G. Pouchet

“ Science cannot have two different modes of proceeding: it must follow the same paths in the same subjects in order to arrive at comparable results. It is the only truly philosophic road: nature is one, and the work of the modern sciences is precisely to tend towards unity. The most diverse phenomena in the hands of analysts compare and assimilate themselves to the rays of a spirit of synthesis; magnetism, electricity, light, heat, motion, everything is mingled and linked together so well, that we know not how to make a distinction any more. ”

“ Then a curious phenomenon will strike his gaze,—the chains of mountains and the rivers which separate the various races of mankind, will also separate different religions. Like the sea which breaks on the shore, every belief has seen its disciples, armed with the sword, or with the pacific weapons of persuasion, stop at certain limits, over which they are not permitted to pass. Of course, we only speak here of true proselytism, of real progress in religion in its form and spirit. ”

“ 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 ”

“ To admit that all human races can reach a complete hybridity, would be to admit that each race is cosmopolite, which it is not. But at least it remains true, that when two very different races are united, we must not hope for anything good or durable from their union. The same phenomenon happens, with the simple difference of intensity, when two different species of animals are united. ”

“ The question of intellectual differences, like, indeed, all the other points in anthropological study, has largely exercised the inventive genius of monogenists, for it must be owned that all the efforts of imagination proceed from them. It is not more difficult to admit the development of one or twenty human species upon our planet, than the development of a single moss or sea-weed; they are phenomena of the same order, and equally beyond the actual limits of our knowledge; but this first step taken, anthropology opens itself to the polygenist as simple and easy ”

“ Man confers upon himself dominion of his own will; he loves to proclaim himself legitimate sovereign of all things on the surface of this globe; and, in fact, no creature will dare to dispute with him an empire which, day by day, extends and increases. Well! is it not satisfactory to behold anthropological characteristics sanction and ennoble this empire by placing by the side of the right, which springs from intellectual superiority, the notion of duty, which arises from morality and religion? ”

“ Science is neither a special attribute of privileged castes, nor given to certain times in preference to others; it has never been obliged to wait for a revelation; it is universal, and all men, endowed with the same faculties, have always been able, in all countries and at all times, to carry it as far, when they have had the same means and the same occasions of observation; it is thus that psychology, based upon simple reflection, has not farther progressed in our days than at Athens or at Alexandria; from Plato to Descartes there is only the distance between one system and the other. ”

“ And if we wished to form sentiment from science, we should ask, which is the most reasonable, the most worthy, and the most consoling,—whether to believe that we alone are perfect, and that nine-tenths of our brethren who cover the globe are disinherited; or to consider all these varied existences which we see around us as forming equal, if not similar, species, pursuing, each in its own way, a destiny, different, indeed, but not degraded,—not degenerated,—in certain points even better arranged than our own. ”

“ And, moreover, the American residing in boundless forests, where the view is always restricted, has as piercing a glance as the Kalmuc upon his plain. The question of the education of an organ or a system by the individual himself will be cleared up, doubtless, one of these days, by attentive anatomy. And since we are upon the subject, let us remember that an important study still remains, hitherto merely glanced at,—that of the influence which, for instance, the milk of an animal or a female of another race may have upon the development or the health of a white child. ”

“ It is impossible to establish by a clearer and more striking image the individuality of the different families of language, not one of which owes its origin to its neighbours, and which have, probably, never been in one another’s presence, except when they had already been formed, bringing with them their own characteristics, their fundamental and profound type, as unalterable by contact as is the physical type of the men who spoke them. ”

“ To examine what man is with respect to the highest orders of mammalia, and in a more general manner, to animals, is the primordial question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical elements, absolutely submitted to the same exigences of development, nutrition, and reproduction, as animals. ”

“ Mohammed was so struck with the difference between white and black men, that he did not hesitate to say, that God had made the first with white earth, and the latter with black. He did not imagine that men so different, not only in colour but in figure and inclination, could possibly be of one and the same origin. ”

“ As to explaining how a part of the ancient species has been able to modify itself whilst another has remained stationary, we must admit that all these influences of medium have always been exclusively local, so that all the coexisting vertebrata have never been able to submit at once to its influence. We must understand by medium, the whole of the circumstances, past or present, which are able to influence organism mediately or immediately in any manner whatsoever. The ancestors of an animal, as well as the sun which warms it, and the parasites which devour it, make up a part of this medium. ”

“ Craniology was anthropology itself, whilst this science was being cultivated merely by learned men in their studies. If a skull does not always bear about it the stamp of the race to which it belongs, we must nevertheless own that it is the best representative of the dead individual. Craniology obtains all its weight and powers from the study of ancient races and extinct peoples. ”

“ That fine North American race, which is so much admired by all who have lived among them, will be no longer, according to Dr. Martius,194 the worthy descendant of the first murderer, a collection of maniacs and insane folks, brought to that state by misery and the reprobation of God. We only see in them men endowed like ourselves, but more in harmony with the nature which animates them, having, of course, their imperfections like ourselves, but giving us also an example of great qualities, firmness, courage, patience, and an intense love of liberty. ”

“ We ask if it is right to compare a being thus raised and exalted by his own means with an animal which has no more remote past than its own birth?30 Let us take, then, for the sake of comparing them with animals, those people in whom life is in some sort individual, among whom no person adds anything to transmitted inheritance,—among whom even this inheritance has originally come from outside, and who, we know not why, having arrived at the lowest ebb of civilisation, have not been able to improve or perfect it. ”

“ Since we have found that man is comparable in all points to animals, we ought to seek for him and for them a common origin, and the difficulty of admitting an initial miracle has led us to the idea of evolution. If in the science of observation it is permitted to refer to general ideas, assuredly it is so in this case; philosophy commences where science ends, and it belongs to it to give us an explanation of the matter; but we must wait for the future for a true positive solution of the problem, perhaps from advanced geology, perhaps from experiments. ”

“ Histology teaches us that each animal, its instincts and intellect included, is at a given moment merely a mass of amorphous matter, which, at a later period, will form itself, or in the midst of which will be spontaneously developed an anatomical element, that is to say, an organised body. To admit spontaneous genesis, then, is simply to admit the formation of organic amorphous primitive matter apart from an already living body, at the cost of and in the heart of which can be born the initial anatomical element of one of these animals, very properly called protozoa. ”

“ Now, let us apply to man the theory of the origin of species which we wish to be dominant, for there is no reason to think that man forms any exception to the common rule. Before all [Pg 129] things, we must remember that human races cannot lend themselves to any classification in natural series. It is also as impossible for the naturalist to point out a race at the present day from which all the others are derived, either parallelly or successively, as for the historian to discover in the past any trace of a homogeneous humanity. ”

“ The natural history of man is of to-day, and the difficulties are great, because by virtue of his intellect man possesses resistance and special affinity. Living by nations, he lives a double life; his own, and that of the nation—which is a separate thing—into which a neighbouring race or species can enter wholly, adopting the same customs, the same dress, and the same language. There are difficulties which we meet with in anthropology, and which we only meet with there. ”

“ Unity of composition is the condition of all harmony, the necessary rule of nature. As to ourselves, we only see everywhere the same faculties, extended and developed among the superior vertebrate animals; having even acquired among mankind the singular property of aggrandising itself almost ad infinitum, confined among other vertebrata, enclosed in a small circle, where they can even escape our own means of knowledge.
But there is everywhere the same nature, everywhere things are alike. Life is unity ”

“ If we admit into White’s theory a birth which does not take place, or an unproductive union, the conclusions are overturned at once; a part of the new generation will preserve the primitive type,254 and this portion will be much more considerable than White imagined. When the facts of arrest of development, quoted above, are not sufficient to prove that a mongrel breed cannot subsist by itself, can we anywhere find one? Do we find a people preserving for centuries a medium type between two other types which gave it birth? We see them nowhere,—just as little as we see a race of mules. ”

“ We can study philology and craniology in the library and in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient materials, but not anthropology; because anthropology is a science still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth will not contribute to social progress. ”

“ 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 have shown, while speaking of hybridity, that a native individual disposition ought always to disappear by the mere fact of its being individual; it quickly disappears through cross-breeding at the tenth generation, if not at the first, in the midst of a population which does not possess it. We fully admit, like Lamarck, that species are formed from one another by the appearance of organic modifications, more or less decided; but we do not leave anything to chance in this phenomenon, as Darwin does, and we can only see there the application of general laws. ”

“ The difficulty is the same with mankind as it is with animals. We would not dare to contradict, for instance, the opinions of those who see in the Hindú, German, and Celtic population three species in course of formation, all three being probably derived from a species anterior to that which history endeavours at the present day to name; that Aryan race of which such a noble picture is made, and which we believe to be primitive because it is in the horizon of history, just as the ancients saw in the ocean the limits of the world. ”

“ Proposition.—Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous Apes in his Physical Organism. Whether one is a partisan or not of the “Human Kingdom,” this resemblance is a fact which it will be in no person’s ideas to contest. And it is not merely in the external forms; we find it even greater if, going to the foundation of the facts, we give our attention to the essential parts composing the body,—to the anatomical elements,—to those delicate particles visible only in the microscope, and which always show, among animals of the same group, a marvellous uniformity. ”

“ Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the faculty of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this servitude, remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher sphere? No, by the compression of the brain man loses consciousness like the animal. It is material substance, which, brought into contact with the anatomical elements of the nervous centres, can excite,26 trouble,27 or depress,28 the intelligence of animals, and leave no part of the human intellect untouched. ”

“ For our part, we wish simply to extend the same manner of viewing the matter, to generalise it, and to place it in relation with this immense unknown which is behind us, and of which monogenists do not take enough notice. We maintain that there has existed in the night of time a certain species, less perfect than the most imperfect man, remounting by a certain number of intermediary species, of whose nature it is impossible for us at present to form any idea,—to this primordial vertebrate animal which we admit. ”

“ The analogy of two climates is rather a sort of experimental notion, which can only be reasonably deduced by the similarity of the biological as well as the meteorological phenomena of every kind in the two regions to be compared. And when climates shall have been able to change a white man into a black (a fact we energetically deny) , must we also lay to the charge of meteorological influence the clear moral aptitude and profound differences of the various species of mankind? Shall we admit that a little more cold or heat will alter the intellect? and why not language? ”