Chapter IX: System (3)

[305] Darwin _On the Origin of Species_, p. 518, London, 1861. “I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or less number. Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype.”

[306] Compare Darwin _On the Origin of Species_, p. 96, 1861.

[307] _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. ii, p. 421, 1859.

[308] “The observation of species in a state of nature, by revealing to us a multitude of modifications more or less important, cannot show us any serious deviation from the types formed or preserved by the influence of the existing state of things.” Isidore Geoffroy, _Vie d’Étienne Geoffroy_, p. 349.

[309] See Leibnitz, _Protogée_, transl. by Bertrand de Saint-Germain, Introduction, p. 61.

[310] _Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie_, February 22, 1858.

[311] We shall be thanked for publishing here the following extract from a letter addressed to us by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the 3rd of June, 1860, and which relates to all these questions. “I said, two or three years ago, as I have learnt from M. Lartet (who remembered the expression which I had myself forgotten), that the present movement of science tends to substitute in geology the idea of the _evolution_ of the globe for that of _revolutions_. M. Lartet has taken up this view, and adheres to it. It is of great importance to me, as regards my works on species, in which we must in this case substitute the notion of _evolution_ for that of _revolution_; _revolutions_ are here pretended creations, abruptly successive. It is time to have done with these views, which, instead of taking creation as having been once concluded, make at every instant the _Deus ex machinâ_ intervene.”

[312] [“In the neighbourhood of Mount Ætna, or on the sides of that extensive mountain, there are beds of lava covered over with a considerable thickness of earth; and at least another, again, which though known from ancient monuments and historical records to have issued from the volcano at least two thousand years ago, is still almost entirely destitute of soil and vegetation; in one place a pit has been cut through seven different strata of lava; and these have been found separated from each other by almost as many thick beds of rich earth. Now, from the fact that a stratum of lava, two thousand years old, is yet scantily covered with earth, it has been inferred by the ingenious Canon Recupero, who has laboured thirty years on the natural history of Mount Ætna, that the lowest of these strata which have been found divided by so many beds of earth, must have been emitted from the volcanic crater at least _fourteen thousand_ years ago, and consequently, that the age of the earth, whatever it may exceed this term of years, cannot possibly be less.”--Brydone’s _Tour through Sicily and Malta_ (1770). Plato, in his _Critias_, mentions the island Atlantis as having been buried in the ocean nine thousand years before his own time. In the _Universal History_, vol. i, (preface,) we are told that the astronomical records of the ancient Chaldeans carry back the origin of society to the remote period of _four hundred and seventy-three thousand_ years. Among comparatively well-known authorities, there is a good deal of difference in the time of the supposed formation of the world. The Hebrew bible makes the creation 3,944 years before the Christian era. The Samaritan bible, 4,305 years; the Septuagint, 5,270 years; Usher, 4,004 years; Josephus, 4,658 years; M. Pezron, 5,872 years. In all these differences, however, there is nothing so striking as in the theories we mention above, of Recupero, the Chaldeans, etc.--EDITOR.]

[313] [Our author is quite right. Science _does_ teach us what to think of divine power in its outward manifestations. The more we understand nature, the more ready will earnest-minded men be to praise and give glory to the God who made it, who created man and beast with such marvellous and exquisite regularity, and who continues to govern the world and all that is upon it. Perhaps M. Pouchet thinks he himself could have made a better one. It is a pity that a clever mind is so warped by that science which ought to make him more satisfied than ever that God is the creator of the world; and that spontaneous generation, and the never-clearly explained origin of the _first_ matter, about which even M. Pouchet cannot tell us, with all his scepticism, ought to go to pave the “pathway of good intentions.”--EDITOR.]

[314] [Why not?--EDITOR.]

[315] Some may be astonished at our applying the word _kingdom_ to the vertebrata. We do so because, in truth, the distance which separates them from other animals seems to us almost as great, and even more decided, than that which separates the invertebrata from plants.

[316] The diagram which Darwin has placed in his book _On the Origin of Species_, is only a fraction and piece of detail of the general figure which we are endeavouring to place before the mind of the reader.

[317] _L’Insecte_, p. 128, 1858.

[318] Predominance of the immediate azotic principles, respiration comparable to that of animals, voluntary movements, indivisibility of organism, etc.

[319] [See above, pp. 46, 47.--EDITOR.]

[320] See _On the Origin of Species_, chap. iii.

[321] Lions hindered the army of Xerxes in Macedonia. They abounded in the province of Africa in the time of the Roman Emperors. At the present time, however, Gérard was obliged to watch for three hundred nights in order to kill only thirty or forty.

[322] The crocodile, which used to swarm on the Delta, is now only found in Upper Egypt.

[323] The hippopotamus, since the Roman occupation, has successively retired from the mouth of the Nile to the fourth cataract. Some years ago, there existed one, and one only, at the Island of Argo, on this side of New Dongolah. Some hunters killed it, and since then, they have only been found at the Berber level.

[324] [_Hamites_, a genus of extinct Cephalopods, found in the greensand formation in England.--EDITOR.]

[325] _Comptes Rendus_, vol. iv, p. 58. Perhaps the only logical deduction which we can really draw from the greater size of these animals, is the greater extent of the continents which they inhabited. The belief in the gigantic dimensions of the fossil _fauna_ and _flora_, is also a remains of the marvels which the first inquirers into science involuntarily reported. In examining matters nearer and more impartially, we see that certain zoological groups have been, in fact, formerly represented by larger species than at the present day; but until we arrive at some new discovery, we have the right to think that the other groups of animals, on the contrary, have a class of larger representatives _than in former times_; like the quadrumana, the cetacea, insects, cephalopods, acephalous mollusks, etc. But this pretended decay is especially false as regards plants; if we find in the ground some large ferns, or enormous grasses, we must subtract a good deal from those so-called _antediluvian_ forests, which many have not hesitated to bring forward in support of their ideas. All the fossil plants that we know are, without exception, extremely wretched in comparison with the gigantic conifers and dicotyledons in the forests of the old and new world.

[326] [If this new handiwork of man, so charmingly arranged by our author, is not more successful than Pandora, as made by Vulcan, we fear the world will not gain much by it. In the olden times, the man who propounded such curious ideas would probably have had a punishment awarded him, something similar to that suffered by Prometheus. Does M. Pouchet, in quoting this personage, entirely forget the rest of the tale, and the _consequences_ of his rashness? We are really sorry, however, to see science perverted to a _pet idea_, if we may use the expression, and twisted by means of “bad anatomy and worse theology,” as a friend of ours calls it, for the sake of proving facts quite impossible to be solved. M. Pouchet gives us, in spontaneous generation, a first germ with which to start a _primordial anatomical element_, as he calls it. He starts with this, and argues--in what manner we leave it to our readers to determine--that, from this germ there have, in time, sprung all the animals on the surface of the globe. But he does not tell us how this _first germ_ itself arose. That is put entirely on one side, and taken for granted. We cannot take it for granted however; and until we have it satisfactorily proved that he is right in any part of his idea, we shall go on thinking and believing as we have done before.--EDITOR.]

[327] See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Vie d’E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire_, p. 287.

[328] See above, chap. viii.

[329] Compare Owen, _On the Characters, Principles of Division, and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia_ (_Journal of Linnean Society_, 1857.)

[330] See, for the explanation and discussion of these different systems, Crull, _Dissertatio de Cranio_, 1810.

[331] Compare Crull, _Dissertatio de Cranio_, p. 28, 1810.

[332] Compare Crull, _Dissertatio de Cranio_, p. 52.

[333] Busk and Quekett (_Medical Times and Gazette_).

[334] One always endeavours to find some former indication or presentiment, although even confused and full of obscurity, beyond the origin of positive science; it is curious to find in the works of the _potter physician_ a sort of germ which, when developed, may have given birth to cranioscopy,--a sort of foresight of the importance which the measurement of the skull would one day acquire. It is in the _Recepte Véritable_: one of two speakers relates a dream in which he saw the different instruments used in geometry dispute about precedence: he answers them, that man is above them all; they exclaim, that man cannot even use one of them in order to measure any part of his body. [We think it best to give the original here.--EDITOR.] “Quoy voyant, il me print envie de mesurer la teste d’un homme, pour scauoir directement ses mesures, et me sembla que la sauterelle, la reigle, et le compas me seroient fort propres pour ceste affaire, mais quoy qu’il en soit, ie n’y sceu iamais trouver une mesure asseurée.” Bernard Palissy, _Œuvres_, p. 93, 12mo, Paris, 1844. Blumenbach says somewhere, “The habit and constant use of my collection of skulls makes me understand every day the impossibility of subjecting a variety of skulls to the rule of any possible angle, the head being susceptible of so many forms, and the parts which compose it being of so many different proportions and directions.” See Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences dans l’espèce humaine_, p. 68. M. Aitken Meigs, at the present day, shows no less than twenty-nine different measurements of the skull which must be obtained if we wish to have anything like a satisfactory idea of the same.

[335] See above, chap. iv.

[336] See _Indigenous Races of the Earth_, p. 320.

[337] See Strope, _Description d’une Momie très-ancienne_ (_Recueil Périod. d’Observ. de Médecine_, vol. iv, p. 290, Jan. 1756). One may see in reading the account of a very able and judicious narrator how much ancient scientific observations alter with the times, when no care is taken to refer to the original sources.

[338] See Vivien, in the _Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique_, vol. ii, p. 59.

[339] _Portfolio_, Philadelphia, 1814.

[340] W. Edwards, _Des Caractères Physiologiques des races humaines_, p. 45, has especially noticed the great importance of external characteristics; he has only done wrong in excluding the hair, and attending solely to the form of the skull, which never concerns us when we endeavour to picture or recall to our mind the features of a man.

[341] See Michelet, with regard to the paintings in the Sixtine Chapel, _Histoire de France, Renaissance_.

[342] “Philology is at once the most elevated and the most positive branch of the natural history of the human race.” Chavée, _Moïse et les Langues_ (_La Revue_). M. Flourens seems to give philological a superior rank to physical characteristics. [See above, p. 77, _note_.--EDITOR.]

[343] He believes that by their means we can go back to the most distant geological periods. See _Apophthegms_ (_Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ._, vol. li.)

[344] Latham thus explains it: “This is because whilst A and B, in the way of stock-blood or pedigree, will give C a true _tertium quid_, or a near approach to it, and A and B, in the way of language, will only give themselves, _i. e._, they will give no true _tertium quid_, nor any very close approach to it.” _Celtic Nations_, p. 33. We have endeavoured to prove that this true _tertium quid_--this _real mean term_, is never produced as far as species.

[345] [“Either language must have been originally revealed from heaven, or it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who represents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the _names_ of animals. The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. The first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. This opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was framed by Mochus, the Phœnician, and afterwards improved by Democritus and Epicurus; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are represented as having grown out of the earth, like trees and other vegetables, it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the republic of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination.”--_Encyclop. Brit._, vol. ix, p. 530, 1797.--EDITOR.]

[346] I do not here mention the opinions of the Swede (see Latham, _Celtic Nations_, p. 2), who thinks that important changes can be introduced into a language by certain customs of a people, who change, for instance, the lips for the nostrils, and thus substitute nasal for labial consonants. These facts are, perhaps, true in the detail, but they ought not to have much importance, as they do not alter the specific and personal character of the language, which is far from consisting in the relative number of one or two kinds of letters.

[347] Bunsen (Eng. transl.), Niebuhr’s _Life and Letters_, vol. i, p. 39.

[348] “Languages,” he says, “give but feeble probabilities in Anthropology.” _Voyage aux regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent_, vol. iii, p. 352.

[349] See, in the _Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique_ (July 1843), a letter in which M. Vivien denies a first rank to language as a distinctive characteristic, and gives it to physical type.

[350] See above, p. 32.

[351] “I am led to believe that familiar languages (if this philological barbarism is permitted me) do not resemble one another _because_ they come from the same parent, but because they have been brought up together; Africa especially seems to me to furnish a proof of it, for we must study the history of families of languages, especially in the place where they began to be formed, and I believe that language was formed in Africa. My hypothesis is not applicable to all cases, but to several; thus, the French, Italian, Spanish, etc., come from the Latin, and were born at its death; but many other languages appear to me to take their features one from the other by simple frequentation, by the natives being often in company together, and, as time goes on, these mutual loans make two or several languages, like the branches of the same tree, only, in my idea, the tree does not exist.”--_Correspondence_, 1857.

[352] See above, p. 78.

[353] [Pali, the ordinary language of daily life in Hindoostan at the time when Sanscrit was used in elevated literature alone.--EDITOR.]

[354] _Des Colorations de l’épiderme_, 4to, Paris, 1864.

[355] See _The Natural History of Man_, 1844.

[356] See _Ethnographic Tableau_ (_Indigenous Races of the Earth_, London, 1857).

[357] We may quote, as types of genus, two paintings, incomparable in an anthropological point of view, _Portrait d’un Nègre_; _Portrait d’un Oriental_, by Herschop (Berlin Museum, Nos. 825 and 827).

[358] M. Flourens, in saying that Buffon collected the accounts of different travellers in order to write his _Histoire des Races_, adds, “Whatever they have only seen with the eyes of their body, he sees with the eyes of his mind, and by that means alone he sees better than they can; each of them has seen merely some scattered characteristics,--Buffon sees everything; he links together whatever they may have separated, and separates whatever they have confounded.”--_Histoire des Idées de Buffon_, p. 167.

[359] “Boni viri nullam oportet esse causam præter veritatem.”

[360] [Yes, but the difficulty is to determine if it _is_ true. We cannot receive _anything_ as true merely because a _savant_ says it is so. We must go on enquiring in a proper spirit; but we must not put inquiry after truth in the same category with scepticism,--“that cheerlessness of soul to which certainty respecting anything and everything here on earth seems unattainable.” This is the age for seeking after truth; but in how many different ways do men endeavour to attain to it! We must search the past carefully in all its scientific and natural facts, and as Longfellow beautifully says,--

“Nor deem the irrevocable past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.”

This is the true aim of all inquiry.--EDITOR.]

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.

The “Errata” have been corrected in line.