into the hereditary. Similarly in some cases where a doubly compound society is formed. Further, this later-established power of a supreme ruler, at first given by election and presently growing hereditary, is commonly less than that of the local rulers in their own localities; and where it becomes greater it is usually by the help of ascribed divine descent or ascribed divine commission.
Where, in virtue of supposed supernatural origin or authority, the king has become absolute, and, owning both subjects and territory, exercises all powers, he is obliged by the multiplicity of his affairs to depute his powers. There follows a reactive restraint due to the political machinery he creates; and this machinery ever tends to become too strong for him. Especially where rigorous adhesion to the rule of inheritance brings incapables to the throne, or where ascribed divine nature causes inaccessibility save through agents, or where both causes conspire, power passes into the hands of deputies. The legitimate ruler becomes an automaton and his chief agent the real ruler, who, in some cases passing through parallel stages, himself becomes an automaton and his subordinates the rulers.
| THE BLACK RACES OF OCEANICA.[1] |
By Dr. R. VERNEAU.
NEGRO forms are figured among the earliest representations of men on ancient monuments. As early as the eighteenth dynasty (seventeen hundred years before the Christian era), the artists of Egypt represented at least five races of negroes. Nigritic types were also figured by the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, although none of those people had as extended knowledge of Africa as the Egyptians had. The examination of all the monuments which have come down from antiquity makes it evident that the negro races of Africa and Asia were well known. Scientific investigations of negro characteristics began to be made in the sixteenth century. The first to record one was Albert Dürer, who, in 1525, drew a profile of a negro inclosed in a system of lines, of which an oblique and an horizontal line formed at their junction a real facial angle. MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy, in their "Crania Ethnica," begin the study of the negro races with the negroes of Oceanica, and select as their point of departure the Negritos, the most brachycephalic race. The Negrito race proper, which was first observed in the Philippine Islands, has been found in the interior of the Peninsula of Malacca, the Sunda Islands, and the Andaman Islands. M. Hamy has been able to trace it even to the interior of India.
- ↑ Translated from the French by W. H. Larrabee.
