Anthropology in France seems, at last, to desire to free itself from the shameful yoke which has for so long paralysed its flight. In its turn it claims independence. But, we would declare this, that the principle of authority, defeated on so many points, has concentrated its highest efforts behind this last rampart, calling to its aid the pretence of morality and propriety. The question of the unity or the plurality of the human race, so far as relates to species, is only a scientific one; but others make of it a question of principle, as in the time of Galileo, when it was a matter of overturning the ideas of the old world, supported by a testimony which was not allowed to be doubted. So the struggle is a sharp one;[3] it is felt that it refers almost to a dogma, and not merely to an accessory fact. Science clashes there with religion, as is the case with geology, and as formerly with astronomy; but in no way is the shock so violent, in no way can its consequences be as great. Anthropology, more than any other science, ought to produce immense results.[4] Who does not see that the abyss becomes every day deeper under the belief of the past, and that science, at a given moment, will become the foundation of more perfect morality? This antagonism is the first difficulty which we find at the threshold of anthropology. We should have wished to have entered upon our subject without being obliged, not absolutely to discuss it, but merely to show the disputed point in the question. Unfortunately, the example has been given us; we must follow it. Two schools are to be found in anthropology; one called that of the Polygenists, the other that of the Monogenists,[5] two words which came from America, and which we receive because they have the great advantage of being clear and precise, determining, by the opposing point of their doctrines, two distinct schools, the one recognising but one family in the human race, of which some members have alone preserved the primitive type--altered everywhere else; the other school recognising no direct relationship among the races of mankind. The Polygenistic school is comparatively modern; the founders of anthropology--the Blumenbachs and the Prichards--belonged to the other. Now, if they took their stand on an entirely philosophic or experimental point of view, we should be very badly received now-a-days if we were to reconsider the question upon a burning soil. It has not been so, however. Most Monogenists[6] have, up to the present time, done the universal wrong of invoking, in proof of their ideas, an authority which it is not allowable to discuss. Science is neither a special attribute of privileged castes, nor given to certain times in preference to others; it has never been obliged to wait for a revelation; it is universal, and all men, endowed with the same faculties, have always been able, in all countries and at all times, to carry it as far, when they have had the same means and