8 INTEODUCTION. 



logy, to indicate why and wherefore the history of one people 

 has undergone a different process of development from that of 

 another people ; why one people has no history at all, and in 

 another the sum of mental performances never exceeds a cer- 

 tain limit ; and yet in every case it is the aggregate of the 

 physiological and psychological facts alone which contains the 

 essential conditions of the historical facts. 



In assigning to Anthropology the task of mediation between 

 the physical and historical portion of our knowledge of man, it 

 will not merely be delivered from the reproach of being a mere 

 collation of borrowed materials, and thus unjustly claim the 

 position of an independent science ; but it will acquire a better 

 right to its name, inasmuch as the nature of man mainly rests 

 upon this, that he steps out of his individual life, and enters 

 into a social connexion with others, by whom he himself arrives 

 at a higher and truly human development. It is at the point 

 of his transition from isolation into social life that Anthropology 

 must lay hold of man, and investigate the conditions and results 

 of his further development. 



Let us endeavour more closely to examine this task of An- 

 thropology in its relation to history. In the historical con- 

 sideration of man, the differences of physical organization and 

 the influences of surrounding nature, stand in the background ; 

 the former, because the development of civilization is, with 

 some few unimportant exceptions, limited chiefly to the Cau- 

 casian race ; the latter, because the conformation of the human 

 race, however dependent it may originally in pre-historic times 

 have been on surrounding nature, has gradually, with progres- 

 sive civilization, by division of labour, intercourse and trade, 

 art and science, greatly emancipated itself from this depend- 

 ence. Whilst History endeavours to represent the various 

 phases of civilized life to the fullest extent, the interest of 

 Anthropology rests chiefly upon the general features and the 

 greatest differences in the various forms of human life ; for as 

 regards the latter science, these diversities form the most im- 

 portant and characteristic part, and we should have but a one- 

 sided conception of man, if our notion of him were only derived 

 from the history of civilization without taking into consider- 



