[336] See Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 320.
[337] See Strope, Description d’une Momie très-ancienne (Recueil Périod. d’Observ. de Médecine, vol. iv, p. 290, Jan. 1756). One may see in reading the account of a very able and judicious narrator how much ancient scientific observations alter with the times, when no care is taken to refer to the original sources.
[338] See Vivien, in the Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique, vol. ii, p. 59.
[339] Portfolio, Philadelphia, 1814.
[340] W. Edwards, Des Caractères Physiologiques des races humaines, p. 45, has especially noticed the great importance of external characteristics; he has only done wrong in excluding the hair, and attending solely to the form of the skull, which never concerns us when we endeavour to picture or recall to our mind the features of a man.
[341] See Michelet, with regard to the paintings in the Sixtine Chapel, Histoire de France, Renaissance.
[342] “Philology is at once the most elevated and the most positive branch of the natural history of the human race.” Chavée, Moïse et les Langues (La Revue). M. Flourens seems to give philological a superior rank to physical characteristics. [See above, p. 77, note.—Editor.]
[343] He believes that by their means we can go back to the most distant geological periods. See Apophthegms (Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ., vol. li.)
[344] Latham thus explains it: “This is because whilst A and B, in the way of stock-blood or pedigree, will give C a true tertium quid, or a near approach to it, and A and B, in the way of language, will only give themselves, i. e., they will give no true tertium quid, nor any very close approach to it.” Celtic Nations, p. 33. We have endeavoured to prove that this true tertium quid—this real mean term, is never produced as far as species.
[345] [“Either language must have been originally revealed from heaven, or it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who represents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the names of animals. The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. The first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. This opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was framed by Mochus, the Phœnician, and afterwards improved by Democritus and Epicurus; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are represented as having grown out of the earth, like trees and other vegetables, it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the republic of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination.”—Encyclop. Brit., vol. ix, p. 530, 1797.—Editor.]