and. In the American continent
full-blooded Indians preside over commonwealths which speak the tongue
of Cortes and Pizarro. In the lands to which all eyes are now turned,
the Greek, who has been busily assimilating strangers ever since he
first planted his colonies in Asia and Sicily, goes on busily
assimilating his Albanian neighbors. And between renegades, janissaries,
and mothers of all nations, the blood of many a Turk must be physically
any thing rather than Turkish. The inherent nature of the case, and the
witness of recorded history, join together to prove that language is no
certain test of race, and that the scientific philologers are doing good
service to accuracy of expression and accuracy of thought by
emphatically calling attention to the fact that language is no such
test.

But, on the other hand, it is quite possible that the truth to which our
attention is just now most fittingly called may, if put forth too
broadly and without certain qualifications, lead to error quite as
great as the error at which it is aimed. I do not suppose that any one
ever thought that language was, necessarily and in all cases, an
absolute and certain test. If anybody does think so, he has put himself
altogether out of court by shutting his eyes to the most manifest facts
of the case. But there can be no doubt that many people have given too
much importance to language as a test of race. Though they have not
wholly forgotten the facts which tell the other way, they have not
brought them out with enough prominence. But I can also believe that
many people have written and spoken on the subject in a way which cannot
be justified from a strictly scientific point of view, but which may
have been fully justified from the point of view of the writers and
speakers themselves. It may often happen that a way of speaking may not
be scientifically accurate, but may yet be quite near enough to the
truth for the purposes of the matter in hand. It may, for some practical
or even historical purpose, be really more true than the statement which
is scientifically more exact. Language is no certain test of race; but
if a man, struck by this wholesome warning, should run off into the
belief that language and race have absolutely nothing to do with one
another, he had better have gone without the warning. For in such a case
the last error would be worse than the first. The natural instinct of
mankind connects race and language. It does not assume