THE HUMAN RACE 1681 



Laplander or the Mongolian in the cold regions to 

 which he is now confined? 



There is a school of philosophers who assert that 

 man was manifold in his creation, that each type of 

 humanity originated in the region to which it is now 

 attached, and that it was not emigration followed 

 by the action of climate, circumstances, and customs 

 which gave birth to the different races of man. This 

 opinion has been upheld in a work by M. Georges 

 Pouchet, son of the well-known naturalist of Rouen. 



If there existed several centres of human creation, 

 they should be indicated, and it should be shown 

 that the men who dwell there nowadays have never 

 been connected with other populations. M. Georges 

 Pouchet preserves prudent silence upon this ques- 

 tion ; he avoids defining the locus of any one of these 

 supposed multiple creations. 



We, on our part, think that man had on the globe 

 one centre of creation, that, fixed in the first instance 

 in a particular region, he has radiated in every direc- 

 tion from that point, and by his wanderings, coupled 

 with the rapid multiplication of his descendants, he 

 has ultimately peopled all the inhabitable regions 

 of the earth. 



We need hardly say that animals, like plants, are 

 attached to various localities which they rarely quit 

 with impunity, since they have not the faculty of 

 acclimatizing themselves at will. The elephant lives 

 only in India and in certain parts of Africa; the hip- 

 popotamus 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 



