The utmost that can be said is that they
keep the power of again entering that body, either by their own return
to the national faith, or by such a change in the state of things as
shall make difference in religion no longer inconsistent with true
national fellowship.
Thus, wherever we go, we find language to be the rough practical test of
nationality. The exceptions are many; they may perhaps outnumber the
instances which conform to the rule. Still they are exceptions.
Community of language does not imply community of blood; it might be
added that diversity of language does not imply diversity of blood. But
community of language is, in the absence of any evidence to the
contrary, a presumption of the community of blood, and it is proof of
something which for practical purposes is the same as community of
blood. To talk of "the Latin race," is in strictness absurd. We know
that the so-called race is simply made up of those nations which adopted
the Latin language. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races may
conceivably have been formed by a like artificial process.
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