with other nations, observes the same regimen, and pursues the same avocations now that he ever did. The only change, then, which he has undergone in entire conformity with physiological laws, is that of color, while the physiognomy, influenced only by food, and habits, and education, remains unchanged. But the assertion that man does not change when climate, food, moral and intellectual habits are changed, is contrary to well established facts. The Jew, occupying for several centuries the coast of Malabar, has become black as a Negro. The Brahmins, evidently descended from the same conquering race, differ in amplexion according to the latitude they occupy in the immense country of Hindostan. The Turk in Europe has partially assumed the Caucasian cast of countenance, whilst in Western Asia he inclines towards the Mongolian. The Celtic nations, whom it would be the merest quixotism of criticism to deny to have sprung from the same race, possess very different characteristics; the Irishman is unlike the Frenchman and the Scotchman differs materially from both. Perhaps there can be no two nations more directly the antipodes of one another in mental and moral habits, than the Irish and Scotch; and there is scarcely any historical fact more certain, than that they are descendants from a common stock. The Saxon is different in almost every important aspect from the Dutch who now inhabit the country from which he formerly emigrated; and since transplanted into Ireland has superadded to the parent stock some of the qualities of the soil, and is generally considered to be a more genial, impulsive character than his brethren on the other side of the Channel; and what is more obvious to Ls is that the American is assuming a physiognomy of his own; it is not that of any of the races from which he is sprung, nor is it identical with that of the offspring of those races born in Erope, but it is something peculiar and national. History, then, and the most positive experience, prove that varieties have been produced, within the historic period, in families descended from the same race; it is, we think, then, the most gratuitous hypothesis to maintain that, because there are a few instances of permanency of type, during the historic period, there are, therefore, no variations at all from the original typical stock. This is simply a question of facts; and, in my opinion, none has been more completely and triumphantly settled. The question has been asked, however, how is it, that if races possess the capabilities of change, they never re-assume the original type, and that the negro, after being exposed for centuries to the climate of America, shows no signs of becoming white? As we said before, all the circumstances which govern the development of the human race, are not known; but, from a wide induction of facts, the law has been discovered, that, in the infancy of the human race, when the nature of man was plastic, he received, from the action of the circumstances among which he was placed, an impression which determined his conformation for ever; or, in the more scientific language of Lyell, whose opinions are entitled to the highest respect, human development is governed by the following laws: 1st. All species have a capacity, to a certain extent, of adapting themselves to external circumstances. 24. When the change of situation they can endure is great, it is usually attended with some modification of the form, color, size, and other particulars; but the mutations thus superinduced are governed by constant laws; and the capability of so varying forms a part of the permanent specific character. 3d. Some acquired qualities are transmissable, &c. 4th. The entire variation from the original type which any given kind of change can make, must usually take place in a very short space of time, after chich no further variation can be attained by continuing to alter the circumstances, though ever so gradually; indefinite divergence, either in the way of deterioration or improvement, being prevented; and the least excess beyond the defined limits being fatal to the existence of the individual." It may be objected, that this is simply theory; this is true, but it is a theory evolved from a very wide induction of facts, and has the recommendation of harmonizing all the circumstances known, with regard to human development; while opposing opinions, which are theories too, run singularly counter both to facts and experience. In this connection we cannot avoid noticing the remarkable theory of Dr. Knox, that races can never change, and never amalgamate or emigrate without extinction; in other words, that the typical character and location of a race, are so inseparably connected with its well-being, that neither can be changed without extinction. On the subject of variations of the human race, we have before remarked; and the connection between migration and extinction will be apparent to very few but the doctor, himself. Most of the nations of Europe have migrated to their present locations during the historic period, and have been, pretty generally, adulterated with a foreign element, which it is, I believe, generally admitted, has contributed to their improvement. The American nation is certainly derived from a great many different stocks, without any signs of degeneracy. The attempt to account for this anomaly, by pointing to the constant accessions made to the population from the parent stocks, manifests extraordinary ignorance of the true state of the case. Europeans and their immediate descendants are liable, in the process of acclimation, to many more diseases than the native American, and, consequently, exhibit a much greater mortality. The fact is, that the longer a family has been in the country, the greater is its immunity from disease, and the more does it multiply; whilst the least healthy, and the most subject to mortality, is the European. We are not certain that this is the case in all the British Colonies; we are pretty sure it is in Canada, and incline to the belief it is in all countries in the temperate zone. Man does, then, not only survive the shock given to his system by the action of a strange climate, and, by the addition of certain peculiarities, but is very frequently improved by the process. 3. It has been stated that as you ascend the stream of history, there is no more trace of unity among the human race than at the present time; but you find the species broken into divisions still more fragmentary. Where you now have nations, you formerly had tribes; and mankind, instead of converging towards a point, as you trace them back towards their origin, are found to diverge still more hopelessly, rendering the search after unity absolutely desperate. It is doubtless a fact, that the first form of human associations known to history were tribes; and that the first form of government was patriarchal. But to identify societies with race, is to confound things totally distinct. At the present day, a nation is by no means coextensive with a race, for several king doms are peopled by members of the same great family. Witness the Celtic race scattered over France, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland; the Sclavonic oc cupying all the East of Europe, and the German split up into innumerable petty nationalities. It is impossible then from the social subdivisions of mankind to infer anything, as to their diversity of origin; and this is more especially the case, when we are discussing the primitive state of society. The first form of government, as we have just said, was patriarchal; the oldest of the family was generally the leader of the tribe; this was simply an extension of the family relation, and continued until rendered impracticable by the multiplication of the people. The sovereignty was then confined to a single family, and by slow degrees assumed all the various modifications, which we at present find in society. Besides this very natural order in the development of government, the subdivision into tribes was necessitated by the pursuits of primitive man. The first avocations of the race were pastoral, communities were thus formed not too large for acquiring subsistence, and not toc small for self-defence. Every pastoral country presents the same condition of things. The Arab of the desert is a living embodiment of the social state in the same locality two thousand years ago. He lives in tribes, which are broken up when they become unwieldy or when internal dissensions arise, and which never after coalesce. Yet no one, I believe, has adduced the multiplicity of tribes as a proof of the plurality of stocks from which the Arab is descended. The clan system is, however, not confined to the East or to antiquity; it existed until a very recent period in the Highlands of Scotland, among a nation descended of course from a common stock. To adduce, then, the multiplicity of tribes in ancient times, as inconsistent with the unity of the origin of the human race, is completely to misapprehend the state of the question. The same remarks hold substantially good in reference to the argument drawn from diversity of language; if indeed, there be a radical diversity in language. Most philologists think not, and I believe most of the languages of Europe and western Asia have been traced to a common Semitic stem. So obvious was this connection to the most eminent scholars of the last century, that the conveyance of all languages to a common origin, was to them conclusive of the unity of the human race. The opposers of this unity say they make no pretensions to philological research; seeing however, superficial differences in various languages, they are disposed to make the most of them. If, however, a radical difference did exist between the various languages of the world, it would prove nothing against the unity of the race: it being obvious that families, confessedly of the same race, do not always use the same language. The Irish, Welsh, Gælic, and French are as different as most languages from one another, yet still are consistent with community of origin, on the part of the nations that use them. The South Sea Islanders have different languages, not only in the different groups, but in the several islands which compose these groups: and in the small Island of Tatua, Lot more than 80 miles in circumference, the inhabitants speak four different languages totally distinct from one another. Yet it would not sound very philosophical to assign different origins to the inhabitants of each of these islands. The truth is, that every indication which is at all valuable in antiquarian research, points invariably to migration of the race from a single centre: it is the deduction of science as well as the testimony of history and tradition. National vanity is, doubtless, gratified as in Greece, by referring to Autochthones, or aborigines, springing like grasshoppers from the soil; but this tradition is involved in the obscurity of remote antiquity, and is extremely indistinct in its outlines; and, after all, amounts only to the simple fact, that the first recorded emigrants to Greece found inhabitants there before them. The inability to determine when the first inhabitants settled there arises simply from the fact, that the emigration took place before the historic period. In opposition to this supposition of the first inhabitants of Greece springing from the soil, or being created on the spot, we have the unanimous testimony of antiquity in favor of the migration of the race from a spot somewhere in Northwestern Asia." The Brahmins, Chinese, and Assyrians too, represent the human family as descending from the highlands of A-ia; streaming down the sides of the Hindoo Cosh, the Himalaya, and the Altai Mountains, and finally spreading over the adjoining plains to the con fines of the ocean. The history, poetry, and legends of Europe, give precisely the same account of the settlement of that country; and all point to the mysterious, sacred East as the cradle of the human race. We are told, however, that we cannot rely much on the chronicles and traditions of a barbarous age. Yet we think, that a testimony given with such unanimity and universality might have some weight with gentlemen who attribute such a profound significancy to the Gre cian tradition of men springing from the soil. Our remarks have been extended to this point purposely without any reference to Scripture, because we do not think that the argument from Scripture would have much weight with the maintainers of the position we have been attempting to controvert. Scripture, it is asserted, was never given for the settling of physical and scientific questions, nor for any purpose, indeed, but the propagation of moral and religious truth. Be it so. But in the purpose of Scripture the origin of man is not developed as a simple ethnological question, but dwelt upon as the mode of accounting for the introduction of moral evil into the world, and its transmission through the different members of the human family down to the present time. All orthodox Christians agree with St. Paul, in tracing the predisposition to evil in the human race, to one man's transgression, by whom sin entered into the world, and to our connection with him as our progenitor. Moral infirmity is part of the constitutional bias derived from our first parents, and only to be accounted for according to the theory of Scripture, by our intimate union with them by direct descent. It may be, as it has been said, that St. Paul was deceived. To discuss this assertion, would be opening up a question entirely foreign to the object of this paper. Our remarks in this immediate connection are intended only for those who have some confidence in the teaching of St. Paul. Apart, however, from the bearing of Scripture on the subject, the various converging arguments from science, history, and tradition, as well as the deeper moral consciousness of the race, are, we conceive, conclusive of the unity of mankind. Man instinctively recognizes man as his brother; the social instinct is paralyzed only when our better feelings are deadened. Our hopes, our fears, our aspirations after the unseen, are all associated with the society and fellowship of our brother man. The mysterious sympathy which inspires whole nations with the emotions of a single inan; the community of happiness which spreads through society under the thrill of a single joy-and the deep and yearning tenderness excited by the occurrence of a great misfortune-are certainly indications of something more than a mere general resemblance among mankind; and can be satisfactorily accounted for by no other theory, than that which supposes the moral, religious, and physical unity of the human race. WE SECRET SOCIETIES-THE KNOW NOTHINGS. TE think the historians, in general, have scarcely made sufficient account of the influence of secret societies on human affairs. They have written elaborately of the external events of history, of the rise and fall of dynasties, of the migrations of races, of political changes, of victories and defeats, of the philosophy, the arts, the literatures, and the manners and customs of nations; they have also dwelt with circumstantial accuracy upon the fortunes of great men, their precocious youth, their mature splendor, and their final mistakes and martyrdom; but the workings of those mysterious organizations, which, as much as anything else, have controlled the movements of society, they have treated only incidentally, as they chanced to be involved in larger movements, and without that careful research and comprehensive philosophy which their importance seems to demand. Yet, no phenomena in history have been more constant, or more powerful in their effects, though not always flagrant, or even apparent, than the operations of these secret brotherhoods. From the earliest times, and among every people with which we are acquainted, they have not only existed, but exerted considerable influence over the developments of humanity. Among the oldest monuments of social life, carrying us back into the debatable land which hovers between a misty mythology, and a scarcely less misty traditional history, in the clouds of which men swell into the proportions of demi-gods, and the reformer, the civiliser, the thinker, and the poet. take the shape, in the excitable imaginations of their followers, of celestial divinities-in the rude hieroglyphics and pictures of the Egyptian pyramids, in the Orphic legends which ante-date the civilization of Greece-in the Cabirian rites of Samothrace, we find traces of certain mystic associations, which were spread over vast empires, gathering into their shadowy folds the wisest men of the day, teaching through symbols tho most exalted sentiments, and depositing, for the most part, the seeds of a superior social order. And, in each subsequent age from the Eleusinian, and other mysteries of Greece, and the Bacchanalia of Rome-through the Disciplini Arcani of the earlier Christiansthe Odinic priesthood of Scandinaviathe Druids, the Free-Masonry, the Monachism, the Rosicrucianism, the Knighthoods of the middle ages-the Santa Hermandad of Spain, the Vehm-Gerichte of Germany, the Carbonari of Italydown to the Red Republican conclaves of France, the Trade Unions of England -and the Odd-Fellow-and Know-Nothingism of the United States, the number and power of such associations has increased, until we may safely regard them as co-extensive with the civilized world. They have grown with the growth of society, and though not as dazzling to the imaginations of men as in the more primeval and credulous ages, they are still potent instruments of good and evil, embracing, as they do, multitudes of disciples taken out of every rank and condition of human existence. If their members were numbered, we have no doubt that the figures of the computation would extend into the millions. A certain uniformity of character pervades these associations, in the midst, however, of a very marked and con trasted variety. The principle of secresy they all have in common, and this implies, also, the use of symbols, or mystic signs, and the practice of hidden ceremonies But their objects, both in respect to the persons comprised in each fraternity and the world outside, differ as widely as the circumstances of place or time under which they exist, and range from a simple exercise of good-feeling or charity, to the inculcation of a profounder philosophy, the overthrow of empires, and the reconstruction of society. A controversy exists among learned men as to the origin and purpose of the ancient mysteries, which some regard as simple political devices, designed to impress the prevailing spontaneous religious faith more deeply upon the minds of the initiated, by imposing ceremonies, and artistic effects, while others see in them profound institutions, founded by great and good men, for the deliberate end of conveying to those who were worthy to receive them, the recondite doctrines of a pure morality, and a divine science. The latter view, introduced mainly by Platarch and the later Platonists, elaborately insisted upon by Warburton in that store-house of erudition, the Divine Legation, and largely illustrated by the more modern works of St. Croix, in French, and Creuzert and Hermann, in German, has predominated up to a very recent period; when more accurate historical inquests, and a more scientific view of history, are thought to have dismissed it, along with the ancient view of the deep theological and philosophical contents of the early myths. But it is certainly clear that these mysteries, if not intended to impart an esoteric wisdom superior to that of the common people, did yet shadow forth important moral trath. A larger meaning, astronomical, metaphysical, and theosophic, has doubtless been given to them by the allegorizing tendencies of later times, than they originally bore; but the idea of purification, of the surrender of vices, and growth in virtue, is more or less involved in all. In no other way can we account for the strong hold they took on the feelings of the initiated, and the satisfaction and peace which they often gave unquestionably to their consciences. Whatever may be the truth in respect to the mysteries, we are left in no doubt as to the general designs of the secret orders, instituted by distinguished men, such as the schools of Pythagoras, or of those still larger fraternities, like the Essenes, the Templars, the Free-Masons, the Rosicruicians, &c., which were organized with the express purpose of moral and social reform. The sage of Samos, though he concealed his principal doctrines in a nimbus of words, or under a seal of inviolable silence, openly avowed his objects to be scientific instruction, moral culture, social communion, and political change. His disciples were taught both speculative tenets and positive science, and, while collected in a special community, were yet induced to operate on the interests of society at large. The constituent principles of his academy were the principles which he wished to see carried out in the government of a nation, and the body of instruction was a propaganda of new political and social ideas. Müller, in his masterly work on the Dorians, contends that the aim of Pythagoras was to exhibit an ideal of a Dorian State; but a better statement of his leading thought would be, that he wished to show, by a living example, how the State and the individual might both reflect the harmonious order by which the universe was regulated and sustained. His celebrated societies were schools of philosophy, political associations, and religious brotherhoods, united in one; and, consequently, extending their discipline to the whole man, physical, intellectual, social and moral. The Essenes, were a body of contemplative religionists, supposed to have taken their rise in Judea, about the time of the Maccabees, and whose name is referred to the Essen, a jewelled plate, containing the precious stones, worn by the Jewish high priest. De Quincey, however, in a brilliant and ingenious essay, contends that this was the name of the earlier Christians, adopted with a view to avoid persecution, and to enable them to propagate the new religion with more security and effect. His argument is not satisfactory, altogether, or rather, it is not inconsistent with the supposition of the obscure, ante-Christian existence of such a sect, and of its subsequent merger in the private assemblies of the converted Jews. Yet it is remarkable, as he states, that the New Testament no where speaks of the Essenes, or their im Recherche sur les Mystères du Paganisme. + Simbolik und Mythologie des Alten-Folker. De Mythologia Græcorum Antiquissima. |