GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 13 



only oppose to this idea the doubtful and fictitious examples of 

 the Cafusos, the Griquas, and the mop-headed Papuans. 



If, indeed, it were true that there are only five races of men 

 on the globe, and if it were capable of demonstration that either 

 of them, in mixing with another, produced eugenesic Mulattos 

 capable of constituting a mixed race enduring by itself, without 

 the ulterior concurrence of the parent races, the embarrassment 

 would not yet be at an end. After having succeeded to establish 

 such a demonstration for two of the chief races, it would by no 

 means necessarily result that the intercrossings of the nine other 

 combinations are eugenesic like the first. We should then be 

 obliged to prove (what is evidently impracticable), by ten suc- 

 cessive examples, that the ten possible intercrossings between 

 the five fundamental races are all equally and completely pro- 

 lific. The difficulty is such, that Dr. Prichard, after much re- 

 search, could only find the three instances already cited and 

 refuted. These facts having proved inconclusive, and other 

 facts which we shall mention presently having induced the 

 theory that certain intermixtures are imperfectly prolific, the 

 pentagenists were led to the opinion that the possibility of a 

 definitive intermixture of races is by no means established, and 

 that, on the contrary, this possibility may be denied. 



The pentagenists occupied themselves at first chiefly with the 

 intermixture of the five chief races ; but even from this point of 

 view, and taking the term race in a general sense, their nega- 

 tion, though, it must be admitted, far from being justifiable, is 

 still founded upon a more solid basis, and less removed from the 

 truth than the opposed affirmation. Hence it was considered 

 valuable ad interim. But the principle of non-intermixture of 

 races being once promulgated, the confusion of terms soon be- 

 came apparent. The negation which was at first applied merely 

 to the artificial groups formed by the re-union of races of the 

 same type was applied to natural races, and thus arose that 

 frightful proposition, that no mixed races can subsist in hu- 

 manity. 



It is noteworthy how this excessive and exclusive theory dif- 

 fers from the first, which it has displaced. There is such a gap 

 between the starting point and the conclusion, that it could 



