Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/82

72 Even when we encounter one or several men, presenting the characters of these types, we cannot identify them, for lack of historical documents upon the subject. Consequently, if we judge by the looks. if we take account only of the men themselves, we cannot decide whether the differences they present are differences of race or differences of species: whether man is to be considered as arising from a single primitive stock, or whether we ought to suppose several primitive stocks.

But we have already said, and we again repeat, that man is an organized and living being; and, as such, he obeys all the general laws which govern all organized and living beings: he consequently obeys the laws of crossing. These, then, we must interrogate, to find out whether there is one or several species of men.

Take, for example, the two most distinct types, those which, more than any others, seem separated by profound differences—the white man and the negro.

If these types really constitute distinct species, their union ought to bear the stamp we have found to characterize the unions between animals and vegetables of different species. In the great majority of cases they should be infertile; in all the remainder, slightly fertile; the fertility should soon disappear, and they should not be able to form intermediate groups between the negro and the white. If these two men are only races of one and the same species, their union, on the contrary, should be very fertile; the fertility should be kept up by their descendants, and intermediate races ought to be formed.

Well, gentlemen, the facts here are decisive, and admit of no hesitation. It is scarcely three centuries since the white man par excellence—the European—made, so to say, the conquest of the world; he has gone everywhere, and everywhere he has found local races, human groups that do not resemble him; everywhere he has crossed with them, and the unions have been very fertile, sometimes very sensibly more fertile than those of the indigenous people themselves.

And further, in consequence of a detestable institution, which happily has never sullied the soil of France, in consequence of slavery, the white has taken the negro everywhere, everywhere he has crossed with his slaves, and everywhere a mulatto population has been formed. Everywhere, also, the negro has crossed with the local groups, and everywhere there have sprung up intermediate races, which, by their characters, proclaim this double origin. The white, finally, has crossed with these mixed breeds, and hence has resulted in certain parts of the globe, and notably in America, an inextricable mass of mixed peoples, perfectly comparable with our street dogs and roof cats.

The rapidity with which these mixed races cross and multiply is truly remarkable. It is hardly three centuries, about twelve