§ 2: On the Varieties in the Human Race

The varieties of colors, of statures, of shapes of the construction of the head and the whole body, of the characteristics of the face, the hairy and smooth of the skin, the spiritual development, the moral formation, the religious principles, the customs, the habits, the diet, the drives, the tendencies, the inclinations, the desires, and in general the life of the different races of the human race provide occasion for those who have taken man as the subject of study to express many and different opinions; and some of the naturalists, French ones under the influence of skepticism and materialist theories, regarded the human race as constituting various independent races from one another. Voltaire was one of the first to pronounce an opinion on the complete distinction of races. He in his work Histoire de l'empire de la Russie, le Grand, ch. I. says: “there is none but a blind man who can doubt that Whites, Blacks, Albinos, Hottentots, Chinese, and Americans are races completely distinct.” Pescheur also in a treatise of his supported the existence of eleven independent families in the human race. Histoire naturelle des races humaines another naturalist, M. Bory de Saint-Vincent, goes further, increases the number of families to fifteen independent races from one another, which he further subdivides significantly. Thus the Adamic Family, that is, the descendants of Adam consisted only of the second subdivision of the Arabian kind of man (Homo arabicus), while the English belonged to the Teutonic variety of the Germanic race, which was only the fourth creation of the Octava kind (Homo scythicus) of the Japhetic Family. From the same School (Dictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle, tom. VI, Paris 1824, pp. 90 et 451). The Japhetic man is not even this a subdivision (les Japetous) the race with short hair. Vogt belongs to the same School, but his works arouse indignation for the light and frivolous manner in which he discusses from one extreme to the other the most subtle points of morality and religion. He is not content to ascribe to Ethiopians a moderate origin different from that of Europeans, he proceeds forward, goes to the point of supposing a real kinship between Hottentots and bipedal dog-headed apes. (Lectures ch. II, p. 191). But on this subject Lamarck proceeds more boldly, and claims to prove even traces of the promotion of nature, which in earlier times produced through wonderful evolution one order from another earlier one; he seeks to establish a chain gradually not through simultaneous links, but through successive ones, and thus to produce in the end the human species through a transformation opposite to the truth and hence less wondrous than that known in the tales of myths.

The two volumes of his work Philosophie Zoologique are entirely destined to support this degrading theory; the first so as to prove how the physical organism of man underwent a modification from chance circumstances, albeit natural, from the ape, and the second so as to prove that the privileges of the human spirit are nothing but an extension of the power that animals also possess, different in quantity through the power of judgment. After weak and badly laid bases Lamarck appropriates to himself the right to say that, because we see in nature a gradual increase of organic beings, necessarily they also had a successive evolution through which animals of one order were unable to

Pass into another new one, much more so, so that one animal whatever, forced by necessities, acquires through habit in new and private conditions like the modification of its organism toward fulfilling them. Thus for example a bird forced by necessity to enter the waters to swim, or to walk only in shallow waters, and its offspring do the same, in the passage of many generations the effort exerted to extend the toes of its feet contributes to the increase of some membrane; and behold, there came forth a water bird throughout all generations. Pushed by the same necessity into deeper waters it acquired longer shins, as the crane and the flamingo. These two acts united with new necessities, and the tendency of nature toward fulfillment concurred so as man should come forth from the ape.

Possibly one generation ago the ape of Angola in western and southern Africa for certain reasons whose memory it did not preserve lost the habit of climbing trees and grasping with the lower hands as well as the upper. After passage of several generations in which it walked on the ground, the lower hands thus were modified into a shape more suitable for the new habit and feet appeared, and through them the animals gradually acquired the habit of walking upright. They no longer had much need of their jaws for gathering fruits or fighting one another; he was able to employ for this the feet and his hands as they had become after upright walking; and hence gradually its snout shrank and the face became more rectangular. Going even further he says that “its grimaces were transformed into a pleasant smile, its guttural cries into articulate speech”. As if however he himself greatly doubted what he said, he adds: “Such will be the thoughts which one can abandon, if man was not distinguished from the animal, either by the character of his organism, and if the principle of man was not different in degree from the principle of animals”.

In modern times man was also considered a perfected ape. Darwinian theories imagined that they had brought to the solution of the anthropological question accepting the mode of evolution.

Through these theories each attempted to solve the proposed problem, whence man, and to give the true reason for such variety appearing in the human race. But these theories as not founded on healthy bases instead of solving the problem made it more enigmatic; because they denied the validity of the revealed truth, regarded man as co-ranking with animals, broke the bond of his unified race, promoted as acceptable from cells. They denied his spiritual descent and gave him a most vile origin. Their failure had as principal reason the denial of his noble descent and of his spiritual nature wholly foreign to matter and the world; in general without acceptance of the revealed truth man will be an unsolved problem.

The acceptance of this principle is the firm and safe foundation upon which every researcher of man ought to rest; from it he ought to set out so as to correctly solve the various parts of the question and know the truth through true science. And in scientific investigation faith in the revealed truth ought first to exist, so that this may reach knowledge of the truth; because without this man from ignorance wanders, and science follows the wanderings of the spirit. He who ignores the spiritual man ignores the question which he deals with; he ignores that moral degradation and spiritual fall and apostasy can so adhere to both the external character of man and bring about external alterations such that to those who do not know the history of these men they appear wholly inexplicable, and those seeking the solution without the light of revelation err and lead to conclusions far from the truth. To the true descent of the human race were led only those who laid as foundation the revealed truth, as they built upon the history of nations; these found both the reasons for the varieties and differences, and in general every reason distinguishing the races of the human race from one another; without revelation and history the anthropological question they vainly strove to solve. The kinship of spirit and body exerts such influence as to bring about such alterations wholly inexplicable. From the mutual interaction and from the influence of climates as well as from diet, civilization, etc., are born all the varieties distinguishing the human race into races, whose reason for alteration and variation would be unknown if the investigations were limited to anatomy alone. We, having before us the works of men who have studied man under both aspects, of the spirit and of the body, will prove that all the races of the earth lead back to one race, to one single stock, and we will bring the most persuasive testimonies.