Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
I am one of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence
whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a
single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or
even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than
one species of Man. Nevertheless, as you know, just as there are numbers of
varieties in animals, so there are remarkable varieties of men. I speak not
merely of those broad and distinct variations which you see at a glance.
Everybody, of course, knows the difference between a Negro and a white man,
and can tell a Chinaman from an Englishman. They each have peculiar
characteristics of colour and physiognomy; but you must recollect that the
characters of these races go very far deeper--they extend to the bony
structure, and to the characters of that most important of all organs to
us--the brain; so that, among men belonging to different races, or even
within the same race, one man shall have a brain a third, or half, or even
seventy per cent, bigger than another; and if you take the whole range of
human brains, you will find a variation in some cases of a hundred per
cent. Apart from these variations in the size of the brain, the characters
of the skull vary. Thus if I draw the figures of a Mongol and of a Negro
head on the blackboard, in the case of the last the breadth would be about
seven-tenths, and in the other it would be nine-tenths of the total length.
So that you see there is abundant evidence of variation among men in their
natural condition. And if you turn to other animals there is just the same
thing. The fox, for example, which has a very large geographical
distribution all over Europe, and parts of Asia, and on the American
Continent, varies greatly. There are mostly large foxes in the North, and
smaller ones in the South. In Germany alone the foresters reckon some eight
different sorts.
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