Looking to the fact already mentioned (p. 1 311.), as to the:absence of that tendency to extinction in the African races, by sexual contamination from Europeans, which shows itself so remarkably among other aborigines, it is not a little interesting to observe, that there are elements in the Negro character, which have been deemed, by competent ob servers, capable of working a considerable improvement in even Anglo-Saxon civilisa tion. Many intelligent thinkers have come to the conclusion, that the boasted superiority of the latter is, after all, more intellectual than moral ; and that in purity and disinterested ness of the affections, in childlike simplicity and gentleness of demeanour, in fact, in all the milder graces of the Christian temper, we may have even much to learn of the despised Negro. " I should expect," says Channing, " from the African race, if, civilised, less energy, less courage, less Intellectual ori ginality than in ours ; but more amiableness, tranquillity, gentleness, and content. They might not rise to an equality in outward con dition, but would probably be a much happier race." And it is to be remembered that these and similar remarks have been made respect ing the Negroes of the Guinea coast, or their descendants, who are, as we shall presently see, the most degraded of all the African races, except those of the neighbourhood of the Cape, whose degradation has been in great measure the result of European oppression, and the introduction of European vices. It Is not a little remarkable that the earliest civilisation of which we have any distinct traces in the western portion of the Old World,— perhaps the very earliest develop ment of the arts of life and of a spiritual phi losophy that man has witnessed—should have presented itself in a race which was not only African in its locality, but also in its affinities, such being demonstrably the character of the Ancient Egyptians, as will be seen hereafter. Yet to this race the civilisation of Greece, of Rome, and of Western Europe may be in great measure ascribed; and long after the time when its power and intelligence had gained their highest state of development, the progenitors of the Anglo-Saxon race, both in Britain and in Germany, were in a state of barbaric ignorance and brutalism.
Referring, for the particulars of this part of the enquiry, to the valuable collection of in formation brought together by Dr. Prichard chiefly from the records of the Moravian mis sionaries who have planted themselves over almost every portion of the habitable globe, and who have gained a more intimate ac quaintance with the mental habits and feelings of the people among whom they dwell, than has been acquired by any other class of Eu ropean settlers; the following may be adopted as its general results : — In all the races of mankind, with which any adequate acquaint ance has been gained, unequivocal indi cations may be discerned of the same moral and intellectual nature as that which the most civilised tribes exhibit ; and these indications become more obvious, the more complete is our knowledge of their habits, not merely of action, but of thought. We can trace, in short, among all the tribes who are endowed with the faculty of articulate speech, the same rational, human nature; superior to that of the highest brutes, not merely in the com plexity of the processes which it is capable of performing, but in that capacity for generating abstract ideas, and thus arriving at general principles, which, so far as we have the means of judgment, appears to be the distinguishing attribute of man. So, again, we discover in all of them the same elements of moral feeling; the same sympathies and susceptibilities of affection ; the same conscience, or internal conviction of accountableness, more or less fully developed ; the same sentiments of guilt and self-condemnation, and the same desire for expiation. These principles take very
different forms of expression, even in civilised life ; much more, therefore, ought we to be prepared for finding nothing more, even among the best specimens of uncivilised barbarism, than the mere rudiments of a higher under standing, and of a nobler moral nature, than that which they have at present reached. But the rudiments are there, though not always in the same degree of forwardness for being moulded to the institutions of a more regular society, for the development of the intellectual powers under a rational education, and for that growth of the moral and religious sentiments which Christianity is pre-eminently fitted to promote in every mind that opens itself to its benign influence.
The general conclusion, then, which we seem entitled to draw from the Anatomical, Physiological, and Psychological facts to which reference has been made, is that all the human races may have had a common origin ; since they all possess the same constant cha racters, and differ only in those which can be shown to vary from generation to genera tion.—We have now to inquire, lastly, into the bearing of philological evidence upon the same question ; and as this department of the inquiry is more foreign than the preceding to the character of the present work, a brief notice of its chief results is all that can be here admitted. These results, it may be re marked, are of extremely recent acquisition. In fact, there is no department of ethnology in which progress is at present so rapid, as it is in the study of glottology.
Now it may be observed, in the first place, that what has been just said of the com munity of psychical nature amongst the se veral races of mankind, is very strongly con firmed by the general fact of the universality of spoken language, and of the power of trans lating from one language to another. Dogs and monkeys may have languages of their own ; but there is no such relation between these and ours, as may enable us to com prehend them ; and where brute animals have been taught to comprehend human lan guage, it has been only so far as to acquire a mental association between the sounds of certain words, and the material objects which they represent. This is but the first and simplest stage of the acquirement of language, as every one must perceive, who watches the development of the power of communication by this means, in early childhood. A very large part of all languages, but especially of those employed by nations advanced in in tellectual culture, consists of terms expressive of ideas and relations, rather than of material objects ; and it is in the capacity for ex pressing the former, that the distinctive at tributes of human language appear specially to consist. This capacity, though existing more or less in all languages, will obviously vary considerably in degree, according to the in tellectual culture of the people of whose thoughts they are the habitual expression ; and the power of fully rendering the thoughts conveyed by one language into another tongue, must of course depend in great part upon the relative advancement of the two. The abstractions of a German transcendental philosopher do not always admit of being ef fectively conveyed, even in a tongue so nearly related as the English to their original, far less could they be translated into Hottentot gibberish. So, again, the peculiar style of eloquence cultivated in the East, does not produce its adequate effect, when rendered in Western tongues. But any two barbarous languages, or any two which are highly cul tivated, are, on the whole, so pervaded by a sameness of character, as to bear witness to the similarity of their internal source.