Martyria Part 20

In consideration of this subject of miscegenation, let us review the phenomena that have been brought to light by the naturalists who have studied hybridity among animals, and recall a few facts from history to support the experimentalists.

XVI.

In the animal world, in the wild state, hybrids are rarely if ever produced, and it is only from the experiments of the naturalists that the law of hybridity has been explained.

We see the bipart.i.tes appear, when two kindred species mix together under the influence of man, these animals partaking of the qualities of both.

The horse and the a.s.s; the a.s.s, zebra, and hermione; the wolf and the dog; the dog and the jackal; the goat and the ram; the deer and the axis, &c., unite and breed; but these artificial species are not durable, and they have only limited fecundity. "The mongrels of the dog and the wolf are sterile from the third generation. The mongrels of the jackal and the dog are so from the fourth. Moreover, if we unite these mongrels to one of the two primitive species, they soon revert completely and totally to that species.

"The mongrel of the dog and jackal contains more of the jackal than the dog. It has the straight ears, the pendent tail; it does not bark; it is wild. It is more jackal than dog. This is the first product of the crossed union of the dog with the jackal. I continue to unite the successive produce, from generation to generation, with one of the two primitive roots,--with that of the dog, for example.

"The mongrel of the second generation does not bark yet, but it has the ears pendent at the tip: it is less wild.

"The mongrel of the third generation barks: it has pendent ears, raised tail: it is no longer wild. The mongrel of the fourth generation is entirely dog. Four generations, then, have sufficed to restore one of the two primitive types--the dog type; and four generations suffice also to restore the other type--the jackal type. Thus, when the mongrels produced from the union of two distinct species unite together, either become soon sterile, or they unite with one of the two primitive stocks, and they soon revert to this stock; in no case do they yield what may be called a new species, that is, an intermediate, durable species.

"Whether, then, we consider the external causes,--the succession of time, years, ages, revolutions of the globe, or internal causes,--that is to say, the crossing of the species, the species do not alter, do not change, nor pa.s.s from one to the other; the species is fixed." Such are the conclusions of the admirable efforts of Flourens.

"The imprint of each species," says Buffon, "is a type, the princ.i.p.al features of which are engraved in characters ineffaceable, and permanent forever; but all the accessory touches vary; no individual perfectly resembles another."

XVII.

Among the human families, the law of hybridity, which has been pointed out so clearly by Flourens, has also its fixed and inflexible rules; these rules have not been so well studied with men as with animals, but it is believed to have its limit at the seventh generation. At all events, the experiments of human hybridism, and acclimation in strange lat.i.tudes, have always in time ended in disaster; and that such will always be the fate of the attempted union of different races in unfavorable climes, have been the views of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen. We observe among the races in savage life a natural repugnance to unite: as for instance, the negroes and the fairer people of the Philippine and Polynesian Isles show no disposition to unite; and though living side by side, in the same country, for a long period, they have not produced an intermediate race. Neither do the Eskimos nor the Red Men, neither do the Caffres nor the Hottentots mix, for in the state of nature the law of ethnic repugnance is supreme. It is only in the artificial and depraved states of society that hybrids appear, and their existence is of short and fixed duration.

The apparent duration and perfection of the Coulouglis, the bipartates of the Bergers and Turks, may be an exception to the general rule. But the results of the mingling of human families, widely separated, is generally very decided.

The Creoles, produced by the African with the Spaniard, Italian, and the Southern French, possess considerable durability, but disease and degeneration soon appear when the black mingles with the blood and humors of the more northern nations. With all these mixtures there is a profound characteristic, which const.i.tutes the unity, ident.i.ty, and reality of the species, which is, continuous fecundity; and this characteristic never varies: it is immutable. The mulattoes live less time than the black or the white race, and their offspring perish readily, and are rarely prolific, except when united with stronger individuals of either primitive type, to which they soon return.

XVIII.

The blacks have been too degraded to more than conceive of liberty, too debased to think of resistance to the forces that crushed them, and they have neither observed, nor sought for opportunities, to throw off their chains and sweep over the lands, like a destroying element, with the acc.u.mulated wrongs of centuries. Yet there were black men among them who were capable of high cultivation. The long contact with the superior white race had recast the faculties of their mind, and had altered perceptibly the rugged contour of their forms and features.

The writer observed with wonder in the regiment of black men which formed part of the column of the desperate a.s.sault upon Fort Wagner, beautiful heads, whose cla.s.sic and regular outlines recalled the finest of the antique.

We believe with the writer in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," that contact with the white races has given the negro the lines of the Caucasian form, and that the Congo type can disappear or become greatly modified.

These changes in the typical form, which we have since observed elsewhere, appear to have taken place sometimes without the admixture of the blood of the whites.

That the black men in the United States army fought well, no one will deny; that they conducted themselves admirably in the murderous a.s.saults at Fort Wagner, or under the destroying fire at Ol.u.s.tee, and in many other conflicts, every one possessed of any candor will admit. When we consider the degradation whence they suddenly rose, and the steadiness and firmness, and the manly bearing they exhibited after the few lessons of military training, we are compelled to render thanks to them for their efforts in the struggle for national existence, and to admit the probability of their attaining that degree of intelligence, wisdom, and virtue which distinguish the true citizen. That these men will attain the standard of intellect of the Caucasian, we neither expect nor believe; but we do maintain, that in the nature of every race, however debased by prejudice, and the avarice of superior society, there exists the element of honesty, virtue, truth, and a horror of wrong, which may be developed and turned to the good of all society, in repelling and resisting the force of machination, the intrigue which arises from disappointed ambition, or the insatiable l.u.s.t of more favored and less considerate cla.s.ses.

No one acquainted with the history of the commerce of human beings will wonder at the present condition of the blacks, or that they have not risen in the scale of social and intellectual advancement. For, looking back to the primitive ages we may see how the human species have been depressed in servitude, and how the very same families, who carried the arts and sciences to celestial limits, were affected by this influence. Persons of the same blood and inheritance as the best families of Greece and Rome, were often reduced to slavery, and they sank rapidly under its debasing effects. They were tamed like the black man of the South; "like brutes, by the stings of hunger and the lash; and their education was so conducted as to render them commodious instruments of labor for their possessors. This degradation of course depressed their minds, restricted the expansion of their faculties, stifled almost every effort of genius, and exhibited them to the world as beings endued with inferior capacities to the rest of mankind. But for this opinion there appears to have been no foundation in truth or justice. Equal to their fellow-men in natural talents, and alike capable of improvement, any apparent or real difference between them and some others must have been owing to the mode of education, to the rank they were doomed to occupy, and to the treatment they were appointed to endure."

After all, the world appears to be a vast arena, where the good and the bad are gathered together, and men are left to their own efforts, whether to rise up in that scale of intelligence and virtue which conducts to immortality, or to grovel deeper into the depths of degradation, where there is nothing but death and annihilation. The vault of heaven grows in immensity as we gaze into its limitless expanse, whilst the shadows and attractions of earth fade away from view, or allure only those who have forsaken nature.

XVIII.

Have the European races advanced in these lat.i.tudes in strength of mind and body with equal ratio as the black man? We think not. Let us consider.

The qualities of plants and vegetables are often affected by external influences, so as to a.s.sume different characters, and the impressions upon the leaves and the fruits are distinctly marked. These alterations, degenerations, and modifications may disguise the primitive type so far that it is no longer recognizable. We observe these properties among all organic bodies, among those of the animal and as well as of the vegetable world. The vine and its golden extracts are very much dependent upon these influences.

The exquisite bouquet, the soul-inspiring qualities of the best varieties of wine, cannot be acquired by the efforts of man at pleasure; without the generous nature of the soil, the rays of sunlight, and the inspiring breezes of favored localities and climes, the extract of the pressed grape is without that flavor and force which warm into life the brilliancy of the imagination, the n.o.bility of the soul.

There is also a marked effect of soil and climate upon the odor of plants, and in their narcotic const.i.tuents. Does not the same law affect man?

The Italian violets grow sweeter as we climb the Alpine slopes; the mignonette blooms with greater perfection and perfume as we approach the sh.o.r.es of the lowlands of the Mediterranean. We find the finest types of the human race among the uplands and the mountains; below, on the low coasts and river margins, where pestilences are generated, the physical and mental forces do not fully expand, and we find there neither liberty, virtue, nor science.

Dr. Rusdorf, in his work on the influence of European climate, regards the temperate zone as the brain-making region, and attempts to prove it by physiological deductions. The brain of the Caucasian, he says, determines the superiority over the other races, and it is the standard of the organism. This, he maintains, is produced by the richness of alb.u.men in the blood, which is also dependent upon the oxygen of pure air. The extensive observations of the English Registrar-General show indisputably that the elevation of the soil exercises as decided an influence on the English race as it does on the native races of other climes and soils.

They also show that the finest animals are raised in the healthiest districts. We see that certain heights above the plains are remarkably exempt from maladies which devastate nations inhabiting lower levels.

Cholera, remittent fever, yellow fever, and plague, disappear at well-defined degrees of elevation.

At Vera Cruz, and along its lat.i.tude, the yellow fever vanishes at the height of three thousand feet above the Gulf sh.o.r.es.

The Prussian, in his "Medicinische Geographie," appears to indicate with great degree of certainty the limits and alt.i.tudes of the three zones, into which he cla.s.sifies the catarrhal, the dysenteric, and the scrofulous diseases. The scrofulous zone ceases at an alt.i.tude of two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and here, he says, there is no pulmonary consumption, scrofula, cancer, or typhus fever. "It is," says Babinet, "the climate of each country which permits or arrests the development of the human race, which, joined with the industry of populations, imposes limits to the numerical force of each meteorological district, and which subsists four million of men in fertile Belgium, which is no more than a small fraction of the territory of France, whilst Siberia can with difficulty nourish a part of that number with an extent which is twenty-six times that of France." "All over the world, physical circ.u.mstances," exclaims Draper, "control the human race."

XIX.

It is vain to a.s.sert that the atmospheres of the maritime or the low levels do not affect the physical and mental condition of men; and after all, Fontenelle was right when he maintained, in a curious paradox, that inspiration is a barometer that varies, which mounts to genius or descends to absurdity, according to the inconstancy of the weather; that there are unhealthy countries, full of mists, winds, tempests, that never produce clear understandings; and, on the contrary, there are lands with beautiful skies and fields filled with sunlight and roses which give out flashes of divine light.

Nearly all of the Grecian lyrists were born in the enchanting climates, and among the beautiful scenes of the Asiatic sh.o.r.e or the isles of the aegean Sea. Most of the eminent men of Italy rose from similar inspirations, which Michael Angelo observed when speaking of Vasari in terms of admiration. Historians say that the sun was never softer, the heavens brighter, the roses more prolific, the winds more perfumed, than in the dawn of the eighteenth century, which produced that "wild garland of beautiful women who recalled by their graces, their genius, the courtesans of Greece," which gave birth to those philosophers who gave a new impetus to liberty and religion.

XX.

According to some writers, the unequal distribution of solar heat over the earth is the cause of marked differences in national character; others refer the distinctive effects to the quality of the air they breathe.

Arbuthnot maintains that air not only fas.h.i.+ons the body, but has also had great influence in forming language; that the close, serrated method of speaking of Northern nations was due to coldness of the climate, and hesitation of opening the mouth; whilst the sweet, sonorous phrases of temperate climes, like those of the Mediterranean, were due to the mildness of climate, where the vocal organs could be exposed without danger. "It is incontestable," also writes Alfred Maury, in his "Earth and Man," "that climate has upon the mode of government a considerable influence, because it exercises an immediate effect upon the character of individuals. In the warm countries, under an enervating atmosphere, where all inclines to effeminacy and idleness, the soul has not that energy and that force of will necessary to a people who wish to be free. Under a severe and cold climate, to the contrary, the character acquires more of energy, and the body more of activity. The pa.s.sions are less violent, and leave to the reason a freer exercise. In the hot climes the instincts are impetuous, and they pa.s.s from an extreme of dejection to a state of exaltation which produces revolutions, insurrections, but which do not establish the independence. For, to the contrary, these violent crises introduce retaliation; and in the sanguinary conflicts, the power of an individual, although tyrannical, appears as a benefit, or is accepted as a necessity."

XXI.

The anger of the European has always raged with undefinable fury, when once aroused, in these southern lat.i.tudes, and especially in the regions in question. The spirit is the same, whether we review the cruel and useless extermination of the Indians in Cuba or Florida; the ma.s.sacres of the Mexicans by the merciless Spaniards; the internecine slaughter of the French, English, and Spaniards along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; the extermination of whole tribes, like the Yema.s.see, or the forced removal of the red men from the broad lands of their birthplace and inheritance. All show the implacable depth of his avarice or his ire. It was not merely the honor of subjugation, of conquering strange races, that was the object of the politics, and that excited the emulation of these iron-mailed and iron-hearted men and their descendants: it seems to have been an irresistible desire to immolate human races, to glut with blood that thirst for destruction which arises from depraved and burning hearts.

It was the same spirit, under the mask of avarice, that tore the well-behaved Creeks and Cherokees from the homes of their ancestors, and banished them to the prairies of the West; that hunted down the last Seminole in the everglades of Florida, where there are to-day twenty millions of acres of land unsold and unoccupied.

It was the same spirit that, in later times, recklessly and ruthlessly destroyed, at Camp Sumter, an army of freemen, under the pretence of treating them as prisoners of war.

XXII.

Yet this depraved fury does not appear to have been natural to the soil, climate, or the native races, as observed by the early navigators; although Ponce de Leon received his death-wound from them when he sought the fountain of youth in the everglades of Florida, and De Soto encountered fierce opposition from the red men of the forest when he pursued his way towards the Appalachian mountains in search of the mines of gold. But nevertheless the Europeans were treated almost always with kindness whenever they approached the Indian with good intentions.

Contrast the present time and the people with the period and the natives when the great Navigator discovered the adjacent isles. "Nature is here,"

he exclaims, "so prolific, that property has not produced the feelings of avarice or cupidity. These people seem to live in a golden age, happy and quiet, amid open and endless gardens, neither surrounded by ditches, divided by fences, nor protected by walls. They behave honorably towards one another, without laws, without books, without judges. They consider him wicked who takes delight in harming another. This aversion of the good to the bad seems to be all their legislation."

These people with natural sentiments have pa.s.sed away, and new races, with strange and repulsive ideas, have taken their place. "Like the statue of Glaucus, that time, the sea, the storms have so disfigured that it resembles less a G.o.d than a ferocious beast, the human soul, altered in the bosom of society by a thousand causes rising without cessation, by the acquisition of a mult.i.tude of creeds and errors, by the changes produced in the const.i.tution of bodies by the continual shock of pa.s.sions, has caused a change in appearance almost unrecognizable; and we sooner find, instead of the being acting always by certain and invariable principles, instead of that celestial and majestic simplicity in which the Creator has left his impress, the deformed contrast of the understanding in delirium, and of the pa.s.sion which pretends to reason."