ate
their subjects; sometimes they are assimilated by their subjects;
sometimes conquerors and subjects remain distinct forever. When
assimilation either way does take place, the direction which it takes in
each particular case will depend, partly on their respective numbers,
partly on their degrees of civilization. A small number of less
civilized conquerors will easily be lost among a greater number of more
civilized subjects, and that even though they give their name to the
land and people which they conquer. The modern Frenchman represents,
not the conquering Frank, but the conquered Gaul, or, as he called
himself, the conquered Roman. The modern Bulgarian represents, not the
Finnish conqueror, but the conquered Slav. The modern Russian
represents, not the Scandinavian ruler, but the Slav who sent for the
Scandinavian to rule over him. And so we might go on with endless other
cases. The point is that the process of adoption, naturalization,
assimilation, has gone on everywhere. No nation can boast of absolute
purity of blood, though no doubt some nations come much nearer to it
than others. When I speak of purity of blood, I leave out of sight the
darker questions which I have already raised with regard to the groups
of mankind in days before recorded history. I assume great groups like
Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, as having what we may call a real corporate
existence, however we may hold that that corporate existence began. My
present point is that no existing nation is, in the physiologist's sense
of purity, purely Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, or any thing else. All
races have assimilated a greater or less amount of foreign elements.
Taking this standard, one which comes more nearly within the range of
our actual knowledge than the possibilities of unrecorded times, we may
again say that, from the purely scientific or physiological point of
view, not only is language no test of race, but that, at all events
among the great nations of the world, there is no such thing as purity
of race at all.

But, while we admit this truth, while we even insist upon it from the
strictly scientific point of view, we must be allowed to look at it with
different eyes from a more practical standing point. This is the
standing point, whether of history which is the politics of the past, or
of politics which are the history of the present. From this point of
view, we may say unhesitatingly that there are such things as races and
nations,