90 THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 



varieties which it shows on recovering its liberty, are of them- 

 selves a proof that it has been under a different sky to that of 

 its original country. 



Such is, in our opinion, the sole manner of explaining at 

 the present day, in a serious and general point of view, all cli- 

 materic influences. We must render justice to some mono- 

 genists, that they have perfectly understood the real part taken 

 by these influences. Blumenbach calls them causce degenera- 

 tionis ; and here the German anatomist, in defending, like 

 Prichard, the specific unity of the human race, raises himself 

 above the English anthropologist, without, however, reaching 

 what we believe to be the truth. Prichard, inclining to the 

 belief that humanity is entirely descended from the Negroes,* 

 acknowledged, consequently, a kind of causce perfecticmis, that 

 is to say, an ascending march of phenomena, where his prede- 

 cessor had only seen an inverse march. Now, this ascending 

 march of phenomena is difficult to reconcile with the notion of 

 the specific unity of man. Every species, in fact, is neces- 

 sarily constituted by reason of the defined space in which it 

 ought to move. It is unreasonable to suppose that elsewhere 

 the same organism and the same species can meet with more 

 favourable conditions of existence. 



^. In Blumenbach's opinion, all races are unhealthy deviations 

 from a primitive type, of which we are the representatives ;f 

 so that nine-tenths of the human kind are, according to him, 

 'composed of degenerate individuals. Blumenbach did not 

 know that one of the essential characters of degeneracy is the 

 limited development of its produce, that is to say, the disap- 

 pearance of the race at a more or less distant period. J We 

 ask ourselves only how monogenists, who all partake more or 

 less of Blumenbach's opinions, and who nearly all pride them- 

 selves on moral and humanitarian sentiments, can consent to 



* John Hunter also thought that man was originally black ; he had re- 

 marked that domestic animals become white by age. Compare White, Ac- 

 count of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 100. Hunter thus confounded men 

 with domestic animals. We have already said what must be thought of this 

 connexion. 



f Compare Morel, Deglnerescence de I'espece humaine, p. 5, Paris, 1857. 



J See above, p. 73. 



