tween nations? ‘long since separated and inhabiting
distant regions, where they have been subjected during
many ages to different external agencies. By such
proofs afcc^ve naaysliltablish the fact of their descent
from a common original, -^nfitoscerjtaia.'$!©> effects
which a long abode“nnder different cEmate&^and a diversity
of habits and imoral influences, are- capable"
- of producing on the offspring of oile primitive stock.
These' researches have therefore a bearing upon the
origin ~of physical varieties, and they are, though
laborious and indirect methods, often the^only availa
b le means of elucidating obscure points connected
with thi& subject. Inquiries into' the mythological
traditions and the-early literature of disffi|p^nt rages*
and the peculiar developement which conceptions and
representations connected with religiom^may have
assumed among them, constitute^moreOver a iprimlipal
resource for comparative psychology. ‘ Such traits, pf
character form no small part of the history of races,
and they are often important indications of the state
of mental culture, or arguments of the community
of origin, of of the early separation of particular
tribes.
To establish the reality of such relations of kindred
between nations separated from each other and differing
in acquired physical and moral characters, has
■$ m m m
often been the design of laborious and manifold investigations.
i t has been the end or the object for
the sake of which these investigations have been
undertaken^ and is their result or fruit. Hence it
is obviously improper, in describing the population
of different portions of “the1 ^earth, to set out with
a distribution of mankind into spaces and tribes, as
most writers on the |featstory of mankind have done.
Such an arrangement prematurely attempted is an
anticipation of results which are only attainable, of
admissions which can only be .granted^ as legitimate,
after careful investigation. For this reason I have
thought it better to proceed in ;the analytical method,
and to begin witBthi; survey of the phenomena
from which inductions were to be collected» I have
examined the ethnography of various countries in a
local order, and it has been only where a whole region
appears to have been occupied by one race that I have
deviated apparently, though not really, from this
method of; arrangement. In particular, the different
branches of the Indo-European family of nations are
not all brought together, under one head, but described
successively in the order of the countries which they
inhabit. While the analytical arrangement, so termed,
was thus the only one which circumstances allowed,
it has disadvantages of an obvious nature, and is liable