Foreword

It is customary, in works of this sort, for the author to begin by apologising for his intrusion upon the reader’s time. I have never understood the practice. A man who believes his conclusions unworthy of attention ought not trouble a printer with them, and a man who does believe them worthy should possess sufficient courage to say so plainly. I therefore offer no apology for the present volume. It is the product of thirty-four years’ study, twelve expeditions, six university appointments, three royal commissions, and an amount of correspondence sufficient to have killed a less disciplined man.

My qualifications are, fortunately, easy to establish. I hold chairs in Comparative Physiology and Natural History at the Imperial Collegium, have served twice as President of the Royal Anatomical Society, and remain the only living scholar to have received both the Veyr Medal for Biological Inquiry and the Albrecht Prize for Historical Method. My monograph on Dwarven skeletal mineralisation remains the standard reference on the subject seventeen years after publication, despite several energetic attempts to replace it with inferior works of greater length. My classification of Elven senescence has likewise survived every serious challenge presented to it, although I am told Professor Hest has recently announced that his latest measurements “substantially revise” my conclusions. They do not. Professor Hest has rediscovered my second chapter with a newer microscope.

I mention these matters not from vanity, but because the modern reader has been trained, regrettably, to regard expertise as a species of personal opinion. One increasingly encounters the notion that the observations of a provincial physician, a travelling antiquarian, or an unusually confident newspaper correspondent deserve equal consideration beside those of men who have devoted their lives to disciplined study. They do not. Nature is not democratic. A spleen does not alter its structure because a committee votes against the dissection.

The purpose of this work is therefore corrective as much as descriptive. The Principal Races have accumulated around themselves such a quantity of mythology, sentimental history, religious embroidery, tavern genealogy, and academic speculation that elementary facts are frequently obscured beneath layers of cherished nonsense. My intention is to remove those layers one at a time and determine what remains when tradition is obliged, however reluctantly, to yield to evidence.

The reader should not mistake confidence for inflexibility. I have revised my conclusions before and shall undoubtedly do so again when presented with superior evidence. I insist only that the evidence be superior, and not merely louder. A new idea is not valuable merely because it is new, nor an old one false merely because it is old. One must measure the evidence and establish its provenance, reproduce the methods, and keep every conclusion within the limits imposed by the facts. This is a tedious process, which perhaps explains why so many of my colleagues prefer theories.

If, by the end of this volume, the reader finds several beloved assumptions damaged beyond repair, I can offer only the consolation that they were poorly constructed to begin with.