Note I-6 — Chapter I · ON THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS.

The value of proof by analogy has been questioned by many eminent authors. Humboldt writes: 'On n'est pas en droit de supposer des communications partout où l'on trouve, chez des peuples à demi barbares, le culte du soleil, ou l'usage de sacrifier des victimes humaines.' Vues, tom. i., p. 257. 'The instances of customs, merely arbitrary, common to the inhabitants of both hemispheres, are, indeed, so few and so equivocal, that no theory concerning the population of the New World ought to be founded upon them.' As regards religious rites, 'the human mind, even where its operations appear most wild and capricious, holds a course so regular, that in every age and country the dominion of particular passions will be attended with similar effects.' Robertson's Hist. Amer., vol. i., p. 269. Warden remarks that nations known to be distinct, to have had no intercourse, breed similar customs—these, therefore, grow from physical and moral causes. Recherches, p. 205. 'In attempting to trace relations between them and the rest of mankind, we cannot expect to discover proofs of their derivation from any particular tribe or nation of the Old Continent.' Prichard's Nat. Hist. Man, vol. ii., p. 494. 'To tell an inquirer who wishes to deduce one population from another that certain distant tribes agree with the one under discussion in certain points of resemblance, is as irrelevant as to tell a lawyer in search of the next of kin to a client deceased, that though you know of no relations, you can find a man who is the very picture of him in person—a fact good enough in itself, but not to the purpose.' Latham's Man and his Migrations, pp. 74-5.