236 ANTHROPOLOGY xvi 



The origin and early history of man's civilisation, his 

 language, his arts of life, his religion, science, and social 

 customs in the primitive conditions of society, are subjects 

 in which, in consequence of their direct continuity with the 

 arts and sciences, religious, political, and social customs 

 among which we all live, by which we are all influenced, 

 and about which we all have opinions, every person of ordinary 

 education can and should take an interest. In fact, really to 

 understand all these problems in the complex condition in 

 which they are presented to us now, we ought to study them 

 in their more simple forms, and trace 1 them as far as may be 

 to their origins. 



But, as the author remarks, this book is only an intro- 

 duction to anthropology, rather than a summary of all that 

 it teaches ; and some, even those that many consider the most 

 important branches of the subject, are but lightly touched upon, 

 or wholly passed over. 



In one of the estimates of the character and opinions of 

 the very remarkable man and eminent statesman, whose death 

 the country was mourning last spring, it was stated : " Lord 

 Beaconsfield had a deep-rooted conviction of the vast im- 

 portance of race, as determining the relative dominance 

 both of societies and of individuals ; " l and with regard to 

 the question of what he meant by " race," we have a key in 

 the last published work of the same acute observer of man- 

 kind : " Language and religion do not make a race there is 

 only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood." 2 Now 

 " blood " used in this sense is denned as " kindred ; relation by 

 natural descent from a common ancestor ; consanguinity." 3 

 The study of the true relationship of the different races of 

 men is then not only interesting from a scientific point of 

 view, but of great importance to statesmanship in such a 

 country as this, embracing subjects representing almost every 

 known modification of the human species whose varied and 

 often conflicting interests have to be regulated and provided 

 for. It is to want of appreciation of its importance that many 

 of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the government of 



1 Spectator, 23rd April 1881. 2 Endymion, vol. ii. p. 205. 



3 Webster's Dictionary. 



