468 NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. 



W. Humboldt, Grimm, Bopp, Klaproth, Bask, &c., indicate 

 the more conspicuous of those who have advanced this science 

 abroad. In our own country we may enumerate Harris, Home 

 Tooke, Sir W. Jones, Wilkins, Marsden, Young, Prichard, 

 Latham, &c., as associates in the same learned career. We 

 gladly too annex the eminent name of Max Miiller to the 

 latter list. 



What, then, are we to understand by the title prefixed to 

 this article ? In stating it to be the natural history of Man, 

 as a branch of that larger science which includes the physical 

 history of all organised life on the globe, we give but a 

 meagre conception of the subject. Vegetable life, indi- 

 vidually fixed to a single spot - generically distributed into 

 different regions so as to form a science of botanical geo- 

 graphy limited by climate, soil, and other circumstances, 

 though capable of vast changes by culture all this, while 

 furnishing much curious illustration and analogy, does only 

 slightly represent to us what pertains to the physical history 

 of the human race. When we rise in the scale of creation 

 through the innumerable forms and gradations of animal life, 

 and reach those wonderful instincts and yet higher functions 

 of intelligence and feeling in some animals, which Aristotle 

 calls fjbi^rjfjbara rrjs avOpwrriv^s faijs though finding some of 

 the analogies to approach more closely, still we are far below 

 the level of those great questions which regard the human 

 species, viz. the origin, dispersion, and mutual relation of the 

 various races of mankind. To mere physical evidence are 

 here added other and higher methods of proof, connected 

 with the exercise of those mental faculties which mark Man 

 as the head of the animal creation. The peculiarity, the 

 grandeur, and, we may add, the difficulty of the theme, 

 depend mainly on his condition as an intellectual being, 

 whereby his whole existence on earth is defined, and his 

 relation to all other parts of created life. 



