Writings of the late Professor Blumenbach. 227 



had not begun to excite interest, Blumenbach raised his 

 voice in order to shew that their psychical qualities were 

 not inferior to those of Europeans, that between their races 

 the greatest differences prevail, and that it is only opportu- 

 nity for development which is wanting for the display of their 

 higher powers.* As Blumenbach relished a joke when no 

 one was injured by it, he wrote an essay entitled, " On the 

 races of Men and Swine."t Man continued to be his chief 

 subject, but not in a transcendental point of view (for that he 

 left to moral philosophers and theologians), but as he is in the 

 external world ; and while he contributed essentially to our 

 better acquaintance with, and appreciation of, this subject, he 

 was not easily excelled by any one in practical acquaintance 

 with human nature. 



Natural history, in its proper sense, and not the description 

 of nature, was the task he had undertaken. With Bacon, 

 Lord Verulam, he regarded it as the prima materia philo- 

 sophic?. He understood well how to represent, by means of 

 a few characteristic traits, what was peculiar in objects, and 

 at the same time how to bring out their individual inter- 

 nal;]; properties and relations, so as to apprehend, as a whole, 

 their economy and their position. Therefore it was that he 

 occupied himself more especially with animal organic nature. 

 That he was, however, no stranger to the study of geology 

 and mineralogy, is clearly shewn by De Luc's letters § to Blu- 

 menbach, by what he wrote on Hutton's Theory of the Earth, 

 and by his paper on the Impressions on Bituminous Marl-slate 

 found at Riegelsdorf.|| 



* In the Gottingen Magazine, 1781. No. vi. p. 409-425. " Ueber die Fahicj- 

 kciten und Sitten dcr Wilden." (On the Capabilities and Manners of Sa- 

 vages.) 



t In Lichtenberg anil Voigt's Mag. fur das Neueste aus der Physik 

 •vol. vi. Gotha, 1789. No. i. p. 1. 



t He laboured long on a history of natural history, but publishod nothing 

 upon it. That he thought of the possibility of a philosophy of natural his- 

 tory is evident, among other proofs, from a letter to Moll in the MiUheilungen 

 of the latter. Part i. 1829, p. CO. 



§ In the Magazin filr das Neueste aus der Phjsik. Vol. 8, No. 4, 1793. 

 Compare also Gott. gel. Anz. 1799. Part 135, p. 1348. 



|| In Kohlcr's Mining Journal. Freyberg, 1791, fourth year. Vol. i. 

 p. 151-6. Blumenbach shewed that those impressions were of a mammal 

 but not of a child, and therefore were not anthropolitce. 



