Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/83

Rh, since the European spread over all parts of the world. Well, we estimate that already one seventieth of the total population of the globe are mixtures, resulting from the cross of the whites with indigenous peoples.

In certain states of South America where the mixture began earlier where the European arrived in the first days of discovery, a quarter of the population is composed of cross breeds, and in some regions the proportion is more than half.

You see, our experience is today as complete as possible. Unless we deny all modern science, unless we would make man a solitary exception in the midst of organic and living beings, we must admit that all men form only one and the same species, composed of a certain number of different races; we must, therefore, admit that all men may be considered as descended from a single primitive pair.

You see, gentlemen, we have reached this conclusion, outside of all species of dogmatic or theological consideration, outside of all species of philosophical or metaphysical consideration. Observation and experiment alone, applied to the animal and vegetable kingdom, science, in a word, leads us logically to this conclusion: there exists but one species of men.

This result, I do not fear to say, is of great and serious importance, for it gives to the thought of universal brotherhood the only foundation that many people now recognize, that of science and reason.

I hope, gentlemen, that my demonstration has convinced you. However, I am not unaware of the fact, and you doubtless also know, that all anthropologists are not agreed. There are among my fellow laborers a certain number of men, even of great men, who believe in the plurality of the human species. Perhaps you may have come in contact with them. Well, listen, then, with attention to the reasons they bring in support of their view. You easily see that all these reasons may be summed up in this: There is too much difference between the negro and the white man to permit them to belong to the same species.

Then you reply: Between the white or black water spaniel and the greyhound, between the bulldog and the lapdog, there is much more difference than between the European and the inhabitant of Africa, and yet the greyhound and the water spaniel, the bulldog and the lap dog, are equally dogs.

They will perhaps add: How could the same primitive man, whatever his characters might be, give birth to the white man and the negro?

You will answer: How has the wild turkey, of which we know the origin, of which we know the grandparents, how has the wild rabbit, which we find still among us, how have they been able to give birth to all our domestic' races?

We cannot, I repeat, explain rigorously the how and the why; but