TYPE S OF MANKIND.
I N T R O D U C T I O N .
M r . L u k e B u r k e , the bold and able Editor of the London Ethnological
Journal, defines Ethnology to' be “ a science which investigates
the mental and physical differences of Mankind, and the organic laws
upon which they depend; and which seeks to deduce from these
investigations, principles of human guidance, in all the important
relations of social existence.” 1 To the same author are we indebted
not only for the most extensive and lucid definition of this term,
but for the first truly philosophic view of a new and important science
that we have met with in the English language.
The term “ Ethnology” has generally been used as synonymous
with “ Ethnography,” understood as the Natural History of Man; but
by Burke it is made to take a far more comprehensive grasp to
include the whole mental and physical history of the various Types
of Mankind, as well as their social relations and adaptations; and,
qnder this comprehensive aspect, it therefore interests equally the
philanthropist, the naturalist, and the statesman. Ethnology demands
to know what was the primitive organic structure of each race ?'—
what such race’s moral and psychical character?—how far a race may
have been, or may become, modified by the combined action of time
and moral and physical causes ? — and what position in the social
scale Providence has assigned to each type of man ?
“ Ethnology divides itself into two principal departments, the Scientific and the Eistoric.
nder the former i3 comprised every thing connected with the Natural History of Man
and the fundamental laws of living organisms; under the latter, every fact in civil history
w ich has any important hearing, directly or indirectly, upon the question of races — every
act calculated to throw light upon the number, the moral and physical peculiarities, the
ear y seats, migrations, conquests or interblendings, of the primary divisions of the human
amily, or of the leading mixed races which have sprung from their intermarriages.” 2
f ( 4 9 1