282 Timehri. 



of us to give some part of our leisure, a few hours at least, to the 

 perusal of such reports and so enjoy the fruits of others' labours. 



One last word with regard to the Asiatic theory. I spoke of it as 

 having been the orthodox one at the beginning of last century, and 

 despite the pronouncement of Herr Eduard Seler, which I have quoted, 

 it is, I think, still entitled to be considered such. The assumption of a 

 monogenous descent for man, common practically to all schools of 

 anthropologists, has, where any attempt has been made to speculate as 

 to his first habitat, gone hand in hand with a kindred assumption — so 

 one cannot avoid calling it, both being in accordance with a prevailing 

 tradition, preserved, as we have seen, by more than one large section of 

 mankind— that the original home was somewhere in or in the neighbour- 

 hood of Western Asia. The distance from the Western Himalayas to 

 Mesopotamia, or even to Egypt, is after all relatively insignificant. No 

 rival theory has received any general acceptance ; and in this wide sense 

 the Asiatic theory still holds the field. What the lines were upon which 

 the common stock dispersed itself throughout the globe, how journeys or 

 voyages were made from continent to continent, how differences such as 

 we now recognise as fundamental ethnologically came to be developed 

 and perpetuated : these constitute another and more difficult problem. 

 In justice to speculators such as Father Brosse, it is right to consider 

 how enormous the difficulties are. The ocean has increased a mile in 

 depth, one geologist says ; the earth is in a process of desiccation, 

 declares another : and vestiges of civilisations which had ceased to exist 

 before the dawn of history are not lacking to confirm both one and the 

 other view. Under such circumstances, to hope to trace in a roughly 

 continuous or distinct chain the migrations, not merely of mankind 

 generally but of a particular race or stock with marked physical, 

 intellectual and social peculiarities, is to be greatly sanguine; and 

 practical workers within a narrower sphere, intent on comparative 

 minuticv, and strongly impressed with the common indigenous character 

 of the ancient local civilisations, are likely to regard somewhat 

 impatiently the picking out of particular groups, and their identification 

 on mere general grounds with known foreign stocks. It is in this way, 

 I think, that we must construe Herr Seler's declaration. To the theory 

 of the Asiatic origin of all mankind, including the American races gen- 

 erally, lie would, one may conjecture, have no more objection than 

 anthropologists have had ; the point of his protest is against the attribu- 

 tion of an "exotic ; ' origin to selected races, and their being held up as 

 different in historical development and culture from other races of the 

 new continents. To bring the two views into harmony some modifica- 

 tions — very important modifications, in fact, on Father Brosse's theory — 

 are obviously necessary : but to regard it as entirely discountenanced 

 by the researches of recent Americanists would probably be an error. 

 The children of Noah, as I have said before, still keep their place as 

 the progenitors of great divisions of mankind: those of us who love 

 and reverence the sacred narratives recognise the fact as confirmatory of 

 their truth ; those whose learnings are in another direction still accept 



