The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing,
and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The
classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies
of each new student; while every prominent follower of it has had some
pet hypothesis, to which he desired to suit his facts. Whether the
_a priori_ theory were of modern miraculous origin or of gradual
development, of unity or of diversity of parentage, of permanent and
absolute divisions of races or of a community of blood, it has equally
forced the author to twist his facts.
Perhaps the basest of all uses to which theory has been put in this
science was in a well-known American work, where facts and fancies in
Ethnology were industriously woven together to form another withe about
the limbs of the wretched African slave.
Waiz has reasoned slowly and carefully from facts, considering in
his view all possible hypotheses,--even, for instance, the
development-theory of Darwin,--and has formed his own conclusion on
scientific data, or has wisely avowed that no conclusion is possible.
The classification to which he is forced is that which all profound
investigators are approaching,--that of language interpreted by history.
He is compelled to believe that no physiological evidences of race can
be considered as at all equal to the evidences from language. At the
same time, he is ready to admit that even this classification is
imperfect, as from the nature of the case it must be; for the source of
the confusion lies in the very unity of mankind. He rejects _in toto_
Professor Agassiz's "realm-theory," as inconsistent with facts. The
hybrid-question, as put by Messrs. Gliddon and Nott, meets with a
searching and careful investigation, with the conclusion that nothing
in facts yet ascertained proves any want of vitality or power of
propagation in mulattoes or in crosses of any human races.
The unity of origin and the vast antiquity of mankind are the two
important conclusions drawn.
His second volume is entirely devoted to the negro races, and is the
most valuable treatise yet written on that topic.
The whole work is mainly directed towards _Naturvölker_, or "Peoples in
a State of Nature," and therefore cannot be recommended for translation,
as a general text-book on the science of Ethnology,--a book which is
now exceedingly needed in all our higher schools and colleges; but as
a general treatise, with many new and important facts, scientifically
treated, it can be most highly commended to the general scholar.
_Il Politecnico. Repertorio Mensile di Studi applicati alia Prosperità e
Coltura Sociale._ Milano, 1860. New York: Charles B. Norton, Agent for
Libraries, 596, Broadway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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