LANGUAGE AND RACE. 415 



into the mistake of confusing community with 7nce^ for 

 the same race may be divided into 'a multitude of com- 

 munities, each separate and independent, and with special 

 characteristics of its own as to language, customs, etc. 



"A society may continue to exist, thanks to its customs 

 or the influence of race, while the language it spoke has 

 disappeared, through the daily need of communication with 

 other and more powerful societies speaking a different 

 language. Thus, Jewish societies exist all the world over 

 as separate societies with peculiar rites and customs, and' 

 apart from any question of race ; and yet their language 

 is for the most part that of the people among whom they 

 are settled." We cannot be sure that the same event has 

 not befallen other races; for if it is possible with one, it 

 must be with others also. 



" Keltic is extinct among the Kelts of Cornwall and the 

 Isle of Man, and the same fate seems to threaten the other 

 Keltic dialects of Great Britain and France. Slavonic has 

 disappeared from Prussia ; and Basque alone is left of the 

 pre-Keltic languages of Western Europe. Keltic itself had 

 to make way for Latin in Gaul and Spain, like Punic in 

 Africa ; and the Normans first lost their mother-tongue in 

 Normandy, and then their new tongue in England. The 

 Scandinavian colonies, which existed in Greenland for five 

 hundred years, left practically no traces of their language 

 behind them ; and Arabic in Sicily, and Visigothic in Spain, 

 have been totally extirpated. 



'' The Melanesians and Papuans belong to different races, 

 and yet speak the same languages ; and the same may be 

 the case with the Lapps and Finns. 



" According to Humboldt and Bonpland, ' a million of the 

 aborigines of America have exchanged their native for an 

 European language.' The inhabitants of San Salvador, 



