Tahitians (max.) 1·803 5 10·98
New Zealanders 1·815 5 11·46
Mhaya 1·841 6 0·48
Caraïbes 1·868 6 6·54
Ojibbeways (max.) 1·875 6 1·82
Schiffer Islanders 1·895 6 2·61
New Zealanders (max.) 1·904 6 2·96
Patagonians of the North (max. of D’Orb.) 1·915 6 3·39
Patagonians of the South (max. Musters) 1·924 6 3·75
Schiffer Islanders } 1·930 6 3·98
Tongatuban Islanders }
We here see what strange relations and what a singular confusion rise
from a consideration of the stature. Numbers given in the same order,
representing the size of the skull, the cephalic indices, the weight
of the brain, will give the same striking result.
We must also observe that there is a great majority of means in this
table. Now we see that the discrepancies between these means are less
than the discrepancies between the maximum and minimum of a single
race, so much so that races widely distinct from each other intervene
between them.
Now let us mentally compare instead of these groups, the individuals
of which they are composed. Is it not clear that if they were placed
according to height, we should pass from one to the other with
scarcely the difference of a millimetre; but is it not also clear
that the confusion would become much greater than it appears even in
the table?
I ask anyone who possesses even the smallest knowledge of zoology
and zootechny whether it would be in a collection of species that he
would expect to find the most evident affinities destroyed by the
application of this method? Would it not be rather in a collection
of _races_ that similar facts would be met with, as, for example,
in canine races, where the mastiff and its young, the greyhound of
Saintonge and the Italian greyhound, the large and the small carriage
dog would be separated from each other by a number of other races if
stature alone were taken into account.
The intercrossing and fusion of characters, so marked between human
groups, are inexplicable if we consider these groups as species,
unless we admit that the morphological relations between these
_human species_ are of an entirely different nature to the relations
established between _animal species_. But this _hypothesis_ makes an
_exception_ of man; we have, therefore, the right to regard it as
_false_.
If, on the contrary, we look upon these groups as nothing more than
races of a single species, all these facts of intercrossing and
fusion agree with what may be observed in plants and animals and
replace man under the dominion of general laws.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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