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Black Republic of Letters

Note - Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was a German scientist, scholar and eugenicist. Learn more about Ernst Haeckel.

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"Variety: On the Evolution of the Black Race" (Continued)

But the same beings who are on the lowest rung of the human ladder are transforming rapidly; and it is difficult to recognize their descendants in the type that we see in America, for example. Their evolution was so rapid, so beautiful, that many, my a regrettable and misplaced sentiment of pride, renounce their line of descent, while the should boast of the progress they have accomplished. In all the places where, master of his liberty, in control of all his initiative, the Black man has been able to develop liberally, we see him rapidly arriving at the most elevated social conceptions. He becomes elegant, he loves luxury clothes, the privilege of refined peoples; he raises the woman up to the rank of a companion and he no longer demeans himself. He becomes religious, and his mind assimilates the great principles articulated in the books of philosophy and theology so well, that he quickly becomes a very good teaching minister. Finally, when he is able to choose his form of government, he always chooses the republican form—that is to say the most elevated social form; only inferior people allow despotism.

It is not only from the moral and psychical point of view that the Black race is modifying itself with such surprising rapidity. From the physical point of view, it is, par excellence, the race in transition, by the instability of its exterior signs, its ease at mixing, its modification in anthropological characteristics. From the south of Bornou, all the way to the vicinity of the Atlantic, it has undergone numerous mixes with the reddish race of the Peuls, invaders from the East who, from conquest to conquest, ended up approaching the European establishments of Senegal. It mixed with the Nubians, the Abyssinians, then, further South, with the Gallas. In the Antilles, in Brazil, it mixed with the white element, it was partly absorbed by the foreign element, and it consequently became a new type, of a transmissible character, and quite different from the primitive type; the African Nègre is no longer recognizable in the Black of Martinique. In contrast to the fixed races, Chinese and Semitic, the Black race quickly lost, in its brief contact with foreign peoples, its less pronounce Ethnic characteristics, that seem to be groping to affirm their specificity.

In inverse proportion to the peoples whose physical Evolution is complete, and who have invariable anthropological characteristics or only present insignificant variations, we find, in this report, the greatest distance in different nègre groups.

Here, according to Broca, is the cranial capacity of certain ones:
Men Women
New Caledonians 1435cc    1320cc
Wolofs 1490 1295
Mandringues 1460 1285
Nilotiques 1355 1275
Achantis 1330 1145
Dahomey 1322 1249
Koï-Koin 1290 "

We thus find, in the same race, differences of 200cc in the cranial capacity.

The cephalic index varies in the same proportion:

Australians    71.4
Cafres 72.5
New Caledonians 71.78
Tasmanians 76.1
Polynesians 76.3
Negrito Type (Andamanese, Semang, Aeta) 72.5

The Black race therefore has no well determined, immuntable ethnic characteristics; it is under modification, transformation; and its evolutive movement is progressive, and not regressive.

These phenomena of organic and psychical modifications that we observe in the Black race constitute the best proof that can be given to verify the transformist theory. It is very unfortunate to hear men of a perfect instruction and speaking in good faith, contesting this theory, of which the only defect is that it is incompletely known or misinterpreted.

Also, it was with the greatest pleasure that, in a recent conference offered by a few worthy members of the Haitian colony in Paris—I hope that the modesty of the young director of La Fraternité will forgive me for this sincere appreciation—I heard a refutation of the legend, that seems to incompetent persons to sum up transformism: "man is descended from monkey, and the Black man is the intermediary between the simian and the human type." Never, indeed, did Lamarck, or after him Darwin, advance such an assertion.

This idea is not new, by the way; it is thus, for example, that the entire tubétain [sic] nation, the Khiang, are purportedly descended from a species of large monkey; still today, the middle part of Tubet [sic] is called the country of monkeys. According to Buddhist writings, its inhabitants descended from the monkey Sarr Metchin and his mate Raktcha; they boast of this origin, and believe themselves more ancient than other people. There is thus nothing new in this legend still repeated in our days. And this shows once again that the ideas that we consider the newest are often nothing but an inconsistent reminiscence.

One single school, of which the illustrious Haeckel is the chief promoter, sustains the evolutive principle of monogenism which seems indeed to result from the Darwinian law, and which has lately had the result of making all living being and who have ever lived on the earth into the multiplying descendant of a single individual, of a single primitive seed, of a single universal mother-cell, of a unique egg that contained in its germinal vesicle all living early creation. Darwin has established, conversely, that all living forms derive from perhaps four or five different primitive types; but he never conceived of the thought that each of these types would have had, at its origin, a unique individual, but rather an unlimited number of like individuals who, by virtue of their natural identity, evolved in parallel following the same general model, permitting, thereafter, greater and greater divergences and variations. He particularly insisted on the variation of species according to the setting in which they were developing. And the psychical and organic perfectibility of the human races is not possible without this faculty of variation, which is the consequence of natural selection. The Black Race is one of the most striking examples of this progressive variation—which is entirely to its advantage. Whereas the facts had established the truth of the fixity of species, or the truth of the ideas taught by theology, a unique and spontaneous genesis, we would not be able to witness the comforting spectacle of a race in transformation, perfecting itself, and erasing the marks of its primitive and crude origin.

The intelligent man must not deny his origin when, through work and perseverance, he has been able to rise above his original condition, however negligible it may have been. It is the same thing with a people and a race. The lower its beginnings, the more praiseworthy its elevation.

And in admitting our simian origin, our self-love must not suffer; it must find a consolation and even a legitimate sentiment in this just thought of Claparède: "Better to be a perfected monkey than a degenerate Adam."

Dr. de Gleygnon

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Related articles:

	Men	Women
New Caledonians	1435cc	1320cc
Wolofs	1490	1295
Mandringues	1460	1285
Nilotiques	1355	1275
Achantis	1330	1145
Dahomey	1322	1249
Koï-Koin	1290	"

This page references:

Ernst Haeckel Image

Australians	71.4
Cafres	72.5
New Caledonians	71.78
Tasmanians	76.1
Polynesians	76.3
Negrito Type (Andamanese, Semang, Aeta)	72.5