Читать книгу On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo - Broca Paul - Страница 5

The word race has thus, in the language of authors, two very different significations; one is particular and exact, the other general and misleading. Taken in the first sense, it designates individuals sufficiently resembling each other, that we may, without prejudging their origin, and without deciding whether they are the issues of one or several primitive couples, admit, if necessary, as theoretically possible, that they have descended from common parents. Such are, for instance, among the white races, the Arabs, the Basques, the Celts, the Kimris, the Germans, the Berbers, etc.; and among the black races, the Ethiopian Negroes, the Caffres, the Tasmanians, Australians, Papuans, etc.

In the second, that is to say, in a general sense, the term race designates the ensemble of all such individuals who have a certain number of characters in common, and who, though differing in other characters, and divided, perhaps, in an indefinite number of natural groups or races, have to each other a greater morphological affinity than they have with the rest of mankind.

Every confusion in words exposes us to errors in the interpretation of facts, and this rather long digression in relation to the origin of a denomination, borrowed by certain polygenists from the language of monogenists, enables us to understand the denial of the existence of mixed races, and why Prichard could only oppose to this idea the doubtful and fictitious examples of the Cafusos, the Griquas, and the mop-headed Papuans.

If, indeed, it were true that there are only five races of men on the globe, and if it were capable of demonstration that either of them, in mixing with another, produced eugenesic Mulattos capable of constituting a mixed race enduring by itself, without the ulterior concurrence of the parent races, the embarrassment would not yet be at an end. After having succeeded to establish such a demonstration for two of the chief races, it would by no means necessarily result that the intercrossings of the nine other combinations are eugenesic like the first. We should then be obliged to prove (what is evidently impracticable), by ten successive examples, that the ten possible intercrossings between the five fundamental races are all equally and completely prolific. The difficulty is such, that Dr. Prichard, after much research, could only find the three instances already cited and refuted. These facts having proved inconclusive, and other facts which we shall mention presently having induced the theory that certain intermixtures are imperfectly prolific, the pentagenists were led to the opinion that the possibility of a definitive intermixture of races is by no means established, and that, on the contrary, this possibility may be denied.

The pentagenists occupied themselves at first chiefly with the intermixture of the five chief races; but even from this point of view, and taking the term race in a general sense, their negation, though, it must be admitted, far from being justifiable, is still founded upon a more solid basis, and less removed from the truth than the opposed affirmation. Hence it was considered valuable ad interim. But the principle of non-intermixture of races being once promulgated, the confusion of terms soon became apparent. The negation which was at first applied merely to the artificial groups formed by the reunion of races of the same type was applied to natural races, and thus arose that frightful proposition, that no mixed races can subsist in humanity.

It is noteworthy how this excessive and exclusive theory differs from the first, which it has displaced. There is such a gap between the starting point and the conclusion, that it could never have been cleared had not the ambiguous term race concealed the distance. The fact is established that affinities of organisation may exercise some influence on the results of crossing. In studying the phenomena of hybridity in quadrupeds and birds, we have already stated that homœogenesis, without being always proportionate to the degree of the proximity of species, decreases ordinarily in comparison with more removed animals, and that probability induces us to expect similar phenomena in the intermixture of human beings. But what have been the bases of the monogenists and of the pentagenists in forming the five ethnological groups, which constitute the five fundamental races? Why have all Caucasian races been united by them in one family, and called by them the white or the Caucasian race? It has been already stated because the races with a skin more or less white possess between themselves a greater affinity than with any of the other races. In other terms, the zoological distance is less between Celts, Germans, Kimris, etc., compared with that existing between them and the Negroes, Caffres, Lapps, Australians, Malays, etc.

Supposing now that it has been demonstrated – which it has not – that the races of any group can never engender a durable and permanent line by an intermixture with any of the others, can we infer from this that the races of the same group are equally incapable of producing by their intermixture mongrels indefinitely prolific? Just as little as the sterility of the union between the dog and the fox would enable us to infer the sterility between the wolf and the dog; these conclusions would be as little physiological as the former. Such as deny the fecundity of the reciprocal cross-breeds of the five chief primary races might err in some points, and be right as to others. But those who extend this by far too general negation in applying it to the intermixture of secondary races of the same group commit a more serious error. They have reasoned like the monogenists, who knowing from experience that certain human races may become mixed without limitation, have affirmed that all the races, without exception, are in a similar condition. There obtains thus a strange contradiction in these two schools; the one maintains resolutely that all races may intermix, and that their offspring and their descendants will be as prolific as if they were of a pure race, whilst the second as firmly sustains that no mixed race can have any other but an ephemeral existence.

Between these opposite assertions we may well ask where lies the truth? Facts must answer the question. We shall endeavour to examine a few. Some of the facts are in favour of the monogenists, others support the opinion of their adversaries, from which we shall be enabled to infer that in the genus homo, as in the genera of their mammalia, there are different degrees of homœogenesis, according to the races or species; that the cross-breeds of certain races are perfectly eugenesic; that others occupy a less elevated position in the series of hybridity; and finally, that there are human races the homœogenesis of which is still so obscure, that the results even of the first intermixture are still doubtful.