SPECIES. 129 



things, we must remember that human races cannot lend 

 themselves to any classification in natural series. It is also 

 as impossible for the naturalist to point out a race at the 

 present day from which all the others are derived, either 

 parallelly or successively, as for the historian to discover in the 

 past any trace of a homogeneous humanity. If even such an 

 uniformity had ever existed, how would the remembrance of it 

 have been kept, for it is evident that this primitive form, 

 constituting at the beginning all the human genus, would be 

 the same inferior form, such as the Negro or the Bosjesman, 

 for instance, nature rising in general from inferiority to per- 

 fection. This was for a long time Pri chard's idea, and 

 certain monogenists think the same at the present day. This 

 hypothesis, entering at its basis into the doctrine of evolution, 

 has nothing in itself which is startling ; we can only say one 

 thing against it, and that is in its admitting as proved that 

 filiation which would connect one with the other all the groups 

 composing in our times the genus homo. For our part, we 

 wish simply to extend the same manner of viewing the matter, 

 to generalise it, and to place it in relation with this immense 

 unknown which is behind us, and of which monogenists do 

 not take enough notice. We maintain that there has existed in 

 the night of time a certain species, less perfect than the most 

 imperfect man, remounting by a certain number of inter- 

 mediary species, of whose nature it is impossible for us at 

 present to form, any idea, to this primordial vertebrate animal 

 which we admit. This species, a rough outline of what man 

 now is, gave birth, after a considerable time, to many other 

 species, whose parallel and unequal evolution, following what 

 we have said concerning animals, has at the present day as 

 contemporaneous (but not the last) illustration, the different 

 species of men designated by the name of races. So that all 

 humanity would be in relationship, if the expression be allowed 

 us, not in the serial sense, as monogenists take it, but in the 

 collateral sense, and at a degree which we cannot determine ; 

 the prognathous races probably less deviated from the former 

 type, the others more separated from this type, and more 

 perfect. 



