But, although this civilization will become more general and more widely spread, it will not suppress certain differences in the conditions of life. As long as there are poles and an equator, continents and islands, or mountains and plains, races will exist distinguished by characters of every kind, and superior or inferior in a physical, intellectual, and moral point of view. In spite of crossings, varieties and inequalities will continue. But as a whole, mankind will be perfected; it will have grown; and the civilizations of the future, without causing those of the past to be forgotten, will outstrip them in some as yet unknown direction, just as ours have outstripped those of our predecessors. * * * * * V. I have just closed the statement of the most general questions raised by the history of the human race. The principal point to determine is the _unity_ or the _multiplicity of the species_. There are some anthropologists, even men of high distinction, who regard it as almost an idle question, as merely a question of dogma or of philosophy. Nevertheless, a little reflection is sufficient to make it intelligible, that the science is entirely changed according as it is regarded from a monogenist’s or a polygenist’s point of view. I have already pointed out this fact; and beg permission to return to it in a few words. After the fundamental question of unity comes that of _antiquity_. This is put similarly in the two doctrines. But the problem is simple and absolute for the monogenist, but multiple and relative for the polygenist. The _question of the place of origin_, which next presents itself, only exists in reality for the believer in the specific unity of human groups. The doctrine of autochthonism, though greatly multiplying the question, reduces it to very simple terms, since it declares that all the populations were born upon the spot whose foreign origin it does not establish, and only admits movements of expansion. For the polygenist the _general question of migrations_ does not exist. For particular cases autochthonism supplies everything. He who regards the Polynesians as having appeared on the islands of the Pacific has not to seek whence they might have come. The _question of acclimatisation_ for the polygenist is reduced to a small number of facts almost exclusively modern, human populations being in his eyes naturally formed for living under the conditions of life in which they were born. The _question of the formation of races_ disappears entirely for the polygenist, since the different species admitted by him have appeared with all the characters which distinguish the different human groups. At most he has to concern himself with the results of some modern crossings which are too evident to be denied. The _question of primitive man_ does not exist for the polygenist, since he recognizes all _his species_ with the characters which they have had from the commencement.