Is biological, sense, is supremely indifferent to the history of

languages and cultures, that these are no more directly explainable on

the score of race than on that of the laws of physics and chemistry, we

shall have gained a viewpoint that allows a certain interest to such

mystic slogans as Slavophilism, Anglo-Saxondom, Teutonism, and the Latin

genius but that quite refuses to be taken in by any of them. A careful

study of linguistic distributions and of the history of such

distributions is one of the driest of commentaries on these sentimental

creeds.

That a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial

group or a culture area is easily demonstrated. We may even show how a

single language intercrosses with race and culture lines. The English

language is not spoken by a unified race. In the United States there are

several millions of negroes who know no other language. It is their

mother-tongue, the formal vesture of their inmost thoughts and

sentiments. It is as much their property, as inalienably "theirs," as

the King of England's. Nor do the English-speaking whites of America

constitute a definite race except by way of contrast to the negroes. Of

the three fundamental white races in Europe generally recognized by

physical anthropologists--the Baltic or North European, the Alpine, and

the Mediterranean--each has numerous English-speaking representatives in

America. But does not the historical core of English-speaking peoples,

those relatively "unmixed" populations that still reside in England and

Its colonies, represent a race, pure and single? I cannot see that the

evidence points that way. The English people are an amalgam of many

distinct strains. Besides the old "Anglo-Saxon," in other words North

German, element which is conventionally represented as the basic

strain, the English blood comprises Norman French,[177] Scandinavian,

"Celtic,"[178] and pre-Celtic elements. If by "English" we mean also

Scotch and Irish,[179] then the term "Celtic" is loosely used for at

least two quite distinct racial elements--the short, dark-complexioned

type of Wales and the taller, lighter, often ruddy-haired type of the

Highlands and parts of Ireland. Even if we confine ourselves to the

Saxon element, which, needless to say, nowhere appears "pure," we are

not at the end of our troubles. We may roughly identify this strain with

the racial type now predominant in southern Denmark and adjoining parts

of northern Germany. If so, we must content ourselves with the

reflection that while the English language is historically most closely

affiliated with Frisian, in second degree with the other West Germanic

dialects (Low Saxon or "Plattdeutsch," Dutch, High German), only in

third degree with Scandinavian, the specific "Saxon" racial type that

overran England in the fifth and sixth centuries was largely the same as

that now represented by the Danes, who speak a Scandinavian language,

while the High German-speaking population of central and southern

Germany[180] is markedly distinct.

[Footnote 177: Itself an amalgam of North "French" and Scandinavian

elements.]

[Footnote 178: The "Celtic" blood of what is now England and Wales is by

no means confined to the Celtic-speaking regions--Wales and, until

recently, Cornwall. There is every reason to believe that the invading

Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) did not exterminate the

Brythonic Celts of England nor yet drive them altogether into Wales and

Cornwall (there has been far too much "driving" of conquered peoples

into mountain fastnesses and land's ends in our histories), but simply

intermingled with them and imposed their rule and language upon them.]

[Footnote 179: In practice these three peoples can hardly be kept

altogether distinct. The terms have rather a local-sentimental than a

clearly racial value. Intermarriage has gone on steadily for centuries

and it is only in certain outlying regions that we get relatively pure

types, e.g., the Highland Scotch of the Hebrides. In America, English,

Scotch, and Irish strands have become inextricably interwoven.]

[Footnote 180: The High German now spoken in northern Germany is not of

great age, but is due to the spread of standardized German, based on

Upper Saxon, a High German dialect, at the expense of "Plattdeutsch."]

But what if we ignore these finer distinctions and simply assume that

the "Teutonic" or Baltic or North European racial type coincided in its

distribution with that of the Germanic languages? Are we not on safe

ground then? No, we are now in hotter water than ever. First of all, the

mass of the German-speaking population (central and southern Germany,

German Switzerland, German Austria) do not belong to the tall,

blond-haired, long-headed[181] "Teutonic" race at all, but to the

shorter, darker-complexioned, short-headed[182] Alpine race, of which

the central population of France, the French Swiss, and many of the

western and northern Slavs (e.g., Bohemians and Poles) are equally good

representatives. The distribution of these "Alpine" populations

corresponds in part to that of the old continental "Celts," whose

language has everywhere given way to Italic, Germanic, and Slavic

pressure. We shall do well to avoid speaking of a "Celtic race," but if

we were driven to give the term a content, it would probably be more

appropriate to apply it to, roughly, the western portion of the Alpine

peoples than to the two island types that I referred to before. These

latter were certainly "Celticized," in speech and, partly, in blood,

precisely as, centuries later, most of England and part of Scotland was

"Teutonized" by the Angles and Saxons. Linguistically speaking, the

"Celts" of to-day (Irish Gaelic, Manx, Scotch Gaelic, Welsh, Breton) are

Celtic and most of the Germans of to-day are Germanic precisely as the

American Negro, Americanized Jew, Minnesota Swede, and German-American

are "English." But, secondly, the Baltic race was, and is, by no means

an exclusively Germanic-speaking people. The northernmost "Celts," such

as the Highland Scotch, are in all probability a specialized offshoot of

this race. What these people spoke before they were Celticized nobody

knows, but there is nothing whatever to indicate that they spoke a

Germanic language. Their language may quite well have been as remote

from any known Indo-European idiom as are Basque and Turkish to-day.

Again, to the east of the Scandinavians are non-Germanic members of the

race--the Finns and related peoples, speaking languages that are not

definitely known to be related to Indo-European at all.

[Footnote 181: "Dolichocephalic."]

[Footnote 182: "Brachycephalic."]

We cannot stop here. The geographical position of the Germanic languages