RACE AND LANGUAGE. 349 



of these vanished tribes — their form and stature, their arts, their men- 

 tal capacity, their state of civilization ; but the races, ethnologically 

 speaking, to which they belonged, can not be ascertained, except by 

 other data than those which we now possess. Whether they were 

 Aryan, Iberian, Uralian, Semitic, Eskimo, Algonkin, Dakotan, Zufii, 

 Navajo, or whether they belonged, as Prof. Boyd Dawkins supposes 

 of the river-drift men, to a race now utterly extinct, will never be 

 known, unless, as in the case of the Assyrian mounds, some relics are 

 discovered from which their speech can be ascertained. Until this is 

 learned, their affiliations of race will be merely matter of conjecture ; 

 and conjecture is not science. As soon as the language is determined, 

 the race will be known. The instant assent which every ethnologist 

 will give to this assertion proves at once, without need of further ar- 

 gument, the truth of the proposition that language is the sole test of 

 race. As the proper deductions from the foregoing facts and argu- 

 ments, the following propositions are presented for the consideration 

 of anthropologists : 



1. The only sure and scientific method of grouping the tribes of 

 men, to show their descent and affiliations, is by the evidence of lan- 

 guage. The grouping of men by their languages constitutes the science 

 of ethnology. 



2. Ethnologically speaking, the terms " race " and " linguistic stock" 

 are synonymous. The people of each linguistic stock, in their original 

 and unmixed condition, are distinguished from those of other stocks 

 by various peculiarities of physical traits and character, as well as of 

 religion, customs, and arts. The physical differences may, in certain 

 cases, be comparatively slight, as among the American aborigines, and 

 the stocks of Central Africa ; but to a practiced eye they are always 

 apparent. "When the differences in this respect between two stocks 

 are slight, the inference is simply that, since those stocks originated, 

 the climatic and other influences which affect the physical type have 

 been nearly the same for both. 



3. Whenever a mixture of races is indicated in any community by 

 peculiarities of physical traits which can not be ascribed to climate or 

 other natural causes, the language, on a careful analysis, will always 

 show traces of a corresponding mixture ; and, on the other hand, a 

 mixture of languages belonging to different linguistic stocks is an in- 

 variable indication of a mixture of blood. 



To sum u]D briefly our conclusions, a scientific treatise on ethnology 

 ^v'ill commence, like a treatise on chemistry, with the primary elements, 

 which, as has been said, are the linguistic stocks. It will determine, 

 as far as possible, the mother-tongue and the original geographical 

 center of each stock. It will describe the moral and intellectual traits 

 and the physical characteristics of the people. It will ascertain their 

 mythology, their social system, their industries, and arts. It will trace 

 their migrations, their interminglings with other septs, and the moral 



