Critiques and Addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley

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"The rate of growth of the common branching madrepore is not
over one and a half inches a year. As the branches are open,
this would not be equivalent to more than half an inch in
height of solid coral for the whole surface covered by
the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over
three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone. But a coral
plantation has large bare patches without corals, and the
coral sands are widely distributed by currents, part of them
to depths over one hundred feet where there are no living
corals; not more than one-sixth of the surface of a reef
region is, in fact, covered with growing species. This reduces
the three-eighths to _one-sixteenth_. Shells and other organic
relics may contribute one-fourth as much as corals. At the
outside, the average upward increase of the whole reef-ground
per year would not exceed _one-eighth_ of an inch.

"Now some reefs are at least two thousand feet thick, which at
one-eighth of an inch a year, corresponds to one hundred and
ninety-two thousand years."[1]

[Footnote 1: Dana, "Manual of Geology," p. 591.]

Halve, or quarter, this estimate if you will, in order to be certain
of erring upon the right side, and still there remains a prodigious
period during which the ancestors of the existing coral polypes have
been undisturbedly at work; and during which, therefore, the climatal
conditions over the coral area must have been much what they are now.

And all this lapse of time has occurred within the most recent period
of the history of the earth. The remains of reefs formed by coral
polypes of different kinds from those which exist now, enter largely
into the composition of the limestones of the Jurassic period; and
still more widely different coral polypes have contributed their quota
to the vast thickness of the carboniferous and Devonian strata. Then
as regards the latter group of rocks in America, the high authority
already quoted tells us:--

"The Upper Helderberg period is eminently the coral reef
period of the palaeozoic ages. Many of the rocks abound in
coral, and are as truly coral reefs as the modern reefs of the
Pacific. The corals are sometimes standing on the rocks in the
position they had when growing: others are lying in fragments,
as they were broken and heaped by the waves; and others were
reduced to a compact limestone by the finer trituration before
consolidation into rock. This compact variety is the most
common kind among the coral reef rocks of the present seas;
and it often contains but few distinct fossils, although
formed in water that abounded in life. At the fall of the
Ohio, near Louisville, there is a magnificent display of
the old reef. Hemispherical _Favosites_, five or six feet
in diameter, lie there nearly as perfect as when they were
covered by their flower-like polypes; and besides these,
there are various branching corals, and a profusion of
_Cyathophiyllia_, or cup-corals."[1]

[Footnote 1: Dana, "Manual of Geology," p. 272.]

Thus, in all the great periods of the earth's history of which we
know anything, a part of the then living matter has had the form of
polypes, competent to separate from the water of the sea the carbonate
of lime necessary for their own skeletons. Grain by grain, and
particle by particle, they have built up vast masses of rock, the
thickness of which is measured by hundreds of feet, and their area by
thousands of square miles. The slow oscillations of the crust of the
earth, producing great changes in the distribution of land and water,
have often obliged the living matter of the coral-builders to shift
the locality of its operations; and, by variation and adaptation to
these modifications of condition, its forms have as often changed. The
work it has done in the past is, for the most part, swept away, but
fragments remain; and, if there were no other evidence, suffice to
prove the general constancy of the operations of Nature in this world,
through periods of almost inconceivable duration.

VII.

ON THE METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY.

Ethonology is the science which determines the distinctive characters
of the persistent modifications of mankind; which ascertains the
distribution of those modifications in present and past times, and
seeks to discover the causes, or conditions of existence, both of
the modifications and of their distribution. I say "persistent"
modifications, because, unless incidentally, ethnology has nothing to
do with chance and transitory peculiarities of human structure. And
I speak of "persistent modifications" or "stocks" rather than of
"varieties," or "races," or "species," because each of these last
well-known terms implies, on the part of its employer, a preconceived
opinion touching one of those problems, the solution of which is the
ultimate object of the science; and in regard to which, therefore,
ethnologists are especially bound to keep their minds open and their
judgments freely balanced.

Ethnology, as thus defined, is a branch of anthropology, the great
science which unravels the complexities of human structure; traces out
the relations of man to other animals; studies all that is especially
human in the mode in which man's complex functions are performed; and
searches after the conditions which have determined his presence in
the world. And anthropology is a section of zoology, which again is
the animal half of biology--the science of life and living things.

Such is the position of ethnology, such are the objects of the
ethnologist. The paths or methods, by following which he may hope to
reach his goal, are diverse. He may work at man from the point of
view of the pure zoologist, and investigate the anatomical and
physiological peculiarities of Negroes, Australians, or Mongolians,
just as he would inquire into those of pointers, terriers, and
turnspits,--"persistent modifications" of man's almost universal
companion. Or he may seek aid from researches into the most human
manifestation of humanity--language; and assuming that what is true of
speech is true of the speaker--a hypothesis as questionable in science
as it is in ordinary life--he may apply to mankind themselves the
conclusions drawn from a searching analysis of their words and
grammatical forms.

Or, the ethnologist may turn to the study of the practical life
of men; and relying upon the inherent conservatism and small
inventiveness of untutored mankind, he may hope to discover in manners
and customs, or in weapons, dwellings, and other handiwork, a clue to
the origin of the resemblances and differences of nations. Or, he may
resort to that kind of evidence which is yielded by history proper,
and consists of the beliefs of men concerning past events, embodied
in traditional, or in written, testimony. Or, when that thread breaks,
archaeology, which is the interpretation of the unrecorded remains of
man's works, belonging to the epoch since the world has reached its
present condition, may still guide him. And, when even the dim light
of archaeology fades, there yet remains paleontology, which, in these
latter years, has brought to daylight once more the exuvia of ancient
populations, whose world was not our world, who have been buried in
river beds immemorially dry, or carried by the rush of waters into
caves, inaccessible to inundation since the dawn of tradition.

Along each, or all, of these paths the ethnologist may press towards
his goal; but they are not equally straight, or sure, or easy to
tread. The way of palaeontology has but just been laid open to us.
Archaeological and historical investigations are of great value for
all those peoples whose ancient state has differed widely from their
present condition, and who have the good or evil fortune to possess a
history. But on taking a broad survey of the world, it is astonishing
how few nations present either condition. Respecting five-sixths of
the persistent modifications of mankind, history and archaeology are
absolutely silent. For half the rest, they might as well be silent for
anything that is to be made of their testimony. And, finally, when the
question arises as to what was the condition of mankind more than a
paltry two or three thousand years ago, history and archaeology are,
for the most part, mere dumb dogs. What light does either of these
branches of knowledge throw on the past of the man of the New World,
if we except the Central Americans and the Peruvians; on that of the
Africans, save those of the valley of the Nile and a fringe of the
Mediterranean; on that of all the Polynesian, Australian, and central
Asiatic peoples, the former of whom probably, and the last certainly,
were, at the dawn of history, substantially what they are now? While
thankfully accepting what history has to give him, therefore, the
ethnologist must not look for too much from her.

Is more to be expected from inquiries into the customs and handicrafts
of men? It is to be feared not. In reasoning from identity of custom
to identity of stock the difficulty always obtrudes itself, that
the minds of men being everywhere similar, differing in quality and
quantity but not in kind of faculty, like circumstances must tend to
produce like contrivances; at any rate, so long as the need to be
met and conquered is of a very simple kind. That two nations use
calabashes or shells for drinking-vessels, or that they employ
spears, or clubs, or swords and axes of stone and metal as weapons and
implements, cannot be regarded as evidence that these two nations
had a common origin, or even that intercommunication ever took place
between them; seeing that the convenience of using calabashes or
shells for such purposes, and the advantage of poking an enemy with a
sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, must be early forced
by nature upon the mind of even the stupidest savage. And when he had
found out the use of a stick, he would need no prompting to discover
the value of a chipped or wetted stone, or an angular piece of native
metal, for the same object. On the other hand, it may be doubted
whether the chances are not greatly against independent peoples
arriving at the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow; which last,
if one comes to think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus; and
the tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as these,
and of such strange customs as betel-chewing and tobacco-smoking, may
afford valuable ethnological hints.

Since the time of Leibnitz, and guided by such men as Humboldt, Abel
Remusat, and Klaproth, Philology has taken far higher ground. Thus
Prichard affirms that "the history of nations, termed Ethnology, must
be mainly founded on the relations of their languages."

An eminent living philologer, August Schleicher, in a recent essay,
puts forward the claims of his science still more forcibly:--

"If, however, language is the human [Greek: kat ezochhen], the
suggestion arises whether it should not form the basis of
any scientific systematic arrangement of mankind; whether the
foundation of the natural classification of the genus Homo has
not been discovered in it.

"How little constant are cranial peculiarities and other
so-called race characters! Language, on the other hand,
is always a perfectly constant diagnostic. A German may
occasionally compete in hair and prognathism with a negro,
but a negro language will never be his mother tongue. Of how
little importance for mankind the so-called race characters
are, is shown by the fact that speakers of languages belonging
to one and the same linguistic family may exhibit the
peculiarities of various races. Thus the settled Osmanli Turk
exhibits Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric
Turks exemplify the Mongol type. On the other hand, the
Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical
peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque,
and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from
their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can
hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on
the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like
that of which other vital products are susceptible, especially
when viewed from their morphological side.... The externally
visible structure of the cerebral and facial skeletons, and
of the body generally, is less important than that no less
material but infinitely more delicate corporeal structure, the
function of which is speech. I conceive, therefore, that
the natural classification of languages is also the natural
classification of mankind. With language, moreover, all the
higher manifestations of man's vital activity are closely
interwoven, so that these receive due recognition in and by
that of speech."[1]

[Footnote 1: August Schleicher. Ueber die Bedeutung der Sprache fuer
die Naturgeschichte des Menschen, pp. 16-18. Weimar, 1858.]

Without the least desire to depreciate the value of philology as
an adjuvant to ethnology, I must venture to doubt, with Rudolphi,
Desmoulins, Crawfurd, and others, its title to the leading position
claimed for it by the writers whom I have just quoted. On the
contrary, it seems to me obvious that, though, in the absence of any
evidence to the contrary, unity of languages may afford a certain
presumption in favour of the unity of stock of the peoples speaking
those languages, it cannot be held to prove that unity of stock,
unless philologers are prepared to demonstrate, that no nation can
lose its language and acquire that of a distinct nation, without a
change of blood corresponding with the change of language. Desmoulins
long ago put this argument exceedingly well:--

"Let us imagine the recurrence of one of those slow, or
sudden, political revolutions, or say of those secular changes
which among different people and at different epochs have
annihilated historical monuments and even extinguished
tradition. In that case, the evidence, now so clear, that the
negroes of Hayti were slaves imported by a French colony, who,
by the very effect of the subordination involved in slavery,
lost their own diverse languages and adopted that of their
masters, would vanish. And metaphysical philosophers,
observing the identity of Haytian French with that spoken on
the shores of the Seine and the Loire, would argue that the
men of St. Domingo with woolly heads, black and oily skins,
small calves, and slightly bent knees, are of the same race,
descended from the same parental stock, as the Frenchmen with
silky brown, chestnut, or fair hair, and white skins. For they
would say, their languages are more similar than French is to
German or Spanish."[1]

[Footnote 1: Desmoulins, "Histoire Naturelle des Races Humaines," p.
345. 1826.]

It must not be imagined that the case put by Desmoulins is a merely
hypothetical one. Events precisely similar to the transport of a body
of Africans to the West India Islands, indeed, cannot have happened
among uncivilized races, but similar results have followed the
importation of bodies of conquerors among an enslaved people over and
over again. There is hardly a country in Europe in which two or more
nations speaking widely different tongues have not become intermixed;
and there is hardly a language of Europe of which we have any right
to think that its structure affords a just indication of the amount of
that intermixture.

As Dr. Latham has well said:--

"It is certain that the language of England is of Anglo-Saxon
origin, and that the remains of the original Keltic are
unimportant. It is by no means so certain that the blood of
Englishmen is equally Germanic. A vast amount of Kelticism,
not found in our tongue, very probably exists in our
pedigrees. The ethnology of France is still more complicated.
Many writers make the Parisian a Roman on the strength of his
language; whilst others make him a Kelt on the strength of
certain moral characteristics, combined with the previous
Kelticism of the original Gauls. Spanish and Portuguese, as
languages, are derivations from the Latin; Spain and Portugal,
as countries, are Iberic, Latin, Gothic, and Arab, in
different proportions. Italian is modern Latin all the world
over; yet surely there must be much Keltic blood in Lombardy,
and much Etruscan intermixture in Tuscany.

"In the ninth century every man between the Elbe and the
Niemen spoke some Slavonic dialect; they now nearly all speak
German. Surely the blood is less exclusively Gothic than the
speech."[1]

[Footnote 1: Latham, "Man and his Migrations," p. 171.]

In other words, what philologer, if he had nothing but the vocabulary
and grammar of the French and English languages to guide him, would
dream of the real causes of the unlikeness of a Norman to a Provencal,
of an Orcadian to a Cornishman? How readily might he be led to suppose
that the different climatal conditions to which these speakers of
one tongue have so long been exposed, have caused their physical
differences; and how little would he suspect that these are due (as we
happen to know they are) to wide differences of blood.

Few take duly into account the evidence which exists as to the
ease with which unlettered savages gain or lose a language. Captain
Erskine, in his interesting "Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of
the Western Pacific," especially remarks upon the "avidity with
which the inhabitants of the polyglot islands of Melanesia, from New
Caledonia to the Solomon Islands, adopt the improvements of a more
perfect language than their own, which different causes and accidental
communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that
"among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did
not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of
numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon only to
five."

Yet how much philological reasoning in favour of the affinity
or diversity of two distinct peoples has been based on the mere
comparison of numerals!

But the most instructive example of the fallacy which may attach to
merely philological reasonings, is that afforded by the Feejeans, who
are, physically, so intimately connected with the adjacent Negritos of
New Caledonia, &c., that no one can doubt to what stock they belong,
and who yet, in the form and substance of their language, are
Polynesian. The case is as remarkable as if the Canary Islands should
have been found to be inhabited by negroes speaking Arabic, or some
other clearly Semitic dialect, as their mother tongue. As it happens,
the physical peculiarities of the Feejeans are so striking, and
the conditions under which they live are so similar to those of the
Polynesians, that no one has ventured to suggest that they are merely
modified Polynesians--a suggestion which could otherwise certainly
have been made. But if languages may be thus transferred from one
stock to another, without any corresponding intermixture of blood,
what ethnological value has philology?--what security does unity of
language afford us that the speakers of that language may not have
sprung from two, or three, or a dozen, distinct sources?

Thus we come, at last, to the purely zoological method, from which
it is not unnatural to expect more than from any other, seeing that,
after all, the problems of ethnology are simply those which are
presented to the zoologist by every widely distributed animal he
studies. The father of modern zoology seems to have had no doubt upon
this point. At the twenty-eighth page of the standard twelfth edition
of the "Systema Naturae," in fact, we find:--

I. PRIMATES.

_Dentes primores incisores: superiores IV. paralleli, mammae
pectorales II._

1. HOMO. Nosce te ipsum.
Sapiens. 1. H. diurnus: _varians cultura, loco._
_Ferus_. Tetrapus, mutus, hirsutus.

* * * * *

_Americanus_ [Greek: a]. Rufus, cholericus, rectus--_Pilis_
nigris, rectis, crassis--_Naribus_
patulis--_Facie_ ephelitica:
_Mento_ subimberbi.
_Pertinax_, contentus, liber. _Pingit_
se lineis daedaleis rubris.
_Regitur_ Consuetudine.

_Europaeus_ [Greek: b]. Albus sauguineus torosus. _Pilis_
flavescentibus, prolixis.
_Oculis_ caeruleis.
_Levis_, argutus, inventor.
_Tegitur_ Vestimentis arctis.
_Regitur_ Ritibus.

_Asiaticus_ [Greek: g]. Luridus, melancholicus, rigidus.
_Pilis_ nigricantibus. _Oculis_
fuscis. _Severus_, fastuosus, avarus.
_Tegitur_ Indumentis laxis.
_Regitur_ Opinionibus.

_Afer_ [Greek: d]. Niger, phlegmaticus, laxus. _Pilis_
atris, contortuplicatis. _Cute_ holosericea.
_Naso_ simo. _Labiis_ tumidis.
_Feminis_ sinus pudoris.
_Mammae_ lactantes prolixae.
_Vafer_, segnis, negligens. _Ungit_ se
pingui. _Regitur_ Arbitrio.

_Monstrosus_ [Greek: e]. Solo (a) et arte (b c) variat.:
a. _Alpini_ parvi, agiles, timidi.
_Patagonici_ magni, segnes.
b. _Monorchides_ ut minus fertiles:
Hottentotti.
_Junceae_ puellae, abdomine attenuato:
Europoeae.
c. _Macrocephali_ capiti conico: Chinenses.
_Plagiocephali_ capite antice compresso:
Canadenses.

Turn a few pages further on in the same volume, and there appears,
with a fine impartiality in the distribution of capitals and
sub-divisional headings:--

III. FERAE.

_Dentes primores superiores sex, acutiusculi. Canini solitarii._

* * * * *

12. CANIS. _Dentes primores_ superiores VI.: laterales
longiores distantes: intermedii lobati.
Inferiores VI.: laterales lobati.
_Laniarii_ solitarii, incurvati.
Molares VI. s. VII. (pluresve quam in reliquis).

_familiaris_ [Greek: i]. C. cauda (sinistrorsum) recurvata....

_domesticus_ [Greek: a]. auriculis erectis, cauda subtus lanata.

_sagax_ [Greek: b]. auriculis pendulis, digito spurio ad
tibias posticas.

_grajus_ [Greek: g]. magnitudine lupi, trunco curvato, rostro
attenuato, &c. &c.

Linnaeus' definition of what he considers to be mere varieties of
the species Man are, it will be observed, as completely free from
any allusion to linguistic peculiarities as those brief and pregnant
sentences in which he sketches the characters of the varieties of
the species Dog. "Pilis nigris, naribus patulis" may be set against
"auriculis erectis, cauda subtus lanata;" while the remarks on the
morals and manners of the human subject seem as if they were thrown in
merely by way of makeweight.

Buffon, Blumenbach (the founder of ethnology as a special science),
Rudolphi, Bory de St. Vincent, Desmoulins, Cuvier, Retzius, indeed I
may say all the naturalists proper, have dealt with man from a no
less completely zoological point of view; while, as might have been
expected, those who have been least naturalists, and most linguists,
have most neglected the zoological method, the neglect culminating in
those who have been altogether devoid of acquaintance with anatomy.

Prichard's proposition, that language is more persistent than physical
characters, is one which has never been proved, and indeed admits of
no proof, seeing that the records of language do not extend so far
as those of physical characters. But, until the superior tenacity
of linguistic over physical peculiarities is shown, and until the
abundant evidence which exists, that the language of a people may
change without corresponding physical change in that people, is shown
to be valueless, it is plain that the zoological court of appeal
is the highest for the ethnologist, and that no evidence can be set
against that derived from physical characters.

What, then, will a new survey of mankind from the Linnaean point of
view teach us?

The great antipodal block of land we call Australia has, speaking
roughly, the form of a vast quadrangle, 2,000 miles on the side, and
extends from the hottest tropical, to the middle of the temperate,
zone. Setting aside the foreign colonists introduced within the
last century, it is inhabited by people no less remarkable for the
uniformity, than for the singularity, of their physical characters and
social state. For the most part of fair stature, erect and well built,
except for an unusual slenderness of the lower limbs, the AUSTRALIANS
have dark, usually chocolate-coloured skins; fine dark wavy hair; dark
eyes, overhung by beetle brows; coarse, projecting jaws; broad and
dilated, but not especially flattened, noses; and lips which, though
prominent, are eminently flexible.

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