On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo

These two axioms have served as the premises of an apparently irresistible syllogism.

1. All animals, capable of producing an eugenesic progeny, are of the same species.

2. All human crossings are eugenesic.

Therefore, all men are of the same species.

The monogenists, convinced of the reality of the premises of this syllogism, thought their doctrine to stand on a solid foundation, and defended it with that confidence inspired by conviction.

Assailed by pressing objections, constantly obliged to yield, incapable of advancing a step without an immediate retreat, they felt their forces revive by resorting to their syllogism, like Antæus when he touched the earth. As long as the refuge remained they continued the struggle, though not with advantage, at least with the ardour of faith; for though faith no longer moves mountains, it still leaves the hope of moving them.

But these two fundamental propositions, admitted as axioms, do they express the truth? Can this triumphant syllogism, of which they are the premises, stand? Is it true that only animals of the same species can produce a prolific progeny? Is it true that all human crossings are eugenesic? To upset the syllogism of the monogenists, and to deprive their system of any scientific base, it might be sufficient that the first of the above questions should be answered in the negative. The system would then become what it was before it came in contact with science, namely, a belief more or less respectable, founded upon a sentiment or a dogma. But if the second question were also negatived, and it could be demonstrated that all human crossings are not eugenesic, then not merely the syllogism, but the whole doctrine of the monogenists would crumble to pieces. The doctrine would then not merely be extra-scientific, but anti-scientific; it being positive that two groups of animals, so different as to be incapable of fusion by generation, do not belong to the same species. This is an incontestable and uncontested truth.

We were thus led to examine successively the two fundamental propositions serving as a base to the unitarian doctrine, for which purpose a series of researches were requisite.

We have, in the first place, investigated the results of certain crossings between animals of incontestably different species, such as dogs and wolves, goats and sheep, camels and dromedaries, hares and rabbits, etc.; and we have demonstrated that these crossings produce eugenesic mongrels, that is to say, perfectly and indefinitely prolific between themselves.

It is thus not true that all animals capable of producing an eugenesic progeny are of the same species; and even if all human intermixtures were eugenesic, as is generally believed, we could not infer from this the unity of the human species. The monogenists are thus deprived of their principal basis and their sole scientific argument.

It was, however, necessary to inquire, whether this popular axiom, that all human crossings are eugenesic, was a demonstrated truth or a lightly accepted hypothesis, without any verification or control? Such has been the object of our second series of investigations.

We recognised at the outset that the monogenists, considering their axiom as self-evident, have made no efforts to establish its correctness, so that, strictly speaking, we might have discarded it. When, contrary to the opinion of several modern authors, we wished to establish that there were really eugenesic intermixtures in the human genus, we found in science assertions without proofs, and we believe that our investigations concerning the mixed populations of France have, in this respect, the merit of novelty. We may be mistaken as to the value of our demonstration; but we venture to assert, that this demonstration is the first that has been attempted.

After having rendered, if not quite certain, at least extremely probable, that certain human crossings are eugenesic, we have inquired whether all human crossings are in the same condition.

From the documents collected it results, that certain human crossings yield results notably inferior to such as constitute in animals eugenesic hybridity. The whole of the known facts permit us to consider as very probable, that certain human races taken two by two are less homœogenesic; as, for instance, the species of the dog and the wolf. If we are to make any reservation, and leave some doubts upon this conclusion, it is that we cannot admit, without numerous verifications, a fact which definitively demonstrates the plurality of human species; a fact, by the presence of which, all other discussion is rendered superfluous; a fact, finally, of which the political and social consequences would be immense.

We cannot too much insist upon drawing the attention of observers upon this subject. But whatever be the result of ulterior researches on human hybridity, it remains well attested that animals of different species may produce an eugenesic progeny, and that consequently we cannot, from the fecundity of human intermixture, however disparate the races may be, draw a physiological argument in favour of the unity of species, even if the fecundity were as certain as it is doubtful.

The great problem we have investigated in this essay is one of those which have caused great agitation, and most difficult to approach with a mind unbiassed by any extra-scientific preconception. This was almost inevitable; but science must keep aloof from anything not within its province. There is no faith, however respectable, no interest, however legitimate, which must not accommodate itself to the progress of human knowledge and bend before truth, if that truth be demonstrated. Hence it is always hazardous to mix up theological arguments with discussions of this kind, and to stigmatise in the name of religion any scientific opinion, since, if that opinion, sooner or later gains ground, religion has been uselessly compromised. The unskilful intervention of theologians in astronomical questions (rotation of the earth), in physiology (pre-existence of germs), in medicine (possessions), etc., has formed more infidels than the writings of philosophers. Why should men be placed in the dilemma of choosing between science and faith? And when so many striking examples have placed theologians under the necessity to acknowledge that revelation is not applicable to science, why do they obstinately continue to place the Bible before the wheels of progress?83

Sincere Christians have understood that the moment is come to prepare the conciliation of the doctrine of the polygenists with the sacred writings. They are disposed to admit that the Mosaic narration does not apply to the whole human race, but merely to the Adamites, from which sprung God’s people; that there may have been other human beings with whom the sacred writer had no concern; that it is nowhere said that the sons of Adam contracted incestuous alliances with their own sisters; that Cain, banished after the murder of his brother, had a mark set upon him that no one might kill him; that, besides the sons of God, there was a race of the sons of man; that the origin of the sons of men is not specified; that nothing authorises us to consider these as the progeny of Adam; that these two races differed in their physical characters, since, by their union, a cross-breed was produced designated by the name of giants, “to indicate the physical and moral energy of mixed races.” And that, finally, all these antediluvian races might have survived the deluge in the persons of the three daughters-in-law of Noah.84

We have collated here the observations of various authors, one of whom, the Rev. John Bachmann, remarks with evident satisfaction that, if contrary to the prevailing opinion, the multiplicity of human species should eventually be demonstrated, which he considers very improbable, the authority of the Bible would still remain unshaken, and that “the highest interest of mankind would not suffer by it.” We have here a preparatory conciliation as a sort of prevision of ulterior scientific developments. Very recently a fervent Catholic, a physician, who in his various voyages has attentively studied the races of mankind, Mr. Sagot, has advanced an hypothesis which we consider as quite new, and which would enable us, better than by the preceding suppositions, to accommodate the biblical narration with anthropological science. After having demonstrated that the physical, intellectual, and moral characters establish between the races of men profound differences, which are indelible, and that all influences to which they have been attributed are absurd and imaginary, inasmuch as natural causes would never have produced such a deviation from the primitive form, Mr. Sagot supposes that the division in perfectly distinct races, and their methodical dispersion and repartition upon the surface of the earth, was a miraculous intervention of Providence. He is of opinion that this great fact was accomplished at the period of the confusion of tongues, that is, after the audacious enterprise of the Tower of Babel, and that God, in dispersing the families, endowed each with a peculiar organisation and aptitudes accommodated to the various climates assigned to them.85 Whether the differences of human races and their geographical distribution was the consequence of distinct creations, or miraculous transformations equivalent to new creations, comes to the same thing as regards the doctrine of polygenists. Their object is not to enter into any theological discussions; they have been driven to it, and they will no doubt be delighted to hear that their doctrine may become developed without offending anybody.

The intervention of political and social considerations has not been less injurious to Anthropology than the religious element. When generous philanthropists claimed, with indefatigable constancy, the liberty of the blacks, the partisans of the old system, threatened in their dearest interests, were enchanted to hear that Negros were scarcely human beings, but rather domestic animals, more intelligent and productive than the rest. At that time the scientific question became a question of sentiment, and whoever wished for the abolition of slavery, thought himself bound to admit that Negroes were Caucasians blackened and frizzled by the sun. Now that France and England, the two most civilised nations, have definitively emancipated their slaves, science may claim its rights without caring for the sophisms of slaveholders.

Many honest men think that the moment to speak freely is not yet come, as the emancipation struggle is far from being at an end in the United States of America, and that we should avoid furnishing the slaveholders with arguments. But is it true that the polygenist doctrine, which is scarcely a century old,86 is any degree responsible for an order of things which has existed from time immemorial, and which has developed and perpetuated itself during a long series of centuries, under the shade of the doctrine of monogenists, which remained so long uncontested? And can we believe that the slave-owners are much embarrassed to find arguments in the Bible? The Rev. John Bachmann, a fervent monogenist of South Carolina, has acquired in the Southern States much popularity by demonstrating, with great unction, that slavery is a divine institution.87 It is not from the writings of polygenists, but from the Bible, that the representatives of the Slave States have drawn their arguments; and Mr. Bachmann tells us that the Abolitionists of Congress have been struck dumb by such an irrefragable authority! It must, therefore, not be believed that there is any connexion between the scientific and the political question. The difference of origin by no means implicates the subordination of races. It, on the contrary, implicates the idea that each race of men has originated in a determined region, as it were, as the crown of the fauna of that region; and if it were permitted to guess at the intention of nature, we might be led to suppose that she has assigned a distinct inheritance to each race, because, despite of all that has been said of the cosmopolitism of man, the inviolability of the domain of certain races is determined by their climate.

Let this mode of viewing the question be compared with that of the monogenists, and let it be asked which of the two modes is more apt to please the defenders of slavery. If all men are descendants of one couple, – if the inequality of races has been the result of a curse more or less merited, – or again, if the one have degraded themselves, and have allowed the torch of their primitive intelligence to become extinct, whilst the other have carefully guarded the precious gift of the Creator, – in other words, if there be cursed and blessed races, – races which have obeyed the voice of nature and races which have disobeyed it, – then the Rev. John Bachmann is right to say that slavery is a Divine right; that it is a providential punishment; and that it is just, to a certain point, that those races who have degraded themselves should be placed under the protection of others, – to borrow an ingenious euphemism from the language of the defenders of slavery.88 But if the Ethiopian is king of Soudan by the same right as the Caucasian is king of Europe, what right has he to impose laws upon the former, unless by the right of might? In the first case, slavery presents itself with a certain appearance of legitimacy which might render it excusable in the eyes of certain theoricians; in the second case, it is a fact of pure violence, protested against by all who derive no benefit from it.

From another point of view, it might be said that the polygenist doctrine assigns to the inferior races of humanity a more honourable place than in the opposite doctrine. To be inferior to another man either in intelligence, vigour, or beauty, is not a humiliating condition. On the contrary, one might be ashamed to have undergone a physical or moral degradation, to have descended the scale of beings, and to have lost rank in creation.

1

Gobineau, Inégalité des Races Humaines, 8vo, Paris, 1855; [also translated into English, On the Inequality of Human Races, and edited by Henry Hotze, 8vo. Editor.]

2

“The sole action of the laws of Hybridity,” says Nott, “might exterminate the whole human species if all the various types of human beings actually existing on the earth were completely to amalgamate.” Types of Mankind, p. 407, eighth edit., Philadelphia, 1857. Dr. Robert Knox is not less explicit. “I do not believe that any Mulatto race can be maintained beyond the third or fourth generation by Mulattos merely; they must intermarry with the pure races or perish.” Robert Knox, The Races of Men, London, 1850.

3

Georges Pouchet, De la Pluralité des Races Humaines, p. 140, Paris, 1858. [A translation of this work will shortly be published by the Anthropological Society of London, edited by T. Bendyshe, Esq., M.A., F.A.S.L. Editor.]

4

Prichard, Natural History of Man.

5

Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, p. 7, No. 4, London, 1856.

6

See the voyages of Truter and Somerville (1801), Lichtenstein (1805), Campbell (1813), John Philips (1825), Thompson (1824), etc., in the Collection of Voyages by Walkenaer, t. xv-xxi, Paris, 1842. In 1801 Truter and Somerville found near the Orange or Gariep river, in the district where now Griqua town stands, a horde of Bastaards and Bosjesmen, commanded by a Bastaard of the name of Kok (t. xvii, p. 364). On their return they found a considerable village, composed of Kaffirs, Hottentots, and mongrel breeds of several varieties, under the command of a chief named Kok (p. 393). In the same year Kitchener, the missionary, assembled the horde in a village. There came pure Hottentots and Namaquas (t. xviii, p. 126). In 1802 Anderson, the missionary, in organising the growing nation, gave authority to the Bastaards (p. 127). The village of Laawater or Klaarwater, which has since become Griqua-town, consisted in 1805, when Lichtenstein visited it, of about thirty families, one-half of which belonged to the Bastaard race, the rest were Namaquas or Hottentots. The village enlarged rapidly “by the arrival of refugees, and by marriages with the women of the Bosjesmen and the Koramas, who lived in the vicinity” (t. xix, p. 355). They practised polygamy. “They constituted a horde of nomadic naked savages, living by pillage and the chase; their bodies were besmeared with red paint, the hair covered with grease, living in ignorance, without any trace of civilisation” (p. 356). After the lapse of five years the missionaries commenced civilising them by giving them the taste for agricultural pursuits. The name, however, of Bastaards, which indicated their European origin, was no longer suitable to this nation, in which the African blood was greatly predominating. They took, therefore, the name of Griquas. Campbell asserts that they chose that name, as it was that of the principal family (t. xviii, p. 395). This explanation appears to me very doubtful. Ten Rhyne, who explored Southern Africa in 1673, twenty year after the first disembarkation of Europeans, already mentions the existence of a Hottentot people who went by the name of Gregoriquos (t. xv, p. 122). Thirty years after (1705) Kolbe designates the same people Gauriquas (t. xv, p. 253). There existed at that time another people, called Chirigriquas. In 1775 Thunberg still speaks of Gauriquas (t. xvi, p. 201), and of Chirigriquas. All these names have evidently the same root, and the singularity of Hottentot enunciation induced probably the various travellers to adopt a different orthography. It is thus presumable that the Hottentots of Klaarwater, in calling themselves Griquas, merely adopted the old name Gauriquas. There exists to this day the people Koraquas, signifying “people who wear shoes” (Burchell, t. xx, p. 60). They live in the neighbourhood of Klaarwater. Be this as it may, the new people of the Griquas gave to Klaarwater, influenced by the English missionaries, the name of Griqua-town. This town, called by Malte-Brun Kriqua, grew rapidly by the adjunction of the Koranas. In 1813 there were not less than 1,341 Koranas in a population of 2,607 inhabitants (t. xviii, p. 393). In 1814 the governor of the Cape tried to force the Griquas to furnish men for the indigenous army. The proposal was very badly received, and the nation was nearly in a state of dissolution. A portion of the inhabitants of Griqua-town escaped to the surrounding mountains, and formed bands of robbers, who, under the name of Bergmaars, devastated the country, and, associating with bands of Koranas, pillaged and massacred the Betchouanas and the Bosjesmen, and carried off their women and children. In 1825, owing to the intervention of John Philips, the Bergmaars were reduced to order, and returned to Griqua-town. They had now crossed with the Koranas, the Betchouanas, and Bosjesmen (t. xviii, p. 357). Some time previously a grave dissension had broken out among the settled Griquas. The governor of the Cape had sent an agent, John Melvil, with an important charge to a certain Waterboer, a Bosjesman by origin. The supremacy had hitherto belonged to the family Kok, who, proud of the drops of European blood in their veins, would not recognise the authority of Waterboer, and emigrated accordingly. Waterboer was, however, not dismissed; and in 1825 John Philips found the Griquas divided in three kraals, under the chiefs Kok, Berend, and Waterboer (t. xix, p. 370). If Dr. Prichard had taken the trouble to consult these documents he would have recognised that the Griquas had, by so many consecutive crossings, become almost a pure African race. Modern geographers range therefore the Griquas among the Hottentots, calling them Hottentot-Griquas. It is also noteworthy that Prichard, in citing the Griquas as an example of a mixed race, has given no description of them. In order that the example should be of any value, it is requisite that the Griquas should present an intermediate type between the Europeans and the natives. Neither Dr. Prichard nor any travellers say so. There is another consideration. The origin of the Griqua nation dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Dr. Prichard last speaks of them in 1843. Two generations had not yet elapsed. There is another point. In 1800 the tribe of Kok was a horde but little numerous; in 1824 it was a people of five thousand souls, including seven hundred armed warriors (Thompson, loc. cit., t. xxi, p. 22). It is clear that this people were not descended from the primitive tribe, but had increased by numerous adjunctions. Father Peteam himself, if he were still alive, would be obliged to admit this. I have been very minute as to the Griquas, but I flatter myself that this is sufficient to discard from science the assertion of Prichard, which all modern monogenists have received with so much favour.

7

Quoy et Gaimard, Observat. sur la constitution physique des Papous, reproduit dans Lesson. Complement des Œuvres de Buffon, t. iii., Paris, 1829.

8

Domeny de Rienzi, l’Oceanie, t. iii, p. 303. Paris, 1837.

9

Maury, La terre et l’homme, p. 365. Paris, 1847.

10

Latham, The Natural History of the Varieties of Man, p. 213. London, 1850. Dr. Latham designates the Malays by the somewhat fantastic name, of Protonesians. There are a great number of neologisms of this kind in his work.

11

Some geographers say that Waigiou is a large Island; but they give no dimensions. It is, however, scarcely as large as the Island of Majorca. It is of an irregular form, long and narrow; it is about 80 leagues in circumference (Dumont d’Urville in Rienzi, l’Oceanie). It is only 25 leagues long and 10 leagues broad, says Henricy (Histoire de l’Oceanie. Paris, 1845.) The Island of Majorca is only 22 leagues in length by 16 leagues in breadth. Three races united in such a small territory, cannot long remain strangers to each other.

12

Lesson, loc. cit. t. ii. p. 19.

13

Davis, Crania Britannica. Introduction, p. 8, note.

14

These geographical denominations are certainly not irreproachable; they have even the inconvenience of giving rise to the false idea, that all races of the same type originated in the same region; that all the Whites came from the Caucasus, all the Mongolians from Mongolia, the Blacks from Nigritia, even the Van-Diemen islanders. I have, however, thought proper to retain these denominations, as they are generally in use, and have no zoological signification. Such is not the case with the denominations adopted by certain authors derived from the colour of the skin. Thus the Caucasians were termed the white, the Mongolians the yellow, the Ethiopian the black, the Malayo-Polynesian the brown, and finally, the American the red race. It has been shown that the American type alone includes red, brown, black, white and yellow races. There are brown races in the American, and even in the Caucasian type. All the black races do not belong to the Ethiopian type; and finally, the Malayo-Polynesian type comprises races of colours as various as those belonging to the American type. A classification founded on differences of colour would lead to numerous and serious errors.

15

It is undoubted that several American races have been destroyed within 300 years; others having been reduced to a few families, will soon disappear. The Charruas were exterminated in 1831 by the Spaniards of South America: root and branch, as Dr. Latham says. In 1835, four years later, the English of Van Diemen’s Land, after a horrible massacre, transported 210 Tasmanians, men, women, and children, to a small island (Flinders), in Bass’ Straits. In 1842, after seven years of exile, the number of these unfortunates amounted to 54! This was all that remained of a race which, 40 years previously, occupied the whole of Van Diemen’s Land, as large as Ireland, and we may soon learn that none of them are in existence. The Malays have entirely destroyed the black races who preceded them in certain isles of the great Indian Archipelago. The Guanches now only exit in a mummified state. The black and prognathous race which occupied the isles of Japan before the arrival of the Mongolians, have left no other traces behind than their crania imbedded in the soil; and it is easy to foresee that within one or two centuries all the black races will have disappeared from these parts, and have been succeeded by Malayans and Europeans.