1 INTRODUCTION. 



solution of this problem,, recourse was had to mere rhetoric of 

 a political and religious nature, in order to establish certain 

 favourite notions with regard to the primitive man. Yet it is 

 this point which is of such great importance to the student of 

 the history of mankind ; and it is the very last which should 

 be neglected in laying a foundation for the history of humanity, 

 bearing always in mind that this investigation must be con- 

 ducted in an empirical method, and not by a deduction from 

 abstract notions. 



The fourth theme of Anthropology is that of Ethnography 

 or Ethnology, the object of which is an investigation into the 

 affinities of various peoples and tribes. Closely allied with 

 it is the History of Mankind ; and it seems arbitrary whether 

 this branch of knowledge be considered as a separate part of 

 Anthropology, or belonging to Ethnology. The important 

 results to which, in modern times, German philology has led, 

 caution us against the errors still committed in determining 

 affinities of nations, and grouping them in families or races, by 

 viewing them exclusively from an Ethnological stand-point, 

 and neglecting the historical and other evidence.* 





ON THE UNITY OP MANKIND AS A SPECIES, AND ON THE 

 NATURAL STATE (NATURZUSTAND) OF MAN. 



Whosoever would arrive at a just conception of Man must 

 not consider him exclusively as an individual being, for man is, 

 as was well observed by Aristotle, a social being ; as an 



* That the definition which Latham (" Man and his Migrations," London, 

 1851) has recently given of Anthropology, is confined within too narrow 

 limits, requires, after what has been stated, no elucidation. He distinguishes 

 the natural history of man from the history of civilization : the first considers 

 man as an animated, the second as a moral, being. The natural history of 

 man he divides into Anthropology, treating of the differential characteristics 

 of man in contrast with the brute ; and Ethnology, the doctrine of races or 

 varieties of mankind. By the first, the peoples are to be classified according 

 to their physical resemblances, and hence Hottentots, Esquimaux, the popu- 

 lation of Tierra del Fuego, are to be grouped together, in order to deduce the 

 effects of external influences ; in Ethnology, on the other hand, the peoples 

 must be grouped according to their affinities. 



