SPECIES.
We have now arrived at the limits of the task which we proposed to attempt, and we hope, after what has gone before, that we shall be able to arrive at some scientific conclusion.
After having endeavoured to establish in the introduction the route we had to follow in anthropological studies, we gave an account of the system of purely philosophic researches, putting every foreign or prejudicial idea on one side, and, resting on facts and on mathematical reasoning, we have endeavoured to apply these principles. We endeavoured at first to prove that man was not a being as foreign and superior to the rest of animal nature, as certain naturalists have thought, taking themselves, the first from among men, as the point of comparison. We have considered the inferior races, and we have shown that between these and the first animals the distance was neither absolute nor well-defined; that man came into the zoological series, and that he only forms definitively a separate family. Changing our direction, we abandoned this acquired knowledge, and we passed on to the study of varieties among men; we found them profound, indeed, and of every description.
Then came the study of the influences to which man may be subjected. We saw that hybridity did not play any serious part in this, since it could only weaken pre-existing differences. On the other hand, we have acknowledged that in the limits of time accessible to our knowledge, nothing justified the hypothesis, that climate had such an extensive influence in changing man so as to make the differences which we may observe between ancestors and descendants such as would suffice, in any other zoological group, to characterise distinct species.
In regarding man as a separate kingdom, we are, by this fact, exempted from applying the same rules as in zoology; but, by proving that he comes into the zoological series, we have implicitly proved that he must be submitted to the same laws. Science cannot have two different modes of proceeding: it must follow the same paths in the same subjects in order to arrive at comparable results. It is the only truly philosophic road: nature is one, and the work of the modern sciences is precisely to tend towards unity. The most diverse phenomena in the hands of analysts compare and assimilate themselves to the rays of a spirit of synthesis; magnetism, electricity, light, heat, motion, everything is mingled and linked together so well, that we know not how to make a distinction any more.
The pure and simple adoption of the law of organic unity brings us to the following proposition:—
Proposition.—Either we must admit different species in the genus Homo, or we must entirely reform zoological classification.
This last hypothesis will mean, then, that the works of Linnæus, Cuvier, De Blainville, and the two Geoffroys, will be of no value, and that we must commence anew the great work of classification upon the same basis which we wish to adopt in anthropology. Of the two terms of the preceding proposition, the second merits particular consideration. Zoological classification has been created and established by the greatest thinkers of which humanity can boast; even more, independent by its nature from all religious influence, it has been freely done, and without prejudice, as every scientific question ought to be, by means of facts and reasoning. It has not always been so with the works of those who desire that man should be an exception to universal nature, and beyond the limits of the animal kingdom. Zoological classification need not be reformed,—it is that of the genus Homo.
We touch now on the much discussed and controverted question of species, and at the same time on the question of the origin of man. We do not believe, as many eminent men have done, that this origin must eternally be concealed, that man will never be permitted to tear the veil from this statue of Isis. Let it suffice us to say that we are about to enter on slippery ground, where we shall only find as few resting places as the stones of a ford half destroyed by a torrent. And since we shall only find here and there the fragile aid of one hypothesis against so many others, in order to assist the consequents of our reasonings, is it a reason for drawing back? We do not think so.