If the Negro and the White could not procreate together, or if their offspring remained unfruitful, they would be two distinct species; the negro would be to man what the ass is to the horse; or rather, if the white was the man, the negro would be a distinct animal like the monkey, and we might with reason think, that the white and the negro had not the same common origin. But this supposition is denied by the fact; for since all varieties of men can communicate together and transmit their kind, all men must have come from the same stock, and are of the same family. When two individuals of the same species cannot produce together, it is possibly occasioned by some slight difference of temperament, or accidental fault in the organs of generation. For two individuals of different species, to produce other individuals which do not resemble the one or the other in no fixed particular, and can consequently produce nothing like themselves, there needs but a certain degree of conformity between the forms of their bodies, and their organs of generation. But what an immense number of combinations are even necessary, even to suppose that two animals, male and female, of a certain species, have so much degenerated as to form a new species, and are no longer able to produce with any of their own kind but themselves! And also to suppose that the production of these two degenerated animals should follow exactly the same laws which are observed in the procreation of perfect animals; for a degenerated animal is itself a vitiated production, and how can a vitiated, depraved origin, become a new stock, and not only produce a constant succession of beings, but even to produce them in the same manner, and by following the same laws which reproduce animals, the origin of which are pure and uncorrupted? Although we cannot demonstrate that the production of a new species, by degeneration, is a thing impossible in nature, yet the number of probabilities to the contrary render it incredible, for if some species have been produced by the degeneration of others, if that of the ass absolutely originated from the horse, it can only have happened by a succession of imperceptible degrees, and there must necessarily have been a greater number of intermediate animals, the first of which would have differed but slightly in its nature from the horse, and the latter would have approached by degrees to that of the ass. Upon the ground of this supposition we might ask, what is become of these intermediate beings? Why do we not see their representatives, their descendants? and why do the two extremes alone remain?