On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus homo / by Paul Broca ; edited, with the permission of the author, by C. Carter Blake.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus homo / by Paul Broca ; edited, with the permission of the author, by C. Carter Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    SECTION IV. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. The numerous and controverted questions wtich we had to discuss, have more than once interrupted the chain of our thesis. It may, therefore, be useful to present here a o-esum^ of the various parts of our argumentation. Zoologists have, in each of the natural groups which consti- tute the genera, recognised several types which they denomi- nate species.-^ The human group evidently constitutes one genus j if it con- sisted only of one species, it would foi-m a single exception in creation. It is, therefore, but natural to presume, that this genus is, like all the others, composed of different species. In the greater number of'genera, the various species differ much less from each other than certain human races. A natu- raHst, who, without touching the question of origin, purely and simply applies to the human genus the general principles of zootaxis, would be inclined to divide this genus into different species. This mode of viewing the subject can only be abandoned, if it were by observation demonstrated that all the difference be- tween human races had been the result of modifications caused in the organisation of man by the influence of media. The monogenists have at first made great efforts to furnish such a demonstration, but without success. Observation has, on the contrary, shown, that though the organisation of man may, in the course of time, and under the influence of external conditions, undergo some modification, yet that these modifica- tions are relatively very slight, and have no relation to the typical differences of human races. Man, transplanted into a ' Some genera in existing faunas, containing only one species, are in an- terior faunas represented by a number of species now extinct, and evidently differing from the one species actually existing. [Compare the two species of existing elephants with the twelve species of Elephas and thirteen of Mastodon which existed in tertiary times.—Editob.]