On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo

by Paul Broca

Alfourous and the Malays, and if this race be really hybrid, it is not easy to see how Prichard and his adherents are authorised to assert that they persist by themselves.

The three examples adduced by Prichard having thus proved without any absolute value, a diametrically opposite doctrine has been advanced. It has been said that since this author was obliged to go so far for such indifferent examples, it amounts to a proof that he could not find any others,[13] and the conclusion was arrived at that a mixed race neither has nor could have a permanent existence.

This novel assertion is perfectly erroneous, and if it found adherents, it is simply because the question has been badly put; because the word race has not received a precise signification, and consequently, a very confused acceptation has been given to the term.

Among the various characters which distinguish the numerous varieties of the genus homo, some are more or less important, and more or less evident. To distinguish two races, a single character, however slight, is sufficient, provided it be hereditary and sufficiently fixed. If, for instance, two peoples differed merely from each other by the colour of the hair and the beard, though they may resemble each other in every other respect, by the simple fact that the one has black, whilst the other has fair hair, it may be asserted that they are not of the same race. This is the popular and the true meaning of the term race, which, however, does not necessarily implicate the idea either of identity or diversity of origin. Thus all ethnologists and historians, all the monogenists, and polygenistic authors say that the Irish proper are not of the same race as the English. The Germans, the Celts, the Basques, the Sclaves, the Jews, Arabs, Kabyles, etc., etc., are considered more or less separate races, more or less easy to be characterised, and more or less distinguished by their manners, tongues, history and origin. There are thus a large number of human races; but if, instead of considering all the characters, we confine ourselves to take into consideration but a few of the more important, or if, after having by an analytical process, first studied the various races separately, we now subject them to a synthetic process, we soon recognise that there exists among them numerous affinities, which enable us to dispose them in a certain number of natural groups.

The ensemble of the characters common to each group, constitute the type of that group. Thus, all the races we have just enumerated, and many others, have the skin white, regular features, soft hair, oval face, vertical jaws, and elliptical cranium, etc. These points of resemblance give them in some sort a family likeness, by which they are recognised at once, and which has caused them to be designated by the collective name of Caucasian races. The hyperborean races, and those of Eastern Asia, constitute the family of Mongolian races; the group of Ethiopian races equally comprises a large number of black races with woolly hair, and a prognathous head. The American and the Malayo-Polynesian races form the two last groups.

It must not be believed that all human races can with equal facility be ranged in either of these divisions; nor must we believe that the characteristic traits of one group are equally marked in all the dependent races; nor even that they are found combined in any of these races; nor, finally, that in the centre of each group we find a typical race in which all the characters have their maximum of development. This might be the case if all known races had descended from five primitive stocks, as admitted by several polygenists, or if, as many monogenists think, humanity, one in the beginning, had soon afterwards been divided into five principal trunks, from which issued, as so many accessory branches, the numerous sub-divisions which constitute the secondary races. But there is no race which can pretend to personify within itself the type to which it belongs. This type is fictitious; the description is an ideal one, like the forms of the Apollo de Belvedere. Human types, like all other types, are merely abstractions, and in proportion as we attach more importance to this or that character, we obtain a more or less considerable number of types. Thus, Blumenbach had five, Cuvier only three, and Bérard describes fifteen types. This is also proved by the fact, that whilst many races attach themselves directly and evidently to a fixed type, there are others belonging to two very dissimilar types. Thus the Abyssinians are Caucasian in form and Ethiopian by colour. The description of the principal types is thus merely a methodical process, fit to facilitate, by the formation of a certain number of groups, the comparison of human races, and to simplify the partial description of each. This division has, moreover, the advantage of establishing for the greater part of the races, their degree of relative affinity or divergence. It even accords to a certain point with their primitive repartition upon the surface of the globe, which has permitted, without doing any violence to the facts, to distinguish the types by denominations borrowed from geography.[14]

There is in the human mind a tendency to personify abstractions. These ideal types have usurped a place in the domain of facts, so that a real existence has been given to them. The monogenists had, strictly speaking, a right to do so without any violence to their principles; but the polygenists, who have followed their example, have sinned against logic. The former attribute all varieties of the human species to the numerous modifications of five principal races, issued themselves from one common stock, and the same influences which, according to then, have in the origin produced fundamental races, have afterwards by an analogous process produced the secondary races. All this is sufficiently clear; and such stood the question when the polygenists appeared in the arena. Their first efforts were directed to attack the doctrine in its essential foundations, and to demonstrate that by no natural causation could Whites be transformed into Negroes, or Negroes into Mongolians; they therefore proclaimed the multiplicity of human origin and the plurality of species. Be it that they have shrunk from the idea of causing too great a revolution in science, or that they thought that it would conduce sooner to the triumph of their doctrine, they retained as far as possible the number of species, and confined themselves to assume a primitive stock for each of the five races described by the Unitarians. I do not assert that all polygenists followed this course, as some proceeded in a more independent manner. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Desmoulins, P. Bérard, Morton, had the courage to break entirely with the past, and to remodel the classical divisions. They found, however, but few imitators; and many polygenists are to this day content to assign a distinct origin to each of the five principal trunks, which constitute for the monogenists the five fundamental races, but which are to us only natural groups formed by the union of races or species of the same type. They continue also very often to use the term race to designate the ensemble of all individuals of each group, adopting thus by a sort of transaction the language of those whose system they reject; and thus they speak of the white or Caucasian race, the yellow or Mongolian race, the black or Ethiopian race, etc., as if all these individuals of a Caucasian type resembled each other to constitute one race; as if, for instance, the brown Celts and the fair-haired Germans had descended from the same primitive stock. This contradiction has given a handle to the monogenists; for if climate and mode of life may cause a German to become a Celt, there is no reason why, under certain influences, a Celt might not become a Berber, a Berber a Foulah, a Foulah a Negro, and a Negro an Australian.

I easily comprehend how careful we ought to be to employ in Anthropology the term species. It can scarcely be used with certainty until science has clearly circumscribed the limits of each species of men. This moment is not come yet, and may, perhaps, never arrive, for, in the midst of constant changes produced by crossing, migrations, and conquests, and with the certainty that several races, or a great number of them, have disappeared within historical time,[15] it seems impossible to appreciate the degree of purity of certain races, to discover their origin, to know whether they are autochthonic or exotic, whether they belonged originally to this or that Fauna, and re-establish the Ethnology of our planet as it was in the beginning. To fix the number of primitive species of men, or even the number of actual species, is an insoluble problem to us, and probably to our successors. The attempts of Desmoulins et Bory de Saint Vincent have only produced imperfect sketches, which have led to contradictory classifications, where the number of arbitrary divisions is nearly equal to more natural divisions.

The term species has, in classical language, an absolute sense, implying both the idea of a special conformation and special origin, and if some races—the Australians, for instance—unite these conditions in a sufficient degree, to constitute a clearly marked species, many other pure or mixed races escape, in this respect, a rigorous appreciation. It is for these reasons that many polygenists, after having proclaimed the multiplicity of the origins of humanity, and having recognised the impossibility of determining the number and the characters of the primitive stocks, have justly avoided methodically to divide the human genus into species. Many among them, however, who thought that they were, nevertheless, bound to establish divisions, have committed the error to accept the basis of the classification of the monogenists, and, like them, to establish five chief human families, and, like them, to admit that the individuals of each family are issued from a common trunk, with this difference, that, whilst the monogenists assume that the five primary trunks have proceeded from the same stock, and have the same roots, the pentagenists (if we may use this term) assume five distinct and independent stocks. Logically speaking, it would have been requisite to term the five fundamental races of the monogenists species, but it is easy to perceive that, for many reasons, the term species cannot be employed here in an absolute sense. The pentagenists have felt this, and, for want of a better term, use the word race, which has thus been diverted from its real acceptation.