Martyria; or, Andersonville PrisonHamlin, Augustus C. (Augustus Choate)
History
Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison
Hamlin, Augustus C. (Augustus Choate)
Andersonville Prison; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Prisoners and prisons
"The mongrel of the third generation barks: it has pendent ears, raised
tail: it is no longer wild. The mongrel of the fourth generation is
entirely dog. Four generations, then, have sufficed to restore one of the
two primitive types--the dog type; and four generations suffice also to
restore the other type--the jackal type. Thus, when the mongrels produced
from the union of two distinct species unite together, either become soon
sterile, or they unite with one of the two primitive stocks, and they soon
revert to this stock; in no case do they yield what may be called a new
species, that is, an intermediate, durable species.
"Whether, then, we consider the external causes,--the succession of time,
years, ages, revolutions of the globe, or internal causes,--that is to
say, the crossing of the species, the species do not alter, do not change,
nor pass from one to the other; the species is fixed." Such are the
conclusions of the admirable efforts of Flourens.
"The imprint of each species," says Buffon, "is a type, the principal
features of which are engraved in characters ineffaceable, and permanent
forever; but all the accessory touches vary; no individual perfectly
resembles another."
XVII.
Among the human families, the law of hybridity, which has been pointed out
so clearly by Flourens, has also its fixed and inflexible rules; these
rules have not been so well studied with men as with animals, but it is
believed to have its limit at the seventh generation. At all events, the
experiments of human hybridism, and acclimation in strange latitudes, have
always in time ended in disaster; and that such will always be the fate of
the attempted union of different races in unfavorable climes, have been
the views of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound
statesmen. We observe among the races in savage life a natural repugnance
to unite: as for instance, the negroes and the fairer people of the
Philippine and Polynesian Isles show no disposition to unite; and though
living side by side, in the same country, for a long period, they have not
produced an intermediate race. Neither do the Eskimos nor the Red Men,
neither do the Caffres nor the Hottentots mix, for in the state of nature
the law of ethnic repugnance is supreme. It is only in the artificial and
depraved states of society that hybrids appear, and their existence is of
short and fixed duration.
The apparent duration and perfection of the Coulouglis, the bipartates of
the Bergers and Turks, may be an exception to the general rule. But the
results of the mingling of human families, widely separated, is generally
very decided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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