THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



FOR a long period, in medieval days, science was to most 

 people what it was to Servetus, a simple paraphrase or 

 glossary of a revealed text. In this was the truth, and if 

 observation itself seemed sometimes contradictory, it was 

 certain that there was some mistake; it was necessary to 

 re-examine the contested question, and by dint of inquiring 

 into the facts, they were altered so wisely, that in the end they 

 always were found to agree. 



All over the East, among the Semitic race,* that which 

 above all other possesses respect for authority, science still 

 lives. Without the law there is no science, and the Koran is 

 what the books of the sons of Israel and the writings of the 

 apostles were in the middle ages, the great, the only authority, 

 to which everything was referred, f 



* We must here inform the reader, once for all, that we shall use, until we 

 say anything to the contrary, the word "race" to designate the different 

 natural groups of the human genus (genus Homo). We intend definitely 

 to prove that these groups constitute veritable species. M. de Quatrefages 

 has on this matter reproached us with a confusion, which is accounted for 

 partly by the incorrectness of his quotation. He makes us say, " The plu- 

 rality of original races, otherwise the plurality of the species, of the genus 

 'man'" (Unite de I'Espece Humaine, 1861, p. 309). It stands as follows in 

 our own text : " The original plurality of races, otherwise the plurality of 

 the species composing the genus ' man,' " etc. It is evident that the con- 

 fusion which is found in these words is entirely voluntary. 



f One day, I was talking with one of the principal officers of Mehemet- 

 Said, at Korosko, in Nubia, about the earthquake which was felt in Lower 

 Egypt on the 12th of October, 1856. He asked me the cause of this pheno- 

 menon. I attempted an explanation suited to the understanding of a" man 



