among many different tribes, spread over many and far-distant regions,
will be considered as the best evidence of one common origin.
Disagreement in a similar case, accompanied with a great variety of
terms of considerable dissonance, will be equally conclusive as to the
object being indigenous or of a multifarious origin.

Already has Balbi, in his Ethnographic Atlas, given us a list of names
and coincidences to an extent truly astonishing. Yet what is this, in
fact, but a judicious use of Bacon's old but much-neglected rule of
questioning nature about facts instead of theories--examining evidences
ere rhetoric had made language one vast heap of implied falsehood?

In a court of inquiry we examine witnesses as to facts, not opinions.
But the historian reads mankind in cities; the philosopher in the
clouds. He who is anxious for the truth should look abroad on the plains
or in the woods, where man's first prerogative, the giving of names, was
exercised. His knowledge of nature must be wretchedly imperfect who
thinks that no grand outline of truth can possibly exist in the dim
records of human recollection ere the pen of the scholar was employed to
depict the scenes that opinion or prejudice had created. How many pages
of Clarendon's, Hume's, or even Robertson's history would be cancelled
if we had access to all the recollections of each event, and the
evidence of the unlettered vulgar who had witnessed the fact brought to
our notice, even through the mouthpiece of tradition!

There is more truth than comes to the surface in that speech put into
the lips of the father of lies by a late poet, where he says--

"The Bible's your book--history mine."