PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 277 



to rescue one branch of knowledge from a variety of ill-founded 

 objections, and to take from another, its equally ill-founded claims ; 

 to support each, in fact, by placing each upon its proper basis, 

 and by assigning to each its real object, and its legitimate appli- 

 cation. 



He then concluded by some reflections on the insufficiency of 

 the human understanding however distinguished by natural en- 

 dowments or strengthened by scientific acquirements, for the 

 discovery and comprehension of many things to which its powers 

 are occasionally misapplied ; and shewed the folly of speculating 

 on those subjects which are, in their nature, necessarily beyond 

 the reach of finite minds. 



November 6th. — Lt. Col. Ham. Smith's Third Lecture on 

 The Filiation of' the tribes of man ; embracing those which pre- 

 ceded the Celt(j£ in Europe. 



The paper commenced with a retrospect of what had been 

 already urged upon the same subject in the two former lectures, 

 and also in the " Philo Danmonian," a periodical published in 

 this town, in which, under the head of *' The Portfolio,^' a similar 

 inquiry had been pursued. The lecturer then adverted to the 

 pretended maxim that ancient authorities are incontrovertible 

 facts in history ; and contended — that, as the quotations drawn 

 from ancient and classical writers may be often opposed to each 

 other, one contradicting the other : as they are also constantly 

 subjected to new readings and to different interpretations by every 

 commentator; and, finally, as the ancients were not only very 

 ignorant in Geography, but had moreover the practise of referring 

 all the mythology of nations to the names and forms of their own 

 religious doctrines, their authority is only so far available as it is 

 consistent with credibility submitted to modern criticism by the 

 tests of evidence, in Geography, Languages, Comparative Anato- 

 my, Traditions, and other early records of the nations which are 

 still preserved. With these restrictions the lecturer admitted that 

 most of the positive information we possess, upon the origin of 

 nations, is derived from the writers in question, but that being the 

 positive it was as in physics often of small avail without the 

 negative or critical side of the question. 



The paper then proceeded with an account of the discovery of 

 human bones, intermixed with those of extinct animals, as asserted 

 by Schlotheim, Donati, Germer, Rasoumouski, and Guetard. 

 The lecturer enumerated several species so mixed up, found in 



