of accuracy. I cannot be quite sure that William the Conqueror landed at
Pevensey, though I have strong reasons for believing that he did so. And
I have strong reasons for believing many facts about race and language
about which I am much further from being quite sure than I am about
William's landing at Pevensey. In short, in all these matters, we must
be satisfied to let presumption very largely take the place of actual
proof; and, if we only let presumption in, most of our difficulties at
once fly away. Language is no certain test of race; but it is a
presumption of race. Community of race, as we commonly understand race,
is no certain proof of original community of blood; but it is a
presumption of original community of blood. The presumption amounts to
moral proof, if only we do not insist on proving such physical community
of blood as would satisfy a genealogist. It amounts to moral proof, if
all that we seek is to establish a relation in which the community of
blood is the leading idea, and in which, where natural community of
blood does not exist, its place is supplied by something which by a
legal fiction is looked upon as its equivalent.

If, then, we do not ask for scientific, for what we may call physical,
accuracy, but if we are satisfied with the kind of proof which is all
that we can ever get in the historical sciences--if we are satisfied to
speak in a way which is true for popular and practical purposes--then we
may say that language has a great deal to do with race, as race is
commonly understood, and that race has a great deal to do with community
of blood. If we once admit the Roman doctrine of adoption, our whole
course is clear. The natural family is the starting-point of every
thing; but we must give the natural family the power of artificially
enlarging itself by admitting adoptive members. A group of mankind is
thus formed, in which it does not follow that all the members have any
natural community of blood, but in which community of blood is the