Variability in Man, and Social Questions. 155 



The variability exhibited by man is of the fluctuating 

 kind : whereas species arise by mutation. The two phe- 

 nomena are fundamentally different.^ The assumption 

 that human variability bears any relation to the variation 

 which has or is supposed to have caused the origin of 

 species is to my mind absolutely unjustified. 



Man is a permanent type, like the vast majority of 

 species of animals and plants. The laws for permanent 

 types apply to man ; though often with a qualification. 

 But the laws which describe the changes by which indi- 

 vidual permanent types arise cannot be so applied. As 

 we have seen it is characteristic of these types to exhibit 

 a certain amount of fluctuating variability. Man is no 

 exception to this rule. 



Therefore all that we can apply to the treatment of 

 social questions is our knowledge of ordinary variability. 

 The facts of specific differentiation are interesting but 

 not relevant. 



The mental qualities of the human race are closely 

 bound up with their bodil}^ organization, and this has 

 been shown to conform to the same laws as those by 

 which we describe individual variability in plants and 

 animals. 



Of late 3^ears, Kollmann has done more than any 

 one else to insist on the distinction which should be 

 made between persistent racial characters and fluctuating 

 intra-racial characters in the case of man — a distinction 

 which was also emphatically maintained by Virchow.- 



Favorable and unfavorable conditions of life, migra- 



^L'Unite dans la Variation, loc. cit., p. 17. 



^Kollmann, Die angebliche Entstchung netier Rassentypen in 

 Correspondenzblatt der d. Gesellsch. fiir Anthropologic, Vol. 31, No. 

 I. Jan. 1900. p. I. A bibliography of the subject will be found on 

 P'lge 5- 



