50 Actual Races in History. 



species should not turn into another, by what is 

 called " descent," or " transformation of species;" 

 just as among bottles we can reassort classes, and 

 have in one group to-day the bottles which we had 

 in a different group yesterday. Here we must re- 

 mark that the term, species, is taken in quite a 

 different meaning from what it must have if we 

 are to discuss at all the question of the descent of 

 species. And indeed any one arguing so, on this 

 subject, commits the logical error which is called 

 equivocation, that is, playing on the same word in 

 two different senses. Considering the scientific 

 and philosophical gravity of this error or sophism 

 in particular, we should desire nothing more than 

 to see it first pilloried, and then petrified in every 

 text-book of grammar, rhetoric and logic to the end 

 of time; till a future age of anthropologists shall 

 unearth it, and wonder wisely, what kind of pre- 

 historic barbarians devised such a fossil piece of 

 industry, and made it, and used it. 



52. In the scientific idea of species, it is not any 

 resemblance that determines the class. The like- 

 The Test of ness among individuals may be more or 

 Species. j ess> j^ mav be lost so far in apparent 



unlikenesses, that other beings of a different species 

 may come closer to the type, in appearance, than 

 organisms of really the same species; as in all 

 classes of things we see that extremes touch, or 

 even overlap one another. In biology, it is a like- 

 ness indeed that determines the species; but it is a 



