similarities or differences in races. This importance is especially
owing to the clue which a community of descent affords in treading
that mysterious labyrinth in which the connection of physical powers
and intellectual forces manifests itself in a thousand different
forms. The brilliant progress made within the last half-century, in
Germany, in philosophical philology, has greatly facilitated our
investigations into the national character of languages and the
influence exercised by descent. But here, as in all domains of ideal
speculation, the dangers of deception are closely linked to the rich
and certain profit to be derived.

Positive ethnographical studies, based on a thorough knowledge of
history, teach us that much caution should be applied in entering into
these comparisons of nations, and of the languages employed by them at
certain epochs. Subjection, long association, the influence of a
foreign religion, the blending of races, even when only including a
small number of the more influential and cultivated of the immigrating
tribes, have produced, in both continents, similarly recurring
phenomena; as, for instance, in introducing totally different
families of languages among one and the same race, and idioms, having
one common root, among nations of the most different origin. Great
Asiatic conquerors have exercised the most powerful influence on
phenomena of this kind.

But language is a part and parcel of the history of the development of
mind; and, however happily the human intellect, under the most
dissimilar physical conditions, may unfettered pursue a self-chosen
track, and strive to free itself from the dominion of terrestrial
influences, this emancipation is never perfect. There ever remains, in
the natural capacities of the mind, a trace of something that has been
derived from the influences of race or of climate, whether they be
associated with a land gladdened by cloudless azure skies, or with the
vapory atmosphere of an insular region. As, therefore, richness and
grace of language are unfolded from the most luxuriant depths of
thought, we have been unwilling wholly to disregard the bond which so
closely links together the physical world with the sphere of intellect
and of the feelings by depriving this general picture of nature of
those brighter lights and tints which may be borrowed from
considerations, however slightly indicated, of the relations existing
between races and languages....

Let