VIL] METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 137 



men being everywhere similar, differing in quality and 

 quantity but not in kind of faculty, like circumstances 

 must tend to produce like contrivances ; at any rate, so 

 long as the need to be met and conquered is of a very 

 simple kind. That two nations use calabashes or shells 

 for drinking-vessels, or that they employ spears, or clubs, 

 or swords and axes of stone and metal as wea.pons and 

 implements, cannot be regarded as evidence that these 

 two nations had a common origin, or even that inter- 

 communication ever took place between them ; seeing 

 that the convenience of using calabashes or shells for 

 such purposes, and the advantage of poking an enemy 

 with a sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, 

 must be early forced by nature upon the mind of even 

 the stupidest savage. And when he had found out the 

 use of a stick, he would need no prompting to discover the 

 value of a chipped or wetted stone, or an angular piece 

 of native metal, for the same object. On the other hand, 

 it may be doubted whether the chances are not greatly 

 against independent peoples arriving at the manufacture 

 of a boomerang, or of a bow ; which last, if one comes to 

 think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus ; and the 

 tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as 

 these, and of such strange customs as betel- chewing and 

 tobacco-smoking, may afford valuable ethnological hints. 



Since the time of Leibnitz, and guided by such men 

 as Humboldt, Abel Eemusat, and Klaproth, Philology 

 has taken far higher ground. Thus Prichard affirms that 

 "the history of nations, termed Ethnology, must be 

 mainly founded on the relations of their languages/' 



An eminent living philologer, August Schleicher, in a 

 recent essay, puts forward the claims of his science still 

 more forcibly : 



" If, however, language is the human rar' e'frx^, the suggestion arises 

 whether it should not form the basis of any scientific systematic 



