THE STATUS OF MAN. 257 



be concerned : Is man one species, Homo sapiens, with a num- 

 ber of varieties, or are we concerned with a number, say four 

 or eight species of men, Caucasian, Polynesian, etc, or, have 

 we a very great number of less extensive species of approxi- 

 mately the same systematic rank ? Finally, we may ask whether 

 possibly the situation in man is so different from what exists 

 in plants and animals, that we cannot speak of species in the 

 way in which we use the terms in other organisms. 



Is mankind considered as a whole, a group equivalent in 

 rank to let us say the brown rat, Mus norvegicus, a species 

 with some varieties, or to a group like the carnivorae, with 

 numerous species grouped in complexes of a higher order, or 

 to a group of animals like the domestic cattle or the dog, 

 the horse? 



Are the different types of man species, or varieties? 



What is a variety? A variety is a number of individuals 

 which differ from the type of the species to which they belong 

 in the same way, without a necessary genealogical continuity. 

 There exists a typical species, a ground-squirrel, and all those 

 squirrels together which are found at rare intervals among 

 typical ones, and which are of yellow colour, constitute a yellow ' 

 variety of this squirrel. 



Are the breeds of domestic dogs varieties ? There is no such 

 thing as a typical dog, with aberrant individuals which we can 

 group in varieties. There is, however, such a thing as a typical 

 Airedale- terrier, and an occasional blue individual in this breed 

 represents a blue variety of the Airedale-terrier. 



Are the groups of man varieties ? There is no such thing as a 

 typical, standard man, with aberrant individuals in varieties. 

 There is, however, a typical Zulu-kaffir, and an occasional al- 

 bino Zulu represents an albino variety of Kaffir; a typical 

 Sicilian, and an occasional feeble-minded Sicilian represents a 

 variety. According to this reasoning the Airedale- terrier, the 

 Zulu, the Sicilian, are species, rather than varieties. Can we 

 group the types of man into half a dozen species, or can we 

 group the dogs in this way? We may conceive of an ideal, a 



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