existed during a vast period of time, which has made it easier to assume the continuance of very slow natural variation of races. The other view is that of the evolution or development of species. It does not follow necessarily from a theory of evolution of species that mankind must have descended from a single stock, for the hypothesis of development admits of the argument that several simian species may have culminated in several races of man (Vogt, Lectures on Man, London, 1864, p. 463). The general tendency of the development theory, however, is against constituting separate species where the differences are moderate enough to be accounted for as due to variation from a single type. Darwin’s summing up of the evidence as to unity of type throughout the races of mankind is as distinctly a monogenist argument as those of Blumenbach, Prichard or Quartefages:—
“Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole organization be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these are so unimportant, or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. . . . Now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes and dispositions, between two or more domestic races, or between nearly allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed, and, consequently, that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.” (Descent of Man, pt. i. ch. 7.)
A suggestion by A. R. Wallace has great importance in the application of the development theory to the origin of the various races of man; it is aimed to meet the main difficulty of the monogenist school, how races which have remained comparatively fixed in type during the long period of history, such as the white man and the negro, should have, in even a far longer period, passed by variation from a common original. Wallace’s view is substantially that the remotely ancient representatives of the human race, being as yet animals too low in mind to have developed those arts of maintenance and social ordinances by which man holds his own against influences from climate and circumstance, were in their then wild state much more plastic than now to external nature; so that “natural selection” and other causes met with but feeble resistance in forming the permanent varieties or races of man, whose complexion and structure still remain fixed in their descendants (Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 319).
MONOGRAM (from Late Lat. monogramma, in Late Gr. μονόγραμμον, from μονός, single, γράμμα, letter), originally a cipher consisting of a single letter, now a design or mark consisting of two or more letters intertwined together. The letters thus interlaced may be either all the letters of a name, or the initial letters of the Christian and surnames of a person for use upon note-paper, seals, &c. Many of the early Greek and Roman coins bear the monograms of rulers for whom or the towns in which they were struck. The Late Latin and Greek words were first applied to the signatures, which took this form, of the emperors of the Eastern Empire. The signatures
of the Frankish kings also took the form of a monogram. The accompanying monogram, from a coin of Charles the Bald, is a good example of a “perfect” monogram, in which all the letters of the name Karolus can be traced (see Diplomatic and Autograph). The most famous of monograms is that known as the “Sacred Monogram,” formed by the conjunction of the two initial letters of Χριστός, Christ. The most usual form of this is the symbol ⳩, and sometimes the α (alpha) and ω (omega) of the Apocalypse were placed on either side of it. The symbol was incorporated in the Labarum (q.v.) when the imperial standard was Christianized. The interlaced I.H.S. (also called “The Sacred Monogram”) apparently possesses no great antiquity; it is said to have been the creation of St Bernard of Siena in the middle of the 15th century. Monograms or ciphers were often used by the early printers as devices, and are of importance in fixing the identity of early printed books. Similar devices have been used by painters and engravers. The middle ages were, indeed, extremely prolific in the invention of ciphers alike for ecclesiastical, artistic and commercial use. Every great personage, every possessor of fine taste, every artist, had his monogram. The mason’s mark also was, in effect, a cipher. As the merchant had as a rule neither right nor authority to employ heraldic emblems, he therefore fell back upon plain simple letters arranged very much in monogram form. These “merchants’ marks” generally took the form of a monogram of the owner’s initials together with a private device. They nearly always contain a cross, either as a protection against storms or other catastrophes, or as a Christian mark to distinguish their goods from Mahommedan traders in the East. There is a fine example of a 16th century gold ring with a merchant’s mark in the British Museum. One of the most famous of secular monograms is the interlaced “H.D.” of Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers. Upon every building which that king erected it was sown profusely; it was stamped upon the buildings in the royal library, together with the bow, the quiver and the interlocked crescents of Diana. It has been argued that “H.D.” is a misreading of “H.C.,” which would naturally point to husband and wife; but the question is set at rest by the fact that Henri II. sometimes signed his letters to Diane with this very monogram. Henri IV. invented a punning cipher for his mistress Gabrielle d’Estrées, the surname being represented by a capital S. with a trait, or stroke through it.
See F. Builliot, Dictionnaire des monogrammes (1832–1834, 3 parts); G. K. Nagler, Die Monogrammisten (1857–1876, 5 parts); Ris-Paquot, Dictionnaire encyclopédique des marques et monogrammes, chiffres, &c. (1893); also Du Cange, Glossarium (s.v. Monogramma), with plates giving examples of the monograms of early popes, the emperors of the Western Empire, and of other kings.
MONOLOGUE (from Gr. μονός, alone, and λόγος, speech), a passage in a dramatic piece in which a personage holds the scene to himself and speaks unconsciously aloud. The theory of the monologue is that the audience overhears the thoughts of one who believes himself to be alone, and who thus informs them of what would otherwise be unknown to them. The word is also used in cases when a character on the stage speaks at great length, even though not alone, but is listened to in silence by the other characters. The old-fashioned tragedies of the 17th and 18th centuries greatly affected this convention of the monologue, which has always, however, been liable to ridicule. There is something of a lyrical character about the monologue in verse; and this has been felt by some of the classic poets of France so strongly, that many of the examples in the tragedies of Corneille are nothing more or less than odes or cantatas. The monologues of Shakespeare, and those of Hamlet in particular, have a far more dramatic character, and are, indeed, essential to the development of the play. Equally important are those of Racine in Phèdre and in Athalie. The French critics record, as the most ambitious examples of the monologue in two centuries, that of Figaro in Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro and that of Charles V. in Victor Hugo’s Hernani, the latter extends to 160 lines. In the Elizabethan drama, the popularity of Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, in which Hieronymo spouts interminably, set a fashion for ranting monologues, which are very frequent in Shakespeare’s immediate predecessors and contemporaries. After 1600 the practice was much reduced, and the tendency of solitary heroes to pour forth columns of blank verse was held in check by more complex stage arrangements. After the Restoration the classic tragedies of the English playwrights again abused the privilege of monologue to such a degree that it became absurd, and fell into desuetude.
MONOMOTAPA. In old maps of south-east Africa, derived originally from Portuguese and from Dutch sources, an extensive region on the Çuama or Zambezi and to the south of it is styled regnum monomotapae. The precise character of the kingdom or empire to which allusion is made has been the subject of much discussion, and some modern historians have gone so far
