Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/66

54 SUGGESTIONS RESPECTING THE NATIONALITY AND LANGUAGE OF THE ANCIENT ETRUSCANS.

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BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY 9. DECEMBER 1857.

One of the most interesting questions left us from antiquity to investigate, is the enquiry respecting the nationality and language of the ancient Etruscans. On this subject so much has been written and such a vast display of scholarship exhibited, that it may seem somewhat presumptions in one who makes no pretension to a competitorship with it to venture an opinion at all antagonistic to the theories promulgated. Nor should I think of doing so, were it not that those theories divergent as they are from each other, though often supported by arguments very ingenious and erudite, still seem to me generally opposed not only to authority but also to the probable course of events in the history of man.

As my object then is not controversy but simply to assert the preference due to ancient records over modern paradoxes, I shall not particularly enter on the details of those theories for the purpose of confutation, though it may be necessary for my argument to notice them specifically. At the same time I hope it may be allowed me to protest against the practice of so many writers who especially on this subject seem to enter on the question in the spirit of advocates for a particular theory rather than as unbiassed enquirers in search of knowledge. Such writers seem to adopt the practice of first propounding a theory and then squaring every consideration to meet its requirements, without any regard often to the fitness of the argument or its true bearing on