

EACES. 365 



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 everywhere 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 favour 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 colonisation of 

 some 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 cannot 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 cannot therefore be deter- 

 mined 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 where 

 large sections are separated into a few but large divisions ; so it 

 also appears to me, that in the determination of races a pre- 

 ference should be given to the establishment of small families 

 of nations. Whether we adopt the old classification of my 

 master, Blumenbach, and admit Jive races, (the Caucasian, 

 Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malayan,) or that Ox 

 PricKard, into seven races,* (the Iranian, Turanian, American, 

 Hottentots and Bushmen, Negroes, Papuas, and Alfouious,) 

 we fail to recognise any typical sharpness of definition, or any 

 * Prichard, op. cit., vol. i. p. 247. 



