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Inquiries into Human Faculty
different races; none hardly that have not been tenanted by very different
tribes having the character of at least sub-races.
The absence of a criterion to distinguish between races and sub-races,
and our ethnological ignorance generally, makes it impossible to offer
more than a very off-hand estimate of the average variety of races in the
different countries of the world. I have, however, endeavoured to form
one, which I give with much hesitation, knowing how very little it is
worth. I registered the usually recognised races inhabiting each of
upwards of twenty countries, and who at the same time formed at least
half per cent of the population. It was, I am perfectly aware, a very rough
proceeding, so rough that for the United Kingdom I ignored the
prehistoric types and accepted only the three headings of British, Low
Dutch, and Norman-French. Again, as regards India I registered as
follows :—Forest tribes (numerous), Dravidian (three principal divisions),
Early Arian, Tartar (numerous, including Afghans), Arab, and lastly
European, on account of their political importance, notwithstanding the
fewness of their numbers. Proceeding in this off-hand way, and after
considering the results, the broad conclusion to which I arrived was that
on the average at least three different recognised races were to be found in
every moderately-sized district on the earth’s surface. The materials were
far too scanty to enable any idea to be formed of the rate of change in the
relative numbers of the constituent races in each country, and still less to
estimate, the secular changes of type in those races.
It may be well to take one or two examples of intermixture. Spain was
occupied in the earliest historic times by at least two races, of whom we
know very little; it was afterwards colonised here and there by
Phoenicians in its southern ports, and by Greeks in its eastern. In the third
century B.C. it was invaded by the Carthaginians, who conquered and
held a large part of it, but were afterwards supplanted by the Romans, who
ruled it more or less completely for 700 years. It was invaded in the fifth
century A.D. by a succession of German tribes, and was finally
completely overrun by the Visigoths, who ruled it
