trictly physical, a
study of facts over which the will of man has no direct control. The
study of men's languages is strictly an historical study, a study of
facts over which the will of man has a direct control. It follows
therefore from the very nature of the two studies that language cannot
be an absolutely certain test of physical descent. A man cannot, under
any circumstances, choose his own skull; he may, under some
circumstances, choose his own language. He must keep the skull which
has been given him by his parents; he cannot, by any process of taking
thought, determine what kind of skull he will hand on to his own
children. But he may give up the use of the language which he has
learned from his parents, and he may determine what language he will
teach to his children. The physical characteristics of a race are
unchangeable, or are changed only by influences over which the race
itself has no direct control. The language which the race speaks may
be changed, either by a conscious act of the will or by that power of
fashion which is in truth the aggregate of countless unconscious acts
of the will. And, as the very nature of the case thus shows that
language is no sure test of race, so the facts of recorded history
equally prove the same truth. Both individuals and whole nations do in
fact often exchange the language of their forefathers for some other
language. A man settles in a foreign country. He learns the language
of that country; sometimes he forgets the use of his own language. His
children may perhaps speak both tongues; if they speak one tongue only,
it will be the tongue of the country where they live. In a generation
or two all trace of foreign origin will have passed away. Here then
language is no test of race. If the great-grandchildren speak the
language of their great-grandfathers, it will simply be as they may
speak any other foreign language. Here are men who by speech belong to
one nation, by actual descent to another. If they lose the physical
characteristics of the race to which the original settler belonged, it
will be due to inter-marriage, to climate, to some cause altogether
independent of language. Every nation will have some adopted children
of this kind, more or fewer; men who belong to it by speech, but who do
not belong to it by race. And what happens in the case of individuals
happens in the case of whole nations. The pages of history are crowded
with cases in whic