PREFACE. vii 



tremity of a barbarism, which such a custom presupposes, it is a reasonable 

 presumption that progress through and out from it was by successive stages of 

 advancement, and through great reformatory movements. Indeed, it seems probable 

 that the progress of mankind was greater in degree, and in the extent of its range, 

 in the ages of barbarism than it has been since in the ages of civilization; and 

 that it was a harder, more doubtful, and more intense struggle to reach the thresh- 

 old of the latter, than it has been since to reach its present status. Civilization 

 must be regarded as the fruit, the final reward, of the vast and varied experience 

 of mankind in the barbarous ages. The experiences of the two conditions are 

 successive links of a common chain of which one cannot be interpreted without 

 the other. This system of relationship, instead of revolting the mind, discloses 

 with sensible clearness, " the hole of the pit whence [we have been] digged" by 

 the good providence of God. 



A large number of inferior nations are unrepresented in the Tables, and to that 

 extent the exposition is incomplete. But it is believed that they are formed upon 

 a scale sufficiently comprehensive for the determination of two principal questions: 

 First, whether a system of relationship can be employed, independently, as a basis 

 for the classification of nations into a family 1 and, secondly, whether the systems 

 of two or more families, thus constituted, can deliver decisive testimony concern- 

 ing the ethnic connection of such families when found in disconnected areas 1 

 Should their uses for these purposes be demonstrated in the affirmative, it will not 

 be difficult to extend the investigation into the remaining nations. 



In the progress of the inquiry it became necessary to detach from the Turanian 

 family the Turk and Finn stocks, and to erect them into an independent family. 

 It was found that they possessed a system of relationship fundamentally different 

 from that which prevailed in the principal branches of the Southern division, which, 

 in strictness, stood at the head of the family. The new family, which for the 

 reasons stated I have ventured to make, I have named the Uralian. At the 

 same time the Chinese have been returned to the Turanian family upon the basis of 

 their possession, substantially, of the Turanian system of consanguinity. Still 

 another innovation upon the received classification of the Asiatic nations was ren- 

 dered necessary from the same consideration. That portion of the people of India 

 who speak the Gaura language have been transferred from the Aryan to the Tura- 

 nian family, where their system of consanguinity places them. Although ninety 

 per centum of the vocables of the several dialects of this language are Sanskritic, 

 against ten per centum of the aboriginal speech, yet the grammar as well as the 

 system of relationship, follows the aboriginal form. 1 If grammatical structure is 



1 CaldwelFs Dravidian Comp. Gram. Intro, p. 39. 



