White[253] supposes a colony composed of an equal number of blacks and whites; then he tries to find out what will happen in the course of time, by supposing that a thirtieth part of them die and are born each year. He arrives, by his calculations, at the following results: in sixty-five years the number of blacks, whites, and mulattos will be equal; in ninety-one years the whites will only form one-tenth of the total population, and the blacks one-tenth; in three centuries, there would not remain one hundredth part of them, either black or white.
This proposition is true, theoretically speaking; it is practically false: it rests upon what we may call an unstable equilibrium. In the physical world we may, by care, happen to put an ellipsoid in a state of equilibrium on the extremity of its greater axis, or a cone on its apex; these are also unstable equilibria, but the least cause intervening, the smallest movement, and the balance is instantly destroyed. If we admit into White’s theory a birth which does not take place, or an unproductive union, the conclusions are overturned at once; a part of the new generation will preserve the primitive type,[254] and this portion will be much more considerable than White imagined. When the facts of arrest of development, quoted above, are not sufficient to prove that a mongrel breed cannot subsist by itself, can we anywhere find one? Do we find a people preserving for centuries a medium type between two other types which gave it birth? We see them nowhere,—just as little as we see a race of mules. The fact is that such a hybrid race, intermediate to two defined types, can only have a subjective and ephemeral existence.
The definition of the word type, both in natural history and in the particular case in which we are engaged, is rather a difficult matter, and which we can feel much better than we can express it in writing. When we have seen a certain number of men belonging to one race, the mind, without any particular study, takes from each a number of general characteristics, and forms from them a sort of ideal being, to which it refers the real beings which it may henceforth see, and with which it identifies those who have a sufficient amount of similarity with this being.[255]
We have seen in the preceding chapter that, as regards historic times at least, a type invariably reproduces itself through time and space, when it does not succumb to the new climate in which it is about to live. If we admit, however, that two types may have met with a harmony of influences, a medium in which they can both live, we say that—even with all the care that may be taken to mix them—we shall always find, whatever White may say, black people and white people, if these races were black and white originally; and this by reason of laws which we think we can shape, and whose demonstration will be as positive as that of the domain of history.
Law I.—A medium type cannot exist by itself, except on the condition of being supported by the two creating types.
Law II.—When two types become united, two phenomena may arise: 1. Either one of them will absorb the other; or, 2. They may subsist simultaneously in the midst of a greater or less number of hybrids.
These two laws are only, in fact, the formula of the principles which Prichard[256] himself laid down long ago, and which are held also by the editor of the Ethnological Journal,[257] by Knox,[258] and by William Edwards.[259]
By reason of these laws, we find that nowhere can a medium race either establish itself on the ruins of two creating races, or replace them, and live by itself with an independent existence, formed entirely of hybrids which propagate among themselves. In fact we have laid down a rule that conditions of development are very much restricted among hybrids, and that they can only go on decreasing in their descendants, if they are capable of producing any. The crossed race will only exist in the condition of being supported by the two creating types remaining in the midst of it. If the value of this law is only deduced from a negative fact,—that is to say, from the absence on the surface of the globe of any real hybrid race existing by itself on a certain extent of territory,—we shall find, as regards the second, a great number of positive facts.
When two types unite, we said, a double phenomenon may be observed; either of these two types will absorb the other, or they may subsist simultaneously, one near the other. The first case ought to be the most frequent; but it is the least appreciable, because it does not leave sensible traces. We must endeavour to discover in history the remains of a people who formerly existed, and who have since disappeared. Thus, the colony of Nubians, taken to the banks of the Phasis by Rámases, have left no trace of their sojourn among the inhabitants of the land. It is the same with the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean coasts.[260] The Normans have only left, on the coasts of Labrador, their engraved stelæ;[261] their race has not remained. The primitive Turkish and Asiatic type has likewise disappeared from Europe. This has been attributed to the introduction of Georgian women into the seraglios, and it is, perhaps, a reason only too readily accepted. It is, indeed, very natural that the repeated introduction of Georgian and Circassian women into the hárems should deprive the descendants of the conquerors of their original characteristics; but if this were the case, the Turks of our days would, from continued unions with the same race, have become real Georgians and Circassians themselves. It has not been so, however, because the harems are recruited in Europe as well as in Asia, and even then the fact would only be applicable to families of high position. The truth seems to be that the real Turkish blood has nearly disappeared, and has been encroached upon and replaced by the old blood of the country, either Macedonian or Thracian.
We are ignorant of the laws which govern the disappearance of one race in the sight of another. Sometimes it happens very rapidly; sometimes it does not show itself. The complex conditions which rule it enter into the great order of facts which Darwin has so ingeniously classed under the name of the struggle for existence. They have always seemed to us to present a complete analogy with the disappearance of certain animal species before others, the steps of which disappearance history sometimes allows us to measure; so that there seems to be a curious similarity between the great fluctuations of nations and of animals upon continents. We are almost tempted to say that the invasion of the West by the Barbarians, the black rat, and the field mouse, is the triple expression of one and the same biological law. The American population retrogrades, like certain animals;[262] that of the Australian coasts has disappeared; and we believe that the Negroes of Africa themselves will be called, at some distant period, to give up their place in their turn.