On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo

Оглавление

Broca Paul. On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo

EDITOR’S PREFACE

GLOSSARIAL NOTE

SECTION I

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON CROSSING IN HUMAN RACES

Pretended examples of hybrid races (note on the Griquas of Southern Africa)

Significations of the words race and type

SECTION II

OF EUGENESIC HYBRIDITY IN MANKIND

SECTION III

EXAMPLES TENDING TO PROVE THAT THE INTERMIXTURE OF CERTAIN RACES OF MEN ARE NOT EUGENESIC

Remarks on the interpretation of human hybridity

Relative infecundity of the interbreeds between the White and Negro

Relative sterility of some Mulattoes in the first generation

Moral or physical inferiority of some Mulattoes

Malay and mixed breeds

Relative sterility of the interbreeds between the Europeans and the Australians or Tasmanians

Observations of Count Strzelecki; discussion

Conclusions on human hybridity

SECTION IV

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

Отрывок из книги

The significations of the following words, habitually used by Dr. Broca, are appended: —

Agenesic. Mongrels of the first generation, entirely unfertile, either between each other, or with the two parent species, and consequently being unable to produce either direct descendants or mongrels of the second generation.

.....

It must not be believed that all human races can with equal facility be ranged in either of these divisions; nor must we believe that the characteristic traits of one group are equally marked in all the dependent races; nor even that they are found combined in any of these races; nor, finally, that in the centre of each group we find a typical race in which all the characters have their maximum of development. This might be the case if all known races had descended from five primitive stocks, as admitted by several polygenists, or if, as many monogenists think, humanity, one in the beginning, had soon afterwards been divided into five principal trunks, from which issued, as so many accessory branches, the numerous sub-divisions which constitute the secondary races. But there is no race which can pretend to personify within itself the type to which it belongs. This type is fictitious; the description is an ideal one, like the forms of the Apollo de Belvedere. Human types, like all other types, are merely abstractions, and in proportion as we attach more importance to this or that character, we obtain a more or less considerable number of types. Thus, Blumenbach had five, Cuvier only three, and Bérard describes fifteen types. This is also proved by the fact, that whilst many races attach themselves directly and evidently to a fixed type, there are others belonging to two very dissimilar types. Thus the Abyssinians are Caucasian in form and Ethiopian by colour. The description of the principal types is thus merely a methodical process, fit to facilitate, by the formation of a certain number of groups, the comparison of human races, and to simplify the partial description of each. This division has, moreover, the advantage of establishing for the greater part of the races, their degree of relative affinity or divergence. It even accords to a certain point with their primitive repartition upon the surface of the globe, which has permitted, without doing any violence to the facts, to distinguish the types by denominations borrowed from geography.14

There is in the human mind a tendency to personify abstractions. These ideal types have usurped a place in the domain of facts, so that a real existence has been given to them. The monogenists had, strictly speaking, a right to do so without any violence to their principles; but the polygenists, who have followed their example, have sinned against logic. The former attribute all varieties of the human species to the numerous modifications of five principal races, issued themselves from one common stock, and the same influences which, according to then, have in the origin produced fundamental races, have afterwards by an analogous process produced the secondary races. All this is sufficiently clear; and such stood the question when the polygenists appeared in the arena. Their first efforts were directed to attack the doctrine in its essential foundations, and to demonstrate that by no natural causation could Whites be transformed into Negroes, or Negroes into Mongolians; they therefore proclaimed the multiplicity of human origin and the plurality of species. Be it that they have shrunk from the idea of causing too great a revolution in science, or that they thought that it would conduce sooner to the triumph of their doctrine, they retained as far as possible the number of species, and confined themselves to assume a primitive stock for each of the five races described by the Unitarians. I do not assert that all polygenists followed this course, as some proceeded in a more independent manner. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Desmoulins, P. Bérard, Morton, had the courage to break entirely with the past, and to remodel the classical divisions. They found, however, but few imitators; and many polygenists are to this day content to assign a distinct origin to each of the five principal trunks, which constitute for the monogenists the five fundamental races, but which are to us only natural groups formed by the union of races or species of the same type. They continue also very often to use the term race to designate the ensemble of all individuals of each group, adopting thus by a sort of transaction the language of those whose system they reject; and thus they speak of the white or Caucasian race, the yellow or Mongolian race, the black or Ethiopian race, etc., as if all these individuals of a Caucasian type resembled each other to constitute one race; as if, for instance, the brown Celts and the fair-haired Germans had descended from the same primitive stock. This contradiction has given a handle to the monogenists; for if climate and mode of life may cause a German to become a Celt, there is no reason why, under certain influences, a Celt might not become a Berber, a Berber a Foulah, a Foulah a Negro, and a Negro an Australian.

.....