Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon.

Nott, Josiah C. (Josiah Clark), 1804-1873.

Date:: 1860

Credit: Types of mankind, or, Ethnological researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history / illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson ; by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

747/800 (page 691)

$C91 Chinese chronology 'with the above extracts. They will furnish at once to the reader a very different idea of the teachings of Confucius (five hundred years before any Greco-Judaean writers of the Gospels lived) than he can gather from Macao supercargoes, Hong-kong opium-smugglers, or Canton missionaries. Whatever practical developments the latter may diurnally give to the sublime principle of “ universal charity whatever merit may be due to the first human being who enunciated this exalted sentiment; or whatever thorough knowledge of humanity’s best aud loftiest interests such sentiments may imply; all these ascriptions, history attests, equally belong to a Sinico-mongol, Confucius; who died n. c.479, or about 2332 years ago. [See his portrait; supra. Fig. 330, p. 449.] Whether among the Hong merchants “ universal charity” (and there are noble instances) be unexceptionably practised, any more than in Wall street, Lombard street, or in the Place de la Bourse, concerns us not. These commercial princes are taught to reverence its principles as much as the Dohias or the Medicis of Christendom; and they are exposed to infinitely greater temptations toward its violation, than are those Chinese archaeologists, who, scattered throughout the empire, pursue, at national expense, their historical studies of their own monuments; in lettered seclusion, but with every honorable recompense scholarship may aspire to. (503) For above twenty-three centuries, moreover, the 4tli and 5th maxims of Khoung-tseu have been instilled into each generation of them from earliest infancy. “ It is uprightness; that is, that rectitude of spirit and of heart, which makes one seek for truth in everything and to desire it, without deceiving oneself or deceiving others: it is finally sincerity or good faith; which is to say, that frankness, that openness of heart, tem- pered by self-reliance, which excludes all feints and all disguising, as much in speech as in action.” That the moral influence of such principles has not perished, even through the transitory irruption of the present and expiring dynasty of Mantchou Tartars, is testified by Sir Henry Pottinger in the eulogiums pronounced by him, at London, upon the high Chinese diplomatists with whom he concluded the Treaty of 1844. Nor should Americans forget the excellent conduct which such principles have already exhibited among thousands of our Chinese fellow-citizens in the State of California. We have not the slightest right to doubt, therefore, whatever reasonable account Chinese scholars may furnish us of their nation’s indigenous history; of which, otherwise, not a syl- lable is known to us prior to the fourteenth century after Christ; and, where not irrational, such annals, from such sources, may be received in the more good faith, that the Chinese arch^ologue, having none of our hagiographers’ motives for chronological curtailment or extension, cares nothing about “outside barbarians,” their alien history or superstitions, and did not compose his national chronicles with a view to such foreigners’ edification. The day is evermore passed that modern science should strive to reduce Chinese chro- nology, for the mere whim of adapting it to the spurious computations on a Hebrew Text, and Samaritan, Septuagint, or Vulgate version ; as was the case before Egyptian monumental annals were proved to ascend, at least, to the thirty-fifth century b. c. (504) And we shall presently show (sketched also in our table of Alphabetical origins, supra, p. 638), how the highest point claimed by Chinese historians, for their nation’s antiquity, falls centuries below that which hierologists now insist upon for Egypt: so that, if Egypt and Egyptians were a civilized country and populous people in the thirty-fifth century, b. c., it would be preposterous not to feel assured that Sinico-mongols (indeed every human type of Mongolia) were already in existence, in and around China, their own centre of creation, during the same parallel ages. What is the objection to believing that China was populated, by her Mongolian autocthones, chiliads of years previously? Reader! “one blushes” redder than St. Jerome to mention, that, now-a-days, the acceptance of this fact is questioned by the Rev. Dr. This, or the Rev. Mr. That: neither of whom, perhaps, has ever studied Sinology — never even opened a Sinological work! ' • ' ■ (503) Chine; pp. 194, 21S, 22S, 236, 248, 2S6, 308, 336, 352, 359, 388, 397, ic.: also, Biot, Sur la Constitution i\> litique de la Chine au 12ewe siede avant noire ere; 1845; pp. 3, 9, ic. (504) Db Bbotosne: Filiations el Migrations des Peuples; ii. pp. l-<-3.$

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