RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR 45 



their language upon the subject Celts, it was due to the power of the 

 Roman organization, of which they continued to form a part, the 

 country being governed from Rome and receiving from it a constant 

 influx of officials, soldiers, and tradesmen. The statement, often 

 made, that the Greeks, for example, may have received their Indo- 

 European language from a small body of invaders, so that they would 

 be only to a slight degree of Indo-European descent, is unwarranted 

 by historical analogies. This of course is not to doubt the existence 

 of one or more than one pre-Indo-European peoples in Greece and 

 the adjacent islands, and we are anxious for all possible information 

 in regard to them, especially if the so-called ^Egean civilization, wholly 

 or in part, antedates the appearance of the Indo-European Greeks. 

 (And let it be noted in passing that this question awaits its decision 

 from linguistic evidence. Are not all scholars impatient to learn 

 what is the language of the Cretan pictograph and linear signs?) 

 But the Indo-European Greeks must have come, like the Anglo- 

 Saxon invaders of England, in vast hordes and in successive waves of 

 migration, and the very fact that their language became dominant 

 entitles them to be regarded as the most important element of the 

 historical Greek people, however much may have been' contributed 

 to their civilization by earlier conditions. 



And if linguistic evidence is subject to some reservation, what of 

 anthropological evidence? One after another of the anthropological 

 criteria has been found inadequate to serve as an absolute basis of 

 ethnological classification. Leading anthropologists like Virchow 

 hold that a mixture of dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, of blond 

 and brunette, etc., is the rule rather than the exception, and further- 

 more that such racial characteristics are not in themselves unchange- 

 able. And even if the matter of racial classification were in a more 

 satisfactory state than it is at present, it would take us back to 

 such remote periods as to have comparatively little bearing upon the 

 immediate prehistory of even the earliest known peoples. The period 

 of Indo-European speech-unity, for example, which no one need 

 place earlier than 5000 B.C., and is probably later than this, represents 

 a late date from the anthropological point of view, and it is alto- 

 gether likely that the people speaking this parent speech was already 

 of mixed race. Furthermore, is it not true in general that the phys- 

 ical characteristics of a people, in and of themselves, are subordinate 

 in historical significance to their institutions? Community in myths 

 and customs, but above all in language, is that which goes to make 

 up kinship as a subjective element, that is, that consciousness of 

 kinship which is an important factor in history. Language is the 

 most vital factor in the growth and retention of national feeling. 

 Nothing is so zealously guarded as essential to racial survival. No- 



