Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

knew nothing whatever about La Peyrère, and had probably never read a line of his work, the sentence contains a positive slander, hardly worth noticing except for its amazing folly. For Peyrère was the most devout, the most earnest believer in the inspiration of every word of Scripture; and it is from Scripture that his doctrine is deduced. Peyrère believed in Præadamites* solely because he considered that the Bible recognised their existence. The scientific arguments were in his day unknown. To class him, either chronologically or intellectually, among the free-thinkers is an enormous error. Yet Dr. Smyth, who thus shews his complete unacquaintance with the subject, is introduced with a loud preliminary trumpet-flourish from English and Scotch divines!

It is by such base weapons of calumny and abuse that Polygenists have been met from the time of Peyrerius down to that of Vogt, from Hulsius and Heidegger down to Dr. Bachman and Dr. Smyth. We may well ask with M. de Quatrefages-a monogenist who is tolerant because he is scientific, and courteous because he is not ignorant: "à quoi bon toutes ces colères? Les arrêts de l'inquisition n'ont ni arrêté la terre sur sa marche, ni fait tourner le soleil autour de notre globe.... Les violences de langage, les insinuations malveillantes, les railleries, ne changeront pas davantage les relations existantes entre les groupes humains." Such a style as that which we have been noticing is never really efficacious. It has served no other object than that of bringing religious controversy into profound contempt. What have those clergy and religious writers now to say for themselves who fulminated their forgotten and idle anathemas against the first discoverers of geology, and who, more suo, discussing that theory with colossal arrogance and unfathomable ignorance, "thought, or sometimes pretended to think, that they were crushing a heresy, when they were denying without examination what might almost be called the lowest kind of revelation, since the truths of nature, as Scripture teaches, bear witness to the perfections of the Creator." If such clerical dogmatisers will not learn wisdom, the rent which already exists between the teaching of the national Science and the national Church will, with the most injurious consequences, be irretrievably widened.‡

* I here judge Peyrère by his own book; not by the malicious remarks made about him, of which I am well aware. De Quatrefages takes the same view. Rev. des Deux Mondes, Dec. 1860.

+ Gen. of Earth and Man, p. vi.

That this scorn and contempt is fast becoming the natural tone of scientific men towards a large body of the clergy is well known; and whose fault is it? It speaks most loudly in the hasty and irreverent language of C. Vogt, which I will not translate (Vorlesungen, § 13). He says: "Ein Adam ... ein Noah . . . das

Few scientific truths have ever been discovered-few discoveries have been made for the last five centuries, against which the combined forces of prejudice and ignorance have not marshalled their array of mistaken Biblical inferences. We leave it to others to write this sad, this humiliating, but instructive history. Here we will but follow Professor Vogt in alluding to two of the most modern instances to shew that the religious critics of to-day are no wiser than of old, and have gained nothing from the experience of past defeats.

1. Few ethnologists have done more for science than the calmminded, the noble and earnest student, Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia. Belonging to the highest order of physicians, he devoted lifelong researches to American, and afterwards to general cranioscopy. His researches, pursued with continuous ardour, and directed by a pecu. liarly ingenious and original method, led him to the conviction that mankind had sprung from different origins, and could not possibly have descended from a single pair. Like a brave and honest man, he did not shrink from publishing his conclusions. This was a great stumblingblock to the Reverend Dr. Bachman, of Charleston, who thereupon wrote in a friendly way to Dr. Morton,* that he must enter the lists against this view, but hoped that the controversy would not weaken their previous friendship, since he regarded Dr. Morton as a benefactor of his country, and an ornament to science. Dr. Bachman then published a book, in which, although he displayed the grossest ignorance of his subject, 'he mounted his high horse, treated the good Dr. Morton de haut en bas in an arrogant and offensive manner, and in that inflated declamatory style, which is too frequent in his profession.' Morton replied in a calm, dignified, and even friendly manner, waren Sätze, die als Vorbedingung jeder wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung sollten aufgezwungen werden, und ohne deren Annahme nach der Behauptung der Frommen die Welt in Gefahr stand und noch steht, ohne weiteres in den Abgrund der Hölle zu versinken. . . . So hat man hier die ganze Klerisei nebst sämmtlichen glaubigen Schafen und stössigen Böcken auf dem Halse-und was das sagen will, das kann nur Derjenige wissen, der sich einmal mitten drin befunden hat." [As many of our readers are unable to read German, we beg to append here a translation of the above paragraph for their satisfaction. "One Adam, one ancestor, one Noah, with three sons as second ancestors-these were the premises forced upon scientific inquiry, without the assumption of which the naturalist was un. ceremoniously sent to hell. Where in the former case we had only to do with philosophers, who in their academical gowns only talk to a select audience, here we had against us the whole clergy, with their faithful sheep and butting rams— a state of things which can only be appreciated from experience." EDITOR.]

*If we here quote, without translating and without approving, the words of C. Vogt, whose account of this controversy is taken from Morton's Biography, it is only to show the bitter spirit of hostility to clerical science (if we may be allowed the term) which animates physical inquirers. "Nach der Weise der Pfäfflein, die stets zu Aubegen die Katzenpfote machen, schreibt er zuerst freundlich an Dr. Morton." (Vorlesungen, § 14.)

VOL. II.-NO. V.

I

repeating, extending, and developing his scientific arguments. This was quite intolerable to the Reverend Dr. Bachman. He lost all self-control; accused Morton of belonging to a conspiracy which had for its express object the overthrow of a doctrine, which was bound in the closest connection with the faith and hope of the Christian both in time and in eternity; he declared that infidelity was the only possible logical consequence of such a view, an infidelity which, in the name of threatened society, must be energetically resisted.' How utterly false and calumnious such assertions are, will be obvious; but when the clergy use such language as this, we know, as Morton's biographer observes, that it is the trumpet of internecine war. This took place in 1850, and doubtless Dr. Morton would have felt the effect of religious persecution, had not his death in the following year ended the controversy. And what is the result? Morton's name is venerated throughout the civilised world; Dr. Bachman, who would otherwise have remained utterly unknown, will be curiously immortalised in the amber of Morton's fame.

2. Even scientific men are not beyond the reach of deeply rooted traditional prejudice. How else can we account for the long contempt and neglect of the now celebrated discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes? The whole world, scientific and unscientific, had made up its mind that man had not existed on this earth more than six thousand years, and this was a reason for quietly ignoring, or explaining by the loosest theories, the occasional discovery of human remains among the bones of extinct animals. Cuvier had even denied the existence of fossil monkeys; but he had not been dead for five years when M. Lartet, in 1836, discovered fossil remains of the Pliopithecus antiquus; Dr. Lund found in Brazil, in 1837, a fossil simian of a now extinct species; and other geologists found similar remains in the tertiary strata in other parts of the world.* Since that period undoubted fossilised human remains have been discovered in such situations as to have won the reluctant consent of most scientific men to the fact of man's antiquity on the surface of the globe. But, had not prejudice stood in the way, the conclusion would have been arrived at long ago. Before the end of the last century, Mr. Frere had discovered flint-implements at Hoxne, in Sussex, "at a depth of about twelve feet in a stratified soil," under circumstances which led him to conclude that they had belonged to a manufactory of such implements

*For a good and comprehensive review of these discoveries, see Anthropol. Rev., i, pp. 68-79; Boucher de Perthes, De l'Homme Antediluvien et de ses Euvres.

*

at a period remoter than that of the present world. This discovery, like that of Schmerling, in 1833, fell still-born; nor was it until 1839 that M. Boucher de Perthes succeeded in gaining the slightest attention to his similar discovery of antediluvian implements. For years he battled in vain against prejudice, ignorance, and theological opposition. "Practical people," he says, "laughed, shrugged their shoulders, and even disdained to examine the circumstances for themselves; in one word-they were afraid. They dreaded, in short, to make themselves associates of a heresy. When, however, the facts were so obvious that any one could corroborate them, they were still less willing to believe them, and threw in my path an obstacle greater than remonstrance, than criticism, than satire, even than persecution -namely, the silence of contempt. They no longer disputed the facts; they no longer gave themselves the trouble to deny them; but simply buried them in oblivion. Then they invented explanations which were in truth far more surprising than the facts themselves; the stone hatchets were the result of fire, a volcano had flung them out in a fluid condition, they had fallen into water, and had assumed their present shape in consequence of the sudden cooling, since some of them resemble Prince Rupert's drops! Others called Cold to their assistance; pebbles might have been split by frost, and shaped into knives and hatchets! or they were the mere forgeries of the workmen; or they might have sunk into the sand by their own gravity !† All these objections troubled me very little; what irritated me far more than criticism was the obstinate refusal to examine the facts, and the exclamation impossible! before any one had given himself the trouble to see whether it was the case or no." Elsewhere, M. Boucher complains that "being a purely geological question, it became the subject of religious controversy." Some people attacked his religion; the rest took refuge in that favourite argument of bigotry, the charge of presumption. 'Do you, a single obscure person, venture to put your opinion against that which all other men have adopted?' Here, again, we ask what was the result of the controversy? Truth and science triumphed, and nearly all geologists, all archæologists, all, except a few theologians and obstinate persons-who consider a man lost for time and for eternity, if any belief of his militates against

This was the theory of Mr. Edwards of Birmingham.

+ M. Boucher has not mentioned the belief of A. Wagner that the stone hatchets are a mere lusus natura! This was the theory adopted by the theological opponents of geology with respect to fossil remains; but it is amazing to find it cropping up again in a scientific work of the eighteenth century.

any idol or prejudice of theirs-have accepted, as a fact scientifically proved, the Antiquity of Man.

It is ever thus; the true thought of the solitary thinker in his closet is stronger than priests and princes; is omnipotent even against the banded conspiracies of the whole world's prejudice and interest. After twenty-five years of devotion to study, during which he was "for a long time railed at, or what is worse, treated with contempt, M. Boucher de Perthes had to struggle against universal prejudices, but by his perseverance and courage received first some tardy support, until at length this depressed truth broke forth in science."* PHILALETHES.

MISCEGENATION.†

DURING the last two months there have come reports to Europe of the remarkable form of insanity which is just now affecting the people of Federal America. We should not have thought it worth while to take any notice of the publication of the pamphlet under review, if it did not give us some insight into the extraordinary mental aberration now going on in Yankeedom. It is useless, however, longer to close our eyes to the phenomenon now appearing in the New World. Before we saw this pamphlet, we expected that it was merely a hoax, which some political wag had concocted for the benefit of his party. But an examination of the works dispels that illusion, and shows that the author attempts to found his theory on scientific facts!

There is, indeed, just enough of the current scientific opinion of the day, and also enough of literary merit, to enable readers of this work to get very much confused as to the real nature of the opinions and theory therein propounded. The anonymous author starts with some general assertions, and if these be admitted, the theory is not so utterly absurd as it otherwise appears. Monogenists will, indeed, be astonished at the use made of their doctrine; but it is from the

* See Vogt, Vorlesungen über des Menschen, § 18. [A translation of this work is announced to be in the press, and will soon be published as one of the series of works brought out by the Anthropological Society. EDITOR.] Anthropological Rev., i, 80; Dr. Knox, ib., ii, 261.

+ Miscegenation, or the Theory of the Blending of Races, applied to the American White Man and Negro. Trübner and Co., 1864.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »