Louis Figuier

“ Among the numberless half-clothed men he sees none but brawny shoulders and wiry, muscular frames. He is struck by the dull, dark brown complexion of the Indian, whose hue appears to vary with the district where he happens to be located; for his skin which seems brick-red on the sea coast assumes a violet and pinkish tinge near masses of vegetation, and becomes almost black in a dusty region. The perfectly naked children gambolling in the full rays of the sun look like fine antique bronzes, so graceful are their attitudes and so faultless their mould. ”

“ Uninstructed and unambitious of learning, timid artisan and plodding husbandman though he be, the Frenchman has yet one ruling virtue. He is a soldier; he possesses all the qualities necessary for war—bravery, intelligence, quickness of conception, the sentiment of discipline, and even patience when it is called for. If in 1870 a combination of deplorable fatalities forced the French to yield to the dictates of a people, who even yet wonder at their victory, the reputation of the French soldier for bravery and intelligence has in no way suffered by this unforeseen check. ”

“ The men are tall and strong; the women slender and active. Their hair is blond, their eyes are blue, and their complexion ruddy. The children are fresh and rosy, the old men lithesome and erect in their walk. Their voices are good and vigorous, they speak in an energetic manner. We encounter in Denmark a strange mixture of democratic and feudal customs: perpetual entails are contrasted with laws whose object is equality. The working classes have an ardent desire to possess land in their own right. ”

“ The sense of hearing, without attaining in man the perfection which it reaches in certain animals, is nevertheless of great delicacy, and becomes an infinite resource of instruction and pure enjoyment. Not only are differences of intonation, intensity, and timbre, recognised by our ear, but the most delicate shades of rhythm and tone, the relations of simultaneous and successive sounds which give the sentiment of melody and harmony, are appreciated, and furnish us with the first and most natural of the arts—music. ”

“ Doubly arrayed in the murderous weapons of Europe and America, with his head decked with bunches of feathers, his ears pinked, his face smeared black, his arms dyed in blood, this noble champion of the New World became as formidable to behold, as he was to contend against, on the shore which he defended foot by foot against the foreigner. ”

“ Picturesque knots of women clad in their white yaschmacs, which cover the whole face and only reveal the nose, are to be seen there. Long flowing overdresses of a thousand different hues envelope the rest of their figure. ”

“ Few men are stronger, physically or morally, than the Slavonians of the Ottoman Empire.
The deplorable Turkish administration has been unable to change the precious qualifications of this people. Though continually beaten down with the sword, they always rise again; the least hope of independence nerves their hearts. The hospitality of the Southern Slavonians, their language brimming with poetry, and their national songs, all impart to them a fine and beautiful character. ”

“ We can make no reference to family life in this land of convents and celibacy, nor speak of intellectual faculties in a country where we see a jealous tyranny narrowing the minds of the inhabitants, and an authority that is seated in the blackest darkness, moulding body and mind in ignorance of morality and education. We should need the greatest power of penetration to find, in the effeminate and degenerate population of Modern Rome, the genius of the ancient conquerors of the world. ”

“ It is only toward the centre of the country that we find in all its purity the blond Germanic type, the feudal organization and the numerous principalities which are its consequences. It is here that we find the conditions of climate which appear to produce this race with blue eyes, red and white complexion, tall figures, and full, powerful frames.
“Whilst the Latin, glorying in the light of heaven, enlarges his windows, builds open terraces, and clears his forests that he may plant vineyards in their stead; the German loves above all things shade and mystic retreats. ”

“ The Patagonians are the nomads of the New World. They furnish the horsemen who scour its vast arid tracts, living under tents of skins, or who hide in its forests, in huts covered with bark and thatch. Haughty and unconquered warriors, they despise agriculture and the arts of civilization, and have always resisted the Spanish arms.
These savages have darker skins than most of those in South America. Their complexion is an olive-brown; and among the men composing them we find the tallest stature as well as the most athletic and robust frames. ”

“ The most unpleasant thing about a Negro’s skin is the nauseous odour it emits when the individual is heated by perspiration or exercise; these emanations are as hard to endure as those which some animals exhale.
A Negro’s hair is quite peculiar. Whilst that of a White is cylindrical, the Black man’s is flat. It is also short and crisp, like the wool of a sheep, and in contradistinction to the abundant supply of Europeans, the women among whom can even trail their locks on the ground, it only attains the length of a few inches. The beard, also, is very scanty and scarcely covers the upper lip. ”

“ It has been well said that a correct definition can be furnished by none but divine power. Nothing is more true than this, and were we able to give of our own species a definition rigorously correct, we should indeed possess absolute knowledge.
The trouble we have to define aright the being about to form the subject of our investigation is but a forecast of the difficulties we shall meet when we endeavour to reason upon and to classify man. He who ventures to fathom the problems of human nature, physical, intellectual or moral, is arrested at every step. ”

“ We have traced the origin and progress of civilization, from the moment when man was cast, feeble, wretched and naked, in the midst of a hostile and savage brute population, to the day when his power, resting upon a firm basis, changed little by little the face of the inhabited earth. ”

“ Flat feet, which are sufficient to exempt from military service among the French, are not only no deformity in the Negro, but a normal characteristic. Instead of forming that curve which imparts elasticity to the whole frame, the under part of the Negro’s foot is flat, thus rendering it less fitted to support the body on marches. So apparent is this malformation in the black, that they say of him in America, “The sole of his foot makes a hole in the sand;” and it is easy, in consequence, to distinguish by a mere look the footprint of an European from that of a Negro. ”

“ If the dog, the horse, the rabbit, and the turkey, through the agency of human industry applied to them during a period of scarcely two thousand years, have given birth to so many varieties, how much more would man, whose appearance upon the globe is of such antiquity that we cannot assign to it even approximatively a date—man, whose fate it has been to pass through so many different climates, such various physical and social positions, expect to see his own type become modified and transformed? ”

“ The Malay in his turban, tight-fitting green vest, and grey petticoat striped with whimsical patterns, has quite a handsome head. His face is oval with eyes of almond shape and a thin, straight nose; the mouth is shaded by a slight, glossy black moustache and his high broad forehead is admirably formed. All do not perhaps possess so many advantages, but they are without exception finely made, with beautiful black, smooth, and silky hair.
The Javanese wear hats of bamboo, the plaiting of which is perfect. ”

“ It is not only through its immense superiority as regards extent and power, that the intelligence of man is distinguished from that of the brute; there is an attribute of intelligence which is strictly peculiar to our species. This is the faculty of abstraction, which permits of our collecting and placing together the perceptions of the mind, by that means arriving at general results. It is through this power of abstraction, that our intellect has created the wonders which are familiar to all; that the arts and sciences have been brought to light and fostered by society. ”

“ Amid the irregularity of this physiognomy the soul displays its workings.
As a rule, the French woman is short of stature, but in every proportion of her form combines grace and delicacy. Her extremities and joints are fine and elegant, of perfect model and distinct form, without a suspicion of coarseness. With her, moreover, art is brought wonderfully to assist nature.
There is no place in the world where the secret of dress is so well understood as in France, or where means are so admirably applied to the rectification of natural defects of form or colour. ”

“ Those who deny the unity of the human species, polygenists, or supporters of the plurality of human kind, base their arguments in favour of there being more than one species, upon the assertion that the distinction between the Negro and the white man is too great to permit of their possibly being classed together. But, between the lap-dog and the mastiff, the wild and tame rabbit, the spaniel and the greyhound, or the Shetland and Russian horse, there is a much greater difference than exists between the Negro and the white man. ”

“ Undoubtedly, by his ambushes, by his flights, by his isolated and totally unforeseen attacks, he bewilders scientific warfare, and the most able strategists of the United States, with General Sherman at their head, have been beaten by the Indians, who have gained no small share of glory against the Whites. But the next war will be no longer one of regulars but of volunteers. The pioneers of the territories will arm themselves, and if the Red man demands tooth for tooth, eye for eye, the Whites will inflict upon him the inflexible penalty of retaliation, and the Indian will disappear for ever. ”

“ If man, in his savage state, occasionally casts aside these moral notions, it is in consequence of the social condition of the tribe to which he belongs, and must be regarded in connexion with the customs of war and the feeling of revenge. But, in a state of tranquillity and peace, which condition the philosopher and student must presuppose in framing their arguments, the notion of evil and good is always to be found. The forms which the feeling of honour dictates, vary for example in the white man and the savage, but the feeling itself is never eradicated from the heart of any. ”

“ She felt in a perfect fever at being thus encompassed by frenzied men, at being smothered by the odour of these human remains, and at being lulled to rest by the sinister sound of skulls jangled together by the wind. ”

“ Immense marshes encumber the low parts of Walachia, and their exhalations produce a continuance of bilious fevers. The most superb forests, in which splendid oaks grow side by side with beeches, pines, and firs, cover not only the mountains, but many of the large islands in the Danube. These, instead of being used in the construction of fleets, merely furnish the wood used in paving the streets or roads; for idleness and ignorance find no means of raising the blocks of granite and marble, of which the Carpathians offer such abundance. ”

“ The Spanish woman, faithful as a wife, is an excellent mother. Few women can equal her as a nurse, or in the attention and patience which are called for by the care of children. The mother lavishes upon her young family her whole life, and if she fails to instruct them, it is, alas! that she lacks the power to do so; for she is no better educated than the French woman, and, as regards ignorance, is a meet companion for her in every respect.
We have said that, in France, women exercise a very manifest influence upon the course of events. ”

“ Comanches.—The great and valiant nation of the Comanche Indians, which is divided into three tribes, overruns in every direction the vast expanse of the Prairies: outside those green savannahs they would be unable to live. Those of the north and of the centre are ever hunting the buffalo, and the flesh of that animal constitutes almost their sole sustenance. From the most tender childhood till advanced age they are in the saddle, and a whip and bridle render the Comanche the most expert, agile, and independent of men. ”

“ Man is the last link of visible creation; with him closes the series of living beings which we are permitted to contemplate. Beyond him there extends, in a world hidden from our view, a train of beings of a new order, endowed with faculties superior and inaccessible to our comprehension, mysterious phalanxes, whose place of abode even is unknown to us, and who, after us, form the next step in the infinite progression of living creatures by whom the universe is peopled. ”

“ This want of instruction in the French woman is the more to be regretted, since, to an excellent intellectual disposition, she adds the irresistible gifts of grace and physical charms. There is in her face a seduction which cannot be equalled, although we can assign her physiognomy to no determinate type. Her features, frequently irregular, seem to be borrowed from different races; they do not possess that unity which springs from calm and majesty, but are in the highest degree expressive, and marvellously contrived for conveying every shade of feeling. ”