ENGL373 - Evalutating "Are Humans One Race or Many?"

In his essay, "Are Humans One Race or Many?", Alfred Russel Wallace investigates the issue of whether or not mankind is a singular race or many races (as the title duly suggests).  Wallace postulates that early mankind does indeed share a singular past ancestry, up to a certain point.  He asserts that mankind developed different traits early in our development based on the surroundings he found himself in to best survive that environment.  However, as mankind grew smarter and became more and more social, their ability to communicate, empathize, and even think about the future gave rise to communities whereby the collective good outweighed the individual.  This, in turn, led to humans being able to divide labor amongst many individuals, care for the sick, and plan ahead.  It was at this juncture in early human development that humans were able to bypass the concept of natural selection and separate themselves from the rest of animal kingdom.

Wallace goes on to further qualify his opinion by stating that this ability of mankind to rise above natural selection via man's intelligence has lead to the more modern variations of humankind in existence today.  That is to say that the more organized and intelligent species of man have not only been rise above natural selection, but have also been able to stand out and dominate other humans evens though we are the same species.  To prove his point he gives examples of how in warmer climate regions, humans aren't necessarily required to evolve their intelligence, because their surroundings and natural selection have afforded them a genetic predisposition to their environment, making life comfortable for them.  There is no reason to evolve because they are naturally suited to their environment.

However, species of mankind that wandered outside of their comfort zone were forced to adapt and use their brains to survive.  Wallace points out that all species of northern origins are smarter than those of southern origins simply because they've had to use their brains to survive and this has led to their greater capacity for intelligence.  This, he concludes is why northern species of humans are always more dominant than their southern counterparts, simply because they are smarter.

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad illustrates this very same mentality throughout the story.  For example, while Marlow was fixing the steamboat, he compliments his fireman with the following, "And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman.  He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler.  He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind leg (pg 36)."  This quote, finely illustrates the European attitude that those not of their "kind" were savages.  They were thought of as smarter than animals, but just barely, and that they were only capable of doing what came naturally (animal instinct?) or what they were trained to do, as Conrad eluded to when he said it reminded him of watching a trained dog performing a trick.