340 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EACE AND LANGUAGE.* 



By HOKATIO HALE. 



ETHNOLOGY has been defined, briefly, as " the science of the 

 races of men," and, more fully, as " the science which treats of 

 man as a member of a tribe or nation, and of his culture, morals, and 

 language." Many treatises on this science have been given to the 

 world by scholars of the first eminence, from the days of Camper and 

 Blumenbach to our own time. But, when we examine their works, 

 we are struck by the fact that no two of them are agreed on the mere 

 elements or fundamentals of the science. If we inquire, for example, 

 the number of the races of men, we find that Virey is satisfied with 

 two, and. Cuvier with three— that Linnaeus makes four, Blumenbach 

 five, Buffon six, Peschel seven, Agassiz eight, Pickering eleven. Fried- 

 rich Muller twelve, Bory de St. Vincent fifteen— while Morton increases 

 the number to twenty-two, Crawford to sixty, and Burke to sixty- 

 three. If we seek the criteria by which the races are distinguished, 

 we discover that one high authority proposes the color of the skin, 

 another the texture of the hair, another the shape of the skull, and a 

 fourth mere geographical location — while others combine with one or 

 more of these distinctions the minor characteristics (as they deem 

 them) of language, stature, and mental traits. On the most important 

 question of all, the question whether the races of men are distinct 

 species or simply varieties, the votaries of the science are divided into 

 opposing camps. In the latest works of the most distinguished an- 

 thropologists, we find the views of the monogenists and the polyge- 

 nists as far apart and as decided as they were fifty years ago. 



The question naturally arises whether a study which has no estab- 

 lished principles and no accepted classification can rightly be dignified 

 with the name of a science. Writers whose opinion on such a question 

 must be received with respect have been inclined to answer it in the 

 negative. Eminent among these, from the position which he holds, 

 must be ranked the distinguished chief of the American Bureau of 

 Ethnology. "There is," declares Major PoavcII, in a late number of 

 " Science " (June 24, 1887), " a science of anthropology, composed of 

 subsidiary sciences," which he enumerates. " There is," he continues, 

 " a science of sociology, which includes all the institutions of mankind ; 

 there is a science of philology, which includes the languages of man- 

 kind ; and there is a science of philosophy, which includes the opinions 



* This paper (under the title of " The Trae Basis of Ethnology ") was read, in part, 

 before the Section of Anthropology, at the last meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, when it called forth an interesting discussion. It is now 

 presented in a fuller form, with additional evidence and arguments, which may answer 

 some of the questions then raised. 



