Species

The Nineteenth Century, a Period of Change 129

I do not pretend that a new creation was required for calling our present races of ani-

mals into existence. I only urge that they did not anciently occupy the same places, and

that they must have come from some other part of the globe.^61

James Prichard: Species Are Real, Variations Are Environmental

Prichard (1786–1848) published his widely read Researches into the Physical History

of Man the year after Cuvier’s “Discours” was published.^62 In it, he foreswore a pri-

ori argument, whether scriptural or not, and vowed to deal only with evidence, not

speculation. That notwithstanding, Prichard declared that Linnaeus’ classes were

arbitrary and artificial (something we have seen Linnaeus might admit freely), but

Not so in the case of species. Here the distinction is formed by nature, and the defini-

tion must be constant and uniform, or it is of no sort of value. It must coincide with

Nature.

Providence has distributed the animated world into a number of distinct species, and

has ordained that each shall multiply according to its kind, and propagate the stock to

perpetuity, none of them ever transgressing their own limits, or approximating in any

great degree to others, or ever in any case passing into each other. Such confusion is

contrary to the established order of Nature.

The principle therefore of the distinction of species is constant and perpetual

difference.^63

He then used this criterion to reject Buffon’s concept of species and to argue

that human races were all of the same species. He denied that local variations were

caused by the direct action of the soil and environment, and argued that variation

occurred naturally when the environment changed and was passed on (in the con-

text of human variation). Civilization minimized this variability in humans, and

so dark skins, due to savage conditions, would turn into light skins upon civiliz-

ing. Prichard’s discussion of species is extensive and at the time authoritative. He

writes:

The meaning attached to the term species in natural history is very definite and intel-

ligible. It includes only the following conditions, namely, separate origin and distinct-

ness of race, evinced by the constant transmission of some characteristic peculiarity

of organization. A race of animals or of plants marked by any peculiar character

which has always been constant and undeviating, constitutes a species; and two races

are considered as specifically different, if they are distinguished from each other by

some characteristic which the one cannot be supposed to have acquired, or the other

to have lost through any known operation of physical causes; for we are, hence, led to

(^61) Cuvier et al. 1818, 128 quoted in Greene 1959, 363n.
(^62) P r icha rd 1813.
(^63) P r icha rd 1813, 7–8, quoted in Greene 1959, 239.