with Germans whose
skulls bore all the characters of the negro race; and an
inhabitant of Nukahiwa, according to Silesius and Blumenbach,
agreed exactly in his proportions with the Apollo Belvedere."

Professor Huxley, in his "Observations on the Human Skulls of Engis and
Neanderthal," printed in Sir Charles Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," p. 81,
remarks that "the most capacious European skull yet measured had a
capacity of 114 cubic inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of
brain) about 55 cubic inches; while, according to Professor Schaaffhausen,
some Hindu skulls have as small a capacity as 46 cubic inches (27 oz. of
water);" and he sums up by stating that "cranial measurements alone afford
no safe indication of race."

And even if a scientific classification of skulls were to be carried out,
if, instead of merely being able to guess that this may be an Australian
and this a Malay skull, we were able positively to place each individual
skull under its own definite category, what should we gain in the
classification of mankind? Where is the bridge from skull to man in the
full sense of that word? Where is the connecting link between the cranial
proportions and only one other of man's characteristic properties, such as
language? And what applies to skulls applies to color and all the rest.
Even a black skin and curly hair are mere outward accidents as compared
with language. We do not classify parrots and magpies by the color of
their plumage, still less by the cages in which they live; and what is the
black skin or the white skin but the mere outward covering, not to say the
mere cage, in which that being which we call man lives, moves, and has his
being? A man like Bishop Crowther, though a negro in blood, is, in thought
and speech, an Aryan. He speaks English, he thinks English, he acts
English; and, unless we take English in a purely historical, and not in
its truly scientific, _i.e._ linguistic sense, he is English. No doubt
there are many influences at work--old proverbs, old songs and traditions,
religious convictions, social institutions, political prejudices, besides
the soil, the food, and the air of a country--that may keep up, even among
people who have lost their national language, that kind of vague
similarity which is spoken of as national character.(48) This is a subject
on which many volumes have been written, and yet the result has only been
to supply newspapers with materials for inte