THE HISTORY OF MANKIND.* MR. TYLOR, who contributes an introduction

to the English edition of this work, writes that it is the best guide in existence to the museum collections, on which the science of man more and more depends in working out the theory of human development. This description of the use of the ethno- logical collections in our museums accurately reflects the modern feeling about the so-called natural races of mankind. The civilised peoples of Europe always felt an interest in the black and brown races of the other continents. Even in the Middle Ages the tales of travellers regarding them were

• The History of Mankind. By essor Friedrich RatzeL Tratuilated from the Second German Edition by A. JrJ. Butler, M.A. With Introdhation by IC. B. Tyler, D.C.L., B.B.B. Vol. I. London: Macmillan and Co. listened to with avidity, and when intercourse with them became more common, their idols, weapons, and implements were collected in curiosity - shops, which were termed museums. But this interest was for centuries an agreeable

pastime, connected with no serious purpose. At times, it is true, the interest assumed a sentimental form. In antiquity, and also in the eighteenth century of our era, some ardent spirits, wearied of the fetters of civilisation, indulged in the

dream that the ideal human life was that of the noble ears go in the primeval forest ; and more than one eminent French- man endeavoured to realise his dream by going and dwelling amid the wild races of America. In modern times the interest of curiosity and the interest of sentiment have given place to scientific study. The natural races are re. garded as human documents of history, because they afford

us the means of tracing backward the roads which civilisa- tion has followed, and of prefixing an introductory chapter to general history. Professor Ratzel thus states the problem which at present confronts the student of civilisation :—

"Herodotus tells us about a race of Troglodytes who dwell near the Garamantes, the inhabitants of the modern Fezzao. They were active and swift-footed, and spoke a language almost unknown beyond their own boundaries. Here we have Nachtigal's Tabus or Tedas, who to this day inhabit the natural caverns in their rocks, are renowned far and wide for activity and fleetness of foot, and speak a language which has hardly ex- tended itself beyond the walls of their rocky fortress. Thus for two thousand years at least, and for all we know much longer, they have lived in just the same way. They are to- day no poorer, no richer, no wiser, no more ignorant than they have been these thousands of years. Each generation has repeated the history of the one before it, and that repeated its predecessors ; as we say, they have made no progress. There they stand, a fragment of bygone ages. In the same space of time we have emerged from the darkness of our forests on to the stage of history, we have made our name alike in peace and war, honoured and dreaded by the nations."

A short and easy answer has been given to the question which these words raise. The Germans have progressed, it has been said, because they belong to the higher races ; the Troglodytes have remained stationary because they form part of the lower strata of the human family who are nearer to the beasts, and do not, at present at least, possess the power of rising in the scale of life. This solution of the problem, were it accepted, would do much to destroy our belief in the unity of the human race, and it is perhaps somewhat to blame for the treatment which civilised men have meted out to savage and barbarian races. Professor Ratzel rejects it with an emphasis, in which there is, perhaps, some exaggeration, for it can hardly be doubted that history gives support to the idea that there are aristocratic races whose natural place is in the front, although from circumstances they may not always reach it. But, according to him, race as such has nothing to do with the possession of civilisation :-

" It would be silly to deny," he writes, " that in our own times the highest civilisation has been in the hands of the Caucasian, or white races; but on the other hand, it is an equally important fact that for thousands of years in all civilising movements there has been a dominating tendency to raise all races to the level of their burdens and their duties, and therewith to make real earnest of the great conception of humanity."

He adds that the study of comparative ethnology in recent years has tended to diminish the weight of the views of earlier anthropologists as to racial distinction, and in no case

do they afford any support to the opinion which sees in the so-called lower races of mankind a transition stage from beast to man.

The author's own view is that races have been civilised mainly by circumstances or surroundings. The essence of civilisation consists in the amassing and handing down of experiences which deliver from the immediate bondage to Nature. In the tropical regions, which he regards as the cradle of the human race, Nature is so bountiful that there is little

inducement to provide for the future. It was in the temperate zones that civilisation began in the form of agriculture, or in

the storage by means of labour of the sum of force in a clod of earth. But the agriculturist is bound to his plot of ground, and cannot advance beyond a certain point. A second step is gained when hunter and shepherd races, who have the power of moving in masses and of obeying discipline, con- quer and blend themselves with agricultural races. A political force is thus introduced, and the State is formed. The closer and more continuous the action of individual on individual, and of race upon race, the more rapid is the progress of civilisation. One great cause of the retarding isolation among savage races is the latent state of war in which they live. The formation of great Empires, by repressing private war and by facilitating intercourse among different tribes, has, therefore, been a fruitful source of civilisation. Outside of Europe all great States have been formed by intruding conquerors, not by the dwellers in the land.

It would be pleasant for Englishmen if they were able to assure themselves that by going to the East and the West as intruding conquerors they have proved themselves the ministers of civilisation to the nations they subdued. But the manner in which the intruding conqueror has done his work has often robbed it of beneficent results, and has converted it into a desolating and destructive raid. Of the injuries inflicted by conquest Ratzel writes :—

" A civilisation, self-contained and complete, even with im- perfect means, is morally and Eesthetically a higher phenomenon

than one which is decomposing in the process of upward effort and

growth. For this reason the first results of the contact between a higher and a lower civilisation are not delightful when the higher is represented by the scum of the world, the lower by people com- plete in a narrow space and contented with the filling up of their own narrow circle. Think of the first settlements of whalers and runaway sailors in countries rich in art and tradition like New Zealand and Hawaii, and of the effects produced by the first brandy-shop and brothel. In the case of North America, School- craft first pointed out the rapid decay which befell all native industrial activity as a result of the introduction by the white men of more suitable tools, vessels, clothing, and so forth. European trade provided easily everything which hitherto had had to be produced by dint of long-protracted, wearisome labour; and native activity not only fell off in the field where it had achieved important results, but saw itself weakened, and lost the sense of necessity and self-reliance, and so in course of time art itself perished. As we know, the same is going on to-day in Polynesia, in Africa, and among the poorest Eskimo. In Africa it is a declared rule that on the coast you have a region of de- composition, behind that a higher civilisation, and the best of all in the untouched far interior."

The general course of mankind has been upwards, at all events in material civilisation, but retrogression and degeneration are by no means unknown. The tropics are covered with the remains of old semi-civilisations which have perished ; and many colonial enterprises, especially in earlier times, ended in an absorption of the higher races by the lower.

There are interesting chapters in Professor Ratzel's volume .on language and on religion. In the former he quotes with approval a saying of Lepsius—philologists will consider it a hard saying—that the importance of languages as an indica- tion of distinctions within mankind is uncommonly small ; for languages often escape from their original creators and overspread foreign peoples and races. He would therefore reject as misleading such expressions as an Indo-Germanic race, a Semitic race, a Basuto race. If this dictum were accepted we should have to give up one of the surest clues which guides us through the mazes of the earliest history of mankind. But it seems to give an exaggerated importance to the exception ; for it is the exception, and not the rule, for nations to give up their language. In the chapter on religion the name is applied, as is the custom at present, to all the early guesses of savage races regarding the origin of

life and movement. Man's craving for causality has without doubt entered into the upbnilding of religious thought; and

the same may be said of his guesses regarding the state of the dead. But we do not call the earliest guesses of mankind science, although they are the precursors of scientific thought; and it is doubtful whether we should term anything religion which is entirely destitute of the moral element, and has no controlling power over life. Ethics, however, Professor Ratzel writes, do not form a primitive ingredient in religion. The doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, belongs to a higher stage than the first beginnings of thought about it. The natural races imagine divisions in a future life, but these are social and not moral. Thus, the Polynesians distinguish the realm of Min and Wakea. The former is the rowdy place, where the lower class of souls dwell and amuse themselves with games and shouting; in the latter quiet and dignity prevail, suited to the chiefs of whose souls it is the abode. Professor Ratzel writes in a sympathetic spirit of Christian Missions. But be insists that the missionary who would gain success must make a thorough study of the religious notions and secular institutions of the natural races. This is certainly desirable, although missionaries have sometimes gained considerable success who had no other equipment than faith and love. He makes the some- what gratuitous statement that the English and Americans send uneducated men as missionaries, " men without love, who have often been rather traders and political agents than Christian ministers." Such missionaries there are ; but we are not aware that they proceed in larger numbers from England and America than from Germany or America.

The work as a whole well deserves the high praise bestowed upon it by Professor Virchow and Mr. Tylor. The latter por- tion, which is devoted to the American Pacific group of races, is an immense collection of facts arranged with great clear- ness. The introductory discussion on the principles of ethnography is interesting and suggestive, and the author does not urge his own theories with undue zeal. A word of praise must be given to the illustrations, which are very numerous and often of great beauty. They give important help to the right understanding of the text.