Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind

tween nations long since separated and inhabiting distant regions, where they have been subjected during many ages to different external agencies. By such proofs alone we may establish the fact of their descent from a common original, and ascertain the effects which a long abode under different climates, and a diversity of habits and moral influences, are capable of producing on the offspring of one primitive stock. These researches have therefore a bearing upon the origin of physical varieties, and they are, though laborious and indirect methods, often the only available means of elucidating obscure points connected with this subject. Inquiries into the mythological traditions and the early literature of different races, and the peculiar developement which conceptions and representations connected with religion may have assumed among them, constitute moreover a principal resource for comparative psychology. Such traits of character form no small part of the history of races, and they are often important indications of the state of mental culture, or arguments of the community of origin, or of the early separation of particular tribes.

To establish the reality of such relations of kindred between nations separated from each other and differing in acquired physical and moral characters, has

often been the design of laborious and manifold investigations. It has been the end or the object for the sake of which these investigations have been undertaken, and is their result or fruit. Hence it is obviously improper, in describing the population of different portions of the earth, to set out with a distribution of mankind into races and tribes, as most writers on the history of mankind have done. Such an arrangement prematurely attempted is an anticipation of results which are only attainable, of admissions which can only be granted as legitimate, after careful investigation. For this reason I have thought it better to proceed in the analytical method, and to begin with the survey of the phenomena from which inductions were to be collected. I have examined the ethnography of various countries in a local order, and it has been only where a whole region appears to have been occupied by one race that I have deviated apparently, though not really, from this method of arrangement. In particular, the different branches of the Indo-European family of nations are not all brought together under one head, but described successively in the order of the countries which they inhabit. While the analytical arrangement, so termed, was thus the only one which circumstances allowed, it has disadvantages of an obvious nature, and is liable

to distract the attention of the reader, and obscure to his view and render less forcible the evidence that may be brought to bear upon general conclusions. On this account it has appeared to me advisable to prefix an introductory chapter, in which I have attempted to survey in a synthetical order a great variety of particular subjects; and at the termination of this part of my work, where a synthetical statement has its most natural place, I shall resume the same point of view, and shall draw up a brief recapitulation of the results."*

* I cannot let pass this opportunity of expressing my obligations to Captain Washington, R.N., and the other officers and members. of the Royal Geographical Society, for the great assistance in very many instances afforded me, by giving me access to sources of information otherwise hardly attainable. I am under a similar obligation to the learned and truly liberal Marquis of Bute, who has most kindly lent me from his magnificent library many works on the history of the northern nations, which could not be heard of either at the Bodleian or in the library of the British Museum.

Books