The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races

141

Our author here gives evidence of a want of critical study of races – the resemblances he has traced do not exist. There is no type in Africa south of the equator, or among the aborigines of America, that bears any resemblance to any race in Europe or Asia. – N.

142

Müller, Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, vol. ii. p. 639.

143

Prichard, op. cit., pp. 484, 485.

144

An exception, however, must be made in the case of Shakspeare, while painting on an Italian canvas. In Romeo and Juliet, Capulet says: —

"My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride."

To which Paris answers: —

"Younger than she are happy mothers made."

145

According to M. Krapff, a Protestant minister in Eastern Africa, among the Wanikos both sexes marry at the age of twelve. (Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. iii. p. 317.) In Paraguay, the Jesuits had established the custom, which subsists to this day, of marrying their neophytes, the girls at the age of ten, the boys at that of thirteen. It is not rare to find, in that country, widowers and widows eleven and twelve years old. (A. d'Orbigny, L'Homme Américain, vol. i. p. 40.) In Southern Brazil, females marry at the age of ten and eleven. Menstruation there begins also at a very early age, and ceases equally early. (Martius and Spix, Reise in Brasilien, vol. i. p. 382.) I might increase the number of similar quotations indefinitely.

146

Prichard, op. cit., p. 486.

147

Botta, Monumens de Ninive. Paris, 1850.

148

Edinburgh Review, "Ethnology, or the Science of Races," Oct. 1844, p. 144, et passim. "There is probably no evidence of original diversity of race which is so generally and unhesitatingly relied upon as that derived from the color of the skin and the character of the hair; … but it will not, we think, stand the test of serious examination… Among the Kabyles of Algiers and Tunis, the Tuarites of Sahara, the Shelahs or mountaineers of Southern Morocco, and other people of the same race, there are very considerable differences of complexion." (p. 448.)

149

Ibid., loc. cit., p. 453. "The Cinghalese are described by Dr. Davy as varying in color from light brown to black, the prevalent hue of their hair and eyes is black, but hazel eyes and brown hair are not very uncommon; gray eyes and red hair are occasionally seen, though rarely, and sometimes the light-blue or red eye and flaxen hair of the albino."

150

Ibid., loc. cit. "The Samoiedes, Tungusians, and others living on the borders of the Icy Sea, have a dirty-brown or swarthy complexion."

151

Edinburgh Review, p. 439.

152

Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, vol. i. p. 2. (History of the Ottoman Empire.)

153

Ritter, Erdkunde Asien, vol. i. p. 433, et passim, p. 1115, etc. Lassen, Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. ii. p. 65. Benfey, Encyclopædie, by Ersch and Gruber, Indien, p. 12. Alexander Von Humboldt, speaking of this fact, styles it one of the most important discoveries of our times. (Asie Centrale, vol. ii. p. 649.) With regard to its bearings upon historical science, nothing can be more true.

154

Nouschirwan, whose reign falls in the first half of the sixth century of our era, married Scharouz, the daughter of the Khakan of the Turks. She was the most beautiful woman of her time. (Haneberg, Zeitschr. f. d. K. des Morgenl., vol. i. p. 187.) This is by no means an isolated instance; Schahnameh furnishes a number of similar ones.

155

The Scythes, though having adopted a language of the Arian classes, were, nevertheless, a Mongolian nation; there would, therefore, be nothing very surprising if the Orghuses had been an Arian nation, though speaking a Finnic dialect. This hypothesis is singularly corroborated by a passage in the relations of the traveller Rubruquis, who was sent by St. Louis as ambassador to the sovereign of the Mongols. "I was struck," says the worthy monk, "with the prince's resemblance to the deceased M. John de Beaumont, whose complexion was equally fresh and colored." Alexander Von Humboldt, justly interested by this remark, adds: "This physiognomical observation acquires importance, when we recollect that the monarch here spoken of belonged to the family of Tchinguiz, who were really of Turkish, not of Mogul origin." And pursuing this trace, the great savant finds another corroborating fact: "The absence of Mongolian features," says he, "strikes us also in the portraits which we possess of the Baburides, the conquerors of India." (Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 248, and note.)

156

It will be seen that Mr. Gobineau differs, in the date he gives of the institution of the Janissaries, from all other European writers, who unanimously ascribe the establishment of this corps to Mourad I., the third prince of the line of Othman. This error, into which Gibbon himself has fallen, originated with Cantemir: but the concurrent testimony of every Turkish historian fixes the epoch of their formation and consecration by the Dervish Hadji-Becktash, to the reign of Orkhan, the father of Mourad, who, in 1328, enrolled a body of Christian youths as soldiers under this name (which signifies, "new regulars"), by the advice of his cousin Tchenderli, to whose councils the wise and simple regulations of the infant empire are chiefly attributed. Their number was at first only a thousand; but it was greatly augmented when Mourad, in 1361, appropriated to this service, by an edict, the imperial fifth of the European captives taken in the war – a measure which has been generally confounded with the first enrolment of the corps. At the accession of Soliman the Magnificent, their effective strength had reached 40,000; and under Mohammed IV., in the middle of the seventeenth century, that number was more than doubled. But though the original composition of the Janissaries is related by every writer who has treated of them, it has not been so generally noticed that for more than two centuries and a half not a single native Turk was admitted into their ranks, which were recruited, like those of the Mamelukes, solely by the continual supply of Christian slaves, at first captives of tender age taken in war, and afterwards, when this source proved inadequate to the increased demand, by an annual levy among the children of the lower orders of Christians throughout the empire – a dreadful tax, frequently alluded to by Busbequius, and which did not finally cease till the reign of Mohammed IV.

At a later period, when the Krim Tartars became vassals of the Porte, the yearly inroads of the fierce cavalry of that nation into the southern provinces of Russia, were principally instrumental in replenishing this nursery of soldiers; and Fletcher, who was ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to Ivan the Terrible, describes, in his quaint language, the method pursued in these depredations: "The chief bootie the Tartars seeke for in all their warres, is to get store of captives, specially young boyes and girles, whom they sell to the Turkes, or other, their neighbours. To this purpose, they take with them great baskets, made like bakers' panniers, to carrie them tenderly; and if any of them happens to tyre, or bee sicke on the way, they dash him against the ground, or some tree, and so leave him dead." (Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. iii. p. 441.)

The boys, thus procured from various quarters, were assembled at Constantinople, where, after a general inspection, those whose personal advantages or indications of superior talent distinguished them from the crowd, were set aside as pages of the seraglio or Mamelukes in the households of the pashas and other officers, whence in due time they were promoted to military commands or other appointments: but the remaining multitude were given severally in charge to peasants or artisans of Turkish race, principally in Anatolia, by whom they were trained up, till they approached the age of manhood, in the tenets of the Moslem faith, and inured to all the privations and toils of a hardy and laborious life. After this severe probation, they were again transferred to the capital, and enrolled in the different odas or regiments; and here their military education commenced. – H.

157

Erdkunde, Asien, vol. i. p. 448.

158

Ethnology, etc., p. 439: "The Hungarian nobility … is proved by historical and philological evidence to have been a branch of the great Northern Asiatic stock, closely allied in blood to the stupid and feeble Ostiaks, and the untamable Laplander."

159

St. Stephen reigned about the year 1000, nearly one century and a half after the first invasion of the Magyars, under their leaders, Arpad and Zulta. He introduced Christianity among his people, on which account he was canonized, and is now the tutelary saint of his nation. It may not be known to the generality of our readers, that the Magyars, though they have now resided nearly one thousand years in Hungary, have, with few exceptions, never applied themselves to the tillage of the soil. Agriculture, to this day, remains almost exclusively in the hands of the original (the Slowack or Sclavonian) population. The Magyar's wealth consists in his herds, or, if he owns land, it is the Slowacks that cultivate it for him. It is a singular phenomenon that these two races, though professing the same religion, have remained almost entirely unmixed, and each still preserves its own language. – H.

160

Essai Historique sur l'Origine des Hongrois. Paris, 1844.

161

It appears that we shall be compelled henceforward to considerably modify our usually received opinions with regard to the nations of Central Asia. It cannot now be any longer doubted that many of these populations contain a very considerable admixture of white blood, a fact of which our predecessors in the study of history had not the slightest apprehension. Alexander Von Humboldt makes a very important remark upon this subject, in speaking of the Kirghis-Kazakes, mentioned by Menander of Byzant, and Constantine Porphyrogenetus; and he shows conclusively that the Kirghis (χερχις) concubine spoken of by the former writer as a present of the Turkish chief Dithubùl to Zemarch, the ambassador of Justinian II., in A. D. 569, was a girl of mixed blood – partly white. She is the precise counterpart of those beautiful Turkish girls, whose charms are so much extolled by Persian writers, and who did not belong, any more than she, to the Mongolian race. (Vide Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 237, et passim, and vol. ii. pp. 130, 131.)

162