384 



ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY. 



tion we must rely on anatomical and physio- 

 logical characters, not on language. He laid 

 great stress on the forms of cranium, and ap- 

 proved Gratiolet's ternary classification, into : 

 1, the Frontal (European) race ; 2, the Parietal 

 (Mongolian) ; 3, the Occipital (Negro). These 

 -cranial distinctions coincide with the differ- 

 ences of mental and moral character, which 

 Dr. Hunt believed to be solely dependent on 

 man's physical structure. Other secondary 

 physical characters could be made available; 

 as those of color, stature, hair and beard, lon- 

 gevity, diseases, temperaments, odor, entozoa, 

 &c. If we were guided solely by language, we 

 should class the negroes of the West India 

 islands as Europeans; their physical charac- 

 ters alone mark them negroes. We can change 

 the language of a race, but scarcely its religion, 

 or its innate ideas of art. Not yet being able 

 to say how the varieties of mankind have origi- 

 nated, we must for the present class them 

 according to the physical and physiological dis- 

 tinctions now existing between them. 



.Is Race determinable by Language? Mr. 

 John Crawfurd read a paper before the British 

 Association on " The Celtic Languages in ref- 

 erence to the Question of Eace." He was an- 

 swered in another paper on the same subject 

 and of greater length, by Mr. B. S. Oharnock, in 

 which the latter said : 



Eace can never to a certainty be determined 

 by language. People of the same race may 

 speak two different languages; while, on the 

 other hand, people of different races may come 

 to speak the same language, or languages which 

 are derivatives from the same source. An ex- 

 ample of the latter kind is found in the case of 

 the Italian and French nations, which, though 

 of different races, speak languages having a 

 common origin in the Latin tongue. 



Anthropological Bearings of Language. Mr. 

 Oharnock's paper had previously been read be- 

 fore the London Anthrop. Society ; and on that 

 occasion the President, Dr. James Hunt, re- 

 marked that, although some were inclined to 

 consider that the field of anthropology did not 

 include the science of language, he could not 

 himself agree in this opinion ; but he thought 

 that, through observations upon languages, valu- 

 able results might be reached. 



Mr. Bendyshe thought the only tenable the- 

 ory of the origin of human languages was that 

 which Max Miiller had designated the "low- 

 wow" theory. The onomatopoeia would, in 

 course of the development of a language, be- 

 come less apparent; yet it could in earlier ages 

 have formed the whole of the language. Pic- 

 ture-writing points to this theory. He thought, 

 further, that in the comparison of languages, 

 hitherto, it had not been sufficiently remem- 

 bered, when we hear of such a word as serpent 

 being like sarpa, and erpo, and so in other sim- 

 ilar cases, that we are hearing these words as 

 they are uttered by the same mouth, and by 

 one accustomed to a particular style of pro- 

 nunciation. 



Mr. Owen Pike alluded to Max Muller's 

 theory that the root-words, to which he con- 

 ceives all languages to be reducible, express 

 general ideas. He doubted if this view 13 

 proved. Miiller says also that general ideas 

 are peculiar to man. But if the speaker said 

 "cat "to his dog, the latter looked, not after 

 any particular cat, but after cats in general. 

 He concluded that animals have general ideas, 

 and that Miiller had confounded general with 

 ^abstract ideas. Miiller also concluded that be- 

 cause the Aryan roots express general (abstract) 

 ideas, the words composing the original lan- 

 guage of mankind represented such ideas. But 

 it is not pretended that the Aryan is the orig- 

 inal language ; and no one has traced the con- 

 nections of the immense number of languages 

 not included in the Aryan family. He thought 

 it singular that the theory of the " unity of lan- 

 guage " should be so much more popular than 

 that of the " unity of origin of species." But 

 Lyell had shown the remarkable resemblance 

 between the theory of natural selection as ap- 

 plied to organic species, and the history of the 

 origin of dialects and languages. 



Schleicher on "Natural Selection' 1 '' in Lan- 

 guage.'M.. Aug. Schleicher has recently pub- 

 lished, at Weimar, a pamphlet entitled " The 

 Darwinian Theory and Philology." In this he 

 contends that, as Lyell had intimated, there is 

 a close analogy between the genesis of species 

 among organized beings and in language. The 

 philologist, like the naturalist, is often puzzled 

 by the phenomenon of languages possessing 

 well-marked and apparently ineffaceable points 

 of difference, yet at the same time presenting 

 tokens of a unity of origin. It must be sup- 

 posed that the accidental divergences in speech 

 were at the first well-nigh innumerable. But 

 the very conditions of the existence of words, 

 would tolerate for each meaning only a few. 

 Those best suited to the taste of the users, or 

 to convenience of use, would alone persist 

 would in the end triumph over their weaker 

 rivals. Thus, from countless varieties in the 

 outset, the tongues from which the Indo-Ger- 

 manic, the Turanian, and the Semitic have de- 

 scended, being better fitted than their competi- 

 tors for the purposes of human society, drove 

 out the others ; and these groups now remain 

 as if originally of separate creation. And it is 

 certainly a singular coincidence, that the same 

 ingenious theory should solve mysteries in 

 sciences whose subject-matter is so widely dif- 

 ferent. 



A reviewer of M. Schleicher's pamphlet 

 mentions, as an instance of the triumph of one 

 tongue over others in the " struggle for life," 

 the fact that the Anglo-Saxon is in England 

 gradually rooting out the Celtic, as it has done 

 the Norman French. The same principle if. 

 illustrated on a greatly increased scale in thd 

 United States, where the same victorious^ 

 tongno rapidly and* surely supplants all tho 

 other imported languages and dialects of Eu- 

 ropean countries. 



