APPENDIX.
By J. C. NOTT, M. D.,
MOBILE, ALABAMA.
APPENDIX.
I have seldom perused a work which has afforded me so much pleasure and instruction as the one of Count Gobineau, "Sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines," and regard most of his conclusions as incontrovertible. There are, however, a few points in his argument which should not be passed without comment, and others not sufficiently elaborated. My original intention was to say much, but, fortunately for me, my colleague, Mr. Hotz, has so fully and ably anticipated me, in his Introduction and Notes, as to leave me little of importance to add.
The essay of Count Gobineau is eminently practical and useful in its design. He views the various races of men rather as a historian than a naturalist, and while he leaves open the long mooted question of unity of origin, he so fully establishes the permanency of the actual moral, intellectual, and physical diversities of races as to leave no ground for antagonists to stand upon. Whatever remote causes may be assigned, there is no appeal from the conclusion that white, black, Mongol, and other races were fully developed in nations some 3000 years before Christ, and that no physical causes, during this long course of time, have been in operation, to change one type of man into another. Count Gobineau, therefore, accepts the existing diversity of races as at least an accomplished fact, and draws lessons of wisdom from the plain teachings of history. Man with him ceases to be an abstraction; each race, each nation, is made a separate study, and a fertile but unexplored field is opened to our view.
Our author leans strongly towards a belief in the original diversity of races, but has evidently been much embarrassed in arriving at conclusions by religious scruples and by the want of accurate knowledge in that part of natural history which treats of the designation of species, and the laws of hybridity; he has been taught to believe that two distinct species cannot produce perfectly prolific offspring, and therefore concludes that all races of men must be of one origin, because they are prolific inter se. My appendix will therefore be devoted mainly to this question of species.