61 



SECTION IV. 



RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 



THE numerous and controverted questions which we had to 

 discuss, have more than once interrupted the chain of our 

 thesis. It may, therefore, be useful to present here a resumd of 

 the various parts of our argumentation. 



Zoologists have, in each of the natural groups which consti- 

 tute the genera, recognised several types which they denomi- 

 nate species. 1 



The human group evidently constitutes one genus ; if it con- 

 sisted only of one species, it would form a single exception in 

 creation. It is, therefore, but natural to presume, that this 

 genus is, like all the others, composed of different species. 



In the greater number of genera, the various species differ 

 much less from each other than certain human races. A natu- 

 ralist, who, without touching the question of origin, purely 

 and simply applies to the human genus the general principles 

 of zootaxis, would be inclined to divide this genus into different 

 species. 



This mode of viewing the subject can only be abandoned, if 

 it were by observation demonstrated that all the difference be- 

 tween human races had been the result of modifications caused 

 in the organisation of man by the influence of media. 



The monogenists have at first made great efforts to furnish 

 such a demonstration, but without success. Observation has, 

 011 the contrary, shown, that though the organisation of man 

 may, in the course of time, and under the influence of external 

 conditions, undergo some modification, yet that these modifica- 

 tions are relatively very slight, and have no relation to the 

 typical differences of human races. Man, transplanted into a 



1 Some genera in existing faunas, containing only one species, are in an- 

 terior faunas represented by a number of species now extinct, and evidently 

 differing from the one species actually existing. [Compare the two species 

 of existing elephants with the twelve species of Elephas and thirteen of 

 Mastodon which existed in tertiary times. EDITOR.] 



