14 HYBRIDITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



never have been cleared had not the ambiguous term race con- 

 cealed the distance. The fact is established that affinities of 

 organisation may exercise some influence on the results of 

 crossing. In studying the phenomena of hybridity in quad- 

 rupeds and birds, we have already stated that homoeogenesis, 

 without being always proportionate to the degree of the prox- 

 imity of species, decreases ordinarily in comparison with more 

 removed animals, and that probability induces us to expect 

 similar phenomena in the intermixture of human beings. But 

 what have been the bases of the monogenists and of the pen- 

 tagenists in forming the five ethnological groups, which consti- 

 tute the five fundamental races ? Why have all Caucasian races 

 been united by them in one family, and called by them the white 

 or the Caucasian race ? It has been already stated because the 

 races with a skin more or less white possess between themselves 

 a greater affinity than with any of the other races. In other 

 terms, the zoological distance is less between Celts, Germans, 

 Kimris, etc., compared with that existing between them and the 

 Negroes, CafFres, Lapps, Australians, Malays, etc. 



Supposing now that it has been demonstrated which it has 

 not that the races of any group can never engender a durable 

 and permanent line by an intermixture with any of the others, 

 can we infer from this that the races of the same group are 

 equally incapable of producing by their intermixture mongrels 

 indefinitely prolific ? Just as little as the sterility of the union 

 between the dog and the fox would enable us to infer the 

 sterility between the wolf and the dog ; these conclusions would 

 be as little physiological as the former. Such as deny the 

 fecundity of the reciprocal crossbreeds of the five chief primary 

 races might err in some points, and be right as to others. But 

 those who extend this by far too general negation in applying 

 it to the intermixture of secondary races of the same group 

 commit a more serious error. They have reasoned like the 

 monogenists, who knowing from experience that certain human 

 races may become mixed without limitation, have affirmed that 

 all the races, without exception, are in a similar condition. 

 There obtains thus a strange contradiction in these two schools ; 

 the one maintains resolutely that all races may intermix, and 



