It is in vain that we direct our
thoughts to the solution of the great problem of the first origin, since man
is too intimately associated with his own race and with the relations of
time to conceive of the existence of an individual independently of a
preceding generation and age. A solution of those difficult questions,
which can not be determined by inductive reasoning or by experience --
whether the belief in this presumed traditional condition be actually based
on historical evidence, or whether mankind inhabited the earth in gregarious
associations from the origin of the race -- can not, therefore, be
determined from philological data, and yet its elucidation ought not to be
sought from other sources."
The distribution of mankind is therefore only a distribution into
'varieties', which are commonly designated by the somewhat indefinite term
'races'. As in the vegetable kingdom, and in the natural history of birds
and fishes, a classification into many small families is based on a surer
foundation than
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where large sections are separated into a few but large divisions; so it
also appears to me, that in the determination of races a preference should
be given to the establishment of small families of nations. Whether we
adopt the old classification of my master, Blumenbach, and admit 'five'
races (the Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malayan), or that
of Prichard, into 'seven races'* (the Iranian, Turanian, American,
Hottentots and Bushmen, Negroes, Papuas, and Alfourons), we fail to
recognize any typical sharpness of definition, or any general or
well-established principle in the division of these groups.
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