Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/215

Rh center of dissemination in the Alps. For the first three of our types the task of christening was simple enough. To name this second one would have been comparatively easy as well, if Cæsar had not introduced his Commentaries by the well-known passage: "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgæ inhabit; the Aquitani, another; those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third." The so-called Celtic question is all involved in this simple statement. Let us reduce it to its lowest terms. The philologers properly insist upon calling all those who speak the Celtic language Celts. With less reason the archæologists follow them and insist upon assigning the name Celt to all those who possessed the Celtic culture; while the physical anthropologists, finding the Celtic language spoken by peoples of divers physical types, with equal propriety hold that the term Celt should be applied to that physical group or type of men which includes the greatest number of those who use the Celtic language. This manifestly operated to the exclusion of those who spoke Celtic but who differed from the linguistic majority in physical characteristics. The practical result of all this was that anthropologists called the tall and blond people of northern France and Belgium, Gauls or Kymri; and the broad heads of middle and southwestern France Celts: while Cæsar, as we saw, insisted that the Celt and the Gaul were identical. The anthropologists affirmed that the Celtic language had slipped off the tongues of some, and that others had adopted it at second hand. Their explanation held that the blond Belgæ had come into France from the north, bringing the Celtic speech, which those already there speedily adopted; but that they remained as distinct in blood as before. These anthropologists, therefore, insisted that the Belgæ deserved a distinctive name: and they called them Gauls, since they ruled in Gaul, in distinction from the Celts, who, being the earlier inhabitants, constituted the majority of the Celtic-speaking people. This was a cross-division with the philologists, who called the Belgæ Celts, because they brought the language, reserving the name Gaul, as they said, for the natives of that country; but