216 METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 



is speech. I conceive, therefore, that the natural classi- 

 fication of languages, is also the natural classification of 

 mankind. With language, moreover, all the higher mani- 

 festations of man's vital activity are closely interwoven, 

 so that these receive due recognition in and by that of 

 speech." * 



Without the least desire to depreciate the value 

 of philology as an adjuvant to ethnology, I must 

 venture to doubt, with Rudolphi, Desmoulins, 

 Crawfurd, and others, its title to the leading 

 position claimed for it by the writers whom I have 

 just quoted. On the contrary, it seems to me ob- 

 vious that, though, in the absence of any evidence 

 to the contrary, unity of languages may afford 

 a certain presumption in favour of the unity of 

 stock of the peoples speaking those languages, 

 it cannot be held to prove that unity of stock, un- 

 less philologers are prepared to demonstrate, that 

 no nation can lose its language and acquire that of 

 a distinct nation, without a change of blood corre- 

 sponding with the change of language. Desmou- 

 lins long ago put this argument exceedingly well: — 



" Let us imagine the recurrence of one of those slow, 

 or sudden, political revolutions, or say of those secular 

 changes which among different people and at different 

 epochs have annihilated historical monuments and even 

 extinguished tradition. In that case, the evidence, now 

 so clear, that the negroes of Hayti were slaves imported 



* August Schleicher. Uehcr die Bcdeutung dcr 

 Sprache fur die NaturgescMchte dcs Menschen, pp. 16 

 —18. Weimar, 1858. 



