The plurality of the human race

by G. Pouchet

Isidore Geoffroy believed in a decisive influence of the medium, but only under certain conditions. He believed that these influences are limited, as he himself calls it, every time that it relates to anything beyond the action of man, that is to say, on savage or free animals. In this case, the action of the medium, according to him, would be confined exclusively to the producing of varieties in form and in the colour of the skin,[210]—a form we never see varied in the same class of men; the colour of the skin,—which is sensibly the same among men, among whom the fair type is itself exceptional, and spread over a very small portion of the ancient north-west continent.

In every case, Isidore Geoffroy acknowledged that these variations are sometimes very inconsiderable;[211] and although they have in no way approached those which separate human races, we may be allowed to believe that the differences observed among savage species were, in his eyes, much less important. He has endeavoured, on the contrary, to compare insignificant differences among free animals with varieties much more marked, and much clearer than those shown by domestic animals, and therefore, doubtless, he wished to make a step towards the fundamental question of anthropology, which was evidently at the bottom of his thoughts, and which he had for a long time resolved in a monogenist sense.

But domestic animals have quite special conditions, which do not allow the assimilation of these varieties with those which have been simply produced by natural forces. Cuvier[212] had already pointed out this difference, and rejected all assimilation between them and free animals. Without taking too much account of the reasons which impelled him towards such opinions, we believe that upon this point, at least, he was entirely in the right; as to the rest, Isidore Geoffroy himself furnishes us with weapons against his own theories. “Since nature, left to herself,” he says, “does not give us witnesses of the great changes in the conditions of existence, it is clear that there only remains one means of seeing such changes, and of deducing therefrom the effects upon organisation,—it is to force nature to do what she would not do voluntarily.”[213] All the condemnation of this system of Isidore Geoffroy is contained, in our opinion, in these last words. As for ourselves, we reject, in the most absolute and formal manner, the connexion which some have desired to make between man and the domestic animals. Man is a sociable animal, like many others; but he only becomes exceptionally a domestic animal when he falls into slavery. The domestic animal is a being drawn from the normal state, and constrained by man. He is constrained by nature to obey the influence of his master alone,—an influence infinitely variable. It resembles itself no longer; the habit of obedience does not even leave it its will; it ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere machine, producing for the benefit of another person.

Domesticity has certain characteristics of degeneracy; the animal loses its activity, it becomes less eager, and assimilates itself more; it becomes almost incapable of subsisting alone; it vegetates; together with its personality it has lost this resistance to the ambient medium, which is the necessary characteristic of the species, the condition of the nisus formativus; it modifies itself to everybody’s will. Its organism may be considered as being in a state of unstable equilibrium, so that the least influence causes this organism to vary, and with the least possible delay, to a considerable degree.[214] But when man ceases for an instant to be attentive in directing these modifications, when he forgets himself for a moment, nature—always vigilant and ready to seize upon her rights—destroys all this human edifice, and recalls the animal to a type which may be called normal, but which is not the type of the stock, since nature, acting on an organism endowed, as we have just said, with the wonderful malleability and ductility acquired by domesticity, immediately and naturally modifies the animal, which is restored to liberty, by the power of the new medium into which it is cast.

Nothing of the same sort takes place with mankind. This does not mean, however, that he cannot also be reduced to a state of domesticity.[215] Slaves, indeed, are nothing else; and all that is wanting in order to place them in comparison with animal domesticity, would be the history of a race of Ilotes, which has always been free from any mixture, and has continued so during a time equal to that which separates us from the first conquest of the dog, the sheep, and the ox, upon the high table-lands of Asia.

Let us, then, leave all comparison[216] between man, free to come, to go, and to choose his own food,—and domestic animals. Let us return to those who live free, and say, once for all, that if we stop our progress with so many details concerning these comparisons, it is from a kind of respect for the character of certain learned men who have thus treated anthropological science. We believe very little in biology, or in demonstrations by similarities. Every animal, every organ, every anatomical element, has its own life, its own laws of birth, development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commencement of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular theory, for instance, in the elements of anatomy; but every day the laws of life (we might say, the laws of nature) are multiplied and complicated; every morning the searcher after truth must expect to discover some phenomenon which will disturb the scientific belief of the night before. “Every evening,” said one of the masters of science, “our best prayer is to form afresh a synthesis of the sciences.”[217] Well, if modern anatomy has taught us that the initial phase of the development of the egg differs according to the animal,[218] even as nothing resembles less the development of certain bones of the face than that of their neighbours, how shall we dare to compare any animal with man?[219] Having said this, let us return to the influence of climate upon wild or free animals.

Isidore Geoffroy quotes, with complacency, the instance of the Corsican and African stag taken from Europe to these two countries scarcely twenty centuries ago, which form at the present day two clearly distinct varieties. From that the author of the Histoire Naturelle Générale argues rapid and sensible modifications, caused by the action of the medium. But, first of all, the evidence of this fact is simply negative; the old authors, who denied the existence of the stag in Corsica and Africa, were perhaps simply ignorant of it. Then, this introduction, if it did take place, was perhaps performed by means of animals which had been kept in domesticity or captivity for many generations, and consequently, were easily able to change their mode of life directly they recovered their liberty, as we have already said. However this may be, it is simply man himself whom it is necessary to examine, without comparing him to any animal, and without misleading ourselves with the connexion of climates, generally compared too hastily, and with regard to mere equality of temperature.

It is sufficient to run over, in Humboldt’s Cosmos, the lengthy enumeration of circumstances which make up a climate, in order to understand that all the comparisons which our minds may make between any two regions of the world are, at least, rash. The analogy of two climates is rather a sort of experimental notion, which can only be reasonably deduced by the similarity of the biological as well as the meteorological phenomena of every kind in the two regions to be compared. And when climates shall have been able to change a white man into a black (a fact we energetically deny), must we also lay to the charge of meteorological influence the clear moral aptitude and profound differences of the various species of mankind? Shall we admit that a little more cold or heat will alter the intellect? and why not language?

But we are not the first to doubt all these marvels. Bacon[220] and Albin[221] fairly doubted the effect of the sun on the colour of the skin. Camper, who admitted that all varieties come from external influences, acknowledged, and with good faith, that the influences which we can appreciate are not sufficient to explain fully either the prominent jaw-bone in the Negro, the cheek-bone in the Kalmuc, or the obliquity of the eyes in the Chinese and the Malay, etc. We can declare the same about all the other peculiarities of the same order,—the flattening of the nose, the crisped state of the hair, the colouring matter which we find even in the arch of the palate in the Negro, etc.

We owe a very good observation to Camper: “The black colour which is noticed in the natural parts of both sexes, and even in white individuals, clearly proves that our reticular membrane has its colour only from the blood.”[222] This fact alone should have long ago given a more rational impulse to researches on this subject. If—putting all these hypotheses on one side, for all that we can bring forward has no other value—if we wish to study in a positive manner the influence of the sky upon man, we have only in reality one resource,—it is to shut ourselves up in the limits of history, to study the effect of the migrations of which it tells us, and to see whether man, transported far away, does become modified, and how this modification takes place. Then we shall find two answers to these questions, which form together a kind of anthropological law.