We do not know any more about the conditions which allow two types to subsist indefinitely one near the other: must we attribute this resistance to the country, or the races which are always before them? Why, if the Normans have disappeared in America, Italy, and Asia, should they still remain in Normandy, few in number, it is true, but always the same, and perfectly described by Linnæus, when he said of the Goths in the Scandinavian peninsula, “They have smooth, fair hair, and the iris of the eye is of a bluish colour.”[263] Even when cross-breedings take place between more than two races,—even when these various influences are mixed together, struggled with, and assisted in a thousand ways, so that the question has become almost inextricable to the anthropologist, in the midst of the varied produce resulting from all these combinations, we are astonished to see here and there individuals who have the absolute and complete character of one of the original stock. Whilst there remains among a people a considerable amount of mixed blood, we may always expect to see some one appear who will have the pure characteristics of the race which was believed to be extinguished, and mingled for ever with the blood of others.[264]
The most remarkable instance which can be quoted about these crosses, and at the same time the easiest to notice, is that presented by England, where two races live side by side, mixed together, without one having absorbed the other since the time of Strabo, Tacitus, and Julius Cæsar. England, isolated from Europe, ought necessarily to be a fertile field for the anthropologist, and it will be there where the history of historic and pre-historic races will soonest be made. Eminent men work at it with ardour; and the certainty of remounting, through archæology and palæontology, to the first races which invaded England, at a time when the use of metals was unknown in the west, makes this study one of the most interesting of the present day.
Two distinct races divide Great Britain, or, at least, representatives of two races are found there; and in the midst of an immense number of intermediate individualities, the least accustomed eye will not fail to distinguish these two fundamental types, as different as two men with white skins can be. One of these races is composed of tall, strong, powerful men, with transparent skin, and blue eyes;[265] the other, with a more tawny complexion, has black, curling hair.[266] The first were formerly called Caledonians, the second Silurians, very like the Iberians of the Spanish peninsula: the first, of Germanic, or northern origin; the second, of Celtic, or southern origin. Nobody denies, at the present day, that these two races are well characterised, and every day one can meet perfect specimens of them in England. We may quote certain districts where the Silurian, Iberian, or Celtic race, as tradition wills it, are dominant;[267] for example, in the north-west of Glamorganshire, in the outskirts of Merthyr, and in the Vale of Neath.[268] Mr. John Philips finds them equally abundant in the Danelag[269] district, between Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, with the same characteristics, “black eyes and hair, uniform, or rather, dark complexion.”[270] Among these two races there are of necessity a considerable number of cross-breeds who, allying themselves among one another, or to the pure types, produce varied results, and in this manner unite the two groups by a multitude of inappreciable shades of difference.
Such is also the case in France. Edwards[271] has divined it almost by inspiration; and M. Périer[272] has powerfully added to his presumptions, by examining more attentively all ancient documents which treat on the inhabitants of Gaul. M. Broca, in the Mémoire which inaugurated the proceedings of the Paris Anthropological Society,[273] has proved in the clearest possible manner, that if we draw a line passing by Cherbourg and Nice,[274] we shall divide France into two distinct zones as regards the appearance and height of the inhabitants. In the south-west, the ancient Celtic population is of small height, as is proved by the great number of military exemptions.[275] In the north-west, in the region which was always encroached upon by the fair and powerful races of the north, the result is quite the contrary. Here, then, are two distinct races: the one, formerly mistress of the west, and then pushed to the extremity of the continent; the other, leaving its forests and encroaching on the rest,—both differing as much as possible by physical aspect and by moral aptitudes, but now filling up their numbers, so to speak, by each other’s help, and working together for the glory and prosperity of their common land.
We must not, however, give a general meaning to these last words, and thus extend their meaning to all cases of ethnic cross-breeding. The two united terms must not be too dissimilar, so that the two branches may reunite as regards progress. This is essential; and if we have endeavoured to prove that the hybrids of distant races do not possess all the necessary conditions of animal life and of propagation, it would be easy to find numerous proofs in order to show that, generally, the intellectual conditions of hybrids are not much more satisfactory than their physical condition, since the two intelligent organisms which are there combined do not show a decided similarity.
Doctor Tschudi[276] says, in speaking of the Zambos (hybrids from aborigines and Negroes at Lima), “As men, they are greatly inferior to the pure races; and as members of society, they are the worst class of citizens:” they alone furnish four-fifths of the criminals in the prisons of Lima. Mr. E. G. Squier[277] has made almost the same observation about the Zambos of Nicaragua. In his part of the country, the union of Spaniards with these same Americans, seems to have only produced degenerate men, who show no capability whatsoever for perfection or improvement. In fact, it is on account of these same principles that M. de Gobineau[278] has set himself to prove at length that the mixture of races necessarily conducts mankind to degradation and universal debasement. Cabanis had the same ideas on the subject.[279]
The supposition which Cabanis and M. de Gobineau have taken up will, doubtless, never be realised. To admit that all human races can reach a complete hybridity, would be to admit that each race is cosmopolite, which it is not. But at least it remains true, that when two very different races are united, we must not hope for anything good or durable from their union. The same phenomenon happens, with the simple difference of intensity, when two different species of animals are united. So the monogenists are astonished at such a result in man, “a result quite contrary,” says one of them,[280] “to what one generally expects in crossing a race.”[281] The astonishment of the learned man, of whom we speak, is explained easily enough by the ideas which he holds of human races, where he only sees degenerated varieties of the original type, preserved by the European in its primitive purity.
It is evident that in this monogenic hypothesis, which we shall not touch on again, the union of one of these degenerated races with the pure stock would be a sort of hygid[282] consanguinity, and therefore favourable to the offspring. Here there would happen something analogous to the practice of the peasants in the crétin districts, who try to struggle against the scourge by seeking for marriages in the plains, in order to give purer blood to each generation. In a more general manner it is evident that if we suppose two sets of people born of the same stock, and that one of them, after various fortunes, after having undergone fatal influences, should unite itself with the other, which had remained unaltered, it is evident that the produce of such a union ought to tend to reproduce in its purity the primitive type.[283] If it is not so with the union of different races of men, the reason is simply that they do not directly descend the one from the other; and from this debasement of produce there results a new proof in favour of the ideas which we are defending.
It remains for us to speak of hybridity, as applied to the propagation of a deformity or a monstrosity. We know that when we experimentally unite one of this class to the other, two individuals whose organism has equally deviated from the usual type, “nothing is more difficult than to prevent these mischances from being done away with.”[284] A stronger reason, then, for the same when one of these individuals alone is deformed, which happens always in a state of nature. The races which we can thus produce are a kind of experiment which exist, but which it would be illogical to deduce can exist naturally. Because we make in a laboratory oxygenated water, or mixtures of hydrogen and chlorine, must we admit that these bodies are to be found united in nature? Quite the contrary; we deduce from their instability that they do not, and cannot thus exist in a natural state.