shifting suddenly now with modern industrial life, but they have persisted until the present through generations. Proof of this antiquity we have; where Nature has isolated little pools since, of population, we may still find men with an unbroken ancestral lineage reaching back to a time when the climate, the flora and fauna of Europe were far different from those which prevail to-day. This may be shown, not by historical documents, for these men antedate all written history, but by physical traits which are older than institutions and outlast them all as well.
This varied population, as we see it to-day, is in its racial composition the effect of a long train of circumstances, historical upon the surface, social it may be in part, but at bottom also geographical. From these effects, and from the migrations even now going on, we may seek out the causes—many of which have hitherto been neglected by students of institutions—which have been operative for centuries, and which have gone on in spite of political events or else have indirectly given rise to them. Progress in social life has not been cataclysmic; it has not taken place by kangaroo-leaps of political or social reforms on paper; but it has gone on slowly, painfully perhaps, and almost imperceptibly, by the constant pressure of slight but fixed causes. Our problem is to examine certain of these fundamental mainsprings of movement, especially the influence of the physical environment; and to do it by means of the calipers, the measuring tape, and the color scale. Science proceeds best from the known present to the remote past, in anthropology as in geology or astronomy. The study of living men should precede that of the dead. This shall be our method. Fixing our attention upon the present population, we shall then be prepared to interpret the physical migrations and to some extent the social movements which have been going on for generations in the past.
Let us at the outset avoid the error of confusing community of language with identity of race. Nationality may often follow linguistic boundaries, but race bears no necessary relation whatever to them. Two essentials of political unity are bound up in identity of language—namely, the necessity of a free interchange of ideas by means of a common mental circulating medium; and, secondly, the possession of a fund of common traditions in history or literature. The first is largely a practical consideration; the second forms the subtle essence of nationality itself. For these reasons we shall find language corresponding with political affiliations far more often than with ethnic boundaries.[1] Politics
- ↑ A full discussion of this point is offered in Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie, Paris, 1862, p. 264. Vide also Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. v, p. 212; and Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft, Wien, Supp. I, p. viii.
