ART. V.-LATHAM AND GRIMM ON THE ETHNOLOGY OF GERMANY.

The Germania of Tacitus. By Dr. R. G. Latham. Walton and Maberly, 1851.

Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache. By Jacob Grimm. Leipzig, 1818.

THE battle concerning the unity of the human races has not yet been fought out: the adverse combatants are as confident as though nothing had been said to the purpose on the opposite side. In part, this has been owing to a Mosaic and to an antiMosaic bias; but still more, we suspect, to that mist of obscurity which all controversies fomented by religious passion are apt to diffuse, far beyond the region in which that passion dwells. One school uses words in a different sense from another; in which case each is liable to erroneous reasoning by the inveterate ambiguity of terms. In this controversy there is, as it appears to us, also a tendency to mistake the question really at issue; and although we are about to address ourselves to the races of ancient Germany, it will give clearness to our remarks if we prefix some thoughts concerning the wider argument.

In speculating on the earlier history of man, especially in respect to the propagation of human races, it may be maintained that they have, or that they have not, sprung out of a single homogeneous and narrowly localised race. To determine which of these two hypotheses is true, if it can be determined by science, is of course matter of scientific interest. But there is a second question, which is ordinarily confounded with the first, -we mean, whether human races did or did not spring from a single pair of progenitors, male and female-an Adam and an Eve. To prove that all mankind are of one race, and diffused from one locality, will never prove that all came from a single pair; which, though capable of being received as a doctrine of specific revelation, seems impossible to be proved by science, and loaded with considerable improbability as soon as one begins to reason about it, from whatever presumption we start concerning the origin of man. For if, on the one hand, we believe man to have been created by a strictly supernatural process (by the "immediate hand" of God), yet, unless an infinite series of miracles is imagined to follow, the utter helplessness of an isolated man. and woman, whose lives-and with them all the hopes of the future species-are in daily extreme danger, would make every merely scientific inquirer take for granted that the wisdom of the Creator would produce mankind in mass at once, both

for physical security and for moral development. It is an old remark, how the divine wisdom is displayed in the fecundity of feeble animals on which the powerful ones prey; and to expose one pair of human beings to all the risks of such a world as this, would be by no means in harmony with that arrangement. But even this is not the strongest argument. It is a familiar thought that gregarious animals are in an unnatural state when isolated; and even on that account,-to say nothing of danger from wild-beasts,—no man speculating on the origin of cows or horses would imagine that they are derived from a single pair. Gregariousness being their nature, we take for granted that they were created in troops, in order that that nature might at once have its gratification and its development. Now in man the same argument is of tenfold strength: for to his moral nature a varied society is essential; and for moral development he was created. A wife fills the largest share in the heart of a husband; but a single married pair cannot afford to one another the whole moral interest and moral exercise which is demanded for the culture of the heart and development of the powers. As, then (not knowing the contrary), we presume that gregarious animals were from their origin gregarious, much more would one who did not know the contrary presume that man, being a social, political, and moral being, was from his origin furnished with the varied companionship of his fellows.

But if, on the other hand, we could suppose that (whether by the will and design of an Infinite Governor, or by the undirected unintelligent powers of Nature) man and other animals were generated mediately, by influences eternally acting whenever physical conditions permit, it is then nearly unimaginable that a single pair of any animals ever any where exhausted the whole productiveness of Nature. The same influences which produced one man and woman, would simultaneously produce hundreds for no locality large enough for human life can have been so small as to allow but two births. On the whole, we conclude that the derivation of mankind from a single pair ought not to be regarded as any matter of contest between men of science. Those who think that they are arguing for it on scientific grounds, are really arguing to prove a different proposition, namely, that which we stated first-the derivation of all human races from one race; and if they can prove this, they have indeed left room for the further opinion that the original race came from a single pair, but that is all.

Those who (on whatever grounds) regard the testimony of the book of Genesis as indecisive in this argument, must probably always start from the presumption of a multiplicity of human races: a presumption which may be either disproved or

confirmed, but which is to be held until disproved; for the differences of climate manifestly require an adaptation in every human race; and it is beyond dispute that the change of races, so as to make them thoroughly fitted to a foreign climate, is an extremely slow process. Let us allow that a negro race might at length be possessed of full vigour in Canada, and an English race in India; still (until we have evidence to that effect) we do not easily believe that one climate was (so to say) made a favourite for human origination; that the constitution of the race was primitively adapted in perfection to that one group of physical circumstances, and was then left by slow and painful degrees to acquire aptitude for other circumstances. This may have been the process. There may have been excellent reasons for it. But prior to any specific information on the point, all will assume the opposite presumption, that many human races had independent origin, each being from the beginning fitted to its own climate and conditions. Such was the meaning attached by the ancients to the word 'indigenous,' which was popularly paraphrased by saying that each race sprang from its own soil.

But there is yet another question, far more important than this, which is liable to be obscured in the controversy. On both sides it is too apt to be asserted or implied that to hold a multiplicity of human origins is to deny the unity of the human species; and we judge this confusion to be the worst by far of all which the heat of the contest has engendered. No one would for a moment allow that the naturalist held horses to consist of an indefinite number of species because he believed their origin to have been from an indefinite number of individuals, and not from a single pair. Every body's meaning and test of unity of species in the horse is found in present fact-in the likenesses and unlikenesses of nature now existing; but whether the origin was from two or from two thousand individuals is not to the purpose. So also, whether the original individuals came to life all in Africa, or some in Africa and some in Tartary, has nothing to do with the question whether the Tartar horse and the African horse are of the same species: that, again, must be judged by other considerations, especially from the sameness or diversity of powers and instincts, and from the capacity of fusing themselves into a mixed race which retains all the powers of the progeniThe same considerations must be applied to human races. One theorist believes that Englishmen, Papuans, Hottentots, Aztecs, are of four different origins; another that they are all from one forefather: but the disputants need not be the less agreed that all four races are strictly of the same species-man. The great variety of faculties, passions, affections, and tendencies, as well as of instincts, bodily powers, and peculiarities, found in

tors.

human races, give far greater severity to the test of a common manhood, and proportionate facility of rejecting intrusive pretenders. Science is not needed. Common sense as infallibly teaches man to distinguish man, as dog to recognise dog; and it is deplorable that the prominent and notorious certainty of the unity of the human species should ever have been supposed at stake in a question on which probable opinions may be held, but which can never become a scientific certainty of the same order, -the question, under what circumstances human races had their origin.

Thus, we apprehend, on the unity of the human species all are agreed; the question is settled by common sense, and is one of the substantial facts on which science has to build, but which no science can root up. The derivation of that one species from one pair of progenitors is a doctrine for which no scientific reasons are ever adduced by those who think they are maintaining it. Finally, the question whether that one species has always existed in many races, or once existed as only one race- -this is the real matter about which, and about which alone, there is scientific dispute.

And here the facts of history, recent as is our knowledge, are such as to show the dangers of that most necessary process, à priori argument. Who that looks upon Germany, England, even Northern Italy, could, without history, have conjectured that three to four thousand years ago, when Egypt and China, India and Babylon, abounded with dense population and elaborate civilisation, our lands were covered with forest or morass; and if not absolutely without human population, yet were only wandered over by almost savage men? So much, indeed, Tacitus and Livy and Herodotus knew; but they did not know-what since the English conquest of India has been brought to light by the labours of grammarians, beginning from Sir William Jones-that the language spoken by the British, the German, the Cisalpine, the Scythian savages, proves them to be emigrants from the same centre of population as the people of Persia and of Bengal. The proof is of the highest degree of cogency, and admits of no evasion; nor are there two opinions about it among learned men, whatever in other respects their doctrines or tendencies. Thus, à priori, we should have expected Britain, Germany, Gaul, Italy, Greece, to have been peopled as early as Babylonia, Egypt, India, and China: à posteriori, we find this to be contrary to the fact; and that it is a doctrine not merely of religion, but also of history and of science, that Europe has been entirely, or almost* entirely, peopled from the East and South

We say almost, because of the yet uncertain relations of the Iberian or Basque population.

east. Again, the physical constitution of a Brahmin is so different from that of an Englishman, that, but for the phenomena of language, it is scarcely probable that the advocates of many original human races would have admitted it as an open question whether both were of one descent. We are aware that the gap between the lower races of India and the Brahmin is considerable; and so is that between the Pariah and the Negro. There may be adequate scientific reasons for rather believing in several than in a single origin; but when, resting on physical diversities, men talk dogmatically on the "absolute impossibility" of Negrillos, even in the ages of time given us by geology, becoming modified into Egyptians, or Pariahs into Brahmins,-whatever the eminence of such men, they do but make us regret that science is not always modest.

The discovery of the intimate early relation between Gauls, Britons, Germans, Slavonians, Latins, Greeks, and Indo-Persians, ought materially to affect many of our opinions and reasonings concerning the tribes and nations mentioned in Greek and Roman authors. It being admitted that there once was a time when the Gaulish, the German, the Lithuanian tribes differed very little in language, it is irrational to assume that two or three thousand years ago there were the same chasms between European languages as now. The phenomena of great continents thinly overspread with an unstable and barbarous population are known to us in modern times; and we can pronounce that when it has proceeded from one source, there will be a vast development of imperfect languages, connected by partial agreements, so as (if we could see and know the whole) in all probability to have nowhere any abrupt and violent diversity. The effect of great kingdoms, empires, and civilisation, is to perfect the imperial language, and extinguish by the dozen those dialects or languages which exist by its side: whence, as time goes on, gaps are produced in the series. Side by side with this, under the operation of political causes, national characters are brought out into sharper contrast; and by the long operation of habits, food, and climate, even physical peculiarities arise which were not always in the race.

Grimm, the very first authority concerning the old German languages, in the reasonings of the work before us, distinctly treats the ancient Danes as one people with the Germans;-as undoubtedly Pliny and Tacitus supposed them. We accept this as an assurance that Grimm believes the vast chasm now separating the Danish and German tongues to have been generated by the history of 1800 years. At this moment the process is rapidly going on, which, by exterminating the various shades of dialect that are named Platt Deutsch, will leave a chasm be