any circumstances, choose his own skull; he may, under some
circumstances, choose his own language. He must keep the skull which has
been given him by his parents; he cannot, by any process of taking
thought, determine what kind of skull he will hand on to his own
children. But he may give up the use of the language which he has
learned from his parents, and he may determine what language he will
teach to his children. The physical characteristics of a race are
unchangeable, or are changed only by influences over which the race
itself has no direct control. The language which the race speaks may be
changed, either by a conscious act of the will or by that power of
fashion which is in truth the aggregate of countless unconscious acts of
the will. And, as the very nature of the case thus shows that language
is no sure test of race, so the facts of recorded history equally prove
the same truth. Both individuals and whole nations do in fact often
exchange the language of their forefathers for some other language. A
man settles in a foreign country. He learns the language of that
country; sometimes he forgets the use of his own language. His children
may perhaps speak both tongues; if they speak one tongue only, it will
be the tongue of the country where they live. In a generation or two all
trace of foreign origin will have passed away. Here then language is no
test of race. If the great-grandchildren speak the language of their
great-grandfathers, it will simply be as they may speak any other
foreign language. Here are men who by speech belong to one nation, by
actual descent to another. If they lose the physical characteristics of
the race to which the original settler belonged, it will be due to
intermarriage, to climate, to some cause altogether independent of
language. Every nation will have some adopted children of this kind,
more or fewer; men who belong to it by speech, but who do not belong to
it by race. And what happens in the case of individuals happens in the
case of whole nations. The pages of history are crowded with cases in