An Excerpt from American physician, Charles Caldwell’s:
“Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race” Caldwell, Charles. Rev.ed., Cincinnati: J.A. and U.P. James, 1852
“To readers free from prejudice, and the mental perversions and blindness of superstition, and liberally amenable to reason and argument, few words are requisite for the attainment of my object; and I am unwilling to encumber them with superfluous matter. And with readers enthralled by an opposite condition of the mind, who never, in the true sense of the term, think at all, but are the slaves of sightless feeling and passion, argument is unavailing; and to remonstrate with them is a waste of words, which I never commit. But in exposition of the character, and in furtherance of the design and interest of the work, the following remarks are considered not inappropriate, and are submitted to the public. [i]
A disbelief in the hypothesis of the original unity of man, or even a doubt respecting it, has hitherto identified, in public opinion, with a disbelief of the Christian religion. Hence those writers who have opposed that hypothesis, have been pronounced infidels. Whether that imputation be true or not, the sentiment accompanying it is certainly unfounded. If the individuals referred to were unbelievers, their infidelity was neither the cause, the effect, nor the necessary concomitant, of their opinion respecting the origin of man. Between a doubt whether all the races of men are descendants of a single pair, or even a conviction that they are not so, and unfriendliness to Christianity, there is no essential connection. The one sentiment not only may, but actually does, exist without the other. How, indeed, can the case be otherwise? The sentiments belong to different departments of knowledge. Whether all men sprung from the same primitive root, is a question pertaining exclusively to natural science, and concerns chiefly philosophers, and men of general knowledge. But far different are the nature and bearing of the other. The inquiry, whether religion be a reality of paramount importance, or a delusion practiced by the few on the many, belongs to moral science, and concerns the whole human race. As well may opinions in chemistry, mathematics, or astronomy, be pronounced unfriendly to Christianity, as that which denies the unity of mankind. Neither its Founder, nor the apostles, have transmitted to us a thought on the subject.
No person thoroughly acquainted with human nature, whether as respects its constitution or its relations, and with the history and progress of civil society, can doubt for a moment the reality of religion. Nor can he be blind to its important bearing on the affairs of the world, were those of another even left out of the [xi] question. An enemy to religion, therefore, whatever maybe his views and feelings on other subjects, is virtually a foe to man, not only individually, but in mass. Were every one like himself, earth would be a moral chaos, the most revolting and destructive agents and objects of which would be the human race and their enormities.
A sentiment of religion enters, as an essential element, into the constitution of man. It is as
much a part of his moral nature, as a leg or an arm is of his organic. Deprive him of it, and he would be rendered monstrous. Like the loss of any other indispensable portion of himself, the mutilation would unfit him to play his part in the drama of life. The sentiment of religion is adapted to the relation which man bears to his God and to his fellow-men, if it is not the immediate growth of it. It constitutes, therefore, a substantial part of the law of being. Without it, human nature would be an anomaly in creation, and an outcast from the scheme of benevolence and wisdom, which embraces everything else.
The author of the following dissertation, then, sincerely trusts, that no religious scruples will interpose to prevent it from receiving a candid perusal. It will not be denied that the subject of it is curious and highly interesting; and the disclosure and establishment of truth is the only object for which it was written. But truth can never prove unfriendly to sound religion. On the contrary, it is auxiliary to it. The most dangerous enemies of religion, are those person who would make it an instrument to trammel the human intellect, and arrest the progress of knowledge, by preventing free inquiry and discussion. Every new truth may be made to minister to religious feeling, by the light it throws on the beautiful and beneficent arrangement of nature, disclosing thus its aptitude to the “Giver of all good,” for his bestowing the power and means to discover it.
Is any one inclined to say, that the theory which maintains that there are different species of men, some of them inferior to others, is calculated to awaken and foster, in the superior species, sentiments of pride, injustice, and unkindness, toward those that are below them? The author replies, that he is not answerable for consequences, provided his representation of nature be correct. [xii] And if not correct, let its errors be shown, and he will instantly renounce them. If it be not wrong in the Deity to frame some species of men inferior to others, it cannot be wrong in him to assert and endeavor to prove it. The highest privilege of man is to examine the works of God, and his brightest glory to interpret them truly.
But the author denies that the theory referred to has the slightest tendency to harden, pervert, or in any way deteriorate the feelings of enlightened man. It does not produce in the superior, either injustice or cruelty toward the inferior, or induce him to inflict on him injury or wrong. The reverse of this is nearer being true. Inferior beings become objects of kindness, because they are inferior. That this is the case among the cultivated and the generous, will not be denied. Man protects and cherishes woman, because she is feeble, and looks to him for protection. Render her his equal and rival, and he will leave her to protect herself, and become less tenderly and devotedly her friend. It is only among the savage and uncultivated, that inferiority and feebleness invite aggression and suffer wrong. It is there alone that woman, and other beings unable to cope with man, are habitually degraded, and made to feel their weakness as an evil. And it is not with any reference to the principles and rules of action which prevail in such a state of society, that discussions like the present are engaged in. They are intended for those who are fitted, by nature and education, for a more liberal and elevated sphere of action and thought.
It is not true, then, that he theory here contended for favors injustice, oppression and wrong, inflicted by the higher races of men on the lower. It gives no countenance, as it has been accused of doing, to cruelty, or acts of wanton injury, practiced toward the Africans, or the aborigines of our country. Each race is entitled alike to all the rights it is fitted to enjoy. But each race is neither qualified, nor can ever become so, to enjoy and turn to proper account precisely the same rights, especially in the same degree, and has not therefore the same claim to all of them. The Caucasians are not justified in either enslaving the Africans or destroying the Indians, merely because their superiority in intellect and war enables them to do so. Such practices are an [xiii] abuse of power; and where there is privilege that is not liable to abuse? Even the inferior animals, for whose equality to man no one contends, have their rights, of which nothing but injustice and tyranny can deprive them.
The author, indeed, knows of no evil that can possibly result from the theory which he has endeavored, in this dissertation, to maintain. On the contrary, he firmly believes it to be not only true, but beneficial in its tendency. It is therefore that he has adduced in its favor, such facts and arguments as appear to him to sustain it. Convince him that it is unfounded, or of evil influence, especially that it is unfriendly to morality or religion, and he will not only abandon it, but record his recantation. But neither assertion nor censure will be sufficient for his conviction. He has rested his opinion on what he believes to be facts, and by nothing short of facts can it be shaken. To them, when presented, he will yield his assent; but to nothing else. He knows of no practice more disingenuous, or of worse tendency, in its relation to the denunciation and false imputations, opinions which cannot be refuted by argument. Yet, to the dishonor or the times, the practice exists, even among those who pretend to justice, and make profession of piety.
It is time that such unfairness were frowned on by the enlightened; and that truth were placed in the proper balance, and subjected to the proper test, that it may be decided on according to its purity and weight. The period calls for liberal discussion; and none else should be received into favor, or suffered to have influence. A notion is abroad, that certain truths are of dangerous tendency. The fancy is idle, and should not be admitted. No truth is dangerous, except to error and mischief. They are endangered by it, precisely as what is wrong is always endangered by the presence of what is right. When the great apostle that “all truth is useful,” he never pronounced a holier or a more important maxim. To contend for the contrary, is to impute to Heaven the perpetration of wrong. For Heaven is the birthplace and fountain of truth.
Let no the friends of true religion, then, tremble lest liberal inquiries and discussions should injure it. They will injure none [xiv] but spurious religion; and the sooner that is overthrown, the better. Genuine religion is brightened by discussion, as gold is purified by fire, and the diamond improved in its luster by friction. On every subject let fair and unrestrained investigation prevail, exempt from opposition by power, and denunciation by bigotry, and a new era in knowledge will arise. Trick and abuse will no longer pass for reason and argument, nor prejudice and passion for pious feeling. Things will be seen and judged of as they are, measures will be known by their proper names, and truth will ultimately vanquish error. [xv]
As far as our reading and inquiries have informed us, Dr. Pritchard is the last author of note, who has written on the subject we are about to examine. His work is entitled “Researches into the Physical History of Man,” the second edition of which was published in London, in two large volumes octavo, in 1826.
But the doctor is not only the last writer on the unity of mankind; he is also the most learned, as well as the ablest. By many, perhaps we may say, by most of his readers, he is considered as having so completely exhausted the argument and settled the question, as to render further investigation superfluous. Such, however, is not the opinion which our own inquiries have induced us to form. As the Doctor’s “Researches,” therefore, lie directly in our way, occupying much of the ground over which we must pass, and as they constitute a standard production, the refutation of which will be the overthrow of the hypothesis they are intended to support, we deem it requisite to introduce into our dissertation a compendious analysis of them, accompanied by such remarks as the various topics passed in review may seem to demand.
The object of our author in the publication referred to, may be stated in a few words. It is to establish, on philosophical ground, the doctrine (if so it may be called) of the original unity of man; in simple language, to prove the descent of the whole human race from a single pair. All minor considerations being disregarded, the accomplishment of this single purpose constitutes exclusively the design of the work. [2]
Having found, or rather fancied, that for the propagation of each species of vegetables and animals, there was created originally but a single parental individual or pair he [Dr. Pritchard] inferred by analogy, that the same was true of the human race; that the entire species of man had also descended from a single pair. But here he begged the question, by taking for granted the very position, which it was his business and avowed object to prove --- that mankind consists of but one species. We have no great objection to the theory which maintains, that each species, or distinct and incommutable race of men, is the progeny of a single pair; although even that view of the subject is beset by difficulties of a Herculean stamp. But the question to be determined, not by assumption, but proof, is, what number of such races actually exist? And no satisfactory answer can be derived from analogy; the more especially if its foundation be unsound, or even doubtful. Besides, to say the least of it, as many analogies can [34] can be adduced against our author’s hypothesis, as in favor of it.
Of various tribes or genera of inferior animals, the species are numerous. Of the genus Equus there are five species. Of the ape, naturalists make no less than thirty; of the baboon, several; and of the monkey, not a few. Nor are the differences between many of those species greater, between some of them they are not near so great, as between the several races of men; especially the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the African, and the American Indian. This, of course, Dr. Pritchard denies, but denial is neither proof nor argument. Yet we shall see hereafter, that, on the present topic, he has employed no other. Is it not as probable, then, that each of these four races of mankind is descended from an original pair, as each of the numerous species of baboons, apes, monkeys, and animals of the equine race? By nothing that our author has said on the subject, is this probability in the slightest degree weakened.
The better to sustain his hypothesis, he very properly rejects the evidences of the distinction of species laid down by Buffon and adopted by Hunter and others, and supplies their places by a few of his own, which we believe to be new. He admits that hybrids do breed, a truth so well established, that it is surprising it should ever have been questioned by enlightened naturalists. The fact is, however, that they are not so prolific as the species from which they spring. And this is true of the mulatto, the hybridous production of the Caucasian and the African. It is even asserted, as the result of observation, that when the descendants of mulattoes continue to intermarry, for a few generations, the offspring ceases at length to be productive, and the breed becomes extinct. Nor do I question the truth of the allegation. This is evidence direct and strong against the hypothesis of the unity of man. With our author’s definition of the term species, we are pleased, and in justice to him, shall adopt it. But it is our purpose, and, we think, in our power, to employ it to his prejudice, in combating his opinions. The following are his words:
“The meaning attached to the term species in natural history, is very simple and obvious. It includes only one circumstance, namely, an original distinctness and [35] constant transmission of any character. A race of animals or plants, marked by any peculiarities or structure, which have always been constant and undeviating, constitutes a species; and two races are considered as specifically different, if they are distinguished from each other by some peculiarities, which one cannot be supposed to have acquired, or the other to have lost, through any known operation of physical causes; for we are hence led to conclude, that the tribes thus distinguished, cannot have sprung from the same original stock.” ---Volume I, pp. 90-1.
Our author proceeds to a specification of the leading characteristics or criterions, by which he considers a distinctness of races clearly indicated.
First Criterion---“If we find, on inquiry, that the physical characters and habits are similar in any particular race; if they agree, for example, as to the duration of life; in all the circumstances connected with their breeding, as in the times and frequency of breeding, the period of utero-gestation, the number of their progeny; if they are subject to the same diseases, susceptible of the same contagions; if their animal faculties, instincts, and habits, are found precisely to resemble each other; there will be very strong presumption that they are of the same species.” ---pp. 93-4.
In reply to this, it might be justly observed, that to settle a question like the present, something more than mere “presumption” is required. We want proof; evidence that is tangible and solid. And that we have not received. But to render this discussion as liberal as possible, we shall admit, for the moment, our author’s “presumptive criterion,” and allow him to avail himself of it, as if it were true. In the use of it there must be no limits. If it apply in one case, it must apply to all. Let it be adopted, then, as rule of decision, and we ventured to say, that a very striking change, if not an entire revolution, in zoological classification will be the issue. We mean that such will be the effect, if all races of animals resembling each other, in the points specified by our author, as strongly as the different races of men do, be, on account of that resemblance, reduced to the same species. The red and fallow deer will constitute then but one species; for they resemble each other more, in all material points, than the Hottentot and the American Indian. [36] Instead of five, its present number, the genus Equus will then possess but three species, the zebra, the quagga, and the ziggetai, being identified. The genus Taurus, containing the bison, buffalo, and urus, will be consolidated into a single species. In the number of species of baboons, apes and monkeys, a similar diminution will be produced. Nor will the classification in ornithology be less altered. Of the eagle there will but one species. Of the falcon, not a fourth of the present number. The specific divisions of the owl, the vulture, the duck, the sparrow, the plover, the hummingbird, and many others of the feathered race, will be similarly affected. For could we dwell on the subject, it might be clearly shown, that between the numerous species of those tribes of quadrupeds and birds, there does not exist a wider difference than between the races of men. Let our author’s criterion, then, we say, be adopted in its full extent, and it will so completely subvert the commonly received views of specific difference, as to call imperatively for a new classification in zoology. Nor is this all. That criterion is directly opposed to the doctrine of the unity of the human race. It erects a specific barrier between the Bushmen and the rest of mankind. Among that degraded race longevity is unknown. The most protracted term of life with them does not exceed fifty years. They are old and withered at forty. Nor is the region they inhabit a sickly one. The seeds of early death are implanted in their organization. Shall we be told that the shortness of their lives is owing to the scantiness of their food, and the exposures and hardships they are compelled to undergo? We reply, that other savages, who are as severely exposed as they are, and often suffer for want of food, attain to a much more advanced age. The human constitution is exceedingly flexible, and learns to accommodate itself, without sustaining much injury, to external circumstances. Were the Bushmen therefore, identical with other races of mankind, there is ground to believe that their term of life would be nearly the same. As we do not, however, attach much importance to this supposed criterion of species, we have now adverted to it only to show, that, feeble as it is, our author cannot avail himself of it, in support of his hypothesis. In submitting it to his readers, he did not perhaps recollect, [37] that if it were true, we are not of the same species with our antediluvian progenitors. Their life extended to many centuries, while ours rarely reaches one. Dr. Pritchard specifies a liability to the same forms of disease, as another mark of identity of species. But it is well known to the observers of nature, that dogs, cats, horses, and hogs, are subject to bilious affections in common with man. “The yellow water” of horses, is a true bilious fever; and we have known multitudes of cats, and many dogs, to die of bilious diseases, in the summer season, when human beings were suffering from the same complaint. Hogs are liable also to scrofula, measles, and influenza. To hydrophobia, tetanus, colic, and the disease produced by the bites of serpents, numerous races of the inferior animals, especially our domestic animals, are subject. According to our author’s views, then, they all belong to the same species with each other, and with ourselves! We shall close our strictures on the reputed causes of changes in mankind from one race to another, by observing, that they are so trivial and insufficient, that the very reference to them by our opponents, proves the desperate condition of their hypothesis. It is only the drowning
man that grasps at straws.
Second Criterion---“It is manifest that there is some principle in nature, which prevents the intermixture of species, and maintains the order and variety of the animal creation; if different species mixed their breed, and hybrid races were often propagated, the animal world would present a scene of confusion. By what method is this confusion prevented? The fact seems to be, that the tribes of wild animals are preserved distinct, not by the sterility of mules, but by the circumstance that such animals are never, in the state of nature, brought into existence. The preservation of distinct species is sufficiently provided for, by the natural repugnance between individuals of different kinds. This is, indeed, overcome in the state of domestication, in which the natural propensities of animals cease, in a great measure, to direct their actions.”---pp. 97-98.
In instituting this criterion, our author betrays not only loose reasoning, but a want of that accurate knowledge of facts, which characterizes most other parts of his work. Between all different species of wild animals, there does [38] not exist a “natural repugnance” so strong, as absolutely to prohibit the intercourse of the sexes. The general rule unquestionably is, that whether wild or tame, males prefer females of their own species; and the converse. But that is all we are authorized to affirm. And that does not amount to a “repugnance.” It is choice, and nothing more. Nor are facts wanting to demonstrate, in certain animals, feelings toward those of different species, the very opposite of “repugnance.” The stag often seeks the female of the fallow deer. Between different species of the antelope, a similar intercourse exists. Between the males of different species of the monkey, ape, and baboon tribes, fierce conflicts often take place, on account of lawless attempts on their females. Jealously is here the ground of battle. We are assured, on authority which it is skepticism to question, that the males of the larger species of the ape manifest, in a natural state, an ardent predilection for the human female. In a domesticated state, we know they do, more especially for the negress. Does this prove an identity of species between jocko and homo?
But our author acknowledges that the sexual “repugnance” of which he speaks, is limited to animals in a natural state. He admits that, when domesticated, the males and females of different species forget their antipathies, and unite. And the admission is correct. But he has failed to examine the subject in all its bearings. He even neglected the most important of them. Has he ever seen the different tribes or races of mankind in any other than a “domesticated” state? Has he ever visited and studied them in a state of nature? He will not reply in the affirmative. The most savage and uncultivated of the human race he has ever looked on, were raised somewhat above a state of nature. What, then, does he know of their “repugnancies” or predilections in such a state? Nothing. Nor ought he ever to have compared the propensities of domesticated man with the propensities of undomesticated animals; because their conditions are different. It is only when both are in a state of domestication, that he is justified in making the comparison; and there the similarity of their propensities is striking. When he shall have carefully examined tribes of mankind, in a natural state, and not before, will he be authorized [39] to compare their propensities and actions with those of inferior animals in the same condition. His present comparison, therefore, avails him nothing.
Third Criterion---“There is another way of examining this subject, which the statement of the question itself naturally suggests. Thus we may remark, that certain varieties in form and color are seen in most of the tribes of animals with which we are acquainted, as horses, cows, pigs, poultry; and that these varieties exist under circumstances which preclude the idea of difference of species. It will remain to be inquired whether the diversities of mankind are of a similar description. If there should be found to be a strict analogy between those varieties in form, color, and the organization of parts, which exist in different races of men, and the diversities which occur in the lower departments of the animal creation, within the limits of the same species, the comparison of these two classes of phenomena, would lead us to an obvious conclusion respecting the former.”---pp. 99-100.
This criterion, as the reader perceives, is purely analogical. No inference, therefore, worthy of philosophy, can be deduced from it. In a particular manner, it must not be brought into competition with fact. Besides, we consider it beneath the dignity of the subject. The question does not relate to Shetland ponies, hornless or many-horned cows, ill-shaped hogs, white mice, black foxes, piebald horses, or a strange breed of chickens; to all of which, with many other things cjusdem generic, our author refers. Nor can such topics throw on it a ray of light. It relates to striking discrepancies, physical, moral and intellectual, between the several races of men, which, from time immemorial, have remained unchanged. The subject is a grave and weighty one, and should not be sported with, but seriously and pertinently confronted and discussed. Throughout his whole work, our author never encounters it in its strength. However dexterously he may play around it, and maintain a distant conflict, he never courageously meets and grapples with it. The truth of this we trust will appear, when we shall have endeavored to present the question in the real light in which it should be considered; a light, we must add, in which it does not appear, from his writing, that Dr. Pritchard has ever viewed it. [40]
To ascertain how the criterion we are now considering will sustain itself under the ordeal, we shall analyze more closely than we did the two preceding ones. The plain interpretation of it is, that if it can be made appear that certain remarkable changes have anywhere occurred, in some of the species of inferior animals, the fact will prove that like changes have taken place in the human family, and thus produced the several races of mankind from a single stock. As a ground of the argument, our author adduces the following varieties in the breeds of animals, and fancifully compares them with certain varieties in the breed of men.
Corresponding to what he calls the “black-haired variety of mankind,” he finds “rabbits, cats, dogs, hogs, foxes, horses, oxen, sheep, and fowls, with black hair, wool, or plumage.”
In analogy with the “albino variety of men,” he finds white “cats, rabbits, dogs, oxen, asses, hogs, goats, monkeys, squirrels, rats, mice, hamsters, moles, opossums, weasels, martins, elephants, camels, crows, blackbirds, peacocks, partridges,” and many other birds and quadrupeds, wild and tame, great and small.
Assimilated to what he calls the “xanthous variety” of man, he finds “rabbits, dogs, oxen, and cats, with light brown or yellow hair.” He pronounces the “chestnut horse, which has the mane and tail of a light yellowish brown color, precisely analogous to the xanthous complexion in mankind.” He further states, that “all the swine of Piedmont are black; those of Normandy, white; and those of Bavaria, of a reddish brown color. The oxen of Hungary are of a grayish white; in Franconia, they are red. Horses and dogs are spotted in Corsica. The turkeys of Normandy are black; those of Hanover, almost white.” –“In the Mysore, there are red, black, and white sheep; and red cats in Siberia.”
Having finished his remarks on color, Dr. Pritchard treats next of the varieties produced in the figure of certain species of inferior animals. In Hungary, Sweden, and England, he finds hogs with “solid hoofs;” in the island of Cubagua, a breed of the same animal with very long toes; and a variety, in some other place, but he does not say where, with “hoofs divided into five clefts.”—“In Guinea, the hogs have very long ears;” in China, “large [41] pendent belly, and very short legs,’ and “at Cape de Verde, very large tusks, curved like horns of oxen.”
Neapolitan horses have inordinately long heads, and Hungarian horses uncommonly short ones. In England, “the heads of the race horses differ much in form from those of the draft horses.” In the race of the common domestic fowl, numerous and striking varieties exist. Some of them have large heads, ornamented with tufts of feathers; others different sized heads, without tufts; some double and others single combs; some naked legs, and others legs covered with feathers. One variety of sheep and oxen is hornless, and another has many horns. “The horses of Arabia and Syria differ widely from those of northern Germany; and the long legged oxen of the Cape of Good Hope, from the short legged breeds of England.” From these, and a few more analogous facts, our author infers, that as physical causes have given rise to such remarkable varieties in several species of quadrupeds and birds, they have produced also all the several races of men from a single stock.
Although we acquit Dr. Pritchard of any premeditated violation of candor, we are compelled to believe that, in making this inference, he consulted feeling more than judgment, and sacrificed to his wishes rather than his reason. He had a theory to maintain, and he forced everything to become tributary to it. He even seems to have forgotten, that in argument, supposition is not equivalent to reality. To reach his conclusion, therefore, he assumes as a postulate, and employs as a premise, what he should have proved as a fact: that physical causes have the same power to change man, that they have to change the inferior animals. But is this true? We answer confidently, no. On the contrary, every fact bearing on the subject, not excepting those which we have just cited from Dr. Pritchard’s book, gives opposite testimony. The Doctor’s major proposition, therefore, being unfounded, his conclusion cannot be less so, and consequently his whole argument fails. If climate, situation, food, and other physical causes, can change men as they do hogs, poultry, turkeys, oxen and horses, why have they not done it; and why has not our author adduced examples of it? The human race have lived in Piedmont, Normandy, Bavaria, Hungary, Franconia [42], Corsica, and England, as long as domestic quadrupeds and birds. Wherefore, then have they sustained similar changes, and been formed into an equal number of varieties? Why, in those countries, are men so much alike, and their domestic animals so different? The answer is plain. The human constitution is less mutable than that of the inferior animals. Whether we can account for this or not, is a matter of no moment. We must admit it as a fact, because observation confirms it. The very circumstance, that in the places designated, the inferior animals are changed, and man not, and that no visible change is now in progress in him, is an argument against our author’s hypothesis, which he cannot refute. It exposes the insufficiency of his analogies, and the impropriety of employing them, by showing that, as far as the formation of races is concerned, mankind are proof against the operation of physical causes, which produce varieties in the inferior animals. If by transportation to Cubagua, hogs are rendered “monstrous” and oxen “long legged,” by being conveyed to the Cape of Good Hope, why is not the same true of Dutchmen and other Europeans, who have so long resided in the same places? Why are they not rendered “long legged” or in some other way, “monstrous,” as well as hogs and oxen? The reply is obvious: because the inferior animals are easily changed by food and by climate, and men are not. The influence of a tropical sun and atmosphere imbrowns the complexions of Europeans, and affects their health, vigor, and longevity, but produces in them no change indicating the slightest tendency to the formation of a new race. And if, by residence in a hot climate, the covering of sheep is changed from wool to hair, why should the covering of man’s head, and other parts of his body, be altered, by the same cause, from hair to wool? This question Dr. Pritchard and his adherents will find difficult to answer. In fine, his whole chain of reasoning, founded on the alterations produced in the inferior animals, by physical causes, is fallacious; and every fact he has adduced, under that head, may be employed for the subversion of the hypothesis he has erected.
Fourth Criterion---“It may be suspected that the diversities of mankind present an exception to the general conclusion resulting from the comparison of other [43] races. We must, therefore, direct our attention to the external characters which distinguish one tribe of men from another, and observe how far they are permanent, and how far subject to change; and, in general, to the facts which show how far the races of men are subject to variation. That variety of complexion which belongs to albinos, is well known to spring up occasionally in families of a different color. Now if we could in like manner trace the origin of all other diversities in the human form and color, the point at issue would be fully determined.
“In following this suggestion, we shall examine the history of the various races of mankind, and endeavor to find out how far their peculiarities are liable to change; whether nations descended from one stock have always retained their peculiar character, and the form they derived from their common ancestors, or in what degree, or under what circumstances, they have deviated from it.
“The variations of color afford the best explanation of these views. If it could be shown that a white family has arisen from a black stock, or a black family from a white stock, it is obvious that the difference of complexions would no longer be regarded by anybody as a specific distinction. But the same conclusion may be drawn, if we can point out facts which prove that the transition has taken place by several degrees: if, for example, we find one instance in which a brown, or copper-colored progeny has sprung from a black race and then discover another instance where this last color is the prevalent hue, and show that it has again undergone variation, and that a white offspring has arisen from it; it will thus be rendered evident, that there is no clearly marked and definite line, which the tendency to variety or deviation cannot pass; and that we may rest satisfied that there is in this case no specific distinction.” –pp. 101-2.
This fourth and last criterion we think the most extraordinary and objectionable of all. Among its defects is the obscurity of the language in which it is communicated. If we understand it correctly, it implies a belief that the different races of mankind are the product of accident. That they are but incidental deviations from the type of an original stock, each of them commencing in a lusus naturae. The issue of this frolic of nature comes [44] into the world with marks of departure from parental likeness, so strong as to constitute a variety of the species. These marks being connate and constitutional, our author pronounces them permanent, and transmissible to posterity. The individual possessing them, therefore, becomes the progenitor of a new race, which nothing can change, or arrest in its progress of propagation, but another gambol of nature, similar to that which produced it. Thus, as often as the wanton goddess chooses to hoyden it, and turn a somersault, she produces a new variety of man.[45]
The sacrifice would be made to convert a superior race into an inferior one; for no one will deny that the Caucasian is the more excellent. Not only, then, would there have been an immense loss sustained, in the process of forming the African race; the result of the process would have been an additional loss, inasmuch as it would have consisted in an exchange of a better commodity for a worse one. The transaction would have resembled that of an individual, who, possessing a stock of Arabian horses, would destroy great numbers of them, in a project to convert a few into a breed of asses. Such a schemer would be pointed at as a monument of folly and cruelty. Who will venture, then, to charge the Deity with a course of procedure that would disgrace a mortal! Shall we be told, in reply to this, that the ways of Providence are inscrutable, and ought not, therefore, to be made a subject of research? We answer, that they are also wise and beneficent, and accomplish always the best ends by the best means. Being, moreover, in strict accordance with reason, we deny that rational beings are forbidden to inquire into them. Nothing but priestcraft would decree the interdict, and nothing but superstition and weakness will obey it.
But it is puerile thus to toy with the subject. Nothing short of the Almighty power that formed the Caucasian [87] race, can convert it into the African. The influence of climate, food, and modes of living, can never do it. And to speak of its being done by a few anomalous Caucasian births, is folly.[89]
We have thus, in a discussion of much greater extent than we at first contemplated, assigned our reasons for disbelieving in the descent of the whole human race from a single pair. Relying on the united force of the arguments adduced, we feel authorized to assert, that, according to his own definition of the term, Dr. Pritchard has failed to prove, that mankind constitute but one “species.” He represents the chief element of species to be, “peculiarities that cannot be extinguished by any known operation of physical causes.” But such peculiarities, the Caucasian, Mongolian, Indian and African races of men, have been shown to possess. As relates to those peculiarities, history and observation concur in declaring, that no “known operation of physical causes can so far extinguish them, as to convert one race of mankind into [93] another. We have our author’s own decision, therefore, that instead of one, there are four different species of man. For we venture to assert, that the operation of the physical causes referred to, or of any other physical causes, will as soon convert horses, asses, zebras, and quaggas, into each other, as Caucasians, Mongolians, Indians, and Africans. To render the reader the more perfectly sensible of the extent of our author’s failure to prove the original unity of man, we shall present him with a brief summary of his [Dr. Pritchard ] arguments on the subject. Our correctness in pronouncing them entirely analogical, will be thus established. They are as follows:
1. Every species of vegetables, and of the inferior animals, is the offspring of a single pair. Hence the same is true of mankind.
2. Among many species of inferior animals, varieties are produced by food, climate, situation, and anomalous births. Such may be also the case with man.
3. There exists, in England, a family, the individuals of which have been marked, for three or four generations, by hard, wart-like excrescences on the skin, which have procured for it the name of the “porcupine family.” The members of other families have inherited, for several generations, supernumerary fingers and toes. In a few instances, a male and female, the one an African, and the other a Caucasian, have produced children perfectly black, perfectly white, or spotted with black and white. Hence, before the existence of Africans, a male and female Caucasian might have become the parents of a negro child or two, from whom has descended the African race: or the Africans being the original stock, might have given birth to white children, form whom arose the Caucasian race; or Mongolians or Indians might have thus become the progenitors of all the other races!
4. In the languages of the different tribes and nations of mankind, there are many words and phrases that resemble each other. Hence those tribes and nations belonged originally to the same stock.
Such are the arguments offered by our author, as the ground of his belief that mankind are the descendants of a single pair. And if more inconclusive ones, not to apply to them a term less respectful, have ever been seriously urged in favor of any hypothesis, we know not [94] where to find them. The only reason which could have induced us to notice, so extensively, the publication containing them, is, that we have heard it referred to as a standard work, establishing, beyond controversy or doubt, the hypothesis of the original unity of man. Conscientiously believing, therefore, its weight and authority to be in opposition to truth, we have attempted its refutation. Of the result of our effort, the public will judge.
Is the reader inclined to ask for our own theory of the origin of the different races of men? The call would be fair. Yet were it made, we should be obliged to reply, that we have never so far methodized our thoughts on the subject, as to form anything entitled to the name of theory. In discussing the question, our object has been to beat down false doctrines of others, rather than to build up a substitute of our own. The rubbish of the old must be cleared away, before the foundation of the new fabric can be securely laid. Such views, however, as we entertain respecting it, are already, perhaps sufficiently developed in this dissertation. In studying the natural history of man, we regard him as a member of the animal kingdom, to be judged of precisely as its other members are. The superiority of his native endowments is the only prerogative the naturalist is authorized to recognize in his favor. Of most other families of animals, different species are acknowledged to exist. And we confess that, in the whole animal kingdom, we know of no family in which marks characteristic of different species, appear to us to be stronger than in that of man. By evidence, therefore, which we know not how to resist, we are inclined to a belief in an original plurality of races, which bear to each other the relation of species. On one point we speak confidently. If, by anything inferior to ALMIGHTY POWER, one of the present races of men has ever been converted into another, nature, since that period, has changed. There exist, at present, no physical causes to competent to the effect. All efforts to prove the contrary of this will inevitably fail: they must be in their nature conjectural, if not sophistical, will consume time and occupy talents that might be more usefully employed, and had better, therefore, be abandoned as hopeless. Nothing, moreover, can ever prompt to them, but an apprehension, that the Christian religion will be [95] endangered, if the hypothesis of the original unity of the human race be not established. But the apprehension is unfounded. True religion has no necessary dependence on the number of men and women that were originally created. It rests on a much firmer and holier basis: the nature of man, his connection with his fellow men, and his relation to his God. Sentiments and actions conformable to these, constitute the essence of rational religion. On that basis let it stand, and it will stand securely. It will then be the true “rock of ages;” as little affected by the fluctuations of opinion, and the current of time, as is the eternal order of the universe, by the thousand visions which dreaming philosophers conceive in relation to it.” [96]
Born in Caswell County, North Carolina on May 14, 1772, Dr. Charles Caldwell was the son of a devout Presbyterian father who served as an elder in the community congregation. Determined to have his son educated and trained in the Presbyterian clerical ministry, Caldwell, Sr. arranged to have Charles sent to boarding school in North Carolina to receive classical instruction in English, Latin, and Greek as well both the Old and New Testaments. Caldwell recalled his father’s challenge to excel to the top of his class in all subjects, scholarly and religious, as an early prompt toward attaining superior personal achievement. His determination for accomplishment was so strong that he possibly originated the phrase “succeed or die trying” for his emphatic parting words to his favorite sister, Sally, were that he would be “better…or nothing. I am resolved to excel, or kill myself by the effort.” (Caldwell, 1855)
Such resolve paid off, and Caldwell did surpass his fellow classmates. However, this early familiarity with Scripture provided Caldwell with what he termed a certain “freedom of thought and opinion respecting them” that induced him “to endeavor to analyze and examine certain portions of them [Biblical text] precisely as I did other writings, and ascertain the definite purpose for which they are designed.” From his youthful critical approach to Scripture, Caldwell formulated a view of religion that would mold his future scientific pursuits into the origin of mankind immensely. He concluded that religion must be separated from science entirely, stating that religion was intended solely for “high and heavenly things and not in matters pertaining merely to earth,” where physical science takes the necessary objective approach to revealing nature. For this reason, Caldwell gave up the pursuit of a life as a Presbyterian minister in exchange for the study of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1791 under Dr. Benjamin Rush. Upon graduation in 1796, Caldwell would go on to become a very prominent nineteenth century physician distinguishing himself professionally during a yellow-fever epidemic in 1793 and accepting a professorship of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1810. (Caldwell, 1855)
His status in American society only grew with his establishment of medical schools at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY in 1819, and later at Louisville in 1837. With his self-proclamation as “the first introducer of true medical science into the Mississippi Valley”, Caldwell became known as dignified, pompous figure “whose ego was huge since youth and vanity jutted out upon occasions, in season and out of season-in his manners, in his walk, in his conversation, in his writings.” So much was the case that when addressing a Lexington medical audience he said, “There are only three great heads in the United States: one is that of Daniel Webster, another that of Henry Clay, and the last…modesty prevents me from mentioning.” (Stanton, 19-20).
Caldwell’s level of personal confidence in his intellect and in science made him one of the most vocal polygenists in the nineteenth century anthropological debate between the polygenic belief of multiple origins, and therefore species, of man, and the monogenic belief that all man descended from one pair, and were thus a single species (Dain, 197). Enlightenment thinking allowed Caldwell to value religion for its moral truths, but argue that the “writings of Moses offered no shadow of evidence in favor of the unity of the human family.” (Caldwell, 1855) Along with fellow respected polygenists, Dr. Josiah Nott, Louis Agassiz, Dr. Samuel Morton, and George Gliddon, Dr. Caldwell helped established the American School of Ethnology that advocated the polygenic argument, belief in fixed species, white superiority, and in the rejection of the Biblical explanation for scientific phenomena (Dain, 225). The remainder of this synopsis on the life and work of Dr. Caldwell, particularly his essay “Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race” from which the earlier excerpt was extracted, will analyze the science and figures that influenced Caldwell and who he in turn influenced up until his death in Louisville, KY on July 9, 1853.
During the eighteenth century, Linneaus, the father of taxonomy, placed the human irrevocably into the natural history of organisms with the genus and species designation of Homo sapien. In order to match the intensive taxonomic classification of other plant and animal species, a great emphasis was placed on the structured, factual study of human diversity so that, by the nineteenth century, science increasingly focused on human variation, heredity, and reproduction leading scientists and anthropologists to question whether the human races had originated from a common ancestor as one species, or were each of the races biologically strict, separate species stemming from multiple origins (Haller, 64). Those in the nineteenth century who tried to answer the question of human origin entered the controversial debate between monogeny and polygeny, common or separate origins, and would take part in one history’s longest of “battles among the scientists of man.” (Haller, 70).
Amongst the monogenic and polygenic schools of the 19th century, discord within each side’s supporters existed. Of the monogenists, few were “Adamites” who believed in a strict Biblical interpretation of the creation epic that all man descended from Adam and Eve and the eight survivors of the deluge. These held to the century old, faith-based belief that the Negro races were the cursed progeny of Noah’s son, Ham. However, Caldwell and his colleagues were more at odds with the “rational monogenists”, such as Linnaeus, Buffon, Cuvier, and Blumenbach who combined science and Christianity in arguing that the earth was much older than the Bible reveals, and that racial differences were due to climate, mode of life, and other conditions created by God’s will. Applying this belief to race, the rational monogenist believed the races were due to environmental degeneration from an original type, namely the Caucasian, so that races such as the Africans, had simply retained blackened skin from repeatedly exposure to tropical sun. Finally, the transformist monogenists clung to the Lamarckian theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics that mechanistically allowed for human variation from a primordial germ through successive adaptive divergences (Haller, 71-2).
Groups of polygenic theorists also included those who believed in Lamarck’s acquired characteristics, but argued not that there was transformation from a single human pair, but that each different species of man came from a different species of ape inhabiting various environments. Yet the most prevalent polygenists, termed the “neotraditionalists” included Dr. Caldwell and his American School of Ethnology associates . These scientists, anthropologists, and physicians supported the view that man emerged as separate, biologically distinct species through special acts of God’s creation. Borrowing from the monogenist Cuvier, these species were fixed and incapable of physiological or mental modification over time. According the neotraditionalist polygenists, nature proceeded according to a divine plan in need of no improvement or change, and in such a case where the unnatural union between separate races occurred, the hybrid offspring would be sterile and inferior, doomed to extinction (Haller, 75-7).
The polygenic views of Caldwell and his learned colleagues were far from being based on mere conjecture. Caldwell himself carefully deliberated the monogenic view through his English translation of Blumenbach’s Elements of Physiology in 1794 and his medical education under Dr. Benjamin Rush, who held that the blackness of Negro skin was due to leprosy (Dain, 25 and 75). Still, he found Blumenbach’s idea of a environmentalist idea of a “formative force” in racial variation failed to distinguish between the “laws of mechanics and the laws of physiology” so as mistakenly consider laws of “dead matter” applicable to the laws of the living (Dain, 74). He also rejected Lamarck’s mechanism of inheritance of acquired characteristics and completely inadequate in explaining racial differences (Dain, 73). Instead, Caldwell joined forces with Agassiz and other prominent polygenists in support of Dr. Samuel Morton’s use of craniology as scientific evidence of the fixity of the races, and subsequent support of the existence of multiple species of mankind from separate origins (Dain, 197). In reference to Morton’s ethnoracist books Crania Americana (1839) and Crania Aegyptiaca (1844) that “proved” Egyptians were white and blacks had been there slaves since ancient times, Caldwell admired the works for the substantial body of facts they offered from which solid testimony could be given against the ignorant and superstitious idea that temperature and climate could in some way generate human variation (Lurie, 230). Along with Caldwell, the polygenist’s claimed the Negro as an entirely different species based on the skeleton’s legs and spine, difference in natural economies, skulls and therefore brains and minds (Dain, 73). Even Agassiz was a monogenist until 1846, when, upon coming into contact with African Americans for the first time, he sided wholeheartedly with the polygenic view because “their color, peculiar limbs, hands, large lips, and black wooly hair” was clear proof of that mankind was composed of separate species just as much as lower animals and plants (Stanton, 105).
Osteological evidence became regarded as crucial for the classification of races for the anthropologist of the nineteenth century (Jorion, 8). Caldwell and the polygenists were concerned with internal characteristics affecting the natural system and intellect as race moved from “shallow Enlightement environmentalism to deep biology in the 19th century” in order illustrate the speciation within mankind (Dain, 73). Craniology provided one source of scientific proof of the fixity of species in that even the skulls of the ancient Egyptians had not changed when compared to their modern Caucasion counterparts (Stanton, 39). Caldwell also took the popular interest in Francis Gall’s phrenology as a scientific pursuit of comparing intellectual capabilities of the races of mankind, evident in his publication of Phrenology Vindicated, and Antiphrenology Unmasked in 1838 (Stanton, 39). Such studies permitted his quip that if men were to find a separate race exactly like the Europeans in the moral and intellectual capability of the mind, but covered entirely with sheep’s wool, they would automatically classify the wooly race as a separate species, yet he could prove that the Negro were much more different than these at the deeper intellectual level (Dain, 73).
Perhaps the greatest threat to polygenism however, especially in 19th century America, continued to be the belief that arguing for the existence of multiple species of mankind was in direct contradiction with the Christian religion. Yet throughout all the debate concerning the origin of mankind, Caldwell retained his belief in the benefit of Christian morality and labeled himself as a “simply unassuming Christian”. Nevertheless, he held that religious opposition to polygenism had no place in the scientific world and served to only hinder impartial scientific investigation by intimidating scientists to offer their conclusions (Stanton, 22). Two of his contemporaries, Josiah Nott and George Gliddon wrote in their Types of Mankind of 1854 that the controversy over polygenesis was the “last great battle between science and dogmatism.” The polygenists denied the Bible as any source of natural truth in favor true scientific scholarship that proved fixed species and racial hierarchy (Dain, 220).
Having read about the great debate between the 19th century polygenists and monogenists and of how Dr. Charles Caldwell situated himself as one of the foremost supporters of the belief in multiple human species, one can now clearly see the history of science in the 19th century illustrated in an excerpt from his “Thoughts on the Original Unity of Mankind.” The premise of the essay itself is such that Caldwell felt it necessary to critically review the work of a Dr. Pritchard who published a staunchly monogenic piece that not only supported the descent of man from a single pair, but that denounced all those in opposition to the monogenic view as infidels toward Christianity. The labeling of polygenists as anti-Christian was mentioned as one of the great rebuttals from the monogenists’ camp (Caldwell, xi). Caldwell remains unphased by such accusation, though, and conversely argues that the truth found in the Christian religion cannot be threatened by scientific investigation and that heaven, as a font of moral truth, only encourages use of God-given reason to discover the natural truths of God’s creation (Caldwell, xv).
Following his insistence of his solid Christian morality that is in no way opposed to scientific pursuit, Caldwell launches automatically into his polygenic belief in the multiple species of mankind composed of fixed, immutable races. The bulk of the excerpt outlines the monogenic beliefs of Dr. Pritchard and unfavorably contrasts them to the Caldwell’s “scientifically sound” polygenism. He does this by using to Pritchard’s definition of species to show that there is no way one can logically believe in monogenism using such a definition. Pritchard’s four criterion defining species consist of: the belief that each member of species descended from one pair, that the variation found within a species is brought about through environmental causes, that within the human species, separate races were born to the original populations, and finally, also within the human species, commonality in language proves a singular origin of mankind (Caldwell, 94).
Caldwell outlines the several main polygenic views previously discussed in refutation to the claims made by Dr. Pritchard’s definition of species. Therefore he outwardly denied that the “influence of climate, food, and modes of living, can never do it [give rise to races of mankind]. And to speak of its being done by a few anomalous Caucasian births, is folly (Caldwell, 89). This statement succinctly mirrors the polygenic denial of environmentalism. Also, the belief in the sterility of hybrid races as proof of multiple species is seen in Caldwell’s discussion of the Mulatto as mentally inferior and bound to become extinct if left to reproduce amongst only other Mulattos (Caldwell, 35). Finally, the overall polygenic belief in racial inequality from proof found in craniology, phrenology, and comparative anatomy is evident in Caldwell’s discussion of the smaller African smaller skull, and therefore smaller brain and less intellect. He argues such distinction between races has always been the case, even in ancient Egypt, and will always be the case for God has created multiple species each belonging to a part of his ultimate divine plan (Caldwell, 95-6).
One wonders how Caldwell would have reacted to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 following his death in 1853. Perhaps he would have come to a median line in that man did indeed descend from a the monogenists’ common ancestor, but had since differentiated into the polygenists’ separate species making up the distinct races. However, history shows that both the monogenists and the polygenists considered the Negro inferior, so that evolutionary discussion into the definition and purpose of race continued and elevated far beyond the debates of Caldwell’s time well into the 20th century (Haller, 1319)
WORKS CITED
Caldwell, Charles. Autobiography of Charles Caldwell, M.D. Philadelphia: Lippencott Grambo, 1855.
Dain, Bruce. A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic. Cambridge: Harvard Press, 2002., 25, 73-5, 197, 225.
Haller, John S., Jr. Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900. Chicago: U. of Illinois, 1971., 64, 70-2, 75-7.
Haller, John S., Jr. “The Species Problem: Nineteenth-Century Concepts of Racial Inferiority in the Origin of Man Controversy.” American Anthropologist, 72.6 (1970): 1319.
Jorion, Paul. “The Downfall of the Skull.” RAIN, 48 (1982): 8, 9.
Lurie, Edward. “Louis Agassiz and the Races of Man.” Isis, 45.3 (1954): 227, 230.
Stanton, William. The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America 1815-59. Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1960., 19, 20, 39, 105, 122.