Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/665

 AN AUSTRIAN APPRECIATION OF LESTER F. WARD 649

doubt about the unity of mankind, i. e., about derivation from the same progenitors, and about descent from one original home. There is no room for the hypothesis that nature can have hit upon one and the same complicated form two or more times. Nature has produced man only once. As to the unity of origin, and consequently as to the physiological unity of mankind, no naturalist can entertain doubts. The great variety of external forms of the genus homo which we dis- cover within the human family i. e., a variety in color, figure, height, growth of the hair, etc. can consequently be interpreted only as a result of gradual differentiation and adaptation to the vari- ous climates and geographical conditions, in particular a result of the mode of life determined by the geographical situation.

" The theory of many ' creative centers ' i. e., of the polygenetic origin of mankind is long outgrown in natural science. Agassiz, whom you cite in support of your polygenesis in your Rassenkampf, was the last defender of a lost cause."

I was dumfounded before this enthusiastic defender of the " unity of the human race." I ventured only one suggestion : " How do you explain, my honored friend, the sudden reversal in the direc- tion of the social process, which caused your single original human group to split up into innumerable branches of such different sorts, while known history shows us the picture of a gradual conglomera- tion of heterogeneous human groups into an amalgamation growing in size and advancing in assimilation? Has nature suddenly taken thought since we have become acquainted with human history, and has her former tendency toward differentiation and variation of humanity suddenly given place to an evident tendency toward assimilation and amalgamation? Is such an assumption compatible with the idea of a natural process, the first and essential mark of which is the element of eternal sameness and persistence in one direction ? "

" There you are very greatly mistaken, my friend ! You are not a geologist. If you were, as I am, you would ascribe to nature no such one-sidedness. You would know that natural processes not merely often, but always and everywhere, pass from one direction into its opposite. Just observe the geological periods. In them the natural process never occurs in a single direction. If it did, life on our earth would have long since been extinguished. Every living thing would have long ago been frozen up, if the natural process of glaciation had continued in the same direction. On the contrary,