inquiries which most impresses the unlearned,
with the various conformations of the human skull. His researches
differ in nothing from those of the zooelogist or the paleontologist,
except that he has to deal with the physical phenomena of man, while
they deal with the physical phenomena of other animals. He groups the
different races of men, exactly as the others group the genera and
species of living or extinct mammals or reptiles. The student of
ethnology as a physical science may indeed strengthen his conclusions
by evidence of other kinds, evidence from arms, ornaments, pottery,
modes of burial. But all these are secondary; the primary ground of
classification is the physical conformation of man himself. As to
language, the ethnological method, left to itself, can find out nothing
whatever. The science of the ethnologer then is primarily physical; it
is historical only in that secondary sense in which paleontology, and
geology itself, may fairly be called historical. It arranges the
varieties of mankind according to a strictly physical classification;
what the language of each variety may have been, it leaves to the
professors of another branch of study to find out.

The science of the philologer, on the other hand, is strictly
historical. There is doubtless a secondary sense in which purely
philological science may be fairly called physical, just as there is a
secondary sense in which pure ethnology may be called historical. That
is to say, philology has to deal with physical phenomena, so far as it
has to deal with the physical aspect of the sounds of which human
language is made up. Its primary business, like the primary business
of any other historical science, is to deal with phenomena which do not
depend on physical laws, but which do depend on the human will. The
science of language is, in this respect, like the science of human
institutions or of human beliefs. Its subject-matter is not, like that
of pure ethnology, what man is, but, like that of any other historical
science, what man does. It is plain that no man's will can have any
direct influence on the shape of his skull. I say no direct influence,
because it is not for me to rule how far habits, places of abode, modes
of life, a thousand things which do come under the control of the human
will, may indirectly affect the physical conformation of a man himself
or of his descendants. Some observers have made the remark that men of
civilize