The Classification of the Varietites of the Human Species 1

Abstract

THE most ordinary observation is sufficient to demonstrate the fact that certain groups of men are strongly marked from others by definite characters common to all members of the group, and transmitted regularly to their descendants by the laws of inheritance. The Chinaman and the Negro, the native of Patagonia and the Andaman Islander, are as distinct from each other structurally as are many of the so-called species of any natural group of animals. Indeed it may be said with truth that their differences are greater than those which mark the groups called genera by many naturalists of the present day. Nevertheless, the difficulty of parcelling out all the individuals composing the human species into certain definite groups, and of saying of each man that he belongs to one or other of such groups is insuperable. No such classification has ever, or indeed, can ever, be obtained. There is not one of the most characteristic, most extreme forms, like those I have just named, from which transitions cannot be traced by almost imperceptible gradations to any of the other equally characteristic, equally extreme, forms. Indeed, a large proportion of mankind is made up, not of extreme or typical, but of more or less generalised or intermediate, forms, the relative numbers of which are continually increasing, as the long-existing isolation of nations and races breaks down under the ever-extending intercommunication characteristic of the period in which we dwell.