10 HYBRIDITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



the polygenists appeared in the arena. Their first efforts were 

 directed to attack the doctrine in its essential foundations, and 

 to demonstrate that by no natural causation could Whites be 

 transformed into Negroes, or Negroes into Mongolians ; they 

 therefore proclaimed the multiplicity of human origin and the 

 plurality of species. Be it that they have shrunk from the 

 idea of causing too great a revolution in science, or that they 

 thought that it would conduce sooner to the triumph of their 

 doctrine, they retained as far as possible the number of spe- 

 cies, and confined themselves to assume a primitive stock for 

 each of the five races described by the Unitarians. I do not 

 assert that all polygenists followed this course, as some pro- 

 ceeded in a more independent manner. Bory de Saint -Vincent, 

 Desmoulins, P. Berard, Morton, had the courage to break en- 

 tirely with the past, and to remodel the classical divisions. 

 They found, however, but few imitators ; and many polygenists 

 are to this day content to assign a distinct origin to each of the 

 five principal trunks, which constitute for the monogenists the 

 five fundamental races, but which are to us only natural groups 

 formed by the union of races or species of the same type. 

 They continue also very often to use the term race to designate 

 the ensemble of all individuals of each group, adopting thus by 

 a sort of transaction the language of those whose system they 

 reject; and thus they speak of the white or Caucasian race, 

 the yellow or Mongolian race, the black or Ethiopian race, etc., 

 as if all these individuals of a Caucasian type resembled each 

 other to constitute one race ; as if, for instance, the brown Celts 

 and the fair-haired Germans had descended from the same 

 primitive stock. This contradiction has given a handle to the 

 monogenists ; for if climate and mode of life may cause a Ger- 

 man to become a Celt, there is no reason why, under certain in- 

 fluences, a Celt might not become a Berber, a Berber a Foulah, 

 a Foulah a Negro, and a Negro an Australian. 



I easily comprehend how careful we ought to be to employ in 

 Anthropology the term species. It can scarcely be used with 

 certainty until science has clearly circumscribed the limits of 

 each species of men. This moment is not come yet, and may, 

 perhaps, never arrive, for, in the midst of constant changes 



