ient reasons, but I cannot adduce any one
of them in support of my plea to-night; for the languages I shall speak
of have no literature; all transactions with their people can be carried
on as well or better in European tongues; and, in fact, many of these
people are no longer in existence. They have died out or amalgamated
with others. What I have to argue for is the study of the dead languages
of extinct and barbarous tribes.

You will readily see that my arguments must be drawn from other
considerations than those of immediate utility. I must seek them in the
broader fields of ethnology and philosophy; I must appeal to your
interest in man as a race, as a member of a common species, as
possessing in all his families and tribes the same mind, the same soul.
It was the proud prerogative of Christianity first to proclaim this
great truth, to break down the distinctions of race and the prejudices
of nationalities, in order to erect upon their ruins that catholic
temple of universal brotherhood which excludes no man as a stranger or
an alien. After eighteen hundred years of labor, science has reached
that point which the religious instinct divined, and it is in the name
of science that I claim for these neglected monuments of man's powers
that attention which they deserve.

_Anthropology_ is the science which studies man as a species;
_Ethnology_, that which studies the various nations which make up the
species. To both of these the science of Linguistics is more and more
perceived to be a powerful, an indispensable auxiliary. Through it we
get nearer to the real man, his inner self, than by any other avenue of
approach, and it needs no argument to show that nothing more closely
binds men into a social unit than a common language. Without it, indeed,
there can be no true national unity. The affinities of speech, properly
analyzed and valued, are our most trustworthy guides in tracing the
relationship and descent of nations.

If this is true in general, it is particularly so in the ethnology of
America. Language is almost our only clue to discover the kinship of
those countless scattered hordes who roamed the forests of this broad
continent. Their traditions are vague or lost, written records they had
none, their customs and arts are misleading, their religions
misunderstood, their languages alone remain to testify to a oneness of
blood often seemingly repudiated by an internecine hostility.

I am well aware of the lim