EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 233 



and food, domestication, and perhaps an inward tendency to 

 progress under tolerably favourable circumstances, are sufficient 

 to account for all the outward peculiarities of form and colour; 

 so that these can only at the utmost serve as proofs of the 

 distinctness of races, if supported by more decisive evidence. 



The inquiries of the philologist have supplied such evidence. 

 It is seen that the language of a people, liable as it is to 

 change, is a much more permanent possession than a form of 

 head or a hue of the skin. It is a profound expression of the 

 idiosyncrasy of a people, not easy to be obliterated or disguised. 

 There are upon earth between three and four thousand lan- 

 guages, perhaps for the most part as distinct from each other 

 as French, English, German, but, like these, exhibiting rela- 

 tionships which at once enable us to decide on the relation- 

 ships of the nations to which they belong. A relationship 

 amongst languages is shown in the community of words or 

 roots of words. This is the kind of relationship with which 

 we are most familiar, but it is one liable to some obscurity, as 

 it may either happen that all or nearly all traces of a common 

 vocabulary have perished between nations known to be akin, 

 or there may be a community of words that is only the result 

 of accident. By far the most certain test of an affinity between 

 languages is the trace of a common character or analogy in their 

 grammatical structure and in their laws of combination what 

 has been well called the mechanism of speech. This is both 

 a more immediate and distinct expression of intellect, and one 

 which tends to be more permanent. Now it is found that, 

 amidst all the diversities of tongues, relations in the laws of 

 their formation can be established from one to another, till we 

 come to reckon six plans of language, if such a phrase may be 

 used, amongst which no sort of community can be shown, 

 leading to the supposition that they have originated in entire 

 independence of one another, and are each expressive of the 

 idiosyncrasy of a distinct family of mankind. 1 This distinc- 

 tion, as it happens, is tolerably in harmony with a classification 

 of mankind into five varieties, which Cuvier determined on 

 from a consideration of broad external characters, but which 

 has now of course lost much of its value. 



The first group of nations, according to the philological 

 arrangement, comprehends the Indians, Persians, and nearly 



1 See Keport on Ethnology, by Dr. Prichard, in the publication of the 

 British Association for 1847. 



