Paul Broca - On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo

The Publishing Committee of the Anthropological Society have done me the honour to confide to me the task of editing Dr. Broca’s valuable little volume. This duty I have now fulfilled, and hope that the members of the Society and the general public will experience the same pleasure in reading the translation, as I received when first I perused the original.

The causes which led the committee to suggest the publication of the present translation are lucidly expressed by the motto which Dr. Broca placed on his title-page. The public mind is so little acquainted with the real facts relating to the hybridity of the Races of Man, that its investigation, “ non ex vulgi opinione, sed ex sano judicio ,” is necessary to the efficient progress of our science. Such an appeal, however, necessitates that the whole subject should be again reviewed, and to attain this object the perusal of a work on similar principles to that of Dr. Broca becomes the primary requisite for future researches. It may be said, that no work which so completely investigates the whole subject of Human Hybridity has ever been published, and the Council having confirmed the recommendation of the Publishing Committee, I have endeavoured to perform my allotted task with as much prospect of success as could be anticipated amidst the pressure of numerous and laborious avocations unconnected with the Society.

The necessity for the publication of this work in England may be conceived, when we reflect on the laxly defined ideas which form an integral part of the intellectual heritage of even educated Englishmen, with regard to the problems of anthropology. We have been so often told, that all races of men have been demonstrably proved to be fertile inter se , that many have conceived that the laws regulating this presumed fertility are ascertained and fixed, beyond the reach of disproof, or even of doubt. The Author and Editor of the following pages are, however, of a different opinion; and are content to wait for the accumulation of future facts.

To obviate any misconstruction which may be placed on my meaning on this topic, I shall quote the words of the great Dutch philosopher: —

“I invite not the vulgar, therefore, nor those whose minds, like theirs, are full of prejudices, to the perusal of this book. I would much rather that they should entirely neglect it, than that they should misconstrue its purpose and contents after the fashion usual with them.”

I should have felt more gratification if the task of interpreting the thoughts of the great French master of our science had fallen into worthier hands than my own. The habitual methods of thought of Dr. Paul Broca are so exact, his style so terse, his knowledge of the literature of Anthropology so vast, and his power of application and concentration of ideas so powerful, that a just preference might have selected another Editor. It has scarcely been necessary for me to add a single foot-note to the lucid exposition of the Secretary of our parent Society.

It is my pleasurable duty to thank my friend Dr. James Hunt, the President of our Society, for the kindness by which he placed in my hands the editorship of this volume, and for many most valuable suggestions regarding it. To my colleague Mr. J. Frederick Collingwood, for whose friendly assistance in the performance of the secretarial duties I am indebted for the leisure which has enabled me to edit this work, my thanks are also due.

To the Council and to the Society I now commit this little tract, an earnest of the more important works which will be hereafter published during the year 1864, in the hope that it may ultimately advance the best interests of the science all sincere anthropologists must desire to aid.

4, St. Martin’s Place,

March , 1864.

The significations of the following words, habitually used by Dr. Broca, are appended: —

Agenesic. Mongrels of the first generation, entirely unfertile, either between each other, or with the two parent species, and consequently being unable to produce either direct descendants or mongrels of the second generation.

Dysgenesic. Mongrels of the first generation, nearly altogether sterile.

a. Unfertile with each other, therefore with no direct descendants.

b. They sometimes, but rarely and with difficulty, breed with one or the other parent species. The mongrels of the second generation, produced by this interbreeding, are infertile.

Paragenesic. Mongrels of the first generation having a partial fecundity.

a. They are hardly fertile or infertile inter se , and when they produce direct descendants, these have merely a decreasing fertility, tending to necessary extinction at the end of some generations.

b. They breed easily with one at least of the two parent species. The mongrels of the second generation, issued from this second breeding, are themselves and their descendants fertile inter se , and with the mongrels of the first generation, with the nearest allied pure species, and with the intermediate mongrels arising from these various crossings.

Eugenesic. Mongrels of the first generation entirely fertile.

a. They are fertile inter se , and their direct descendants are equally so.

b. They breed easily and indiscriminately with the two parent species; the mongrels of the second generation, in their turn are, themselves and their descendants, indefinitely fertile, both inter se or with the mongrels of all kinds which result from the mixture of the two parent species.

That very ingenious writer, M. A. de Gobineau, 1 1 Gobineau, Inégalité des Races Humaines , 8vo, Paris, 1855; [also translated into English, On the Inequality of Human Races , and edited by Henry Hotze, 8vo. Editor.] whose efforts have been directed towards bringing the light of modern ethnology to bear upon the political and social history of nations, but who, in this very difficult and almost entirely new inquiry, has more than once indulged in paradoxical generalisations, has thought proper to affirm, in his Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1855), that the crossing of races constantly produces disastrous effects, and that, sooner or later, a physical and moral degeneration is the inevitable result thereof. It is, therefore, chiefly to this cause that he attributes the decline of the Roman Republic and the downfall of liberty, which was soon followed by the decline of civilisation. I am very far from sharing his opinion, and, were this the proper place, I might show that the social corruption and the intellectual degradation which prepared the ruin of the Roman power was due to quite different causes. M. Gobineau’s proposition appears to me by far too general; and I am still more opposed to the opinion of those who advance that every mixed race separated from the parent stocks is incapable of perpetuation. 2 2 “The sole action of the laws of Hybridity,” says Nott, “might exterminate the whole human species if all the various types of human beings actually existing on the earth were completely to amalgamate.” Types of Mankind , p. 407, eighth edit., Philadelphia, 1857. Dr. Robert Knox is not less explicit. “I do not believe that any Mulatto race can be maintained beyond the third or fourth generation by Mulattos merely ; they must intermarry with the pure races or perish.” Robert Knox, The Races of Men , London, 1850. It has even been asserted that the United States of America, where the Anglo-Saxon race is still predominant, but which is overrun by immigrants of various other races, is, by that very circumstance, threatened with decay, inasmuch as this continuous immigration may have the effect of producing a hybrid race containing the germ of future sterility. Do we not know that, on the faith of this prognostication, a certain party has proposed the restriction of foreign immigration, and even in England there have been serious men who have predicted, from ethnological causes, the overthrow of the United States, just as Ezekiel predicted the ruin of Alexandria.