The Gauls were conquered by Caesar, but afterwards commingled with the Teutonic Francs, who
founded the French monarchy. The Britons were likewise subdued by the Romans, and afterwards
driven to Wales and Cornwall by the Anglo-Saxons. The Scotch in the highlands (Gaels) remained
Keltic, while in the lowlands they mixed with Saxons and Normans.
The mental characteristics of the Kelts remain unchanged for two thousand years: quick
wit, fluent speech, vivacity, sprightliness, impressibility, personal bravery and daring, loyalty to
the chief or the clan, but also levity, fickleness, quarrelsomeness and incapacity for self-government.
"They shook all empires, but founded none." The elder Cato says of them: "To two things are the
Kelts most attent: to fighting (ars militaris), and to adroitness of speech (argute loqui)." Caesar
censures their love of levity and change. The apostle Paul complains of the same weakness. Thierry,
their historian, well describes them thus: "Their prominent attributes are personal valor, in which
they excel all nations; a frank, impetuous spirit open to every impression; great intelligence, but
joined with extreme mobility, deficient perseverance, restlessness under discipline and order,
boastfulness and eternal discord, resulting from boundless vanity." Mommsen quotes this passage,
and adds that the Kelts make good soldiers, but bad citizens; that the only order to which they
submit is the military, because the severe general discipline relieves them of the heavy burden of
individual self-control.^3
Keltic Christianity was at first independent of Rome, and even antagonistic to it in certain
subordinate rites; but after the Saxon and Norman conquests, it was brought into conformity, and
since the Reformation, the Irish have been more attached to the Roman Church than even the Latin
races. The French formerly inclined likewise to a liberal Catholicism (called Gallicanism); but they
sacrificed the Gallican liberties to the Ultramontanism of the Vatican Council. The Welsh and
Scotch, on the contrary, with the exception of a portion of the Highlanders in the North of Scotland,
embraced the Protestant Reformation in its Calvinistic rigor, and are among its sternest and most
vigorous advocates. The course of the Keltic nations had been anticipated by the Galatians, who
first embraced with great readiness and heartiness the independent gospel of St. Paul, but were
soon turned away to a Judaizing legalism by false teachers, and then brought back again by Paul
to the right path.
- The Germanic^4 or Teutonic^5 nations followed the Keltic migration in successive westward
and southward waves, before and after Christ, and spread over Germany, Switzerland, Holland,
Scandinavia, the Baltic provinces of Russia, and, since the Anglo-Saxon invasion, also over England
and Scotland and the northern (non-Keltic) part of Ireland. In modern times their descendants
peacefully settled the British Provinces and the greater part of North America. The Germanic nations
are the fresh, vigorous, promising and advancing races of the middle age and modern times. Their
Christianization began in the fourth century, and went on in wholesale style till it was completed
(in his Com. and in several articles in the "Studien und Kritiken, " and in the "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," 1877 No. 1)
tries to make them Germans, a view first hinted at by Luther. But the fickleness of the Galatian Christians is characterristic of
the ancient Gauls and modern French.(^3) Römische Geschichte, Vol. I., p. 329, 5th ed., Berlin, 1868.
(^4) The word is of uncertain origin. Some derive it from a Keltic root, garm or gairm, i.e. noise; some from the old
Germangere(guerre), a pointed weapon, spear or javelin (so that German would mean an armed man, or war-man,Wehrmann);
others, from the Persian irman, erman, i.e. guest.
(^5) From the Gothic thiudisco, gentiles, popularis; hence the Latin teutonicus, and the Germandeutschorteutsch(which
may also be connected withdiutan, deutsch deutlich). In the English usage, the term German is confined to the Germans proper,
and Dutch to the Hollanders; but Germanic and Teutonic apply to all cognate races.