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THE ETHNOLOGY OP TUE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



civilisation, and the mental character of the tribes who possess H« 

 The more regular expansion of these districts is caused hy the 

 gradual improvement of the arts, the birth of commercial naviga- 

 tion, the growth of knowledge, and the consequent loss of the 

 prejudices and timidities which are nursed by isolation or confined 

 geographical experience. But arts are advanced far more rapidly 

 than science is acquired, or boldness run] pnterprise substituted for 

 fear and the tyranuy of habit. Hence the expansion of the district 

 is exceedingly alow. Nations often remain for ages endowed with 

 the power, without acquiring the will, to take possession 0/ it in 

 all its extent. There are other less constant and more powerful 

 influences than am and the desire of traffic, which not only accele- 

 rate, although they mat also retard, the enlargement of the district, 

 but give it different boundaries from those which it has for com- 

 merce and colonisation. The predntory spirit, ambition and religion 

 incite to grcrt enterprizee, which often carry the civilised nation 

 beyond the range of its commercial world, and bring it in contact 

 with tribes which commerce alone would never, or not till Inter 

 ages, have sought out 



Each development thus enlarges the ethnic worlds and obliterates 

 many of the ancient geographical barriers, hut even when boal navi- 

 gation lias reached its utmost limits, and an intercourse bos been 

 established l>ctween different great regions, so that they are united 

 although possessed hy distinct races, physical geography still keeps 

 the globe divided into several distinct human regions."'' It is not 

 until ships have been built, and navigation has improved with Other 

 arts, that these last boundaries disappear. The globe is circum- 

 navigated and civilisation advances by sea and taiul to embrace all 

 races and all realms in its powerful and assimilating infln- nee. 

 The ethnic dispersion and division of mankind has done its 

 appointed work in peopling the earth, and developing the human 

 soul by ihe quickening effect of the contact and mixture of races and 

 languages. A more active and powerful process of assimilation now 

 commences which must proceed by moral and physical means, until 

 all mankind become one in intellectual and scientific culture, and 

 every new advancement that genius achieves will be made not for a 

 nation but for the world. It is only at this era, when it first becomes 

 possible to understand the distribution and characters of races, and 

 when, at the same time, the conversions, absorptions and extermina- 

 tions of barbarous tribes by civilised nations or their colonies, shew 

 that the work of assimilation and obliteration is rapidly proceeding, 

 that a science of ethnology can exist. Many tribes have already 

 been swept away. Others, in the course of a single generation, 

 have lost many of the habits of thousands of year?. Before 

 Captain Cook a work is seventy years old, the language, religiutt 



* All or many of these however, to the conn* of great periods, rausi become 

 iwn*»fed 99 infliiettces aueteuively emanating from www* la particular regions: 



