172 FROM CENTRAL INDIA TO POLYNESIA. 



and in support of which he has brought forward such weighty 

 arguments is balanced by a fundamental unity of race among 

 the peoples that speak these various allied languages. I ven- 

 ture to think that this view must be received with much cau- 

 tion. Whether or not there is a thin strain of common blood 

 running through these very diverse races is a point that does 

 not and cannot affect the classification of their languages. 

 Personally I rather regret that the attempt lias been made to 

 establish even a qualified racial unity such as this amongst 

 populations which differ physically amongst themselves as 

 much as chalk does from cheese. Not only is it in my judg- 

 ment premature inasmuch as the data available are quite in- 

 adequate to support the conclusion, but it is liable to do harm 

 by casting doubt on the validity of the purely linguistic in- 

 ferences, where the evidence is far more perfect. Everyone 

 remembers the absurd inferences which were formerly drawn 

 from the existence of the Indo-European family of languages : 

 how we were gravely told that the same blood courses in the 

 veins of the Bengali and the Icelander, and so forth, merely 

 because their languages are ultimately derived from a common 

 source. There is a similar danger in the present case. We 

 must not let linguistic relationships blind us to anthropologi- 

 cal differences. It is important to remember that such differ- 

 ences are deepseated and that the new f unity of languages 

 recognised by Professor Schmidt (assuming its existence as 

 proved) under the name of the " Austric " family is spoken by 

 races as different from one another as those which speak the 

 Indo-European languages. Some are Mongoloid in physical 

 type, others approximate more,, towards the Caucasian form 

 (which of course by no means implies any real relationship 

 with the Caucasian race, commonly so called) ; some are prac- 

 tically indistinguishable from Dravidians in physique, others 

 again are Negritos of a fairly pure kind, and many are Oriental 

 Negroes indistinguishable from their cousins who speak the 

 quite alien Papuan languages. Professor Schmidt is far too 

 intimately acquainted with the intricacies of his subject to be 

 unaware of these differences and the difficulties to which some 

 of them give rise. What I complain of is that he has not 



Jour, Straits Branch 



