240 ANTHROPOLOGY xvi 



of man. A natural classification is an expression of our 

 knowledge of real relationship, of consanguinity of " blood," 

 as the author of Endymion expresses it. When we can 

 satisfactorily prove that any two of the known groups of 

 mankind are descended from the same common stock, a point 

 is gained. The more such points we have acquired, the more 

 nearly shall we be able to picture to ourselves, not only 

 the present, but the past distribution of the races of man 

 upon the earth, and the mode and order in which they have 

 been derived from one another. 



The difficulties in the way of applying zoological principles 

 to the classification of man are vastly greater than in the 

 case of most animals ; the problem being, as we shall see, one 

 of much greater complexity. When groups of animals 

 become so far differentiated from each other as to represent 

 separate species they remain isolated ; they may break up 

 into further subdivisions in fact, it is only by further 

 subdivision that new species can be formed ; but it is of the 

 very essence of species, as now universally understood by 

 naturalists, that they cannot recombine, and so give rise to 

 new forms. With the varieties of man it is otherwise. 

 They have never so far separated as to answer to the physio- 

 logical definition of species. All races are fertile one with 

 another, though perhaps in different degrees. Hence new 

 varieties have constantly been formed, not only by the 

 segmentation, as it were, of a portion of one of the old stocks, 

 but also by various combinations of those already established. 



Neither of the old conceptions of the history of man, 

 which pervaded the thought, and form the foundation of the 

 works of all ethnological writers up to the last few years, 

 rest on any solid basis, or account for the phenomena of the 

 present condition and distribution of the species. 



The one view that of the monogenist was that all 

 races, as we see them now, are the descendants of a single 

 pair, who, in a comparatively short period of time spread 

 over the world from one common centre of origin, and 

 became modified by degrees in consequence of changes of 

 climate and other external conditions. The other that of 

 the polygenist is that a certain number of varieties or 



