54 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 



among the Hottentot women, that of the prepuce and the 

 clitoris among the Semitic race, and even the size of the penis 

 among the Ethiopians such a size that it would almost impede 

 the union of a black man with a white woman, whilst the union 

 of a white man with a Negress would occur without any impe- 

 diment. This remark, quite in agreement with the theories of 

 M. d'Eichthal, has been made by a monogenist;* we have 

 merely the right to wonder at it. How can we reconcile this 

 impossibility, were it even a shade of a real one, with the 

 notion of indefinite and universal reproduction, which all 

 monogenists wrongly, as we shall see make one of their 

 strongest arguments in favour of the specific unity of man ? 



II. What we call physiological differences are certain func- 

 tional forms of the same organ, particular to certain races. 

 This is, as may be seen, an entirely artificial distinction, since 

 these differences must necessarily and forcibly refer to mate- 

 rial, that is, to anatomical differences. 



These alone, either from their small value, or from some 

 other cause, have been hitherto unknown ; whilst their effects, 

 being more sensible, have not failed to escape our observation. 

 If an Esquimaux, for instance, eats in one day the food of six 

 English sailors,t it is evident that the intestines, the stomach, 

 and the glands which border on them, present special modi- 

 fications with reference to this kind of nourishment, so different 

 from the frugivorous diet for which man's organism is adapted. 

 When a Tartar sees further than a European who is using a 

 telescope, J it is certain that such a functional superiority de- 

 pends only on the material quality of the organ, from a more 

 perfect arrangement of the visual apparatus, from the more 

 perfect nature of the medium refractive powers of the eye. 



It has often been desired to refer these kind of modifications 

 to the education of the race or the individual. The education 

 of the race by itself, independently of the ordinary course, 



* M. de Serres, in his Lectures on Anthropology, at the Museum of Natural 

 History. 



f Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage, etc., p. 446. 



t This fact is related by Pallas, Memoires du Museum, vol. xvii, p. 238. A 

 Kalrnuc saw a body of men thirty versts off [nearly twenty miles English], 

 while the Russian general could see nothing even with a telescope. 



