256 PROFESSOR RUDOLTM VIRCHOW. 
For the instant, indeed, even an unknown skull may be an 
interesting object of enquiry, but from the point of view of 
scientific research it first receives importance when inserted in a 
local frame tis, 7o0ev ets dvépév'. This is the natural question not 
only with the ordinary man but also with the Anthropologist. If, 
for example, we start with craniology, it is exceedingly difficult to 
make discoverers understand, that what we lack is not skulls, but 
skulls of definite persons, and definite races. Only with the 
knowledge of the tribe or the person begins the Anthropological 
interest. A skull as such, is for us often tedious, even odious, and 
we either cannot use it at all or only very little. It begins ina 
manner to exist for us when it confesses its nationality, this is 
indubitable. But we must not forget that our ideas of nationality 
are attached primarily to existing relations. This loses its worth 
the further we go back, till gradually we reach those times, in 
which nationalities capable of proof are not known at all. Indeed, 
if we ascend to the prehistoric domain in the stricter sense, every 
idea of nationality ceases, the thing begins to be abstract. We 
must first construct a nationality; and finally names are sought 
for, which, however, are only designations for a certain period, in 
themselves without worth, and of which a later age will know 
nothing. When we hear of a race of Cannstatt or of a race of Cro- 
Magnon, it has the appearance of a profound wisdom ; nevertheless, 
I hope that a time will come when men will no longer speak after 
this fashion. Even in the present it is. often very hard to deter- 
mine the nationality. To be sure we may succeed pretty well 
when we visit an island in the Pacific: there nationality is in full 
bloom, there the people are palpable, there every one knows that 
he is a national being, with whom one can reckon, and go to work, 
and it fares with us as with zodlogists, who, from a single animal 
skull, or at most from a few, can reconstruct an entire genus, at 
any rate even from a single skull demonstrate the craniology of an 
entire.species. Yes,if we could every time in a single human skull 
read the history of the whole tribe, that would be agreeable and 
convenient ; but unhappily we only too often fall into the region of ° 
variations, and these variations are not seldom so considerable 
that we lose all basis for the construction of nationalities. Then 
we turn for recreation to some place in the Pacific which is of 
more scientific than political interest; there we do indeed find the 
