language of the Semites coincides with their cha racter. With the least possible means it accomplishes very much, and. does it by giving in distinct forms accidental qualities of things, such as singular and plural number, masculine and feminine gender. It is able to express distinctly the logical relations of ideas to one another, by having the forms of words agree in number and person; while by prefix ing or suffixing co-ordinate pronouns it can give clear expression to such relations. The more developed languages exhibit more variety and force in this, and they also reflect the tendency of the Semitic mind to sym bolism and abstraction. Thus these idioms show the relations of single ideas to other thoughts by changing the 'round sound of the words in an unmistakable attempt at symbolizing.
Negroes and the Bantu bear a close rela tion to the Semites, for their languages occupy the paths on which those of the Semites had proceeded until they reached the height they now maintain.
In looking back on our course through Africa, we cannot avoid recog nizing the fact that the African nations, the Koi-Koin, the Bantu, and the Negro tribes, have so much in common with the two great divisions of the Semites that we are authorized in placing them in one great ethnologic class.
In the beginning of our ethnologic treatise on Africa we intentionally did not advance this important statement: the evidence of it is given in our description of the African nations, which kept back nothing and added nothing, but simply stated the facts. We now collect the most
important points: i. These nations belong together geographically; it is evident that they spread from Western Asia over Africa.
2. The physical peculiarities of all these nations shade into one another; they nowhere show sharp contrasts. Even the typical fonns of one nation are not unfrequently found among other tribes where an intermixture is not to be thought of, and where only slight exterior influences have been at work.
3. The psychical life and character of all these nations show close relationship in their fundamental traits: let the Bantu be compared with the Negro of Soudan, and both with the African anti Asiatic Semite, and also compare our descriptions of their characters. We need hardly say that those descriptions are not formed from theory, but that the theory is formed from the facts.
4. We find minute uniformity in customs and usages. Of special importance is that of the fundamental traits of religions life and thought.
5. The languages also exhibit homogeneous principles of construction. It is curious to observe how one tribe has developed one peculiarity, and another a different one; how both peculiarities are fully developed only in the Semitic languages; and furthermore how the different principles of construction have been gradually evolved.
From all these facts we are forced to look upon the Arabic-Africans as one ethnologic race, as one race of mankind.