12 HYBEIDITY OP THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



sions, have committed the error to accept the basis of the clas- 

 sification of the monogenists, and, like them, to establish 

 five chief human families, and, like them, to admit that the 

 individuals of each family are issued from a common trunk, 

 with this difference, that, whilst the monogenists assume that 

 the five primary trunks have proceeded from the same stock, 

 and have the same roots, the pentagenists (if we may use this 

 term) assume five distinct and independent stocks. Logically 

 speaking, it would have been requisite to term the five funda- 

 mental races of the monogenists species, but it is easy to per- 

 ceive that, for many reasons, the term species cannot be em- 

 ployed here in an absolute sense. The pentagenists have felt 

 this, and, for want of a better term, use the word race, which 

 has thus been diverted from its real acceptation. 



The word race has thus, in the language of authors, two very 

 different significations ; one is particular and exact, the other 

 general and misleading. Taken in the first sense, it designates 

 individuals sufficiently resembling each other, that we may, 

 without prejudging their origin, and without deciding whether 

 they are the issues of one or several primitive couples, admit, 

 if necessary, as theoretically possible, that they have descended 

 from common parents. Such are, for instance, among the 

 white races, the Arabs, the Basques, the Celts, the Kimris, the 

 Germans, the Berbers, etc. ; and among the black races, the 

 Ethiopian Negroes, the Caffres, the Tasmanians, Australians, 

 Papuans, etc. 



In the second, that is to say, in a general sense, the term 

 race designates the ensemble of all such individuals who have a 

 certain number of characters in common, and who, though dif- 

 fering in other characters, and divided, perhaps, in an indefinite 

 number of natural groups or races, have to each other a 

 greater morphological affinity than they have with the rest of 

 mankind. 



Every confusion in words exposes us to errors in the inter- 

 pretation of facts, and this rather long digression in relation to 

 the origin of a denomination, borrowed by certain polygeiiists 

 from the language of monogenists, enables us to understand the 

 denial of the existence of mixed races, and why Prichard could 



