Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/101

Rh characteristics, until at length the extremes of each would become necessarily the apparent opposition of the others. As in every day's experience in private families we see children of the same parents of very different complexions, so each of them might transmit the different shades to their descendants, until, in the great family of nations, we might expect to find one very fair, another extremely dark, and a third brown or copper-coloured, consistently with the fact of their common origin. In the three continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia, we find three great families of mankind so distinguishable, as white, black, and copper-coloured, with a variety of intermediate gradations, sometimes dependent upon local circumstances, sometimes consequent upon intermarriages, and yet, according to our hypothesis, all arising from natural causes. There are other writers however, who, taking up these differences as radically existing, contend that there are primarily five, or seven, or various greater numbers of races of man, which numbers indeed, if we allowed any real foundation for their suppositions, might be extended to the utmost limit. For thus they might, upon their assumptions, be entitled to divide, not only the dark, but also the white-complexioned people into different races, distinguished by the colour of their hair and eyes, and shades of complexion, which are variations as decided as those they point out among the darker-coloured branches of the human family, though we have become so familiar with those differences amongst ourselves, as to consider them of only minor importance, or of a cognate character.

When, however, we thus find writers of the greatest talents, who have made the human frame their peculiar study, not agreeing amongst themselves as to the conclusions to be drawn respecting the physical history of our species, it may be fairly allowed to those who have not entered professionally into that study to assume, that if there is no certainty attainable in it from their speculations, then the origin of nations becomes a question more peculiarly for philologists to discuss. It is as a philologist therefore alone that I profess to enter upon it, following the course adopted by one of the most eminent in those inquires, our late respected President, Dr. Prichard, in the belief that it is to the study of languages, after all, that we are to look for the most satisfactory elucidation of the question. It is by this means we may best hope to ascertain the affinities of nations, and, tracing the several families of mankind back to their sources, where the branches diverged from their parent stem, may obtain a full confirmation of the belief of their original unity.