CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



Mr Darwin has of late done much to strengthen 

 the monogenists indeed, the ablest naturalists 

 are now monogenistic in their tendencies. Those 

 who hold that the races of mankind are speci- 

 fically distinct, rely chiefly on the assertion, that 

 the present diversities in the various races cannot 

 be accounted for in any other way, and that 

 physical types in man are so permanent, that they 

 cannot be changed to such an extent, by climatic 

 and other external influences, as to account for 

 existing diversities amongst different races. Any 

 one who studies Mr Darwin's work on Animals 

 and Plants under Domestication, will see at once 

 how feeble this argument is, in the light of his 

 discoveries of the almost incredible diversity in 

 form and physique that can be produced within 

 the limits of one single species say, in dogs or 

 pigeons (diversities far greater, it would seem, 

 than any found within the limits of the human 

 species) merely by the operation of artificial 

 selection, and hereditary transmission of parental 

 peculiarities to offspring. The polygenists relied 

 greatly on Dr W. F. Edwards's argument in favour 

 of permanence of racial types, drawn from the 

 resemblance of the pictures of Jews and Negroes 

 on the old Egyptian monuments to the Jews and 

 Negroes of the present day. In regard to the 

 Jews, it would be very strange if a community, 

 whose social and religious observances so care- 

 fully prevent any intermixture with alien races, 

 exhibited any signs of departure from the original 

 type. All these monuments prove is, that in the 

 same conditions, the most striking race characters 

 have not become altered in the course of 3000 

 years. They do not prove that the type would 

 have remained unchanged if the race had 

 been subjected to great diversity of climatic 

 changes for 30,000 years. Dr Edwards's idea, that 

 permanence of type was proved by the fact, that 

 mixed races, such as those inhabiting France 

 and Italy, revert to the original type, is worth 

 little, for we have no anatomical proof of what 

 the original types were in such cases; and we 

 may ask, if a mixed race reverts to its original 

 type, to which original type does it revert? The 

 late Professor Agassiz held that the races of man 

 sprung from eight provinces of creation, where they 

 now exist But opposed to this doctrine we have 

 philological proof that the Indo-European race did 

 not spring up in their present area, but came from 

 Asia ; and it is absurd to suppose the Eskimos 

 sprung up in Professor Agassirs arctic province, for 

 they would have been frozen to death there long 

 before they had learned to protect themselves from 

 the cold. The cradle of primeval man must have 

 been a warm region, and knowing, as we do, 

 man's restless migratory tendencies, it is im- 

 prudent to uphold a theory which permanently 



16 



fixes parent stocks to particular provinces, as 

 though they were plants incapable of the desire 

 for emigration, and devoid of the means of 

 gratifying it. The polygenists have to place 

 themselves in a curious logical dilemma, for 

 doubting the vitality of hybrid races, they deny 

 that the different races could be brought into 

 permanent existence by intermixture of stocks so 

 divergent from each other as were those that 

 produced the various peoples of the earth; yet 

 they attribute to intermixture the manifold diver- 

 sities which they admit exist in the sub-types into 

 which*what they call the different human species 

 are split up. They are in the same dilemma with 

 regard to the influence of climate and external 

 agents ; for, in both cases, it seems that if the 

 manifold differences they admit as occurring 

 within the limits of one of their many species, 

 could be produced by admixture and climate, the 

 production of the differences in virtue of which 

 they defend the specific distinctness of their primal 

 types, might also be produced in the same way 

 by the action of longer periods of time, such as 

 those, in fact, that the recent researches on the 

 antiquity of man make it probable have operated 

 on the human race. Science as yet affords 

 material for no certain conclusion whether man- 

 kind is derived from one pair of human beings 

 or from several. But, whichever view be adopted, 

 there can be little doubt that the balance of 

 evidence does not favour the idea that the nations 

 of the earth are specifically distinct, or, however 

 many pairs they may be derived from, belong to 

 different species. Zoologically speaking, the races 

 of men are of one blood and one brotherhood. 



The development and destiny of mankind are 

 subjects of too vast importance to be discussed in 

 a few lines. Science teaches us that primeval 

 man was a savage; and the notion of Archbishop 

 Whately and the Duke of Argyll, that man was 

 aboriginally civilised, and became degraded, and 

 that savage races are incapable of self-civilisation, 

 is refuted by the researches of Tylor, Lubbock, 

 Darwin, and others. Modern civilisation has 

 developed gradually from prehistoric savagery. 

 The history of humanity in the mass is substan- 

 tially the history of moral and material progress. 

 That some races have been, for the limited period 

 over which human history extends, stationary, 

 whilst others have even retrograded, is adduced as 

 a proof that progress is not the law of humanity. 

 But this is to mistake the eddies in the course 

 of the river of life, that may for a time be washing 

 backwards a few fragments of our race, for its 

 broad strong current, which, flowing ever onwards, 

 bears on its bosom the mass of humanity, with all 

 its highest hopes and aspirations, towards the 

 perfect ideal which lies beyond. 



