The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races: With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of MankindGobineau, Arthur, comte de
Philosophy
The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races: With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of Mankind
This is crying victory too soon. The difficulty of finding a method does
not always prove that none can be found. But the believers in the unity
of species did not admit this reserve. To set off their theory, they
point to the fact that certain tribes, belonging to the same race,
instead of presenting the same physical type, diverge from it very
considerably. They cite the different groups of the mixed
Malay-Polynesian family; and, without paying attention to the proportion
of the elements which compose the mixtures, they say that if groups of
the same origin can assume such totally different craniological and
facial forms, the greatest diversities of that kind do not prove the
primary plurality of origins.[132] Strange as it may be to European
eyes, the distinct types of the negro and the Mongolian are not then
demonstrative of difference of species; and the differences among the
human family must be ascribed simply to certain local causes operating
during a greater or less lapse of time.[133]
The advocates for the plurality of races, being met with so many
objections, good as well as bad, have attempted to enlarge the circle of
their arguments, and, ceasing to make the skull their only study, have
proceeded to the examination of the entire individual. They have rightly
shown that the differences do not exist merely in the aspect of the face
and formation of the skull, but, what is no less important, they exist
also in the shape of the pelvis, the relative proportion of the limbs,
and the nature of the pilous system.
Camper and other naturalists had long since perceived that the pelvis of
the negro presented certain peculiarities. Dr. Vrolik extended his
researches further, and observed that in the European race the
differences between the male and female pelvis are much less distinctly
marked, while the pelvis of the negro, of either sex, partakes in a very
striking degree of the animal character. The Amsterdam _savant_,
starting from the idea that the formation of the pelvis necessarily
influences that of the foetus, concludes that there must be difference
of origin.[134]
Mr. Weber has attacked this theory with but little success. He was
obliged to allow that certain formations of the pelvis occur more
frequently in one race than in another; and all he could do, was to show
that the rule is not without exceptions, and that some individuals of
the American, African, or Mongol race presented the forms common among
the European. This is not proving a great deal, especially as it never
seems to have occurred to Mr. Weber that these exceptions might be owing
to a mixture of blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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