The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

La Peyrère attacked the Adamic dogma in the name of the respect due to the text of a sacred Book. The philosophers of the eighteenth century spoke in the name of Science and Reason. It is to them that the school of Polygenists in reality owe their origin. But it is easy to see that the greater number of them were only guided in their writings by a controversial spirit, their chief aim was the destruction of a dogma. Unfortunately, the same prepossession appears in too many works published in our own day. On the other hand certain monogenists are guilty of seeking in religious doctrines arguments in favour of their theory, and anathematising their adversaries in the name of dogma.

Social and political prejudices in addition to dogmatic and anti-dogmatic prejudices have helped to make still more obscure a question already very difficult in itself. In the United States in particular the advocates of slavery and its opponents have often fought upon this ground. Further still in 1844 Mr. Calhoun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, when replying to the representations made to him by France and England on the subject of slavery, did not hesitate to defend the institutions of his country by urging the radical differences, which, according to him, separated the Negro from the White man.

Besides those polygenists who are influenced by prejudices almost or entirely unscientific, there are sincere and disinterested men of science who believe in the multiplicity of human origins. Foremost among the latter are medical men, who are accustomed to the study of the individual and who only possess a slight familiarity with the study of the species. Then again there are palæontologists, who from the nature of their work are compelled only to take into account morphological resemblances and differences, without even turning their attention to facts of reproduction or of filiation. Finally, there are entomologists, conchologists, etc., who, exclusively interested in the distinction of innumerable species by purely external characters, are entirely ignorant of physiological phenomena, and judge living beings as they would fossils.

On the other hand, monogenism reckons among its partisans nearly all those naturalists who have turned their attention to the phenomena of life, and among them some of the most illustrious. In spite of the difference of their doctrines, Buffon and Linnæus, Cuvier and Lamarck, Blainville and the two Geoffroys, Müller the physiologist and Humboldt agree upon this point. Apart from any influence which the name of these great men might exercise, it is clear that I share their opinion. I have on different occasions explained the purely scientific reasons for my convictions. I shall now endeavour to sum them up in as few words as possible.

II. Let us first establish the importance of the question. It escapes many minds and I have heard a doubt expressed upon it by men who have enthusiastically followed anthropological studies. It is, however, easily proved.

If the human groups have appeared with all their distinctive characters in the isolated condition, and in the various localities where geography teaches us to seek them; if we can trace them up to stocks originally distinct, thus constituting so many special species, then the study of them is one of the most simple, presenting no more difficulty than that of animal or vegetable species. There would be nothing singular in the diversity of the groups. It would be sufficient to examine and describe them one after the other, merely determining the degree of affinity between them. At most we should have to fix their limits and to discover the influence which groups geographically brought in contact had been able to exercise upon each other.

If, on the contrary, these groups can be traced to one common primitive stock, if there is but one single species of man, the differences, sometimes so striking, which separate the groups, constitute a problem similar to that of our animal and vegetable races. Further, man is found in all parts of the globe, and we must account for this dispersion; we must explain how the same species has been able to accommodate itself to such opposite conditions of existence as those to which the inhabitants of the pole and the equator are subject. And lastly, the simple affinity of naturalists is changed into consanguinity; and the problems of filiation are added to those of variation, migration, and acclimatisation.

It is clear that, independently of every religious, philosophical, or social consideration, this science will differ entirely in character as we consider it from a polygenistic point of view, or according to theories of monogenism.

III. If the former of these doctrines claims such a large number of adherents, the reason may for the most part be found in the causes mentioned above. But its seductive simplicity and the facility which it seems to lend to the interpretation of facts also stand for a great deal. Unfortunately these advantages are only apparent. Polygenism conceals or denies difficulties; it does not suppress them. They are suddenly revealed, like submarine rocks, to anyone who tries, however little, to go to the root of the matter.

The case is the same with this doctrine as with the Systems of classification formerly employed in botany and zoology which rested upon a small number of arbitrary data. They were undoubtedly very convenient, but possessed the serious fault of being conducive to most erroneous opinions from a destruction of true relations and an imposition of false connections.