RACES. 353 



ical character. " We do not know," says Wilhelm von Hum 

 boldt, in an unpublished work On the Varieties of Language! 

 and Nations, " either from history or from authentic tradition, 

 any period of time in which the human race has not been 

 divided into social groups. Whether the gregarious condition 

 was original, or of subsequent occurrence, we have no historic 

 evidence to show. The separate mythical relations found to 

 exist independently of one another in different parts of the 

 earth, appear to refute the first hypothesis, and concur in 

 ascribing the generation of the whole human race to the union 

 of one pair. The general prevalence of this myth has caused 

 it to be regarded as a traditionary record transmitted from 

 the primitive man to his descendants. But this very circum- 

 stance seems rather to prove that it has no historical founda- 

 tion, but has simply arisen from an identity in the mode of 

 intellectual conception, which has every where led man to 

 adopt the same conclusion regarding identical phenomena ; in 

 the same manner as many myths have doubtlessly arisen, not 

 from any historical connection existing between them, but 

 rather from an identity in human thought and imagination. 

 Another evidence in favor, of the purely mythical nature of 

 this belief is afforded by the fact that the first origin of man- 

 kind a phenomenon which is wholly beyond the sphere of 

 experience is explained in perfect conformity with existing 

 views, being considered on the principle of the colonization of 

 soiuo desert island or remote mountainous valley at a period 

 when mankind had already existed for thousands of years. It 

 is in vain that we direct our thoughts to the solution of the 

 great problem of the first origin, since man is too intimately 

 associated with his own race and with the relations of time 

 to conceive of the existence of an individual independently of 

 a preceding generation and age. A solution of those difficult 

 questions, which can not be determined by inductive reasoning 

 or by experience whether the belief in this presumed tradi- 

 tional condition be actually based on historical evidence, or 

 whether mankind inhabited the earth in gregarious associa- 

 tions from the origin of the race can not, therefore, be de- 

 termined from philological data, and yet its elucidation ought 

 not to be sought from other sources." 



The distribution of mankind is therefore only a distribution 

 into varieties, which are commonly designated by the some- 

 what indefinite term races. As in the vegetable kingdom, 

 and in the natural history of birds and fishes, a classification 

 into many small families is based on a surer foundation than 



