I
will not undertake to say whether, not indeed the rite of adoption, but
the influences and circumstances which would spring from it, might not,
in the course of generations, affect even the skull of the man who
entered a certain _gens_, tribe, or nation by artificial adoption only.
If by any chance the adopted son spoke a different language from the
adopted father, the rite of adoption itself would not of itself change
his language. But it would bring him under influences which would make
him adopt the language of his new _gens_ by a conscious act of the will,
and which would make his children adopt it by the same unconscious act
of the will by which each child adopts the language of his parents. The
adopted son, still more the son of the adopted son, became, in speech,
in feelings, in worship, in every thing but physical descent, one with
the _gens_ into which he was adopted. He became one of that _gens_ for
all practical, political, historical, purposes. It is only the
physiologist who could deny his right to his new position. The nature of
the process is well expressed by a phrase of our own law.
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