Читать книгу On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo - Broca Paul - Страница 5

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The question, where do we find hybrid races subsisting by themselves, has been asked before M. Pouchet. Dr. Prichard, in replying to it, could only find three instances:—1. The Griquas, the progeny of the Hottentots and the Dutch. 2. The Cafusos of the forests of Varama (Brazil), a race described by Spix and Martius, and, according to them, the offspring of indigenous Americans and African Negroes. 3. The mop-headed Papuans inhabiting the island of Waigiou and the surrounding islands and the northern part of New Guinea, and who, according to MM. Quoy and Gaimard, are a hybrid race, the issue of a union of Malays and the Papuans proper.4

These three examples have been objected to, and are indeed liable to objections.5 We know next to nothing about the Cafusos, and no one can positively assert that they have remained unmixed with the indigenous race; but we know for certain that the Griquas have risen since the commencement of this century around a Protestant mission, by the fusion of some Dutch-Hottentot bastaard families with a large number of the Hottentot race, the Bosjesmen, and the Kaffir race. This example then proves, by no means, that a mixed race can perpetuate itself separately.6

With regard to the mop-headed Papuans, they live in a region the ethnography of which is scarcely known. MM. Quoy and Gaimard are of opinion that they are the issue of a mixture between the Malays and indigenous Negroes (sic); but they only advanced this opinion as an hypothesis: “They appeared to us to hold a medium place between those people (Malays) and the Negroes in regard to character, physiognomy, and the nature of their hair.”7 This is all those authors say; but Mr. Lesson instead of quoting this as a mere hypothesis, says, “These people have been perfectly described by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, who were the first to demonstrate that they constitute a hybrid race, and are, unquestionably, the issue of Papuans (properly so called) and Malays located in those parts, and which form the mass of the population.” Mr. de Rienzi, on the other hand, has described two varieties of Papuan hybrids: one variety the issue of a crossing between the Papuans and the Malays,—the Papou-Malays; the second variety, the issue of an intermixture between the Papuans and the Alforian-Endamenes—the Pou-Endamenes.8 There is already a complication here. Now comes Mr. Maury, who maintains that the race issued from the Papuans and Malays is the Alforian race.9 What are we to conclude from these contradictions? M. Quoy and Gaimard had a certain impression, M. Rienzi entertained a somewhat different impression, to which the authorities cited by Mr. Maury are altogether opposed. All is then, as yet, an hypothesis, and the question is as yet doubtful. In this uncertainty it might well be asked whether the Malays, the Alfourous, the mop-headed Papuans, and the Papuans properly so called might not be as many pure races. It is not merely in the region of the mop-headed Papuans that the other three races are to be met with. The Malays, an invading people par excellence, have, like the English, established themselves on all the coasts accessible to their vessels, and if the mop-headed race occupies only a very confined district, and is perfectly unknown elsewhere where the same elements are present, we are permitted to conclude that it is not the result of an intermixture. Moreover, Dr. Latham, the most zealous of Dr. Prichard’s pupils, informs us that Mr. Earle has seen and described “the real and undoubted hybrids” of the Papuans and Malays, and that these are altogether different from the mop-headed Papuans.10

It will be perceived that the example of the Papuans is a worse selection than that of the Griquas, since it is very probable that those mop-headed men, the type of which was so perfectly described by Dampier two centuries ago, having been since preserved without alteration, are a pure race. Granting even that it is demonstrated that they belong to a hybrid race, they can scarcely be cited as a mixed race persisting by themselves, since, so far from living secluded from the two races from which they are said to be the issue, they live with them in the same localities. MM. Quoy and Gaimard, in their description of these pretended mongrels, add that there were Negroes among them (by which name they designate the Papuans proper) which formed a part of the tribe which visited us daily. There were even among them two individuals of a higher complexion, which, rightly or wrongly, were considered to be descended from Europeans or Chinese. It was thus a very mixed people. Mr. Lesson, speaking of the population of the small island of Waigiou,11 says that two races are found there, the Malays and the Alfourous, besides the hybrid races of the Papuans: “These are men without vigour or moral energy, subjected to the authority of the Malay rajahs, and frequently reduced to slavery by the surrounding islanders.”12 But it is well known what is the consequence of slavery, especially under an equatorial climate, and among a people given to incontinency. It is, then, simply impossible that the mop-headed race of the Isle of Waigiou should remain free from intermixture with the

Alfourous and the Malays, and if this race be really hybrid, it is not easy to see how Prichard and his adherents are authorised to assert that they persist by themselves.

The three examples adduced by Prichard having thus proved without any absolute value, a diametrically opposite doctrine has been advanced. It has been said that since this author was obliged to go so far for such indifferent examples, it amounts to a proof that he could not find any others,13 and the conclusion was arrived at that a mixed race neither has nor could have a permanent existence.

This novel assertion is perfectly erroneous, and if it found adherents, it is simply because the question has been badly put; because the word race has not received a precise signification, and consequently, a very confused acceptation has been given to the term.

Among the various characters which distinguish the numerous varieties of the genus homo, some are more or less important, and more or less evident. To distinguish two races, a single character, however slight, is sufficient, provided it be hereditary and sufficiently fixed. If, for instance, two peoples differed merely from each other by the colour of the hair and the beard, though they may resemble each other in every other respect, by the simple fact that the one has black, whilst the other has fair hair, it may be asserted that they are not of the same race. This is the popular and the true meaning of the term race, which, however, does not necessarily implicate the idea either of identity or diversity of origin. Thus all ethnologists and historians, all the monogenists, and polygenistic authors say that the Irish proper are not of the same race as the English. The Germans, the Celts, the Basques, the Sclaves, the Jews, Arabs, Kabyles, etc., etc., are considered more or less separate races, more or less easy to be characterised, and more or less distinguished by their manners, tongues, history and origin. There are thus a large number of human races; but if, instead of considering all the characters, we confine ourselves to take into consideration but a few of the more important, or if, after having by an analytical process, first studied the various races separately, we now subject them to a synthetic process, we soon recognise that there exists among them numerous affinities, which enable us to dispose them in a certain number of natural groups.

The ensemble of the characters common to each group, constitute the type of that group. Thus, all the races we have just enumerated, and many others, have the skin white, regular features, soft hair, oval face, vertical jaws, and elliptical cranium, etc. These points of resemblance give them in some sort a family likeness, by which they are recognised at once, and which has caused them to be designated by the collective name of Caucasian races. The hyperborean races, and those of Eastern Asia, constitute the family of Mongolian races; the group of Ethiopian races equally comprises a large number of black races with woolly hair, and a prognathous head. The American and the Malayo-Polynesian races form the two last groups.

It must not be believed that all human races can with equal facility be ranged in either of these divisions; nor must we believe that the characteristic traits of one group are equally marked in all the dependent races; nor even that they are found combined in any of these races; nor, finally, that in the centre of each group we find a typical race in which all the characters have their maximum of development. This might be the case if all known races had descended from five primitive stocks, as admitted by several polygenists, or if, as many monogenists think, humanity, one in the beginning, had soon afterwards been divided into five principal trunks, from which issued, as so many accessory branches, the numerous sub-divisions which constitute the secondary races. But there is no race which can pretend to personify within itself the type to which it belongs. This type is fictitious; the description is an ideal one, like the forms of the Apollo de Belvedere. Human types, like all other types, are merely abstractions, and in proportion as we attach more importance to this or that character, we obtain a more or less considerable number of types. Thus, Blumenbach had five, Cuvier only three, and Bérard describes fifteen types. This is also proved by the fact, that whilst many races attach themselves directly and evidently to a fixed type, there are others belonging to two very dissimilar types. Thus the Abyssinians are Caucasian in form and Ethiopian by colour. The description of the principal types is thus merely a methodical process, fit to facilitate, by the formation of a certain number of groups, the comparison of human races, and to simplify the partial description of each. This division has, moreover, the advantage of establishing for the greater part of the races, their degree of relative affinity or divergence. It even accords to a certain point with their primitive repartition upon the surface of the globe, which has permitted, without doing any violence to the facts, to distinguish the types by denominations borrowed from geography.14

There is in the human mind a tendency to personify abstractions. These ideal types have usurped a place in the domain of facts, so that a real existence has been given to them. The monogenists had, strictly speaking, a right to do so without any violence to their principles; but the polygenists, who have followed their example, have sinned against logic. The former attribute all varieties of the human species to the numerous modifications of five principal races, issued themselves from one common stock, and the same influences which, according to then, have in the origin produced fundamental races, have afterwards by an analogous process produced the secondary races. All this is sufficiently clear; and such stood the question when the polygenists appeared in the arena. Their first efforts were directed to attack the doctrine in its essential foundations, and to demonstrate that by no natural causation could Whites be transformed into Negroes, or Negroes into Mongolians; they therefore proclaimed the multiplicity of human origin and the plurality of species. Be it that they have shrunk from the idea of causing too great a revolution in science, or that they thought that it would conduce sooner to the triumph of their doctrine, they retained as far as possible the number of species, and confined themselves to assume a primitive stock for each of the five races described by the Unitarians. I do not assert that all polygenists followed this course, as some proceeded in a more independent manner. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Desmoulins, P. Bérard, Morton, had the courage to break entirely with the past, and to remodel the classical divisions. They found, however, but few imitators; and many polygenists are to this day content to assign a distinct origin to each of the five principal trunks, which constitute for the monogenists the five fundamental races, but which are to us only natural groups formed by the union of races or species of the same type. They continue also very often to use the term race to designate the ensemble of all individuals of each group, adopting thus by a sort of transaction the language of those whose system they reject; and thus they speak of the white or Caucasian race, the yellow or Mongolian race, the black or Ethiopian race, etc., as if all these individuals of a Caucasian type resembled each other to constitute one race; as if, for instance, the brown Celts and the fair-haired Germans had descended from the same primitive stock. This contradiction has given a handle to the monogenists; for if climate and mode of life may cause a German to become a Celt, there is no reason why, under certain influences, a Celt might not become a Berber, a Berber a Foulah, a Foulah a Negro, and a Negro an Australian.

I easily comprehend how careful we ought to be to employ in Anthropology the term species. It can scarcely be used with certainty until science has clearly circumscribed the limits of each species of men. This moment is not come yet, and may, perhaps, never arrive, for, in the midst of constant changes produced by crossing, migrations, and conquests, and with the certainty that several races, or a great number of them, have disappeared within historical time,15 it seems impossible to appreciate the degree of purity of certain races, to discover their origin, to know whether they are autochthonic or exotic, whether they belonged originally to this or that Fauna, and re-establish the Ethnology of our planet as it was in the beginning. To fix the number of primitive species of men, or even the number of actual species, is an insoluble problem to us, and probably to our successors. The attempts of Desmoulins et Bory de Saint Vincent have only produced imperfect sketches, which have led to contradictory classifications, where the number of arbitrary divisions is nearly equal to more natural divisions.

The term species has, in classical language, an absolute sense, implying both the idea of a special conformation and special origin, and if some races—the Australians, for instance—unite these conditions in a sufficient degree, to constitute a clearly marked species, many other pure or mixed races escape, in this respect, a rigorous appreciation. It is for these reasons that many polygenists, after having proclaimed the multiplicity of the origins of humanity, and having recognised the impossibility of determining the number and the characters of the primitive stocks, have justly avoided methodically to divide the human genus into species. Many among them, however, who thought that they were, nevertheless, bound to establish divisions, have committed the error to accept the basis of the classification of the monogenists, and, like them, to establish five chief human families, and, like them, to admit that the individuals of each family are issued from a common trunk, with this difference, that, whilst the monogenists assume that the five primary trunks have proceeded from the same stock, and have the same roots, the pentagenists (if we may use this term) assume five distinct and independent stocks. Logically speaking, it would have been requisite to term the five fundamental races of the monogenists species, but it is easy to perceive that, for many reasons, the term species cannot be employed here in an absolute sense. The pentagenists have felt this, and, for want of a better term, use the word race, which has thus been diverted from its real acceptation.