The Human Race

he first appear?-Unity of Mankind, evidence in support-What is understood by species in Natural

nferior to that of man. It does not extend beyond the necessities of attack and defence, the power of seeking food, and a small number of affections or passions, whose very limited scope merely extends to material wants. With man, on the other hand, intelligence is of a high order, although its range is limited, and it is often arrested, powerless and mute, before the problems itself proposes. In bodily formation, man is an

th the theory itself; and secondly, because a perfectly accurate definition supposes an absolute knowledge of the subject, of which absolute knowledge our understanding is incapable. It has been well said that a c

suggesting them. This can be explained. Man is the last link of visible creation; with him closes the series of living beings which we are permitted to contemplate. Beyond him there extends, in a world hidden from our view, a train of beings of a new order, endowed with faculties superior and inaccessible to our comprehension, mysterious phalanxes, whose place of abode even is unknown to us, and who, after us, form the next step in the infinite pro

when we investigate the origin of man, the period of his first appearance on the globe, the unity or division of our species, the classification of the human race, &c. If to many

d, whether man was at once constituted such as he is, or whether he originally existed in some other animal form, which has been modified in its anatomical structure by time and circumstances. In other words, is it true,

in "Primitive Man," that man is not derived, by a process of organic transformation, from any animal, and that

What is this? Here is again a problem which surpasses our understanding. Let us say, my readers, that the creation of the human species was an act of God, that man is on

opinion of some writers who carry the first appearance of man as far back as the tertiary period. Rejecting this date on account of the insufficiency of the evidence produced, we, in common with most naturalists, have admitted, that man appeared for the first time upon our globe at the commencement of the quaternary per

nary period, we establish the fact, which is agreeable to the cosmogony of Moses, that man was

nding species of our time, filled the forests and peopled the plains. The first men were therefore contemporary with the woolly elephant, the cave bear and tiger; they had to contend with these savage phalanxes, as formidable in their number as their strength. Nevertheless, in obedience to the laws of nature, these animals w

e given the history of th

le, wretched and naked, in the midst of a hostile and savage brute population, to the day when

owing pages. Did man see the light at any one spot of the earth, and at that alone, and is it possible to indicate the region which was, so to say, the cradle of humanity? Or, are we to believe that, in the first instance, man appeared in several pla

D WOMEN O

e shall have to combat the arguments of a hostile doctrine. As we said in the early part of this Introduction, we must ever be prepared to encoun

humanity originated in the region to which it is now attached, and that it was not emigration follow

pluralité des races humaines, to be convinced that the author, like others of his school, as ardent in demolition as powerless in construction, hav

now-a-days have never been connected with other populations. M. Georges Pouchet preserves prudent silence upon this question; he

a particular region, he has radiated in every direction from that point, and by his wanderings coupled with th

with other organized beings, that is to say, with animals and plants, and then apply this class of f

ES OF THE

by human industry. The earth is, so to speak, divided into a certain number of zones, which have their particular vegetable and animal life. These are so many natural provinces, all of small extent, which represent veritable centres of creation. The cedar, peculiar to the mountains of Lebanon, existed in this regio

hippopotamus and giraffe in other countries of the same continent; monkeys exist in very few portions of the globe, and if we consider their different species, we shall find that the place of abode of each species is very limited. For instance, of the lar

ly among beings living on the surface of the globe, we come to the conclusion that the huma

t is probable that man first saw the day on the plains of Central Asia, and that it was from this point tha

that invaded Europe at times prehistoric and in more recent ages; those conquerors belonged to the Aryan or Persian race, and they came from Central Asia. We shall see later on, that the different languages of the globe resolve themselves into three fundamental forms: monosyllabic languages, in which each word contains but one syllable; agglutinative languages, in which the words are connected; and inflected languages, which are the same as those

but the three types of human speech. Does not this, therefore, afford ground for presumption, if not actual

g so to say, around this point of origin, that Man

rimitive populations, explains to us the displacement of the earlier inhabitants of the earth. Soon, means of navigation, although rude, were added to the power of travelling by land, and man passed from the continent to distant islands,

reat difficulty to pass from Asia to America, across Behring's Straits, which are almost always covered with ice, thus permitting of almost a dr

enetrated to the other hemisphere. The inhabitants of Mexico and Chili possess most authentic historical archives, which prove that a most advanced civilization flourished there at an early period. Gigantic monuments which still remain, bear witness to the great antiquity of the civilizat

e hypothesis of multiple creations of the human race; but, on the contrary, traditions for the most part teach us that each country has been peopled progressively by means of conquest or emigration. Tradition shows that the nomadic state of existence has universally preceded fixed settlements. It is, therefore, probable that the first men were constantly on the move. A flood of barbarians, coming from central Asia, ove

of Central Asia, directing their course towards India. As to Africa: that continent received its contingent of p

man started from one point alone, and that through his power of adapting himself to the most

ogony to the different cosmogonies of oriental or pagan antiquity, in like manner it opposes to the erroneous dogmas of the religions and philosophies of antiquity, this doctrine sublime and sim

us of Athens. Acts of the A

globe, or have we to explain the formation of these three fundamental races by the action of climate, by any special form of nourishment, the

de l'homme et des autres êtr

arried to the coast of Guinea, transmits to his descendants the brown colour which the skin of the Negro possesses, and that in their turn the offspring of Negroes, who have been brought into northern countries, become as they descend, paler and paler and end by being white. But the colour of the skin is not the only characteristic of a race; the Negro differs from the white, less by the colour of his skin, than by the structure o

es, that neither the temperature nor the action of the soil furnish an explanation of this fact, and that we must limit ourselves

eight, in their physiognomy, and in their outward appearance, be grouped into different species, or are we to regard them merely as varieties of species-that is to say, races? To fully understand this question and to form a judgm

, the London dray horse, or the omnibus horse of Paris, and the small Corsican or Shetland horses which we can carry in our arms! And yet no one is mistaken in them: whether he differ in size, or in the colour of his hair, we always recognise a horse, and never mistake him for an ass; in the mastiff as well as in the bulldog, we shall always recognise a dog. However greatly a rabbit may vary in size and colour, it will nev

exists in Arabia, whence it came in the first instance. Wheat varies with latitude to a most extraordinary extent, &c. The cotton plant, however, is always the cotton plant, whatever be the soil upon which it grows; the coffee plant and wheat are always the same vegetables, and one is not liable to be

s dog gives birth to the varieties or races known under the names of bull-dog, spaniel, mastiff, &c. The species horse gives birth to the races or varieties known under the names of the Arabian, English, Normandy, Corsican, &c. The species turkey produc

er the animal under consideration belongs to a species or a race? We reply that such a means does exist, which enables us to spea

er individual, capable of reproduction, this will indicate race or variety. If, however, the union of the two indiv

, a wolf with a dog, a sheep with a goat. It is true that hybrids are obtained between the horse and she-ass, and between the ass and the mare, but it is w

formed, and the seed which that produces will in its turn be productive. But if you attempt to perform the same operation between a pear tree and an apple tree, you will obtain no result whatever. This, again, is the practical method which enables botanists to distinguish v

roup arranged by Nature herself. Fruitfulness or barrenness in the products of the mixture are the characteristics which Nature attaches to variety or to species; those g

d have confused every type, thus permitting of no discernment in this crowd of incoherent products. The whole animal kingdom would have been given over to inextricable confusion. In like manner, if plants had been capable of infinite variety th

ch nature assigns to this group of living beings. Reproduction is possible only between members of the same species, and the diff

globe, belong to different species of men, or simply to races or varieties; in other words, whether the human species is unique, and w

n, whatever be their colour, can marry, and their offspring is always reproductive. The Negro and white female by their union produce mulattoes; mulattoes and mulattresses are reproductive, as are also t

from the operation of the universal laws of nature, we must come to the conclusion that they do but form

raternity imposed by nature, may be placed side by side

, or to explain with any degree of accuracy, how it is that man, as he was first created, has given birth to races so widely different as the white, black, yellow, brown, and red which people the earth at the present day. We can but furnish a general explanation of what we see in the widely varying conditions of existence, and in the opposite character of the media through which man, for ages past, has dragged his existence, frequently with much difficulty and uncertainty. If the dog, the horse, the rabbit, and the turkey, through the agency of human industr

s which pervade the life of plants and animals can in no way apply to him. But man, who is an organized and living being, and is furnished with a body that differs but little from that of any mammiferous animal, is, so far as

on, namely, that all men who inhabit the earth are but races or varieties of this o

rd appearance, colour and physiognomy. The differences are so great, the extremes so marked and the transitions so gradual, that it is well-nigh impossible to distribute the human species into really natural groups from a scientific p

have been brought forward by the most important of those wh

f the white, black and yellow race. But these three types in themselves do not exemplify every human physiognomy. The ancient inhabitants of America, commonly known as the Red-Skins, are entirely overlooked in this classification, and the disti

in his Latin work, De Homine, five races of men, the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay and American. Another anthropologist, Prochaska, adopted the

dded to the races admitted by Blumenbach the hyperborean race, comprising

g only the white, black and yellow races, from wh

races. But he was not favourable to the unity of our species, being led to entertain the opinion that the human species was twofold. This was the starting point of an erroneous deviation in the ideas of naturalists who wrote after Virey. We find Bory de S

at, that if strict rule is not adhered to, it is impossible to fix any limit to species. Unless therefore the principle o

ts of our age, Dr. Pritchard, author of a Natural History of Man, which in the original text f

teristics. He, in fact, entirely alters the aspect of the ordinary classifications which are to be met with in natural history. He commences by pointing out three families, which, he asserts, were in history the first human occupants of the e

mong modern anthropologists, and this disfavour has reacted upon the work itself, which, notwithstanding, is the most complete and exact of all that we pos

based upon the three types, white, yellow and black; but he appends to each of these three groups, under the head of mixed races

opologie, published in 1867.[3] It is extremely learned and well worked out, but a classificati

s des Sciences et des Lettres en France, published un

our opinion it may appear to be necessary, is due to a Belgian naturalist, M. d'Omali

cal enumeration of the inhabitants of the globe, permitting a clear consideration of a most confused subject. In the groups, therefore, which we shall propose, the reader will fail to find a truly sci