ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. 20g 



lurian formation, therefore wise miners do not look there for coal. 

 The higher mammals are not found earlier than the Cenozoic, 

 though their precursors are in the Jurassic. Man in the savage 

 stage may be examined in the same spirit as the Jurassic stage is 

 studied to trace what may afterward appear in the barbarian and 

 Cenozoic, and is developed in the present epoch ; but to search 

 for the complete ideas of civilization in the period of barbarism 

 would be as judicious as to dig for manuscripts among the work- 

 shops of flint arrow-heads. 



The beliefs and practices of both the Israelites and the Indians 

 were substantially the same as those of other bodies of people in 

 the same stage of culture. They were neither of them a " pecul- 

 iar " people. 



There is, racially, no peculiar people in the sense intended. 

 Mankind is homogeneous in nature, though its divisions at any 

 one time are found in differing and advancing grades of culture. 

 Such advancement has been from causes known to be still in con- 

 tinuous operation. What is called blood in a racial sense may 

 be likened unto the water of the earth : as the water comes from 

 the clouds it is chemically the same, and it is subjected, wherever 

 it is, to the same laws. The early course of a rill may be turned 

 by a pebble, and from the elevations and depressions met it may 

 become a lake, or a river, or a stagnant marsh. From the charac- 

 ter of soil encountered it may be clear or muddy, alkaline, chalyb- 

 eate, or sulphurous. In one sense, which belongs to modern and 

 not to ancient history, the Jews are a peculiar people, from the 

 fact that for many centuries, until lately, they proclaimed them- 

 selves to be such, and observed religiously the doctrine about the 

 Goim, and therefore did not intermarry with other peoples ; but 

 that should not be a reason for their boasting. Persecution made 

 them pariahs and other peoples would not intermarry with them. 

 During recent centuries the so-styled purity of their race has 

 been kept up by isolation, but the assumption of great purity in 

 the stock at the Christian era is not tenable. Now that their 

 prejudices and those of the Goim against them are dissolving, it 

 is probable that what has been improperly called the Jewish race 

 will disappear by absorption as the Indians are now disappearing. 

 To renew the simile, both Israelite and Indian will be lost in the 

 homogeneous ocean which all mankind seems destined to swell. 



It will be noticed that this presentation of views practically 

 ignores the scholastic divisions of mankind into distinct races. 

 The result of my own studies on the subject is a conviction that 

 all attempts at the classification of races have failed. The best 

 statement of the condition of scientific opinion regarding such 

 classification may be taken from the address of Prof. W. H. Flow- 

 er to the Section of Anthropology of the British Association for 



VOL. XXXVI. 14 



