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

  • Broca, Paul, 1824-1880.
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 Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    enter into any theological discussions ; they have been driven to it, and they will no doubt be delighted to hear that their doctrine may become developed without offending anybody. The intervention of pohtical and social considerations has not been less injurious to Anthropology than the religious ele- ment. When generous philanthropists claimed, with inde- fatigable constancy, the hberty of the blacks, the partisans of the old system, threatened in their dearest interests, were enchanted to hear that Negros were scarcely human beings, but rather domestic animals, more intelhgent and productive than the rest. At that time the scientific question became a question of sentiment, and whoever wished for the abolition of slavery, thought himself bound to admit that Negroes were Caucasians blackened and frizzled by the sun. Now that France and England, the two most civilised nations, have de- finitively emancipated their slaves, science may claim its rights without caring for the sophisms of slaveholders. Many honest men think that the moment to speak freely is not yet come, as the emancipation struggle is far from being at an end in the United States of America, and that we should avoid furnishing the slaveholders with arguments. But is it true that the polygenist doctrine, which is scarcely a century old,^ is any degree responsible for an order of things which has existed from time immemorial, and which has developed and perpetuated itself during a long series of centuries, under the shade of the doctrine of monogenists, which remained so long uncontested ? And can we believe that the slave-owners are much embarrassed to find arguments in the Bible ? The Eev. John Bachmann, a fervent monogenist of South Carolina, has acquired in the Southern States much popularity by demon- strating, with great unction, that slavery is a divine institution.^ It is not from the writings of polygenists, but from the Bible, > [Germs of the polygenist doctrine are, however, as old as Empedocles. See Julius Schvarcz, Geological Theories of the Greeks, 4to, London, 1862, for the most philosophical account of these early attempts.—Editor.] * We may be permitted to reproduce here some passages from a dissertation of this pious slave owner; we extract them from the Charleston Medical Journal and Review, Sept. 1854, vol. ix, pp. 657-659 : “ AU races of men in- cluding the Negroes, are of the same species and origin. The Negro is a striking variety, and at present permanent, as the numerous varieties of