KANT AND EVOLUTION 39 



This argument, by which Kant reasons that all men are of one 

 Stamm, directly implies that men and other animals are not of one 

 Stamm, i. e., are not related through any lines of natural descent. For 

 he makes identity of species synonymous with community of descent, 

 and diversity of species synonymous with separateness of descent. In 

 other words, his manner of distinguishing a species from a race rests 

 upon wholly anti-evolutionary presuppositions. 



Within the limits of a species, however, Kant holds that very con- 

 siderable modifications of physical character may be brought about in 

 the course of successive generations. Now (apart from individual 

 variations not transmitted to offspring), there seem to Kant to be two 

 significantly different types of heritable peculiarities: those which are 

 invariably inherited, and those which are only alternatively inherited. 

 Thus the colors of a negro and a white who marry are both manifested 

 in the offspring ; children of such marriages are always mulattoes. But 

 the complexions of the children of a dark man and a blonde woman are 

 not necessarily a compromise between the complexions of their parents. 

 Some or all of the children may resemble one parent only, and show 

 (with respect to any given character) no marks of their descent from 

 the other. By means of this distinction Kant differentiates a " race " 

 from a " variety." Those members of a single species which also pos- 

 sess in common characters of the invariably hereditary sort belong to 

 the same race; those which possess in common (and, so long as they 

 mate with their own like, transmit to their offspring) characters that, 

 upon cross-breeding with other types, are only alternatively hereditary, 

 constitute only " varieties." 



These definitions of " species " and " race," it is true, involve — as 

 Kant recognizes — some revision of the classifications of the systematists. 



Originally, when only similarity and dissimilarity were taken into consid- 

 eration, it was customary to group classes of creatures under genera {Gat- 

 tungen) . But if it is their descent we are considering, it is necessary to ask 

 whether these classes are species (Arten) or only races. The wolf, the fox, 

 the jackal, the hyena and the domesticated dog, are so many classes of quadru- 

 peds. If one assumes that each of them has a special descent {Abstammung) , 

 they constitute so many species; if one grants that they may have sprung from 

 a single stock, they are simply races of that stock. In " natural history " 

 (Naturgeschichte) , which has to do only with generation and descent, the words 

 Art and Gattung mean the same; 27 only in "nature-description," where it is 

 merely a question of the comparison of characters, does a distinction between 



offspring. But where the generation of such offspring is possible, the utmost 

 diversity of external appearance is no obstacle to regarding the parents as 

 having a common descent. For if they can, in spite of this diversity, produce 

 offspring that exhibit the characters of both parents, then they may be classified 

 as belonging to two races of a single stock, which originally had latent within 

 itself the characters that were to be developed in each separately." 



27 It is for this reason that, in translating Kant's expositions of his own 

 doctrines, I have, so far as possible, rendered both Art and Gattung by " spe- 

 cies." The citation is from the " Conception of Race," § 6, n. 



