h nations have cast aside the tongue of their
forefathers, and have taken instead the tongue of some other people.
Greek in the East, Latin in the West, became the familiar speech of
millions who had not a drop of Greek or Italian blood in their veins.
The same has been the case in later times with Arabic, Persian,
Spanish, German, English. Each of those tongues has become the
familiar speech of vast regions where the mass of the people are not
Arabian, Spanish, or English, otherwise than by adoption. The Briton
of Cornwall has, slowly but in the end thoroughly, adopted the speech
of England. 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, janizaries, and mothers of all nations, the
blood of many a Turk must be physically anything 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 anyone
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 a