AUTHOK'S PREFACE. 



THE questions raised in this work which have for a consider- 

 able time been discussed in America rather as party questions, 

 but have in England, since the emancipation of the negroes, 

 become subjects of unprejudiced, serious inquiry, have been 

 scarcely touched upon in Germany, until recently a contro- 

 versy arose, the politico-theological rather than the scientific 

 tendency of which, created for them a transitory attention, 

 without, however, leading to an exhaustive treatment of the 

 subject, or exciting that deep interest which it deserves. Sci- 

 entific problems, which seem to lie between or to embrace 

 the several branches into which we are accustomed to divide 

 human knowledge, are, amongst us, not favoured by fate. If 

 formerly, philosophy took charge of such orphan problems, 

 they are at present no longer considered, since philosophy is 

 gone out of fashion ; and consequently in our universities 

 there is neither a faculty nor a professor who takes charge of 

 them. 



I have, nevertheless, ventured to treat upon this subject, 

 though I cannot justify my act by the consciousness of pos- 

 sessing a competent knowledge in all the sciences bearing 

 upon its investigation. Led to it by psychological studies, I 

 had from the beginning no hope of arriving at a perfect solu- 

 tion of a question which it were desirable should be treated by 

 the united powers of the zoologist and geologist, the linguist, 

 historian, and psychologist. But as such a happy combination 

 may be long in occurring, there remained but the alternative 

 either to leave the question in abeyance, or to try its solution 

 with insufficient means. 



