INTRODUCTION. 9 



ation the requisite supplement arising from the study of 

 uncivilized nations, and of man in a primitive state. It is just 

 this point which anthropology has to keep in view. History 

 only begins where reliable traditions or writings exist, where 

 a beginning of civilization has been secured, where certain 

 objects are rationally pursued, where a people by the force of 

 historical conditions, either influenced by the genius of indivi- 

 duals arising among them, or by external causes, arrive at a 

 certain development. Anthropology, on the other hand, em- 

 braces all the peoples of the earth, including those who have 

 no history, in order to acquire the largest possible basis ; and 

 endeavours partly to sketch an ante -historical picture, and 

 what may, in contrast to the historical development of peoples, 

 be termed the natural history of human society, namely, its 

 necessary natural formation upon a given soil, and under given 

 stationary external conditions. 



As man appears in history neither as a living body, such as 

 physiology describes him, nor as a spiritual being, as conceived 

 by psychology, but as a combination of physical and psychical 

 life, he must be considered as a whole in the reciprocal action 

 of his physical organization and his psychical life ; for it is 

 only as a whole that he appears as the elementary basis of 

 history. There arises in the interest of history another ques- 

 tion, as to the extent to which the notion of man should be 

 applied, whether all individuals and peoples, usually compre- 

 hended under that term, are of one and the same nature, 

 whether they belong to one species, or whether there be not 

 such specific differences in the physical and psychical en- 

 dowments of individual stocks as would justify history in 

 excluding them, assigning them to zoology, and defending 

 their employment as domestic working animals by higher 

 organized beings, properly called men. To this question there 

 is another closely allied, which attracted considerable attention 

 during the last century, but which seems now almost neglected; 

 namely, the question as regards the primitive or natural state 

 of man (Naturzustand) . On glancing at the mode in which it 

 was formerly treated, its present neglect can scarcely surprise 

 us ; for in the absence of empirical materials requisite for the 



