BEYIEWS. 



359 



. fisofl by tlio lioxameters of tlio * Iliad ' and ' O.-lyssoy,' of the ' Homeric 

 Ilyiniis' and ' P]i)i.£;raTDs/ on tlie Greek, wliich retarded eliiefiy the pro- 

 ,i>res,s of cosmi,';d investif^jation. As the EiiglisJi their Bible, so venerated 

 they the Homeric. Poems : it was more tlian a mere fashion to quote lines 

 from tliem ; and whenever the questions of the day excited alarm, the let- 

 U'.rod of Megalopolis and Corinth, of Argos and Milet, took not less eagerly 

 refuge to their authority than some grave farmers of Norfolk or of Aber- 

 deenshire to tiieirs for the sake of getting a quick delivery about the Go- 

 rilla Glna and the JEc/ilops ovata, the Niam-Niam and the 'flint imple- 

 ments in the Drift.' To ttie same category belonged the Didactics of He- 

 siodus. Tlieir perusal proved still more dangerous for youth in consequen'^e 

 of their being intended to substitute the cosmogonies of observing natural 

 philosophers." 



Even the Peripatetic school is castigated by Dr. Schvarcz. Speaking 

 of Aristotle, the man who did more for Zoology than any other prior to 

 the time of Cuvier, in whose works " I'histoire de I'elephant est plus exacte 

 que dans Buffon'* he says, "It was unfortunate for the history of the 

 efforts made by Indo-German races to arrive at some recognition of the 

 ti'ue scheme of the universe in space and time, that this man had an aver- 

 sion to geology, or was too overwhelmed with researches in other branches 

 of knowledge — the man who exhibited the best-suited mind amongst the 

 Greeks for natural investigation, and who, freed from every preposses- 

 sion, admitted even the myths to be veiled explanations of cosmical pheno- 

 mena." 



In some classical authors, however, a glimpse at positive facts, induc- 

 tively obtained, redeems the character of the ancients for observational 

 acuteness. 



" Ctesias the Cnidian ascribed, in spite of all these pretendr^d observa- 

 tions, the black (dark) colour of Hindoos, not to the action of solar rays, 

 though the latter have been accused by ^'Eschylus, Herodotus before him, 

 by Theodectes of Phaselis, and a great many authors after him, of swarth- 

 ening the skins of nations ; but he ascribed it to nature, that is, he esta- 

 blished a scheme of ' permanence of type.' . . . Even in our otvn age, it 

 appears to be now generally admitted that unit}^ of species does not involve 

 unity of origin ; in what, then, regards the relation, in the Greek view, of 

 human races to each other and the other groups of the animal kingdom, 

 we must refuse every startling generahzation ; for I am firmly of opinion 

 that the whole question of the origin, development, transmutation, or ex- 

 tinction of human races, as dealt loith hy the greater part of ethnologists^ 

 is of a negative character, and has arisen from the reaction against a theo- 

 logical proposition. Had saered tradition not awakened, say, the philoso- 

 phical theme of the origin of mankind from one single ]3air, scieiitific in- 

 vestigators would have never accumulated around those points of view so 

 many data of observation. .• . . The circumstance alone, that those philoso- 

 phers who lived in the vicinity of volcanos alwaj^s adhered to the doctrine 

 of a final conflagration, and those who lived near the sea always to that of 

 a final cataclysm, removes any analogy to the religious appreciation of the 

 * signs of the times' as given in sacred history. . . . Anaxagoras the Cla- 

 zomenean, being interrogated w hether the Lampsacene mountains would 

 ever become converted into sea, replied, according to the testimony of 

 Diogenes Laerlius, ' Yes, if time lasts long enough.' " 



It would be impossible here to notice the philosophical and metaphysical 

 facts which Dr. Schvarcz has adduced, in favour of the cognition, by the 



* Cuvicr, 'Disconrs Prcliiuiuaire sur Ics Revolutions dc la Surface du Globe,' 8vo, 

 4th edit., Paris, 1831., p. 154. 



