1688 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 



man races. But he was not favorable to the unity of 

 our species, being led to entertain the opinion that 

 the human species was twofold. This was the start- 

 ing point of an erroneous deviation in the ideas of 

 naturalists who wrote after Virey. We find Bory de 

 Saint Vincent admitting as many as fifteen species of 

 men, and another naturalist, Desmoulins, doubtless 

 influenced by a feeling of emulation, distinguished 

 sixteen human species, which, moreover, were not the 

 same as those admitted by Bory de Saint Vincent. 



This course of classification might have been fol- 

 lowed to a much greater extent, for the differences 

 among men are so great that if strict rule is not ad- 

 hered to it is impossible to fix any limit to species. 

 Unless therefore the principle of unity has been fully 

 conceded at starting, the investigation may result in 

 the admission of a truly indefinite quantity. 



This is the principle which pervades the writings 

 of the most learned of all the anthropologists of our 

 age, Dr. Pritchard, author of a Natural History of 

 Man, which in the original text formed ten volumes, 

 but of which the French language possesses but a 

 very incomplete translation. 



Dr. Pritchard holds that all people of the earth be- 

 long to the same species ; he is a partisan of the unity 

 of the human species, but is not satisfied with any of 

 the classifications already proposed, and which were 

 founded upon organic characteristics. He, in fact, 

 entirely alters the aspect of the ordinary classifica- 

 tions which are to be met with in natural history. He 

 commences by pointing out three families, which, he 

 asserts, were in history the first human occupants of 



