of the Human Species. 317 



and agricultural people. They are all one nation, strictly so 

 termed, and have one language, which is polysyllabic in its 

 structure, admitting inflections and conjugations of nouns and 

 verbs. On the other hand, the Chinese arc ever known as a 

 people of settled, uniform, and changeless habits ; their histori- 

 cal records deduce them as a separate nation from the earhest 

 ages of antiquity, and especially establish their perpetual enmity 

 and discordance with the Mongolian Nomades, who are the very 

 people to exclude whom from their borders the famous Chinese 

 wall was erected in a remote age. The Chinese and the Indo- 

 Chinese nations appropriate to themselves, as we have before ob- 

 served, one entire class of languages, constituting one of the 

 most strongly marked examples of a distinct assemblage of hu- 

 man idioms, widely differing from all others. It is to these na- 

 tions that i\\Q -monosyllabic languages belong, consisting of mo- 

 nosyllables, incapable of reflection or variation, in which a mere 

 change of intonation and juxtaposition alone serves to indicate 

 the relations of words to each other. Before we can admit of 

 an hypothesis which derives one of these nations from the 

 other, we must resolve to shut our eyes against all the evidence 

 that can be brought to bear upon such a subject, excepting 

 merely that afforded by physical resemblances, which, if we are 

 not mistaken, will admit of a different explanation. 



" The only other connective link between the Mongolian and 

 Chinese nations, is the circumstance that they are all worshippers 

 of Fo. This can scarcely be thought an argument for their 

 unity of race. The religion of Buddha, indeed, called in China 

 Fo, is well known to have taken its rise in India, among the 

 Hindoos, who belong to the division of nations termed by Cuvier 

 the Caucasian race. It was established at a remote period in 

 Tibet, and thence propagated to China, where, however, it is 

 but one of the several prevailing superstitions. The Mongoles 

 and Kalmucs received it not until a. d. 1250. It is not, there- 

 fore, a peculiar and ancient distinction of the Mongolian race. 



" Many writers have thought fit to associate the native Ame- 

 rican tribes with the Mongolian race. Cuvier hesitates on this 

 subject ; but the excellent naturahsts Von Spix and Martius, 

 who soine years ago visited South America, were struck by the 

 great resemblance between ,the,»Chinese, in the form of their 



