ognomic
expression and general bearing of the man. This result has been
increasing in geometrical progression since history, printing, and the
facilities of intercommunication have made the culture of one people
contagious to other peoples, and the attainments of one generation
available to all the generations that follow. Thus does every movement
among the nations conspire to change the simple types into those which
are more complex.
The ethnological unity may be less apparent; and before we clearly
perceive it, we may have to rise into the consideration of social and
political relations, not divorcing these from physiology, without which
no question relative to man can be rightly judged. And it may be that
after greater development in this direction, the unity of races may
become more distinctly pronounced and more readily recognized.
We may observe, in passing, that the same causes which have contributed
to this ethnological complexity, have, at the same time, aided in the
development of the cosmical idea--the idea of the unity of the universe.
At first, tribes had little communication with each other, and knew
nothing of geography beyond the limits of their own hunting grounds.
They knew as little of the vastness of the earth outside of their domain
as of that of the universe. This could only be conjectured from the
vantage ground of some degree of intellectual culture, and the idea must
remain vague and indefinite till after long ages of real experience and
intellectual unfolding. It was not till after Alexander's conquests in
the East, the extension of the Roman Empire, the invention of the
mariner's compass, the discovery of America, and the circumnavigation of
the globe, together with the perfection of optical instruments by the
use of which the true character of the celestial bodies was
demonstrated, that the cosmical idea became truly a scientific one.
(Humboldt.) Thus were the partial and fragmentary notions of early
peoples at length corrected, enlarged, unitized.
Closely akin to this is the development of the god-idea. Fetich-worship
is that of the rudest people. They see a god in every individual object,
in every stream, in every tree, in every stone. All they see is,
however, shrouded in mystery, and they have a blind veneration for every
object. A step farther, and the developing mind generalizes these
objects. The individual trees, for example, are taken collectively, and
their divine representati
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