Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/393

X.] seeming discrepancy is to be reconciled. Some method of bringing about a reconciliation between them must evidently be sought and found. For neither linguistic nor physical ethnology is a science of classification merely; both claim to be historical also. Both are working toward the same end: namely, a tracing out of the actual connection and genealogical history of human races; and, though each must follow its own methods, without undue interference from without, they cannot labour independently, careless each of the other's results. To point out the mode of reconciliation, to remove the difficulties which lie in the way of harmonious agreement between the two departments of ethnological science, I shall not here make the least pretence; such a result can be attained only when the principles and conclusions of both are advanced and perfected far beyond their present point. All that we can attempt to do is to notice certain general considerations bearing upon the subject, and requiring not to be lost from sight by either party; and especially, to point out the limitations and imperfections of both physical and linguistic evidence, and how necessary it is that each should modestly solicit and frankly acknowledge the aid of the other.

How language proves anything concerning race, and what it does and does not prove, was brought clearly to light in the course of our earliest inquiries into its nature and history. What we then learned respecting the mode of acquisition and transmission of each man's, and each community's, "native tongue" was sufficient to show us the total error of two somewhat different, and yet fundamentally accordant, views of language, which have been put forth and defended by certain authorities—the one, that speech is to man what his song is to the bird, what their roar, growl, bellow are to lions, bears, oxen; and that resemblances of dialect therefore no more indicate actual genetic connection among different tribes of men than resemblances of uttered tone indicate the common descent of various species of thrushes, or of bears, inhabiting different parts of the world: the other, that language is the immediate and necessary product of physical organization, and varies as this varies; that