ganized into diverse communities, have
progressed in a broad way by the same stages, have had the same arts,
customs, institutions, and traditions in the same order, limited only by
the degree of progress to which the several tribes have attained, and
modified only to a limited extent by variations in environment.

If any ethnic classification of mankind is to be established more
fundamental than that based upon language, it must be upon physical
characteristics, and such must have been acquired by profound
differentiation anterior to the development of languages, arts, customs,
institutions, and traditions. The classifications hitherto made on this
basis are unsatisfactory, and no one now receives wide acceptance.
Perhaps further research will clear up doubtful matters and give an
acceptable grouping; or it may be that such research will result only in
exhibiting the futility of the effort.

The history of man, from the lowest tribal condition to the highest
national organization, has been a history of constant and multifarious
admixture of strains of blood; of admixture, absorption, and destruction
of languages with general progress toward unity; of the diffusion of
arts by various processes of acculturation; and of admixture and
reciprocal diffusion of customs, institutions, and traditions. Arts,
customs, institutions, and traditions extend beyond the boundaries of
languages and serve to obscure them, and the admixture of strains of
blood has obscured primitive ethnic divisions, if such existed.

If the physical classification fails, the most fundamental grouping left
is that based on language; but for the reasons already mentioned and
others of like character, the classification of languages is not, to the
full extent, a classification of peoples.

It may be that the unity of the human race is a fact so profound that
all attempts at a fundamental classification to be used in all the
departments of anthropology will fail, and that there will remain
multifarious groupings for the multifarious purposes of the science; or,
otherwise expressed, that languages, arts, customs, institutions, and
traditions may be classified, and that the human family will be
considered as one race.

MYTHOLOGY.

Here again America presents a rich field for the scientific explorer. It
is now known that each linguistic stock has a distinct mythology, and as
in some of these stocks there are many languages differing to a greater
or les