IV METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY 215 



infinitely more delicate corporeal structure, the function of 

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

 fication of languages, is also the natural classification of man- 

 kind. "> With language, moreover, all the higher manifestations 

 of man's vital activity are closely interwoven, so that these 

 receive due recognition in and by that of speech." l 



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 

 obvious 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, unless philologers are prepared to demon- 

 strate, that no nation can lose its language and 

 acquire that of a distinct nation, without a change 

 of blood corresponding with the change of language. 

 Desmoulins long ago put this argument exceed- 

 ingly well : 



" Let us imagine tlie recurrence of one of those slow, 01 

 sudden, political revolutions, or say of those secular changes 

 which among different people and at different epochs have 

 annihilated historical monuments and even extinguished tradi- 

 tion In that case, the evidence, now so clear, that the negroes 

 of Hayti were slaves imported by a French colony, who, by the 



1 August Schleicher. Ueber die Bedc.utung der Sprachefur die 

 Naturgeschichte des Mcnschen, pp. 16 18. Weimar, 1858. 



