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AuthorTopic: Origin Aryan Race 1888  (Read 8628 times)

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Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #15 on: June 15, 2019, 09:23:47 PM »
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Religion was similarly communistic. AVe find no trace
of any well-defined family worship, though there is evidence
that a tribal ancestral worship prevailed. But combined
with this was Shamanism, — a system of demon worship, in
which incantation was the prevailing rite. Sorcery ruled
as the main form of religion alike with the Mongolian
tribes, the antique Semites, and the more barbarous tribes
of North America. Very probably it had a strong footing
also with the Aryans in their nomadic era, though it sunk
into decadence at a later date. The only declared priest-
hood we can trace in this archaic stage of development is
that of the Mongolian Shaman, the Babylonian sorcerer,
and the American medicine-man or conjurer. Knavery
undoubtedly had as much to do with their service as re-
ligion, and it must have been an easy task for the leader of
the tribe to gain control of this venal priesthood, and thus
add to the spiritual dignity which he possessed as the rep-
resentative of the tribal ancestor. So far as we can trace,
in every instance some degree of religious authority at-
tached to his office.
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 157

All this may have nothing specially to do with the
Aryans, but it is of importance from its decided contrast
to the character of their organization and from the essen-
tial significance it bears in the history of human institutions.
To the simplicity of the patriarchal system, indeed, we owe
the original unfoldment of human civilization. But it was
a civilization in what is known as the Asiatic form, — an
unprogressive absolutism. Such is the condition which
existed in the three non-Aryan civilizations of the old
world, those of China, Egypt, and Babylonia. They were
all patriarchal despotisms.

As already said, the nomadic tribe is a regularly organ-
ized army. It has its arms, and great ability in their use.
It has its ready-formed regiments and divisions in the ma-
jor and minor groups of the tribe. It has its clan-leaders,
and its patriarchal tribal head, to whom all its members are
willingly subordinate. And it is accustomed to swift and
long marches, in which it takes with it all its property and
food. No link of attachment binds it to a locality. Mi-
grations are among the common duties of life. There is
nothing to hinder invasion of a country at a moment’s
notice, settlement upon the land in case of victory, or swift
retreat and disappearance in the desert in case of defeat.

The indications are strong that to this facility of warlike
migration and this military t}Tpe of political organization
we owe the establishment of the early empires. China is
most distinctively a patriarchal empire. Despite its long
settlement, its developed agriculture, its abundant litera-
ture, its complex industrial and social conditions, it
remains to-day politically a patriarchism, — the simplest
and most archaic of all governmental systems. The em-
peror is the father of the empire. The long continuance of
 158

THE ARYAN RACE.

his absolutism arises from the fact that he stands at the head
of the ancestral religious system of the nation. Ancestral
worship has continued the ruling faith of China, and' the
emperor is the high-priest of this worship, — the hereditary
representative of the primal ancestor of the people. He
has inherited both temporal and spiritual power, and the
bodies and souls of his subjects are alike bound captive.
Like the house-father of old, the officiating priest of the
house-worship and the family despot, the Chinese emperor
is the only intermedium between his national family and
the heavenly powers. He is answerable only to the gods
for his deeds, and it is sacrilege to question his command.
It is interesting also, in considering the character of Chi-
nese civilization, to find that the ancient Shamanism still
prevails. No developed elemental worship has been de-
vised, all efforts to establish a philosophic faith have
failed with the people at large, and the Taoism of to-day
is undisguised sorcery. l"et it is probable that the Chinese
empire arose ere the primitive ancestor-worship had been to
any great extent superseded by the Mongolian Shamanism
of to-day. In every feature of its organization, language,
and belief, the archaic condition of mankind has persisted
in China. This is largely due to the almost utter lack of
imagination in its people ; and the only civilized progress
it display's is in devices for the practical needs of man,
and in moral apothegms of the same tendency. The
Chinese empire is the utmost unfoldment of the purely
practical mentality of the Mongolian race.

In the early stages of the Egyptian monarchy we can
somewhat vaguely perceive indications of a closely similar
organization. The Pharaoh was the high-priest of his
people, to whom he likewise bore a paternal relation.
 TilE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 159

There seems little reason to doubt that this empire was the
outgrowth of a pastoral condition of society, that the
emperor was the development of the original patriarch,
and that his godlike dignity and absolute power arose from
his being at the head of the ancestor-worship of the people,
the hereditary representative of the primal ancestor. In
early Egypt as in early China the absolutism of the em-
peror was not complete. There are indications of a tribal
division of the people, and of the existence of a nobility
?with political powers. But patriarchism in its very nature
tends to absolutism, and in both cases a complete subor-
dination, alike of nobles and people, to the sacred father
and emperoi; eventually succeeded. Religiously, however,
Egypt developed far beyond China. Its people were of
the highly imaginative Melanochroic race, and they devised
a complex system of mythology, with a powerful priest-
hood, at whose head the emperor stood supreme. He was
chief priest as well as sole ruler of the nation. As in
China, he governed his people in bod}T and soul.

Babylonia yields similar indications, though its organi-
zation is more obscure. Its earliest traceable religious
system is a Shamanism, a highlyT developed sorcery. Upon
this, however, arose a nature-worship, a somewhat com-
plicated series of elemental gods. In regard to its govern-
mental idea we are greatly in the dark. But its emergence
in the heart of a pastoral region inhabited by patriarchal
tribes, its absolutism, and the sacred or godlike character
which plainly attaches to the later monarchs of Babylonia
and Assyria, strongly indicate that it was a development
of the patriarchal S3'stem.

It is singular and interesting to find that the archaic
civilizations of mankind all apparently rose from the pas-
 160

THE ARYAN RACE.

toral phase of society, — the simplest and most primitive
method under which great bodies of men could be organ-
ized into national groups. Materially they all made great
and highly important progress. Politically they remained
almost stagnant. The simplicity of their system clung to
them throughout, and absolutism continued a necessary
phase of their national organization. The people sub-
mitted without a struggle, because their souls were bound
in the same fetters that confined their bodies.

We may briefly advert to yet another national develop-
ment of the pastoral tribes, from the interesting evidence
to be gleaned from its literary remains and its present
belief. The Hebrew people had distinctively a patriarchal
organization, and their religious ideas present traces of
ancestor-worship. Abraham was and is looked upon as
the father of the race, its remote ancestor. It is not
Abraham, however, but the god of Abraham, or rather a
compound of this deity wdth the god of Moses, that is
worshipped to-day by the Jews. The indication is strong
that this special god of the Hebrew patriarch, the family
god of Abraham, with whom he conversed and held per-
sonal relations, represented an ancestral divinity. The
particular Jehovah of the Hebrews was the Jahveh of
Moses, the family god of the Mosaic clan, as is clearly
indicated in the Biblical narrative. He expanded with the
growth of the Hebrew intellect into the supreme ruler of
heaven and earth, yet to a very late day the Hebrews
regarded him as the special deity of their race, their
patriarchal divinity.

Coming now to the consideration of the American tribes,
it is of high interest to perceive that they possessed the
same type of family organization as that of Asia and
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 161

Europe, and that in this respect they were considerably
advanced beyond the patriarchal system, and closely ap-
proached, though they did not quite reach, the clan type of
the Aryans. Great differences in this respect, however,
prevailed in different parts of America, some tribes being
much more advanced than others. The barbarian tribes
of North America, usually classed as in the savage hunting-
stage, yet really to a considerable extent settled and agri-
cultural in condition, were organized on a definite clan-
system, — a compound of kindred families like that of the
Aryan village. This Indian organization, while closejy
resembling, differed in some important respects from the
Aryan system. It was, indeed, intermediate between the
patriarchal and the clan system, and represented an in-
teresting phase in the natural development of human
institutions.

Communism prevailed to a greater extent than with the
Aryans. Not only land communism, but household com-
munism existed with many of the tribes, and the isolation
of the household and the tyranny of the house-father, so
marked in the Aryan organization, does not appear in the
Indian. Among the Iroquois of the North several families
inhabited the same dwelling, with little separation of
household rights; and in the case of the Pueblo Indians
of New Mexico, whole tribes, numbering several thousands
of individuals, are still found dwelling in single great habi-
tations. With these tribes there is no division of the
landed property, and in this respect their organization is
distinctly patriarchal.

With the Indians of the southern United States, how-
ever, the Creek confederacy and the neighboring tribes,
whose habits were much more agricultural than in the case

11
 162

THE ARYAN RACE.

of the northern tribes, an interesting advance in social and
industrial conditions is indicated, their organization very
closely approaching that of the Aryan village. Here the
households were separate ; and while the soil was common
property, each family cultivated a separate portion of it,
and was sustained in its claim to the use and products of
this family field. In one respect only did the industrial
organization differ from that of the Aryans. Each family,
while controlling the produce of its own field and its own
labor, was obliged to place a defined portion of the product
in a village storehouse, whose stores were laid up for the
good of the whole community. Hunters were also obliged
to place there a portion of their game. This provident
institution, resembling that of whose existence in Egypt
we have evidence in the scriptural story of Joseph, consti-
tuted a form of taxation for the public good, and seems
to indicate an advance in political conditions beyond the
Aryan community, in which no such custom existed. In
reality, however, it signifies a lower stage of development.
It was a remnant of the general communism of the patri-
archal stage of association, and one which seems to have
worked adversely to the interests of American liberty.

This industrial condition extended farther north than
would be imagined from what is generally known of In-
dian history. Historians of Virginia and Maryland state
that the Indians of those localities had the custom of di-
viding their lands into family lots, and possessed common
storehouses, in which a portion of the food had to be
placed, under control of the sachem, whose power was
to some degree absolute.

This brings us to a consideration of the political organi-
zation of the Indian tribes. It must be borne in mind,
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 163

however, that in the Indian, as in the Aryan community,
there was no such definite organization as is produced by
a body of written laws. Custom was the only law of
these communities, and there was doubtless considerable
variation between different tribes. Yet the general prin-
ciple of organization was everywhere the same. The sys-
tem was an elastic one, which might stretch considerably,
but could not easily break.

One marked feature of the Indian organization was the
existence of two sets of officers, with definitely separated
functions. These were the sachems and the chiefs, — the
former distinctively peace-officers, the latter the leaders in
war. These officers were elected; and in the elections
it is of interest to find that the women of the clan had
a vote as well as the men. "Woman-suffrage is apparently
a very old institution on American soil. The principle of
choice of these two sets of officers, however, was very
different. The war-chiefs were elected for personal valor,
and there might be several of them in the clan. The
sachemship alone was a hereditary office, and needed to
be permanently filled; the new incumbent being usually,
though not necessarily, chosen from the family of the de-
ceased sachem, and perhaps vaguely representing the
clan ancestor. The government of the clan was in the
hands of all its adult members, male and female ; while
the tribe, made up of a number of clans, was governed
by a council composed of the sachems and chiefs, and
the confederacy, where such existed, by a council of the
sachems of its constituent tribes.

No such definite arrangement existed in the Aryan clan.
The principal chief there also probably had a hereditary
claim to his office ; but he was not distinctively a peace-
 164

THE ARYAN RACE.

officer, like the sachem, but a leader in war, and the council
of freemen formed the executive body in matters of peace.
His power was not distinctly marked off from that of chiefs
chosen for personal valor or warlike ability only, and in
time the distinction may have become wholly lost; the
ancestral claim of the chief, which was never very strong,
vanishing completely.

The Indian organization indicates an intermediate con-
dition between the patriarchal and the Aryan village com-
munity. In the sachem we have the patriarch, shorn of
some of his powers, yet not reduced to the mere war-leader
of the Aryan clan. One important remnant of his old
power existed in his control of the public storehouse. As
the latter appears to represent a partial survival of the
original general communism of the patriarchal tribe, so the
control of it by the sachem represents the original control
by the patriarch of all the wealth of the tribe. In neither
case was this an ownership; it was simply a control for
the good of the community. The mico — or sachem — of
the Creek communities had no claim to the treasures in the
storehouse, but had complete control over them. These
had assumed the shape of a general taxation for the public
good, and he was the general executive officer of the com-
munity, with a considerable degree of arbitrary power in
his administration. His government, however, Avas con-
trolled by the village council, which met to discuss every
question of equity and to try every case of crime.

There was one further feature of interest in the Indian
organization to which we must now advert, — that of their
religious conceptions. Among the savage tribes of the
North, Shamanism appears to have been the prevalent faith,
and sorcery the prevalent practice. The medicine-man
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 165

was the religious dignitary, his influence over the tribe
being that of fear rather than of awe and spiritual dignity.
The worship of ancestors is not indicated, while no ele-
vated religious conceptions are displayed. A vague poly-
theism seems to have existed, with belief in a “Great
Spirit ” and a series of lesser gods ; yet this was undefined,
and nothing that can be called a mythology had arisen.

Among the southern tribes, however, a very different
state of religious belief prevailed. They possessed a
mythological religious faith, with the sun for supreme
deity, while their worship was conducted with all the
ostentation of temples, high-priest, and a considerable
priestly establishment. The democratic religious system
of the Aryans did not exist among them. Their religion
was aristocratic in tendency, had a vigorous influence over
the minds of the people, and afforded a ready instrument
for their subjection. While, indeed, there was a high-
priest, the mico was the real head of the religious hie-
rarchy, and added to his temporal influence the power
arising from spiritual dignity. The patriarchal position
of spiritual head of the tribe adhered to him, though the
ancestral worship, to which he may have owed his original
religious authority, had vanished.

The final outcome of this condition of affairs appears in
a tribe to the west of the Creeks, the Natchez. The gov-
ernment of this tribe was an absolute tyranny, the power
of the ruler being based on his religious dignity. He had
become “The 81111,” a god on earth, and the people were
slaves to his will. There was an intermediate class of
nobles, — perhaps the remnant of the former council; but
“ The Sun,” the earthly representative of the supreme
deit}', was absolute over the entire community. The
 166

THE ARYAN RACE.

organization of this tribe presented some other interesting
features, which we have not space to describe, but which
were in conformity with the principles above indicated.
It constituted a patriarchal despotism in close conformity
with those of Asia.1

As to the origin of this peculiar state of government
and religion among the southern Indians, so different in
some respects from those of the wild tribes of the North,
we have much warrant to consider it a survival of the
organization of that vanished race known as the “ Mound-
Builders,” which at one time occupied the whole valley of
the Mississippi and its tributaries, but which seems to have
been dispossessed by the bordering savage tribes, partly
annihilated, and perhaps partly crowded back into the
southern range of States, wThere it left its descendants
in the Natchez, the Creeks, and others of the southern
tribes.

A brief glance at the Indian civilizations of Mexico and
Peru will lead us to conclusions like those above reached.
In Mexico absolutism was not fully declared. The Mon-
tezuma, the spiritual and temporal superior, was controlled
by a council, — the survival of the old tribal assembly. Yet
he was rapidly advancing toward complete absolutism at
the period of the Spanish invasion. The storehouse of the
northern tribes was here represented by an extended sys-
tem of taxation in kind, over which he had full control,
while his position as supreme pontiff gave him an influence

1 For fuller information concerning these interesting institutions of
the American Indians, the reader may be referred to Jones’s “ Antiqui-
ties of the Southern Indians,” in which the organization of the Creeks
and Natchez is fully described, and Morgan's “ Ancient Society,” which
gives valuable information in regard to the Iroquois confederacy and th?
general governmental relations of the Indian tribes.
 THE COUKSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 167

which threatened to overthrow the feudal power of the
nobility.

Offline PrometheusTopic starter

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #16 on: June 15, 2019, 09:24:31 PM »
0

In Peru existed an absolutism as entire as that vre have
seen among the Natchez. The Inca was autocratic both
in religion and in government. He was the descendant of
the gods and a god himself, whose mandate none dared
question. A nobility existed, but it wras a nobility with-
out authority, except such as emanated from the Inca.
The land and all its products were at his command. Vil-
lage establishments existed, with division of family lots;
but a large section of the land belonged to the Inca and
the church, and was worked by the people for their benefit.
The product of the royal and Church lands was stored in
great magazines, the direct counterpart of the storehouse
of the North, since their contents were held for the good
of the whole community, though subject to the Inca’s
absolute control. It was unquestionably the spiritual dig-
nity of the emperor, in all the civilizations named, that
caused the entire submission of the people to his will, and
that subordinated the nobility as fully in the peaceful
empire of China as in the warlike empire of Peru. It is
surprising to find so close a conformity existing in the
principles of Indian organization throughout the wide
range of North and South America. Nothing could show
more clearly the supreme influence of natural law over the
development of human institutions.

Yet there was another agency necessary to the produc-
tion of the final effect, of the utmost importance in this
connection, — that of war. Much as human hostility and
bloodshed may be deprecated, the fact is unquestionable
that to it wre owe all accelerated steps of human develop-
ment. Even in this advanced age, wrar was necessary for
 168

THE ARYAN RACE.

the rapid annihilation of slavery in America, and has
yielded within a few years a degree of political and indus-
trial progress which otherwise might have taken centuries.
In savage and barbarian communities it is the all-essential
element of progress. The conservative clinging to old
conditions and institutions, which is yet vigorous in modem
nations, was a hundredfold more so in the early stages of
human progress, and war was the only agent sufficiently
radical and energetic to overthrow old ideas and customs,
and reorganize society on a new basis.

AVe can here but briefly glance at its general effects.
One of the first and most important of these is to increase
the authority of a successful chief and to bring new tribes
under his control, either as allies or as conquered subjects.
The equality of the freemen of antique communities was
rudely broken into in states of war. The patriarchal tribe
at once became an army, and was subjected to army disci-
pline, which included autocratic power in its chief. On
regaining a state of peace this absolutism of the chief over
his followers did not entirely vanish, while it remained
strong over the conquered tribes. The general effects of
war at that stage of human culture were the following:
The principle of human equality was dissipated, and society
divided into classes, composed of the principal chief, or
king ; the secondary chiefs, or nobles ; the freemen, of the
conquering tribes ; and the subjects, or slaves, of the con-
quered tribes. Some such division seems to have been an
inevitable consequence of continued war, and appears as
well in the development of Aryan as of patriarchal institu-
tions ; and in every instance some condition approximat-
ing to that of feudalism seems to have emerged. It existed
in Mexico at the era of the Spanish conquest. It had very
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 169

probably existed in Peru at an earlier period. Indications
of its existence in Egypt and China appear. And in the
empire of Japan it continued in existence until very re-
cently. But in every instance it has disappeared under
the growing power of the king. In Egypt and China we
perceive the monarch of a province gradually extending
his authority over the whole country by successful war.
A similar phenomenon appears in Mexico and Peru. In
every such case the chiefs of the conquered tribes became
the nobles of the new empire, with some remnant of au-
thority. But in all the cases mentioned, the power of the
nobles gradually vanished, and that of the monarch became
absolute.

This phenomenon was undoubtedly due to the religious
position of the monarch of these patriarchal empires.
Where the body would have vigorously resisted, the soul
sank in powerless slavery. In every one of the four em-
pires named, the emperor was supreme pontiff, the head
of the religious establishment, the son and representative
of the gods, and the connecting link between earth and
heaven. It was the recognition by the people of this
spiritual dignity in the emperor, their superstitious awe,
and the moral support which they gave him in his encroach-
ments upon their liberties, that rendered the resistance of
the nobility unavailing. Step by step they sank until they
became ciphers in the state, with nothing but a title to
distinguish them from the people. This is the condition
which exists to-day in China, where the nobility and the
people stand on an equal footing in respect to the authority
of the emperor.

A highly interesting recent case in point is that of
Japan. Our early historical knowledge of that empire
 170

THE ARYAN RACE.

reveals a strong feudal nobility, with a spiritual emperor
of reduced authority. A powerful chief, the Tycoon, or
Shogun, through the influence of his position as head of
the army, succeeded in robbing the Mikado of nearly all
his temporal authority, and taking the reins of power into
his own hands, leaving to the titular emperor little more
than his title. But the people remained spiritual subjects
of the Mikado, their souls in submission to him, while
only their bodies were governed by the Tycoon. This
powerful basal support has enabled the spiritual emperor,
during the disturbances caused by the forced opening of
Japan to foreign intercourse, to overthrow his rival, bring
to an end the feudal institution, and make himself unques-
tioned autocrat of Japan. After a long interregnum
patriarcliism has there reached its inevitable result, — that
of the spiritual and temporal absolutism of the emperor.
The patriarchal empire, while naturally the simplest in
organization and the easiest established, was one that
tended inevitably to autocracy and subjection. For the
establishment of liberty in civilization the growth of a
widely different system was necessary. And this we find
in the Aryan organization.

It is of high interest to perceive the great degree of con-
formity that existed in the unconscious development of
human institutions. Patriarcliism seems to have always
evolved as the first stage beyond savagery. TTe find it
widely disseminated in Asia and northeastern Africa, with
its final culmination in despotic governments. Throughout
America society, under the influence of agricultural indus-
tries, had advanced a stage beyond patriarcliism. Yet the
civilizations there arising tended inevitably toward abso-
lutism. For the establishment of democratic institutions a
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 171

further step of advance in barbarian organization was nec-
essary ; this step forward we have next to consider.

The description above given of the political characteris-
tics of the other barbarian and civilizing tribes of mankind
is of importance from their marked contrast to the Aryan
condition, and as indicating the special features to which
we owe the Aiyan type of civilization. This t}rpe, we ma}T
say here, was overturned in two of the Aryan empires,— the
Persian and the Macedonian, — which deliberately adopted
the Oriental S}Tstem, and maintained it by the power of the
sword and by the fact that their subjects were largely
Semitic and long accustomed to despotic rule. It was
partly overturned in the Roman empire, as a result of con-
tinual war and the subjection of the State to the army and
its chief, though the senate of Rome kept intact the princi-
ple of the Aryan assembly to the last, and the emperors
never succeeded in their efforts to attain spiritual authority
and to command the worship of their people. In no other
Aryan nation has the effort to kill out the spirit of ancient
Arya attained any marked success. Democracy and decen-
tralization have unyieldingly opposed the efforts of aris-
tocracy and centralization.

It is singular within what definite limits human progress
has been confined. In every case of development be}Tond
the savage state we find the family organization gradually
unfolding into patriarchism. In two families of mankind,
the Asiatic Mongolian and the Semitic, progress stopped
at this point, in conformity with the pastoral character of
their industries, and patriarchal civilizations arose, their
early development being due to the simplicity of their sys-
tem, and the ease and completeness with which it permitted
the control, movement, and subordination of large bodies
 172

THE ARYAN RACE.

of men. In two other families, the American and the
Aryan, development proceeded further as a result of the
change from the nomadic pastoral to the agricultural con-
dition, and produced the clan or village system ; and it is
remarkable, considering the impossibility of intercourse
between these two races, how closely their organizations
resembled each other. In both we find the village system,
the democratic assembly and election of officers, the com-
bination of families into clans, of clans into tribes, of tribes
into confederacies. In both, the organization of the peo-
ple was personal, not territorial. In both, communism in
landed property prevailed. In both, patriarcliism existed
to the extent that a certain family in each clan was con-
sidered of purest descent, and usually furnished the clan
rulers. Yet, as we have shown, the American system
retained the principle of communism in a much greater
degree than the Aryan, and this communism extended to
religion. The democratic system of Aryan worship had
not appeared, the sachem was at the head of the spiritual
establishment of the more civilized tribes, and he became
the representative of the Sun, as the Egyptian Pharaoh did
of Osiris, and the Chiuese emperor of the vaguely defined
heaven deity, while absolutism appeared as a direct con-
sequence of this spiritual autocracy.

The distinctiveness of the Aryan organization lay in its
complete development of the clan-system, its suppression
of community in property beyond partial land-communism,
and its almost complete suppression of religious commu-
nism. In ancient Aiya each house was a temple, each
hearthstone an altar, each house-father a priest, each fam-
ily a congregation, with its private deity and its private
ritual of worship. Some minor degree of communism
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 173

existed in the general ancestor-worship of the clan and
in the less influential worship of the elemental deities ; but
the hearth-spirit seems to have been the favorite god of
the Aryan, and a remarkable decentralization in religion
prevailed. jNo people has ever existed more free in soul
from the reins of spiritual authority. The Aryan house-
father was a freeman before the court of Heaven, as he
was in the assembly of his tribe. It was impossible for
any ruler to hold him fettered body and soul like the sub-
ject of an Oriental monarchy. Mentally he was in eternal
rebellion against tyranny. And it is to this that we owe
the political liberty of modern Europe and America. Yet
the decentralized and democratic organization of the
Aryans was strongly opposed to that concrete and definite
association in large, settled masses which seems everywhere
to have been a necessary preliminary to civilization. A
considerable degree of political consolidation has every-
where preceded material progress, and to this the Aryan
spirit was vigorously opposed. It is one of our purposes
in this inquiry to trace how this opposition was overcome,
and how the village community developed into the State.

IVe have already in previous sections described to some
extent the Aryan tribal organization, — the political system
which prevailed in ancient Arya, and of which indications
appear in the early history of all the branches of the race.
It is a problem of interest to trace the evolution of the
family into the clan, of patriarchism into democracy. In
the largely patriarchal Highland tribes of Scotland there
existed minor groups of fifty or sixty clansmen, with a
particular chief, to whom their first duty was due. This
is analogous to the Slavonic house community, whose
members range from ten to sixty in number. When
 174

THE ARYAN RACE.

grown too large, a swarming to found new families takes
place. But this in itself does not break up the close
patriarchal family relation. Two further steps are neces-
sary to clanship, — the apportionment of a separate lot of
land to each new family, and the development of a system
of home worship.

This is what occurred in the Aryan clans, each of which
was formed of a group of several families descended from
a common ancestor and with a separate organization of its
own. It was ruled by an assembly of the house-fathers ;
though this mode of government was gradually subordi-
nated to that of the chief, elected by the assembly, but
usually from a privileged family. It had its system of
clan-worship, its common burial-place, and its common
landed property. There was no occasion for any house-
holder to make a will. The property-rights of a deceased
member descended to his fellow-clansmen. Xo definite
legislation existed. The clan was governed by a series of
ancient customs, the growth of centuries of usage. The
assembly was an executive, not a legislative bod}7, though
it seems to have legislated sufficiently to meet business
exigencies not previously provided for. To these clan
conditions must be added another of considerable import-
ance,— that of the duty of common defence, common re-
venge, and common responsibility. Each clansman was
bound to defend his fellows, to exact retribution, in money
or blood, for injury to a fellow, and was himself respon-
sible for any criminal act committed by a member of his
clan. The whole clan of a murderer was held accountable
for the murder, and blood-revenge might be taken upon
any member of the offending clan. Xo true sense of indi-
viduality existed. Each clan was an individual, and the
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 175

whole clan, or any part of it, was responsible for the acts
of any of its members. On the other hand, damages
awarded to any person for injury received, belonged not
to him, but to his clan. It was the duty of each clan to
restrain its .members from crime, and this duty was ac-
centuated by a general responsibility.

Though we cannot look into ancient Arya itself, wre can
perceive these conditions as they left their mark on subse-
quent Aryan law. In old Anglo-Saxon law, for instance,
the duty of each clan to act as a police upon its members,
its money responsibility for any crime committed by a
member, and its equal share in damages awarded to a
member, are clearly shown. But the traces of this cus-
tom have descended still lower, and may be found rather
widely spread to-day in the system of the vendetta or
blood-revenge, which exists among all half-civilized Aryan
peoples. AVe know to what an extent it formerly pre-
vailed in Corsica, from which point it still extends as far
east as Afghanistan. In this custom it is the duty of
every member of a family, one of whose near kindred has
been murdered, to exact blood-revenge from any member
of the murderer’s family. The Southern United States
were the seat of a well-developed vendetta system of this
character in the ante-bellum days, and cases yet occasion-
ally crop out to show that the spirit of antique Aryanism
is yet alive in the benighted regions of this country.

As for the tribal combination of the Aryan clans, it is
doubtful if it existed as a permanent group in ancient
Arya ; and the confederacy of tribes arose only under the
influence of migration and warfare. It appeared among
the Teutonic people only after they were forced into strong
combinations by long conflict with Rome It may be fur-
 176

THE ARYAN RACE.

ther said of the clan-organization that it was vigorously
maintained. None could leave it without permission from
the council, aud no new member could be admitted without
a ceremony of initiation. The clan-council seems in some
cases, or among certain tribes, to have been limited in
number. Evidences exist of an ancient council of five in
Greece, Rome, and Ireland. This limitation does not ap-
pear elsewhere. It should also be said that, in addition to
the agriculturists, the clan contained hereditary artisans.
Commercial pursuits, however, such as the business of the
grain-dealer, do not seem to have been hereditary.

From what has been said, it will appear evident that the
antique clan-organization was one of very great simplicity.
There was nothing that could be called criminal law,
though there were many rules of business procedure.
There was no legislator and no executive. Each clan
took on itself the duty of punishing crime against itself.
It was not the duty either of chief or council to see that
justice was done between persons. The council mainly
concerned itself with the care of the common property and
with the good of the clan as a whole. The chief was
personally active only as a war-leader. He had no special
duty or authority in peace. Of courts, laws against crime,
or officers of justice, we have no indications. The family
was under the autocratic control of the house-father. Re-
venge for wrong was the duty of the kindred of the injured
person, who might exact damages in property or in kind.
Injury from outside the clan it was the duty of every
clansman to avenge.

The military system was as simple as the civil. The
clan was the basal unit of the arm}7, and marched to war
under its chosen chief. A group of such clans, under a
 THE COUKSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 177

tribal chief, formed an army. Every freeman was a sol-
dier. The military system existed ready formed in the
civil. This is clearly indicated in the Celtic and the Teu-
tonic warlike organizations ; and an interesting evidence
of the existence of a similar system in Greece is given in
the Iliad, in which old Nestor tells Agamemnon to muster
his men by phyla1 and by phratra,1 so that each clans-
man might support his fellows in the ranks. Of the early
Roman system we are in ignorance.

Yet another survival of the ancient clan-s}Tstem may be
spoken of here, —that of the co-operative guild, or trade,
which existed in Greece' and Rome, in old Ireland, and
was largely developed in Middle-Age Europe. A similar
system exists in Russia to-day, where its development from
the village community organization is very evident. In
addition to the communistic guilds of workmen in the
cities, many villages are arranged on the principle of
communistic artisanship. AYe are told that there are Rus-
sian villages where only boots are made, others whose in-
habitants are all smiths, and some, indeed, which contain
only communistic beggars.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #17 on: June 15, 2019, 09:28:10 PM »
0

This review of the system of clanship as a political con-
dition may be followed by a consideration of the later
stages of growth in Aryan institutions. The clan-system
in its purity was adapted only to a barbaric stage of so-
ciety. Further development could take place only through
the entrance of new elements into the situation. It may
be said here, however, that in Attic Greece a vigorous
republic was established, that differed in organization from
the ancient tribal system in only one essential particular, —
that of the replacement of family by territorial relations;

1 Sub-divisions of the tribe.

12
 178

THE ARYAN RACE.

and that the great republic of the United States is but an
expansion of this idea. Communism has died out, the
council is composed of elected representatives instead of
the whole body of freemen, and men are grouped in terri-
torial divisions instead of kindred groups; but with these
exceptions the political system of the United States con-
stitutes a direct development of the method of organiza-
tion of our remotely prehistoric ancestors.

The clan-element which gave rise to the historic devel-
opment of Aryan institutions was that of chieftainship.
It was an element of individualism placed side by side with
that of communism. It was an inevitable outcome of the
situation, and one destined, with the aid of warlike aggres-
sion, to carry the Aryans far forward on the road of
progress. To its evolution our attention must .now be
turned. In process of time the idea of kinship became
more and more of a fiction in the Aryan clan. The family
had its dependents, and in the warlike period its slaves
and freedmen. The clan in like manner had its depend-
ents, wdio after three generations of service acquired a
hereditary right in the soil. The increase of this alien
element exerted a very important' influence upon the his-
tory of Greece and Rome, as we shall see further on. It
will suffice here to say that the wealth and superior posi-
tion of the chief enabled him to surround himself with a
larger body of dependents than was possible to ordinary
freemen. His estate was apparently an independent house-
hold, organized on the old patriarchal system, with its own
lands, its own cattle, and its own group of slaves and
laborers. It was a house community on a large scale.
This state of affairs, if not originated, was certainly en-
hanced by war.
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 179

Nor was it alone the hereditary and the elected chiefs
who acquired this special importance. Any one with war-
like reputation enough to attract followers could gather
around him a body of retainers, mainly composed of war-
like youths who were ripe for battle. And there was no
hindrance whatever to such a person separating from the
village and starting an independent establishment. Over
such retainers the chief acquired an authority like that of
the house-father over the famity. He was their absolute
lord, to the power of life and death. They could leave
his service if they wished, but were the subjects of his will
while they remained. The tie of connection was a tie of
honor, and its strength may be seen in the ardent devotion
of the Teutonic and Celtic clansmen to the cause of their
chief.

The incessant wars that prevailed during the period of
migration added greatly to the power and influence of the
chiefs. To those with hereditary title to their chieftain-
ship were added those elected for their valor, and perhaps
those who gained influence through their wealth and per-
sonal powers of attraction. Through the above-named
influences the community gradually became divided into
the three classes of nobles, freemen, and slaves. Not
that the nobles had any political authority over the free-
men, or could set aside the voice of the assembly; their
dignity was solely personal. Yet war and conquest had
their inevitable effect in adding to the inequality in wealth
and power. The chief naturally seized the lion’s share of
the spoil, and used it to increase the number of his fol-
lowers. And subject-villages became subordinate to him
personalty rather than to the clan. Over these he gained
some degree of political authority and rights of taxation.
 130

THE ARYAN RACE.

Step by step the ancient system became subverted, and
a new S3Tstem of individual authority established, as war
gave the warrior precedence over the citizen. Indications
of this growth of aristocracy can be seen in every branch
of the Aryan race, from the Rajput nobility of India, to
the chiefs of Greece, Rome, and Germai^, and the so-
called kings of Ireland.

Maine says of the Irish chiefs that though they formed
to some extent a class apart, they stood in closer relation
to the septs they presided over than to one another.
There is some reason to believe that the tribal chief had
gained a portion of the authority of the Druids, and acted
as priest and judge as well as war-chief. The popular
assembty, so powerful in Greece and Rome, had lost all
judicial authority over the Irish Celts. Property was
rapidly losing its communistic character. The chief
claimed ownership of large individual tracts, as well as
certain rights in the communal lands ; villagers claimed to
own the communal lots they had long cultivated ; and a
system of petty usurpation had set in, apparent to a
greater or less degree in all Aryan regions, that threat-
ened in time to completely overturn the old system of
land-holding. To it, aided greatly by war and the seizure
of large conquered estates, we owe the establishment of
feudalism,—the natural outcome of Aiyau communism
and chieftainship.

The political development of Greece and Rome is of
interest in this connection, as indicating one of the two
natural methods of unfoldment of the Aryan S3Tstem. It
is the development due to the influences of cityT life as
contrasted with that arising from the agricultural condi-
tion. Its purest display is that seen in Attica. Here we
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 181

have to do with a sea-going commercial people, industrial
in habit, except to the extent that necessity drove them to
war. Into the active city that naturally arose under these
conditions, aliens crowded from all sides. Yet the early
form of government was strictly an organization of gentes,
or clans, the old Aryan personal system which had held
its own in the formation of the civic government. To the
new conditions it quickly proved inadequate. The great
influx of strangers, members of no gens, and jealously
excluded from gentile privileges, in time brought the gov-
ernment into the hands of a few ancient families, who
conducted it on the old clan-system, except to the extent
that the chiefs of the gentes acquired political authority
and replaced the ancient democratic by an autocratic rule.
The growth of chieftainship can be clearly seen in the
story of the Iliad, it being highly probable that the
“kings” of old Greece had but the standing of tribal
chiefs, with an authority augmented by the warlike sub-
jection of neighboring clans and the adherence of alien
dependents, while the voice of the assembly had become
a mere agreement in the proposals of the chief.

Undoubtedly there was a strong pressure from the alien
population of the city of Athens to gain a share of politi-
cal rights, and as strong a determination of the gentes
to hold the reins of power. It became more and more
evident, as the difficulty grew more urgent, that some
reform must be adopted, and several measures were pro-
posed by influential chiefs or lawgivers. The first of this
is a traditional one, ascribed to Theseus. lie sought to
consolidate the tribes into a nation, with one instead of
many councils. lie also attempted to divide the people
into the three classes of nobles, husbandmen, and artisans.
 182

THE ARYAN RACE.

This legendary division was found in existence in Attica
in the seventh century b. c. But the gentile system of
organization was in full vogue at that period. At a later
date we find the people gradually overthrowing the usurped
authority of their chiefs. The basileus, or king, lost his
weak priestly authority, and was thenceforth called archon,
or civil ruler. Later again this hereditary life-office was
made elective, and limited to ten years. Finally it was
made annual, and divided among nine arehons. Thus the
partly overthrown authority of the popular assembly was
gradually resumed, and the will of the people became the
law in Attica.

The second definite effort at political reform was that
of Solon, who divided the people into classes on the basis
of property. This, however, did not do away with the
division into gentes. The assembly under his laws
gained increased, or at least better defined, rights, and
became an elective, a legislative, and to some extent a
governing body. But the bottom of the difficulty was not
touched by these reforms, and could not be while the gen-
tile families held all power. The final reform was that
made by Cleisthenes (509 b.c.). He divided the people
on a strictly territorial basis, without regard to their ties
of kindred. Abolishing the four ancient Ionic tribes, he
formed ten new tribes, which included all the freemen of
Attica. The territory was divided into a hundred denies
or townships, care being taken that the demes of each
tribe should not be adjacent. It was a distinct effort
thoroughly to break up the old clan-system. Each citizen
was required to register and to enroll his property in his
own deme, without regard to his ties of kindred. Each
deme had rights of self-government in local matters, while
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 183

controlled in national matters by the decision of the State
government. Under this institution arose the primal re-
public, the measure and model of all subsequent republi-
can governments. This reform was undoubtedly made in
response to the demand and sustained by the power of the
alien people of Attica, who must now have been suffi-
ciently numerous to defy the gentes.

It is of interest to find that the government of Rome,
without any knowledge of what was taking place in Ath-
ens, passed through essentially similar steps of develop-
ment. In fact, the formation of territorial government in
Rome is claimed to have preceded its establishment in
Athens. It was a natural and inevitable line of civic
growth. The same difficulty arose in Rome as in Athens.
The inflow of aliens brought a strong pressure to bear on
the system of gentes. The aliens demanded a share in
the government, which was resisted by the clansmen.
The earliest effort at reform is traditionally ascribed to
Kuma, who is said to have classified the people according
to their trades and professions. This failed to produce
any definite effect, and the Romans were still divided into
the patricians, the old gentile clans, with full control of
government; their clients, or dependents ; and the plebs,
or commons, the new class of aliens, without a voice in
political concerns.

To overcome the discord that arose from this state of
affairs Servius Tullius (576-533 b.c.) instituted a reform
closely similar to that of Cleistlienes. lie divided the
territory of Rome into townships or parishes, and the peo-
ple into territorial tribes, which crossed the lines of the
gentes. Each citizen had to enroll himself and his prop-
erty in the city ward or the external township in which he
 184

THE ARYAN RACE.

resided. This monarch is also credited with the establish-
ment of a new popular assembly, which abrogated that of
the gentes, and admitted each freeman to a voice in the
government. Unfortunately, in addition to this wise ar-
rangement he made a second division on a property basis,
— establishing live classes according to the amount of their
respective property. This mischief-making scheme separ-
ated the people at once into an aristocracy and a common-
alty on the line of wealth, and gave the impulse to a struggle
that continued for centuries. In Rome, as in Greece, we
find the people gradually rising in power, and the govern-
ment becoming a more and more declared democracy,
though the struggle was here a very bitter and protracted
one. It was finally brought to an end by the inordinate
growth of the army and of the power of its leaders, by
whom a vigorous despotism was established.

In Greece, however, the power of the people grew rap-
idly, all aristocratic authority quickly disappeared, and a
disposition manifested itself to combine the several minor
states into a confederacy, with a general democratic gov-
ernment. The antique Aryan system was here expanding,
under the strict influence of natural law, into an ancient
counterpart of the modern United States. Unfortunately
for the liberties of mankind, it was overthrown by the
sword of Rome ere it had grown into self-sustaining
strength. During these many changes the ancient gentes
continued to exist as separate religious organizations; but
their antique political and communal constitution utterly
vanished.

In the political development of the Teutonic tribes widely
different conditions appeared. Their industries continued
agricultural, and their unfoldment was more strictly in the
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 185

line of the village system. Territorial government re-
mained subordinate to personal government. The power-
ful invasions by which the empire of Rome was overthrown,
and new states founded on its ruins, naturally gave im-
mense power to the chiefs, which was increased by the
incessant wars that succeeded and continued for centuries.
The original independent establishment of the chief ex-
panded into the feudal manor, and the chief into the feudal
lord. His power was absolute. The house-father was re-
produced in the lord of the manor. Below him were the
descending grades of wife and children, dependents and
slaves, as in the Aryan family. Around him were his re-
tainers, bound by ties of mutual honor and subject to his
will. His relation to them was that of military superior
and of chosen companion in arms. As for the constitution
of the feudal state, with its successive ranks, each lower
one being held as military subordinate to the higher, but
each, from the lowest noble to the king, being free from
any obligations beyond that of military duty, and being
absolute lord of his own territorial establishment and his
retainers, we have in it a direct expansion of the original
Aryan system, with marvellously little change in principle.
The Aryan village and tribe, with the chieftain and his
dependents and retainers, and his rights of suzerainty over
conquered villages, formed the direct though simplified
prototype of the feudal state, with its more complex system
of obligations and wider extension of authority.

In considering the development of the Aryan village-
system into the modern European state we find an inter-
esting illustration of the persistent force of archaic ideas.
Ancient Arya, as we have seen, contained, side by side, a
double system of government. The village was essentially
 186

THE ARYAN RACE.

a democracy. But beside, and perhaps to some extent
over it, was the patriarchal establishment of the chief. In
the development of the feudal state both these conditions
persisted, and the subsequent national history of Europe
has been mainly a struggle between them for precedence.
The patriarchal establishment of the chief, being the
simpler and more centralized, and being one to which war
added strength, rose first to power, and in some states de-
veloped into a degree of absolutism, though its lack of
control of the religious establishment prevented it from
becoming completely autocratic. But the democratic idea,
though slower in its development, never died out, nor did
the subjection of the people ever extend be}Tond their
oodies to their minds and souls. The eventual supremacy
of democracy was inevitable. In every era of peace it
gained vigor, and to the extent that peace became the pre-
vailing rule its demands grew more energetic and its victo-
ries more decided. At present it has risen into complete
ascendency in America, while in Europe absolutism is
shrinking before its force, and must inevitably everywhere
give way to the “ government of the people by the
people.”

With a rapid review of the political development of hu-
man civilization, this chapter may close. As we have
seen, in two regions of the world patriarchism gained
absolute supremacy, democracy failed to develop, and
three states were formed on this simple system of paternal
and spiritual absolutism, — Egypt, Babylonia, and China.
One only of these has persisted unto to-day, — that of
China; and in it not a vestige of a democratic idea has
ever made its appearance. In America the growth of
democratic institutions made greater progress, though in
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 187

the two civilizations that arose, the spiritual authority
of the emperor enabled him to completely overthrow them
in the one case, and seriously threaten them in the other.

In ancient Arya the political development of barbarism
went farther. Democracy gained a marked development
both in political and spiritual affairs; the growth of a
priestly autocracy was checked by the system of individual
worship ; and the patriarchal authority of the chief lost
much of its force. The principle of election grew upon
that of heredity. In the development of every Aryan
civilization differing conditions operated, though it is re-
markable what persistency the ancient ideas everywhere
displayed. It is not necessary here to review all the
Aryan states separately. In only two of them the ancient
Aryan ideas developed with little external interference.
One of these we have already considered, —that of Greece,
in which the development proceeded under civic and com-
mercial influences. The other is that of England, in which
the Teutonic agricultural influences mainly prevailed.

Of all the European States, that of Saxon England was
least disturbed in its development by external forces. The
Norman invasion for a time gave supremacy to patriarch-
ism ; but this gradually yielded again to the steady persis-
tence of the democratic idea. The Aryan popular assembly
held its own as the English parliament, and has, step by
step, taken control of the government, until, finally, it has
left to kingcraft only its name and its palace. Fortunately
for European liberty, the priestly establishment which
eventually arose remained definitely separate from that of
the kings, and usually hostile to it. The bodies of Euro-
peans have been ruled by the Throne, but never their souls.
Thus it was impossible that they could be reduced to the
 188

THE ARYAN RACE.

slavery of the Oriental system. Every effort of the kings
to seize spiritual authority has failed, the spirit of democ-
racy has steadily grown, and the promise is that ere many
centuries not a trace of absolutism will be left on European
soil.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #18 on: June 15, 2019, 09:29:41 PM »
0

Aryan political evolution has everywhere followed the
same general direction; but its rapidity has been greatly
affected by the conditions of society. Under the civic
institutions of Greece and Rome, democracy, territorial
division of the people, and private ownership of land
early appeared; while with the agricultural but warlike
Teutons and Celts progress in this direction has been
much slower; and among the agricultural, but peaceful
and sluggish, Hindus and Slavs, the ancient conditions
still in great part prevail. Yet in every case the general
course of evolution has been the same, and but one final
outcome can be expected to appear, — that of complete
democracy. In the patriarchal empires of Asia, on the
contrary, political evolution followed an exactly oppo-
site course, and long ago reached its inevitable ultimate
in complete absolutism. Political progress in these em-
pires has long since ceased, and can only be resumed
under the influence of Aryan ideas and a reversal of the
governmental principle which has so long held supreme
control.
 VIII.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.
ANGUAGE formed the clew through whose aid

modern research traversed the Aryan labyrinth,—
that mysterious time-veiled region in which so many won-
ders lay concealed. It cannot, indeed, be doubted that
even without the aid of language this hidden problem of
the past would have been in part solved. We have already
shown that the Aryans have much in common besides their
speech. Their industrial relations, their political systems,
their religious organization, their mythologies, their family
conditions, form so many separate guides leading to the
discovery of that remarkable ancient community. Nor is
this all. As we shall show farther on, the modern Aryans
have still other links of affinity, less direct, it is true, than
those so far traced, yet adding to the strength of the de-
monstration, and enabling us still better to comprehend the
conditions of that ancient and re-discovered community.

Yet, with all this, the fact remains that language offered
the simplest and safest path into the hidden region, and
that by comparison of words we have found out much con-
cerning the modes of life in old Arya that otherwise must
have remained forever unknown. This being the case, it
becomes a part of our task to consider the character of
the method of speech which lias proved of such remark-
able utility in the recovery of a valuable chapter of ancient
 190

THE ARYAN RACE.

history. It is known to differ in important particulars
from all other types of human language, not so much in
its words, — for there many accidental coincidences with
other languages exist, — but in its structure, in that basic
organism of thought which is clothed upon with speech as
with a garment. Yet in order properly to understand these
structural characteristics, it will be necessary briefly to re-
view the several types of speech in use by the higher ranks
of mankind. A comparison of these types will reveal, as
all philologists admit, that the Aryan is the most highly
developed method of speech, and the most flexible and
capable of all the instruments of thought }Tet devised by
mankind. In this respect, as in all the others noted, the
Aryan in its original organization was superior to the other
human races.

The types of speech in use by the barbarian and civil-
ized peoples and nations are divided by philologists into
four general classes, — the Isolating, the Agglutinative, the
Incorporating, and the Inflectional; the last being sepa-
rated into two sub-classes, the Semitic and the Aiyan,
which properly should be considered as distinct classes. Of
these methods the isolating is usually viewed as the least
progressed beyond what must have been the original mode
of speech. It is the one in use by the most persistent of
human civilizations, — the Chinese. In the language of
China we seem to hear the voice of archaic man still speak-
ing to us down the long vista of time. It is primitive, as
everything in China is primitive. Yet through the aid of
a series of expedients it has been adapted to the needs of
a people of active literary tendencies.

Philologists are generally satisfied that man first spoke
in monosyllables, each of which conveyed some generalized
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

191

information. The sentence had not yet been devised, nor
even the phrase ; and language consisted of isolated excla-
mations, or root-words, each of which told its own story,
while no endeavor was made to analyze the information
conveyed into its component elements.

Yet this idea directly affiliates the language of primi-
tive man with that of the lower animals. For the lower
animals possess a language of root-sounds, each of which
yields a vague and generalized information, or is indicative
of some emotion. Ordinarily this language consists of very
few sounds, though in certain cases it is more extended,
and is capable of conveying some diversity of information.
This is particularly the case with some of the birds. And
it is usually a language of vowels, though an approach to
consonantal sounds is frequently manifested.

Early man, according to the conclusions of philological
science, possessed a language of the kind here described,
consisting of a few calls and cries, each conveying some
general information or indicating some emotion. As man’s
needs increased, the number of these vocal utterances in-
creased correspondingly, with a growing variety of conso-
nantal sounds. In time, it is probable that a considerable
vocabulary thus came into existence, though language still
continued but little developed beyond the root-stage of
speech.

No human tribe is now iii this archaic stage of language ;
even the lowest savages have progressed beyond it. Yet
that it once everywhere existed, is believed to be fully
proved by the analysis of existing languages, in each of
which a vocabulary of roots emerges as the foundation
of all subsequent development. And that this method of
speech continued until a somewhat late period in human
 192

THE ARYAN RACE.

history seems indicated by one significant fact; this is,
that the two most ancient of civilizations—the Chinese and
the Egyptian — still possess languages which are but a
step beyond the root-stage. The indications are that these
peoples rapidly developed from barbarism into civilization
at an era when human speech was yet mainly in its archaic
stage, and were forced at once to adapt this imperfect
instrument to the demands of civilized life, without being
able to wait for its natural evolution.

The language of China is strictly monosyllabic, and its
words have the generalized force of roots. Yet these vague
words have been adapted to the expression of definite
ideas in a very interesting manner, which we may briefly
consider. The natural development of language consists
in expedients for the limitation of the meaning of words,
vague conceptions being succeeded by precise and localized
ones. This is ordinarily accomplished by the formation of
compound words, in which each element limits the mean-
ing of the others. Such an expedient has been adopted
in every language except the Chinese and its related dia-
lects. TThy it was not adopted by them, is an interesting
question, of which a possible solution may be offered.

The study of Chinese indicates that its original vocabu-
lary was a very limited one. The language seems to pos-
sess but about five hundred original words. But each of
these has several distinct meanings. The ancestors of the
Chinese people would appear to have made each of their
root-words perform a wide range of duties, instead of de-
vising new words for new thoughts. To advance beyond
this primitive stage either an extension of the vocabulary
or some less simple expedient was necessary. The Chinese
adopted a peculiar method for this purpose, the character
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

193

of which can be best shown by an illustration. We may
instance the word fao, which has the several meanings, “to
reach,” “to cover,” “to ravish,” “to lead,” “banner,”
“corn,” “way,” etc. These are modernized meanings.
Originally the significance of words was much more vague.
At present, however, the word tao, if used alone, has the
meanings above given ; and some method is requisite to
show what particular one of them is intended. The diffi-
culty thence arising is partly overcome by the device of
tones, of which eight are occasionally, and four are com-
monly used. The tone in which a word is spoken —
whether the rising, the falling, the even, or some other
inflection — indicates its particular meaning; and in this
way the five hundred original words are increased to over
fifteen hundred.

A more important device is that of combination. Two
words having some similarity or analogy in one of their
meanings are joined, and a special meaning is thus indi-
cated. Thus tli e word tao, above given, has “way” for
one of its meanings. Lu, out of its eight or ten meanings,
has also one signifying “way” or “path;” therefore
tao-lu means “way” or “road” only. So ting, having
“ to hear ” for one of its several meanings, is confined to
this meaning by the addition of keen, “to see” or “ per-
ceive.” General meanings are also gained by the same
method. Thus fa, “ father,” combined with mu, “ mother,”
yields fa-mu, “ parents.” Idling, “ light,” with sung,
“heavy,” yields khing-sung, “weight.” Gender and
some other grammatical expedients may be indicated by
the same device.

By a consideration of the above facts we can understand
why grammatical inflection was never adopted in the

in
 194

THE ARYAN RACE.

Chinese. Inflection has its origin in worcl-compouncling.
But the fathers of the Chinese people seem to have ex-
hausted the powers of word-compounding as a method of
increasing their vocabulary. Instead of coining new words
to express new things, they seem to have spread their old
words over new things, and then limited their meaning by
compounding. This gave rise to two important results.
It was necessary to retain the integrity of form and mean-
ing of the old monosyllables, since each of them formed a
definite part of so many compound words; and it became
impossible to express all the intricacy of grammatical rela-
tions by word-compounding, since this would have led to
inextricable confusion. In consequence, the expedient of
the syntactical arrangement of words to. express gram-
matical variations was adopted, and the peculiar Chinese
method of speech came into existence.

A Chinese word standing alone has no grammatical
limitation. It may be noun, verb, adjective, or adverb at
pleasure. Its sense is as indefinite as that of the English
word “ love,” which may be used at will as verb, noun, or
adjective. This generalism of sense, found in some Eng-
lish words, is common in Chinese words. The special
meaning which each word is intended to convey depends
upon its position in the sentence. Every change in its
relation to the other words of the sentence gives it a new”
sense or grammatical meaning. Chinese grammar, there-
fore, is all syntax. There is no rhetorical freedom in the
arrangement of words into sentences. They must be
placed according to fixed rules, since any variation in their
position gives a new meaning to the sentence. And not
only the parts of speech, but the number, gender, and case
of nouns, and the mood and tense of verbs, are indicated
 THE DEVELOPMENT OE LANGUAGE.

195

by the positiou of the words in the sentence, aided by the
use of certain rules of composition and of some defining
particles.

The Chinese expedient has been adopted by no other
family of language, though the Egyptian vocabulary is
almost as monosyllabic and primitive in character. Every-
where else the vocabulary seems to have been extended by
coinage of new words, and the principle of word-com-
pounding applied to other uses. The most archaic form
of the other types of language is that known as the Incor-
porating, or Polysynthetic, in use by the American tribes
and the Basques of Spain. This is a highly primitive
method, and was probably at one time widely spread over
Europe and Northern Africa, until replaced by more de-
veloped methods of speech.

In the typical incorporating method there are no words,
there are sentences only. The verb swallows up both
subject and object, with all their modifications. A Basque
speaker cannot say 44 I give.” He must say 44 I give it,”
in the one word. There is a poverty of the imagination
indicated. A hint never suffices ; no lacunoe are left for
the mind of the listener to fill up. Where we say 44 John
killed the snake,” the Basque must say 44 John, the snake,
he killed it; ” and all this is welded together into a single
complex word. This method is carried to a great extreme
in some of the American dialects. The verb absorbs not
only the subject, as in Aryan speech, but all the objects,
direct and indirect, the signs of time, place, manner, and
degree, and all the modifying elements of speech, the whole
being massed into a single utterance.

There is little sense of abstract thought in American
speech. Everything must be expressed to its utmost
 196

THE ARYAN RACE.

details. As an instance we may quote the longest word
in Eliot’s Indian Bible:   icut-ap-pe-sit-tuk-qus-sun-noo-

iceht-unk-quoh. In English we should express this by
“ kneeling down to him.” But in its literal meaning we
have, “ he came to a state of rest upon the bended knees,
doing reverence unto him.” "Whitney quotes, as a remark-
able instance of extension, the Cherokee word ici-ni-tciw-
ti-ge-gi-na-li-skaic-lung-ta-naw-ne-li-ti-se-sti, “ they will by
that time have nearly finished granting (favors) from a
distance to thee and me.”

The inordinate length to which words thus tend to
grow is somewhat reduced by an expedient of contrac-
tion. In forming the compound word the whole of the
particle is not used, but only its significant portion. Thus
the Algonkin word-sentence nadholineen, u bring us the
canoe,” is made up of vaten, “to bring;” amochol,
“canoe;” 2, a euphonic letter; and neen, “to us.”

Savage tribes generally display an inability to think
abstractly or to form abstract words, their languages in
this respect agreeing with the American. A Society
Islander, for instance, can say “dog’s tail,” “sheep’s
tail,” etc., but he cannot say “ tail.” He cannot abstract
the idea from its 'immediate relations. A Malay has no
separate word for “striking,” yet he has no less than
twenty words to express striking with various objects,
as with thin or thick wood, with the palm, the fist, a
club, a sharp edge, etc. This incapacity to express ab-
stract relations is strongly indicated in the American
languages, and indicates that they diverged into their
special t}Tpe at a very low level of human speech. The
Cherokee, for instance, can use thirteen different verbs for
various kinds of washing, but he has no word for the
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

197

simple idea of washing. He can say kutuico, “1 wash
myself; ” tcikungkala, “ I wash my clothes ; ” takuteja, “ I
wash dishes ; ” blit is quite unable to say “ I wash.”

All this indicates a very primitive stage of language, in
which every expression had its immediate and local appli-
cation, and each utterance told its whole story. There
was do division of thought into separate parts. In the
advance of thought men got from the idea “ dog” to that
of “dog’s tail,” and from that to “dog’s tail wags.”
They could not think of an action by itself, but could think
of some object in action. No doubt all language pursued
this course of development up to a certain level. Beyond
that point some families of speech began a process of
abstraction, gradually dividing thought into its constituent
elements. The American type failed to do so, but con-
tinued to add modifying elements to its verbal ideas as
the powers of thought widened, until language became a
series of complex polysyllables. This is the theory ad-
vanced by Sayce. All has continued in the original syn-
thetic plan. The secondary method of analysis has not
yet acted upon American thought.

Yet it is rather the method of language than of thought
that has remained persistent with the Americans. They
are undoubtedly able to think more analytically than they
speak. The force of their linguistic S3Tstem has held them
to a method of speech which their minds have grown be-
yond. Every tendency of their language to break up into
its elements has been checked by an incorporative com-
pounding, of which traces are yet visible. In two Amer-
ican languages, the Eskimo and the Aztec, the lowest
and one of the highest in civilized development, isolation
of word-elements has taken place. In these languages a
 193

THE ARYAN RACE.

sentence may consist of several words, instead of being
compressed into a single word. A process of abstraction
exists in the Aztec. Thus the word ome, “two,” com-
bined with yolli, “heart,” yields the abstract verb ome-
yolloa, “ to doubt.” Through methods such as this the
powers of the American type have become increased; yet
in character it directly preserves a highly primitive con-
dition of human speech.

The third type of language which we need to consider
is that known as the Agglutinative. It is the method used
by the Mongolian peoples of Europe and Asia, with the
exception of the Chinese and Indo-Chinese, by the Dravid-
ians of India, and, in a modified form, by the Malayans
of the Pacific islands.

Agglutination means simply word-compounding for
grammatical purposes, without inflectional change of form.
In this linguistic method, as in the isolating, the sep-
arate words retain their forms intact, but many of them
have lost their independence of meaning and become
simply modifying particles. To the root-words the others
are added as suffixes, with a grammatical significance.
The syntax of the Chinese system is here replaced by gram-
mar, the principle of word-compounding having gained a
new purpose or significance. In some of these languages
each verbal root may be made to express an extraor-
dinary variety of shades of meaning by the aid of suffixes.
In the Turkish each root yields about fifty derived forms.
Thus if we take the root sev, which has the general mean-
ing of “ loving,” we may obtain such compounds as sev-
mek, “ to love ; ” sev-me-mek, “ not to love ; ” sev-dir-mek,
“ to cause to love ; ” sev-in-mek, “ to love one’s self ; ” and
so on. By a continued addition of suffixes we arrive at
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

199

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
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such a cumbrous compound as sev-ish-dir-il-e-me-mek,
u not to be capable of being made to love one another.”
Tenses and moods are indicated in the same manner.
And there is a second, indirect conjugation, based on the
union of the several particles with the auxiliary u to be.”
In this manner many minute shades of meaning can be
expressed. Yet all agglutinative languages are not equally
capable in this respect. Thus the Manclm is nearly as
bare as the Chinese, while the Finnish and the Dravidian
are exceedingly rich. In these languages there is no in-
flectional variation; every word rigidly preserves its
integrity of form. Nor do the particles become welded
to the root, and lose their separate individuality, as in
Aryan speech. Each seems to exist as a distinct integer
in the mind. The only change of form admissible is a
euphonic one, in which the vowels of the suffixes vary to
conform to those of the root. Thus “ to love,” is sev-mek;
“ to write,” is yctz-mcik, —mek becoming mak in harmony
with the variation in the root-vowel. This change of
vowel is destitute of inflectional significance.

AVe have yet to deal witli the final series of languages,
— those organized on wdiat is known as the inflectional
method, in which language has attained its highest devel-
opment and is employed by the most advanced of human
races. Here, however, we have two types of language to
consider,—those known as the Aryan, and the Semitic:
the first, the method employed by the Xanthochroic divi-
sion of the Caucasians; the second, that in use by the
Arabs and other Semites of southwestern Asia.

It is of interest in this connection to perceive how greatly
the Aryan languages have prevailed over those spoken
by Yfelanochroic man, despite the probable great excess
 200

THE ARYAN RACE.

in numbers of the latter. Of distinctive Melanochroic
tongues, the only ones now in existence are the Basque
dialect of Spain, and the languages of the Semites and
Egyptians, the only Melanochroic peoples who escaped
conquest by and assimilation with the Xanthochroi.

It is assumed by many philologists, and not denied by
others, that the Aryan and Semitic types of language are
Inflectional in the same general sense, and that they may
have been derived from one original method of speech,
from which the}" have since developed in unlike directions.
l"et the differences between these two types of speech are
so radical, and the character of their inflectionalism so
essentially different, that it seems far more probable that
they have been separate since their origin, and represent
two totally distinct lines of development from the root-
speech of primitive man.

The common characteristic of Semitic and Aryan speech
is their power of verbal variation. There is no tendency
to preserve the integrity of form of their words, as in
other linguistic types. The root readily varies ; and this
variation is not euphonic, but indicates a change of mean-
ing. Similar variations take place in the suffixes, particu-
larly in Aryan speech ; and the word-compound is welded
into a single persistent word, whose elements cease to
remain distinct in thought. But aside from this common
principle of inflection, the Semitic and Aryan languages
differ widely in character, and display no other signs of
relationship.

This is what naturally might have been expected if the
Melanochroic and Xanthochroic types of mankind were
the offspring of different original races, and only mingled
after their methods of speech had become well developed.
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

201

The steps of progress of Semitic speech have not been
traced, and this linguistic method as yet 3Tields little or
no evidence concerning the origin of the Melanochroi.
The line of development of Aiyan speech is more evident.
In its most archaic form it is but a step removed from the
agglutinative Mongolian type of language, and the latter
could readily be changed into an inflectional type closely
resembling the Aryan by a single step forward in devel-
opment. This fact is in close accordance with the infer-
ence drawn in our first chapter,—that the Xanthochroi are
an outgrowth from the Mongolian race. In some of the
agglutinative tongues the principle of word-synthesis is
carried to an extreme only surpassed in the American dia-
lects, and compounds of ponderous length are produced.
The most archaic forms of Aryan speech greatly resemble
these in the extent to which synthesis is carried, and only
differ in that their root-forms have become flexible, and
that thus a new method of variation of meaning has been
introduced, and one which adds the important principle of
verbal analysis to the original one of synthesis. Thus in
language, as in other particulars, the Xanthochroic Aryans
seem a direct derivative from the Mongolian race.

If now we come to Semitic speech, we meet with a type
of language which displays no affinity to Mongolian or
Aryan speech, and indicates a distinct origin and line of
development. The suffixes and affixes which form such
essential elements of the Aryan languages are almost un-
known to the Semitic. They are used, indeed, but only
to a slight extent and as a secondary expedient. The
method of word-compounding, which is so widely used in
all the languages we have so far considered, is almost
absent from the Semitic type, which in this respect fails
 202

THE ARYAN RACE.

to come lip to the level even of the Chinese. The ruling
principle in Semitic speech is inflectionalism pure and
simple. It is characterized by an internal or vowel inflec-
tion of the root, which has proved so valuable an expedient
as greatly to reduce the necessity of word-compounding,
and render the use of suffixes and affixes unimportant.
The distinction between Aryan and Semitic inflection be-
comes thus clearly outlined. The former possesses vowel-
inflection of the root to a slight degree. Yet this seems
principally of modern origin, while the use of the suffix is
the ruling grammatical expedient. On the contrary, in
Semitic speech vowel-inflection rules supreme, and word-
compounding is so little used that it perhaps formed no
part of the original linguistic idea, but is of later
introduction.

To so great an extent do the vowels of the Semitic root
change, and so persistent are the consonants, that the lat-
ter are considered as the actual root, there being no basic
root-forms with persistent vowel or vowels. A Semitic
root thus usually consists of three consonants, and changes
its significance with eveiy variation in the vocalization of
these consonants. There is some reason to believe that
originally the roots contained two consonants only; but
at present the three consonants are almost invariably
present.

As an illustration we may offer the frequently quoted
Arabic root q-t-l, which has the general sense of “kill-
ing.” The signification of this root is variously limited by
the vowels used. Thus qatala signifies “ he kills ; ” qutilct,
u he was killed ; ” qutilu, “ they were killed ; ” uqtcd, “ to
kill; ” qatil, “ killing ; ” iqtcd, u to cause killing ; ” quad,
“murder;” qitl, “enemy;” qutl. “murderous;” and so
 THE DEVELOPMENT OE LANGUAGE.

203

on through numerous other variations. It may readily be
seen how essentially this linguistic method differs from the
Mongolian and the Aryan, with their intricate use of suf-
fixes. In the Semitic not only special modifications of
sense, but the grammatical distinctions of tense, number,
person, gender, etc., are indicated in the same manner.
The system is extended to cover almost every demand of
language. Each Arabic verb has theoretically fifteen con-
jugations, of which ten or twelve, each with its passive
form, are in somewhat common use. Suffixes, prefixes,
and even infixes are moderately employed, but Semitic
words never add ending to ending to the formation of long
and intricate compounds, as in Aryan and Mongolian
speech.

The Semitic languages, comprising the Hebrew and
Arabic, the ancient Assyrian, Phoenician, etc., are re-
markable for their rigidity. For centuries they persist
with scarcely a change. This seems, indeed, a necessary
consequence of their character. The root is the most un-
changing of verbal forms, and the root is the visible skel-
eton of every Semitic word. Hardly a single compound
Semitic word exists, while variation of form takes place
with exceeding slowness.

The Semitic type of language thus points to the speech
of primitive man as directly as does the Chinese. It is
root-language to a veiy marked extent, and does not oc-
cupy the high position in linguistic development which is
often ascribed to it. Its superiority to the Chinese consists
in the adoption of a superior expediënt, — that of root-inflec-
tion, which served all linguistic purposes, and checked fur-
ther development by rendering unnecessary the employment
of other expedients, as in the remaining types of speech.
 204

THE ARYAN RACE.

It has consequently retained its archaic method with rigid
persistency.

The Melanochroic people of Africa possess what is usu-
ally considered a distinct tyTpe of language, known as the
Hamitic, and spoken by the ancient Egyptians, the modern
Copts, and by the Berbers of the Sahara region from Egypt
to the Atlantic. These languages are related to the Semitic
family. Many of their roots are similar to Semitic roots, and
in grammatical structure there are marked traces of Semitic
affinity. Yet there are characteristics differing from the
Semitic. It may be that the two types of speech were de-
rived from a single source and have developed somewhat
differently. The Egyptian language is monosyllabic, and
its forms are almost as rigid and archaic in structure as
those of the Chinese. This monosyllabilism has been
traced by some writers to a Nigritian source. The mono-
syllabic character pertains to several of the Negro lan-
guages ; and the fact that their vocabularies differ from
the Egyptian proves nothing, since savage vocabularies
often change with great rapidity.

This suggestion is in accordance with the idea advanced
in regard to the origin of the Melanochroic race. In fact,
our consideration of the languages of mankind leads to
some interesting conclusions. The two primitive races,
the Mongolian and the Negro, probably- both used origin-
ally a root-method of speech. Each of them, according to
our view of the case, developed into a very- ancient civiliza-
tion, — the Chinese and the Egyptian. These civilizations
came into existence ere language had advanced far beyond
its archaic root-condition ; and in the adaptation of this
imperfect method of speech to the needs of man in his
earliest civilized stage, roots continued the main constit-
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

205

uent of language, and were variously dealt with to express
the multitude of new ideas that arose. The root-language
from which came that of Egypt may have, in another re-
gion, developed the highly effective system of root-inflec-
tion of Semitic speech. Alike in the Semitic and the
Hamitic linguistic types, the use of suffixes and affixes
prevails to a limited extent; and in this respect they are
in harmony with the Nigritian languages, —their possible
ancestral stock, — in which the agglutinative principle has
attained some slight development. But the separation of
these several types must have taken place at a very remote
date, while language was yet but little developed beyond
its archaic stage.

In the Mongolian languages root-inflection failed to ap-
pear, and the principle of word-compounding took its place
as the ordinary expedient. We have traced this line of
development of language through its arrested stage in
Chinese, and its unfoldment in American and Mongolian
speech, to its culmination in Aryan,— a linguistic type which
seems to be in direct continuity with the Mongolian agglu-
tinative method. This consideration leads to the same
conclusion which we reached in studying the races of man-
kind. We seem to perceive two original races, the Mongo-
lian and the Negroid, each with its archaic type of speech,
closely resembling each other originally, but pursuing differ-
ent lines of development, the former reaching its final stage
in the speech of Xanthochroic man,— the highest outcome of
the Mongolian race ; the latter in the speech of the Semites,
— the highest outcome of the Negroid race. It remains, in
conclusion of this chapter, to consider the development of
the Aryan type of speech, — the most effective instrument
of intellectual expression yet attained by man.
 206

THE ARYAN RACE.

In the Aryan languages alone has verbal analysis be-
come a prominent characteristic. In the Semitic tongues
there is no analysis, and almost no synthesis. The same
may be said of the Chinese and its cognate dialects. In
the other languages of Asia, and those of Europe and Amer-
ica, synthesis is a prevailing characteristic, it reaching its
culmination in the interminable American compounds. It
is less declared in the Mongolian tongues, but in none of
them does word-analysis appear. This is only found as an
active principle in the Aryan of all the families of speech.
In the Aryan languages it has always been a ruling char-
acteristic, though it is not strongly declared in the most
archaic of these dialects. No tendency to preserve the
integrity of form in words exists, and abrasion has gone
steadily on, reducing the length of verbal elements, and
wearing down or breaking up compound words into mono-
syllables, until some Aryan tongues have gained a moiio-
syllabilism approaching that of the Chinese. It is this
analytic tendency which has produced and constitutes the
Aryan method of inflection, and in which it is strongly con-
trasted with the vowel-inflection of Semitic speech.

From its origin, the Aryan type of speech has manifested
the double power to build up and to break down, and these
powers have been continually in exercise. It is an inter-
esting fact, however, that the building-up or word-com-
bining tendenc}7 long continued the more active, and yielded
such highly complex inflectional languages as the Sanscrit
and the Greek. The variation from the Mongolian method •
was not yet decided, and the synthetic principle continued
in the ascendency. But throughout the succeeding period,
down to the present time, the abrading or anatytic tendency
has been the more active, and languages of very simple
 THE DEVELOPMENT OE LANGUAGE.

207

structure have arisen. This is most strikingly the case in
English speech, but it is also strongly declared in the Latin
derivative languages, in modern Persian and Hindu, and to
some extent in modern Greek and German. It appears
to have met with most resistance in Slavonic speech, in
which the synthetic tendency has vigorously retained its
ascendency.

In all the ancient Aryan tongues the use of word-com-
bination for grammatical expression was vitally active.
Highly complex languages arose, which are often spoken
of with an admiration as if they had attained the perfection
of linguistic structure, and as if modern languages were
barbarous in comparison. And yët they are superior to
agglutinative speech only in the fact that they permit
verbal variation. They are cumbersome and unwieldy to
modern tongues, which have become fitted to the use of a
simpler and swifter speech.

No sooner did the vigor of word-combination grow inac-
tive, checked probably by the complexity it had evolved,
than the analytic tendency became prominent, and began
to break down the cumbrous compound words into their
elements. The pronoun was separated from the verb.
Particles were torn off and used separately. Auxiliaries
came into more frequent use. Analysis rose into active
competition with synthesis. Yet this did not proceed
rapidly in the ancient historic period. That was an age of
literary cultivation, in which language became controlled
by standards of authority, and its variation was greatly
checked. The most active analytic change was that dis-
played by the Latin, the speech of a highly practical people,
who were more attracted to ease and convenience of utter-
ance than to philosophic perfection of grammatical method.
 208

THE ARYAN RACE.

As the synthetic principle had originated during the
primal period of Aryan barbarism, and reached its highest
development during the ancient era of literary cultivation,
so a second period of barbarism seemed essential to any
rapid action of the analytic principle. This period came.
The ancient civilizations vanished, and a long-continued era
of mental gloom overspread the Aryan world. Through-
out this Middle-Age period the restraining influence of
literature ceased to act. Nearly all the literary cultivation
that remained was restricted to the classical Latin and
Greek in the West, and Sanscrit in the East. Every check
to dialectical change was removed, and language varied
with the utmost activity.

This variation, in Europe, was greatly aided by the for-
cible mingling of peoples speaking unlike dialects. In
France, Italy, and Spain the Latin became exposed to the
influence of barbarian invaders accustomed to a different
speech. The complex words, with their intricate signifi-
cance, proved a burden to these new speakers; they
became broken up into their elements.1 AYlien, at a later
period, the minds of men became again cultivated, and
thought regained some of its vanished powers, the analytic
tendency held its own ; the old synthetic process had lost
its force. Auxiliaries and words of relation came more and

1 Philologists believe that a barbarous Latin, analogous to the jargons
known as Pigeon English and Lingua Franca, became the medium of
communication between the conquerors and their subjects, the gram-
matical perfection of the classic Latin disappearing, and being replaced
by a linguistic method of great simplicity. Similar conditions may have
attended the mingling of dissimilar languages in England, Persia, and
elsewhere; yet such an influence could hut have accelerated what seems
the natural tendency of the Aryan type of language toward analytic
methods of speech, since this has shown itself in places and periods in
which no such specially favoring influence existed.
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

209

more into use. Complex ideas, instead of being condensed
into single words, as of old, were expressed by groups of
words, each of which constituted a separate element of the
idea. A distinct and highly valuable step forward in the
evolution of language had been gained. As in ancient writ-
ing the characters at first expressed ideas, then words and
syllables, and finally alphabetic sounds, so thought became
divided into its prime elements, and instead of spoken
words expressing complete ideas, as in American speech,
or sectional parts of ideas, as in agglutinative and early in-
flectional speech, they became reduced into the component
elements of ideas. A sort of chemical analysis of thought
had taken place. Thought had, if we may so express it,
been reduced to its alphabetic form.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #20 on: June 15, 2019, 09:31:34 PM »
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This, the highest, and probably the final, stage in the
evolution of language, has nowhere gained its complete
development. In some languages, as in the modern Ger-
man, which remained unaffected by transplantation and
mixture with a foreign tongue, the synthetic principle is
still vigorously active. The analytic has gained its fullest
development in modern English. This tendency, indeed,
was strongly at work upon the Anglo-Saxon long before
its intermixture with foreign elements. Of all Aryan
dialects it showed the most active native inclination to
analysis. The reduction of words to monosyllables, the
loss of inflectional expedients, and the use of separate
auxiliaries, pronouns, prepositions, etc., made considera-
ble progress in the long dark period before the Norman
Conquest. This latter event intensified the change of
method. The forced mingling of two modes of speech,
each already tending to analysis, and each with but little
literary cultivation, could not but have an important effect.

11
 210

THE ARYAN RACE.

The synthetic forms rapidly decreased, and there finally
issued a language of elementary structure, largely mono-
syllabic, almost devoid of inflection, and to some extent
displaying a reversion to the root-stage of human speech.

Such is the English of to-day, — the most complete out-
come of linguistic anatysis yet reached, the highest stage
attained in the long pathway of verbal evolution. At first
glance it seems to have moved backward instead of for-
ward. It has approached the Chinese in its loss of inflec-
tion, its monosyllabilism, and its partial replacement of
the grammatical by the syntactical arrangement of the
sentence. Yet this is no real reversion. Our pride in
the richness of Aryan speech as compared with the poverty
and imperfection of the Chinese is apt to blind us to the
fact that the Chinese system has features of decided value.
Similar features have been gained by English speech,
while none of the actual advantages of inflection have been
lost. In the English we perceive a decided advance
toward that simplicity of conditions which marks all
highest results. Nearly every inflectional expedient which
could be spared, or be replaced by an analytic expedient,
has been cast off. The inflection of nouns has almost
vanished. That of adjectives has quite disappeared.
Only in the pronouns does inflection partly hold its own.
The inflectional conjugation of verbs is reduced to a mere
shadow of its former self. The utterly useless gender-
distinctions which yet encumber the languages of Con-
tinental Europe have absolutely vanished.

Nearly all these incubi of language have been got rid of
in English, which has moved out of the shadow of the past
more fully than any other living tongue. It has in great
measure discarded what was valueless, and kept what was
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

211

valuable in inflectional speech, adopting an analytic expe-
dient wherever available, though freely using the principle
of synthetic combination of words where the latter yielded
any advantage. It stands in the forefront of linguistic
development, possessed of the best of the old and the
new, having certain links of affinity with every cultivated
type of language that exists, rid of all useless and cum-
bersome forms, yet possessed of a flexibility, a mingled
softness and vigor of tone, a richness of vocabulary, and a
power of expressing delicate shades of thought, in which
it is surpassed by none, and equalled by few of existing
languages.

With a brief comparison of the different Aryan lan-
guages this chapter may close. Of all these the Sanscrit
of the Vedas is regarded as the most primitive form, the
one nearest the original Aryan, as the Vedas themselves
are the most ancient record of Aryan thought. It has
preserved many archaic forms which are lost elsewhere,
and without its aid our knowledge of the ancient conditions
of Aryan life would be much reduced. Its syntax is com-
paratively simple, the dominant ancient method of word-
composition taking its place. Its grammatical forms are
very full and complete ; yet in the modern Hindu dialects
the usual reversal of this condition appears. These dia-
lects are marked by an active analytical tendency.

The language of the Zend A vesta of the Persians has
strong marks of affinity to the Vedic dialect. In some
respects it is more archaic; yet as a whole it is younger
in form, the A vestas being of more recent production than
the Pig Veda. In modem Persian, however, the analytic
tendency is very strongly declared, — more so, perhaps,
than in any language except the English, which it resembles
 212

THE ARYAN RACE.

in the simplicity of its grammar. It has even gone so far
as to lose all distinction of gender in the personal pronoun
of the third person. Yet it is said to be a melodious and
forcible language. Its great degree of analytic change is
probably due to the extensive mixture of races that has
taken place on Persian soil.

In regard to the European languages, many efforts have
been made to class them into sub-groups. Thus one
author ranks the Greek, another the German, another the
Slavonic, as nearest the Indo-Persian. One brings the
Celtic nearer than the Greek to the Latin, while the more
common opinion makes it wholly independent. Of these
schemes nothing more need be said, since nothing satisfac-
tory has yet come of them. The Celtic dialects have
certain peculiarities not shared by other members of the
Aryan family, and are ordinarii}7 looked upon as the most
aberrant group. The grammar, indeed, displays features
which seem to indicate a non-Aryan influence. The incor-
poration of the pronoun between the verb and its prefixes
in Irish speech has been imputed by Professor Bliys to a
Basque influence. Some other peculiarities exist which
tend to indicate that the aborigines with whom the Celts
mingled exercised a degree of influence upon their method
of speech.

Of the Teutonic division, the most striking peculiarity is
the possession of the strong, or vowel conjugation, such as
wre have, for instance, in the grammatical variations of
form in u sing,” 4 ‘ sang,” and “sung.” In this respect
the Teutonic makes an approach to the Semitic method
of inflection, though the principle with it is probably of
recent origin. Of the Letto-Slavic group, the Lithuanian
is marked by a highly archaic structure. In some few
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE.

213

points its grammar is of older type than even the Sanscrit.
The Slavonic dialects are characterized by phonetic and
grammatical complexity and a great power of forming
agglutinative compounds. The indication of language is
that the Slavonians have been the least exposed to foreign
influence, and are the nearest to the primitive Aryans and
to their probable Mongolian ancestors, of any section of
the race. As an instance, Sayce1 quotes from the Russian
the two words Bez boga, “ without God.” These can be
fused into one word, from which, by the aid of suffixes,
we obtain bezbozhnui, “godless;” from this is gained
the noun bezbozhnik, “ an atheist,” then the verb bezboz-
hnichut, “to be an atheist;” with a host of derivatives,
of which may be named bezbozhnichestvo, “ the condition
of being an atheist,” and bezbozhnichestvovcU, “ to be in
the condition of being an atheist.” Certainly the Russian
has lost none of the ancient richness of the synthetic
method, or descended into what classicists regard as the
base abyss of analytic speech. The Finns, with whom
the Russians are so mingled in blood, could hardly present
an instance of synthesis more complex than the last named.
This is precisely the condition we should expect to find in
the home-staying section of the Aryan race.

It is to the ancient Greek that we must look for the
most logical and attractive unfoldment of the inflectional
method. Though eminently capable of forming compounds,
it is free from the extravagance displayed by the Sanscrit
in this direction, while its syntax has reached a high level
of development. Finally, in the Latin, as already re-
marked, the analytical grammatical tendency is indicated
in a stronger degree than in any other ancient Aryan
1 Introduction to the Science of Language, ii. 95.
 214

THE ARYAN RACE.

tongue. This has been carried forward through the line
of its descendants, the Romance languages of southwestern
Europe, and is particularly displayed in the French, in
which the spoken has run far beyond the written language
in its tendency to verbal abrasion. As regards grammati-
cal analysis, however, the English, as already remarked,
has gone farther than any modern language, and is only
less bare of inflectional forms than its very remote cousin,
the Chinese. And it may be said, in conclusion, that the
English, while the most advanced in development, has
become the most widespread of Aryan languages; it is
spoken by large populations in every quarter of the earth;
and if any modern language is to be the basis of the future
speech of mankind, the English seems the most probable,
both from its character and its extension, to attain that
high honor.
 IX.

THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

HE assertion that the Aryans are intellectually su-

perior to the other races of mankind may be held
as not proved by what wre have yet related concern-
ing them. In the growth of the primitive conditions of
religion, statecraft, industry, language, etc., there was no
individual action. These were all results of involuntary
evolution, not of purposive activity of the intellect. The
democratic character of the Aryan political system, for in-
stance, naturally arose from a primitive stage very closely
resembling that attained by the American Indians. The
subsequent spirit of liberty' of the Aryans seems largely
due to the fact that there had also developed among them
a democratic or individual religious system, and that, in
consequence, there existed no strongly organized and influ-
ential priesthood, as elsewhere, to hold their souls in cap-
tivity. Their village community system was a natural
result of the fact that they became agricultural ere any
progress in political organization had been made. The
same result arose from the same conditions in America.
In the primitive agricultural civilizations of Egypt and
China, on the contrary, the political organization prob-
ably preceded the development of agriculture, and patri-
archism became established. The same thought applies to
the Aryan language. Its superiority may be due to the
 216

THE ARYAN RACE.

fact that out of the several possible methods of speech-
evolution the Allans chanced to adopt the one most capa-
ble of high development, and which has, in consequence,
continued to unfold its capabilities while the other types
have long since reached a stage of rigid specialization.

And yet all this must be more than the effect of mere
chance. It would be very surprising if a single race should
have blundered into the best methods of human develop-
ment in all directions. Though in regard to the matters
so far considered there is no probability that individuals
exercised any important voluntary control over the devel-
opment of institutions, yet the collective intellect of the
Aryans could not have been without its directive force.
It undoubtedly served as a rudder to guide the onward
progress of the race and prevent this from becoming the
mere blind drift of chance. This much we clearly perceive,
— that the Aryans nowhere entered into a rigidly special-
ized state. In all the unfoldment of their institutions they
pursued that mid line of progress which alone permits
continued development. If we compare the only one of
the non-Aryan civilizations that has survived to our time,
the Chinese, with those of Aryan origin, this fact will be-
come evident. In all respects, in language, politics, relig-
ion, etc., the Chinese early attained a condition of strict
specialization, and their progress came to an end. For
several thousand }Tears they have remained stagnant, ex-
cept in the single direction of industrial development, in
which some slow progress has been made. Butin all these
respects the Aryans have continued unspecialized, and their
development has been steadily progressive. This progress
yet actively continues ; while there is no hope for China,
except in a complete disruption of its antique system and
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

217

a deep infusion of Aryan ideas into the Chinese intellect.
This general Aryan superiority is indicative of a highly
active and capable intellect, even though no one mind ex-
ercised a controlling influence. The general mentality of
the race, the gross sum of Aryan thought and judgment,
must have guided the course of Aryan evolution and kept
our forefathers from those side-pits of stagnation into
which all their competitors fell. During its primitive era
the Aryan race moved steadily forward unto a well-devised
system of organization which formed the basis of the great
development of modern times.

It is our purpose now, however, to consider the unfold-
ment of the intellect at a higher stage, — that in which indi-
viduality came strongly into play, single men emerged from
the mass of men, and great minds brought their strength to
bear upon the movement of human events. It is here that
the superiority of the Aryan intellect makes itself first
specially apparent. The mentality of the race developed
with remarkable rapidity, and yielded a series of lofty con-
ceptions far beyond the products of any other race of man-
kind. A brief comparison of the attainments of the ancient
Aryan intellect with the mental work of contemporary na-
tions cannot fail to show this clearly. ^Ye shall here
concern ourselves with the philosophical productions of
the race, before considering their more general literary
labors.

As already said, the human intellect is primarily made
up of two great divisions, the reason and the imagination,
which underlie its more special characteristics. Reason is
based on the practical, imagination on the emotional, side
of thought. These are the conditions which we find in a
specially developed state in the two most distinguishable
 218

THE ARYAN RACE.

primary races of man, the Mongolian and the Negro. The
Mongolian is practical man, the Negro emotional man. In
each of these two races the quality named is present in a
marked degree, while the other quality has attained only
a minor development. The same rule applies to the two
race-divisions of the Caucasians, considered as derivatives
respectively of the two original races. The pure Xantho-
chroi strongly display the Mongolian practicality ; the pure
Melanochroi the Negro emotional excitability. Yet the
one has unfolded into reason, the other into imagination.
But for the complete development of these high faculties
a mingling of the two sub-races seemed requisite. The
practical mental turn of the Xanthochroi needed to be
roused and invigorated by an infusion of the excitable
fancy of the South ; the fanciful mentality of the Melano-
chroi to be subdued and sobered by an infusion of the
practical judgment of the North. As a result arose the
mingled reason and imagination of the Aryan intellect,
each controlling, yet each invigorating the other, until
through their union mentality has reached the acme of its
powers, and human thought has made the whole universe
its field of activity.

Of the non-Aryan civilizations which have attempted to
enter the field of philosophy, three only need be named, —
the Chinese, the Egyptian, and the Babylonian. As for the
American civilizations, they were when destroyed still in
the stage of mythology. Everywhere, indeed, mythology
appears as the result of the earliest effort of the human
mind to explain the mysteries of the universe. The forces
and forms of Nature are looked upon as supernatural be-
ings, with personal histories and man-like consciousness
and thought. This is but little displayed by the practical
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

219

Chinese, who had not imagination enough to devise a
mythology. We find it much more strongly manifested by
the Egyptians, who had much of the fervor of the Melano-
chroic fancy.

It was with the detached and often discordant mytholo-
gie figments, produced through a long era of god-making,
that philosophy first concerned itself. When men had
passed through the ancient era of blind worship of the
elements, and begun to think about the theory of the
universe which had grown up involuntarily during the long
preceding centuries, they were not slow to perceive its in-
congruity. Everywhere gods crowded upon gods. Their
duties and attributes clashed and mingled. Their names
flowed together. Their histories overlapped each other.
All was utter confusion and discord of ideas. It was very
apparent that there must be error somewhere. Heaven
and earth could not be governed in this chaotic fashion.
Some order must exist beneath this interminable show of
disorder.

It is not difficult to understand how this confused intri-
cacy had arisen. There is reason to believe that in ancient
Arya, though many gods were recognized, each worshipper
addressed himself to but one deity at a time, whom he
looked upon as supreme, and whom he invested with all
the deific attributes. This system, named “ henotheism ”
by Max Müller, is the one v'e find in -the hymns of the
Rig Veda. In succession the different gods of the Aryan
pantheon are supreme deities to these antique singers.1

1 “It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Vedas,
passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and
absolute. Agni is called ‘Ruler of the Universe.’ Indra is celebrated
as the strongest god. It is said of Soma that ‘ he conquers every one.’ ”
— Max Muller.
 220

THE ARYAN RACE.

Men’s minds seemed not sufficiently expanded actually to
grasp the thought of more than one god at a time, though
they acknowledged the existence of many. This ascription
of the various duties, powers, and attributes of the deity to
so many different beings, necessarily produced considerable
confusion, which increased with the growth of mythologie
fancies. It grew with particular rapidity in Greece, since
the actively commercial Hellenes imported new gods from
Phoenicia, Ass}wia, and Egypt, and mingled them -with the
tenants of the ancient Aryan pantheon, until the confusion
of ideas became somewhat ludicrous.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #21 on: June 15, 2019, 09:32:14 PM »
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It is interesting to find that in the earliest efforts of men
to obtain a philosophical idea of the universe the thinkers
were still ardent believers in mythology, and their efforts
were limited to an attempt to divide the duties of celestial
government among the several deities, and introduce order
into the deific court. This stage of thought we find vaguely
indicated in Egypt and Babylonia, and more definitely in
Greece ; but it yielded no important results in any of these
regions. The disorder was too great, and the mingling of
the deific stories too intricate, to admit of any success in
their rearrangement. In Egypt and Greece, indeed, thought
soon passed beyond this stage ; the gods were left to the
unquestioning worship of the people, and thinkers began
to devise systems of philosoph}T outside the lines of the old
mythology. The same was the case in India ; but nothing
that can be called a philosophy of the universe arose among
the Semites. Certain highly fanciful cosmological ideas
were devised ; but the religious system remained largely in
the henotheistic stage. Of the superior gods of the old
mythology, each Semitic nation selected one as its supreme
deity, or perhaps raised to this honor its own divine ancestor
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

221

after his ancestral significance had become greatly dimmed.
These supreme deities became each the Lord, the King, the
Ruler. The cloak of myth fell from their mighty limbs,
and left them standing in severe and unapproachable
majest}", —the sublime rulers of the universe, for whom it
would have been sacrilege to invent a history, and to whom
there was left nothing of human frail t}7, and little of human
sympathy. Such was the course of Semitic thought. It
devised no philosophy, yet it evolved, as its loftiest pro-
duct, a strict monotheism, — a conception of the deity that
grew the more sublime as it divested itself of imaginative
details.

In two branches of the Aryan people the effort to organ'
ize mythology and work over this old S3Tstem of belief into
a consistent theory of the universe attained some measure
of success. These were the Persians and the Teutons.
The Persian system, indeed, which grew up among the
followers of Zoroaster, dealt but little with the old mythol-
ogy, but devised a new one of its own. Yet its philosophy
was largely mythological, and it bears a resemblance to the
Teutonic so marked as to make it seem as if some of their
common ideas were of ancient Aiwan origin. These two
philosophies of mytholog}7, the onl}7 complete ones that
have ever been devised, are of sufficient interest to warrant
a brief description.

The Persian sj^stem is only partly to be ascribed to
Zoroaster. Its complete unfoldment is the work of the
thinkers of a later period. Several of the steps of its
development are yet visible. A comparison of the A vesta
with the Vedas shows interesting indications of a religious
schism between the Hindu and the Iranian sects. The
Devas, the “ shining ones,’’ of the Hindus became the
 222

THE ARYAN RACE.

Daevas, the “ demons,” of Iran. On the contrary, the
Hindu demons, the Asuras, became the Ahuras, the gods
of the Iranians. One of the Ahuras, a Mazda, or world-
maker, was chosen as the special deity of the Zoroastrian
faith, which originally had a monotheistic character, — or
rather it was in principle dualistic, since Ahura-Mazda com-
prised two natures, and combined within one personality
the double deific attributes of good and evil.

At a later period these attributes unfolded into two
distinct beings, and a new supreme god was imagined,

—   Zarvan Akarana (Boundless Time), the primal, creative
power. The m}Tthologic philosophy, as finally completed,
was briefly as follows. In the beginning the Absolute
Being, Zarvan Akarana, produced two great divine beings,

—   Aliura Mazda, and Angra Mainyas, or, as ordinarily
named, Ormuzd and Ahriman. These were respectively the
lords of light and darkness,—Ormuzd a bright, wise, all-
bountiful spirit; Ahriman an evil and dark intelligence.
From the beginning an antagonism existed between them,
which was destined to continue until the end of time. Zar-
van Akarana next created the visible world, destined to
last twelve thousand years, and to be the seat of a terrible
contest between the great deities of light and darkness.

Ormuzd manifested his power by creating the earth and
the heavens, the stars and the planets, and the Fravashi,
the host of bright spirits ; while Ahriman, his equal in cre-
ative ability, produced a dark world, in opposition to the
world of light, and peopled it with an equal host of evil
spirits. This contest between the two great deities was to
last until the end of time. Yet the Spirit of Gloom was
inferior in wisdom to the Spirit of Light, and all his evil
actions finally worked to aid the victory of Ormuzd.
 THE AGE OE PHILOSOPHY.

223

Thus the bull, the original animal, was destroyed by
Ahriman; but from its carcass man came into being under
the creative command of Ormuzd. This new race in-
creased, while the earth became peopled with animals and
plants. Yet for every good creation of Ormuzd, Ahriman
created something evil. The wolf was opposed to the
dog, noxious to useful plants, etc. Man became tempted
by Ahriman in the form of a serpent, and ate the fruit
which the tempter brought him. In consequence, he fell
from his original high estate, and became mortal and
miserable. Yet the human race retained the power of
free-will: they could choose between good and evil;
and by their choice they could aid one or the other of
the great combatants. Each man became a soldier in the
war of the deities.

Between heaven and earth stretched a great bridge,
Chinvat, over which the souls of the dead must pass.
On this narrow path the spirits of the good were conducted
by Serosh, the archangel who led the heavenly host.
But the evil souls fell from it into the Gulf of Duzahk,
to be tormented by the Daevas. Those whose evil deeds
had not been extreme might be redeemed thence by prayer ;
but the deepest sinners must lie in the gulf until the era
of the resurrection. At the end of the great contest a
terrible catastrophe is to come upon all created things.
Man will be converted from his evil ways. Then will
follow a general conflagration. The earth will melt with
fervent heat, and pour down its molten floods into the
realm of Ahriman. A general resurrection of the dead
will attend this conflagration. In the older portions of
the Avestas this seems to be restricted to the soul; but in
the newer portions the resurrection of the body is indi-
 224

THE ARYAN RACE.

cated. The souls are clothed upon by new flesh and
bones; friends recognize each other; the just are divided
from the unjust; all beings must pass through the stream
of fire which is pouring down from the molten earth. To
the good it will feel like a bath of warm milk; but the
wicked must burn in it three da}Ts and nights. Then,
purged of their iniquity, they will be received into heaven.
Afterward Ahriman and all his angels will be purified in
the flames, all evil will be consumed, all darkness ban-
ished, and a pure, beautiful, and eternal earth will arise
from the fire, the abode of virtue and happiness for ever-
more.

It is hardly necessary here to call attention to how great
an extent the Semitic cosmogony and religious myths
are counterparts of this Aryan scheme. It will suffice to
say that the Semites seem to have borrowed everything in
their creed that approached an effort philosophically to
explain the universe. The later Semitic creed, that of
Mohammed, is a medley of pre-existing thought. Even
the Persian bridge of the dead appears in it as A1 Sirat,
the razor-edged road from heaven to earth. The Koran
is full of extravagant fancies, but devoid of original ideas.
It is the outcome of the Arabic type of mind, in which
fancy is exceedingly active, but in which the higher powers
of the reason seem undeveloped.

In the Teutonic myths are displayed a system of the
universe which bears certain striking points of resemblance
to that of Persia, though utterly unlike it in its details.
The general ideas of these myths, indeed, are common to
all the Aryan mythologies, and must have been current
in ancient Arya. Thus the Persian Cliinvat, or Knivad,
the bridge of the dead, is paralleled by the Teutonic Pi-
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

225

frost and the Yedic “path of Yama,” the “cows’ path,”
which passes over the abyss of Tartarus to the land of the
wise Pitris, the fathers of the nation. In this mythical
bridge both the Milky AVay and the rainbow are symbol-
ized. Such was the explanation given to these striking
natural phenomena by our imaginative and unscientific
forefathers.

But with the Teutonic tribes, and particularly with their
Scandinavian section, we have to do with a people very
different in situation and culture from the Persians. The
latter were a partly civilized people, the former fiercely
barbarous. The latter dwelt in a temperate region, the
former in an arctic land, where ice and cold were the
demonic agents of man’s torment. Yet the strong Aryan
intellect stirred in their minds, and from their ancestral
myths they wrought out a coherent system of the universe,
— the wildest and weirdest that it ever entered the brain
of man to conceive. It was mythology converted into phi-
losophy ; but it was the mythology of the barbaric and
warlike North, with the breath of the arctic blasts blow-
ing through it, and the untamed fierceness of the Norman
vikings in its every strain. This S}Tstem, as fortunately
preserved to us in the Eddas of Iceland, and perhaps
mainly of Scandinavian development, may be here briefly
given, omitting its many side-details. Everywhere it is
full of warfare. The soul of man is free to combat with
the powers of Nature. The gods are alwa}Ts at war. Sun-
shine and growth combat with storm and winter. Frost
opposes fire. Light and heat are in endless conflict with
darkness and cold. The Jotuns, the ice-giants, are the
demons of Scandinavia. The forces of the winter every-
where bear down upon those of the summer, and finally

15
 226

THE ARYAN RACE.

overwhelm and destroy them. But this battle of the
elements is wrought into a weird story of the conflict of
gods and demons, in which the traces of its origin are
nearly lost.

In the beginning there lay to the south the realm of
Muspell, the bright and gleaming land, ruled by Surtr
of the flaming sword, the swart god. To the north lay
Niflheim, the land of frost and darkness. Between them
was Ginunga-gap, — a yawning chasm, still as the windless
air. From the ice-vapor that rose from Hvergelmir, the
venom-flowing spring of Niflheim, and mingled with the
spark-filled air of Muspell, was born, in Ginunga-gap,
the giant Ymir, the parent of the Jotuns, or frost-giants.
But with Ymir came the primal animal to life, — the cow,
wiiose milk nourished the giant. She licked the salt rime
clumps, and forth came Buri, a great and beautiful being,
the ancestor of the gods. After much gigantic medley the
gods slewr Ymir, wiiose blood drowned all his evil race
except a single pair, wiio escaped, to give rise to a new
Jotun crew. And now the gods began their creative
work. The slain Ymir was flung into the chasm of Gi-
nimga-gap. Here his body formed the earth, his blood
the ocean, his bones the mountains, his hair the trees. The
sky was made from his arched skull, and adorned with
sparks from Muspell. His brain wras scattered in the air,
and became the storm-clouds. A deep sea was caused to
flow around the earth, — the grand, mysterious ocean, the
endless marvel to the Northern mind. The escaped giants
took up their abode in Jotunheim, the frost-realm of the
arctic seas, the ocean’s utmost strand. Between Atgard,
this outer realm, and Midgard, the habitable earth, the
brows of Ymir were stretched as a breastwork against the
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

227

destructive powers. From earth to heaven extended
the rainbow bridge Asbru, the iEsirs’ bridge, or Bifrost,
the “trembling mile.” Every day the gods ride up this
bridge to Asgard, the Scandinavian heaven. They ride to
the Urdar fount, which flows from beneath the roots of the
great ash-tree of life, Yggdrasil, there to take counsel con-
cerning the future from the three maidens — the Fast, the
Preseut, and the Future — who daily sit beside the celestial
fount.

The first human pair were made by the gods from two
trees on the sea-shore ; their names were Ask and Embla.
To them Odin gave spirit, Hoenir understanding, Lodurr
blood and fair complexion. They received Midgard for
their abode. From them sprang the human family. But
in heaven and earth perpetual warfare raged. The gods
and the frost-giants were endlessly at war. But as Aliri-
man was overcome and fettered by Ormuzd, so Loki, the
wolf, the deceiver of the gods, was bound in chains, and
a serpent placed above him to drop venom on his face.
This venom as it dropped was caught by his wife in a
vessel. Only when she went away to empty the vessel
did the poison-drops reach his face. Then he writhed in
his chains, and earthquakes shook the solid globe.

It is fated that all this shall end in a mighty conflict, in
which gods and demons alike shall be slain, and heaven
and earth disappear. Ragnarok, the “Twilight of the
Gods,” shall be ushered in by a winter three years long.
The crowing of three mighty cocks shall proclaim the fate-
ful da}T. Thereat shall the giants rejoice, the great ash take
fire, and all the powers of destruction — wolves, sea-mon-
sters, hell hounds, and the like — rush to the dreadful fray.
Heimdal. the guardian of the rainbow, shall sound his
 228

THE ARYAN RACE.

mighty horn to warn the gods, who shall rush to counsel
beneath the tree Yggdrasil, that meanwhile trembles to its
deepest roots. From the East shall come the frost-giants
in a mighty ship, while another ship, made of dead men’s
nails and steered by Loki, brings the troop of ghosts.
Surtr of the flaming sword, the ruler of Muspell, shall
thunder with his swart troop over the bridge of the gods,
his fiery tread kindling it into a consuming flame as he
rides in grim fury to the stronghold of the deities.

Now meet the combatants, — the gods and the heroes of
Valhalla on the one side ; on the other the giant crew, led
by Fenrir the great wolf, the mighty Midgard serpent, the
terrible Loki, and Hela, the goddess of death. Dreadful
is the combat. Odin fights with the wolf, Thor with the
serpent, Freyr with Surtr, Heimdal with Loki. Death
everywhere treads ; Odin, the king of the JEsir, is swal-
lowed into the yawning gape of his monstrous antagonist.
One by one the mighty combatants fall, while Surtr stalks
terribly over the field, spreading everywhere fire and flame.
All is consumed, the stars are hurled from the sky, the
sun and the moon devoured, and the universe sinks in
utter ruin.

Possibly here ended the original myth. It is an ending
in consonance with the grim temper of the vikings of the
North. But as we have it in the Edda, it goes on to a
future state like that of the Persian myth. After the ruin
of Ragnarok a new heaven and earth shall rise from the
sea. Two gods, Vidar and Vali, and a man and woman
shall survive the conflagration and people the new uni-
verse. The sons of Thor shall come with their father’s
hammer and end the war. Balder the beautiful god and
the blind god Hödr shall come up from hell, and a new
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

229

sun, more beautiful than the old, shall gleam in the sky.
This is, briefly told, the Scandinavian scheme of the uni-
verse, — a rude and fierce one, yet instinct with a vigor of
imagination shown nowhere by men of non-Aryan blood.
It is the only pure organization of mythology into a cohe-
rent system that exists; for the Persian myth includes
philosophical ideas which fail to enter into the ruder Scan-
dinavian story of the deeds of the gods, and Greek mythol-
ogy never fairly emerged from its abyss of confusion.

If now we come to consider the mental evolution of
more civilized man, we find everywhere mythology left
for the amusement of the vulgar horde, while the enlight-
ened few devise purely philosophical explanations of the
mystery of the universe. But in comparing the philoso-
phies of the various civilized nations, the Aryans will be
found to soar supremely above the level of all alien peo-
ples. Only two such peoples, Egypt and China, have
devised anything that deserves the title of philosophy; for
nothing of the kind exists in any of the Semitic creeds.
The utmost we find in Babylonia is an effort to form a cos-
mology of strictly mythologie character, — a highly con-
fused affair as imperfectly given by Berosus. The later
attempt made by Mohammed is, so far as it is original,
an absurd tissue of extravagant fancies. There is nothing
to indicate the least native tendency of the Semitic mind
toward philosophy. All their philosophy is borrowed, and
has deteriorated in their hands. It was by stripping the
idea of deity of all mythologie and philosophic figments,
and leaving it in its bare and unapproachable majest}^
that the Semitic intellect reached its highest flight, that
symbolized in the Jehovah of the later Hebrews.

The Egyptian priesthood, on the contrary, appears to
 230

THE ARYAN RACE.

have devised a somewhat advanced system of philosophy,
which bears a singular resemblance to that of Brahman-
ism, though very far below it in the power and clearness
of thought displayed. The transmigration hypothesis, and
the theory of emanation and absorption of souls, are both
indicated in the Egyptian system, though vaguely, and
overlaid with mythological absurdities. There is here
none of the clear-cut reasoning of the Hindus, but an un-
certain wandering of thought from which it needs consid-
erable ingenuity to extract the idea it conceals. The
well-known Ritual of the Dead is the source of our
knowledge of these confused ideas. A copy of this work,
more or less complete, was placed in every Egyptian coffin,
while its more important passages were written on the
wraps of the corpse and engraved on the coffin. It was
necessarily so placed, according to their belief, since it
contained the instructions requisite to convey the soul of
the deceased safely past the dangers of the lower world.
Throughout the whole story physical ideas struggle with
metaphysical. The Egyptian mind failed definitely to rise
above the level of the world of sense.

After death the soul descends with the setting sun into
the nether world. There it is examined and its actions
weighed before Osiris and the terrible forty-two judges.
If it can declare that it has committed none of the forty-
two sius, it is permitted to pass on. It has with it in the
• Ritual prayers to open the gates of the various lower
realms, and to overpower opposing spirits and monsters.
It must be able to name everything which it meets, and
to recognize the gods it encounters. Here we have in-
dications that the soul is returning to its natal home, and
recalling its ante-terrestrial memories. All this the Ritual
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

231

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #22 on: June 15, 2019, 09:33:14 PM »
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teaches the spirit, and also provides it with a charm to
unlock the gates that lead to the fields of Ra, the sun-god.
Finally, if the heart prove not too light, and the soul pure,
the members of the body, renewed and purified, are re-
turned to the spirit, and the waters of life are poured upon
it by the goddesses of life and the sky. It finally enters
the realm of the sun, and vanishes in a highly vague iden-
tification with Osiris, or with the deific powers generally.
The idea of metempsychosis also confusedly mingles with
this, and animal-worship seems at the basis of the Egyptian
mythology. The thought of Egypt never fairly rises above
the body. There is no entrance into that pure atmosphere
of soul-existence in which the Hindu philosophers are at
home.

The philosophical system of China is a curious one,
which, however, we can but very briefly describe. It had
a continuous development, its antique basis being in the
mystical symbols of Fu-hi, — a monarch of some such
dubious date as 2800 n. c. These symbols consisted simply
of a whole and a divided line, constituting the diagram

(----,------). These lines were variously combined, so

as to make in all sixty-four combinations. On this strange
arrangement of lines, which very probably was connected
with some ancient s}’stem of divination, an abundance of
thought has been exercised, and the whole S3Tstem of
Chinese philosopli}7 gradually erected. The first great
name in this development is that of Wan "Wang, of about
1150 b. c. Being imprisoned for some political offence,
this antique philosopher occupied himself in studying out
the meaning of these combinations. The result of his
reflections was the Y-King, — among the most ancient
and certainly the most obscure and incomprehensible of all
 232

THE ARYAN RACE.

known books. The Y-King comprises four parts. First
are the sixty-four diagrams, each with some name attached
to it; as heaven, earth, fire, etc. Second, are a series of
obscure sentences attached by Wan Waug to these dia-
grams. Third, we have other ambiguous texts by Tcheou-
king, the son of Wan Wang, the Chinese Solomon.
Fourth, are a host of commentaries, many centuries later.
The whole forms an intricate system of philosophy, which
is based on the idea of the duality of all things. The
whole lines represent the strong, the divided lines the weak,
or the active as contrasted with the passive. These indi-
cate two great primal principles,— Ycing, the active, Yin,
the passive, — which owe their origin to the Tai-lceih, the
first great cause. All existence comes from the Yang and
the Yin: heaven, light, sun, male, etc., from the Yang;
earth, darkness, moon, female, etc., from the Yin. This
development of the idea is mainly the work of the later
commentators. Tai-keih, or the grand extreme, is the
immaterial producer of all existence. Yang and Yin are
the dual expression of this principle, — Yang the agency of
expansion, Yin that of contraction. When the expansive
activity reaches its limit, contraction and passivity set in.
Man results from the utmost development of this pulsating
activity and passivity. His nature is perfectly good ; but
if he is not influenced by it, but by the outer world, his
deeds will be evil. The holy man is he with full insight
of this twofold operation of the ultimate principle, and of
these holy men Confucius was the last. Such is the
developed philosophy of the Y-King as expressed by
Choo-tsze (1200 a. d.), — one of the latest of the many
commentators who have sought to unfold the Fu-hi symbols
into a philosophy of the universe.
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

233

Of the best-known Chinese philosophers, Confucius and
Lao-tsze, the system of the former was simply a creed of
morals ; that of the latter was but an unfoldment of the
dual idea. To Lao-tsze the primal principle was a great
something named the Tao, concerning which his ideas seem
exceedingly obscure. Tao was the unnamable, the empty,
but inexhaustible, the invisible, comprising at once being
and not-being, the origin of all things. All things are
born of being. Being is born of not-being. All things
originate from Tao. To Tao all things return. We have
here a vague conception of the emanation philosophy.
The creed of the faith is based on the virtue of passivity.
Not to act, is the source of all power. The passive con-
quers. Passivity identifies one with Tao, and yields the
strength of Tao to the believer. A certain flavor of
Buddhism pervades this theory, and it may have had
its origin in a previous knowledge of the Buddhistic creed
by the philosopher; but it is very far below Buddhism in
distinctness of statement and clearness of thought. Yet
it is remarkable as the highest philosophical product of
the Chinese mind.

If now we come to consider the ancient Aryan philos-
ophies, it is to find ourselves in a new world of thought,
a realm of the intellect that seems removed by a wide gulf
from that occupied by the contemporary peoples of alien
race. These philosophies are the work of two branches of
the Aryans, the Hindu and the Greek, some brief account
of whose systems of thought may be here given.

Of the peoples of the past only four can be said to have
risen, in their highest thought, clearly above the level of
mythology. These were the Chinese and the Hebrews, the
Hindus and the Greeks ; to whom may be added the pupils
 234

THE ARYAN RACE.

of the last, the Romans. But of these the first two
named cannot be fairly said to have ever had a mythology.
And of them the Hebrews originated no philosoph}7, while
out of the countless millions of the Chinese race, with
their constant literary cultivation, only one or two phi-
losophers arose ; and their systems of thought, perhaps
devised under Buddhistic inspiration, have been allowed
to decline into blank idolatry or unphilosophical scepticism.
Far different was the case in India. There we find a con-
nected and definite system of philosophy growing up, the
outcome of the thought of a long series of Bralnnanic
priests, grounded in the childlike figments of mythology,
but developing into a manly vigor of reasoning that has
never been surpassed in the circle of metaphysical thought.
It was a remarkable people with whom we are now con-
cerned, — a people that dwelt only in the world of thought,
and held the affairs of real life as naught. This world
was to them but a temporal^ resting-place between two
eternities, a region of probation for the purification of the
soul. With the concerns of the eternities their minds were
steadily occupied, and time was thrust aside from their
thoughts as a base prison into which their souls had been
plunged to purge them of their sins.

Their effort to solve the mystery of existence called forth
an intricate and clearly thought-out conception of the or-
ganization of the universe, in which reason and imagina-
tion were intimately combined, — the latter, however, often
so unchecked and extravagant as to reach heights of un-
told absurdity. The final outcome of this activity of
thought was a philosophical system strikingly like that
reached by the Egyptians, — a dogma of emanation and ab-
sorption, with intermediate stages of transmigration. But
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

235

instead of the vapor-shrouded eternity of Egyptian thought,
we here look into the past and the future of the universe
through a lens of clear transparency.

We have now to deal with a thoroughly pantheistic doc-
trine of the universe, — the abundant fountain of all sub-
sequent pantheism. In the beginning Brahma alone ex-
isted,— an all-pervading, self-existent essence, in which
all things yet to be lay in the seed. This divine progeni-
tor, the illimitable essence of deity, willed the universe into
being from his own substance, created the waters by med-
itation, and placed in them a fertile seed, which developed
into a golden egg. From this egg Brahma, the impersonal
essence, was born into personal being as Brahma, the cre-
ator of all things. We need not here concern ourselves
with the many extravagances of the ardent Hindu im-
agination, that overlaid this conception and the subsequent
work of creation with an endless array of fantastic adorn-
ments, but may keep to the central core of the Brahmanic
philosophy. It will suffice to say that from the imper-
sonal, thus embodied as the personal Brahma, all things
arose, —the heavens, the earth, and the nether realm, with
all their countless inhabitants. All were emanations from
the primal Deity, and all were destined to be eventually
re-absorbed into this deity, so that existence should end, as
it had begun, in Brahma alone. But with this descent from
the infinite had come evil, or imperfection. Though a por-
tion of the divine essence entered into all things, animate
and inanimate, yet all things had become debased and im-
pure. The one perfect being had unfolded into a limitless
multitude of minor and imperfect beings. Such was the
first phase of the mighty cycle of existence. The second
phase was to be one of re-absorption, through which the
 236

THE ARYAN RACE.

multitude of separate beings would become lost in the one
eternal being, and Brahma — who had never ceased to
constitute the sole real existence — would regain his pri-
mal homogeneous state.

But divinity had become debased in the forms of men
and animals, angels and demons. How was it to be puri-
fied, and rendered fit for absorption into the divine essence?
In this purification lay the terrestrial part of the Hindu
pantheism. To prepare for re-absorption into Brahma was
the one duty of man. Attention to the minor duties of life
detracted from this. Evil deeds still further debased the
soul. The great mass of mankind died unpurified. But
the divine essence in them could not perish. And in most
cases it had become unfit to inhabit so high a form as the
human body. Therefore it entered, after the death of men,
into the bodies of various animals, into inanimate things,
and even into the demonic creatures of the Hindu hell, in
accordance with its degree of debasement. It must pass,
for a longer or shorter period, through these lower forms
ere it could be fitted to reside again in the human frame.
And after having by purification passed beyond the human
stage, it still had a series of transmigrations to fulfil, in
the bodies of angels and deities, before it could attain the
finality of absorption. To this ultimate, all Nature, from
its highest to its lowest, was endlessly climbing. Every-
thing was kindled by a spark of the divine essence, and all
existence consisted of souls, in different stages of embodi-
ment, striving upward from the lowest hell to the loftiest
stage of divinity.

For these many manifestations of the one eternal soul
there was but one road to purification. This lay through
subjection of the senses, purity of life, and knowledge of
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

237

the deity. Asceticism, mortification of the animal in-
stincts, naturally arose as a resultant of this doctrine.
The virtues of temperance, self-control, and self-restraint
were the highest of human attainments. To reduce the
flesh and exalt the soul was the constant effort of the
ascetic, and to wean the mind from all care for the things
of this life was the true path toward purification. Finally,
knowledge of the deity could come only through a deep
study of the Institutes of religion, rigid observance of its
requirements, and endless meditation on the nature and the
perfections of the ultimate essence,—the eternal deity.
By thus giving the soul a steadily increasing supremacy
over the matter that clogged and shadowed its pure
impulses, in the end it would become utterly freed from
material embodiment, and fitted to enter its final state
of vanishment into the supreme. Just what this final
state signified, whether the soul was or was not to lose all
sense of individuality, is a question wdiose answer is not
very clearly defined; and it is probable that the Hindu
thinkers, bold as they were, shrank before this utterly in-
soluble problem, and left the final abyss uninvaded by their
daring speculations.

It is a grand system of thought which we have here very
imperfectly detailed, an extraordinary one to have been
devised at so early a period, and by a people just emerging
from barbarism into civilization. No higher testimony to
the superiority of the Aryan intellect could be offered than
to bring this clearly outlined cosmical philosophy into com-
parison with the confused, imperfect, and vapory concep-
tions of the Egyptian and the Chinese mind. It must be
said, however, that it offers a conception of man’s obliga-
tions as a citizen of the universe that has proved fatal to
 238

THE ARYAN RACE.

the national progress of the Hindu people. From the
Brahman to the outcast, they have remained politically and
socially dormant, their duties to the world to come dwarf-
ing their duties to the world that is, and the realm of
thought overlaying in their lives the realm of action. No
heroes have risen to lead the Hindu people on the path to
nationality or empire, for thinkers and workers alike have
heen lost in the shadow of a dream. The very thought of
history-writing or history-making has not arisen among
them ; and they have yielded with scarce a struggle to a
long array of foreign conquerors, heedless of who ruled
their bodies while their thoughts continued free.

The philosophy here described was, as we have said, the
work of a long line of priestly thinkers, not of any great
lawgiver of the race. In it we have the highest expres-
sion of the endlessly active Hindu intellect. At a later
date, however, the names of several special thinkers
emerge, each devising some variation in the-details, yet
none deviating from the basic principle of the system.
The mystery of the origin of matter was left unaccounted
for in the ancient Vedanta system ; and its actual existence
was afterward denied, it being declared a mere illusion,
arising from the imperfect knowledge of the soul. Kapila,
the founder of the Sankhya school, attempted to overcome
this difficulty by proclaiming the eternal existence of an
unconscious material principle possessed of self-volition
in regard to its own development. From it all matter had
emanated, and into it all matter would be absorbed. By
the side of this material principle existed a primal spiritual
essence, manifold in its nature, and which from the begin-
ning has entered into and animated matter. This spirit-
ual unintelligence is endued with a subtile body consisting
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

239

of intelligence (buclclhi). The Sankhya cleity is a com-
pound of these three elements, — spirit, substance, and
intelligence.

This scheme was followed by that of Patanjali, who
considered the spiritual principle to be possessed of self-
volition, and to exist separate from the co-eternal principle
of matter. But the most striking of these speculative sys-
tems was that of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, and
the final great Hindu philosopher. This system was in the
line of that of Kapila; but it carried the Hindu vein of
thought to its utmost conceivable extension. It denied
the existence of the soul as a substance. No spiritual es-
sence pervaded the body. It held only certain intellectual
attributes, which would perish with it. But the sum of
each individual’s good and evil actions {Karma) would
survive, to migrate through other bodies, until the evil
became eliminated, and only the good remained. As to the
culminating stage of this process, the Nirvana, whether it
signified the final extinction of evil and the vanishment of
good, an utter and eternal nonentity, or embraced the con-
ception of a conscious existence of the absolutely purified
principle of good, — is a question that has been endlessly
debated, and yet remains unsolved. The system made
provision for the natural disappearance of evil; but the
principle of good remained, and would not down at the
command of thought. Probably the founder of the Bud-
dhistic sect was as deepty lost as the Brahmanic philos-
ophers in the abyss of infinity into which his daring
conception had plunged. It is a depth by which all ex-
plorers have been bafiled, and which the plummet of
thought lias ever failed to sound.

In regard to the manifold philosophies of Greece much
 240

THE ARYAN RACE.

less need here be said. They are far better known to
readers in general, and are to a large extent philosophies
of the earth rather than schemes of the universe. The
imagination of the Greeks was as bold and active as that
of the Hindus ; but it was far more under the control of
the reasoning faculties, and is always subdued and artistic
where that of the Hindus riots in the wildest extravagance.
The Hindu philosophy directly emerged from the mytho-
logy of the Vedas and the sacrificial observances of the
priests, and the steps of its evolution can yet be traced.
The Greek philosophy had no relation to mythology. The
gods of Greece had become so laden with earthly clay that
they had ceased to be fit subjects for any but the vulgar
belief when philosophy first showed its front on the Ionic
shores. Thus the philosophy of Greece was a completely
new growth. Cutting loose from all preceding thought,
the Grecian intellect endeavored to construct a universe
of its own, on the platform of what it saw and what it
felt.

The various systems devised need be but rapidly run
over, as they are more matters of ordinary knowledge than
is the Hindu philosophy. The Ionic philosophers, Thales
and his successors, endeavored to arrive at a conception of
all existence from a study of the properties of physical
substances, and the Pythagoreans from a like study of
the properties of number. Next came the Eleatics, with
their system of abstraction. Through the denial of the
actuality of visible existence they arrived at a conception
of pure being,—the basis of all appearance. Heraclitus
followed, with his system of the becoming, — the incessant
flow between finity and infinity, being and not-being. To
these succeeded the Atomistic philosophers, to whom
 THE AGE OF PHILOSOPHY.

241

matter was the basis of being, and force the cause of
movement. The philosophers here named were gradually
advancing toward a theory of the universe; but it was a
theory built up from the ground, rather than brought down
from the infinite, as with the Hindus, — a scientific rather
than an imaginative evolvement. As yet the idea of a
deific principle had not appeared. This was devised by
Anaxagoras, who placed a world-forming Intelligence by
the side of matter. Yet the idea was only feebly grasped.
This Intelligence existed but as a primary impulse, a mov-
ing force to set the universe in motion. The philosophic
mind of Greece had not yet advanced to the grand out-
reach of Hindu thought.

This material phase of philosophizing was followed by
the mental one of the Sophists and of Socrates. Cutting
loose from the conception of matter as the basis of all
things, they came to that of mind. The Sophists stood
forth as the destroyers of the whole preceding edifice of
thought, and Socrates as the originator of a new system
of philosophy, in which the subjective replaced the objec-
tive, and mind subordinated matter. TYith him virtue and
duty became the great principles of existence, thought was
higher than matter, and morality superior to philosophy.
He gave birth to no cosmology, but he turned the atten-
tion of man to a distinctively new field of speculation.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #23 on: June 15, 2019, 09:34:42 PM »
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This was deeply worked by Plato, his great disciple,
whose system of Ideas replaced the old systems of things,
and with whom the supreme and all-embracing idea, the
absolute Good, became the God, the divine creator and
sustainer. Finally followed Aristotle, with his strongly
scientific turn of mind and his highly indefinite metaphysi-
cal conception of the fluctuations between Potentiality and

Ifi
 242

THE ARYAN RACE.

Actuality, the variation from matter to form, from form-
less matter to pure or immaterial form. To these concep-
tions were added cosmological notions largely derived
from the old mythology. But the value of the thought of
Greece was not so much for its deductive as for its induc-
tive labors. It tended constantly toward a scientific
research into the basis of matter and mind, and never
began by cutting loose from the actual, as in Hindu
thought.

The mental acumen of these two highly intellectual
branches of the ancient Aryans approached equality; but
the real value of their work differed widely, mainly as
a consequence of their different standpoints of thought.
The speculations of the Greeks were based on observed
facts, those of the Hindus on mythological fancies. As a
consequence, the Greeks have worked far more truly for
the intellectual advancement of mankind. If we come to
glance at modern philosophy, a strikingly similar parallel
appears. The Germans, the metaphysicians of the modern
age, have inclined toward the Hindu line of pure deduc-
tion, and built vast schemes of philosophy with little more
solid basis than the doctrine of emanation. The English
and French, on the contrary, have developed the Greek
line of science, and based their philosophies on observed
facts. Their schemes do not tower so loftily as those of
Germany, but they are built on the ground, and not on
the clouds, and are likely to stand erect when the vast edi-
fices of pure metaphysics have toppled over in splendid but
irremediable ruin.
 X.

THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

IT is not our intention to enter upon the task of a
general review of the vast field of Aryan recorded
thought, but merely to offer a comparative statement of
the literary position of the several races of mankind, in
evidence of the superiority of the Aryan intellect. Lite-
rary labor has been by no means confined to this race.
Every people that has reached the stage of even an im-
perfect civilization has considered its thoughts worthy of
preservation, its heroes worthy of honor, its deeds worthy
of record. But so far as the intellectual value of lite-
rary work is concerned, the Aryans have gone almost
infinitely beyond the remainder of mankind.

All early thought seems naturally to have flowed into
the channel of poetry, with the exception of certain dry
annals which cannot properly be classed as literature.
This poetry, in its primary phase, appears to have been
always lyrical. It was apparently at first the lyric of
worship. This was followed by the lyric of action, and
this, in its highest outcome, by the epic,—the combined
and organized phase of the heroic poem. It is of interest
to find that the Aryans alone can be said to have fairly
reached the final stage of the archaic field of thought,
the epic efforts of other races being weak and inconse-
quent, while almost every branch of the Aryan race rose
to the epic literary level.
 244

THE ARYAN RACE.

Of the antique era of the religious lyric little here need
be said. TTe find it in the hymns of the Vedas and of
the Zend-Avesta, in the early traditional literature of
Greece, and in the ancient Babylonian hymns to the
gods, some of which in form and manner strikingly re-
semble the Hebrew psalms. As to the second poetic
period, that of the heroic song, or the record of the
great deeds of the gods and demigods, little trace re-
mains. Heroic compositions, as a rule, have ceased to
exist as separate works, and have either become compo-
nent parts of subsequent epics, or have vanished. As to
valuable epic literature, however, it is nearly all confined
within Aryan limits.

Modern research into the fragmentary remains of the
ancient Babylonian literature has brought to light evi-
dence of a greater activity of thought than we formerly
had reason to imagine. And among the works thus re-
covered from the buried brick tablets of the Babylonian
libraries are portions of a series of mythological poems
of a later date than the hymns. These productions are
considered to form part of an antique and remarkable
poem, with a great solar deity as hero, — an epic centre of
legend into which older lays have entered as episodes.
It appears to have consisted of twelve books, of which
we possess two intact, — the Deluge legend, and that
of the descent of Istar into Hades ; while part of a third
exists, in which is described the war of the seven evil
spirits against the moon. The Assyrians are supposed
to have also had their epic, in imitation of this older
work, and the Semiramis and Ninas of the Greeks are
considered by M. Lenormant to have been heroes of this
legendary circle of song. However that be, it cannot be
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

245

claimed that either in poetic or artistic ability the Se-
mitic mind displayed any exalted epic powers. So far as
we are able to judge of this work from its scanty remains,
it is devoid of all that we are accustomed to consider
literary merit, and is full of hyperbolical extravagance.

Of the Semitic races, indeed, the Hebrews alone pro-
duced poetry of a high grade of merit. Of this Hebrew
literature we shall speak more fully farther on, and it
must suffice here to say that none of it reached the epic
level. It is, as a rule, lyrical in tendency. Hebrew
literature, however, is not without its heroic characters.
We find them in Noah, Samson, David, Daniel, and
others who might be named; but none of these were^
made heroes of song, but were dealt with in sober prose,
— as we shall find later on was the fate of the heroes
of Roman legend. The Hebrew intellect, indeed, was
largely practical in its tendencies, its imagination was
subdued, and though its literature contains many excit-
ing legendary incidents, these are all couched in quiet
prose, while its poetry fails to rise above the lyric of
worship or of pastoral description. The nearest approach
to an epic poem is the grand book of Job, of unknown
authorship. The literature of Assyria, of which abundant
relics are now coming to light, is yet more practical in
character than that of the Hebrews, and resembles that
of the Chinese in literalness. There is no poetry ap-
proaching in merit the elevated lyrical productions found
in the Hebrew scriptures, and, like the Chinese, it is largely
devoted to annals, topography, and other practical matters.
The Semitic race as a whole appears to have been deficient
in the higher imagination, though possessed of active powers
of fancy. To the latter are due abundant stores of legend,
 246

THE ARYAN RACE.

often of a highly extravagant character; but we nowhere
find an instance of those lofty philosophical conceptions,
or of that high grade of epic song or dramatic composi-
tion, which are such frequent products of Aryan thought,
and which indicate an extraordinary fertility of the imagi-
nation in the Aiyan race.

Egypt produced little work of merit from a literary
point of view. The religious literature consists of cer-
tain hymns of minor value, and the well-known “ Ritual
of the Dead.” Similar to this is the “Ritual of the Lower
Hemisphere.” These ritualistic works can scarcely be
called literary productions, and are marked by an inex-
tricable confusion. So far as the display of intellectual
ability is concerned, they are almost an utter void. In
addition to its tyrics, Egypt has one work which has
been dignified with the title of epic, though it should
rather be viewed as an extended instance of those heroic
legends whose confluence is needed to constitute a true
epic production. It forms but the first stage in the pro-
duction of the epic. This poem is credited to a scribe
named Pentaur, and is devoted to a glorification of the
deeds of Rameses II. in a war which that monarch con-
ducted against the Cheta. He seems to have been cut
off from his troops by the enemy, and to have safely
made his Avay back to them. But the poem tells us that
the mighty hero fell into an ambuscade of the Cheta,
and found himself surrounded by two thousand five hun-
dred hostile chariots. Invoking the gods of Egypt, the
potent warrior pressed with his single arm upon the foe,
plunged in heroic fuiy six times into their midst, cov-
ered the region with dead, and regained his army to
boast of his glorious exploits. It is a bombastic and
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

247

inartistic production ; but such as it is it seems to have
struck the Egyptian taste as a work of wonder, and has
been engraved on the walls of several of the great tem-
ples of the land. The most complete copy of it is writ-
ten on a papyrus now in the British Museum.

The remaining antique non-Aryau civilization, that of
China, is utterly void of any epic productions, either in
the ultimate or in the germ. The imagination necessary
to work of this kind was wanting to the Chinese. Their
decided practical tendency is abundantly shown in their
close attention to annalistic history and to such sub-
jects as geography, topography, etc. But no heroic le-
gend exists, and but little trace of the devotional poetry
with which literature begins elsewhere. The Confucian
“ Book of Odes,” which contains all we possess of the
antique poetry of China, is mainly devoted to the con-
cerns of ordinary life. It has little of the warlike vein,
but much of the spirit of peaceful repose. We are
brought into the midst of real life, with domestic con-
cerns, religious feeling, and family affection replacing
the wild “outings” of the imagination which are shown
in all the ancient Aryan literature. After the Confucian
period Chinese song gained a somewiiat stronger flight,
and the domestic ballad wras replaced by warlike strains
and mythologie songs. But no near approach to epic
composition wras ever attained.

If now wre enter upon Aryan ground we find ourselves
at once upon loftier peaks of thought, and in a higher and
purer atmosphere. Almost everywhere epic poetry makes
its appearance at an early stage of literary cultivation as
the true usher to the later and more practical branches
of literature. These antique epic creations of the Aryans
 248

THE ARYAN RACE.

may be briefly summarized. As in philosophy, so in po-
etry, India and Greece take the lead; the Ramayana
vying, though at a much lower level of art, with the Iliad
of Greece. Of the two ancient epics of the Hindus, the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the former is the older,
while it is more the work of a single hand, and shows few
signs of that epic confluence of legend which strongly
characterizes the latter. And of the two, the Ramayana
is the more mythological, the Mahabharata the more
historical in character.

Legend credits uorthérn India in these early days with
two great dynasties of kings, known respectively as the
Solar and the Lunar dynasties. The Ramayana describes
the adventures of a hero of the solar race. Rama, the
hero, is a lineal descendant of the god of the sun, and
is himself adored as an incarnation of Vishnu. Every-
where in the poem we find ourselves on mythological
ground, and the only historical indication it contains is that
of the extension of the Aryan conquest southward toward
Ceylon. The story describes the banishment of Rama
from his hereditary realm and his long wanderings through
the southern plains. His wife, Sita, is seized by Ravana,
the giant ruler of Ceylon. Rama, assisted by Sugriva, the
king of the monkeys, makes a miraculous conquest of
this island, slays its demon ruler, and recovers his wife,
the poem ending with his restoration to his ancestral
throne.

The style of this poem is of a high grade of merit, and
it takes a lofty rank among the works of the human im-
agination. In the first two sections there is little of
extravagant fiction, though in the third the beauty of its
descriptions is marred by wild exaggerations. It is
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

249

evidently in the main the work of one hand, not a welding
of several disjointed fragments. There are few episodes,
while the whole latter portion is one unbroken narrative,
and there is shown throughout an unvarying skill and
poetical power and facility. It is credited to a single poet,
Valmiki. This name signifies “ white ant-hill,” and it
is very doubtful if it represents a historical personage.
However that be, the Ramayaua is a homogeneous and
striking outcome of ancient thought.

The Mahabharata is a work of very different character.
It is rather a storehouse of poetic legends than a single
poem, and is evidently the work of many authors, treating
subjects of the greatest diversity. It is of later date than
the Ramayana, and more human in its interest, but is far
below it in epic completeness and unity. Y"et it is not
without its central story, though this has almost been lost
under the flood of episodes. It is the epic of the heroes of
the lunar dynasty, the descendants of the gods of the
moon, as the Ramayaua is the heroic song of the solar
race. Bharata, the first universal monarch, who brought
all kingdoms “under one umbrella,” has a lineal descend-
ant, Kuril, who lias two sons, of whom one leaves a hun-
dred children, the other but five. The fathers dying, the
kingdom is equitably divided among these sons, the five
Pandavas and the hundred Kauravas. The latter grow
envious, wish to gain possession of the whole, and pro-
pose to play a game of dice for the kingdom. The
Pandavas lose in this strange fling for a kingdom ; but the
Kauravas agree to restore their cousins to their share in
the throne if they will pass twelve years in a forest and
the thirteenth year in undiscoverable disguises. This
penance is performed; but the Kauravas evade their
 250

THE ARYAN RACE.

promise, and a great war ensues, in which the Pandavas
ultimately triumph. "Whether this war indicates some
actual event or not, is questionable; but this part of the
work is well performed, the characters of the five Pandavas
are finely drawn, and many of the battle-scenes strikingly
animated.

But this main theme forms but a minor portion of the
work. It is full of episodes of the most varied character,
and contains old poetical versions of nearly all the ancient
Hindu legends, with treatises on customs, laws, and re-
ligion, — in fact, nearly all that was known to the Hindus
outside the Vedas. The main story is so constantly
interrupted that it winds through the episodes “like a
pathway through an Indian forest/’ Some of these
episodes are said to be of “rare and touching beauty,”
while the work as a whole has every variety of style, dry
philosophy beside ardent love-scenes, and details of laws
and customs followed b}T scenes of battle and bloodshed.
Many of the stories are repeated in other words, and the
whole mass, containing more than one hundred thousand
verses, seems like a compilation of many generations of
Hindu literary work. Yet withal it is a production of high
merit and lofty intellectual conception.

In regard to the Persian branch of the Indo-Aryans, it
37ields us no ancient literary work in this exalted vein.
That considerable legendary poetry existed we have good
reason to believe; but it does not seem to have centred
around a single hero, as elsewhere, but to detail the deeds
of a long series of legendaiy kings, many of wiiom were
undoubtedly historical personages. It was late in the
history of the Persians when these legends became con-
densed into a single work, the celebrated Shah Xamah of
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

251

Firdusi, which forms, as Malcolm observes, “ deservedly
the pride and delight of the East.” It professes to be but
a versified history of the ancient Persian kings, from the
fabulous Kaiomurs to the fall of the second empire under
Yezdijird. But no trace remains of the documents em-
ployed by the poet, while his work is to so great an extent
legendary that it has all the elements of the epic except
that of a central hero. The work itself displays the
highest literary skill and poetical genius, and, as Sir John
Malcolm remarks, u in it the most fastidious reader will
meet with numerous passages of exquisite beauty.” The
narrative is usually very perspicuous, and some of the
finest scenes are described with simplicity and elegance of
diction, though the battle-scenes, in which the Persians
most delight, are by no means free from the Oriental
besetting sin of hyperbole.

Of the epic poetry of Greece, and particularly the great
works attributed to Homer, little here need be said. The
Iliad and Odyssey are too well known to readers to need
any description. Modern research has rendered it very
probable that these works, and the Iliad in particular, are
primitive epics in the true sense, being condensations of
a cycle of ancient heroic poetry. The antique Greek
singers were not without an abundant store of stirring
legends as subject-matter for their songs. These legends
have become partly embodied in poetry, partly in so-called
history; and in them mythology, history, and tradition
are so mingled that it is impossible to separate these con-
stituents and distinguish between fact and fancy. But of
all the legendary lore of the Greeks, that relating to the
real or fabulous siege of Troy seems most to have roused
the imagination of the early bards, and brought into being
 252

THE ARYAN RACE.

a series of the most stirring martial songs. These as a
rule centred around the deeds of one great hero, Achilles,
the scion of the gods, the invulnerable champion of the
antique world.

Little doubt is entertained by critics that the Iliad con-
tains the substance of a number of ancient lays devoted
to this one attractive subject. But if so, there can scarcely
be a doubt that these lays were fitted by a single skilful
hand into the epic framework of the Homeric song. AYe
may as well seek to divide Shakspeare into a series of
successive dramatists as to break up Homer into a c}Tcle
of antique poets. Alen of his calibre do not arise in
masses, even in the land of the Hellenes ; and though there
can be little question that older material made its way into
the Iliad, there can be as little question that it was wrought
into its present form by one great genius, and fitted by one
skilful hand into the place which it occupies. Another
theory offered is that the nucleus of the poem and a portion
of its incidents are the work of a single great poet, while
episodes of other authorship were worked into it at a later
period. But a more probable supposition would seem to
be that Homer, like Shakspeare, dealt with heroic legends
of earlier origin, ancient ballads whose substance w*as
worked into the nucleus of the poem by that one great
genius whose vital intellect inspirits the whole song.
This would explain at once the discrepancies that exist
between the subject and handling of the several cantos,
and the considerable degree of unity and homogeneity
which the poem as a whole possesses. It need scarcely
here be said that the Iliad stands at the head of all epic
song, alike in the manner of its evolution, the lofty poetic
genius which it displays, and the exquisite beauty of its
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

253

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versification. As compared with the Hindu epics, it
displays the artistic moderation of Greek thought in con-
trast with the unpruned exuberance of the Oriental imagi-
nation. Even the gods which crowd its pages are as human
in their lineaments as a Greek statue, and we are every-
where introduced to the society of actual man, with his
real passions, feelings, and sentiments, instead of to a
congeries of phantasms whose like never drew breath in
heaven, earth, or sea.

The Odyssey has been subjected to criticism of the same
character, and with like indefinite results. There can be
no doubt that here also we have to do with one of the
favorite heroes of Greek legend,—the wise, shrewd, hard-
headed old politician Ulysses, in contrast with the fiery
Achilles, uncontrollable alike in his fury and his grief.
They are strongly differentiated types of character, both
to be found in the mental organization of the Greek,
and perhaps chosen from an involuntary sense of their
fitness. We need not here follow Ulysses in his wan-
derings and his strange adventures by land and sea. They
simply indicate the conception of the ancient Greek mind,
yet firmly held in mythologie fetters, of the conditions of
the world beyond its ken. Yet a considerable change had
taken place in the ruling ideas between the dates of the
two poems. The turbulent Olympian court of the Iliad
has almost disappeared in the Odyssey, and Zeus has
developed from the hot-tempered monarch of the Iliad
into the position of a supreme moral ruler of the uni-
verse. If both poems are the work of one hand, which
is now strongly questioned, the poet must have passed
from the ardent and active youth of the Iliad to the re-
flective era of old age and into a period of developed
 254:

THE ARYAN RACE.

religions ideas ere he finished his noble life-work with the
Odyssey.

Of the remaining epic work of Greece nothing need be
said. The true epic spirit seems to have died with Homer ;
and though many heroic poems were afterward produced,
they lack the lofty poetic power of the ancient Muse.
But one work need be named here, the Theogony of He-
siod, as at once partly an epic poem, and partly a mytho-
logical record. To a certain extent it may be classed
with the Icelandic Eddas and the Persian cosmogony;
though the scheme which it presents is less connected and
complete, and it cannot lay the same claim to the title of
a philosophy of mythology. On the other hand, it details
many stirring scenes, and its description of the battles
between Zeus and the Titans has an epic power which
approaches that of Milton’s story of the war on Heaven’s
plains.

The epic poetry of Rome may be dismissed with a few
words. That the Romans possessed the vigor of imagi-
nation and the boldness and sustained energy of concep-
tion necessary to work of this description, is sufficiently
attested by the JEneid of Virgil. But it is with a native
epic growth that we are here concerned, not with a second-
ary outcome of Greek inspiration. A study of ancient
Roman history reveals the fact that abundance of epic
material existed. This history is in great part a series of
legends, many of which are doubtless prose versions of old
heroic lays. Cicero remarks that “ Cato, in his Origines,
tells us that it was an old custom at banquets for those
who sat at table to sing to the flute the praiseworthy
deeds of famous men.”1 He further regrets that these

1 Quaestioncs Tuscul. iv. 2.
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

255

lays had perished in his time. Other writers give similar
testimony; and it is highly probable that the stories of the
warlike deeds of Iloratius, Mucius, Camillns, etc., were
largely poetic fictions, designed to be sung in the halls of
the great nobles of these clans. We find here no clustering
of legend round the names of single heroes, as in ancient
Greece. The scope of Homan thought lay below the level
of the demigods. It was practical throughout, and per-
mitted but minor deviations from the actual events of
history. Thus Roman legend is more in the vein of that
of Persia, which was spread over a long line of fabulous
kings, instead of concentrating itself around a few all-
glorious champions. Rome, however, produced no Fir-
dusi to embalm its legends in the life-like form of song.
Yet the history of Livy may almost be called an epic in
prose. It is the nearest approach which Rome made to a
national epic, and prose as it is, the great work of Livy
deserves to be classed among the heroic epics of the
world.

It is in strong confirmation of the intellectual energy of
the Aryans to find that the remaining and more barbaric
branches of the race, equally with the Greeks and Hindus,
produced their epics of native growth. And it is of inter-
est to find that the Teutonic and Celtic epic cycles display
the true epic condition of the concentration of a series
of heroic lays around one great national hero. With the
Teutonic people a native Homer arose to give epic shape
to the floating lays of the past. This cannot be affirmed
of the Celts, whose ancient heroes owed their final glory
to foreign hands.

The Germans possess more than one collection of an-
tique lays, such as the poem of Gudrun, and the Helden-
 256

THE ARYAN RACE.

buck, or Book of Heroes. But it is to the Nibelungen-lied
that they proudly point as a great national epic, the out-
growth of their heroic age. Nor is this pride misplaced.
The song of the Nibelung is undoubtedly a great and
noble work, unsurpassed in the circle of primitive warlike
epics except by the unrivalled Iliad. It is full of the
spirit of the old German lays, such as Tacitus tells us the
Germans of his time composed in honor of their great
warriors. It is full also of mythological elements, to such
an extent that it is difficult to discriminate between the
deific and the human origin of its heroes. In its central
hero, Siegfried, the Achilles of the song, and in the heroic
maiden Brunhild, we undoubtedly have mythological char-
acters. But in others, such as Etzel and Dietrich, can be
traced such well-known historical personages as Attila,
the leader of the Iluns, and Theodoric, the Gothic king.
Siegfried and Brunhild appear in other legends besides
those of the Nibelung, and we find the former in the Vol-
sung lay of the Eddas as Sigurd, who fought with the
dragon Fafnir for the golden hoard. This golden hoard
is a moving impulse in the Teutonic legendary cj'cle.
Siegfried has become the possessor of the enchanted treas-
ure of the Nibelungs, and, like Achilles, has been made
invulnerable, except in a spot between his shoulders, which
replaces the heel of Achilles.

But the hoard of gold is a secondary motive in the
Nibelungen-lied. Its mythologie fiction has almost van-
ished, and has been replaced by human motives, human
passions, and human deeds. Man has dwarfed the gods in
this outcome of German thought. It is the truly human
passion of jealousy, the hot rivalry of the two queens,
Brunhild and Kriemhild, and the bitter thirst of the latter
 TIIE ARYAN LITERATURE.

257

for revenge, that carry us through its stirring epic cycle
of treachery, war, and murder. There is nothing in the
whole circle of song more terrible than the finale of this
vigorous poem, the pitiless battle for vengeance in the
blood-stained banquet-hall of the Huns. Of the name of the
poet who shaped the old ballads into the enduring form of
the Nibelungen-lied we have no more than a conjectural
knowledge. This work was apparently done about the
year 1200 ; but the lays themselves perhaps reach back to
the fifth or sixth centuries. The epic work was done by a
master-hand, who has moulded the separate songs, sagas,
and legends into a well-harmonized single poem with a
judgment and ability that shows the possession of a vigor-
ous genius.

The Nibelungen-lied is not a courtly poem. It is full
of the rudeness and passion of a barbaric age, though the
conditions of Middle-Age society, with its combined cru-
elty and chivalry, and the sentiment of the age of the
Minnesingers, have not been without their effect in soften-
ing the spirit of the older lays, and in giving a degree of
poetic splendor to the crude boldness of archaic song. It
falls far below the Iliad in all that constitutes a great
work of art, yet it is instinct with a fervent imagination,
a fiery energy, and a truly epic breadth of incident. Its
descriptive power, the fine characterization of its person-
ages, and the skilful handling of the plot, indicate both
an age of considerable literary culture and a high degree
of poetic genius in the narrator, while the Teutonic spirit
is shown in its deep feeling for the profound and mysteri-
ous in human destiny. Opening with a calm and quiet
detail of peaceful incidents, we soon find the poem plung-
ing into the abyss of jealousy, rivalry, murder, and all the

17
 258

THE AllYAN RACE.

fiercer passions. The hand of the assassin finds the vul-
nerable spot in Siegfried’s body, the fatal spot left un-
bathed by the magic dragon’s blood, and he falls a victim
to Brunhild’s relentless hate. From this point onward the
poem gathers force as it flows, until it sweeps with the
fury of .a mountain-torrent toward its disastrous finale
in the terrible retribution exacted by the hero’s vengeance-
brooding wife. The death-dealing spirit of ancient trag-
edy finds its culmination in the story of awful bloodshed in
which the murderons Hagen and his companions meet their
deserts at the court of the Huns. The terrible energy with
which the poem closes finds nothing to surpass it in the
most vigorous scenes of Homer’s world-famous works.

One more poem of epic character, the product o'f the
Teutonic Muse, may be here mentioned,—the most archaic
and barbarous of all epic songs. This is the primeval
English epic, the poem of Beowulf,—the work of the
Anglo-Saxons in their days of utter barbarism and heathen-
ism, probably before they left their home on the Continent
to fall in piratical fury on England’s defenceless shores.
We have here no chivalry, no sentiment, no softness. All
is fierce, rude, and savage. The superstitions of an age of
mental gloom form the web of the poem, which is shot
through and through with the threads of mythologie lore.
It is, as Longfellow remarks, “like a piece of ancient
armor, — rusty and battered, and yet strong.” The style
is of the simplest. The bold metaphorical vein of later
Anglo-Saxon poetry is wanting; the poet seems intent
only on telling his story, and has no time for episodes and
metaphors. Yet Beowulf is the far-off progenitor of the
knight-errant of chivalry; and the song is such as the un-
cultured, yet vigorous-minded, bards of the heathen Saxons
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

259

might have sung in the rude halls of half-savage thanes,—
ale-quaffing, stool-seated Berserkers, listening in the light
of flaring and smoking torches to the stirring lay of human
prowess and magic charms.

AYe are told how Beowulf, the sea Goth, fought unarmed
with Grendel the giant, and destroyed the monster, after
the latter had slain scores of beer-drunken doughty Danes
in the great hall of King Hrothgar the Scylding. There
succeeded a terrible fight in the dens whither Beowulf
had followed the GrendeTs mother, a witch-like monster.
Here he slew dragons and monsters that blocked his way;
and after a hard struggle with the grim old-wife, seized a
magic sword which lay among the treasures of her dwell-
ing, and “with one fell blow let her heathen soul out of
its bone house.” 1 To this strongly told bit of heathen lore
are added eleven more cantos, relating the deeds of the
sea-king in his old age, when he fought with a monstrous
fire-drake which was devastating the land. He killed this
creature, and enriched the land with the treasure found in
its cave ; yet himself died of his wounds.

Here again we have the magic treasure of Teutonic lore,
destined to be fatal to its possessor, as the Nibelung
hoard was to the hero Siegfried. It is undoubtedly an out-
growth of Northern mythology, and perhaps had its origin
in the treasures of the dawn or of the summer of ancient
Aryan myth. As an epic, the poem possesses much
merit. It is highly graphic in its descriptions, while the
story of its battles, its treasure-houses, the revels and
songs in the kings’ halls, and the magical incidents with
which the poem is filled, are told with a minuteness that
brings clearly before our eyes the life of a far ruder age
1 Longfellow, Poets and Poetry of Europe, p. 4.
 260

TIIE ARYAN RACE.

than is revealed by any other extended poem. As Long-
fellow sa}Ts, “ we can almost smell the brine, and hear the
sea-breezes blow, and see the mainland stretch out its
‘sea-noses’ into the blue waters of the solemn main.”
This rude old song, so fortunately preserved, yields us
striking evidence of the intellectual vigor of the fathers of
the English race.

The Celtic Aryans have been quite as prolific as any
other branch of the race ; and though they present us with
no completed epic, they have preserved an abundance
of those heroic tales which form the basis of epic song.
While the Germans of the Continent and the Saxons of
England were plunged in the depths of barbarism, the
Irish Celts manifested a considerable degree of literary
activity, and produced works on a great variety of subjects,
whose origin can be traced back to the early centuries of
the Christian era. Among these were numerous heroic
legends which centred around two great traditional cham-
pions of the past. One of these cycles of epic la}7s, whose
heroes have almost vanished from the popular mind, relates
the deeds of a doughty hero, Cuchulaind, of whose mighty
prowess man}7 stirring stories are told. The central tale is
the Tain Bo Cuailnge, or the “Cattle Spoil of Cualnge,”
which tells how Cuchulaind defended Ulster and the mystic
brown bull of Cualnge single-handed against all the forces
of Queen Medb of Connaught, the original of the fairy-
queen Mab. Around this vigorously told story cluster
some thirty others, descriptive of the deeds of the hero
Cuchulaind, of Medb the heroine, and of many great cham-
pions of the past. As a whole, it forms a complete epic
cycle, and needed only the shaping and pruning hand of
some able poet to add another to the national epics of
 TIIE ARYAN LITERATURE.

261

the world. These legends, as they exist now, are in
twelfth-century manuscripts, of mixed prose and verse;
hut for their origin we must go hack to the vanished hards
of many centuries preceding.

In addition to this epic cycle of heroic song, the Irish
have the fortune to possess another, equally extensive, and
of much more modern date,—the story of Finn, the son
of Cumall, who is still a popular hero in Ireland, though
his predecessor has long heen forgotten. Finn and the
Fennians may have had a historical basis, though there can
he very little of the historical in the stories relating to
them, with their abundance of magical incidents and extra-
ordinary adventures. The Fennian tales probably only be-
gan to he popular about the twelfth century, and new ones
continued to appear till a much later period, one of them
being as late as the eighteenth century. These legends
are very numerous, and they may claim to have found their
epic poet in a bard of alien blood; for it seems certain
that the heroes of both these cycles of songs were popu-
lar in the Highlands of Scotland, and that Macpherson’s
Ossian, though doubtless due, as a poem, to his own
mind, contains elements derived by him from the popular
Highland heroic lore. Ossian is Oisin, the son of Finn,
while the hero himself is represented in Fingal; and char-
acters of both the Irish legendary cycles are introduced.
Much as the statement of Macpherson concerning the
origin of this poem has been questioned, it may have
equal claim to the title of a naturally evolved epic as the
Nibelungen-lied or the Iliad. For in none of these cases
are we aware to what an extent the final poet manipulated
his materials, or how greatly he transformed the more an-
cient lays and legends.
 262

THE ARYAN RACE.

The Welsh division of the Celts seems to have been
nearly as active as the Irish in literary work, and pro-
duced its distinct epic cycle in the heroic lays of King
Arthur, — the popular hero of the age of chivalry and of
modern English epic song. This hero of fable, with his
Round Table of noble knights, and the deeds of the
enchanter Merlin, was first introduced to Middle-Age
Europe in the fabulous British history of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, written early in the twelfth century. The
Arthurian legends yielded nothing that we can call an epic,
but they gave inspiration to a marvellous series of rhymed
romances, the work of the French Trouvères. The French,
however, were not without a native hero of romance
of older date in their literature than the Arthur myths.
This was their great King Charlemagne, who, with his
twelve peers, formed the theme of an interminable series
of Chansons de Gestes, or legendary ballads, in which
the epic spirit became diffused through a wide range
of rude and magical romance. King Arthur succeeded
Charlemagne as a popular hero at a period of more cul-
ture and softer manners, and the poems of which he and
his knights form the heroes are the finest in that tedious
series of magical romances with which the Trouvères and
their successors deluged the literature of the chivalric
age, until they finally sank into utter inanity, and were
laughed out of existence by Cervantes in his inimitable
satire of Don Quixote.

In this review of the early poetry of the Aryans there
is one branch of the race }^et to be considered, and one
remaining epic to be described. The Slavonians have
not been without their literary productions, though none
of their poetry has reached the epic stage. But the con-
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

263

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #25 on: June 15, 2019, 09:39:15 PM »
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tiguous Finns, whom we have viewed as nearly related
in race to the Slavonic Aryans, have evolved an epic
poem of some considerable merit, and of interest as the
latest work of this character to come into existence in
the primitive method. Its elements long existed among
the Finnish people as a series of heroic legendary bal-
lads, the work of arranging which into a connected epic
form was due to Dr. Lönnrot, of Helsingfors, who col-
lected from the lips of the peasantry, and published in
1835, the epic production now known as the Kalevala,
the “Home of Heroes.” These legends belong mainly
to the pre-Christian period of Finnish culture. They
centre, in true epic style, round the hero Wainamoinen,
whose deeds, with those of his two brother heroes, form
the theme of a series of connected lays, which fall to-
gether into a poem almost as homogeneous as the Iliad.
It is a work instinct with mythology. It opens with a
myth of the creation of the universe from an egg, and
is full of folk-lore throughout. The heroes of Kaleva,
the land of happiness, bring down gifts from Heaven to
mortals, and work many magic wonders. Yet they min-
gle in the daily life of the people, share their toils, and
enter into their rest. They are, as Mr. Lang says,
“ exaggerated shadows of the people, pursuing on a
heroic scale, not war, but the common business of peace-
ful and primitive men.” Yet the poem is not without
its warlike element, — in the struggle of the heroes of
Kaleva with the champions of Pohjola, the region of
the frozen North, and of Luonela, the land of death.
It ends, after many vicissitudes, in the triumph of Wai-
namoinen and his followers over their foes. Of the
merits of this poem, Max Müller remarks: “From the
 264

THE AKYAN RACE.

mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected,
equalling the Iliad in length and completeness, — nay, if
we can forget for the moment all that tee in our youth
learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful.” In metre
and style it resembles Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” which
imitates it with some exactness.

Though the Slavonic people have produced no heroic
epos of this completeness, they are not without their
heroic poetry. The success attained by Dr. Lönnrot in
studying the popular poetry of Finland has led to like
efforts in Russia, with very marked results. Two great
collections of the epic lays of the Russian people now
exist,—that published by P. N. Ruibnikof in 18G7; and
that of P. R. Kiryeevsky, which is not yet completed.
These lays were collected from the lips of the Russian
peasantiy, the whole country being traversed by the
ardent explorers in their indefatigable search for the
old songs of the Slavonic race. The Builinas, or historic
poems, thus rescued from oblivion seem naturally to fall
into several cycles, each with its distinct characteristics.
Of these the most archaic lays deal with the “Elder He-
roes,” and are evidently of mythologie origin. Closely
connected with these in character is the cycle named after
Vladimir the Great. This is the epos of the “ Younger
Heroes,” — the ancient paladins of the country, like those
of the Charlemagne and Arthur legends. The third is
known as the Novgorod cycle, and deals with the remote
era of historic Russia. The fourth is the Royal or Mos-
cow cycle, and has the personages of actual history for
its heroes.

These Russian songs show no tendency to centre round
any single hero, and thus offer no opportunity for their
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

265

concentration into a single connected poem. In the his-
tory of national epic poetry, in fact, we seem to distinguish
two distinct lines of development. One of these is that
pursued by Persia, Rome, and Russia, in which no single
hero has concentrated the attention of singers, and the
flow of song takes in a long succession of fabulous and
historical champions. The other is that pursued by the
remaining Aryans, in which song centred itself around one
or a few great warriors, mostly of mythological origin, and
the series of songs naturally combined into a connected
narrative. This is the more archaic stage of the two, or
perhaps the one that indicates the most active imagination,
and it is the one to which all the naturally evolved epic
poems of the world are due.

The production of heroic poetry by the Aryan peoples
by no means ceased with their stage of half-barbaric de-
velopment. Numerous valuable epic poems have been
produced in the age of civilization; but of these we need
say nothing, as they are secondary products of the human
mind, and not the necessary outcome of mental evolution.
They are only of value to us here as evidences of the
continued vigor of the Aryan imagination. One only of
these presents any of the characteristics of a naturally
evolved work. This is the great poem of Dante, the
Dicina Commedia, in which the Middle-Age mythology
of the Christian Church has become embodied in song, the
record of a stage of thought which can never be repro-
duced upon the civilized earth. The Inferno of Dante is
the mediaeval expression of a succession of extraordinary
conceptions of the future destiny of the soul. These are
of strict Aryan origin, since all non-Aryan nations have
had very vague conceptions of the punishment of the
 266

THE ARYAN RACE.

wicked. The extreme unfoldment of the hell-idea we owe
to the Hindu imagination, and a less exaggerated one
to that of Persia. It would be difficult to conceive of
a more grotesquely extravagant series of future tortures
than those of the Buddhistic liell. These ideas have been
carried by the Buddhists to China, while they gave the
cue to Mohammed and instigated the hell of the Koran.
Their final product is the hell of mediaeval Europe, and
they have attained poetical expression in Dante’s In-
ferno. We may therefore fairty class this poem with the
primitive epics of mankind, as it gives poetic expression
to a stage of human culture and a natively evolved series
of mythical conceptions which have died out with the
advance of civilization, but which were as essential ele-
ments of thought-development as the worship of mythical
deities and the admiration of heroic demigods.

We have given considerable attention to the development
of Aryan epic poetry from the evidence which it presents
of the distinctly superior character of the Aryan imagina-
tion to that of the other races of mankind. None of these
can be fairly said to have reached the epic level of thought.
The Aryans have continuously progressed beyond this
level. But the steps of this progression can here but con-
cisely be indicated. The epic spirit in ancient Greece
unfolded in two directions, one producing the imaginative
historical narrative, the other giving rise to the drama.
The former of these in that actively intellectual land
quickly developed into history in its highest sense, yielding
the rigidly critical and philosophical historical work of
Thucydides. The latter as quickly gave rise to a succes-
sion of the noblest dramatic productions of mankind, those
of the three great tragedians of Greece. Elsewhere in the
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

267

ancient world the course of development was much the
same. Rome produced no native drama of literary value,
but in historic production it rivalled the best work of
Greece, passing from the half-fabulous historical legends
of Livy to the critical production of Tacitus. In this re-
spect practical Rome was in strong contrast to imaginative
India, in which land history remained undeveloped, while
a drama of considerable merit came into existence.

If now we consider the unfoldment of modern European
literature, it is to find it pursue a somewhat different
channel, and reach results not attained in ancient times.
The rhymed romance of chivalry was the direct outgrowth
of the epic spirit in mediaeval Europe, and was accom-
panied by metrical histories as fabulous as the romance.
In their continued development these two forms of litera-
ture deviated. The history of fable gradually unfolded into
the history of fact. Prose succeeded verse, and criticism
replaced credulit}7. The rhymed romance, on its part, de-
veloped into the prose romance, and lost more and more of
its magical element, until it full}7 entered the region of the
possible. It still continued tedious and extravagant, but
had got rid of its old cloak of mythology.

Ancient fiction reached a stage somewhat similar to this,
though not by the same steps of progress. In the later
eras of Greece romantic fictions appeared, comprising
pastoral, religious, and adventurous tales similar to those
which were the ruling fashion of a few centuries ago in
Europe. But there was little trace of the allegory, which
became such a favorite form of literature with our fore-
fathers. In India this development stopped at a lower
stage, that of fable and fairy lore. But in this field
the active Hindu imagination produced abundantly, and
 268

THE ARYAN RACE.

directly instigated the Persian and Arabian magical liter-
ature. Through the latter its influence entered modern
Europe. Collections of the Hindu tales were extant in the
Middle Ages, and from them seems to have directly out-
grown the short novel or tale, which attained such popu-
larity and reached its highest level of art in the Decameron
of Boccaccio.

But in more modern times the imaginary narrative has
passed onward to a far higher stage than it attained in the
ancient period, and has yielded the character-novel of our
own day, — a literary form in which the combined imagina-
tion and reason of the Aryan mind have gained their lofti-
est development. The novel is the epic of the scientific
and reflective era. It has cast off the barbaric splendor
of the mantle of verse and of magical and supernatural
embellishments, and has descended to quiet prose and
actual life conditions. It has left the heroic for the do-
mestic stage. It has replaced the outlined characters of
the epic by critical dissections that reveal the inmost fibres
of human character. The stirring action of the epic has
in it been replaced in great part by reflection and mental
evolution. It forms, in short, the storehouse into which
flows all the varied thought of modern times, there to be
wrought into an exact reproduction of the physical, social,
and mental life of man.

The modern drama unfolded at an earlier date than the
novel. But its evolution was a native one only in Spain
and England. Elsewhere it was but an imitation of the
drama of the ancient world. It attained its highest level
in the works of Shakspeare, which indeed prefigured the
modern novel in the critical exactness and mental depth
of their character-pictures and in the reflective vein which
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

269

underlies all their action. As complete reproductions of
intellectual man, and dissections of the human understand-
ing in its every anatomical detail, they probably stand at
the highest level yet reached by the powers of human
thought. The remaining outgrowth of epic narrative, that
of prose history, has likewise attained a remarkable devel-
opment in modern times, and has become as philosophical
and critical as the narrative of ancient times, with few
exceptions, was crude, credulous, and unphilosophical.

If an attempt be made to compare the literary work
of the non-Aryan nations in these particulars with the
Aryan productions, it will reveal a very marked contrast
between the value of the two schools of thought. Noth-
ing need be said of the fictitious or historical literature of
the ancient non-Aryan civilizations. It lay in intellectual
power very far below the level attained by Greece. The
only important literary nation of modern times outside
the Aryan world is China. In the making of books the
Chinese have been exceedingly active, and their literature
is enormous in quantity; the Europeans scarcely surpass
them in this respect. But in regard to quality they stand
immeasurably below the Aryan level.

Though China has produced no epic poem, it has been
very prolific in historical and descriptive literature and in
what is called the drama and the novel. Yet in its his-
torical work it has not gone a step beyond the annalistic
stage. The idea of historical philosophy is yet to be bom
in this ancient land. As for tracing events to their causes,
and taking that broad view of history which converts the
consecutive detail of human deeds into a science, and dis-
plays to us the seemingly inconsequential movements of
nations as really controlled by necessity and directed by
 270

THE ARYAN RACE.

• the unseen hand of evolution, such a conception has not
yet entered the unimaginative Chinese mind.

As regards the Chinese drama and novel, they are
utterly unworthy of the name. Character-delineation is
the distinctive feature of the modern novel, and of this
the novel of China is void. It consists mainly of inter-
minable dialogues, in which moral reflections and trifling
discussions mingle, while the narrative is made tedious by
its many inconsequential details. The stories abound in
sports, feasts, lawsuits, promenades, and school exam-
inations, and usually wind up with marriage. There is
abundance of plot, but no character. Their heroes are
paragons of all imaginable virtues, — polished, fascinating,
learned; everything but human. The same may be said
of the Chinese drama. It is all action. Reflection and
character-analysis fail to enter. There are abundance of
descriptions of fights and grand spectacles, myths, puns,
and grotesque allusions, intermingled with songs and bal-
lets. The plot is sometimes very intricate, and managed
with some skill; but often the play is almost destitute of
plot, though full of horrible details of murders and ex-
ecutions. Fireworks, disguised men, and men personating
animals, are admired features of those strange spectacles;
but as for any display of a high order of intellectuality,
no trace of it can be discovered in the dramatic or fictitious
literature of this very ancient literary people.

There is no occasion, in this review, to consider all the
many divisions into which modern Aryan literature has
unfolded. There is, however, yet another of the ancient
and naturally evolved branches of literature to be taken
into account. AVe have said that the general course of
poetic development seems to have been from the religious
 THE ARYAN LITERATURE.

271

through the heroic lyric to the epic. But lyric poetry con-
tinued its development, accompanying and succeeding the
epic. It has indeed come down to our own times in a
broad flood of undiminished song. It is with the lyric,
truly so called, that we are here concerned, — the poetry
of reflection, the metrical analysis of human emotion and
thought, in contrast with the poetry of action. To this
may be added the poetry of description, of the love-song,
and of the details of common life, with all their numerous
varieties.

In this field of literature alone the other races come
more directly into comparison with the Aryan. Prolific as
every branch of the Aryan race' has been in lyric song,
the remaining peoples of civilized mankind have been little
less so, and in this direction have attained their highest
out-reach of poetic thought. The Hebrews specially ex-
celled in the lyric. In the poem of moral reflection and
devotion, in the delineation of the scenes and incidents
of rural life, and in the use of apposite metaphor, they
stand unexcelled, while in scope of sublime imagery the
poem of Job has never been equalled. This poetry, how-
ever, belongs to a primitive stage of mental development,
— that in which worship was the ruling mental interest of
mankind. The intellect of man had not expanded into
its modern breadth, and was confined to a narrow range
of subjects of contemplation.

At a later period the Semitic race broke into a second
outburst of lyric fervor, — that of the Arabians in their im-
perial era. But this failed to reach any high standard of
intellectual conception. Their poems were largely devoted
to love and eulogy ; and while they had the same metrical
harmony ns their direct successors, the works of the Trou-
 272

THE ARYAN RACE.

baclours and the Minnesingers, they, like these, were
largely void of thought, and lacked sufficient vitality to
give them continued life. In China, again, we find a very
considerable development of non-Aryan lyric song, coming
down from a very early period of the nation. And these
lyrics have often much merit as quiet pictures of life; but
it cannot be claimed that they show any lofty intellectual
power. For the highest development of the lyric, as of
every form of literary work, we must come to the Aryan
world, where alone thought has climbed and broadened,
reaching its highest level and its widest outlook, and sink-
ing to its profoundest depth of analysis of the mental
universe. So far as literature embodies the powers of
the human intellect, it points to the Aryan development
as supremely in advance of that of the other races of
mankind.
 XL

OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

IT is necessary, in continuation of our subject, to con-
sider the comparative record of the Aryan and the
other races of mankind in respect to the development
of art, science, mechanical skill, and the other main
essentials of civilization. In doing so, certain marked
distinctions make themselves apparent, and it seems pos-
sible to draw broad lines of demarcation between the
principal races. If we consider the Negro race from this
point of view, it is to find a lack of energy both physical
and mental. Nowhere in the region inhabited by this race
do we perceive indications of high powers either of work
or thought. No monuments of architecture appear; no
philosophies or literatures have arisen. And in their
present condition they stand mentally at a very low level,
while physically they confine themselves to the labor ab-
solutely necessary to existence. They neither work nor
think above the lowest level of life-needs; and even in
America, under all the instigation of Aryan activity, the
Negro race displays scarcely any voluntary energy either
of thought or work. It goes only as far as the sharp
whip of necessity drives, and looks upon indolence and
sunshine as the terrestrial Paradise.

The record of the Mongolian race is strikingly different.
Here, too, we find no great scope or breadth of thought,
but there is shown a decided tendency to muscular exertion.

18
 274

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #26 on: June 15, 2019, 09:40:02 PM »
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THE ARYAN RACE.

For pure activity of work the Mongolians have been un-
surpassed, and no difficulty seems to have deterred them
in the performance of the most stupendous labors. The
Aryans have never displayed an equal disposition to hand-
labor,— not, however, from lack of energy, but simply that
Aryan energy is largely drafted off to the region of the
brain, while Mongolian energy is mainly centred in the
muscles. The Aiyan makes every effort to save his hands.
Labor-saving machinery is his great desideratum. The
Mongolian, with equal native energy, centres this energy
within his muscles, while his brain lies fallow. The Chi-
nese, for instance, are the hardest hand-workers in the
world. The amount of purely physical exertion which they
perform is nowhere surpassed. The productiveness of
their country, through the activity of hand-labor alone, is
considerably superior to that of any other country not
possessed of effective machinery. But in regard to thought
they exist in an unprogressive state. Little has been done
by the brain to relieve the hand from its arduous labor.
Chinese thought is mainly a turning over of old straw.
The land is almost empt}T of original mental productions.

If we consider the record of the Mongolians of the past
the same result appears. They have left us monuments
of strenuous work, but none of highly developed thought.
China, the most enlightened of Mongolian nations, has an
immense ancient literature, but none that can be compared
with Aryan literature in respect to display of mental ability.
Its highest expression is its philosophy, and that, in
intellectual grasp, is enormously below the contemporary
philosophy of India. But in respect to evidences of
muscular exertion it has no superior. The Great YYall of
China far surpasses in the work there embodied any other
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

275

single product of human labor. Yet it is in no sense an
outcome of advanced thought. It is the product of a
purely practical mind, and one of a low order of intelli-
gence, as evidenced by the utter uselessness of this vast
monument of exertion for its intended purpose. The Great
Canal of China is another product of a purely practical
intellect. Every labor performed by China has a very
evident purpose. It is all industrial or protective. There
are no monuments to the imagination. Y"et the lack of
mental out-reach has prevented any great extension of
labor-saving expedients. At long intervals, during the
extended life of the nation, some useful invention has
appeared, — such as that of the art of printing. Yet for
much more than a thousand years this art has remained in
nearly its original stage, while in Europe, during a con-
siderably shorter period, it has made an almost miraculous
advance. Among the few illustrations of non-practical
labor in China are its pagodas, which seem like the play-
things of a rudimentary imagination wdien compared with
the architectural monuments of Europe.

If now we review the products of the American abo-
rigines, whose closest affinities are certainly with the
Mongolians, we arrive at a similar conclusion. There is
evidence of an immense ability for labor, but of no superior
powers of thought. The quantity of sheer muscular
exertion expended on the huge architectural structures and
the great roads of Peru, the immense pyramids of Mexico,
and the great buildings of Yucatan, is extraordinary. The
huge mounds erected by the ancient dwellers in the
Mississippi valley are equally extraordinary, when we
consider the barbarian condition of their builders. There
is here no lack of muscular energy. No people of native
 276

THE ARYAN RACE.

indolence could have erected these monuments, or have
even conceived the idea of them. There is abundant
ability to work displayed, but no great ability to think.
The great roads of Peru are products of a practical mind.
In regard to the remaining works, they were largely incited
by religious thought. They yield us in massive walls and
crude ornamentation the record of the highest imaginative
out-reach and artistic power of the American mind. When
we come to examine them we find that their main ex-
pression is that of hugeness. Their art is rudimentary,
except in some few striking instances in the Maya archi-
tecture and statuary of YTicatan. There are indications
of intellectual ability, but it remains in its undeveloped
stage. Energy is not lacking, but it is mainly confined to
the muscles, and but slightty vitalizes the mind.

We have evidences of similar conditions in the works of
architecture remaining from the pre-Aryan age of Europe.
The huge monoliths of Stonehenge, Avebuiy, and Carnac,
and the Cyclopean walls of Greece and Italy (the latter
possibl}7 of Aryan formation), indicate a race or an era
when muscle was in the ascendant and thought in embiyo.
The idea was the same as that indicated in the structures
of Asia and America, — to astound future man with edifices
that seem the work of giant builders. No indication of
the loftiest conception of architectural art appears,—that
of the simple combination of the ornamental with the
practical, and the restriction of size to the demands of
necessity and the requirements of graceful proportion. To
astonish by mere hugeness is a conception of the unde-
veloped mind. Blind force can raise a mountain mass ;
only higlil}7 developed intellect can erect a Greek temple.

The Melanochroic division of the white race repeats in
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

277

its work the Mongolian characteristic of hugeness. Yet
it indicates superior thought-powers, and has attained
a much higher level of art. In the extraordinary archi-
tectural and artistic monuments of Egypt the power of
sheer muscular vigor displayed is astounding. The world
has never shown a greater degree of energy; but it is
rather energy of the hands than of the mind. The ru-
dimentary idea of vast size is the main expression of these
works; and though they have sufficient artistic value to
show a considerable mental unfoldment, yet hugeness of
dimensions and the power of overcoming difficulties are
their overruling characteristics. The old rulers of Egypt
were eager to show the world of the future what labors they
could perform ; they were much less eager to show what
thought they could embody.

And yet among the monuments of Egypt and those of
the sister nations of Assyria and Babylonia we find our-
selves in a circle of thought of far higher grade than that
displayed by the Mongolian monuments. There is indi-
cated a vigorous power of imagination and an artistic ability
of no mean grade, while strong evidence appears that
but for the restraint of conventionality and the distracting
idea of hugeness, art would have attained a much higher
level. The rudiment of the Greek temple appears in the
architecture of Egypt and Assyria, and the former is a
direct outgrowth from the latter in the hands of a people
of superior intellectuality.

If the Negro is indolent both physically and mentally,
the Mongolian energetic physically but undeveloped men-
tally, and the Melanochroi active physically and to some
extent mentally, in the Aryan we find a highly vigorous
and developed mental activity. Though by no means
 278

THE ARYAN RACE.

lacking in ph}Tsical energy, the mind is the ruling agent in
this race, muscular work is reduced to the lowest level
consistent with the demands of the body and the in-
tellect, and every effort is made to limit the quantity of
work represented in a fixed quantity of product. Waste
labor is a crime to the Aryan mind. Use is the guiding
principle in all effort. It is to this ruling agency of the
intellect over the energies of a muscular and active
organism that we owe the superior quality, the restricted
dimensions, and the vast quantit}T of Aryan labor products.
In this work pure thought is far more strongly represented
than pure labor.

In the two great intellectual Aryan peoples of the past,
the Greek and the Hindu, the artistic products are strik-
ingly in accordance with the character of their respective
mentality. The work of the Hindu displays an imagina-
tive exuberance, with a lack of reasoning control. In it
we have rather the idea of vastness than of hugeness, a
vague yet strong mental upreach, while a superfluity, al-
most a wildness, of ornament testifies to the unrestrained
activity of the imagination. There is indicated no con-
trolling idea of utility. The Hindus were almost devoid
of practicality. Their architecture seems an embodiment
of their philosophy, —daring, unrestrained, and unpractical
throughout. In their older cave-temples, such as that at
Elephanta, sheer labor is the strongest characteristic; but
it is labor underlaid with a vigorous sense of art. In the
extraordinary excavations at Ellora an exuberant imagi-
nation carries all before it, and we seem to gaze upon
an epic poem in stone, rendered inartistic by its endless
superfluity of ornament.

In Greek architecture and in all Greek art. on the con-
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

279

trary, are visible the evidences of a subdued imagination.
In breadth and height of imaginative conception the Greek
mind is in no sense iuferior to the Hindu, but it is every-
where restrained by the habit of observation and by a
sense of the logical fitness of things. The Hindu looked
inward for his models, and built his temples to fit the con-
ceptions of his imagination. The Greek looked outward,
found his models in the lines and forms of the visible, and
sought to bring his work into strict conformity with the
grace, harmony, and moderation of external Nature. In
this effort he attained a remarkable success. True art
was born with him. All excess and exuberance disap-
pears, the wings of the imagination are clipped, and its
flights kept down to the level of the visible earth. The
idea of the practical is everywhere combined with that of
the ornamental. The subordination of the mind to the
teachings of visible Nature is rigidly maintained. Greek
art is the actual, reproduced in all its lines and propor-
tions, and with a strictly faithful rendering that detracts
from its value as a work of the intellect, while adding to it
as a work of art.

The defect of Greek art lies in an excess of this re-
straint. It sins in one direction, as Hindu art does in the
other. The wings of the imagination are too severely
clipped. It is undoubtedly a high conception of art accu-
rately to reproduce in marble the exact details and propor-
tions of the human frame. But the Greek fixed his eyes
so closely upon the body that he in a measure lost sight
of its animating soul. This is not the highest conception
of art. To imitate physical Nature exactly, was a great
achievement; and this the Greek artist attained to a de-
gree that can never be surpassed. But to reproduce the
 280

THE ARYAN RACE.

mind in the body, is a greater achievement; and in this
direction Greek art made but the preliminary steps.

The great statues of Greece represent types, not indi-
viduals. They display the mental characteristics of fear,
modesty, terror, dignity, and the like, in the gross, not in
detail. Their works are like the combined photographs
by which the general typical features of groups of men are
now reproduced. The special and individual varieties of
these characters are never represented. It is the same
with Greek architecture. It contains the harmonies and
proportions of physical Nature, but it is empty of the deep
spiritual significance with which Nature is everywhere per-
vaded. It is a magnificent body, but it lacks the soul.
The same would doubtless prove to be the case with Greek
painting, had it been preserved. It is largely the case
with Greek literature. Its characters are t}Tpes of man
more largely than they are individual men. Too strict
devotion to the seen is the weak point in Greek thought.
Its flight lies below the level of the unseen.

Modern Aryan art has taken a higher flight. 'While
paying less attention to the bod}T, it has paid more to the
soul. In Gothic architecture the imagination displays a
certain extravagance of manifestation ; but in it there is
embodied something of that profound and awe-inspiring
spiritual significance of Nature which Greek art fails to
manifest. Modern sculpture, while it does not attain to
the Greek level of physical perfection, indicates a higher
ideal of mentality. It represents the individual instead of
the group, and seeks to reproduce human emotion in its
special, instead of its general varieties of manifestation.
But the true modern arts, those best suited for mental em-
bodiment, are painting and music. Of these the former
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

281

attained some ancient development; the latter is strictly
modern as an art. It is mainly in these, and particularly
in music, — the latest production of Aryan art, —that the
soul shows through the thought, and that man has broken
the crust of clay which envelops his inmost being, and
auimated the products of his art with the deep spiritual
significance that everywhere underlies Nature. In the
work of the modern artist, in fact, we seem to have found
the true middle line between the opposite one-sidedness of
Greek and Hindu art. In the former of these the vis-
ible too strongly controls ; in the latter the invisible. In
the one the logical, in the other the imaginative, faculty of
the mind attains undue predominance. The modern artist
seeks to make these extremes meet. He fails to rival the
Greek in the physical perfection of his work mainly be-
cause his thought looks deeper than mere ph}Tsical perfec-
tion ; he fails to display the Hindu exuberance of fancy
from the fact that he never loses sight of the physical.
As a consequence, his work pursues the mid-channel be-
tween the logical and the imaginative, and reproduces
Nature as it actually exists,—everywhere a body ani-
mated by a soul. It is the individual that appears in
modern art, as it is the individual that rules in modern
society. In ancient nations the individual was of secon-
dary importance. The group was the national unit alike
in the family, the village, the gens, the tribe, and the va-
rious subdivisions of the State. The individual was im-
perfectly recognized in society, and became as imperfectly
recognized in art.

In respect to the art of the non-Aryan nations little
need be said. It lay far, often immeasurably, below the
level of Aryan art. What the art of Egypt might have
 282

THE ARYAN RACE.

attained if freed from the restraint of conventionalism, it
is difficult to say. It would probably even then have
ended where Greek art began, as we find to be the case
with the less conventionalized art of Assyria. The art of
the Americans was far more rudimentary. In one or two
examples it approaches the character of Greek art, but as
a rule it is rather grotesque than artistic. The same re-
mark applies to the art of modern China. It belongs to
the childhood of thought.

The world of science is almost completely an Ai^an
world. In this important field of thought the non-Aryan
races of mankind stop at the threshold of discovery.
Their most important work is in the formation of the
calendar, to which strict necessity seems to have driven
them. In this direction considerable progress was early
attained. Each of the primitive civilizations measured the
length of the year with close exactness, the Mexicans par- -
ticularly so, their calendar being almost equally accurate
with that of modern nations. This was a work of pure
observation, and astronomical conditions seem strongly to
have attracted the attention of early man. In fact the
only extended series of scientific observations in the far
past of which we are aware, is that of the Babylonians,
in their close watch upon the movements of the stars and
their study of eclipses. As to the accuracy and actual
value of this work, we really know very little. Some sim-
ilar observations were recorded by the Chinese. But
nearly all the actual results of science which the Aryan
has received from the exterior world consist in these few
astronomical observations, — the partial settlement of the
length of the year, its division into months and weeks,
and the similar division of the day into its minor portions.
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

283

On this small foundation the Aryans have built an im-
mense superstructure. Aryan science began with the
Greeks, whose tendency to exact observation made them
critically acquainted with many of the facts and conditions
of Nature. Y"et during' all the early eras of Greek enlight-
enment the activity of the imagination prevented this habit
of observation from producing valuable scientific results.
It was devoted principally to the purposes of philosophy
and art. It was necessary that able men, in whom logic
was superior to imagination, should arise ere science could
fairly begin. The first of these men we find in Thucy-
dides,— a cool, practical thinker, who made history a
science. The second of marked superiority was Aristo-
tle,— the true founder of observational science, which had
but a feeble existence before his day. His teacher, Plato,
was a true Greek, with all the fervor of the Hellenic im-
agination. Aristotle was essentially a logical genius. An
effort to bring himself into conformity with the prevailing
conditions of Greek thought forced him into various lines
of speculation ; but the ruling tendency of his mind was
toward incessant observation of facts for the accumula-
tion of exact knowledge. There had been preceding
Greek naturalists. Several noted physicians, particularly
Hippocrates, had made medical investigations. Aristotle
made use of the work of these men ; but it is doubtful if it
was of much extent or accuracy. To it he added a great
accumulation of facts, while laying down the laws of logi-
cal thought, which he was the first to formulate, and to
which little of value has been since added.

Any review of the subsequent history of science in the
Aryan world is beyond our purpose. It is far too vast a
subject to be even named at the conclusion of a chapter.
 284

THE ARYAN RACE.

It will suffice to say that the Greek mind seized with avid-
ity upon the new field of labor thus opened to it. It was
native soil to Greek thought, although it yet lay fallow.
The tendency of the Hellenic race to critical observation
had for centuries been fitting them for the work of re-
search into the facts of Nature ; and had the Greek intel-
lect remained in the ascendant there is no doubt that the
schools of Alexandria would have been the focus of a
great scientific development during the ancient era. As
it was they performed a large amount of good work, and
built a broad foundation for the future growth of this new
product of the human understanding.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #27 on: June 15, 2019, 09:40:56 PM »
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The Arabian empire served as the connecting-link be-
tween the thought of the ancient and modern world. We
cannot exactly say the Arabians, for this broad empire
clasped the thinkers of nearly all of civilized mankind
within its mighty grasp. It handed down Greek philoso-
phy and science to modern Europe, — the former with many
additions but no improvements, the latter considerably
advanced. The Arabian fancy played with Greek philoso-
phy, but was incapable of developing it, or even of fully
comprehending it. But observation and experiment needed
no vigorous powers of the intellect, and in this direction
many important discoveries were added by the Arabians to
the science of the Greeks. As to the vast results of scien-
tific observation of the modern Aryan world, nothing need
here be said. The coffers of science are filled to bursting
with their wealth of facts.

But science has by no means been confined to observa-
tion. The Aryan imagination has worked upon its store
of facts as actively as of old it worked upon its store of
fancies, and has yielded as abundant and far more valuable
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

285

results. Nature is being rebuilt in the mincl of man. One
by one her laws and principles are being deduced from
her observed conditions, and man is gaining an ever-widen-
ing and deepening knowledge of the realities of the uni-
verse in which he lives. And he is beginning: to “ know
himself ” in a far wider sense than was in the mind of the
Grecian sage when he uttered this celebrated aphorism.
The imagination of the past dealt largely with legend, with
misconceptions of the universe, with half observations,
and devised a long series of interesting but valueless
fictions. The imagination of the present is dealing more
and more with critically observed facts, and deducing
from them the true philosophy of the universe, that of
natural law, and of the unseen as logically demonstrable
from the seen. This great field of intellectual labor be-
longs to the Aryans alone. The other races of mankind
have not yet penetrated beyond its boundaries.

Modern Aryan civilization is made up of many more
elements than those whose development we have hastily
reviewed. One of the most marked of these is that of labor-
saving machinery. This is somewhat strictly confined to
modern times and to the Aryan nations. Beyond this
limit it has never existed in other than its embryo state.
Tools to aid hand-work have been devised, but the employ-
ment of other powers than the muscles of man to do the
labor of the world is almost a new idea, scarcely a trace of
it being discoverable beyond the borders of what we may
denominate modern Arya. The immense progress made
in the development of this idea is comparable with the
unfoldment of science, and together they form the back-
bone of modern civilization. Knowledge of Nature, and
industrial application of this knowledge, have given man a
 286

THE ARYAN RACE.

most vigorous hold upon the universe he inhabits; and in
place of the slow, halting, and uncertain steps of progress
in the past, he is now moving forward with a sure and
solid tread, and down broad paths of development as firm
and direct as were the great high-roads that led straight
outward from Rome to every quarter of the civilized world.

The progress of commerce, of finance, and of inquiry
into the underlying laws of social aggregation and political
economy, has been no less great. Here, too, we must
confine ourselves to the limits of the Aryan race, so far as
modern activity is concerned. Commerce, however, had
its origin at a very remote period of human history, and
attained a marked development in Semitic lands before
the Aryans had yet entered the circle of civilization.
There is every reason to believe that the ancient Baby-
lonians had a somewhat extensive sea and river commerce
at a very remote epoch. They were succeeded by the
Phoenicians, who displayed a boldness in daring the dan-
gers of unknown seas that was never emulated by their
successors, the Greeks. The overlaud commerce of the
Phoenicians was also very extensive. Since the origin of
Greek commerce, however, little activity has been shown
in this direction by non-Aryan peoples, with the one ex-
ception of the Arabians, who carried on an extensive ocean
commerce in their imperial era, and who to-day penetrate
nearly every region of Africa in commercial enterprises.
In this respect, also, modern China manifests some minor
activity. Yet the Aryans are, and have been, the great
commercial people of the earth, and have developed mer-
cantile enterprise to an extraordinary degree. Commercial
activity has been handed down in an interesting sequence
from branch to branch of the Aryan race, the Greeks, the
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

287

Venetians, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and
the Dutch each flourishing for a period, and then giving
way to a successor. To-day, however, commercial activity
is becoming a common Aryan characteristic, and though
England now holds the ascendency, her position is no
longer one of assured supremacy. A century or two more
will probably find every Aryan community aroused to ac-
tive commercial enterprise, and no single nation will be
able to claim dominion over the empire of trade. That
any non Aryan nation will at an early period enter actively
into competition in this struggle for the control of com-
merce, is questionable. The Japanese is the only one that
now shows a strong disposition to avail itself of the advan-
tages of Aryan progress, China }ret hugging herself too
closely in the cloak of her satisfied self-conceit to per-
ceive that a new world has been created during her long
slumber.

There is one further particular in which comparison
may be made between the Aryan and the non-Aryan
races of mankind,—that of moral development. In this
direction, also, it can readily be shown that the Aryans
have progressed beyond all their competitors. This,
however, cannot be said in regard to the promulgation
of the laws of morality, the great body of rules of
conduct which have been developed for the private gov-
ernment of mankind. It is singular to find that no im-
portant code of morals can be traced to Aryan authorship,
with the single exception of the Indian branch of the
race. There we find the Buddhistic code, which is cer-
tainly one of remarkable character, but which has in
very great measure lost its influence upon the Aryan race.
Alike the morality and the philosophy of Buddhism have
 288

THE ARYAN RACE.

almost vanished from the land of their birth, and this
religious system is now nearly confined to the Mongo-
lian race, while its lofty code of moral observance has
lost its value as a ruling force in the modern Bud-
dhistic world.

A second great code of morals is that of Confucius,
and constitutes essentially the whole of Confucianism.
This religion of educated China consists simply of a
series of moral rules, of a character capable of making
a highly elevated race of the Chinese, had they any de-
cided influence. They are studied abundantly, but only
as a literary exercise. The moral condition of modem
China indicates very clearly that the Confucian code is
one of lip-service only. It has made but little impres-
sion upon the hearts of the people.

The third and highest of the three great codes of
morals is of Semitic authorship, being the lofty doc-
trine of human conduct promulgated by Christ. So
far as the mere rules of conduct embraced in it are
concerned, it differs in no essential features from those
already named. Its superior merit lies in its lack of
appeal to the selfish instincts, and its broad human sym-
patli3T. Buddhism warns man to be virtuous if he would
escape from earthly misery. Confucianism advises him
to be virtuous if he would attain earthly happiness. Do
good, that you may attain Nirvana. Do good to others
if you wish others to do good to you. These are the
dogmas of the two great non-Christian codes. Do good
because it is your duty, is the Christ dogma.   Sin de-

files, virtue purifies, the soul. All men are brothers,
and should regard one another with brotherly affection.
“Love one another.” This is the basic command of the
 OTHER ARYAN CHARACTERISTICS.

289

code of Christ. And in this command we have the high-
est principle of human conduct, — a law of duty that is
hampered by no conditions, and weakened by no promises.

It is singular that the creed of Christ has become the
creed of the Aryan race alone. The Semites, even the
Hebrews, of whose nation Christ was a scion, ignore
his mission and his teachings. But throughout nearly
the whole of the Aryan world it is the prevailing creed,
and its code of morals is to-day observed in a higher
degree than we find in the moral observance of the
remainder of mankind. Elsewhere, indeed, there is abun-
dance of private and local virtue, and rigidly strict ob-
servance of some laws of conduct, though others of equal
value are greatly neglected. But nowhere else has human
charity and the sense of human brotherhood attained the
breadth they display in the Aryan world, and nowhere
else can the feeling of sympathy with all mankind be said
to exist. There is abundance of evil in the Aryan nations,
but there is also abundance of good; and the minor
sense of human duty which is elsewhere manifested is
replaced here with a broad and lofty view that fairly
stamps the Aryan as the great moral, as it is the great
intellectual, race of mankind.

19
 XII

HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

WHEN history opens, it reveals to ns the Aryan race
in possession of a vast region of the eastern hem-
isphere, including some of its fairest and most fruitful por-
tions. How long it had been engaged in attaining this
expansion from its primitive contracted locality ; what bat-
tles it had fought and what blood shed; what victories it
had won and what defeats experienced, — on all this human
annals are silent. Rut we may rest assured that many
centuries of outrage, slaughter, misery, and brutality lie
hidden in this prehistoric abyss. Millions of men were
swept from the face of the earth, millions more deprived
of their possessions, and even of their religions and lan-
guages, millions incorporated into the Aryan tribes, during
this expansion of primitive Arya. The relations of human
races, which had perhaps remained practically undisturbed
for many thousands of years, were largely changed by this
vigorous irruption of the most energetic family of man-
kind. It was as if an earthquake had rent the soil of hu-
man society, broken up all its ancient strata, and thrown
mankind into new and confused relations, burying the old
lines of demarcation too deeply to be ever discovered.

The Aryan migration displays the marks of a high vigor
for so barbaric an age, and was probably the most ener-
getic of all the prehistoric movements of mankind. It met
with no check in Europe except in the frozen regions of
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

291

the extreme North, and there it was Nature, not man, that
brought it to rest. Such also was probably the case in
northern Asia. The deserts and the mountain-ranges
there became its boundaries. China lay safe behind her
almost impassable desert and mountain borders. In the
south of Asia only the Semites held their own. They
offered as outposts the warlike tribes and nations of Syria
and Assyria. Possibly an era of hostility may have here
existed ; but if so it has left no record, and there is nothiug
to show that the Aryans ever broke through this wall of
defence. But the remainder of southern Asia fell into
their hands, with the exception of southern India with its
dense millions of aborigines, and the distant region of
Indo-China, on whose borders the Aryan migration spent
its force.

Such is the extension of the Aryan world with which
history opens. It embraced all Europe, with the exception
of some minor outlying portions and probably a con-
siderable region in northern Russia. In Asia it included
Asia Minor and the Caucasus, Armenia, Media, Persia,
and India, with the intermediate Bactrian region. These
formed the limits of the primitive Aryan outpush, and it is
remarkable that it failed to pass beyond these borders,
with the exception of a temporary southward expansion,
for two or three thousand years. It made some external
conquests ; but they were all lost again, and at the opening
of the sixteenth century the Aryan race was in possession
of no lands that it had not occupied at the beginning of the
historical period.

This is a striking circumstance, and calls for some in-
quiry as to its cause. "What was the influence that placed
this long check upon the Aryan outflow? The acting in-
 292

THE ARYAN RACE.

lluences, in fact, were several, which may be briefly named.
A chief one was the almost insuperable obstacle to further
expansion. Many of the boundaries of the new Aryan
world were oceanic, and the art of navigation was as yet
almost unknown to the Aryan race. Other boundaries
were desert plains that offered no attraction to an agricul-
tural people. The purely pastoral and nomadic days of
the race were long since past. In the East the boundary
was formed by the vast multitudes of Indian aborigines,
who fiercely fought for their homes and made the Hindu
advance a very gradual process. In the South warlike
Assyria formed the boundary, and the Semitic world
sternly held its own.

As Aryan civilization progressed, the great prizes of
ambition were mainly included within the borders of
the Aryan world. There is no evidence of a loss of the
original migratory energy; yet it was no longer an energy
of general expansion, but of the expansion of the separate
branches of the race. The Aryan peoples made each other
their prey, and the outside world was safe from their in-
cursions. The only alluring region of this non-Aryan
world was that of the Semitic nations and of Egypt. This
fell at length before Aryan vigor, and became succes-
sively the prey of Persia, Greece, and Pome. Aud the
thriving settlements which the Phoenicians had established
in northern Africa fell before the arms of Rome. Such
was the only extension of the borders of the Aryan world
which history reveals, and this extension was but a tempo-
raiy one. After a thousand years of occupancy the hold
of the Aryans upon the Semitic and Ilamitic regions was
broken, and the invading race was once more confined
within its old domain.
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

293

It is not necessary to repeat in detail the historic move-
ments of the Aryans of ancient times. These are too well
known to need extended description. They began with
the rebellion of the Medes against Assyrian rale, and with
the subsequent rapid growth of the Persian empire, which
overran Ass3Tria, Syria, and Egypt. At a later date the
Greeks made their great historical expansion, and under
Alexander gained lordship over the civilized Aryan world.
Still later the Romans established a yet wider empire, and
the world of civilization was divided between Rome and
Persia. The finale of these movements was the irruption
of the Teutons upon the Roman empire, which buried all
the higher civilization under a flood of barbarism.

Thus for about a thousand years the great battle-field of
the world had been confined mainly within Aryan limits,
and the other races of mankind had remained cowed spec-
tators, or to some extent helpless victims, of this bull-dog
strife for empire. The contest ended with a marked de-
cline in civilization and a temporary loss of that industrial
and political development which had resulted from many
centuries of physical and mental labor. The Aryan race
had completed its first cycle, and swung down again into
comparative barbarism, under the onslaught of its most
barbarous section, and as a natural result of its devastat-
ing and unceasing wars.

And now a remarkable phase in the history of human
events appeared. The energy of the ancient Aryan world
seemed to have spent its force. That of the non-Aryan
world suddenly rose into an extraordinary display of vigor.
The Aryan expansion not only ceased, but a reverse move-
ment took place. Everywhere wre find its borders con-
tracting under a fierce and vigorous onslaught from the
 294

THE ARYAN RACE.

Mongolian and Semitic tribes. This phase of the migra-
tory cycle we may run over as rapidly as we did that of the
expanding phase.

The first marked historical movement in this migratory
series was that of the Huns, who overran Slavonic and
pushed far into Teutonic Europe, and under the fierce
Attila threatened to place a Hunnish dynasty on the throne
of imperial Rome. The next striking movement was the
Arabian, which drove back the wave of Aryan conquest
from the Semitic region, from Egypt, and from northern
Africa, and brought Persia and Spain under Arabian domi-
nation. The third was that of the Turks, who replaced
the Arabian rulers of Persia, conquered Asia Minor, and
finally captured Constantinople and the Eastern Empire,
extending their dominion far into Europe and over the
Mediterranean islands. The fourth was that of the Mon-
gols, under Genghiz Khan and Timur, which placed a Mon-
gol dynasty on the throne of India and made the greater
part of Russia a Mongol realm. We need not mention the
minor invasions, of temporary effect, which broke like
fierce billows on the shores of the Aryan world and flowed
back, leaving ruin and disorder behind them. It will suffice
to describe the contraction of the borders of the Aiyan
region which succeeded this fierce outbreak of the desert
hordes upon the civilized world.

All the historical acquisitions of the Aryans were torn
from their hands. The Semitic region became divided be-
tween the Turks and the Arabians. Egypt and northern
Africa were rent from the Aryan world. In the East, Per-
sia, India, and the intermediate provinces, though with no
decrease in their Aryan populations, lay under Mongol
rule. In the West, Spain had become an Arabian kingdom.
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

295

A Hungarian nation in central Europe was left to mark the
onslaught of the Ilunnish tribes. In eastern Europe, the
Tartars occupied Russia in force, and held dominion over
the greater part of that empire. Farther south, the Turks
were iu full possession of Asia Minor and Armenia, held
the region of ancient Greece and Macedonia, and extended
their barbaric rule far toward the centre of Europe. The
contraction of the aucient Aryan region had been extreme.
As a dominant race they held scarce half their old domin-
ions, while in many regions they had been driven out or
destroyed, and replaced by peoples of alien blood.

Such was the condition of Europe at the close of the
Middle Ages. The first cycle of human history had be-
come completed, the expansion of the Aryans had been
succeeded by a severe contraction, the growth of ancient
civilization had been followed by a partial relapse into bar-
barism, human progress had moved through a grand curve,
and returned far back toward its starting-point. Such
was the stage from which the more receut history of man-
kind took its rise.

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #28 on: June 15, 2019, 09:41:49 PM »
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It may be said that of the energy of the Aryans and the
non-Aryans the former has proved persistent, the latter
spasmodic. No sooner was the condition of affairs above
mentioned established than the unceasing pressure of Aryan
energy again began to tell, and a new process of Aryan
expansion to set in. And this process has been continued
with unceasing vigor till the present day. The Aryans of
Spain began, from a mountain corner, to exert a warlike
pressure upon the Arabian conquerors of their land. Step
by step the Arabs were driven back, until they were finally
expelled to the African shores. Simultaneously a vigorous
effort was made to wrest Syria from its Arab lords. All
 296

THE ARYAN RACE.

Europe broke into a migratory fever, and the Crusades
threw their millions upon that revered land. But all in
vain. The grasp of the Moslem was as yet too firm to be
loosened by all the crusading strength of Europe.

At a later date the Mongol hold was slowly broken in
Russia, and the Slavonic Aryans regained control of their
ancient realm, while the invasion of the Turks was
checked, and a reverse movement begun which has con-
tinued to the present day. As for the Magyars of Hun-
gary, their realm has been partly reconquered by Aryan
colonists, its civilization and government are strictly
Aryan, and the Mongolian characteristics of the predomi-
nant race have been to a considerable extent lost. Europe
has been reoccupied by the Aryans, with the exception of
a few Turks who are left upon its borders by sufferance,
and the Mongoloids of the frozen North. In Asia the
Aryan spirit has declared itself less vigorously ; yet Persia,
Afghanistan, and India have declined little if at all in
the percentage of their Aryan populations, while Aiyan
dominance has replaced the Mongol rule in India. As for
the Aryan physical type, it seems to be killing out the type
of the Mongolian in all regions exposed to its influence.
Thus the Osmanli Turks have gained in great measure the
European physical organization, this applying even to the
peasantiy, whose religious and race prejudices must have
prevented much intermarriage with the Aryans. It looks,
in this instance, like an effect of climate, physical sur-
roundings, and life-habits similar to that which, as we
have conjectured, caused the original evolution of the
Aryan race. The same influences may have had much
to do with the loss of Mongolian characteristics in the
Magyars of Hungary.
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

297

But the Aryans have been by no means contented with
this slow and as yet but partially completed recovery of
their ancient realm. Only the mutual jealousy of the na-
tions of Europe permits aliens yet to occupy any portion
of this soil, and it is plainly apparent that the complete
restoration of Aryan government over all its ancient do-
minions is a mere question of time. But the slow steps
of this internal movement have been accompanied by an
external one of vast magnitude. After its long rest the
Ai’3Tan race has again become actively migratoiy, an ex-
pansive movement of great energy has set in, and the
promise is that ere it ends nearty the whole of the habi-
table earth will be under Aryan rule, infused wTith Aryan
civilization, and largely peopled with Aryan inhabitants.

It is the control of the empire of the ocean that has
been the moving force in this new migration. The former
one was checked, as we have said, upon the ocean border.
Navigation had not yet become an Aryan art. But the
rise of ocean commerce gave opportunity for a new out-
push of no less vigor than that of old. "When once the
European navigators dared to break loose from sight of
land and brave the dangers of unknown seas, a new chap-
ter in the history of mankind began. The ships of Europe
touched the American shores, and with phenomenal rapid-
ity the invaders took possession of this new-discovered
continent. Not four centuries have passed, and yet
America, from its northern to its southern extremities, is
crowded with men of Aryan blood, and the aborigines
have in great measure vanished before the ruthless foot-
step of conquest.

In the East the activity of Aiwan migration has had
more difficulties to contend with, yet its energy has been
 298

THE ARYAN RACE.

no less declared. The island continent of Australia has
become an outlying section of the Aryan dominions, and
in many of the fertile islands of the Pacific the aborigines
are rapidly vanishing before the fatal vision of the Euro-
pean face. The non-Aryan rulers of India have been
driven out, and England has succeeded to the dominion
of this ancient realm. And finally the u dark continent ”
of Africa is being penetrated at a hundred points by the
foot of the invader, and is already the seat of several
Aryan states.

Side by side with this oceanic migration has been a no
less active and important expansion by land. The Sla-
vonic Allans of Russia had no sooner fairly driven out
their Tartar conquerors and acquired a stable government
than they resumed their ancient migratory expansion and
began to press their way into that vast region of northern
and central Asia upon whose borders the ancient Aryan
advance had paused. Siberia fell before their arms, and
this great but frozen region was added to their empire.
More recently they have taken possession of the western
steppes, seized a considerable region of Chinese Mongolia,
and forced their way deeply into Turkestan. All western
Asia to the borders of China, Afghanistan, and Persia is
to-day a Russian province, and still the march of conquest
goes on. Of the regions of the ancient non-Aryan mi-
gratory activity none, with the exception of Arabia and
Chinese Mongolia, is free from the Aryan grasp or the
preventive influence of Aryan control. The barbarian out-
breaks of the past can never be repeated.

In regard to this modern migrator}7 activity some further
remarks may be made. It is in a great measure a com-
mercial one, and has been very closely governed in its
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

299

movements by those of commerce. It had its origin in
the Phoenician trading-stations, and subsequently in the
Greek colonies. It passed from branch to branch of the
Aryan peoples in strict accordance with the shiftings of
commerce. At the period of the discovery of America
there was a very general commercial activity in the At-
lantic nations of Europe, and all of these simultaneously
took part in the struggle for territory that followed. Por-
tugal, Spain, France, Holland, and England each claimed
a share in the rich prize. At a later date, however, Eng-
land rose to unquestioned supremacy in the commercial
world, and this was accompanied by a similar rise to su-
premacy in colonizing efforts. The England of to-day is
extended until it has its outlying members in almost every
region of the habitable earth. The other Aryan peoples,
on the contrary, with the exception of Russia, have lost
in great measure their national migratory activity, as they
have lost their commercial enterprise. The Celts and
Germans still migrate largely as individuals, but this mi-
gration mainly goes to feed colonies of English origin
and to add to the English-speaking populations of the
earth. The very recent colonizing movements of Germany
are acts of the Government, and it remains to be seen if
they will be supported by the people. The same may be
said of the colonial enterprises of France. They are Gov-
ernmental enterprises only, while the people are among
the least migratory in spirit of any European nation.
Only in England, of all the commercial nations of Europe,
are the people and the Government moving hand in hand.

Thus the Aryan migration has to-day reached a highly
interesting stage. The boundary lines which restrained it
several thousand years ago and which remained its limits
 300

THE ARYAN RACE.

until within recent times, have been overleaped, and a new
migration, with all the energy of the old one, is in process
of completion. This migratory movement is at present
largely confined to two of the Aryan peoples, — the Eng-
lish and the Russian. The former has broken through the
ocean barrier ; the latter through the desert barrier, — the
two limits to the ancient migration. The English move-
ment is entirely oceanic, the Russian entirely terrestrial.
The English represents the modern commercial migration ;
the Russian is a survival of the primitive agricultural mi-
gration. These two peoples form the vanguard of the
Aryan race in its double march to gain the empire of the
earth. By a strange coincidence their movements converge
upon one region, — that of India, one of the great prizes
of commerce and war in all the historic ages of mankind.
On the borders of this land the two waves of migration
have nearly met, and the lords of the land and the sea
threaten to join in battle for its mastery. Aryan is again
face to face with Aryan as in the era of the past, and, as
then, the migratory march may end in a fierce strife of
these ancient cousins for a lion’s share of the spoils.

The Aryan outposts of to-day are being pushed forward
so rapidly that they cannot be very definitely named.
The whole of the great continent of America has become
an Aryan region, with the exception of the inaccessible for-
ests of central Brazil and some few minor localities. In
‘ the eastern seas the great island of Australia has become
Aryan ground to the inner limit of its fertile land. In
most of the rich islands of the Pacific the Aryan grasp has
been firmly laid upon the coast-regions, though the abo-
rigines as a rule hold their own internally. The vege-
table wealth of these fertile islands has become the prize
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

301

of Aryan commerce. In Asia one of the ancient Aryan
lands, the kingdom of Persia, is under Mongolian rule,
though its population continues largely of Aryan blood.
But in return the greater portion of the old Mongolian
territory has fallen under Aryan dominion, and the out-
posts of European rule have been pushed across Asia to
the Pacific in the north, and to the western borders of
China in the central region. Again, in the southeast, in
that remote region which stayed the march of the ancient
Aryans, the modern Aryans are slowly pushing their way.
England years ago laid her hand on the western coast-
lands and occupied the maritime region of Burmah, while
she has recently seized on the whole of that kingdom.
France has taken as firm a hold on the eastern coast, over
which she exerts a controlling influence. Siam, the re-
maining independent region of Indo-China, will probably
yet fall under the rule of these enterprising invaders.

Africa tells a somewhat similar story. France has
regained from the Mohammedan rule a large section of
the old Roman region in northern Africa. England has
become the virtual lord in Egypt, and may eventually
become the acknowledged lord. Southern Africa, for a
long distance northward from the Cape, has become
English and Dutch territory. Portugal holds large dis-
tricts on both the eastern and the western coasts. Of the
remaining coast-lands, all the western border and a con-
siderable portion of the eastern are claimed by European
nationalities, while in the region of the Congo a strong
inward movement is on foot, and the International Asso-
ciation lays claim to an immense territory in Central
Africa, — a region with a population of perhaps forty mil-
lions, who do not dream that they have gained new lords
 302

THE ARYAN RACE.

on paper. Such is the borcler-land, actual and claimed,
of modern Arya, — the result of four centuries of commer-
cial and colonial enterprise. The Aryan region of old has
been much more than doubled by this new movement. The
hold is yet to some extent simply the grasp of an army
or of a document. But the colonist is advancing in the
rear of the army, and the merchant in the rear of the
document; and the story of Aryan enterprise is but half
told.

If now we seek to review what the other races of man-
kind have done, in rivalry with this energetic movement,
a few words will suffice to tell the tale. The alien outflow
is confined to three peoples alone. The first of these is
the Chinese, some portion of whose crowding millions are
forced to seek other homes afar, and whose strongly
practical disposition has produced a degree of commercial
enterprise. Yet the results of this movement have been
as yet of secondary importance. It has made itself felt
in some regions of the Pacific, and to a minor extent in
America. Yet it can never attain a vigor comparable to
the Aryan while Chinese civilization and Chinese ideas
remain in their present state. The Chinaman is not yet
cosmopolitan like the Aryan ; the world is not his home ;
and wherever he goes he dreams of laying his bones to
rest in Chinese soil. 'While such ideas persist, the Aryans
need fear no powerful competition from this ancient realm.
As for the neighboring Japanese, they have so far shown
no disposition to wander. They are in no sense a migra-
tory people.

The second non-Aryan migratory people is the Arabian.
The migratory spirit which has in all historic times affected
the Semites has by no means died out; and while Europe
 HISTORICxVL MIG RATIONS.

303

is grasping the African shores, the Arabs are penetrating
every portion of the interior of that continent. But their
movements are commercial only, not colonial. The sole
political grasp of Arabia on African soil is in the region
of Zanzibar. Elsewhere their political dominion is but
that of the wandering tribe. The Arabs of to-day are not
in the state of civilization requisite to active colonization,
while there is no pressure of numbers in the home region
to enforce a border outgrowth. Thus there can be said to
be no combined Arabian competition with the Aryans for
the political possession of Africa. The empire-forming
enterprise of the Arabians of old has apparently died out;
and while they retain all their ancient commercial activity,
they manifest no inclination to gain political control of
African soil.

The third migration referred to comes from Africa itself.
It no longer exists, but has had the unfortunate effect of
very considerably extending the area of the Negro race,
— the least-developed section of the human family. This
migration has been solely an involuntary and unnatural
one. It is not the outcome of enterprise among the
migrants, but of the enslaving activity of the Aryans, and
has resulted in widely extending the limits and increasing
the numbers of the most unenterprising and unintellectual
of human races. The migration of Africans to the shores
of America has proved a highly undesirable result of
Aryan enterprise, and has produced a rapidly increasing
population of American Negroes, who cannot but remain
an awkward problem for the civilization of the future.
This people has the unlucky characteristic of prolific
increase, and the unsealing of the continent of Africa by
the slave-dealers has proved like the unsealing of the
 304

THE ARYAN RACE.

magic jar brought up in his net by the Arabian fisherman.
A living cloud has issued, which cannot be replaced in its
former space, and the sealed-up dwarf has been permitted
to expand to the stature of the released giant. This en-
forced outpour of the African race is one of the several
unfortunate results of the over-greed of Aryan colonists.
It has proved far the most unfortunate feature of modern
migratory activity by its extension of the domain of low
intellectuality upon the earth.

We may close with one further consideration, — that of
the comparative good and evil resulting from this modern
Aryan outgrowth. That it has been conducted brutally,
no one would think of denying. The laws of morality and
of natural right have been abrogated in dealing with alien
races ; and had these been wild beasts instead of men, they
in many cases could not have been more cruelly treated
or rapidly annihilated. Yet if we could strictly compare
the good and evil produced, there can be no question that
the former would, so far as man as a whole is concerned,
far outweigh its opposite.

What are the actual facts concerning the suffering which
the aborigines of the earth have endured from Aryan
hands, and the change for the worse in their condition
produced by Aryan occupation? The treatment of the
American Indian is usually considered as a flagrant ex-
ample of injury to the aborigines. Yet it cannot be
justly said that the Indians of the United States have been
at any time visited with more suffering, and made the
subjects of greater outrage, during the Aryan occupation,
than they were ordinarily exposed to before that occupa-
tion. The preceding period was one of incessant wTar,
outrage, slaughter, and torture of prisoners. Security
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

305

nowhere existed, and it was impossible for any civilizing
progress to take place. The wars which the Indians waged
with the Europeans were but a continuation of those they
had always previously waged. The slaughter of Indians
was in no sense increased, while there was produced a
mitigation of the more revolting features of Indian conflict.
And the Aryan wars with the Indians were waged in the
interests of peace. They have steadily decreased in
violence and frequency, and an increasing justice and
security in the conditions of Indian life have replaced the
old rule of injustice and insecurity, which but for the
European colonization would still have continued. It may
safely be declared, then, that the Indians have been
benefited far more than they have been injured by the
Aryan conquest, and that to-day they exist in a far higher
state of security, comfort, and happiness than they would
have attained if that conquest had not been made.

Similar remarks can be applied to the Aryan conquests
in every region, with the one exception of Spanish Amer-
ica. Here two civilized empires were overturned by
colonists whose civilization was, in certain respects, of
a lower grade, and millions of people were reduced from
a state of plenty, and comparative freedom and happiness,
to one of want, slavery, and misery. And yet, so far as
the actual progress of civilization is concerned, the general
interests of mankind have not suffered by this outrage.
A civilization of a higher grade has succeeded the imper-
fect conditions of the Aztec and Peruvian States, and the
mass of the human inhabitants of these regions are in a supe-
rior condition to-day than they would have been but for the
Aryan conquest. The low conditions of Indian have been
replaced by the high conditions of European civilization.

20
 306

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Re: Origin Aryan Race 1888
« Reply #29 on: June 15, 2019, 09:42:50 PM »
0

THE ARYAN RACE.

This Spanish region, however, is the one black spot in
the history of modern migration. Elsewhere the good has
far surpassed the evil. No one can for a moment hold
that the Africans or the Australians are the worse off for
the Aryan settlements upon their soil. Nor can it be
maintained that an extension of these settlements will
work any actual harm to the aborigines. At present they
are in a debased condition, and are subject to constant
outrage and injustice from their rulers or from hostile
bands. The influence of Europeans is steadily in the
interest of peace, security, and prosperity; and fiercely as
they have been often opposed by natives of the countries
colonized, yet as a rule these natives have been fighting
against their own advantage. "Wherever the Aryan race
has become definitely established, and peaceful conditions
succeeded, the condition of the natives has been improved,
the wealth of their country developed, all the needs of
a comfortable life increased, peace has succeeded to war,
security to outrage, and the happiness of mankind has
steadily augmented.

The true effect of Aryan migration has been the ex-
tension of the realm of modern civilization, of Christian
ethics, of stable and just political conditions; of active
industry, peaceful relations, and security in the possession
of property; of human liberty and intellectual unfold-
ment; of commerce and developed agriculture ; of rail-
roads, telegraphs, books, tools, abundance of food, lofty
thoughts, and high impulses; and of the noblest standard
and most unfolded practice of morality and human sym-
pathy the world has yet attained. We can scarcely name
in comparison with this great benefit the small increase of
evil, the degree of human suffering which can be attributed
 HISTORICAL MIGRATIONS.

307

to the Aryans alone, in excess of that which would have
existed without them. As a whole it must be admitted
that the Aryan migration has acted and is acting for
the best interests of all mankind ; and it cannot consis-
tently be deprecated for the minor amount of evil it has
originated.
 XIII.

THE FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.

NE important effect of the long process of human evo-

lution which we have considered in the preceding
pages has been such a mingling of the races of man-
kind as in considerable measure to blur the lines of race-
distinction. This mingling, which began in prehistoric
times, has proceeded with enhanced rapidity during the
historic period, — that of active migration and of decreas-
ing devastation. The movements of savage races and of
races in the lower stages of barbarism are apt to be an-
nihilating ones. Of this we have historic instances in the
wars of the American Indians, of the Mongolian nomads,
and even of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of England.
The captive must have some value to the conqueror ere
he will be permitted to live, and the practice of slavery
produced the first great amelioration of human brutality.
The captors ceased to burn or otherwise slaughter their
captives when they discovered that a slave was of more
value than a corpse ; and the class of conquered subjects
who had been previously massacred were now set to work.
In modern times a second step forward has been taken.
The captive is no longer made the personal slave, but
merely the political subject of the captor, and the ancient
feeling of hostility to the non-combatant is rapidly dying
out. Migratory peoples no longer make a desert for the
 FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.

309

growth of their colonies, but simply establish their laws
and introduce their customs in all newly occupied regions,
and mingle freely with their new subjects.

The result of this is necessarily a considerable oblitera-
tion of race-distinctions. Such an obliteration has been
visibly going on since the early days of history, while
many traces of its prehistoric activity yet exist. We
have already dwelt upon the probable partial mingling of
the Xanthochroic and Melanochroie races in ancient Arya.
This was succeeded by a considerable fusion of the migrat-
ing Aryans with the aborigines of conquered provinces.
The almost pure Xanthoehroi of the original Celtic migra-
tion appear to have so thoroughly mingled with a super-
abundant population of European aborigines as nearly to
lose their race-characters, and to suffer marked changes in
their mental constitution. In Hindustan a similar min-
gling, though probably a less complete one, took place.
Religious antipathy here acted as a check of growing
intensity to race-amalgamation. An active race-mingling
appears to have taken place in Germany and Russia.
Scandinavia remained the only home of people of pure
Xanthochroic blood. The probability is, as we have al-
ready suggested, that the southern Xanthoehroi had min-
gled with the Melanochroi at a very early period, but that
the infusion of alien blood was much less decided in the
northern section of the race, and that the northern Aryan
migrants were nearly pure Xanthoehroi. Such seems to
be the case from the fact that their most northerly portion
is yet of pure blood, and that this was the condition of the
Celts and Teutons of early history. The main mingling
with the Semitic Melanochroi was probably that of the
southern branches, who may have been, from a very
 310

THE ARYAN RACE.

remote period, in direct contact with the Semites. The
mingling of the other Aryan branches with alien races
seems to have mainly taken place after the era of their
migration.

As we have seen in the last section, however, the com-
pletion of the original Aryan migration was succeeded by a
long period in which the main Aryan movements were con-
fined to Aryan lands. There was a very considerable min-
gling of blood between the different branches of the Aryans,
but the amalgamation with alien races was greatly reduced.
Almost no mixture with the Mongolians took place. To
the south, however, there was more mingling, and the Se-
mites and Hamites must have received a strong infusion
of Aryan blood. This period was followed by that of the
Arabian and the Mongolian migrations and conquests,
and a very considerable new blood-mixture occurred upon
Ar}ran soil. In Russia and in the Aryan districts of Asia
this must have added ver}T considerably to the obliteration
of race-lines in those regions. Yet with all the long-con-
tinued amalgamations we have here considered, it is re-
markable with what vigor the Aryan holds his own. ITis
vital energy everywhere bears him up against alien influ-
ences. The main change produced in his race-character-
istics is that of color. He varies greatly from fair to
dark, but his special physiognomy has been nowhere ob-
literated. The Mongolian type of face has nowhere driven
out the Aryan, but, on the contraiy, shows a disposition to
vanish whenever the two races come into contact. In like
manner the Aryan language and the Aryan mentality have
held their own against all opposing influences. This is
the case in Persia and India, which have been the seat of
the fiercest Mongolian inroads, while the Mongolian in-
 FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.

311

vaders of Turkey have lost in great measure the physical
characters of their race, partly by intermarriage, but
equally where no apparent intermarriage has taken place.

The more recent era of Aryan migration has not been an
annihilating one in the ancient sense. Yet it has had a
very marked annihilating effect in a modern sense. The
migrants to America, for instance, have not greatly re-
duced the numbers of the aborigines by the sword ; but
they have largely destroyed them by the contact of civili-
zation. They have brought with them diseases, habits,
and vices to which civilization has become acclimated, but
which have flowed like destroying angels over the barba-
rian lands. Rum and the small-pox have killed far more
than the sword, while the plough has ruined the harvest of
the arrow. In Spanish America hard work and brutality
have had a similar effect. The race-mingling between the
Aryan colonists and the Indians has been comparatively
slight. There has been simply an industrial struggle for
existence, and the Indian, from his non-adaptation to
those new life-conditions, has in great measure vanished
from his ancient localities. His place has been filled by a
less desirable element, — that of the African, whose mil-
lions perhaps fully replace all the vanished aborigines of
America. If so, the non-Aryan inhabitants of America
are as numerous as ever, while they have been lowered in
type both ph}Tsically and mentally by this unfortunate
change.

As to the future of human races in America, no satisfac-
tory decision can be reached. The problem is a highly
complex one. America is a grand storehouse of nations,
the reservoir of the overflow from the Old "World. Between
the Aryan sections of this migration a very free mingling
 312

THE ARYAN RACE.

takes place, and there is arising an American race-type of
well-marked character. There has also been considerable
mingling of Aryan with Indian, particularly in Spanish
America. As the Indians become civilized and agricultural
in habits, it is probable that this amalgamation will go on
at an increased rate, and it is quite possible that the In-
dians may finally disappear as a distinct race, swallowed
up by the teeming millions of Aryan colonists. If they
hold their own, it will be in the tropical regions of South
America, where the conditions of Nature are opposed to
the progress of civilization. Yet we can scarcely doubt
that civilization will yet conquer even the Brazilian forests,
and that the debased aborigines of that region will vanish
before it.

The one perplexing problem of America is the Negro.
Between him and the white the race-antipathy seems too
strong for any great degree of amalgamation ever to take
place, while the mulatto has the weakness and infertility
of a hybrid. In tropical America, indeed, there is a quite
free mingling of whites, Indians, and Negroes; but the
result of this amalgamation is a class that greatly lacks
sta3Ting qualities. The American Negro has marked per-
sistence, while there is little promise that he can be raised
to the level of Aryan energy and intellect. Mentally his
only strong development is in the emotional direction, —
the most primitive phase of mental unfoldment. Yet he is
increasing in numbers with a discouraging rapidity. In
this, however, there seems no threat to Aryan domination.
The negro is normally peaceful and submissive. His lack
of enterprise and of mental activity must keep him so.
Education with him soon reaches its limit. It is capable
of increasing the perceptive, but not of strongly awakening
 FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.

313

the reflective, faculties. The Negro will remain the worker.
There is nothing to show that he will, at least for a long
period to come, advance to the rank of the thinker. Of the
two great modern divisions of civilized mankind, the work-
ers and the thinkers, the Negro belongs by nature to the
former class. He will probably long continue distinctly7
separate from the Aryans as a race, — a well-marked
laboring caste among the non-differentiated whites of
America.

As to the future of the continent of Africa, it may pass
through conditions somewhat similar to those that have
taken place in America ; but these changes will be attended
with less barbarity, since the moral status of the white
race has very considerably advanced during the past four
centuries. The wave of Aryan migration has as yet but
begun to break upon African soil. Only in the far South
has it pressed to any extent inward. But an inward pres-
sure has now fairly set in, and it may perhaps not cease
until Africa has come completely under Aryan rule, and is
veiy largely peopled by Aryan inhabitants. The Aryan
settlements in the South promise to become paralleled by
Aryan settlements in the North. Algiers is now a French
province, Tunis is on the road to the same condition, and
Morocco is threatened both by France and Spain, while
Egypt is under English control. The march of events
cannot go backward. There is very little reason to doubt
that the whole region of northern Africa will eventually
come under Aryan influence and become the seat of a
growing Aryan population. And here a decided race-
mingling will very probably take place in the future, as
between the two sub-types of the Caucasian people in the
far past.
 314

THE ARYAN RACE.

Central Africa is being invaded by both these sub-types.
Of these invasions the Melanochroic is to a considerable
extent an amalgamating one. Between Arab and Berber
and Negro, probably of close original race-affinity, there
seems very little blood-antipathy; and Africa is full of
sub-types of man, produced quite probably by a free min-
gling of the black with the Melanochroic race. How long
this mingling has been going on, it is impossible to decide,
and it is equally impossible to conjecture to what varied
race-combinations in the far past the present inhabitants
of Africa are due. But it is very evident that the future
dealings of the Aryans with the Africans will not be con-
ducted to any important extent with the race-counterparts
of the American Negro. The American slaves were princi-
pally brought from nearly the only region of Africa inhab-
ited by the typical Negro, and they thus represent the
least-developed people of that continent. The majority of
the African people are by no means lacking in energy and
warlike vigor, nor in the elements of intelligence. Many
of them seem to stand midway in these characteristics be-
tween the pure Negro of the western tropics and the Arabs
and Berbers of the North. And the vanguard of Aryan
migration may meet as hostile and resolute a resistance as
that experienced from the American Indians.

The whole western coast of Africa, and to some extent
the eastern, is at present dotted with Aryan colonies.
None of these penetrate far inward, the unhealthfulness of
the climate more than the opposition of the Negro checking
their advance. But the key to the centre of the continent
has been found in a great navigable river, the Congo,
whose affluents spread far their liquid fingers through that
fertile unknown land. In this line Aryan migration has
 FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACES.

315

fairly begun its inward march. It will meet with hostile
tribes. Wars will take place. Forcible seizure and ex-
tinguishment of African governments will follow. Aryan
control will be established over African populations. Many
of the Africans will vanish before the Aryan weapons of
rifle and whiskey-bottle. All this may be looked for as
an almost inevitable consequence of the discovery that the
Congo offers a new and valuable channel of commerce.
The railroad past the rapids, and the steamboat on the
river, cannot fail to subdue Central Africa, — far more
quickly, perhaps, than the plough subdued America.
Eventually this inward movement may meet with a north-
ward movement from the South-African settlements. Nor
is it possible at present to decide what may be the final out-
come of English wars in the Soudan and in Abyssinia,
and of French settlements in Algeria. For years past the
Aryan influence in these regions has been steadity on the
increase, and it may eventually make its way deeply into
Africa from these directions toward the Aiyan vanguard
pressing inward from the West. A railroad is already
pushing southward in Algeria, which may eventually
cross the Sahara and reach the long-hidden city of Tim-
buctoo, toward which a railroad is also advancing from the
South. As yet little more has been done than was accom-
plished by the Aryans in America during the sixteenth
century. But there is every reason to believe, from what
we know of the Aiyan and the African character, that
the final result will be the same. Africa will become a
new empire of the Aryans. But the position of the mi-
grants will be rather that of a ruling than of an inhabiting
race. The condition of the Africans is markedly different
from that of the Indians. They are much less warlike, and
 316

THE ARYAN RACE.

much more agricultural. They will undoubtedly remain
upon the soil as its cultivators, while the role of the Aryans
will be that of merchants, rulers, and artisans, in ac-
cordance with their position as the thinking and dominant
minority. In fact there is some reason to believe that the
march of events in the future will bring the African and
the American continents into conditions of some degree
of similarity. Through all the warmer regions of America
the Negroes are increasing with great rapidity. They
exist, and long may exist, as a working caste under Ai'3Tan
dominance. Some similar relation of Aryans and Africans
is not unlikely to arise on African soil, and the final
relation of races in the warmer tropics of both hemispheres
may be that here indicated, — a large population of Af-
rican agricultural laborers, adapted by their physical
nature to a tropical climate, and a smaller population of
Aryan merchants, artisans, and rulers, mainly escaping the
deleterious influence of tropical climates by city residence.
In the higher and more healthful tropics and the semi-
tropics the Aryan population must approach in numbers
that of the tropically adapted race ; and it must retain
a great numerical excess, as now, in the temperate re-
gions, to whose climate the Aryan is physically adapted.

That a race-mingling will take place between these two
widely distinct types of man seems now extremely improb-
able. For a very long period to come it is certain that the
physical and mental antipathy which now exists will be in
no important degree overcome, and for many centuries in
the future the demarcation may remain as strongly de-
clared as now. TYhat the final race-relation will be it is
impossible to predict. There is no strong antipathy be-
tween the native races of the temperate zones of the earth,
 FUTURE STATUS OF HUMAN RACKS.

317

the Aryan, Indian, Mongolian, and Melanoeliroic ; and these
may mingle in an increasing ratio until their race-distinc-
tions in great measure disappear. In such a case the only
marked race-demarcation remaining will be that of white
and black, respectively the man of the temperate and the
man of the tropical climates of the earth. But the Indians
of America and the Melanochroi of Africa have but little
race-antipathy to the Negro, and their offspring is of a
higher type than that of the Aryan and the Negro. It is
possible, therefore, that the pure black may eventually
vanish in an intermediate race, as is already so largely the
case in Africa.

In the island region of the Pacific it is highly probable
that the Aryan dominion, which is now firmly established
in every island of any marked agricultural value, will
grow more and more decided, and that the aborigines,
or their Malayan successors, will eventually fall generally
under Aiyan rule. The lower aborigines will very prob-
ably vanish. They lie too far below the level of civilized
conditions to survive the contact with civilization; and
only those of declared agricultural habits, and the active
Malays, are likely to remain as subjects of the growing
Aryan rule.