“Who shows a Newton as he shows an ape.”

Yet, provided there be no morbid gloating over the more dishonourable points of similarity, no pleasurable excitement derived from the lowering view of our nature, the study is not ignoble. At any rate, it is part of human knowledge, and a step in the direction of self-knowledge.

Besides this, the relationship is merely one of degree. We may not be either improperly or unpleasantly like the orang-utan or the chimpanzee. We may even be angelomorphic. Nevertheless, we are more like orang-utans and chimpanzees than aught else upon earth.

The other branch of Man’s Natural History is called Ethnology—from the Greek word signifying nation (ethnos).

It by no means follows, that because there is an anthropology there is an ethnology also. There is no ethnology where there is but a single pair to the species. There would be no ethnology if all the world were negroes; none if every man was a Chinese; none if there were naught but Englishmen. The absolute catholicity of a religion without sects, the centralized uniformity of a universal empire, are types and parallels to an anthropology without an ethnology. This is because Ethnology deals with Man in respect to his Varieties.

There would be an anthropology if but one single variety of mankind existed.

But if one variety of mankind—and no more—existed, there would be no ethnology. It would be as impossible a science as a polity on Robinson Crusoe’s island.

But let there be but a single sample of different though similar bodily conformation. Let there be a white as well as a black, or a black as well as a white man. In that case ethnology begins; even as a polity began on Crusoe’s island when his servant Friday became a denizen of it.

The other classes of organized beings, although, mutatis mutandis, they have, of necessity, their equivalent to an anthropology, may or may not have an ethnology. The dog has one; the chimpanzee has either none or an insignificant one; differences equivalent to those which separate the cur from the greyhound, or the shepherd’s-dog from the pointer, being wanting. Again, a treatise which showed how the chimpanzee differed from the orang-utan on one side, and man on the other, would be longer than a dissertation upon the extent to which chimpanzees differed from each other; yet a dissertation on the varieties of dogs would be bulkier than one on their relations to the fox. This shows how the proportions of the two studies may vary with the species under consideration. In the Natural History of Man, the ethnological aspect is the most varied. It is also the one which has been most studied. With the horse, or the sheep, with many of the domestic fowls, with the more widely-cultivated plants, the study of the variety outweighs that of the species. With the dog it does so in an unparalleled degree. But what if the dog-tribe had the use of language? what if the language differed with each variety? In such a case the study of canine ethnology would be doubly and trebly complex, though at the same time the data for conducting it would be both increased and improved. A distant—a very distant approach—to this exists. The wild dog howls; the companion of man alone barks. This is a difference of language as far as it goes. This is written to foreshadow the importance of the study of language as an instrument of ethnological investigation.

Again—what if the dog-tribe were possessed of the practice of certain human arts, and if these varied with the variety? If they buried their dead? and their tombs varied with the variety? if those of one generation lasted for years, decenniums, or centuries? The ethnology would again increase in complexity, and the data would again be increased. The graves of an earlier generation would serve as unwritten records of the habits of sepulture with an earlier one. This is written to foreshadow the importance of the study of antiquities as an instrument of the same kind with philology.

With dogs there are impossibilities. True; but they serve as illustrations. With man they are realities—realities which make philology and archæology important adjuncts to his natural history.

We have now ascertained the character of the study in question; and seen how far it differs from history properly so-called—at least we have done so sufficiently for the purpose of definition. A little reflection will show its relations to certain branches of science, e.g. to physiology, and mental science—a relation upon which there is no time to enlarge. It is enough to understand the existence of such a separate substantive branch of knowledge and inquiry.

What is the amount of this knowledge? This is proportionate to that of the inquiry. What has this been? Less than we are prepared to expect.

“The proper study of mankind is Man.”

This is a stock quotation on the subject.

“Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.”

This is another. Like many apophthegms of the same kind, they have more currency than influence, and are better known than acted on. We know the zoology of nine species out of ten amongst the lower animals better than that of our own genus. So little have the importance and the investigation of a really interesting subject been commensurate.

It is a new science—so new as scarcely to have reached the period of adolescence. Let us ask what the ancients cared about it.

We do not look for systematic science in the Scriptures; and the ethnology which we derive from them consists wholly of incidental notices. These, though numerous, are brief. They apply, too, to but a small portion of the earth’s surface. That, however, is one of pre-eminent interest—the cradle of civilization, and the point where the Asiatic, African, and European families come in contact.

Greece helps us more: yet Greece but little. The genius of Thucydides gave so definite a character to history, brought it so exclusively in contact with moral and political, in opposition to physical, phænomena, and so thoroughly made it the study of the statesman rather than of the zoologist, that what may be called the naturalist element, excluded at the present time, was excluded more than 2000 years ago. How widely different this from the slightly earlier Herodotean record—the form and spirit of which lived and died with the great father of historic narrative! The history of the Peloponnesian war set this kind of writing aside for ever, and the loss of what the earlier prototype might have been developed into, is a great item in the price which posterity has to pay for the κτῆμα εἰς ἀεὶ of the Athenian. As it is, however, the nine books of Herodotus form the most ethnological work not written by a professed and conscious ethnologist. Herodotus was an unconscious and instinctive one; and his ethnology was of a sufficiently comprehensive character. Manners he noted, and physical appearance he noted, and language he noted; his Scythian, Median, Ægyptian, and other glosses having the same value in the eyes of the closet philologist of the present century, as the rarer fossils of some old formation have with the geologist, or venerable coins with the numismatic archæologist. Let his name be always mentioned with reverence; for the disrespectful manner