140 SYSTEM. 



done, and, above all, by assisting the researches of the Egypti- 

 ologists, who can read upon the coffin that such and such a 

 body is that of a workman, a priest, or a king. We may thus 

 be able to ascertain if the kings of such or such a dynasty were 

 black or yellow ; if the dominant population of such or such a 

 nome had the Coptic, Berberine, or Fellah type. Here we have a 

 large field for study, which has been almost entirely neglected by 

 the American school of anthropology, precisely because Morton 

 found himself without information about the production and 

 true age of the immense materials which he had at his disposal. 



But we must not be forgetful : the classification of skulls by 

 their shape, of hairs by their colour, or skins by their hue, is 

 not the classification of races of mankind. We only perceive 

 here one order of phenomena. A classification established 

 upon such bases has its point of departure only in the mind of 

 him who conceived it, and not in the nature of things. 



We shall only have a natural and rational classification by 

 comparing entire individuals one with the other.* To this we 

 must come ; we must study at one and the same time the height, 

 the skin with its dependencies, and, above all, the character of 

 the countenance, the attitude, the fades, and the habitus of dif- 

 ferent races, which Caldwell called " the variety discoverable 

 in the complexion and feature, the figure and stature of the 

 human race ;f" this something is explained in one word, which 

 we call type, about which we are never mistaken, and which 

 makes us say, " This is a man from the south, that is a man 

 from the north; this is a Mongolian, that an Indian. "J By 

 this means alone we can form natural groups ; difficulties will, 

 doubtless, be great at the beginning, but light will come little 

 by little, and time will teach us surely to distinguish certain 

 distinctive characteristics, whose expression will be gradually 

 more and more simple. This is a work for the future. 



* See Vivien, in the Memoires de la Societe Ethnologique, vol. ii, p. 59. 



f Portfolio, Philadelphia, 1814. 



J W. Edwards, Des Caracteres Physiologiques des races humaines, p. 4jp, 

 has especially noticed the great importance of external characteristics ; he 

 has only done wrong in excluding the hair, and attending solely to the form 

 of the skull, which never concerns us when we endeavour to picture or recall 

 to our mind the features of a man. 



