I assume great groups like
Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, as having what we may call a real corporate
existence, however we may hold that that corporate existence began. My
present point is that no existing nation is, in the physiologist's sense
of purity, purely Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, or any thing else. All
races have assimilated a greater or less amount of foreign elements.
Taking this standard, one which comes more nearly within the range of
our actual knowledge than the possibilities of unrecorded times, we may
again say that, from the purely scientific or physiological point of
view, not only is language no test of race, but that, at all events
among the great nations of the world, there is no such thing as purity
of race at all.
But, while we admit this truth, while we even insist upon it from the
strictly scientific point of view, we must be allowed to look at it with
different eyes from a more practical standing point. This is the
standing point, whether of history which is the politics of the past, or
of politics which are the history of the present.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108