Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/404

 390 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

transformation must therefore naturally tend to the mixture of races and to a more homogeneous adaptation of the species to the different conditions of the plant, through the progressive acquisition of qualities more and more special and complex, but also more and more common to the several groups.

In opposition to the school of Darwin, polygenism is rep- resented, in the philosophy of history, notably by Kolb who, in Culturgeschichte der Menschheit, admits a great number of primi- tive races. In this respect he agrees, as we have seen, with Gumplowicz. Blumenbach reduces the number of absolutely original races to five. Kolb rejects monogenism, chiefly for the reason that man would be incapable of adapting himself to the divers climates, and that consequently some distinct centers of creation were necessary. Adaptation, he thinks, becomes partly possible only for the civilizations already very advanced and prepared by great resources for escaping more or less from the external influences. According to him, the special environments correspond therefore to special races created in these environ- ments.

Such is the explanation of a rational philosopher. It is, in fact, very complicated. It necessitates as corollary the explana- tion of the fact that these special and local creations have been able, however, to contribute to the formation of a specifically single type, notwithstanding its accessory variations. This explanation the naturalist partisans of polygenism appear not at all capable of furnishing. See, however, the principal argu- ments produced by one of them, Burmeister, in his Histoire de la creation? According to him, the influence of environments, from the point of view of the formation of species and races, is not the same in so far as one applies to the man that which has been observed among animals. The races of domestic animals, par- ticularly in a certain climate or upon a certain soil, are not slow to degenerate when they are transported to other climates and other soils. However, they conserve a certain originality and do not take completely the character of the race-stock which primarily inhabited the new environment. "As to the human kind,

'Fifth edition, 1854, pp. 564-68.