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that can be shown to exist amongst the existing races whose origin would be referred to a common ancestry. And the supposition that each race at present distinguishable by well-marked physical characters had an originally distinct parentage, would lead to such a multiplication of primary stocks as we fancy that none of the advocates for such a doctrine are prepared for; besides being inconsistent with all the evidence of common descent, which is furnished by physiological, psychological, and philological considerations. In Dr. Prichard's first volume will be found much interesting evidence in favour of the specific unity of the human races, derived from their conformity in physiological characters,--such as the average duration of life, the periodical phenomena of the constitution, the phenomena of hybridity, and the liability to the same diseases; the chief points of which were adverted to by us, at a very early period of our critical labours, soon after the publication of that volume (see Vol. III, pp. 365 et seq.) He has also brought together a most interesting mass of evidence of identity in psychical nature between the highest or most civilized and the lowest or most degraded nations; which, in his shorter work, he thus sums up:

"We contemplate among all the diversified tribes who are endowed with reason and speech, the same internal feelings, appetencies, aversions; the same inward convictions, the same sentiments of subjection to invisible powers, and (more or less fully developed) of accountableness or responsibility to unseen avengers of wrong and agents of retributive justice, from whose tribunal men cannot even by death escape. We find everywhere the same susceptibility, though not always in the same degree of forwardness or ripeness of improvement, of admitting the cultivation of these universal endowments, of opening the eyes of the mind to the more clear and luminous views which Christianity unfolds, of becoming moulded to the institutions of religion and of civilized life: in a word the same inward and moral nature is to be recognised in all the races of men." (Natural History of Man, p. 546.)

The philological evidence in favour of the specific unity of the human races is to be found not merely in the coincidence of particular features of the languages of remote families of nations, but also in the more general fact of the universality of spoken language, and in the power of translating from one language to another. Dogs and monkeys may have languages of their own; but there is no such relation between either of them to ours as may enable us to become acquainted with them; and where brute animals have been taught to comprehend human language, it has been that only which related to certain objects well known to them with which the sounds of the words could readily be associated. Let this limited comprehension be compared with that which is manifested by such human beings as seem most completely cut off, by the deficiency of organs of sensation, from communication with their fellows, and the contrast is at once evident. The lighting up of the whole countenance of Laura Bridgman, which her benevolent and persevering instructor, Dr. Howe, describes as having taken place when she first made the discovery that she could express her thoughts in words by a combination of literal signs, and the gradual elevation of her whole mind through the medium of language, from the level (but little above that of the brute) in which it would have probably ever remained if she could not be made to comprehend its use, afford most striking testimony to the fundamental importance of this common characteristic of humanity. The power of fully rendering the thoughts conveyed in one language into another tongue, must of course

depend in great part upon the relative advancement of the two languages. The profound ideas of a German philosopher could not be expressed in the Hottentot gibberish; nor does the peculiar style of eloquence cultivated in the East produce its adequate effect when rendered in our own language. But any two barbarous languages, or any two which are highly cultivated, are so pervaded by a sameness of character as to bear witness to the identity of their internal source.

Contenting himself with having established to his satisfaction the main positions of the common origin of the human races, Dr. Prichard does not offer any speculations in regard to their primary source. Perhaps he considers it safer not to give the weight of his authority to any such speculations, until they may have a better foundation than that on which they can be at present built. But as we are not restrained by any such consideration, we shall briefly state the idea which had occurred to our own minds, and which has gained strength by the more detailed survey which we have been recently led to make (for the purposes of this review) of the vast collection of materials brought together by Dr. Prichard.

The stock from which the globe was originally peopled appears to us to be most nearly represented at the present time by the people of High Asia, namely, the Mongolians and their allies; and some part of that region was probably their original seat. We ground this hypothesis (for we wish it to be regarded as nothing else) upon the following considerations. The physical characters of these people are such as peculiarly adapt them to a nomadic life; they have a vigour of constitution which enables them to brave great diversities of climate; and they readily accommodate themselves to a great variety of hardships. Their natural disposition leads them almost to seek these rather than to avoid them; and to wander over the surface of the earth, rather than to settle in any one spot. If it had been intended that by such migrations the whole globe should be peopled, no better centre could be thought of than Higher Asia; whose connexions with all other lands are such as are possessed by no other region; and whose climate is so intermediate between that of the frigid and the torrid zones, that the passage into either may be effected without any violent transition. This a priori argument, however, would be worth but little, if we did not find it in correspondence with the very curious fact, that the most ancient inhabitants of almost every part of the globe are connected with the nations of High Asia, more or less closely, by affinities of language or of physical characters. This we have seen to be the case, not merely with the aboriginal people of Northern and Southern Asia, but with those of Northern and Southern Europe, with those of the Caucasus, with the first settlers in the Indian Archipelago, and (as seems highly probable, though the proof is less complete) with the American nations. The only region regarding which there is not the same decided evidence is Africa; but until the contrary shall have been shown, we cannot but think that the existence of a people presenting so strongly the original Mongolian characters (modified, however, by change of climate, &c.) as do the Hottentots, affords strong evidence that this continent also was early peopled from the same stock. There is ample evidence that the Mongolian type is capable of being elevated on the one hand towards the Indo-European, or degraded on the other to the Negro or Australian; and we are not

aware that either of the other types exhibit the same capacity for metamorphosis.

In certain spots of the globe thus peopled with races derived from a common centre, varieties in physical conformation sprang up; new and more refined languages were originated; and subordinate centres were thus formed, from which more limited radiations have subsequently taken place, impressing their own features of civilization upon the countries through which they have spread. Thus we have, at a very early period, indications of the Egyptian, the Syro-Arabian, the Indian, the IndoChinese, the Mexican, and the Peruvian races; and although some of these may possibly have been mutually connected at their origin (as the Egyptian and the Indian), they seem to have been very early separated, and to have attained their fullest development quite independently of one another. Each of these had its own peculiar characters, departing more or less from the common original; and contained within itself those elements of progress, of fixity, or of early decay, which have exerted their influence upon the subsequent destiny of these races. The great body of African nations is the one whose origin has seemed to us most obscure; but the recent investigations which have been made in regard to the languages of some of their most elevated tribes, would lead us to regard this continent as having been peopled (after its first and most scattered colonization) by successive offsets from the stem which produced the SyroArabian races. The earliest of these, which wandered the farthest from the original centre, would seem to have most completely lost the traces of its original ancestry, both in respect to language and physical characters; whilst the later colonies, which have not extended themselves beyond the northern and eastern portions of the continent, have retained more or less of the primitive type of language, and usually show less approxima tion to the true Negro physiognomy. Nevertheless the Syro-Arabian variety does exhibit greater tendency to this kind of change than we know to be the attribute of any other race; since instances are by no means wanting, in which, under the prolonged influence of similar external conditions, families and whole tribes of undoubted Arab descent have assumed all the most important characters of the Negro races.

It has been remarked by an acute critic, that the lapse of time requisite to bring about such changes as those required in any hypothesis of the single origin of the human races, is far greater than the limits of received history allow. This remark is commented on by Dr. Prichard in a supplementary note at the close of his last volume; which is not one of the least interesting parts of his work. He points out that all those writers who have entered upon the investigation of primeval history, have felt a difficulty in reconciling the proofs of the early existence of powerful empires and high grades of civilization with the ordinary chronology founded upon the Mosaic records; even though not at all disposed to impugn the authority of the latter. And then, in a truly philosophical but not less reverential spirit, he proceeds to inquire how far that chronology is necessarily to be regarded as complete and authentic, by those who receive the narrative as the genuine record of Divine Revelation. He comes to the conclusion which might be expected from so learned and judicious a critic, -that the Book of Genesis was not intended to give us an exact chrono

logy, any more than it was intended to teach us geology or astronomy; that it is a collection of different documents having no proper connexion with each other,—that the genealogies which it includes have no claim to completeness,-that the great length of lives recorded in the anteAbrahamic times is founded on a mistake in the interpretation of numbers or numerical signs, and that there is consequently no foundation whatever for a chronology of the earliest ages, or, in other words, that no means are to be found for ascertaining the real age of the human race. Consequently we need not be fettered by any considerations of this kind in our attempts to determine the mode in which the globe became peopled by the nations, which are now spread over every part of its surface that is fit for the habitation of man.

It now only remains for us to place before our readers a general estimate of the merits of Dr. Prichard's ethnographical labours; and we cannot do so more concisely or pointedly, than by adopting the language of a learned contemporary, to whom we have more than once had occasion to refer, and whose judgment, in this particular, we would most entirely and cordially adopt as our own. Speaking of the Physical History,' he says,—" "It is impossible to even turn through the pages of Dr. Prichard without admiring the very varied erudition brought together for the illustration of one topic. The knowledge of a modern physiologist is in itself sufficiently multifarious. Blumenbach and some others had so far led the way upon this question, as to have preoccupied all the main physiological discussions and the most prominent facts concerning human races. But Prichard has not merely filled out with an almost inexhaustible learning the topics previously familiar, and endowed with new force arguments which had been almost abandoned as untenable; he has further investigated ancient and modern races with a detail perhaps previously unattempted, scraping together and illustrating with great sagacity all the scattered notices found in Greek or Roman writers, and combining for his purpose the ethnographical information furnished by modern travellers, missionaries, and philologists. The latest researches of acute and inquisitive Germans, whether concerning the inscriptions of ancient Italy, the characters of Persepolis, or the language of Biscay and India, with the splendid geographical generalizations of Karl Ritter, are all made to converge into the same focus. The value of the work before us by no means depends upon the question whether the writer has or has not proved, either that man is one species, or that this species descends from one pair. It is, in fact, a storehouse of information concerning the whole controversy. The adverse arguments, although not pressed and developed as by an advocate, are set forth without disguise or suppression, so far as we are aware; so that in no small degree the reader is put in possession of materials for an independent judgment. Add to this,-what is in our view of peculiar importance, quite independently of the great cause which the book is pleading-the facts themselves, so varied, so instructive, so picturesque, and so very eloquently set forth, are of high interest; and the learning, ancient and modern, crowded into its pages, is such as would with difficulty be gleaned from ample libraries by the most persevering study. The work, in short, has been the labour of a life. Thirtyseven years have elapsed since the accomplished author laid its founda

XLVIII-XXIV.

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tions, and three times has it been reconstructed."* As a striking contrast with the hasty manner in which some other writers have been accustomed to dogmatise on the subject, we may recall the attention of our readers to the fact, that the first volume of this third edition was published as much as eleven years since, soon after the commencement of our critical labours. That the delay in its completion has been owing to nothing else than the author's determination to render it as perfect as possible we can vouch for, from our own knowledge of the unremitting devotion of his disposable time to his laborious investigations. We rejoice that we are enabled, at the close of our own career, to congratulate him on the successful attainment of this step in his honorable course. he will not consider it as here concluded, but will be constantly availing himself of every kind of information that may throw light upon the obscurer departments of Ethnology, all who have the privilege of a personal knowledge of him must feel the utmost confidence.

That

In regard to the smaller work it will be sufficient to say, that its object is to furnish for the use of general readers a brief and popular view of all the physical characteristics, and likewise of the moral and intellectual peculiarities which distinguish from each other the different races of men; and likewise to offer such an account of the nature and causes of these phenomena as the present state of our knowledge will afford. It may, therefore, be regarded as a popular abridgment of the larger work; comprising the chief results of the inquiries pursued in the latter, with a general outline of the evidence on which they are based: the Physical History' is the work for the man of science; the 'Natural History' for the general reader.

ART. XV.

A Treatise on Diseases of the Air-passages: comprising an Inquiry into the History, Pathology, Causes, and Treatment of those Affections of the Throat called Bronchitis, Chronic Laryngitis, Clergyman's Sore Throat, &c. &c. By HORACE GREEN, A.M., M.D., formerly President and Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Castleton Medical College, Vice-President of the New York Medical and Surgical Society, and Honorary Member of the Philadelphia Medical Society, &c. &c.-New York and London, 1846. 8vo, pp. 256.

DR. GREEN's work is a monograph on diseases of the follicles which stud the mucous membrane of the fauces, pharynx, and larynx, and is a practical work of very considerable merit. Its object is to point out the great value of nitrate of silver as a local application to the cavities of the larynx and pharynx, in cases of chronic laryngitis, bronchitis, and allied affections, many of which are so nearly similar in their symptoms to more serious pulmonary disease as to be mistaken for phthisis pulmonalis, or so urgently complicate the latter affection, as to render their treatment of importance, even in the alleviation of the sufferings to which the moribund of phthisis are so often exposed.

Dr. Green commences his essay with the anatomy of the fauces, pha

New Quarterly Review, vol. viii, p. 98.

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