The Natural or Physical history of Man—the Civil—their difference—divisions of the Natural or Physical history—Anthropology—Ethnology—how far pursued by the ancients—Herodotus—how far by the moderns—Buffon—LinnÆus—Daubenton—Camper—Blumenbach—the term Caucasian—Cuvier—Philology as an instrument of ethnological investigation—Pigafetta—Hervas—Leibnitz—Reland—Adelung—Klaproth—the union of Philology and of Anatomy—Prichard—its PalÆontological character—influence of Lyell’s Geology—of Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences.

Let us contrast the Civil with the Natural History of Man.

The influence of individual heroes, the effect of material events, the operations of ideas, the action and reaction of the different elements of society upon each other, come within the domain of the former. An empire is consolidated, a contest concluded, a principle asserted, and the civil historian records them. He does more. If he be true to his calling, he investigates the springs of action in individual actors, measures the calibre of their moral and intellectual power, and pronounces a verdict of praise or blame upon the motives which determine their manifestation. This makes him a great moral teacher, and gives a value to his department of knowledge, which places it on a high and peculiar level.

Dealing with actions and motives, he deals nearly exclusively with those of individuals; so much so, that even where he records the movements of mighty masses of men, he generally finds that there is one presiding will which regulates and directs them; and even when this is not the case, when the movement of combined multitudes is spontaneous, the spring of action is generally of a moral nature—a dogma if religious, a theory if political.

Such a history as this could not be written of the brute animals, neither could it be written for them. No animal but Man supplies either its elements or its objects; nor yet the record which transmits the memory of past actions, even when they are of the most material kind. The civil historian, therefore, of our species, or, to speak with a conciseness which common parlance allows, the historian, living and breathing in the peculiar atmosphere of humanity, and exhibiting man in the wide circle of moral and intellectual action,—a circle in which none but he moves,—takes up his study where that of the lower animals ends. Whatever is common to them and man, belongs to the naturalist. Let each take his view of the Arab or the Jew. The one investigates the influence of the Bible and the Koran; whilst the other may ask how far the Moorish blood has mixed with that of the Spaniard, or remark the permanence of the Israelite features under climates so different as Poland, Morocco, or Hindostan. The one will think of instincts, the other of ideas.

In what part of the world did this originate? How was it diffused over the surface of the earth? At what period in the world’s history was it evolved? Where does it thrive best? Where does it cease to thrive at all? What forms does it take if it degenerate? What conditions of soil or climate determine such degenerations? What favour its improvement? Can it exist in Nova Zembla? In Africa? In either region or both? Do the long nights of the Pole blanch, does the bright glare of the Equator deepen its colour? &c. Instead of multiplying questions of this kind, I will ask to what they apply. They apply to every being that multiplies its kind upon earth; to every animal of the land or sea; to every vegetable as well; to every organized being. They apply to the ape, the horse, the dog, the fowl, the fish, the insect, the fruit, the flower. They apply to these—and they apply to man as well. They—and the like of them—Legion by name—common alike to the lords and the lower orders of the creation, constitute the natural history of genus Homo; and I use the language of the Zoologist for the sake of exhibiting in a prominent and palpable manner, the truly zoological character of this department of science. Man as an animal is the motto here; whilst Man as a moral being is the motto with the Historian.

It is not very important whether we call this Natural or Physical History. There are good authorities on both sides. It is only important to see how it differs from the History of the Historian.

Man’s Civil history has its divisions. Man’s Natural history has them also.

The first of these takes its name from the Greek words for man (anthrÔpos) and doctrine (logos), and is known as Anthropology.

When the first pair of human beings stood alone on the face of the earth, there were then the materials for Anthropology; and so there would be if our species were reduced to the last man. There would be an Anthropology if the world had no inhabitants but Englishmen, or none but Chinese; none but red men of America, or none but blacks of Africa. Were the uniformity of feature, the identity of colour, the equality of stature, the rivalry of mental capacity ever so great, there would still be an Anthropology. This is because Anthropology deals with Man as compared with the lower animals.

We consider the structure of the human extremities, and enlarge upon the flatness of the foot, and the flexibility of the hand. The one is subservient to the erect posture, the other to the innumerable manipulations which human industry demands. We compare them with the fins of fishes, the wings of birds; in doing which, we take the most extreme contrasts we can find. But we may also take nearer approximations, e.g. the hands of the higher apes. Here we find likeness as well as difference; difference as well as likeness. We investigate both; and record the result either in detail or by some general expression. Perhaps we pronounce that the one side gives the conditions of an arboreal life, the other those of a social state; the ape being the denizen of the woods, the man of towns and cities; the one a climber, the other a walker.

Or we compare the skull of the man and the chimpanzee; noticing that the ridges and prominences of the external surface, which in the former are merely rudimentary, become strongly-marked crests in the latter. We then remember that the one is the framework for the muscles of the face; the other is the case for the brain.

All that is done in this way is Anthropology.

Every class of organized beings has, mutatis mutandis, its anthropological aspect; so that the dog may be contemplated in respect to the fox which equals, the ape which excels, or the kangaroo which falls short of it in its approach to a certain standard of organization; in other words, as species and genera have their relative places in the ladder of creation, the investigation of such relations is co-extensive with the existence of the classes and groups on which it rests.

Anthropology deals too much with such matters as these to be popular. Unless the subject be handled with excessive delicacy, there is something revolting to fastidious minds in the cool contemplation of the differentiÆ of the Zoologist

“Who shows a Newton as he shows an ape.”

Yet, provided there be no morbid gloating over the more dishonourable points of similarity, no pleasurable excitement derived from the lowering view of our nature, the study is not ignoble. At any rate, it is part of human knowledge, and a step in the direction of self-knowledge.

Besides this, the relationship is merely one of degree. We may not be either improperly or unpleasantly like the orang-utan or the chimpanzee. We may even be angelomorphic. Nevertheless, we are more like orang-utans and chimpanzees than aught else upon earth.

The other branch of Man’s Natural History is called Ethnology—from the Greek word signifying nation (ethnos).

It by no means follows, that because there is an anthropology there is an ethnology also. There is no ethnology where there is but a single pair to the species. There would be no ethnology if all the world were negroes; none if every man was a Chinese; none if there were naught but Englishmen. The absolute catholicity of a religion without sects, the centralized uniformity of a universal empire, are types and parallels to an anthropology without an ethnology. This is because Ethnology deals with Man in respect to his Varieties.

There would be an anthropology if but one single variety of mankind existed.

But if one variety of mankind—and no more—existed, there would be no ethnology. It would be as impossible a science as a polity on Robinson Crusoe’s island.

But let there be but a single sample of different though similar bodily conformation. Let there be a white as well as a black, or a black as well as a white man. In that case ethnology begins; even as a polity began on Crusoe’s island when his servant Friday became a denizen of it.

The other classes of organized beings, although, mutatis mutandis, they have, of necessity, their equivalent to an anthropology, may or may not have an ethnology. The dog has one; the chimpanzee has either none or an insignificant one; differences equivalent to those which separate the cur from the greyhound, or the shepherd’s-dog from the pointer, being wanting. Again, a treatise which showed how the chimpanzee differed from the orang-utan on one side, and man on the other, would be longer than a dissertation upon the extent to which chimpanzees differed from each other; yet a dissertation on the varieties of dogs would be bulkier than one on their relations to the fox. This shows how the proportions of the two studies may vary with the species under consideration. In the Natural History of Man, the ethnological aspect is the most varied. It is also the one which has been most studied. With the horse, or the sheep, with many of the domestic fowls, with the more widely-cultivated plants, the study of the variety outweighs that of the species. With the dog it does so in an unparalleled degree. But what if the dog-tribe had the use of language? what if the language differed with each variety? In such a case the study of canine ethnology would be doubly and trebly complex, though at the same time the data for conducting it would be both increased and improved. A distant—a very distant approach—to this exists. The wild dog howls; the companion of man alone barks. This is a difference of language as far as it goes. This is written to foreshadow the importance of the study of language as an instrument of ethnological investigation.

Again—what if the dog-tribe were possessed of the practice of certain human arts, and if these varied with the variety? If they buried their dead? and their tombs varied with the variety? if those of one generation lasted for years, decenniums, or centuries? The ethnology would again increase in complexity, and the data would again be increased. The graves of an earlier generation would serve as unwritten records of the habits of sepulture with an earlier one. This is written to foreshadow the importance of the study of antiquities as an instrument of the same kind with philology.

With dogs there are impossibilities. True; but they serve as illustrations. With man they are realities—realities which make philology and archÆology important adjuncts to his natural history.

We have now ascertained the character of the study in question; and seen how far it differs from history properly so-called—at least we have done so sufficiently for the purpose of definition. A little reflection will show its relations to certain branches of science, e.g. to physiology, and mental science—a relation upon which there is no time to enlarge. It is enough to understand the existence of such a separate substantive branch of knowledge and inquiry.

What is the amount of this knowledge? This is proportionate to that of the inquiry. What has this been? Less than we are prepared to expect.

“The proper study of mankind is Man.”

This is a stock quotation on the subject.

“Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.”

This is another. Like many apophthegms of the same kind, they have more currency than influence, and are better known than acted on. We know the zoology of nine species out of ten amongst the lower animals better than that of our own genus. So little have the importance and the investigation of a really interesting subject been commensurate.

It is a new science—so new as scarcely to have reached the period of adolescence. Let us ask what the ancients cared about it.

We do not look for systematic science in the Scriptures; and the ethnology which we derive from them consists wholly of incidental notices. These, though numerous, are brief. They apply, too, to but a small portion of the earth’s surface. That, however, is one of pre-eminent interest—the cradle of civilization, and the point where the Asiatic, African, and European families come in contact.

Greece helps us more: yet Greece but little. The genius of Thucydides gave so definite a character to history, brought it so exclusively in contact with moral and political, in opposition to physical, phÆnomena, and so thoroughly made it the study of the statesman rather than of the zoologist, that what may be called the naturalist element, excluded at the present time, was excluded more than 2000 years ago. How widely different this from the slightly earlier Herodotean record—the form and spirit of which lived and died with the great father of historic narrative! The history of the Peloponnesian war set this kind of writing aside for ever, and the loss of what the earlier prototype might have been developed into, is a great item in the price which posterity has to pay for the ?t?a e?? ?e? of the Athenian. As it is, however, the nine books of Herodotus form the most ethnological work not written by a professed and conscious ethnologist. Herodotus was an unconscious and instinctive one; and his ethnology was of a sufficiently comprehensive character. Manners he noted, and physical appearance he noted, and language he noted; his Scythian, Median, Ægyptian, and other glosses having the same value in the eyes of the closet philologist of the present century, as the rarer fossils of some old formation have with the geologist, or venerable coins with the numismatic archÆologist. Let his name be always mentioned with reverence; for the disrespectful manner in which his testimony has been treated by some recent writers impugns nothing but the scholarship of the cavillers.

I do not say that there are no ethnological facts—it may be that we occasionally find ethnological theories—in the Greek writers subsequent; I only state that they by no means answer the expectations raised by the names of the authors, and the opportunities afforded by the nature of their subjects. Something is found in Hippocrates in the way of theory as to the effect of external condition, something in Aristotle, something in Plato—nothing, however, by which we find the study of Man as an animal recognized as a separate substantive branch of study. More than this—in works where the description of new populations was especially called for, and where the evidence of the writer would have been of the most unexceptionable kind, we find infinitely less than there ought to be. How little we learn of Persia from the CyropÆdia, or of Armenia from the Anabasis—yet how easily might Xenophon have told us much!

Amongst the successors of Aristotle, we find none who writes a treatise pe?? a?????—yet how natural the subject, and how great the opportunities!—great, because of the commerce of the Euxine, and the institution of domestic slavery: the one conducting the merchant to the extreme Tanais, the other filling Athens with Thracians, and Asia Minor with Africans. The advantages which the Greeks of the age of Pericles neglected, are the advantages which the Brazilian Portuguese neglect at present, and which, until lately, both the English and the States-men of America neglected also. And the loss has been great. Like time and tide, ethnology waits for no man; and, even as the Indian of America disappears before the European, so did certain populations of antiquity. The process of extinction and amalgamation is as old as history; and whole families have materially altered in character since the beginning of the historical period. The present population of Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia is of recent introduction. What was the ancient? “Thracians and GetÆ” is the answer. But what were they? “Germans,” says one writer; “Slavonians,” another; “an extinct race,” another. So that there is doubt and difference of opinion. Yet we know some little about them in other respects. We know their political relations; a little of their creed, and manners; the names of some of their tribes. Their place in the classification of the varieties of our species we do not know; and this is because, though the Greeks wrote the civil, they neglected the physical history of Man.

Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus—these are the areas for which the ancients might easily have left descriptions, and for which they neglected to do so; the omission being irreparable.

The opportunities of the Roman were greater than those of the Greek; and they were better used. Dissertations, distantly approaching the character of physical history, occur in even the pure historical writers of Greece, I allude more especially to the sketch of the manners and migrations of the ancient Greeks in the first, and the history of the Greek colonization of Sicily in the sixth book of Thucydides. Parallels to these re-appear in the Roman writers; and, in some cases, their proportion to the rest of the work is considerable. Sallust’s sketch of Northern Africa, Tacitus’ of Jewish history are of this sort—and, far superior to either, CÆsar’s account of Gaul and Britain.

The Germania[1] of Tacitus is the nearest approach to proper ethnology that antiquity has supplied. It is far, however, from either giving us the facts which are of the most importance, or exhibiting the method of investigation by which ethnology is most especially contrasted with history.

But the true measure of the carelessness of the Romans upon these points is to be taken by the same rule which applied to that of the Greeks; i.e. the contrast between their opportunities and their inquiry. Northern Italy, the Tyrol, Dalmatia, Pannonia, have all stood undescribed in respect to the ancient populations; yet they were all in a favourable position for description.

If the Jewish, Greek, and Roman writers give but little, the literatures derived from them give less; though, of course, there is a numerous selection of important passages to be made from the authors of the Middle Ages, as well as from the Byzantine historians. Besides which, there is the additional advantage of Greece and Rome having ceased to be the only countries thought worthy of being written about. A Gothic, a Slavonic, a Moorish history now make their appearance. Still they are but civil—not natural—histories. However, our sphere of observation increases, the members of the human family increase, and our records increase. Nevertheless, the facts for the naturalist occur but incidentally.

Of the Oriental literature I can only give my impression; and, as far as that goes, it is in favour of the Chinese statements having the most, and the Indian the least ethnological value; indeed, the former nation appears to have connected the notice of the occupant population with the notice of the area occupied, with laudable and sufficient closeness. I believe, too, that several differences of language are also carefully noted. Still, such ethnology as this supplies is an educt from the works in question, rather than their subject.

We now come to times nearer our own. For a sketch like the present, the Science begins when the classification of the Human Varieties is first attempted. Meanwhile, we must remember that America has been discovered, and that our opportunities now differ from those of the ancients not merely in degree but in kind. The field has been infinitely enlarged; and the world has become known in its extremities as well as in its middle parts. The human naturalists anterior to the times of Buffon and LinnÆus are like the great men before Agamemnon. A minute literary history would doubtless put forward some names for this period; indeed for some departments of the study there are a few great ones. Still it begins with the times of LinnÆus and Buffon—Buffon first in merit. That writer held that a General History of Man, as well as A Theory of the Earth, was a necessary part of his great work; and, as far as the former subject is concerned, he thought rightly. It is this, too, in which he has succeeded best. Thoroughly appreciating its importance, he saw its divisions clearly; and after eight chapters on the Growth of Man, his Decay, and his Senses, he devotes a ninth, as long as the others put together, to the consideration of the Varieties of the Human Species. “Every thing,” he now writes, “which we have hitherto advanced relates to Man as an individual. The history of the species requires a separate detail, of which the principal facts can only be derived from the varieties that are found in the inhabitants of different regions. Of these varieties, the first and most remarkable is the colour, the second the form and size, and the third the disposition. Considered in its full extent, each of these objects might afford materials for a volume[2].” No man need draw a clearer line between anthropology and ethnology than this. Of the systematic classification, which philology has so especially promoted, no signs occur in his treatise; on the other hand, his appreciation of the effects of difference in physical conditions is well-founded in substance, and definitely expressed. To this he attributes the contrast between the Negro, the American, and the African, and, as a natural result, he commits himself unequivocally to the doctrine of the unity of the species.

LinnÆus took less cognizance of the species to which he belonged; the notice in the first edition of the Systema NaturÆ being as follows:—

Now both Buffon and LinnÆus limit their consideration of the bodily structure of man to the phÆnomena of colour, skin, and hair; in other words, to the so-called soft parts.

From the Greek word osteon= bone, we have the anatomical term osteology= the study of the bony skeleton.

This begins with the researches of the contemporary and helpmate of Buffon. Daubenton first drew attention to the base of the skull, and, amongst the parts thereof, to the foramen ovale most especially. Through the foramen ovale the spinal chord is continued into the brain, or—changing the expression—the brain prolonged into the spinal chord; whilst by its attachments the skull is connected with the vertebral column. The more this point of junction—the pivot on which the head turns—is in the centre of the base of the skull, the more are the conditions of the erect posture of man fulfilled; the contrary being the case if the foramen lie backward, as is the case with the ape as compared with the Negro, and, in some instances, with the Negro as compared with the European. I say in some instances, because the backward position of the foramen ovale in the Negro is by no means either definite or constant. Now the notice of the variations of the position of the foramen ovale—one of the first specimens of ethnological criticism applied to the hard parts of the human body—is connected with the name of Daubenton.

The study of the skull—for the skeleton is now dividing the attention of investigators with the skin and hair—in profile is connected with that of Camper. This brings us to his well-known facial angle. It means the extent to which the forehead retreated; sloping backwards from the root of the nose in some cases, and in others rising perpendicularly above the face.

Now the osteology of Daubenton and Camper was the osteology that Blumenbach found when he took up the subject. It was something; but not much.

In 1790, Blumenbach published his anatomical description of ten skulls—his first decade—drawn up with the special object of showing how certain varieties of mankind differed from each other in the conformation of so important an organ as the skull of a reasonable being—a being thereby distinguished and characterized.

He continued his researches; publishing at intervals similar decades, to the number of six. In 1820, he added to the last a pentad, so that the whole list amounted to sixty-five.

It was in the third decade, published A.D.1795, that an unfortunate skull of a Georgian female made its appearance. The history of this should be given. Its owner was taken by the Russians, and having been removed to Moscow died suddenly. The body was examined by Professor Hiltenbrandt, and the skull presented to DeAsch of St.Petersburg. Thence it reached the collection of Blumenbach, of which it seems to have been the gem—“universus hujus cranii habitus tam elegans et venustus, ut et tantum non semper vel indoctorum, si qui collectionem meam contemplentur, oculos eximia sua proportionis formositate feriat.” This encomium is followed by the description. Nor is this all. A plaster cast of one of the most beautiful busts of the Townley Museum was in possession of the anatomist. He compared the two; “and so closely did they agree that you might take your oath of one having belonged to the other”—“adeo istud huic respondere vides, ut illud hujus prototypo quondam inhÆsisse pejerares.” Lastly, he closes with an extract from Chardin, enthusiastically laudatory of the beauty of the women of Georgia, and adds that his skull verifies the panegyric—“Respondet ceteroquin formosum istud cranium, quod sane pro canone ideali habere licet, iis quÆ de summa GeorgianÆ gentis pulcritudine vel in vulgus nota sunt.”

At the end of the decade in question he used the epithets Mongolian, Æthiopian, and Caucasian (Caucasia varietas).

In the next (A.D.1808), he speaks of the excessive beauty—the ideal—the normal character of his Georgian skull; and speaks of his osteological researches having established a quinary division of the Human Species; naming them—1.The Caucasian; 2.The Mongolian; 3.The Æthiopic; 4.The American; and 5.The Malay.

Such is the origin of the term Caucasian; a term which has done much harm in Ethnology; a term to which Blumenbach himself gave an undue value, and his followers a wholly false import. This will be seen within a few pages. Blumenbach’s Caucasian class contained—

• 1. Most of the Europeans.
• 2. The Georgians, Circassians, and other families of Caucasus.
• 3. The Jews, Arabs, and Syrians.

In the same year with the fourth decade of Blumenbach, John Hunter gave testimony of the value of the study of Man to Man, by a dissertation with a quotation from Akenside on the title-page—

His tract was an Inaugural Dissertation, and I merely mention it because it was written by Hunter, and dedicated to Robertson.

Cuvier, in his RÈgne Animal, gives at considerable length the anthropological characteristics of Man, and places him as the only species of the genus Homo, the only genus of the order Bimana= two-handed; the apes being Quadrumana= four-handed. This was the great practical recognition of Man in his zoological relations.

In respect to the Ethnology, the classification of Blumenbach was modified—and that by increasing its generality. The absolute primary divisions were reduced to three—the Malay and the American being—not without hesitation—subordinated to the Mongolian. Meanwhile, an additional prominence was given to the group which contained the Australians of Australia, and the Papuans of New Guinea. Instead, however, of being definitely placed, it was left for further investigation.

The abuse of the term Caucasian was encouraged. Blumenbach had merely meant that his favourite specimen had exhibited the best points in the greatest degree. Cuvier speaks of traditions that ascribe the origin of mankind to the mountain-range so-called—traditions of no general diffusion, and of less ethnological value.

The time is now convenient for taking a retrospective view of the subject in certain other of its branches. Colour, hair, skin, bone, stature—all these are points of physical conformation or structure; material and anatomical; points which the callipers or the scalpel investigates. But colour, hair, skin, bone, and stature, are not the only characteristics of man; nor yet the only points wherein the members of his species differ from each other. There is the function as well as the organ; and the parts of our body must be considered in regard to what they do as well as with reference to what they are. This brings in the questions of the phÆnomena of growth and decay,—the average duration of life,—reproduction, and other allied functions. This, the physiological rather than the purely anatomical part of the subject, requires a short notice of its own. A priori, we are inclined to say that it would be closely united, in the practice of investigation, with what it is so closely allied as a branch of science. Yet such has not been exactly the case. The anatomists were physiologists as well; and when Blumenbach described a skull, he, certainly, thought about the power, or the want of power, of the brain which it contained. But the speculators in physiology were not also anatomists. Such speculators, however, there were. An historian aspires to philosophy. There are some facts which he would account for; others on which he would build a system. Hot climates favour precocity of the sexual functions. They also precipitate the decay of the attractions of youth. Hence, a woman who is a mother at twelve has outgrown her beauty at twenty. From this it follows that mental power and personal attractions become, necessarily, disunited. Hence the tendency on the part of the males to take wives in succession; whereby polygamy is shown to have originated in a law of nature.

I do not ask whether this is true or false. I merely remind the reader that the moment such remarks occur, the natural history of Man has become recognized as an ingredient in the civil.

The chief early writers who expanded the real and supposed facts of the natural history of Man, without being professed ethnologists, were Montesquieu and Herder. By advertising the subject, they promoted it. It is doubtful whether they did more.

We are still within the pale of physical phÆnomena; and the purely intellectual, mental, or moral characteristics of Man have yet to be considered. What divisions were founded upon the difference between the arts of the Negro and the arts of the Parisian? What upon the contrast between the despotisms of Asia and the constitutions of Europe? What between the cannibalism of New Zealand and the comparatively graminivorous diet of the Hindu? There were not wanting naturalists who even in natural history insisted upon the high value of such characters, immaterial and supra-sensual as they were. The dog and fox, the hare and rabbit were alike in form; different in habits and temper—yet the latter fact had to be recognized. Nay, more, it helped to verify the specific distinctions which the mere differences of form might leave doubtful.

All that can be said upon this matter is, that no branch of the subject was earlier studied than that which dealt with the manners and customs of strange nations; whilst no branch of it both was and is half so defective as that which teaches us their value as characteristics. With ten writers familiar with the same facts there shall be ten different ways of appreciating them:—

“Manserunt hodieque manent vestigia ruris.”

In the year 1851, this is the weakest part of the science.

With one exception, however—indefinite and inappreciable as may be the ethnological value of such differences as those which exist between the superstitions, moral feelings, natural affections, or industrial habits of different families, there is one great intellectual phÆnomenon which in definitude yields to no characteristic whatever—I mean Language. Whatever may be said against certain over-statements as to constancy, it is an undoubted fact that identity of language is prim facie evidence of identity of origin.

No reasonable man has denied this. It is not conclusive, but prim facie it undoubtedly is. More cannot be said of colour, skin, hair, and skeleton. Possibly, not so much.

Again, language without being identical may be similar; just as individuals without being brothers or sisters may be first or second cousins. Similarity, then, is prim facie evidence of relationship.

Lastly, this similarity may be weighed, measured, and expressed numerically; an important item in its value. Out of 100 words in two allied languages, a per-centage of any amount between 1 and 99 may coincide. Language then is a definite test, if it be nothing else. It has another recommendation; or perhaps I should say convenience. It can be studied in the closet: so that for one traveller who describes what he sees in some far-distant country, there may be twenty scholars at work in the libraries of Europe. This is only partially the case with the osteologist.

Philological ethnology began betimes; long before ethnology, or even anthropology—which arose earlier—had either a conscious separate existence or a name. It began even before the physical researches of Buffon.

“There is more in language than in any of its productions”—Many who by no means undervalue the great productions of literature join in this: indeed it is only saying that the Greek language is a more wonderful fact than the Homeric poems, or the Æschylean drama. This, however, is only an expression of admiration at the construction of so marvellous an instrument as human speech.

“When history is silent, language is evidence”—This is an explicit avowal of its value as an instrument of investigation.

I cannot affiliate either of these sayings; though I hold strongly with both. They must prepare us for a new term—the philological school of ethnology, the philological principle of classification, the philological test. The worst that can be said of this is that it was isolated. The philologists began work independently of the anatomists, and the anatomists independently of the philologists. And so, with one great exception, they have kept on.

Pigafetta, one of the circumnavigators with Magalhaens, was the first who collected specimens of the unlettered dialects of the countries that afforded opportunities.

The AbbÉ Hervas in the 17th century, published his Catalogue of Tongues, and Arithmetic of Nations, parts of a large and remarkable work, the Saggio del Universo. His data he collected by means of an almost unlimited correspondence with the Jesuit missionaries of the Propaganda.

The all-embracing mind of Leibnitz had not only applied itself to philology, but had clearly seen its bearing upon history. A paper on the Basque language is a sample of the ethnology of the inventor of Fluxions.

Reland wrote on the wide distribution of the Malay tongue; criticised certain vocabularies from the South-Sea Islands of Hoorn, Egmont, Ticopia (then called Cocos Island), and Solomon’s Archipelago, and gave publicity to a fact which even now is mysterious—the existence of Malay words in the language of Madagascar.

In 1801 Adelung’s Mithridates appeared, containing specimens of all the known languages of the world; a work as classical to the comparative philologist as Blackstone’s Commentaries are to the English lawyer. Vater’s Supplement(1821) is a supplement to Adelung; JÜlg’s(1845) to Vater’s.

Klaproth’s is the other great classic in this department. His Asia Polyglotta and Sprachatlas give us the classification of all the families of Asia, according to the vocabularies representing their languages. Whether a comparison between their different grammars would do the same is doubtful; since it by no means follows that the evidence of the two coincides.

Klaproth and Adelung have the same prominence in philological that Buffon and Blumenbach have in zoological ethnology.

Blumenbach appreciated the philological method: but the first who combined the two was Dr.Prichard. His profession gave him the necessary physiology; and that he was a philologist amongst philologists is shown not only by numerous details scattered throughout his writings, but by his ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations’—the most definite and desiderated addition that has been made to ethnographical philology. I say nothing about the details of Dr.Prichard’s great work. Let those who doubt its value try to do without it.

But there is still something wanting. The relation of the sciences to the other branches of knowledge requires fixing. With anthropology the case is pretty clear. It comes into partial contact with the naturalist sciences (or those based on the principle of classification) and the biological (or those based on the idea of organization and life).

Ethnology, however, is more undecided in respect to position. If it be but a form of history, its place amongst the inductive sciences is equivocal; since neither the laws which it developes nor the method of pursuing it give it a place here. These put it in the same category with a series of records taken from the testimony of witnesses, or with a book of travels—literary but not scientific. And so it really is to a certain extent. Two remarkable productions, however, have determined its relations to be otherwise.

In Sir C. Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ we have an elaborate specimen of reasoning from the known to the unknown, and of the inference of causes from effects. It would have been discreditable to our philosophy if such a sample of logic put in practice had been disregarded.

Soon after, came forth the pre-eminently suggestive works, par nobile, of the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here we are taught that in the sciences of geology, ethnology, and archÆology, the method determines the character of the study; and that in all these we argue backwards. Present effects we know; we also know their causes as far as the historical period goes back. When we get beyond this, we can still reason—reason from the experience that the historical period has supplied. Climate, for instance, and certain other conditions have some effect; within the limits of generation a small, within that of a millenium a larger one. Hence, before we dismiss a difference as inexplicable, we must investigate the changes that may have produced it, the conditions which may have determined those changes, and the time required from the exhibition of their influence.

In Dr. Prichard’s ‘Anniversary Address,’ delivered before the Ethnological Society of London in 1847—a work published after the death of its illustrious author—this relationship to Geology is emphatically recognized:—“Geology, as every one knows, is not an account of what nature produces in the present day, but of what it has long ago produced. It is an investigation of the changes which the surface of our planet has undergone in ages long since past. The facts on which the inferences of geology are founded, are collected from various parts of Natural History. The student of geology inquires into the processes of nature which are at present going on, but this is for the purpose of applying the knowledge so acquired to an investigation of what happened in past times, and of tracing, in the different layers of the earth’s crust—displaying, as they do, relics of various forms of organic life—the series of the repeated creations which have taken place. This investigation evidently belongs to History or ArchÆology, rather than to what is termed Natural History. By a learned writer, whose name will ever be connected with the annals of the British Association, the term PalÆontology has been aptly applied to sciences of this department, for which Physical ArchÆology may be used as a synonym. PalÆontology includes both Geology and Ethnology. Geology is the archÆology of the globe—ethnology that of its human inhabitants.”

When ethnology loses its palÆontological character, it loses half its scientific elements; and the practical and decided recognition of this should be the characteristic of the English school of ethnologists.

This chapter will conclude with the notice of the bearings of the palÆontological method upon one of the most difficult parts of ethnology, viz. the identification of ancient populations, or the distribution of the nations mentioned by the classical, scriptural and older oriental writers amongst the existing or extinct stocks and families of mankind.

There are the Etruscans—who were they? The Pelasgians—who were they? The Huns that overrun Europe in the fifth century; the Cimmerii that devastated Asia, 900 years earlier? ArchÆology answers some of these questions; and the testimony of ancient writers helps us in others. Yet both mislead—perhaps, almost as often as they direct us rightly. If it were not so, there would be less discrepancy of opinion.

Nevertheless, up to the present time the primary fact concerning any such populations has always been the testimony of some ancient historian or geographer, and the first question that has been put is, What say Tacitus—Strabo—Herodotus—Ptolemy, &c. &c.? In critical hands the inquiries go further; and statements are compared, testimonies weighed in a balance against each other, the opportunities of knowing, and the honesty in recording of the respective authors investigated. In this way a sketch of ancient Greece by Thucydides has a value which the authority of a lesser writer would fail to give it—and so on with others. Nevertheless, what Thucydides wrote he wrote from report, and inferences—report, most probably, carefully weighed, and inferences legitimately drawn. Yet sources of error, for which he is not to be held responsible, are innumerable. He went upon hearsay evidence—he sifted it, perhaps; but still he went upon hearsay evidence only. How do we value such evidence? By the natural probabilities of the account it constitutes. By what means do we ascertain these?

I submit there is but one measure here—the existing state of things as either known to ourselves, or known to contemporaries capable of learning them at the period nearest the time under consideration. This we examine as the effect of some antecedent cause—or series of causes. ??? st?; says the scholar. On the dictum of such or such an author. ??? st?; says the Archimedean ethnologist. On the last testified fact.

Of the unsatisfactory character of anything short of contemporary testimony in the identification of ancient nations, the pages and pages that nine-tenths of the historians bestow upon the mysterious Pelasgi is a specimen. Add Niebuhr to MÜller, and Thirlwall to Niebuhr—Pelion to Ossa, and Olympus to Pelion—and what facts do we arrive at—facts that we may rely on as such, facts supported by contemporary evidence, and recorded under opportunities of being ascertained? Just the three recognized by Mr.Grote; viz. that their language was spoken at Khreston—that it was spoken at PlakeÆ—that it differed, in some unascertained degree, from the Greek.

This is all that the ethnologist recognizes; and from this he argues as he best can. Every fact, less properly supported by either first-hand or traceable evidence, he treats with indifference. It may be good in history; but it is not good for him. He has too much use to put it to, too much to build upon it, too much argument to work out of it, to allow it to be other than unimpeachable.

Again—Tacitus carries his Germania as far as the Niemen, so as to include the present countries of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, West and East Prussia, and Courland. Is this improbable in itself? No. The area is by no means immoderately large. Is it improbable when we take the present state of those countries in question? No. They are German at present. Is it improbable in any case? and if so, in what? Yes. It becomes improbable when we remember that the present Germans have been as unequivocally and undoubtedly recent immigrants for the parts in question, as are the English of the Valley of the Mississippi, and that at the beginning of the historical period the whole of them were Slavonic, with nothing but the phraseology of Tacitus to prevent us from believing that they always had been so. But it is also improbable that so respectable a writer as Tacitus should be mistaken. Granted. And here begins the conflict of difficulties. Nevertheless, the primary ethnological fact is the state of things as it existed when the countries under consideration were first accurately known, taken along with the probability or improbability of its having so existed for a certain period previous, as compared with the probability or improbability of the migrations and other assumptions necessary for its recent introduction.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The value of Tacitus as an authority is minutely investigated in an ethnological edition of the Germania by the present writer, now in course of publication. The object of the present chapter is merely to show the extent to which the science in question is of recent, rather than ancient, origin.

[2] Barr’s Translation, vol.iv. p.191.