Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

"In spite of all drawbacks, the indolence of many emigrants, and the itch for preaching which seems to torment Ethiopic humanity, as it does most low orders of men, one must allow that the progressive effort is a creditable one. We must not expect wonders, and we must reject the poetical balderdash sometimes served up in this Land of the Free, where so many are only free to starve. But the fact is, that any country, even fever-stricken Liberia, is better for the free man of colour than America."

Chapter XVIII contains an admirable description of the gorilla dance, together with an apparently truthfully executed drawing of the same, which has so many points of interest to the anthropologist that we are glad to be able to insert it.

Chapter XXI contains an admirable account of the "Equatorial Savage," from which we make the following extract:

"These children are absurdly precocious. Africa is a great hothouse, in which they are forced by the sun, and in which they perish prematurely. They can always talk when they are twelve months old. At four or five years I have seen them listening with twinkling eyes to the immoral songs of their seniors, and at eight or nine, nature permits them to put in practice those theories, which, incredible as it may seem, they have actually studied beforehand.

"So much for savage chastity; and I fear that I can say as little for parental affection. The father wishes to have a child, partly because nature has planted within his breast an instinct for reproduction, second only in power to that of self-preservation; and partly because that child, if a son, will help him to hunt or fish, or paddle his canoe, and will give him food when he is old: if a daughter, he will sell her to a suitor, and will receive sufficient in return to make him a man of status in his tribe. He kills the sickly or crippled child, because it will cost him one more mouth to feed without affording him anything in return. . . .

"Such is the child of nature! Such the noble savage! Such the primitive condition of man, which philosophers, who had never studied it, have dared to hold up to our example!

“What is it, then, that they would have us imitate? Must we instruct our children in vice at the tenderest possible age, and sell them for marriage as soon as they arrive at puberty? Must we make our wives mothers when they are scarcely girls; treat them as slaves when they are women, and kill them when they are old? Must we place no restraint upon our passions; but abandon our youth to dissipation and debauchery, that we may have grey hairs on young heads, and all the foul diseases which spring from the diet and habits of a brute? For so does man in an uncivilised condition. The savage lives a life without a future or a past, without hope or regret, and dies the death of a coward and a dog, for whom the grave brings darkness, and nothing more."

The above extracts will give some little idea of the character of the

work. The two last chapters treat specially of the Negro: here the author has made copious use of recent anatomical and physiological researches on this subject. There is such a manifest desire to arrive at the truth, that we should desire not to be too critical on this part of the work, although we could have wished that the author had given his own opinions apart from debated scientific questions.

This volume is one rather of general interest than of scientific importance. It has, however, the somewhat rare merit of honestly describing what the author saw, and not what he would have liked to have seen. This coast journey is the first expedition undertaken by Mr. Reade, but we hope again to meet him on his travels, and on a future occasion to be favoured with more really scientific details concerning the races of man that may come under his observation.

ETHNOLOGY AND PHRENOLOGY AS AN AID TO THE BIOGRAPHER.

By J. W. JACKSON, Esq., F.A.S.L.

SHAKSPEARE.

It would seem from the established practice in all literary circles, that to write the life of a man, is a comparatively trifling affair, for which any person of scholarly education acquainted with the facts, is abundantly qualified. Perhaps, however, there is a mistake in this, and if so, the error is not the less grave, either from its antiquity or its prevalence. As true history is not a mere chronicle of events, so true biography is not a mere narration of incidents. The events and incidents are no doubt goodly material, with which a competent architect will rear a magnificent temple of symmetrical proportions and exquisite beauty; but what will a dunce do with them? In truth, biography is one of the fine arts, and demands genius of no common order for its successful achievement. Is it not, indeed, a species of soul-painting, a depicting of the inner man; a pourtraying of the subjective as projected upon the canvas of the objective. If not this, then is it only the fragment of a chronicle; and so, at best, but of co-ordinate rank and value. In very truth, every real biography is an evangel; a grand revelation of the spiritual beaming through the actual, of the eternal pervading the temporal, of the celestial becoming manifest in the earthly, and so demands for its successful effectuation,

not only sight, but insight; not simply learning and talent, even though of the highest, but rather the devout illumination of a worshipful disciple, aglow with the light and glory of the sun-spirit he is so religiously beholding. Thus furnished, your Galilean fisherman surpasses Plutarch, while, longo intervallo, poor Bozzy accomplishes the one successful feat of his otherwise miserable existence. But of all this, what does your ordinary biographer know or feel? absolutely nothing. It is his business to narrate a career, perhaps for the market, and so the booksellers are satisfied; he certainly is not discomforted. Yet, if a biography is to last,-if it is to become one of the polished cornerstones of literature, its utterances on departed worth and power must descend to deeper springs, and have regard to wider issues, than any such printed gossip has at all contemplated.

No man stands alone. The greatest is not isolated from his fellows or independent of the influences by which he is surrounded. Hence to thoroughly comprehend an individual you must understand the age in which he lived, for this furnishes the mould whence the elements of his being will largely take the form and fashion which they bear. Yet when you have thoroughly mastered all this, and in addition accurately determined the social and educational influences to which he was especially subjected, you have yet only acquired half the data necessary to the solution of your problem. You have at best only estimated the forces; their subject matter is still beyond you. The man as constituted by Nature is still unknown. And for this, if, as is usual, you are only of the literary class, you will be dependent upon his manifestations in thought and action. Very important indications no doubt, and when combined with other elements, of quite incalculable value in arriving at an accurate estimate of character. But you will observe they are only effects, and hence afford information simply as to the causes which have produced them. They, in short, enlighten you as to that part of your hero's character which has become patent, but are hopelessly silent on that, which from want of sufficient opportunity or adequate investigation, has remained latent. Perhaps even this is too favourable an estimate of a merely literary biography; for if the latent powers of its subject be unknown, in all probability the patent will be misapprehended, for an individual character is a whole, and cannot be estimated aright, solely from its fragmentary portions. Least of all, can this be accomplished by men ignorant of the elementary forces which constitute a human mind, and thus utterly unaccustomed to estimate the vigorous interaction maintained between passion, affection, principle, and

faculty in the hidden recesses of consciousness? The result of all this is, that literary biographies are often partial and imperfect, superficial and unsatisfactory, their stand-point being wholly from without, while a true revelation of life demands that its subject should also occasionally be contemplated from within. But for this it will be said, we have a remedy in that now rather fashionable department of literature known as autobiography. And could we obtain a genuine self-revelation this would no doubt be in part true. Not that all men are capable of revealing even themselves. But how many genuine-that is, honest and thoroughly outspoken autobiographies have we? Are not the greater part of these very amusing productions indeed gossiping recollections about others, rather than deep, earnest, soul-searching developments of the author's own inner being. Moreover, an autobiography, however excellent, furnishes but one side of the picture, its aspect as contemplated from within, disfigured and discoloured by the prejudice and self-love, of which even the best and most amiable are more or less the victims. And hence to complete the portrait, it is still necessary that it should be contemplated from without, and that too by an eye, that brings with it the power to see. Biography in short, like history, is a branch of science as well as literature, and demands something more than mere classical attainments for its composition.

To thoroughly understand an individual, you should know somewhat of his ethnic roots and relationships. As we have said, he does not stand alone in the world. He came here in virtue of certain predecessors, from whom he will infallibly have inherited many specialities and proclivities that ought not to be ignored. In the account of any animal, its species is esteemed of paramount importance; and justly so, for this at once decides many questions as to its habits and propensities, that might otherwise have remained matter of doubt. But are there not also well marked diversities in the type of man, that have existed apparently from time immemorial, handed down from generation to generation as an organic inheritance, like the special form of various animals, each of these carrying with it certain mental endowments and deficiencies common to the race. As between the strongly contrasted divisions, where the lines of organic demarcation are broad and palpable, this is generally admitted, so that in any notice of a Negro or Mongol, some allusion to his peculiar race could scarcely be omitted, although this is generally so managed as to be utterly devoid of any scientific value; works of this character being, as we have already remarked, usually written by men altogether ignorant of

ethnic data and their application. Nevertheless, even to such there is a glimmer of light afforded, when the lines of separation are prominent and unmistakable, as in contrasted colour or very observable form, but in the minor divisions and subdivisions, the facts of racial descent and propinquity are systematically ignored. Whether a man of eminence be predominantly of Celtic, Classic, Teutonic or Sclavonic type, is usually esteemed a matter of such insignificance that it is never alluded to, save indirectly, when we are informed as a social and educational fact, of his nationality, moral influences being regarded as of unspeakable importance, while the very elements on which they have to act are commonly treated with ignorant indifference. Now while the former are not to be neglected, constituting as they do one-half of the problem, that is the forces by which given results have been worked out, neither should we despise the latter, as they are the subject matter on which these forces have had to operate.

Thus, for example, in any life of Raphael, his especially Italic type, as seen in the portrait by himself, should never be overlooked; while in any attempted parallel between him and his great rival Michael Angelo, the marked contrast in their genius and disposition is readily explained by the predominantly Gothic blood of the latter. Again, how superficial would be any life of Voltaire, that did not take as its keynote the fact of his Celtic descent and character. How impotently do all ordinary biographies of that model Frenchman stop short at secondary causes. Nay, to understand him thoroughly, he must not only be regarded as generically a Celt, but also of the Gallic variety, and so very different from the Spanish or British divisions of the same ancient and excitable race. Thus only can we comprehend the man, and thus only can we understand his mission, as undermining a faith by sarcasm, and sapping a throne by wit, he heralded the greatest revolution on record by arts which with us are confined to the drawing-room and the stage, and even there are limited in their range and subordinate in their rank. It was a Gallic prophet speaking to his people in their own brilliant dialect, and appealing to them by motives and through sympathies, that would have proved all but inoperative upon an alien race. As a contrast to the gay and sprightly Frenchman, behold the sturdy and stalwart champion of the Reformation, Martin Luther. Predominantly and essentially Teutonic, with perhaps just a sufficiency of the Sclavonic element to give him increased basilar power, the honest, earnest, and pious German, to the best of his ability, built up one form of religion while he pulled down another. No vain scoffer was the rude monk of Erfurt, but a stern

VOL. II.-NO. V.

K

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »