against each other, the opportunities of knowing, and the honesty in recording of the respective authors investigated. In this way a sketch of ancient Greece by Thucydides has a value which the authority of a lesser writer would fail to give it—and so on with others. Nevertheless, what Thucydides wrote he wrote from report, and inferences—report, most probably, carefully weighed, and inferences legitimately drawn. Yet sources of error, for which he is not to be held responsible, are innumerable. He went upon hearsay evidence—he sifted it, perhaps; but still he went upon hearsay evidence only. How do we value such evidence? By the natural probabilities of the account it constitutes. By what means do we ascertain these?

I submit there is but one measure here—the existing state of things as either known to ourselves, or known to contemporaries capable of learning them at the period nearest the time under consideration. This we examine as the effect of some antecedent cause—or series of causes. Ποῦ στῶ; says the scholar. On the dictum of such or such an author. Ποῦ στῶ; says the Archimedean ethnologist. On the last testified fact.

Of the unsatisfactory character of anything short of contemporary testimony in the identification of ancient nations, the pages and pages that nine-tenths of the historians bestow upon the mysterious Pelasgi is a specimen. Add Niebuhr to Müller, and Thirlwall to Niebuhr—Pelion to Ossa, and Olympus to Pelion—and what facts do we arrive at—facts that we may rely on as such, facts supported by contemporary evidence, and recorded under opportunities of being ascertained? Just the three recognized by Mr. Grote; viz. that their language was spoken at Khreston—that it was spoken at Plakeæ—that it differed, in some unascertained degree, from the Greek.

This is all that the ethnologist recognizes; and from this he argues as he best can. Every fact, less properly supported by either first-hand or traceable evidence, he treats with indifference. It may be good in history; but it is not good for him. He has too much use to put it to, too much to build upon it, too much argument to work out of it, to allow it to be other than unimpeachable.

Again—Tacitus carries his Germania as far as the Niemen, so as to include the present countries of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, West and East Prussia, and Courland. Is this improbable in itself? No. The area is by no means immoderately large. Is it improbable when we take the present state of those countries in question? No. They are German at present. Is it improbable in any case? and if so, in what? Yes. It becomes improbable when we remember that the present Germans have been as unequivocally and undoubtedly recent immigrants for the parts in question, as are the English of the Valley of the Mississippi, and that at the beginning of the historical period the whole of them were Slavonic, with nothing but the phraseology of Tacitus to prevent us from believing that they always had been so. But it is also improbable that so respectable a writer as Tacitus should be mistaken. Granted. And here begins the conflict of difficulties. Nevertheless, the primary ethnological fact is the state of things as it existed when the countries under consideration were first accurately known, taken along with the probability or improbability of its having so existed for a certain period previous, as compared with the probability or improbability of the migrations and other assumptions necessary for its recent introduction.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The value of Tacitus as an authority is minutely investigated in an ethnological edition of the Germania by the present writer, now in course of publication. The object of the present chapter is merely to show the extent to which the science in question is of recent, rather than ancient, origin.

[2] Barr’s Translation, vol. iv. p. 191.

CHAPTER II.

Ethnology—its objects—the chief problems connected with it—prospective questions—transfer of populations—Extract from Knox—correlation of certain parts of the body to certain external influences—parts less subject to such influences—retrospective questions—the unity or non-unity of our species—opinions—plurality of species—multiplicity of protoplasts—doctrine of development—Dokkos—Extract—antiquity of our species—its geographical origin—the term race.

In Cuvier—as far as he goes—we find the anthropological view of the subject predominant; and this is what we expect from the nature of the work in which it occurs: the degree in which one genus or species differs from the species or genus next to it being the peculiar consideration of the systematic naturalist. To exhibit our varieties would have required a special monograph.

In Prichard on the contrary ethnology preponderates; of anthropology, in the strict sense of the word, there being but little; and the ethnology is of a broad and comprehensive kind. Description there is, and classification there is; but, besides this, there is a great portion of the work devoted to what may be called Ethnological Dynamics, i. e. the appreciation of the effect of the external conditions of climate, latitude, relative sea-level and the like upon the human body.

Prichard is the great repertory of facts; and read with Whewell’s commentary it gives us the Science in a form sufficiently full for the purposes of detail, and sufficiently systematic for the basis of further generalization. Still it must be read with the commentary already mentioned. If not, it fails in its most intellectual element; and becomes a system of simple records, rather than a series of subtle and peculiar inferences. So read, however, it gives us our facts and classifications in a working form. In other words, the Science has now taken its true place and character.

If more than this be needed—and for the anthropology, it may be thought by some that Cuvier is too brief, and Prichard too exclusively ethnological—the work of Lawrence forms the complement. These, along with Adelung and Klaproth, form the Thesaurus Ethnologicus. But the facts which they supply are like the sword of the Mahometan warrior. Its value depended on the arm that wielded it; and such is the case here. No book has yet been written which can implicitly be taken for much more than its facts. Its inferences and classification must be criticised. Be this, however, as it may, in A.D. 1846 Mr. Mill writes, that “concerning the physical nature of man, as an organized being, there has been much controversy, which can only be terminated by the general acknowledgement and employment of stricter rules of induction than are commonly recognized; there is, however, a considerable body of truth which all who have attended to the subject consider to be