The plurality of the human race / by Georges Pouchet ; translated and ed. (from the 2nd ed.) by Hugh J.C. Beavan.

  • Georges Pouchet
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The plurality of the human race / by Georges Pouchet ; translated and ed. (from the 2nd ed.) by Hugh J.C. Beavan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    resulting as they do from diverse individual impressions. It will be especially necessary to control with care travellers' tales as regards the study of intellectual tendencies, since they are too often influenced by their own ideas on the subject. Let us say this before concluding: among the a ])riori proofs which polygenists can bring forward on their side, there is one which is of some importance; it is this, that while contrary ideas have been sustained and defended by men who never go beyond their own studies, the former have been generally brought forward by travellers and sailors, by those indeed who have been best able to put in practice this direct observation, which is generally conclusive and decisive. It is these whom Ave find the most ready to separate mankind into distinct groups, and to recognise in the inferior species a manifest tendency to approach nearer the nature of the anthro- pomorphous apes. A valuable source of information, from which anthropologists must not neglect to borrow, are the accounts of those who landed for the first time on certain islands and continents. If they have even conceived any erroneous ideas, it must usually be acknowledged that they are most likely to be able to give us a tolerably faithful portrait of the nations with whom they have met, even more important in certain points of view than the accounts afterwards given of them, since at that time these people have not been submitted to the various influences which necessarily result from contact with Europeans. We can study philology and craniology in the library and in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient mate- rials, but not antJwoiJology; because anthropology is a science still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth will not contribute to social progress. The searcher after it can free himself in all tranquillity of mind from this kind of trouble. Haller has said, in reference to this matter, The