ON 



THE PHENOMENA OF HYBRIDITY IN THE HUMAN 



SPECIES. 



SECTION I. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON CROSSING IN HUMAN RACES. 



THAT very ingenious writer, M. A. de Gobineau, 1 whoso 

 efforts have been directed towards bringing the light of modern 

 ethnology to bear upon the political and social history of na- 

 tions, but who, in this very difficult and almost entirely new 

 inquiry, has more than once indulged in paradoxical generalisa- 

 tions, has thought proper to affirm, in his Essay on the Ine- 

 quality of Human Races (1855), that the crossing of races con- 

 stantly produces disastrous effects, and that, sooner or later, a 

 physical and moral degeneration is the inevitable result thereof. 

 It is, therefore, chiefly to this cause that he attributes the decline 

 of the Roman Republic and the downfall of liberty, which was 

 soon followed by the decline of civilisation. I am very far from 

 sharing his opinion, and, were this the proper place, I might 

 show that the social corruption and the intellectual degradation 

 which prepared the ruin of the Roman power was due to quite 

 different causes. M. Gobineau's proposition appears to me 

 by far too general ; and I am still more opposed to the opinion 

 of those who advance that every mixed race separated from the 



1 Gobineau, Inefjalite des Races Humaincs, 8vo, Paris, 1855 ; [also translated 

 into English, On the Inequality of Human Races, and edited by Henry Hotze, 

 Svo. EDITOR.] 



B 



