Some Early Speculations on the Origin of Human Races

T HE publication of Professor Count's anthology This Is Race has done much to stimulate interest in the history of research and speculation concerning the races of man, a subject which historians of science have only begun to explore. In 1946 Count (p. 142) divided the history of raciology into four periods-the eighteenth-century (to 1815), the pre-Darwinian period (1815-1860), the post-Darwinian period (1860-1914), the twentieth-century (since 1914)-and went on to describe the leading developments of the second period, with some reference to the earlier work of Blumenbach and Kant.' The present article deals with the period before 1815 and especially with theories of race formation.