I. We now know what are species and race; the phenomena exhibited by mongrels and hybrids furnish us with an experimental means of distinguishing them. We can, therefore, now reply to the question which has necessitated this discussion: Are there one or many human species? Are the human groups races or species?
Unless we pretend that man alone of all organised beings is free from the laws which, in every other case, govern and regulate the laws of reproduction, and consequently, unless we make him a solitary exception precisely in that order of facts which most closely unites all other beings, we shall be forced to admit that he also obeys the laws of crossing.
Thus, if the human groups represent a more or less considerable number ofspecies, we ought to prove in the crossings of their species the existence of the characteristic phenomena ofhybridism. If these groups are onlyraces of a single species, we ought, in crossings between them, to meet with the phenomena exhibited by mongrels.
II. It is scarcely necessary to recall what nearly four centuries of experience and observation have taught us. It may be recapitulated in a very few words.
SinceColumbus commencedthe era of great geographical discoveries, the White, the highest division of mankind, has penetrated to almost every part of the globe. He has everywhere met human groups which differed considerably from himself in every kind of character; he has everywheremixed with them, and mixed races have everywhere sprung up in his track.
Further still, thanks to an institution, detestable indeed, but the results of which have been favourable to anthropology, the experiment is complete. The White has enslaved the Negro and taken him away with him to all parts of the globe, and where the local races have consented to intermix with the enslaved race, in every case they have produced mixed races of this inferior division. In America theZambois born side by side with theMulattoand theMamaluco.
This crossing commenced less than four centuries ago, and some time has elapsed since M. d’Omalius estimated that mixed races constituted at least1/80of the entire population of the globe, and he emphatically declared that he had only taken the half-breeds of extreme races into consideration.
In South America, where Whites, Blacks and natives have long been in contact and have intermingled more freely, there are whole States in which half-breeds are in the majority, and in which it is extremely difficult to find a native of pure blood.
Have subterfuges or precautions been necessary to form these unions and to insure the fertility of the offspring? Quite the contrary. The tyranny of the Whites, the crimes of slavery, afford quite sufficient proof that in this case fertility was not dependent upon circumstances, but simply upon the physical connections existing between all men from the lowest of the Negroes to the first of the Whites.
Has such facility, such certainty as this been experienced in the production of chabins and leporides?
If another proof were necessary of the facility with which human groups intercross, it might be found in one of those testimonies the value of which is undisputed because they give the result of a daily experience. In 1861, the Californian legislature declared that any white person convicted of having cohabited with or married a Negro, Mulatto, Chinese or Indian, had forfeited all his rights, and becamesubject to all the constitutional incapacities imposed upon men of colour. The local press announced very plainly that the object of this measure was the prevention of the fusion and amalgamation of the races.
The Californian legislature acted on this occasion like the proprietor of a flock of pure breed which he is anxious to keep free from all mixture. It was even more severe, ejecting from legal society, not only the offspring of the cross, but also the transgressing parents of the white race.
Do not our breeders take similar precautions in the case of races only, and not in the case of species?
Far from being sterile, unions between human groups apparently the most distinct are sometimes more fertile than those between individuals taken from the same group. “Hottentot women,” says Le Vaillant, “with husbands of their own race have three or four children. With Negroes this number is tripled, and it is still further increased with Whites.” M. Hombron, during four years which he spent in Brazil, Chili and Peru, studied this phenomenon in a large number of families. “I am able to state,” he says, “that unions of Whites with American women have given the highest average of births. Next come the Negro and Negress. And thirdly the Negro and the American woman.” Unions between Americans themselves gave the lowest average.
Thus, the maximum of fertility is here presented in a case which would constitute a hybridism in the opinion of polygenists; the minimum is exhibited between individuals of the same group, and it is with the woman belonging to the latter, that, owing to the cross, the maximum is obtained.
These facts are significant. In no case of crossing between species has fertility been observed to increase; on the contrary it is almost always diminished, and often, as we have seen above, in an immense proportion. Crossings between races have alone presented facts analogous to those mentioned by Hombron and Le Vaillant.
III. Thus, in every case crossings between human groupsexhibit the phenomena characteristic of mongrels and never those of hybrids.
Therefore, these human groups, however different they may be, or appear to be, are onlyraces of one and the same speciesand notdistinct species.
Therefore, there is butone human species, taking this term species in the acceptation employed when speaking of animals and plants.
IV. Anyone who refuses to accept these conclusions must either deny all the facts of which it is the necessary consequence, or reject the method employed in the examination and appreciation of these facts.
But these facts are borrowed entirely either from scientific experiments, made without any discussion or controversy by men of the highest authority, or drawn from the innumerable experiments which are daily practised by agriculturalists, horticulturists, and breeders. It is therefore very difficult to deny them.
As to the method, it is evident that it rests entirely upon the identity of the general laws governing all organised and living beings. Few true men of science will, I am sure, refuse to admit such a starting point as this.
Now I wish that candid men, who are free from party-spirit or prejudices, would follow me in this view, and study for themselves all these facts, a few of which I have only touched upon, and I am perfectly convinced that they will, with the great men of whom I am only the disciple,—with Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, Cuvier, Geoffroy, Humboldt and Müller, arrive at the conclusion thatall men belong to the same species, and that there is butone species of man.