Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical
peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque,
and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from
their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can
hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on
the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like
that of which other vital products are susceptible, especially
when viewed from their morphological side.... The externally
visible structure of the cerebral and facial skeletons, and
of the body generally, is less important than that no less
material but infinitely more delicate corporeal structure, the
function of which is speech. I conceive, therefore, that
the natural classification of languages is also the natural
classification of mankind. With language, moreover, all the
higher manifestations of man's vital activity are closely
interwoven, so that these receive due recognition in and by
that of speech."[1]

[Footnote 1: August Schleicher. Ueber die Bedeutung der Sprache für
die Naturgeschichte des Menschen, pp. 16-18. Weimar, 1858.]

Without the least desire to depreciate the value of philology as
an adjuvant to ethnology, I must venture to doubt, with Rudolphi,
Desmoulins, Crawfurd, and others, its title to the leading position
claimed for it by the writers whom I have just quoted. On the
contrary, it seems to me obvious that, though, in the absence of any
evidence to the contrary, unity of languages may afford a certain
presumption in favour of the unity of stock of the peoples speaking
those languages, it cannot be held to prove that unity of stock,
unless philologers are prepared to demonstrate, that no nation can