s of men being everywhere similar, differing in quality and
quantity but not in kind of faculty, like circumstances must tend to
produce like contrivances; at any rate, so long as the need to be
met and conquered is of a very simple kind. That two nations use
calabashes or shells for drinking-vessels, or that they employ
spears, or clubs, or swords and axes of stone and metal as weapons and
implements, cannot be regarded as evidence that these two nations
had a common origin, or even that intercommunication ever took place
between them; seeing that the convenience of using calabashes or
shells for such purposes, and the advantage of poking an enemy with a
sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, must be early forced
by nature upon the mind of even the stupidest savage. And when he had
found out the use of a stick, he would need no prompting to discover
the value of a chipped or wetted stone, or an angular piece of native
metal, for the same object. On the other hand, it may be doubted
whether the chances are not greatly against independent peoples
arriving at the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow; which last,
if one comes to think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus; and
the tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as these,
and of such strange customs as betel-chewing and tobacco-smoking, may
afford valuable ethnological hints.

Since the time of Leibnitz, and guided by such men as Humboldt, Abel
Remusat, and Klaproth, Philology has taken far higher ground. Thus
Prichard affirms that "the history of nations, termed Ethnology, must
be mainly founded on the relations of their languages."

An eminent living philologer, August Schleicher, in a recent essay,
puts forward the claims of his science still more forcibly:--

"If, however, language is the human [Greek: kat ezochhen], the
suggestion arises whether it should not form the basis of
any scientific systematic arrangement of mankind; whether the
foundation of the natural classification of the genus Homo has
not been discovered in it.

"How little constant are cranial peculiarities and other
so-called race characters! Language, on the other hand,
is always a perfectly constant diagnostic. A German may
occasionally compete in hair and prognathism with a negro,
but a negro language will never be his mother tongue. Of how
little importance for mankind the so-called race characters
are, is shown