Chapter 2: On the Kinship of the Human Race, Demonstrated From Spiritual Powers and Moral Principles, From Religious Ideas, Customs, and Language—§ 1. Kinship Demonstrated From Spiritual Powers, Moral Principles, and Religious Ideas

If the different races and varieties scattered throughout the entire earth belonged to different independent kinds separate from one another, they should be distinguished also in their psychical and spiritual powers and in their moral principles and religious ideas; for among heterogeneous beings the complete similarity in the most essential characteristics of rational humans that distinguish them from irrational creatures is incomprehensible; namely, how all races of the earth have the same powers of soul— or the same phenomena— or, if they prefer not to call these powers through which various dispositions are externalized according to body’s requirements, whence comes the similarity of the manifestations of spirit? Whence spiritual kinship? Whence comes the complete transformation of the savage into the civilized through development and free education? Whence the feelings, the dispositions, whence the moral principles and religious ideas? Whence the idea of God, the idea of the world, the idea of beauty and evil, of good and wickedness, of the beautiful and the worthless? Whence conscience? Whence the law written in the hearts of all races by the supreme being? How can peoples so far removed from one another have such complete similarity in all things? How can so many independent kinds separated by oceans, and vast distances preventing mutual communication, be found to be in all respects alike? How did not heterogeneity develop and shape different natives peoples according to different principles? How would all have invented a language for communicating feelings and thoughts? Certainly independent kinds would have had a distinct type as animals falling under one category set by the Creator, which by its exalted authority they would be unable to alter, as is observed in animals; but nothing of the sort is observed, for every race is able to merge with and assimilate itself to another. In humans, therefore, there are no category divisions, no particular types, no distinct instincts, but the same spirit and the same soul; and therefore in all respects all are alike; and those who are alike in all respects are more likely to be kin than strangers and foreigners. While those who are alike in every respect are more probably kindred than strangers and aliens.

The kinship of different races is supported by various curious phenomena appearing among even those peoples most distant from one another, whose appearance cannot be attributed except to common origin; for example, the customs and manners of certain races are the same, although oceans separate them. Forster says, “I cannot forget a unique custom practiced not only on all these islands (New Holland, New Zealand, and the Borneo islands), but also among the Hottentots in Africa, the Guatkaos of Paraguay, and the Californians in America; this is the cutting off of the little finger of one or both hands as a sign of mourning for the death of a relative; a custom so unique that we cannot understand how it appeared spontaneously in places so far apart on the earth.”

The existence of similar customs is observed almost from one end of the terrestrial sphere to the other; the inhabitants of the Philippine islands, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides are connected with one another through similarity of dress, religion, and characteristic features to the inhabitants of New Zealand and other indigenous peoples of Polynesia.

Religion and the manner of worshiping the divine under whatever forms it presents itself is a unique phenomenon and a distinctive characteristic of rational humans; and it demonstrates the close kinship of all races, for this feeling of worship, wherever it appears, has such similarity that it would be impossible not to attribute it to a single race, to one source.

Concerning one source and kind, Darwin himself advocates, saying: “The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego belong to the most barbaric peoples. I was greatly surprised that three of these indigenous people, having spent some time in England, whom I met aboard the ship ‘Beagle,’ convinced me by my own eyes that these people did not differ from us at all in intellect and in other spiritual qualities.”

The moral principles of even the wildest races do not differ from those of the civilized; in the humble huts of wild cannibals one hears the philosophical principles concerning moral virtue of Plato: “Hope is the pillar of the world; upon patience heaven rests; dust returns to the one who spoke it; evil and wicked men are common as the trampled grass; and the good are more pleasing to the eye.”

Among the wild Bushmen are found most instructive proverbs testifying to the identity of principles concerning good and evil; and to the similarity of human spirit.

The feeling of will and self-denial appears equally strong among the wild as among the civilized; a Kafir girl ignores her wild father’s will in favor of her feeling, desiring to find a place in her heart, and she begs him on her knees to kill her or to abandon her feeling. The traveler Tuckey, in his description of the northern part of the kingdom of Congo and Angola in Africa in 1816, recounting the cannibalism of these wild Africans, says that “a custom exists among many of them, especially among the elders, of offering their own bodies as sacrifice for the food of the starving community in the hope of swifter and more certain immortality of the soul.” This.

Says du Chaillu, shows that the idea of immortality is deeply rooted in their hearts. He speaks about the condition of the wild peoples: “I had the occasion,” he says, “to examine this matter carefully to understand the opinions of the wild concerning atheism; and from this I became convinced of the superficiality and inaccuracy with which someone (Lubbock) is accustomed to judge the wild races.” The missionary Alex. Merénski, who traveled through Africa and spent a decade there for the sake of conversion and civilization, had, perhaps more than anyone else, on account of his exalted calling, the opportunity to study both the language and religion of those wild peoples. This trustworthy author and missionary testifies based on the facts against those who until now have claimed that the wild Kafir tribes not only lack but do not even have the conception of the word “religion.” On the contrary, he insists as an eyewitness, all without exception believe in one personal God, whom they call Moaïmo. He is the one who spins the fate of all, or Fate itself. He is the one who formed the world, the Lord of life and death, from whom all happiness and well-being flow forth. What a similarity of religious ideas! Who does not discover in them the fundamental ideas of the ancient world? Similarly, among the wild peoples of Northern America, the great spirit that created the earth and the universe holds the highest place; among certain wild tribes of the Negro peoples of New Dia and Andria, there remains even to this day the memory of a superior worship and a higher religious sentiment. “The Sky,” they say, “was once near to humans, and the highest God revealed to them His wise teachings, but afterward wholly removed Himself from the people, becoming accessible only to the priests;” among these Negroes there exists the idea of spirits as servants of God. They worship Φοηραμπηαγαα and Νγοπρίο, that is, the living and personified Sky clothed with clouds as a garment, and placing

The stars as ornament upon his face, sending forth spirits as his own children upon the earth to execute his commands; he is glorified as the giver of all good and as the creator of all things; he is omniscient, having the sun as his eye, and present everywhere as ether; he stands in a sphere higher than the human world and sends forth beneath him the spirits for the governance and providence of the world, which became the first worship among the Aborigines. When one of these wild peoples was asked by a foreigner whether the creature to which he offered food as sacrifice eats it, he answered that the creature is not God, the Djibbe, which is an invisible being that partakes only of spiritual food, leaving the sensible and bodily part to us.

Father Soutouï relates that the Atochia (an Indian tribe) at the beginning of French settlement there first and foremost worshiped Heaven as the sole refuge in times of need and affliction, and sacrificing to him, they prayed thus: “Heaven, look favorably upon my sacrifice and be for me a helper and protector.”

Among other tribes, the Algonkian and Sioux, there still prevails the memory that the heavenly God showed Himself more favorably to them in earlier times, and later abandoned them on account of their disobedience.

Concerning the native Mexican religion, here is what Dl. writes: “in all their prayers remarkably mention is made of the most high, all-powerful, and omnipresent God Tzótzitl; there also existed the idea of the most high God, whom they called Tlóke or Naoválthe; he is the one who contains all things in himself, the cause and source of all things, invisible and incorporeal; on his altar no sacrifice nor image was ever offered, as he needed none of these.”

In the religion of the wild Australians it appears more clearly from its present state that once these people were at a certain degree of civilization and more perfect worship, for its details are relics, so to speak, of a better time; it is shown by their mythology, which is a mixture of demonology and superstition, as W. Ellis confirms.

In Polynesia the Tangaroa or Taaatou is worshiped as a heavenly god in various forms. And Tángkia, whose worship was preserved for the longest time, is the god of the sky, appearing as a bird hovering over the earth and the sea, god of gods and of all creatures. According to Tahitian psychology, the sun is his left eye and the seat of his soul; yet not the same one. At the same time he is also a sea god, protector of sailors; then transformed into a god of fish and reptiles, because as it appears the sky is mirrored like a blue mirror in the sea. The general worship of the heavenly spirit, however, transforms itself into polytheistic forms, which also appears in New Zealand, where among certain other tribes of Polynesians the idea of God takes on a pantheistic character. The curious phenomenon in these worships is the similarity of the principle of all religions; the religious principles of the Mexicans and the ideas concerning the heavenly spirit as a bird brooding and giving life to the world, compared to those of the Polynesians, do they not remind us of the Sacred Scripture, “and the Spirit of God was borne above the water”? Which these races have presented in a more sensible manner?

There is no people that does not worship a god; in Central Asia as in Africa and America and New Holland and in all islands, peoples, however wild they may be, have some god and a worship proportionate to their development. I believe that from what has been said it has been demonstrated that the close kinship of all races of the earth, and the chain by which all are bound together through common virtues, common attributes, and that the same spirit characterizes all of them and the same powers that distinguish them from the rest of irrational nature; and from the identity of ideas, that the now very distant peoples in ancient times were in close communication, and that all drew their religious principles from the same source. We wish to prove the existence of that communication and similar origin in the next paragraph from Linguistics.