172 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



look at species as separate creations, or as In some mannpr 

 as distinct entities; and they must decide what forms of man 

 they will consider as species by the analogy of the method com- 

 monly pursued in ranking other organic beings as species. But it 

 is a hopeless endeavor to decide this point, until some definition 

 of the term "species" is generally accepted; and the definition 

 must not include an indeterminate element such as an act of 

 creation. We might as well attempt without any definition to 

 decide whether a certain number of houses should be called a 

 village, town, or city. We have a practical illustration of the 

 diflBculty in the never-ending doubts whether many closely allied 

 mammals, birds, insects, and plants, which represent each other 

 respectively in North America and Europe, should be ranked as 

 species or geographical races; and the like holds true of the pro- 

 ductions of many islands situated at some little distance from the 

 nearest continent. 



Those naturalists, on the other hand, who admit the principle 

 of evolution, and this is now admitted by the majority of rising 

 men, will feel no doubt that all the races of man are descended 

 from a single primitive stock; whether or not they may think 

 fit to designate the races as distinct species, for the sake of ex- 

 pressing their amount of difference.^' With our domestic ani- 

 mals the question whether the various races have arisen from 

 one or more species is somewhat different. Although It may be 

 admitted that all the races, as well as all the natural species 

 within the same genus, have sprung from the same primitive 

 stock, yet it is a fit subject for discussion, whether all the do- 

 mestic races of the dog, for instance, having acquired their present 

 amount of difference since some one species was first domesticated 

 by man; or whether they owe some of their characters to in- 

 heritance from distinct species, which had already been differen- 

 tiated in a state of nature. With man no such question can arise, 

 for he cannot be said to have been domesticated at any particular 

 period. 



During an early stage in the divergence of the races of man 

 from a common stock, the differences between the races and 

 their number must have been small; consequently as far as 

 their distinguishing characters are concerned, they then had less 

 claim to rank as distinct species than the existing so-called races. 

 Nevertheless, so arbitrary is the term of species, that such early 

 races would perhaps have been ranked by some naturalists as 

 distinct species, if their differences, although extremely slight, 

 had been more constant than they are at present, and had not 

 graduated into each other. 



^ See Prof. Huxley to this effect in the 'Fortnightly Review," 1866, p. 

 275. 



