504 SOMATOLOGY 



question. Terms which are indicative of divisions according to 

 linguistic or ethnic bases are too often confounded or confused 

 with those which relate to the somatological side of the subject. 

 Thus, the terms tribe, stock, nation, are in reality based on con- 

 tinuity of language. With such terms somatology is not concerned. 

 When a number of individuals, each with his own individual varia- 

 tion, differ sufficiently from their neighbors that they may be dis- 

 tinguished by means of well-marked and easily recognized peculiar- 

 ities, we may speak of them as a type. When we find a group of such 

 types all having something in common and all occupying a geo- 

 graphic continuity of habitat and all having a similarity of anatomic 

 traits which mark them from all other groups of mankind, we may 

 speak of such a group as a race. We may therefore define races 

 as the principal divisions of mankind, and types the varieties of 

 these main divisions. 



Such being our definition of race, we have certainly at least five 

 races, the Caucasian, including peoples of the north of Africa, the 

 African, the Mongolian, the American, and the Oceanic. Probably 

 to be added to these should be the Australian, and possibly the 

 Papuan. In considering in a general way the characteristics which 

 indicate this classification of mankind into six races, we are at once 

 brought face to face with the idea expressed by Topinard, who 

 says that people alone are real, types and races are conceptions. 

 In other words, Topinard denies the objective existence of races, 

 and maintains that the term is an abstract definition. Thus he 

 would define the type as an abstract picture, from which we form the 

 ensemble of characters expressed in a group, or, again, the type 

 of a group is the ensemble of characters which are attributed to a 

 type and which distinguish it from other types. Topinard further 

 insists that continuation in time constitutes one of the chief charac- 

 teristics of the race. Actual types exist at the moment when they 

 are determined, and to prove the reality, that is, the objective 

 existence of a race, it is necessary to determine both the type, based 

 on a wide complexity of marks, and the proof of the continuation 

 in time of the descent or relationship in blood. 



Enough has been said to indicate the character of the require- 

 ments which shall determine our classification of mankind into races. 



We return to a more definite consideration of our main theme. 

 The great problem of somatology has already been defined. It re- 

 mains to consider the details of the problem, noting the methods 

 applicable in the solution of them. 



What are the races of mankind? What are the types, the com- 

 posite pictures which represent in the abstract the picture of these 

 combined types? Above all, what are the causes which make types 

 and races? It would seem that two great factors have been at 



