256 
M 
PORT— 1847 . 
origin ; or we must look in Awa for the origin of the people and laiiguase rf 
Egypt. But in that case we must ask again, to what branch of those Asiidi: 
languages does Egypt point? To the essentially fixed Semitic, ortoth 
Japhetic ? Was it the Hebrew or the Sanscrit from which the EgyptiMlo- 
guage can be said to be derived, or was it their coninion germ .* and iu ik 
ease, how can such a state of language be scientifically characU'rizcdiW 
explained ? Egypt forms as it were the bridge between Africa and .ba 
There must be a certain relation, collateral or parcoial, between the hgy|tt 
language and some at least of the languages of Africa, analogous to tk 
physiological affinity which evidently places the skull and the whole phwk* 
formation of the Egyptian man Imtween the Caucasian and the thorouj^; 
African race. Therefore our immediate problem will necessarily iW" 
itself, jihysiologically and historically, into the following great qiiestioa:- 
Js tht Asiatic and Europmn man a more facourahhf S^vebped 
fected Egyptian and African y or is t/ie Egyptian {and perhaps the 
man in yemtnd') a scion of tJie Asiatic stocky vdiich gradually dcgeneralr-* f - 
the African tyjK f 
Both assumptions claim, on the fields of science, an equal right. 
two priuciplos, as the inviolablo conditions of every scientific inquiiy. 
one ist ,—Science excludes no suppositionsy however strange, they tmy appa. 
which are not in themselves ahsurd, viz. demonstrably coutnidictorj' tu'-- 
own priuciples; and the second, equally sacred,— Science admits 
stcmptiotui, however natimd or imperative they may be deemed, which or**' 
trancons to its immediate, object. 'J’he whole question lies in these two 
As to myself, J exclude the hypotlieais of a difference in the physical dw* 
of the Egyptians and the two great families of Asia and Europe already 
ccause I bcHovo that facts liave been discovered atid a* 
, It 19 IlJIU UIIIJ UlJi: UJI « lllV** * - , 
to lay before thin meeting the elements of tbe 
ive of that fact in the concluding volume ofmy*^ 
My object being 
tion which I shall give .. 
Egypt, I shall divide the statement of _ 
the first place, I shall try to develops the 
my own inquiries into two 
e principles and method of 
that method to the ethnological consequences of our Egypfi^o 
the general classification of the principal languages of the earth. ' ^ 
I believe, will deny the necessity of the first or general inq<iiry 5 
the members of this learned Association. . , ca^ 
I cannot help feeling that our claim,—the claim, I mean, cA 
logical Section, to be generally acknowledged, independently f • j, 
gical researches cooeeniing the races of mankind, as a legitimaw ^ 
a scientific association,—must rest upon the possibility of 
physiologist, the geologist, and even to the astronomer, tl 
pbilology ig a science. I must insist upon its not being any 
aggregate of isolated facts, much less of uncritical, arbitrary 
