52 Actual Races in History. 



agated itself from time immemorial. So has the 

 ass. The mule never yet — perhaps to our great 

 relief. Horses are a species. So are asses. But 

 the hybrid mule, which is a cross-breed between 

 the horse and the ass, is not a species. Hence we 

 see that organisms can exist without constituting a 

 species of their own. Others exist, and do make a 

 perpetual family of their own. While no families 

 ever pass over from one line of propagation to 

 another, giving us what is called a descent, or trans- 

 formation of species. This we shall see in biology. 

 55. The idea of race is much easier to apprehend. 

 It originates in the fact that every species admits 

 of varying traits in the individual, as dis- 

 Kace. ' tinguished from any other of the same 

 species. Indeed, no two individuals are 

 in all respects alike. The specific likeness, remaining 

 common to all, is modified accidentally. Now, these 

 accidental modifications may keep within certain 

 normal limits, usual in the species; or they may be 

 exaggerated or diminished, moving in a positive or 

 negative direction, outside of a usual area of un- 

 dulation, observed in that species. So doing, they 

 become exceptional. And the individual which 

 bears an exceptional character of this kind is 

 called a Variety. Should this variety transmit its 

 peculiar modifications to other individuals, by way 

 of descent, there results a line of posterity marked 

 with an hereditary divergence from the common 

 type. A posterity like this constitutes a race; 



