Des causes physiques auxquelles a été attribuée la production des diverses espèces d’hommes, et part

CHAP. 4: > Of the physical causes to which the production of the diverse species of men has been attributed, and particularly of the influence of climates.

If it is impossible for us to know, by the sole aid of the sciences, events that are prior to all our historical monuments, and on which experience gives us no light, we can at least learn whether such well-established facts are or are not consequences of such other equally well-established facts. We can know whether the characteristics that distinguish each species or each variety, as one may wish to call them, are transmitted or not from generation to generation; whether they can be produced by artificial operations on individuals, by the foods on which they nourish themselves, or by the temperature of the atmosphere in which they are placed.

Several scholars have imagined that, to modify the species, it was sufficient to modify individuals artificially; that by imprinting by an artificial means, for example, a certain color on a certain man and a certain woman, and by repeating the same operation on their descendants for a few generations, one would end by altering the color of the species; that by giving, by some means or other, such or such a form to a certain organ, and by continuing the same operation on the children for a certain time, men would end by being born with such or such a form. It is this opinion, which no experience justifies, that has made some think, not that the natives of America painted themselves red because they were copper-colored, but that they were born copper-colored because their ancestors had painted themselves red. The same opinion made Volney believe that the character of the features and physiognomy of negroes was the result of a light too strong for human sight. The exact observation of facts proves to the point of evidence that similar opinions have no foundation [23].

Almost all the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific Ocean imprint indelible colors on their skin: these colors are not merely on the epidermis, they are introduced into the very tissue of the skin, by means of sharp instruments; it is, in general, before puberty that the operation begins to be performed; women are subjected to it like men. We do not know since what epoch this custom has been put into practice; but one can believe that it goes back to the most remote times, since it is found in almost all the islands, and it is probable that it was brought there at the moment they were populated. However, in none of them are children born tattooed; in each generation the operation must be done, as if it had never taken place in the preceding generations.

The reduction that the Chinese make the feet of their daughters undergo by artificial compression is never transmitted from one generation to another; this deformation which affects the individual is without influence on his descendants. The Carib men and women, whose heads have been artificially flattened from birth, engender children with the proportions that characterize their species, and they can only make them similar to themselves by making them undergo the same compression [24]. The natives of the northwest of America, who make a large opening under their lower lip to which they give the appearance of a second mouth, do not transmit this deformity to their descendants by generation [25]. The individuals of some African tribes, who, by incisions, produce artificial elevations on some parts of their body, have not yet succeeded in modifying their race by similar means [26]. Almost all the peoples of the American species, a part of those who belong to the Malay species, and the Orientals of the Caucasian species, pluck a part of their body with great care; but this custom is without influence on the physical constitution of their descendants. In almost all countries, women pierce their ears to hang various ornaments from them, and we know of no example of a child born with pierced ears. Finally, whatever the persistence with which we mutilate certain animals, we have not succeeded in affecting the species. Horses and dogs whose tails or ears have been cut engender only individuals similar to those who have not undergone this operation.

The opinion of Buffon and some other naturalists who have attributed the characteristic differences of the species to artificial means, who believed, for example, that the olive complexion of the Mongolian species, and the copper-colored complexion of the American species, were produced in large part by their filth or by the smoke of their huts, is not only not founded on experience, but is contradicted by it. Those of our workers who work in mines or forges, the charcoal burners and the chimney sweeps, engender children as white as those of the cleanest individuals. If the causes of which Buffon speaks produced the effects he attributes to them, a part of the Europeans would be as black as Africans. It is true that this great writer attributes to more than one cause the varieties that have been observed among men: according to him, climate is the agent that has contributed most to the production of these varieties; but we are about to see that this supposed agent has not had the effect attributed to it, and that the rays of the sun, in modifying the complexion of the individual, no more affect the species than does the tattooing of the inhabitants of the islands of the great Ocean.The diverse colors of the complexion are among the characteristics that serve to distinguish the species; but these characteristics are not the only ones. Negroes could have the complexion of Europeans, and still differ from them in many other respects. Now, the naturalists who have sought to explain the difference of complexion by the difference of climate have left all the other differences without explanation. They are, however, numerous enough to characterize the species, and to prevent us from confusing them.

The complexion of individuals of the Caucasian species varies with the temperature of the atmosphere, for all men who remain exposed to the open air. The Moors who inhabit the coasts of Barbary have a darker complexion than the inhabitants of Portugal and Spain; the latter darker than the French, and the French darker than the Germans and the English [27]. These differences are the incontestable product of the air, or of the atmosphere that surrounds us; a German who went to live in Spain would take on the complexion of a Spaniard, and a Spaniard who went to live among the Germans would take on the complexion of the peoples of Germany. As long as naturalists confined themselves to observing these phenomena superficially, and as long as they knew of black peoples only in the most scorching part of Africa, it is natural that they should have attributed the difference of color to the difference of climate; but as soon as the facts were subjected to a more considered observation, and their number multiplied, it was no longer possible to maintain the same opinion.

The action of the atmosphere, so powerful on the individual, is without influence on his posterity. Children of the Caucasian species are born white in all latitudes and at all degrees of temperature, and they remain so until the action of the air or of light has more or less modified their complexion. There is no difference of color between the child of an Algerian, the child of a Spaniard, and that of a Swede or a Russian. The children of English Creoles, who are born between the tropics, are born of exactly the same color as those who see the light of day in Great Britain. The descendants of the Spanish in South America have as fine a complexion as those who have never left Spanish territory, perhaps even finer, when they do not expose themselves to the rays of the sun. The children of the Dutch who are born alongside the Kaffirs are as white as those who are born in Amsterdam. Not only does the influence of climate not affect the color of the species, but it does not even affect the entire individual; the parts of the body that remain covered have as much whiteness among the peoples of the South as among the peoples of the North; they even often appear to have more, by the contrast that exists between them and those on which the action of the air or the sun has imprinted a more or less swarthy tint [28].

Individuals of the Ethiopian species are born of nearly the same color as individuals of the Caucasian species: they are reddish upon coming into the world. On the third day, the organs of generation, the area around the nails, and the nipples are entirely black; on the fifth or sixth day, the child's body has completely acquired the color particular to its species. This change occurs in the coldest climates as in the hottest; Camper observed it in Amsterdam, on a child born in winter, in a well-closed room, and kept carefully wrapped in swaddling clothes [29]. Kolbe made similar observations on Hottentot children: these children have at birth the color of Europeans; but after ten or twelve days this color gives way to a blackish color that covers their whole body, except for the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, which always remain whitish, as in all individuals of the same race [30]. The Negroes spread over the surface of the American continent, in all latitudes, and at all degrees of elevation, although descended from parents who were born and had lived in the country, are of as dark a color as those who were born in the center of Ethiopia, and who have never left their native land. The Negroes established in the north of Europe not only preserve their original color, but transmit it to their descendants as dark as they received it: I have often had occasion to observe in England the children born of a black man and a woman remarkable for her whiteness; they were as swarthy as are the mulattoes born and raised in the tropics. The parts of the bodies of Negroes that are never exposed to the action of the sun or of light are as black as those that are never covered.

Various peoples of the Negro species are spread throughout some of the islands of the Pacific Ocean; it is unknown how long they have been established there, nor what their origin was; it is known only that they were already there when the Europeans discovered these islands. But, although some are placed at the equator, others live in a temperate climate, and others in a comparatively cold climate, no difference of color has been observed among them. The inhabitants of the Admiralty Islands, at the second degree, eleven minutes, forty-five seconds of southern latitude [31]; those of Bouka Island, at the fifth degree, thirty seconds of the same latitude [32]; those of the Solomon Islands, between the eighth and tenth degree [33]; those of the Isle of Lepers, at the fourteenth [34]; those of the New Hebrides, at the eighteenth [35]; and those of New Caledonia, between the twentieth and twenty-second [36], have a uniform color that approaches that of Negroes; they have, like them, kinky or woolly hair, although the islands on which they are placed, cooled by the winds, are in different temperatures.

The inhabitants of the island of Van Diemen, placed at a much higher latitude, between the forty-first and forty-third degree of southern latitude, are black, and have hair as kinky as that of the inhabitants of Bouka Island, who are placed only at the fifth degree of latitude, or even as that of the Negroes of Guinea [37]. It is difficult to suppose, however, that this people came from New Holland, since those who inhabit that continent are of a less dark color, and differ from them in a multitude of other respects.

"The exclusion of all relations between the peoples of Van Diemen's Land and those of New Holland," says a learned naturalist who visited them, "the darker color of the Diemenese, their short, woolly, and kinky hair, in a country much colder than New Holland, appeared to me as new proofs of the imperfection of our systems on the communications of peoples, their migrations, and the influence of climates on man [38].

"Of all the observations one can make in passing from Van Diemen's Land to New Holland," adds the same traveler, "the easiest without a doubt, the most important, and perhaps also the most inexplicable, is the absolute difference of the races that populate each of these two lands. Indeed, if one excepts the thinness of the limbs, which is observed equally in both peoples, they have almost nothing in common, neither in their customs, their usages, their crude arts, nor in their instruments for hunting or fishing, their dwellings, their pirogues, their weapons, nor in their language, nor in the whole of their physical constitution; the shape of the cranium, the proportions of the face, etc. This absolute dissimilarity is reproduced in the color; the natives of Van Diemen's Land are much darker than those of New Holland. It is even reproduced in a characteristic that everyone agrees to regard as the most important of those that serve to distinguish the diverse races of the human species; I mean the nature of the hair: the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land have it short, woolly, and kinky; those of New Holland have it straight, long, and stiff [39].

"How can one conceive that an island of sixty leagues at most, which is pushed back to the confines of the eastern hemisphere, and separated from all other known land by distances of five, eight, twelve, and even fifteen hundred leagues, can have a race of men absolutely different from that of the vast continent that adjoins it? How can one conceive this exclusion of all relations, so contrary to our ideas on the communications of peoples and on their transmigrations? How to explain this darker color, this kinky and woolly hair in a much colder country [40]?"

All individuals classed under the name of the Ethiopian species or variety, therefore, preserve, in all climates and in all temperatures, the color that is one of their distinctive characteristics. In no country does one see individuals of this species take on the physiognomy of or engender children who belong to any of the others. Their features and their physiognomy remain as invariable in the highest latitudes as the features and physiognomy proper to the Caucasian species in the torrid zone [41].

The American or copper-colored species, although less numerous than most of the others, is spread over a territory more vast than that on which the other species are found: it occupies one and a half million square leagues, from the islands of Tierra del Fuego to the Saint Lawrence River and the Bering Strait. Thus, it is found in lands that their distance from the equator renders almost glacial; in the highest and consequently coldest mountains, as in the deepest valleys, exposed to the most ardent sun. If the complexion, which is one of the distinctive characteristics of the species or varieties, were an effect of the cold or the heat of the climate, one would find in America peoples of all shades, from the most dazzling white to the darkest black. But the facts here are little in agreement with such a system: the variations of color observed among the American peoples have no relation to the temperature in which these peoples are found. In all latitudes and at all degrees of elevation, they bear the color that distinguishes their species, that of copper more or less dark, from red to brown [42].

The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, exposed, throughout the course of the year, to the most rigorous cold, and the Patagonians, who are their closest neighbors, are of a copper color or one approaching that of iron rust mixed with oil [43]. All the peoples who inhabit the area from the southern extremity of America to the center of the torrid zone have a similar color [44]. The peoples who inhabit the other extremity of the same continent are of as dark a tint as those who are placed at the equator: the color of their skin, says Hearne, is that of dark copper [45]. The travelers who have traversed these immense lands in all directions have borne the same testimony [46].

There exist, however, some variations of color among these peoples; but these variations have no relation to the greater or lesser heat of the climate. In Canada, the Mississaugas who live on the shores of Lake Ontario are of a darker color than the peoples closer to the south. Their skin, says a traveler, is of a blacker tint than that of any Indian nations I have met; some resemble Negroes in color [47]. The Californians, who live in a temperate climate, have a darker complexion than the Mexicans, or than other peoples who live in much hotter countries [48]. The Mexicans in turn are more swarthy than the peoples who inhabit the most scorching lands of America [49]. The climate exercises so little action on the complexion of the peoples of this species that, when individuals who inhabit different climates are found together, it is impossible to determine, by color, the country of each of them [50].

However, amidst this multitude of copper-complexioned peoples who are spread over the American continent, there are some whose complexion is very light, and who, by their color, features, and even language, seem to belong to a different species. One finds in Canada, alongside peoples who are almost black, other peoples whose complexion is no darker than that of the inhabitants of Spain or the south of France. One also finds on the northwest coast of the same continent peoples who do not have a more swarthy complexion than the peasants of France, who have European features, and whose children are born white [51].

These differences, between the peoples of the same continent, explain to us how Volney was able to find in America reasons to believe in the unity of the human race. Having seen only a small number of individuals belonging to the same people, having observed that one of these individuals did not have a darker complexion than the peasants of the south, and having learned from him that their children were born as white as those of the Caucasian race, whom this American had probably never seen, he thought that all the natives of America were similar, and that their supposed copper-colored complexion was only an effect of climate.

"If, as physics demonstrates," he says, "there is color only by light, it is evident that the diverse colors of peoples are due only to diverse modifications of this fluid with other elements that act on the skin, and that even compose it. Sooner or later it will be demonstrated that the black of the Africans has no other origin [52]."

Isaac Weld, whom I have previously cited, found in Canada peoples similar to the one of which Volney observed a few individuals; but he also found, at the same latitude, some of a very dark copper color. He observed children born of individuals of the copper-colored species, and he became convinced that they bore, upon coming into the world, the characteristics that distinguish their parents. It appeared evident to him that these peoples owe to nature the different shades that characterize them. "I formed this opinion," he says, "after having observed that children born of parents whose complexion was dark, have it also dark [53]." The children of the copper-colored species resemble so little, at their birth, the children of the Caucasian species, that when a child born of a copper-colored woman was presented for baptism, the missionaries distinguished, at first glance, whether the father belonged to one or the other of these two species [54]. Finally, M. de Humboldt, who made a long sojourn among the Americans, and who observed them in diverse latitudes and at diverse degrees of elevation, became convinced that they bear at birth the complexion that is particular to the American species.

"I have not seen," he says, "the nations of Canada of which the chief of the Miamis (observed by Volney) speaks; but I can assure that in Peru, in Quito, on the coast of Caracas, on the banks of the Orinoco and in Mexico, children are never white at birth, and that the Indian caciques, who enjoy a certain ease, who keep themselves clothed in the interior of their houses, have all the parts of their body (with the exception of the inside of their hands and the soles of their feet) of the same red, brownish, or copper-colored tint [55]."

The numerous observations that M. de Humboldt made on the American continent convinced him that the color particular to the natives of this continent is not susceptible to being changed by the influence of climates, and that it is due to organic dispositions that, for centuries, have been propagated from generation to generation [56].

"The effect of this influence," he says, "appears almost null among the Americans and the Negroes. These races, in which hydrogen carbide is deposited abundantly in the mucous or reticular body of Malpighi, are singularly resistant to the impressions of the ambient air. The Negroes of the mountains of upper Guinea are no less black than those who live near the coasts [57]."

The Malays are, of all the species, the one that presents the fewest varieties. Spread throughout all parts of the great Ocean, they occupy, from New Zealand to the Sandwich Islands, an expanse of sixty degrees of latitude or twelve hundred leagues; and, from Easter Island to the New Hebrides, an expanse of eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen hundred and sixty leagues from east to west; it is, of all the species, the one that is spread over the most extensive surface. All the peoples who belong to this species speak dialects of the same language, and, with a few exceptions, cultivate the same plants, raise the same animals, practice the same arts, observe the same religion, and have nearly the same complexion; the only differences that exist between them are those that are the product of a little more or a little less civilization.The color that distinguishes this species varies from a light tanned tint, like that of the Spanish, to a dark brown approaching black. The inhabitants of New Zealand do not all have the same complexion; some are yellowish or olive; others are of a very dark color, without, however, being as black as the natives of Van Diemen's Island [58]. The inhabitants of Easter Island have a swarthy complexion, but less dark than those of New Holland, although much closer to the equator [59]. The complexion of the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands varies according to whether individuals expose themselves more or less to the action of the sun. Among the greatest number, the complexion is darker than brown copper; several have a yellowish complexion, and some women approach the color of Europeans [60]. Those of these peoples who have the lightest complexion are those who are closest to the equator; these are the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands [61].

The olive-colored complexion that characterizes individuals of the Mongolian species is preserved in all latitudes and at all degrees of elevation, like the copper-colored complexion of the American species. Those among the Persians whose color has not been altered by their mixture with individuals of the Caucasian species have a very dark complexion. Those who inhabit the hottest climate are no different from those who inhabit the cold climates of the mountains: both have a complexion mixed with yellow and black [62]. The Chinese, spread over an immense territory, generally have the brown and dirty complexion of the peoples of Persia [63].

The Mongols whom La Pérouse observed in Castries Bay, at the fifty-first degree, twenty-one minutes of northern latitude, had olive-colored skin, varnished with oil and smoke [64]. Finally, the peoples placed closest to the north pole, in the American continent, and belonging to the same species, have the same complexion as those who inhabit the center of Asia [65].

The diverse colors proper to each species are therefore independent of any artificial cause and of the action of light and heat. If, by artificial means or by the action of a more or less burning sun, one can modify the complexion of individuals of certain species, these modifications never affect their descendants; they perish with the individuals who have experienced them, and often even cease with the action of the causes that produced them.