78 HOEATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



have a right to look askance upon the pretensions of a so-called science which has no 

 established laws, lays down no definite principles, and puts forth no conclusions which 

 claim any higher assurance than that of plausible conjectures. If geology or biology 

 were in the same position, who would venture to claim for them the distinction of true 

 sciences ? 



The two main grounds on which are rested the claims of language to be deemed the 

 true basis of anthropology are : first, its position as the only certain test of the ailinities 

 of races ; and, secondly, its not less important position as the only sure test of the mental 

 capacity of any race. The first of these grounds has been discussed in a former essay. In 

 a paper read in 183*7, at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, under the title of "The True Basis of Ethnology," and published in the ' Popular 

 Science Monthly ' for January, 1888, under the title of " Eace and Language," I en- 

 deavoured to bring together the evideace and authorities in support of the proposition 

 that in language, and language alone, is to be found the true criterion of the genetic rela- 

 tionship of any two populations. It will be enough, perhaps, for the present to say that 

 these arguments have been tersely and happily summed up by the most eminent of living 

 philologists, Prof. Max Miiller, who, in the third lecture of his recent publication, '• Three 

 Lectures on the Science of Language and its place in General Education," fully accepts 

 this proposition, and confirms it by many illustrations and arguments.' I may add the 

 practical example of my distinguished friend. Dr. D. G. Briuton, who in his admirabh^ 

 work, "The American Race," has deliberately put aside all other tests, and has based his 

 classification of the tribes of this continent solely on^the distinction of linguistic stocks. 

 But in referring to this subject on the present occasion, my only object is to disclaim for 

 myself any title to originality in the conclusions which have been thus powerfully sus- 

 tained. These conclusions were derived from the writings of two American philologists 

 ot earlier days, Peter S. Duponceau and Albert Gallatin (both, indeed, of European birth — 

 the one French and the other Swiss), who in their works laid the foundation of American 

 ethnology ; and their couclusious have been sustained by a very eminent authority, 

 Theodore Waitz, once deemed, before the present physical school acquired its undue pre- 

 dominance, the chief of German anthropologists. The first volume of his great work, 

 " Anthropology of Primitive Eaces," was translated and published in London in 1863 for 

 the Authroxjological Society of that city, as the best existing introduction to the science for 

 whose study the society was established. In this volume he lays down the proposition, 

 and illustrates it with abundance of facts and arguments, that " the scientific method at 

 present applied in comparative philology possesses a higher degree of authenticity, and 

 offers better guarantees for its results, than the methods of physical anthropology and 

 craniology." He shows also the futility of the common objection that men may change 

 their language, but not their physical appearance. As he points out, and as history con- 

 firms, no people ever yet changed its language until it had become so intimately mingled 

 with another people as to receive from them, along with their language, a large infusion 

 of their blood. The common — one might almost say the A'ulgar — instance on the other 

 side is that of the negro, or rather the " negroid," populations of the Southern United 

 States and the West Indies. All these populations speak some language of Aryan origin, 



' " I agree with Mr. Horatio Hale that the most satisfactory, nay the only possible division of the human race 

 is that which ia based ou language." — " Three Lectures," etc., p. 49. 



