Civilisation and cerebral development : some observations on the influence of civilisation upon the development of the brain in the different races of man / by Robert Dunn.

  • Dunn, Robert, 1799-1877.
Date:
[1866]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Civilisation and cerebral development : some observations on the influence of civilisation upon the development of the brain in the different races of man / by Robert Dunn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    intellectual nature; the mental differences, which they exhibit, being differences in degree and not of kind. Now the antiquity of man, since the publication of Sir Charles Lyell’s work, on the bearing of the geological evidence upon it, has been the occasion of much discussion. But, beyond the three marked epochs of his history, the ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron, the subject is foreign to our present inquiry, and even upon those, although affording indisputable evidence of his gradual and ascensive progression, it is not my intention to dwell; for I shall confine myself to the historic period of his existence here tipon earth. And, as to the origin, or rather the creation of man, what- ever may be the opinion entertained in regard to his monogenesis or his polygenesis, one thing is certain, that from all historic times, there have existed, and do still exist, aboriginal and typical races of man widely differing from each other, and easily dis- tinguishable by well-marked physical and psychical characters. Such, for instance, are the black Negroes of Africa, the yellow Mongols of Asia, the red men of America, and the white men of Europe. The inquiry, indeed, is a most interesting one, into the true zoological relationship between these different races so dis- similar in colour, features, bodily configuration, stature, habits of life, and moral and intellectual cultivation; so that on a survey of all the nations on the habitable globe, our minds are startled, and, well may we ask, “Are the fair Circassian and the jet black African, the olive Malay, and the red American, the dusky New Zealander, and the florid Saxon, all of one original stock? Did the Patagonians, whose average height is nearly six feet, spring from the same parents as the pigmy Bosjesmans, whose usual height is under five, that of the females rarely much exceeding four ? Are the fat, blubber-fed, flat-visaged Esquimaux even most distantly related to the lean, date-eating, hatchet-face Arab? Does the Bosjesman, who lives in holes and caves, and devours ants’ eggs, locusts, and snakes, belong to the same species as the men who luxuriated in the hanging gardens of Babylon, or walked in the olive grove of Academe, or sat enthroned in the imperial homes of the Cmsars, or reposed in the marble palaces of the Adriatic, or held sumptuous festivals in the gay salons of Ver- seilles ? Can the grovelling Wawa, prostrate before his fetish, claim a community of origiu with those whose religious senti- ments inspired them to pile the prodigious temples of Thebes and Memphis, to carve the friezes of the Parthenon, or to raise the heaven-pointing arches of Cologne ? That ignorant Ibo, muttering his all-but inarticulate prayer, is he of the same ultimate ancestry as those who sang deathless strains in honour of Olympian Jove, or of Pallas Athene, or of those who, in purer worship, are chanting their glorious hymns or solemn litanies in the churches of Christen-