What the Pelasgian and old Etruscan tongues were is uncertain. They were probably sufficiently different from the languages of their neighbourhood for the speakers of them to be mutually unintelligible. Beyond this, however, they may have been anything or nothing in the way of isolation. They _may_ have been as peculiar as the Basque and Albanian. They _may_, on the other hand, have been just so unlike the Greek and Latin as to have belonged to another class--the value of that class being unascertained. Again, that class may or may not have existing representatives amongst the tongues at present existing. I give no opinion on this point. I only give prominence to the isolation of the Basque and Albanian. We _know_ these last to be so different from each other, and from all other tongues, as to come under none of the recognized divisions in the way of ethnographical philology and its classifications.
_Indo-Germanic._--This brings us to the term _Indo-Germanic_; and the term _Indo-Germanic_ brings us to the retrospect of the European populations--all of which, now in existence, have been enumerated, but all of which have not been classified.
I. The Ugrians are a branch of the Turanians.
The Turanians form either a whole class or the part of one, according to the light in which we view them; in other words, the group has one value in philology, and another in anatomy. This is nothing extraordinary. It merely means that their speech has more prominent characters than their physical conformation.
I proceed, however, to our specification:--
_a._ The Turanians in respect to their _physical conformation_ are a branch of the _Mongolians_; the Chinese, Eskimo and others, being members of similar and equivalent divisions.
_b._ In respect to their _language_, they are the highest group recognized, a group subordinate to none other.
To change the expression of this difference, the anatomical naturalist of the Human Species has in the word _Mongolian_ a term of generality to which the philologist has not arrived.
II. The Greeks and Latins--the Sarmatians--and the Germans are referrible to a higher group; a group of much the same value as the Turanian.
The characteristics of this group are philological.