Chapter IX: Of National Noses (2)

No well-informed writer, however warm his sympathies towards the Negro race as his relation by the same “blood of which God made all the dwellers upon earth,” has anticipated a destiny for it equal to that of the Caucasian or elliptical-headed and aquiline-nosed races. Channing, the most enthusiastic friend of the blacks, in all the fervour of his ardent mind and vivid imagination, attributes to them a capacity only for the milder graces of Christianity, and accords to them a destiny precisely such as is indicated by their nasal formation when elevated and sanctified by religion. “I should expect,” he says, “from the African race, if civilized, less energy, less courage, less intellectual originality, than in ours; but more amiableness, tranquillity, gentleness, and content. They might not rise to an equality in outward condition, but would probably be a much happier race.” Essentially a feminine character is that which he assigns the negro; a character very loveable, notwithstanding the deformity of its facial indicator.

In the new Islands of the Pacific, we behold a constant succession of new worlds emerging from the deep by means of the same process which, in the pre-Adamite world, formed and elevated the islands and continents of the northern hemisphere. Minute polypi are secreting from the waters, and fixing on the summits of submarine volcanoes the solid and durable limestone which now forms their protection from the waves, and which will hereafter form the foundations on which accumulated detritus will heap up fertile soils and habitable lands.[53] Earthquakes are continually pushing up these horizontal surfaces, and breaking them up into mountains which, arresting the clouds in their progress, draw down into the valleys and plains the fertilizing rain. This smooths down the asperities of the earthquake-broken surface, and softens and harmonizes into that sweet variety which gives birth to

“The pleasure situate in hill and dale.”

To people these new lands, Nature has branched off from the old stock, new races of men of various degrees of physical development and mental endowments. While those nearest the old continent of Asia, and therefore nearest to the old blood, are of the lowest possible mental and physical organization, little elevated above the low-class animals—the kangaroo and the ornithorynchus[54]—of the Australian plains, those at a greater distance—the New Zealander and the Otaheitan—exhibit a development which may vie with that of the Caucasian nations: and which has proved its equality by not sinking before them, but maintaining against Saxon invaders equal rights and equal privileges.

We have a striking instance of this before us at the present time. The British Legislature having, in ignorance of the determined character and clever good sense of the New Zealanders, endeavoured to force upon them a Constitution which deprived them of legislative privileges equal with those of the colonists, and which gave to the latter the power of taxing the former without their consent, the natives have resisted the injustice so firmly, but hitherto peaceably, that the Governor, Sir George Grey, has been compelled to suspend this so-called Constitution, lest it should foment a war of the most deadly character. It is worthy of observation that the injustice attempted to be done this shrewd and spirited people, is not one of an evident physical character, such as any savage can appreciate, but one of a purely theoretical and political nature, the importance of which is even yet hardly sufficiently understood and appreciated in any country besides England. Sir George Grey writes to the Home Government as follows:

“By the introduction of the proposed Constitution into the provinces of New Zealand, her Majesty’s Ministers would not confer, as it was intended, upon her subjects the blessings of self-government, but would be giving power to a small minority (the colonists). She would not be giving to her subjects the right to manage their affairs as they might think proper, but would be giving to a small _minority a power to raise taxes from the great majority_ (the aborigines). There was no reason to think that the majority of the aboriginal inhabitants would be satisfied with the rule of the minority; while there are many reasons for believing that they would resist to the uttermost. They were people of _strong natural sense and ability_, but by nature jealous and suspicious. Many of them were owners of vessels, horses, and cattle, and had considerable sums of money at their disposal, _and there was no people he was acquainted with less likely to sit down quietly under what they might regard as an injustice_.”

“For these and other reasons, the Governor announced that he should not proclaim the constitution before receiving fresh instructions from the Colonial Office.

“The tone of the most trustworthy correspondence from New Zealand, proves that this exercise of independent authority on the part of Governor Grey has saved the colony from disastrous consequences. Ministers acknowledge his superior competency to judge in a matter of this kind, and a bill has accordingly been introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Labouchere, ‘for suspending, during a limited time (viz., for five years), the operation of part of the Act for making further provision for the government of the New Zealand Islands.’”[55]

Thus has this noble people, with a strong natural sense and ability not hitherto supposed to belong innately to “savages,” opposed more successfully the first step in tyranny—the power of unrepresented taxation—than any other nation (except the Saxon), which has ever existed, civilized or uncivilized.

This has been done within twenty years after their actual beneficial contact with civilization; but it was more than six hundred years after the Norman conquest, before the Saxon roused himself to enforce the same right of self-taxation. There could be but one better evidence than this of the high-class mind of this people; and it has furnished this one better, and best, evidence—its speedy and conscientious reception of Christianity; for “in no country, similarly circumstanced, has the Gospel made such rapid progress, since the days of the Apostles.”[56]

While for several centuries missionaries of every denomination have laboured in Asia in vain, no sooner was Christianity efficiently made known to the New Zealanders, than, catching at once with a remarkable aptitude its leading characteristics, and appreciating immediately its beneficent doctrines, they accepted it; and now, together with other Polynesian islands, New Zealand affords the proudest conquest and the richest harvest of the soldier of Christ.

Yet, apparently, for no nation could Christianity be less adapted, and no nation could be expected to afford less hope of speedy conversion. The pagan New Zealander was a fierce, blood-thirsty monster, spending his whole life, and finding all his pleasures, in the most savage warfare. Not content with slaying his enemies in combat, he sat down afterwards, with a joyous enthusiasm worthy of a fiend, to make a feast on their carcasses. Human sacrifices stained his altars, and hideously deformed images pourtrayed his debased notions of a God.

On the other hand, the peaceable and mild Hindoos, whose religion forbids bloody sacrifices of any kind, and enjoins the careful preservation of the spirit of life, even in the meanest forms; whose singular traditions of the incarnate Chreeshna seem to point distinctly to a Messiah, and whose remarkable Trimurti, “three in one, and one in three,” seems to open a way to the facile reception of the mysterious doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, have never, as a nation, a province, or even a small village, embraced Christianity.[57] China, which has its similar traditions, whose sages have taught that “The true Holy One is to be found in the West,” and that “Eternal reason (λόγος) produced One, One produced Two, Two produced Three, and THREE produced all things,” and whose calm stoicism and severe morality are so accordant with the external symptoms of a Christian mind, has hardly furnished a single convert, and apparently feels no curiosity about the religion of the Fanqui (white devils).

If history is the past teaching lessons to the future, surely our Missionary Societies might take a lesson from these facts, and withdraw their exertions from so hopeless a field as Asia, and expend them on the hopeful soil of Polynesia. Surely if the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who was specially appointed to bring into the fold of Christ “all nations,” was forbidden to preach the Word to the effete nations of Asia, it is not given to his successors to contravene the inspired mandate.

Other injunctions of Scripture to the apostolic Church are rightly interpreted as applicable, and to be obeyed by the Church in all future ages; and it is a strange inconsistency, arising from a too warm and enthusiastic desire to promote the kingdom of Christ, fruitlessly to strive, in this instance, against the mandate of the Holy Spirit.

Thus much have we said, to contrast the New Zealand mind with the Hindoo and the Chinese, because the same contrast is manifest in their respective physiognomies.

NEW ZEALANDER.
]

Compare the bold energetic Roman Nose, the manly and commanding profile of the New Zealander, with the soft and rounded features of the Hindoo, and the flat monotonous surface of the Chinese visage. You perceive at a glance that the first is the face of a man of strong, straight-forward, common sense, and intense energy. He may not be an acute and subtle reasoner; but he catches at once the leading points of a subject, instantly decides, and instantly acts upon his decision.

While the two latter remain in imperturbable absorption, and while the subtle “Greek” would be thinking too precisely on the event,

“A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,
And ever three parts coward,”

the “Roman” has been, and seen, and conquered. He is come back, at home, resting after his successful toil; while the “Snub” is thinking about getting out of bed, and the “Greek” is making up his mind whether it is “worth while” to go out.

Thus we have, from divers sources, brought together, briefly and succinctly, a few of the universal proofs which establish Nasology as a science. From individuals and from nations we have gathered the basis of our nasological laws; and we trust we have produced conviction in some minds that “the Nose is an index to Character;” if not, we shall not say to the reader, as phrenologists do to their incredulous auditors, that it arises from his defective organization, but rather attribute it to our own defective mode of argumentation; for we shall not willingly admit the erroneousness of a system which has been built up upon many years of personal observation both among the dead and among the living.

THE END.

-----

Footnote 1:

It would be rather amusing, if it were not a melancholy sign of human
perverseness, to sum up all the hypotheses which have been at their
first promulgation pronounced impious and heretical. The denial of the
approaching End of the World in any century after Christ; the
Copernican System; Inoculation and Vaccination for the Small-pox; the
change of the Style of the year; Pecuniary Usufruct; Geology;
Phrenology; Railways; Aërostation; the Census; Mesmerism, &c. &c.,
would be included in the list of either existing or defunct heresies.

Footnote 2:

We shall endeavour to speak of Mind in popular phraseology, instead of
in the obscure terms in which metaphysicians envelope their ignorance
of mental phenomena.

Footnote 3:

See Combe’s Phrenology; _passim_.

Footnote 4:

See the woodcut (after a gem in the Florentine Museum) on the
Title-page.

Footnote 5:

The Platonic theory that beauty of form generally indicates beauty of
mind, is finely condensed by Spenser into a single line:

“All that is good is beautiful and fair.”

A HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.

And again

“All that fair is, is by nature good;
That is a sign to know the gentle blood.”—IBID.

Wordsworth would also appear to be a Platonist:

“For passions linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.”—RUTH.

Footnote 6:

A Nose should never be judged of in profile only; but should be
examined also in front to see whether it partakes of Class III.

Footnote 7:

Thus Phrenologists rightly urge that negative qualities require no
organ. Hate is only the absence of Benevolence; dislike to children, a
defective Philoprogenitiveness.

Footnote 8:

Hooke’s Rom. Hist. b. vi, c. i.

Footnote 9:

We write thus reservedly, because there are some well-attested recent
instances of cannibalism in Ireland. The following anecdote is
likewise narrated by Leyden. “Reiterated complaints having been made
to James I. of Scotland, of the cruelties of the Sheriff of Mearns,
James exclaimed, ‘Sorra’ gin the Shirra’ were sodden, an’ supp’d in
broo’.’ Thereupon four Lairds decoyed the Sheriff to the top of the
hill of Garrock, and having prepared a fire and a boiling cauldron,
they plunged the unlucky man into the latter. After he was _sodden_
for a sufficient time, the savages fulfilled to the letter the King’s
hasty exclamation by _supping the shirra’-broo_!” If the subject were
more agreeable to dwell upon, it would be easy to furnish many other
well-attested instances of the slaking of hunger and the thirst of
revenge by a repast of human flesh.

Footnote 10:

Pict. Hist. of England.

Footnote 11:

The indications of I being so decidedly opposed to those of V and VI
it seems almost impossible for them to be associated.

Footnote 12:

The class placed first in these compounds is that which predominates.

Footnote 13:

Gibbon.

Footnote 14:

Roscoe’s Life of L. de’ Medici, chap. ix.

Footnote 15:

See Hone’s description of one performed in 1815 before several crowned
heads of Europe for three successive days; _Hone on the Mysteries_.
See also _Wilhelm Meister_, vol. 1.

Footnote 16:

In Germany about 1750, and in England about 1550, the vernacular first
began to supersede the Latin in philosophical and literary works.

Footnote 17:

Asser’s Life of Alfred.

Footnote 18:

Life of Raleigh, 6 Port. Gal. p. 10.

Footnote 19:

Colin Clout.

Footnote 20:

If Napoleon was an imitator of Alexander, it was only another point of
identity between them; for Alexander was an imitator of Bacchus.

Footnote 21:

It is narrated of Napoleon that he was a practical Nasologist, and
influenced in his choice of men by the size of their Noses. “Give me,”
said he, “a man with a good allowance of Nose. Strange as it may
appear, when I want any good headwork done, I choose a man—provided
his education has been suitable—with a long Nose.”

Footnote 22:

D’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation, B. I.

Footnote 23:

The physiognomy of M. Ledru-Rollin, the Communist leader, is said, by
an eye-witness, to be “without one redeeming quality—insolent,
conceited, reckless, headstrong, cruel.”

Footnote 24:

We trust no one will misunderstand these observations, but give us
credit for making them sincerely and with all reverence; firmly
convinced as we are, that if the system is true, it _must_, like all
other sciences, furnish its quota of proofs of design in the universe.

Footnote 25:

The use of this word would often save the quibble, whether a system is
entitled to be called a science, or only a theory or hypothesis. Thus
both the advocates and the opponents of phrenology or geology might
agree to call them noögenisms. For this reason we apply the word here
to geology, which some persons assert to be more than a mere
hypothesis, while others deny its claim to be called a science. At
present we claim for Nasology no higher title than that of a mental
deduction from facts or noögenism.

Footnote 26:

Longum, difficile est deponere amorem.

Footnote 27:

Nov. Org., Sec. VII.

Footnote 28:

How different is the language of the disciple from that of the master!
Bacon himself says, “Read not to contradict nor to believe (_i. e._
for facts), but to _weigh and consider_.”

Footnote 29:

Explanations, 2nd Edit. p. 78.

Footnote 30:

Nov. Organ.

Footnote 31:

Ibid. Pt. 1, Sect. 7.

Footnote 32:

Historical and Critical Essays, vol. ii. The reader who wishes to form
an estimate of the sordid views of the utilitarian school, had better
peruse the whole of Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon.

Footnote 33:

Essays, vol. ii. p. 386–403.

Footnote 34:

Filum Labyrinthi.

Footnote 35:

New Atlantis.

Footnote 36:

Lucretius. Rerum Natura. Bacon would seem to have had this passage
again in his mind, when he described Plato as “a man of a sublime
genius, _who took a view of everything as from a high rock_.”—_De
Augmentis_, sec. 5.

Footnote 37:

Essay on Truth.

Footnote 38:

Filum Labyrinthi, Part 1.

Footnote 39:

Earthly and heavenly are not here used in the New Testament sense, for
sinful and holy, but in the Old Testament sense; earthly, for things
pertaining to the body formed of the dust of the ground, and heavenly,
for things pertaining to the mind, the breath of God.

Footnote 40:

Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon, vol. ii., p. 426.

Footnote 41:

_i. e._ Post Christum.

Footnote 42:

This head enables us to point out a characteristic difference between
the convexity of the Jewish Nose and the Roman. The convexity of the
former commences at the eyes, and if it afterwards aquilines, the Nose
is I⁄IV or IV⁄I according as I. or IV. prevails. The convexity of the
Roman Nose is confined to the _centre_ of the Nose, and occasions its
aquilineness.

Footnote 43:

Ephes. v. 22–24.

Footnote 44:

“In 1846, which was a year of larger emigration than any that
preceded, it amounted to 129,851. But in the year 1847, the emigration
extended to no less than 258,270 persons, almost the whole of them
being Irish emigrants to North America. It is scarcely necessary to
observe, that history records no single transportation at all to
compare with this. The migrations of classical antiquity were only the
slow oozings of infant tribes from one thinly-peopled district into
another rather less peopled, or rather more fertile. In actual
figures, the irruptions from the north into southern Europe were never
at one time more immense.

“The Government only refrained from assisting this tremendous
emigration at the urgent demand of the land-owners, because it was
going on as fast as possible without its aid. Bad legislation had
driven the Celt to the ocean, and Saxon ingenuity had furnished him a
boat to cross it. Famine and pestilence were at his heels. It was
unnecessary to do more. What drowning wretch will not catch at a
straw? What patient idiot not fly from misery and death? Yet how
monstrous to call such flight—‘the _sauve qui peut_ of a
panic-stricken army’ spontaneous!

“It was the _unavoidable_ misfortune of this emigration to be
_entirely spontaneous_. The cry was—‘_Sauve qui peut!_’ To send out
more emigrants at the public expense, or to promise assistance to all
who should emigrate, would only have been adding fuel to the fire, or
like attempting to expedite the movement of a crowd locked in a narrow
passage, by applying fresh numbers and pressure to its rear. A
miserable necessity dictated that, as a general rule, emigration
should be allowed to retain its spontaneous, unassisted
character. * * * The fever, _it is a painful satisfaction to reflect_,
raged with equal force in all the British vessels, whether well or
ill-provisioned and appointed. Fearful, too, as the loss of life was,
both at sea and on landing, _it was not greater than was reasonably to
be expected_ from the mortality which prevailed, under circumstances
rather less unfavourable for health, in the workhouses and other
accumulations of Irish at home.”—_Times, Jan. 1848._

History, in its blackest pages, records nothing more horrible than the
miseries of the passage; yet while we are maudlin over the horrors of
the slave-trade, we “reflect, with a painful satisfaction, and
reasonably expect” the more dreadful sufferings of our
fellow-citizens. The slave-dealer—before the Abolition made it
necessary to stow three cargoes in one ship—calculated to land at
their destination four-fifths of his cargo; and it was thought
sufficiently shocking that 1 in 5 died on the passage. But the
mortality on board the Irish emigrant-ships was greater. Many vessels,
from their rotten state, perished altogether, with from 200 to 300
passengers. This rarely happens with a slaver, as the vessels are
necessarily of the very best construction. But, of those who escaped
shipwreck, 1 in 3, and 1 in 4 died on the passage from fever, and one
half the remainder suffered from disease. The “Laren” from Sligo
sailed with 440 passengers—108 died and 150 were sick. The “Virginius”
sailed with 496 passengers—158 died, 186 were sick, and the remainder
landed feeble and tottering. It could hardly be otherwise, when
vessels built to pack 200 emigrants sailed with twice that number; so
that they are described to be worse than the blackhole of Calcutta.
And this was the emigration which the British parliament—which
laboured to put down the slave-trade—declared itself willing to
encourage, had it been necessary, from any backwardness in the
wretched Celts, to avail themselves of it, and which a British
Minister coolly declared it would have been inhuman and unjust to
interfere with.

Footnote 45:

“Territa quæsitis ostendit terga Britannis.”—LUCAN.

Footnote 46:

Edinburgh Review, No. 178, p. 443, Oct. 1848.

Footnote 47:

Schnitzler’s ‘Russia under Alexander and Nicholas.’

Footnote 48:

Humboldt’s Cosmos, p. 411.

Footnote 49:

Acts, ch. xvi.

Footnote 50:

That is, westerly from the country last civilized or Christianized.

Footnote 51:

The repugnance of Christian commentators to allow any good in
Mahometanism, has caused them to apply the promises of national glory
made to Ishmael, to the petty chieftainship and desert supremacy of
the Arab tribes during the centuries antecedent to Christ, though it
is obvious that they were not then more powerful as “a nation” than
they are now, and that to no period of their history but to that of
the Saracenic Caliphates can the fulfilment be justly accorded.

Footnote 52:

The Hebrews consider themselves to be so named from Heber, an ancestor
of Abraham (Gen. xi. 15). The descendants of Ishmael are therefore
equally entitled to the name.

Footnote 53:

“The prodigious extent of the combined and unintermitting labours of
these little world-architects must be witnessed in order to be
adequately conceived or realized. They have built up 400 miles of
barrier-reef on the shores of Caledonia; and on the north-east coast
of Australia their labours extend for 1000 miles in length; averaging
a quarter of a mile in breadth, and one hundred and fifty feet in
depth. The geologist, in contemplating these stupendous operations,
learns to appreciate the circumstances by which were deposited, in
ancient times, those mountain-masses of limestone, for the most part
coralline, which abound in many parts of our native island.”—_Ansted’s
Ancient World_, p. 32.

Footnote 54:

Zoologists class the Marsupiala as the very lowest form of Mammalia,
and but little removed above the cold-blooded Reptilia. They are a
connecting link between those two great classes of Vertebrata. The
Ornithorynchus is an animal of still lower organization. The whole
fauna and flora of Australia indicate a newly-formed land, and are
analogous to those of the Poilitic and New Red Sandstone ages of the
Northern Hemisphere; which in like manner succeeded Coralline
Limestones, and in which small islands began to be united into large
islands and quasi-continents.

Footnote 55:

Leeds Mercury, Jan. 1848.

Footnote 56:

Church Missionary Report, 1848.

Footnote 57:

INDIA.—England holds in subjection _one hundred millions of heathens
and idolaters_. India is at once our glory and our shame. Though we
have been masters there for nearly a century, little has yet been done
towards the Christianizing of that mighty empire.—_Appeal of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts_, 1848.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● P. 7, changed “This a drawback which we feel greatly” to “This is a drawback which we feel greatly”. ● P. 73, changed “they turn their tales round” to “they turn their tails round”. ● P. 149, changed “lest in should foment a war” to “lest it should foment a war”. ● Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. ● Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. ● Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.