They are the enlightened and the enlighteners of mankind. They alone are extending the sphere of human knowledge, investigating the nature of matter and of mind, and tracing out their exhibition in the past history and present condition of the earth and its inhabitants. They alone have a surplus stock of intelligent energy, which is constantly pushing beyond its old boundaries, and spurns all limit to its action. The network of their activity embraces the globe; their ships are in every sea between the poles, for exploration, for trade, or for conquest; the weaker races are learning their civilization, falling under their authority, or perishing off the face of the land, from inherent inability to stand before them. They have appropriated, and converted into outlying provinces of their race and culture, the twin world of the West, and the insular continent of the south-eastern seas, while their lesser colonies dot the whole surface of the inhabitable globe. They have inherited from its ancient possessors the sceptre of universal dominion, over a world vastly enlarged beyond that to which were limited the knowledge and the power of former times: and they are worthy to wield it, since their sway brings, upon the whole, physical well-being, knowledge, morality, and religion to those over whom it is extended.
All that speciality of interest, then, which cleaves to historical investigations respecting the origin, the earliest conditions, the migrations, the mutual intercourse and influence, and the intercourse with outside races, of that division of mankind which has shown itself as the most gifted, as possessing the highest character and fulfilling the noblest destiny, among all who have peopled the earth since the first dawn of time, belongs, of right and of necessity, to Indo-European philology.
It may, indeed, be urged that this is an interest lying somewhat apart from the strict domain of linguistic science, whose prime concern is with speech itself, not with the characters or acts of those who speak. Yet, as was pointed out in our first lecture, the study of language is not introspective merely; they would unduly narrow its sphere and restrict its scope who should limit it to the examination of
