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 Another Random Document on
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the true negro race, but it does not seem to be owing to the size of the
bone, as an examination of a series of calcanca in both races proves.
The lengthening is apparent only, and is due to the smallness of the
calf and the slenderness of the main tendon, the “tendon of Achilles,”
immediately above the heel.9

With the pithecoid forms of the bones is often associated another

simian mark. The line in the hand known to chiromancy as the “heart”
line, in all races but the negro ceases at the base of the middle finger,
but in his race, as in the ape, it often extends quite across the palm.

The bones offer the most enduring, but not the most obvious
distinctions of races. The latter are unquestionably those presented by

The Color.—This it is which first strikes the eye, and from which the
most familiar names of the types have been drawn. The black and
white, the yellow, the red and the brown races, are terms far older
than the science of ethnography, and have always been employed in its
terminology.

Why it is that these different hues should indelibly mark whole races, is
not entirely explained. The pigment or coloring matter of the skin is
deposited from the capillaries on the surface of the dermis or true skin,
and beneath the epidermis or scarf skin.10 I have seen a negro so
badly scalded that the latter was detached in large fragments, and with
it came most of his color, leaving the spot a dirty light brown.

The coloration of the negro, however, extends much beyond the skin. It
is found in a less degree on all his mucous membrane, in his muscles,
and even in the pia mater and the grey substance of his brain.

The effort has been made to measure the colors of different peoples by
a color scale. One such was devised by Broca, presenting over thirty
shades, and another by Dr. Radde, in Germany; but on long journeys,
or as furnished by different manufacturers, these scales undergo
changes in the shades, so that they have not proved of the value
anticipated.
As to the physiological cause of color, you know that the direct action
of the sun on the skin is to stimulate the capillary action, and lead to
an increased deposit of pigment, which we call “tan.” This pigment is
largely carbon, a chemical element, principally excreted by the lungs in
the form of carbonic oxide. When from any cause, such as a peculiar
diet, or a congenital disproportion of lungs to liver, the carbonic oxide is
less rapidly thrown off by the former organs, there will be an increased
tendency to pigmentary deposit on the skin. This is visibly the fact in
the African blacks, whose livers are larger in proportion to their lungs
than in any other race.11

While all the truly black tribes dwell in or near the tropics, all the arctic
dwellers are dark, as the Lapps, Samoyeds and Eskimos; therefore, it is
not climate alone which has to do with the change. The Americans
differ little in color among themselves from what part soever of the
continent they come, and the Mongolians, though many have lived
time immemorial in the cold and temperate zone, are never really white
when of unmixed descent.

A practical scale for the colors of the skin is the following:

{1. Black.
Dark. {2. Dark brown, reddish undertone.
{3. Dark brown, yellowish undertone.

{1. Reddish.
Medium.
{2. Yellowish (olive).

{1. White, brown undertone (grayish).

White. {2. White, yellow undertone.
{3. White, rosy undertone.

The color of the eyes should next have attention. Their hue is very
characteristic of races and of families. Light eyes with dark skins are
rare exceptions. Other things equal, they are lighter in men than in
women. Extensive statistics have been collected in Europe to ascertain
the prevalence of certain colors, and instructive results have been
obtained.12 The division usually adopted is into dark and light eyes.

{1. Black.
Dark eyes.
{2. Brown.

{1. Light brown (hazel).

Light eyes. {2. Gray.
{3. Blue.

The eye must be examined at some little distance so as to catch the

total effect.

Next in the order of prominence is

The Hair.—Indeed, Haeckel and others have based upon its character
the main divisions of mankind. That of some races is straight, of others
more or less curled. This difference depends upon the shape of the
hairs in cross-section. The more closely they assimilate true cylinders,
the straighter they hang; while the flatter they are, the more they
approach the appearance of wool. (Fig. 5.) The variation of the two
diameters (transverse and longitudinal) is from 25:100 to 90:100. The
straightest is found among the Malayans and Mongolians; the wooliest
among the Hottentots, Papuas and African negroes. The white race is
intermediate, with curly or wavy hair. It is noteworthy that all woolly-
haired peoples have also long, narrow heads and protruding jaws.
 Fig. 5.—Cross Sections of Hairs.

The amount of hair on the face and body is also a point of some
moment. As a rule, the American and Mongolian peoples have little, the
Europeans and Australians abundance. Crossing of races seems to
strengthen its growth, and the Ainos of the Japanese Archipelago, a
mixed people, are probably the hairiest of the species. The strongest
growth on the head is seen among the Cafusos of Brazil, a hybrid of
the Indian and negro.

The Muscular Structure.—The development of the muscular structure

offers notable differences in the various races. The blacks, both in
Africa and elsewhere, have the gastrocnemii or calf muscles of the leg
very slightly developed; while in both them and the Mongolians the
facial muscles have their fibres more closely interwoven than the
whites, thus preventing an equal mobility of facial expression.

The anomalies of the muscular structure seem about as frequent in one

race as in another. The most of them are regressive, imitating the
muscles of the apes, monkeys, and lower mammals. Indeed, a learned
anatomist has said that the abnormal anatomy of the muscles supplies
all the gaps which separate man from the higher apes, as all the simian
characteristics reappear from time to time in his structure.13

Certain motions or positions, such as I may call “muscular habits,” are

characteristic of extensive groups of tribes. The method of resting is
one such. The Japanese squats on his hams, the Australian stands on
one leg, supporting himself by a spear or pole, and so on. The methods
of arrow-release have been profitably studied by Professor E. S. Morse.
He finds them so characteristic that he classifies them ethnographically,
with reference to savagery and civilization, and locality. The three most
important are the primary, the Mediterranean, and the Mongolian
releases. The first is that of many savage tribes, the second was
practiced principally by the white race, the last by the Mongolians and
their neighbors. (Figs. 6, 7, 8.) The last two are the most effective, and
thus gave superiority in combat.
 Fig. 6.—Primary Arrow-Release.

Fig. 7.—Mediterranean Arrow-Release.

Allied to muscular variation are the peculiar deposits of fatty tissue in

certain portions of the system. The Hottentots are remarkable for the
prominence of the gluteal region, imparting to their figure a singular
projection posteriorly. It is called “steatopygy,” and appears to have
been, in part at least, a cultivated deformity, regarded among them as
a beauty. The thick lips of the negro, and the long and pendent breasts
of the Australian women, are other examples of ethnic hypertrophies.

Fig. 8.—Mongolian Arrow-Release.

Stature and Proportion.—Differences in stature are tribal, but not racial.

The smallest peoples known, the Negrillos, the Aetas, the Lapps,
belong to different races, as do the tallest, the Patagonians, the
Polynesians, the Anglo-Americans. The researches of Paolo Riccardi and
others prove that stature is correlated with nutrition; the better the
food, other things being equal, the taller the men.14 It is also markedly
hereditary; the stature of children will average that of their parents.

What is called the “canon of proportions” of the human body varies

with the race and the nation. There is indeed an ideal, an artistic
canon, which the sculptor or the painter seeks to body forth in his
productions; and this seems in close conformity with an extensive
average of the proportions of the highest peoples; but it is never found
in individuals, and it is essentially unlike in man and woman, in youth
and age, in the blonde and brunette.15 Nor is the ideal of the artist also
that which is consonant with the greatest muscular development or
highest powers of endurance.

Special Senses.—It cannot be said that the different races display

positive discrepancies in the special senses. Their development appears
to depend on cultivation, and all races respond equally to equal
training. There is, to be sure, a higher musical sense in the native
African than in the native American, but quite as much difference is
seen between European nations.

Much has been written of the color-sense as a trait of nations. It has

been said that some tribes, some races, appreciate hues more keenly
than others; that within historic times marked gains in this respect are
noticeable. I think these statements are incorrect. The savage of any
race distinguishes precisely the difference of hues when it is to his
material interest so to do; but concerns himself not at all about colors
which have no effect on his life. He is well acquainted with the colors of
the animals he hunts, and has a word for every shade of hue. This
proves that his color-sense is as acute as that of civilized people, and
merely lacks specific training.

Ethnic Relations of the Sexes.—There are some curious facts in

reference to the relative position of the sexes in different peoples. As a
rule the expression of sex in form and feature is less in the lower than
in the higher races. Travelers frequently refer to the difficulty of
distinguishing the men from the women among the American Indians
or the Chinese. Investigate the fact, and you will find that it is not that
the women are less feminine in appearance, but the men less
masculine. In other words, the expression of sex in such peoples is less
in man than in woman. This seems to be true also of the highest ideals
of manhood in artistic conception. The Greek Apollo, the traditional
Christ, present a feminine type of the male. This was carried to its
excess in the Greek Hermaphrodite.

The reason for this approximation to the female in art-ideals is

probably the zoological fact that the law of beauty in the human
species is the reverse of that in all the other higher mammals, the
female sex with us being the handsomer. This also becomes more
evident in the comparison of the best developed peoples.

On the other hand, the muscular force of the sexes presents the
greatest contrast in nations of the highest culture. The average
European woman of twenty-five or thirty has one-third less muscular
power than the average European man. But among the Afghans, the
Patagonians, the Druses and other tribes, the women are as tall and as
strong as the men; and in Siam, Ashanti, Ancient Gaul, and elsewhere,
not only the field-laborers but the soldiers were principally women,
selected because of their greater physical force and courage.

As the value of mere brute force in a social organization lessens in

comparison to mental powers, the condition of woman improves, and
her faculties find appropriate play. Her brain capacity, though
absolutely less, is relatively more than man’s. That is, the difference of
the whole average weight of woman and man is greater in proportion
than the difference of their brain weights.

It is believed, also, that the viability or prospect of life in woman is

greater in higher than in lower peoples; and generally greater than in
men. European statistics show that 106 boys are born to 100 girls: but
at twelve years of age the sexes are equal, the boys suffering a greater
mortality. At eighty years of age, there are nearly three women living to
one man, indicating a superior longevity.

Correlation of Physical Traits to Vital Powers.—The physical traits are

correlated to the physiological functions in such a manner as
profoundly to influence the destiny of nations. They enable or disable
man with reference to the climatic and other conditions of his
surroundings. For instance, certain races can support given
temperature better than others. The intense heat and humidity of
Central Africa or Southern India are destructive to the pure whites,
while the climate north of the fortieth parallel soon exterminates the
blacks. The food on which the Australian thrives destroys the digestive
powers of the European. Exemption and liability to diseases differ
noticeably in races. The white race is more liable to yellow fever,
malarial diseases, syphilis, scarlet fever and sunstroke; the colored
races to measles, tuberculosis, leprosy, elephantiasis, and pneumonia.

Indeed, from the physical point of view, the pure white is weaker than
the dark races, worse prepared for the combat of life, with inferior
viability. This has been shown by the careful researches of
statisticians.16 But in the white this is more than compensated by the
development of the nervous system and the intellectual power. He can
bear greater mental strain than any other race, and the activity of his
mind supplies him with means to overcome the inferiority of his body,
and thus places him at the head of the whole species.

The tolerance of disease is an obscure but momentous element in the

comparison of races. It is almost a proverb among the Spanish-
American physicians that “when an Indian falls sick, he dies.” The
greater longevity of the European peoples is due to their ability to
support disease long and frequently, without succumbing to it. On the
other hand, surgical injuries, wounds and cuts, appear to heal more
rapidly among savage peoples.17 It is clear that in civilized conditions
this is less important than tolerance.

The Causes of the Fixation of Ethnic Traits.—These causes are mainly

related to climate and the food-supply. The former embraces the
questions of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure (altitude),
malarial or zymotic poisons, and the like. All these bear directly upon
the relative activity of the great physiological organs, the lungs, heart,
liver, skin and kidneys, and to their action we must undoubtedly turn
for the origin of the traits I have named. On the food-supply, liquid and
solid, whether mainly animal, fish or vegetable, whether abundant or
scanty, whether rich in phosphates and nitrogenous constituents or the
reverse, depend the condition of the digestive organs, the nutrition of
the individual, and the development of numerous physical
idiosyncrasies. Nutrition controls the direction of organic development,
and it is essentially on arrested or imperfect, in contrast to completed
development, that the differences of races depend.

These are the physiological and generally unavoidable influences which

went to the fixation of racial types. They are those which placed early
man under the dominion of natural, unconscious evolution, like all the
lower animals. To them may be added natural selection from accidental
variations becoming permanent when proving of value in the struggle
for existence, as shown in the black hue of equatorial tribes, special
muscular development, etc.

But I do not look on these as the main agents in the fixation of special
traits. No doubt such agencies primarily evolved them, but their
cultivation and perpetuation were distinctly owing to conscious
selection in early man. Our species is largely outside the general laws
of organic evolution, and that by virtue of the self-consciousness which
is the privilege of it alone among organized beings.

This conscious selection was applied in two most potent directions, the
one to maintaining the physical ideal, the other toward sexual
preference.

As soon as the purely physical influences mentioned had impressed a

tendency toward a certain type on the early community, this was
recognized, cultivated and deepened by man’s conscious endeavors.
Every race, when free from external influence, assigns to its highest
ideal of manly or womanly beauty its special racial traits, and seeks to
develop these to the utmost. African travelers tell us that the negroes
of the Soudan look with loathing on the white skin of the European;
and in ancient Mexico when children were born of a very light color, as
occasionally happened, they were put to death. On the other hand the
earliest records of the white race exalt especially the element of
whiteness. The writer of the Song of Solomon celebrates his bride as
“fairest among women,” with a neck “like a tower of ivory;”18 and one
of the oldest of Irish hero-tales, the Wooing of Emer, chants the
praises of “Tara, the whitest of maidens.”19 Though both Greeks and
Egyptians were of the dark type of the Mediterranean peoples, their
noblest gods, Apollo and Osiris, were represented “fair in hue, and with
light or golden hair.”20

The persistent admiration of an ideal leads to its constant cultivation by

careful preservation and sexual selection. Thus the peoples who have
little hair on the face and body, as most Chinese and American Indians,
usually do not like any, and carefully extirpate it. The negroes prefer a
flat nose, and a child which develops one of a pointed type has it
artificially flattened. In Melanesia if a child is born of a lighter hue than
is approved by the village, it is assiduously held over the smoke of a
fire in order to blacken it. The custom of destroying infants markedly
aberrant from the national type is nigh universal in primitive life. Such
usages served to fix and perpetuate the racial traits.

A yet more powerful factor was sexual preference. This worked in a

variety of ways. If is well known to stock breeders that the closer
animals are bred in-and-in, that is, the nearer the relationship of father
and mother, the more prominently the traits of the parents appear in
their children and become fixed in the breed. It is evident that in the
earliest epoch of the human family, the closest inter-breeding must
have prevailed without restriction, as it does in every species of the
lower animals. By its influences the racial traits were rapidly
strengthened and indelibly impressed. This, however, was long before
the dawn of history, for it is a most remarkable fact that never in
historic times has a tribe been known that allowed incestuous relations,
unless as in ancient Egypt and Persia, for a sacrificial or ceremonial
purpose. The lowest Australians, the degraded Utes, look with horror
on the union of brother and sister. The general principle of marriage in
savage races is that of “exogamy,” marriage outside the clan or family,
the latter being counted in the female line only. This strange but
universal abhorrence has been explained by Darwin as primarily the
result of sexual indifference arising between members of the same
household, and the high zest of novelty in that appetite. Whatever the
cause, the consequences will easily be seen. The racial traits once fixed
in the period before this abhorrence arose would remain largely
stationary afterwards, and by exogamous marriages would be rendered
uniform over a wide area.

This form of conscious selection has properly been rated as one of the
prime factors in the problem of race differentiation.21 The apparently
miscellaneous and violent union of the sexes in savage tribes is in fact
governed by the most stringent traditional laws, and their confused
cohabitations are so only to the mind of the European observer, not to
the tribal conscience.22

Causes of Variation in Types.—The physical type once fixed by the

influences just mentioned remains very stable; yet may fall under the
influence of conditions which will greatly modify it.

Changes in climatic surroundings and of the food supply exert a visible

effect. These generally come about by migration, though geologic
action has occasionally completely altered the climate of a given
locality, as at the glacial epoch, which change would have the same
effect as migration.

How far migration may alter race-types after many generations is not
yet defined. The Spanish-American of pure white blood, whose
ancestors have lived for three centuries in tropical America, the citizen
of the United States who traces his genealogy to the passengers in the
Mayflower or the Welcome, have departed extremely little from the
standard of the Andalusian or the Englishman of to-day, though the
contrary is often asserted by those who have not personally studied the
variants in the countries compared. Conditions of climate and food
materially impress the individual, but not the race. The Greeks of Nubia
are as dark as Nubians, but let their children return to Greece and the
Nubian hue is lost. This is a general truth and holds good of all the
slight impressions made upon pure races by unaccustomed
environments.

Another cause of variation is the recurrence to remote ancestral traits,

or the appearance of what seem merely accidental variations, which
may be perpetuated. It is not very unusual in pure African negroes and
Chinese to observe instances of reddish hair and gray or brown eyes.

Those peculiar congenital conditions known as albinism and melanism

may be frequent and are unquestionably transmissible by descent.23

The Mingling of Races.—But the mightiest cause in the change of types

is intermarriage between races, what the French call métissage. This
has taken place from distantly remote epochs, especially along the
lines where two races come into contact. In such regions we always
find numerous mixed breeds, leading to a shading of one race into
another by imperceptible degrees.

The widespread custom of exogamous marriage fostered the blending

of types, and it was greatly increased in early days by the institution of
human slavery, the habit of selling captives taken in war, the purchase
of wives and concubines, and the rule in early conquest that the men
of the conquered were killed or sent off, and the women retained as
the spoils of the victors. In all ages man has been migratory, and very
remote relics of his arts show that war and commerce led to extensive
intermixture of races long before history took up the thread of his
wanderings.

It is noticeable, however, that these prolonged interminglings have not

produced another race. The nearest approach to it is in the Australians,
but these do not refute my statement as we shall see later. Many
ethnologists have indeed classed the mixed types as separate races,
running the number of the sub-species of the genus homo up to thirty
or forty. But this was hasty generalization.

I would impress upon you this fact, that since the intermingling of two
races does not produce a third race, it is not likely that any of the
existing races arose from a fusion of two others. The result of
observation shows that after two or three generations the tendency in
mixed breeds is to recur to one or the other of the original stocks, not
to establish a different variety.

Were it not for such constant crossings, we have reason to believe that
the race types would resist all environment and retain their traits under
all known conditions. It is only where the element of métissage
prominently enters that we are unable to assign individuals to one or
another race.

Such being the case, it is a fair comparison to set one race over against
another and deduce the
Physical Criteria of Racial Superiority.—We are accustomed familiarly to
speak of “higher” and “lower” races, and we are justified in this even
from merely physical considerations. These indeed bear intimate
relations to mental capacity, and where the body presents many points
of arrested or retarded development, we may be sure that the mind
will also.

There are two explanations of the presence of the inferior physical

traits in certain races of men; the one, that of the evolutionists, that
they are reversions or perpetuations of the ape-like (simian, pithecoid)
features of the lower animal which was man’s immediate ancestor; the
other, that of the special creationists, that they are instances of
surviving fetal peculiarities, or else deficiency or excess of development
from unknown causes.

The following are the principal traits of the kind:

Simplicity and early union of cranial sutures.

Presence of the frontal process of the temporal bone.

Wide nasal aperture, with synostosis of the nasal bones.

Prominence of the jaws.

Recession of the chin.

Early appearance, size and permanence of the “wisdom” teeth.

Unusual length of the humerus.

Perforation of the humerus.

Continuation of the “heart” line across the hand.

Obliquity (narrowness) of the pelvis.

Deficiency of the calf of the leg.

Flattening of the tibia.

Elongation of the heel (os calcis).

When all or many of these traits are present, the individual approaches
physically the type of the anthropoid apes, and a race presenting many
of them is properly called a “lower” race. On the other hand, where
they are not present, the race is “higher,” as it maintains in their
integrity the special traits of the genus Man, and is true to the type of
the species.

The adult who retains the more numerous fetal, infantile or simian
traits, is unquestionably inferior to him whose development has
progressed beyond them, nearer to the ideal form of the species, as
revealed by a study of the symmetry of the parts of the body, and their
relation to the erect stature.

Measured by these criteria, the European or white race stands at the

head of the list, the African or negro at its foot.

The investigations of anthropologists extend much beyond the outlines

I have now presented you. All parts of the body have been minutely
scanned, measured and weighed, in order to erect a science of the
comparative anatomy of the races. Much of value has been discovered;
but nothing absolutely characteristic, nothing which enables us to
divide more sharply one race from another than the facts I have given
you. It is a question, indeed, whether not too much, but too exclusive
attention has not been devoted by many anthropologists to the purely
physical aspects of their science. They have multiplied useless
anatomical refinements and a pedantic nomenclature. The more
valuable general distinctions and their technical terms I present to you
in the following table:—

Scheme of Principal Physical Elements.

 Dolichocephalic, long skulls.
Skull Mesocephalic, medium skulls.
Brachycephalic, broad skulls.

Leptorhine, narrow noses.

Nose Mesorhine, medium noses.
Platyrhine, flat or broad noses.

Megaseme, round eyes.

Eyes Mesoseme, medium eyes.
Microseme, narrow eyes.

Orthognathic, straight or vertical jaws.

Jaws Mesognathic, medium jaws.
Prognathic, projecting jaws.

Chamæprosopic, low or broad face.

Face Mesoprosopic, medium face.
Leptoprosopic, narrow or high face.

Platypellic, broad pelvis.

Pelvis Mesopellic, medium pelvis.
Leptopellic, narrow pelvis.

Leucochroic, white skin.

Xanthochroic, yellow skin.
Color
Erythrochroic, reddish skin.
Melanochroic, black or dark skin.

Hair Euthycomic, straight hair.

Euplocomic, wavy hair.
Eriocomic, wooly hair.
Lophocomic, bushy hair.
 LECTURE II.
THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENTS OF ETHNOGRAPHY.

Contents.—The mental differences of races. Ethnic psychology.

Cause of psychical development.

I. The Associative Elements. 1. The Social Instincts; sexual impulse;

primitive marriage; conception of love; parental affection; filial
and fraternal affection; friendship; ancestral worship; the gens
or clan; the tribe; personal loyalty; the social organization;
systems of consanguinity; position of woman in the state;
ethical standards; modesty. 2. Language; universality of;
primeval speech; rise of linguistic stocks; their number;
grammatical structure; classes of languages; morphologic
scheme; relation of language to thought; significance of
language in ethnography. 3. Religion: universality of; early
forms; family and tribal religions; universal or world religions;
ethnic study of religions; comparison of Christianity, Islam, and
Buddhism; material and ideal religions; associative influences of
religions. 4. The Arts of Life: architecture; agriculture;
domestication of animals; inventions.

II. The Dispersive Elements: adaptability of man to surroundings. 1.

The Migratory Instincts; love of roaming; early commerce; lines
of traffic and migration. 2. The Combative Instincts: primitive
condition of war; love of combat; its advantages; heroes;
development through conflict.

The mental differences of races and nations are real and profound.
Some of them are just as valuable for ethnic classification as any of the
physical elements I referred to in the last lecture, although purely
physical anthropologists are loath to admit this. No one can deny,
however, that it is the psychical endowment of a tribe or a people
which decides fatally its luck in the fight of the world. Those, therefore,
who would master the highest significance of ethnography in its
function as the key to history, will devote to this branch of it their most
earnest attention.

The study of the general mental peculiarities of a people is called

“ethnic psychology.” As a science, it may be treated by various
methods, applicable to the different aims of research. For our present
purpose, which is to study the growth, migrations and comminglings of
races and peoples, the most suggestive method will be to classify their
mental distinctions under the two main headings of Associative and
Dispersive Elements. The predominance of one or the other of these is
ever eminently formative in the character and history of a people, and
both must be constantly considered with reference to their bearings on
the progress of a nation toward civilization.

The psychical development of men and nations finds its chief

explanation, less in the natural surroundings, the climate, soil, and
water-currents, as is taught by some philosophers, than in their
relations and connections with each other, their friendships, federations
and enmities, their intercourse in commerce, love and war. Around
these must center the chief studies of ethnographic science, for they
contain and present the means for reaching its highest, almost its only
aim—the comprehension of the social and intellectual progress of the
species.

I. The Associative Elements.

The sense of fellowship, the gregarious instinct, was inherited by our
first fathers from their anthropoid ancestors. The “river drift” men, who
dwelt on the banks of the Thames and the Somme before the glacial
epoch, were gathered into small communities, as their remains testify.
The most savage tribes, Fuegians and Australians, roam about in
detached bands. They are not under the control of a chief, but are led
to such union by much the same motives as prompt buffaloes to gather
in a herd.

These fundamental mental elements which impel to association are:

1. The Social Instincts.

Strongest of them all is the sexual impulse. The foundation of every

community is the bond of the man and woman, and the nature of this
bond is the surest test of a community’s position in the scale of culture.
It is not likely that miscellaneous cohabitation, or that slightly modified
form of it called “communal marriage,” ever existed. No instance of it
has been known to history.24 In the most brutal tribes the man asserts
his right of ownership in the woman. The rare custom of “polyandry,”
where a woman has several husbands at once, gives her no general
license.

It is equally true that the tender sentiments of love appear to be less

known to the lowest savages than they are to beasts and birds. The
process of mating is by brute force, marriage is by robbery, and the
women are in a wretched slavery. Mutual affection has no existence.
Such is the state of affairs among the Australians, the western
Eskimos, the Athapascas, the Mosquitos, and many other tribes.25

But it is gratifying to find that we have to mount but a step higher in

the scale to find the germs of a nobler understanding of the sex
relation. In many tribes of but moderate culture, their languages supply
us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them,
and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life.
This I have shown in considerable detail by an analysis of the words for
love and affection in the languages of the Algonkins, Nahuas, Mayas,
Qquichuas, Tupis and Guaranis, all prominent tribes of the American
Indians.26

Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a
capability for romantic love, such as would do credit to a modern novel.
This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this
ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being
something foreign to those varieties of man.

The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through
the development of parental affection. This instinct is as strong in
many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions
it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but slight
attention to the welfare of his offspring. To this, rather than to a doubt
of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in such
communities, of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.

Akin to this is filial and fraternal affection, leading to a preservation of

the family bond through generations, and in spite of local separation. It
is surprising how strong is this sentiment even in conditions of low
culture. The Polynesians preserved their genealogies through twenty
generations; the Haidah Indians of Vancouver’s Island boast of fifteen
or eighteen.

The sentiment of friendship has been supposed by some to be an

acquisition of higher culture. Nothing is more erroneous. Dr. Carl
Lumholtz tells me he has seen touching examples of it among
Australian cannibals, and the records of travelers are full of instances of
devoted affection in members of savage tribes, both toward each other
and toward persons of other races. There are established rites in early
social conditions, by which a stranger is received into the bond of
fellowship and the sanctity of friendship.27 This is often by a transfer of
the blood of the one to the body of the other, or a symbolic ceremony
to that effect, the meaning being that the stranger is thus admitted to
the rights of kinship in the gens or clan. Springing from this clannish
affection is the custom of ancestral worship, which adds a link to the
bond of the family. It is so widely spread that Herbert Spencer has
endeavored to derive from it all other forms of religion. But this is a
hasty generalization. The religious sentiment had many other primitive
forms of expression.

Through these various personal affections we reach the development

of the family into the gens, the clan or totem, all of whose members,
whether by consanguinity or adoption, are held to represent one
interest.

The union of several gentes under one control constitutes the tribe,
which is the first step toward what is properly a state. The tribe passes
beyond the ties of affinity by embracing in certain common interests
persons who are not recognized as allied in blood. Yet it is curious to
note that the tribal sentiments are among the very strongest mankind
ever exhibits, surpassing those of family affection. Brutus felt no
hesitation in sacrificing his son for the common weal. Classical antiquity
is full of admonitions and examples to the same effect. So powerful is
the devotion of the Polynesians that they have been known when a
canoe was capsized where sharks abounded, to form a ring around
their chief, and sacrifice themselves one by one to the ravenous fish,
that he might escape.

This sentiment of personal loyalty has been in history the main

strength of many a government, and has in it something chivalric and
noble, which challenges our admiration; yet it is quite opposed to the
principles of republicanism and the equal rights of individuals, and we
must condemn it as belonging to a lower stage of evolution than that
to which we have arrived.

The result of these gregarious instincts is the formation of the social

organization, the bond under which first the primitive horde and later
the members of the developed commonwealth consented to live. From
first to last, wherever found, communities of men are bound together
by ties of consanguinity and affection rather than mere self-interest.
Those writers who pretend that society once existed without the idea
of kinship, with promiscuity in the sexual relation, and without some
recognized controlling power, have failed to produce such an example
from actual life.

These ties led to the systems of “consanguinity and affinity” which

recur with singular sameness at a certain stage of culture the world
over. They give rise to what is called the totemic or gentile phase of
society, in which its members are organized into “gentes” or clans,
“phratries” or associations of clans, and the tribe, which embraces
several such phratries. This theory affected the disposition of property,
which belonged to the clan and not to the individual, and the form of
government, which was usually by a council appointed from the various
clans. The recognition of the wide prevalence of these ideas in the
ancient world has led to profound modifications of our views respecting
its institutions, and a better understanding of many of the events of
history.28

In social organizations one of the criteria of excellence is the position of

woman. Upon this depends the life of the family and the development
of morality. Those nations which have gained the most enduring
conquests in power and culture have conceded to woman a prominent
place in social life. In ancient Egypt, in Etruria, in republican Rome,
women owned property, and enjoyed equal rights under the law.
Where woman is enslaved, as among the Australian tribes, progress is
scarcely possible; where she is imprisoned, as in Mohammedan
countries, progress may be rapid for a time, but is not permanent.
Unusual mental ability in a man is generally inherited from his mother,
and a nation which studies to prevent women from acquiring an
education and from taking an active part in affairs, is preparing the
way to engender citizens of inferior minds.

Among other ethnic traits, the appreciation of the ethical standard

differs notably. Long ago the observant Montaigne commented on the
conflicting views of morals in nations, and remarked rather cynically
that what was good on one side of a river was deemed wicked on the
other. This is especially noticeable in the sense of justice, the rights of
property, and the regard for truth. No Asiatic nation respects truth
telling, or can be made to see that it is abstractly desirable when it
conflicts with their immediate interests. The rights of property are
generally construed entirely differently to ourselves among nations in
the lower grades of culture, because the idea of independent personal
ownership does not exist among them. What they have belongs to the
clan or the horde, and they merely have the use of it.

The basis of ethics in all undeveloped conditions is not general but

special; it relates to the tribe and the family, and is in direct conflict
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