322 Dr Prichard on the Relations of Ethnology 



ethnology. Great caution is, however, requisite when we at- 

 tempt to draw inferences as to the relationship of nations 

 from the resemblance or even identity of their language. 

 "We know that conquests, followed by permanent subjuga- 

 tion, have caused nations to lose their original languages and 

 adopt those of their conquerors. The intercourse of traffic 

 between neighbouring countries, the introduction of a new 

 religion or of new habits of life, especially when rude and 

 barbarous tribes have been brought into near connection with 

 civilized ones, have given rise to great changes in the origi- 

 nal idioms of nations, and have caused languages originally 

 different to approximate. It is only when we have good 

 reasons for believing that no contingent event has inter- 

 fered to change the original speech of any particular race, 

 or supplant it by the idiom of a different tribe, that we can 

 be justified in founding on such ground an argument as 

 to affinity in descent. Evidence may be collected on this 

 point sometimes from historical facts, or from considerations 

 founded on the known condition of particular nations. When 

 we learn from history that two nations have been remotely 

 separated from each other from a very distant age, and have 

 never been brought into habits of intercourse, we may pre- 

 sume, that marks of affinity discovered in their languages can 

 bear no other explanation than that of an original unity of 

 descent. In other instances, phenomena are discoverable in 

 languages themselves which enable us to determine whether 

 traits of resemblance have been the effect of late inter- 

 course between nations, or arose in the original develop- 

 ment of their languages, and thus prove a common origin in 

 the tribes of people who speak them. A careful analysis 

 will often detect analogies of such kind as to afford un- 

 doubted evidence of primitive affinity between languages 

 which have acquired in the lapse of time and the course of 

 events great differences, and when each dialect has become 

 unintelligible to people who speak another of the same stock. 

 The investigation of affinity between languages has lately as- 

 sumed the character of a scientific study, and when pursued 

 with reference to certain general principles, has led to strik- 

 ing and important results. I shall briefly advert to some of 



