REVIEWS. 
359 
cised by the hexameters of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' of the ' Homerie 
Hymns ' and ' Epigrams,' on the Greek, which retarded chiefly the pro- 
gress of cosmical investigation. As the English their Bible, so venerated 
they the Homeric Poems : it was more than a mere fashion to quote lines 
from them ; and whenever the questions of the day excited alarm, the let- 
tered 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 theirs for the sake of getting a quick delivery about the Go- 
rilla Gina and the JEcjilops ovata, the Niam-Niani and the ' flint imple- 
ments in the Drift.' To the same category belonged the Didactics of He- 
siodus. Their perusal proved still more dangerous for youth in consequence 
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 Buffbn'* he says, "It was unfortunate for the history of the 
efforts made by Indo-German races to arrive at some recognition of the 
true 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 pretend o,l observa- 
tions, the black (dark) colour of Hindoos, not to the action of solar rays, 
though the latter have been accused by ^schylus, 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 own age, it 
appears to be now generally admitted that unity of species does not involve 
unity of origin ; in what, then, regards the relation, in the Greek view, ot 
human races to each other aud the other groups of the animal kingdom, 
we must refuse every startling generalization; for I am firmly of opinion 
that the whole question of the origin, development, transmutation, or ex- 
tinction of human races, as dealt with hy the greater part of ethnologists, 
is of a negative character, and has arisen from the reaction against a theo- 
logical proposition. Had sacred tradition not awakened, say, the philoso- 
phical theme of the origin of mankind from one single pair, scientific 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 always 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 whether the Lampsacene mountains would 
ever become converted into sea, replied, according to the testimony of 
Diogenes Laertius, ' 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 
* Cuvier, ' Discours Preliminaire sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe,' 8vo, 
4th edit., Paris, 1834, p. 154. 
