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.

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.

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

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.

but a step beyoucl the archaic Aryan stage, in which these
deities were yet clearly the powers of earth, air, and sky,
and in which each was, for the time, the supreme being
to his worshipper. Their deities had not yet been special-
ized as we find them later among the Greeks.

As the branches of the Aryan race left their primeval
home and sought new lands of residence afar, certain
highly interesting modifications came over their systems
of worship, to which some attention is requisite. We do
not refer to the expansion of their simple ideas of the
deific attributes of natural phenomena into the splendid
phantasmagoria of mythology, but to the characteristics of
their religious organization. In this there was a marked
difference between the eastern and the western Aryans.
With the eastern branch the national or mythologie wor-
ship rose into supremacy, the priesthood became a power-
ful body, and the people fell under that dominion of
priestcraft which has ever been such an opponent of
human liberty. This was particularly the case with the
Hindu tribes, over whom the priests gained an extraordi-
nary predominance, unequalled in the history of any other
people. The Hindu nation is one without great kings or
great heroes. Its only great men are the lawgivers, the
founders of systems, the priests of the race. When the
tribes first marched to victory over the aborigines of India
it was with the priests at their head. The Vedas are the
record of the stirring hymns of praise or invocation with
which these priestly warriors led their soul-stirred hosts.
And when the Hindus sank to rest upon their conquered
territory it was under the dominion of the priests. No
great warrior led them to new victories, no powerful
kingdom-maker welded the scattered bands into a nation,

10
 146

THE ARYAX RACE.

oo earnest thinker wrote the history of the people. It
was the history of the gods, not that of man, with which
their thinkers were concerned; and we have grand systems
of religious philosophy instead of a record of the mighty
doings of man. The story of Hindu civilization is a
phenomenon without parallel upon the earth.

The story of the Persians begins under conditions
strikingly similar to that of the Hindus. Here, too, we
behold a people marching to conquest with a priestly
leader at their head. The great figure of Zoroaster dwarfs
all the heroes of the sword. And their antique literature
is religion, not history. It yields us only the outlines of
that Zoroastrian system of faith and philosophy which
was gradually filled up by priestly successors. But the
location of the Persians forced them into a very different
channel of history from that pursued by the Hindus.
Instead of the hot, moist, enervating lowlands of the
Indus and the Gauges, so favorable to the ^growth of
superstitious belief in the divine power of the elements,
they inhabited the bleak and inspiriting highlands of Iran.
And the trumpet-blast of war rang everywhere around
them, forcing them into battle for self-defence, and finally
rousing them to victorious aggression. Great warriors
and kings arose. The history of man began, and that
of the gods ceased to be written. Yet to the late days
of the empire the priesthood continued a powerful body,
and, in alliance with the Throne, aided strongly in the sub-
jection of the people.

If now we examine the religious history of the western
Allans a different phenomenon appears. In none of the
western branches did a powerful and controlling priest-
hood arise, with the possible exception of the Celtic, in
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 147

which the shadowy group of the Druids stands out with a
prominence not attained by the priesthood of the Teutons,
Greeks, or Italians As for the early history of the Slavs,
we are utterly in the dark; but there is no trace of a
priestly establishment, and but faint indication of the exist-
ence of a mythology. In the religious, as in every other
respect, the home-staying Slavs seem most fully to have
preserved the antique Aryan system, their creed remaining
that of worship of the ancestral gods of the house and the
clan, while mythology with them failed to advance beyond
its elementary stage.

With the Greeks a rich and varied mythology arose,
and an active public worship of the gods of the whole people
emerged. Yet it never attained dominance over the hum-
bler house-worship. The priesthood always remained an
obscure body, without power in Grecian history, or control
over the Hellenic people. The prevailing rites were those
of the clan, not those of the nation. The literature was
largely devoted to the gods, but it was almost void of
deific philosophy. It dealt with the elemental deities in
a somewhat playful spirit, humanized instead of spirit-
ualized them, and wrought the mythical stories of their
lives into the neat embellishments of poetry, not into the
ground-work of vast theological philosophies. The gods of
mythology were brought down to earth, looked squarely in
the face by thinking men, laughed at, and dismissed. The
whole fabric of myth and fable fell prostrate in splendid
disarray, its rich fragments only to be used thereafter as
poetic simile and metaphor. The worship of the ancestral
spirits alone survived, while the thinking men of Greece
set themselves to work to devise a secular philosophy of
the universe. And Greece moved with unyielding steadi-
 148

THE ARYAN RACE.

ness toward democracy, largely through the lack of a
priestly control of the public mind which usurpers could
seize and wield.

In Rome priestcraft stood at no higher level than in
Greece. The Roman people were from the first deficient
in imagination, and mythology there attained but a stunted
growth. The house and clan worship, on the contrary,
shows itself more prominently than in Greece. We find
traces of it everywhere in Roman liistoiy, as when Corio-
lanus, deserting Rome, seats himself b}T the hearth of his
Volscian foe, and claims the protection, not of the Latin
Jupiter, but of the hearth-spirit of the household he has
entered. Even when the literature of Greece invaded
Rome, and was imitated with all the fervor of the Roman
mind, its mythologie feature obtained no special promi-
nence ; while the gods of the Roman mythology always re-
mained vague and unspecialized, and little developed from
their antique Aryan form. Priestcraft, in consequence,
never gained any footing of power in Rome. The system
of public worship was, indeed, mainly reduced to a phase of
Shamanism, augury and divination replacing the creation
of great religious ideas, which elsewhere ruled the minds
of men. Thus in the development of the Roman State, re-
ligion never enters as an important political element. We
perceive only a steady struggle between the democracy
and the aristocracy, fought with secular weapons alone,
with the growing supremacy of the democracy ; until the
inordinately powerful element of the army overthrew the
whole ancient fabric of the State, and replaced it with a
military despotism.

Teutonic history, so far as we are acquainted with it,
tells the same story. There was plenty of imaginative fer-
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 149

vor, and mythology gained very considerable develop-
ment ; yet but faint traces of a priesthood have survived.
Possibly the worship of the household and the clan dwarfed
that of the elemental deities. When the Teutons march to
victory it is not with a priest at their head, nor even by
the side of their military chief. No such figure makes its
appearance, and the only Teutonic hero is the wielder of
the sword. It was doubtless principally due to this rea-
son that Christianity made such rapid progress with the
Teutonic tribes. There was no one with a strong interest
in preserving the mythologie faith, no one to control the
tribes in matters of belief, no earnest clinging to the dei-
ties of mythology. The tribenien vaguely dreaded the
vast gods of the elements, but their main worship was
paid to the deities of the household, on whom alone their af-
fections were centred. This private worship was too deeply
ingrained to be eradicated except by slow degrees ; but the
weakly held mythologie faith was suffered to be replaced
by the Christian creed with an ease that would appear
frivolous did it not prove how shallow an impression my-
thology had made upon the Teutonic mind.

If we examine the early legend and fable of the several
Aryan branches, an interesting illustration of their differ-
ence in religious condition appears. The ancient Hindu
tradition has nothing to do with man. Only the gods
appear in it, and its supernaturalism is wildly extravagant
in character. Man is a creature not worthy to be named
in a universe which contains the gods. Ancient Greek
tradition tells a widely different story. In this, man is the
central figure. The gods are present, it is true, and there
is no lack of supernaturalism; but heroic man is their
equal rather than their slave. He is displayed in steady
 150

THE ARYAN RACE.

struggle against the terrible powers of Nature, and in
combat even with the Olympian deities. He is usually
overcome and punished, yet he always retains something
of the heroic; and the most striking figure in Greek
mythology is that of Prometheus, the defender of man
against the gods, terribly punished, yet eternally un-
submissive, and hurling threats from his rock of torture
against Zeus, his deific foe. Nor are the gods always
the victors. In the pages of Homer we find heroes dar-
ing to wound the gods, and escaping punishment for the
impious deed.

If now we come to the antique legend of Rome it is to
find the gods utterly forgotten, and man alone the subject
of thought. It is admitted that the so-called history of
ancient Rome is a tissue of fable ; yet it long held its own
as history from the fact that it dealt solely with human
deeds. It is almost devoid of the supernatural. The gods
hardly enter as agents. The old Roman saw only his
hearth-spirits, or but vaguely beheld the elemental deities
of ancient Ary a. His imagination dealt solely with man
and his deeds, in a series of stories that are sober history
as compared with the exploits of the Greek heroes, and
that breathe the most rigid spirit of the practical, as com-
pared with the exuberantly fanciful Hindu conceptions.

This lack of a powerful priestly organization in the
history of the western Aryans is without a counterpart in
the civilized nations of the earth, with the one exception of
China. That it has had much to do with the strong ten-
dency to democracy in these nations, as compared with the
tendency to aristocratic government elsewhere, can scarcely
be questioned when we remember how powerful a control-
ling agent is religion upon the mind of man, and how
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OE ARYAN WORSHIP. 151

vigorous is the grasp of the ruler who can seize at once the
spiritual and the temporal reins of dominion.

The facts here given of the slight hold upon the western
Aryans of their system of national religion, and the lack
of an organized and influential priesthood to develop the
public worship and to create a strong sentiment in its favor,
are of interest for a reason above briefly adverted to. No
bulwark existed against the inflow of a foreign system of
belief, and'we cannot be surprised at the rapid progress of
Christianity. Rome was a fallow field to the seed of foreign
religious thought.* Its native faith was but feebly held,
and we behold successively the Persian, Egyptian, and
Christian creeds making their way into the Imperial City,
with scarcely a word of protest or. opposition, until the
political danger from Christianity roused the dread of the
Emperors and gave rise to spasmodic persecutions. Not a
word of appeal for the old gods comes from the priests of
Rome.

In Greece something similar appears. The systems of the
philosophers there replaced the figments of mythology, and
the opposition to this philosophy came from the conserva-
tive class of the people rather than from the priests. The
after opposition to Christianity came from the adherents of
the philosophers, with their proud admiration of the great-
ness of Greek thought. Mythology in Greece was dead
before Christianity arose. Among the Teutonic clans the
opposition to Christianity was nothing stronger than a
vague distrust of strange gods. The voice of a chief in
favor of the new faith carried with it his whole body of
followers, who threw off their mythologie belief as easily
as they might have discarded an ill-fitting cloak. No priest
raised his voice in favor of the old gods. The hearth-
 152

THE ARYAN RACE.

spirits were as yet left to the people, and these were the
only deities which had a hold upon their hearts. This
phenomenon is singularly contrasted to the persistence
with which the same tribes afterward clung to the slightest
shades of sectarian Christianity. Instead of being without
a priesthood, they had now come under the control of the
most completely organized priesthood in human history.
 VII.

THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT.

HE political organization of the ancient Aryans is one

of the most interesting features in the whole history
of human institutions. It has had an extraordinary in-
fluence upon the development of modern civilization, its
basic conditions having maintained themselves with a
remarkable persistence through long eras of tyranny and
oppression. Finally, in the government of the United
States we have what is in many respects a survival of the
government of ancient Ary a, so far as the simple conditions
of the antique tribe can be brought into analogy with the
complexity of relations in the modern nation. For in
the Republic of the United States we possess a system of

v

local self-government ranging upward through the famil}T,
the township or ward, the city or county, and the State, to
the nation, with its general supervisory power over all
below it. This is a close counterpart of the family, the
village, clan, or gens, the tribe, and the confederacy of
the ancient Aryans, each with its self-government in all
that immediately concerned itself. It is the system of non-
centralization, as opposed to the centralization which forms
the basic feature of despotic government. In religion the
same phenomenon appears. There was no State religion in
ancient Ary a, and there is none in modern America. The
religion of the household or of the clan ruled in the one, as
 154

THE ARYAN RACE.

that of the person or of the sect does in the other. In
despotic government, on the contrary, a centralized or
State religion is an essential feature, and few tyrannies
have been established without its aid.

The development of human institutions has been very
little considered from this point of view ; and before ex-
amining the Aryan system particularly, a brief comparison
of this with the other systems of civilized mankind is of
importance. Such a comparison will reveal features in the
Aryan organization differing from those of any other family
of mankind, and show clearly that ancient Aiwa was the
true cradle of human liberty. Yet it will show at the same
time that Ary a was by no means the cradle of human
civilization. Despite the very evident intellectual superi-
ority of the Aryan race, its institutions acted as a strong
preventive to political progress; and but for the activity of
external agencies, and of influences at variance with its
democratic organization, the Aryan peoples of to-day might
be in the same state of stagnation that we find in the vil-
lage communities of Russia and India.

In reviewing the early organization of human society,
wherever advanced beyond the savage state, a remarkable
uniformity makes itself apparent, indicating that the social
.and political conditions of mankind unfolded under the
unconscious action of general laws, on the same principle
that appears in the development of languages. Yet as
human language, after pursuing the same course up to a
certain level of unfoldment, diverged from this point into
several different channels, so in the development of insti-
tutions a like phenomenon is manifest. Our purpose here
is very briefly to glance at these lines of divergence.

The primal condition of man was undoubtedly a social
 THE COURSE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. 155

one. The lowest savages were combined in groups for
various purposes. One of these was that aggregated for
defence. A second was the family group, — probably
definitely and firmly organized only at a late date. A
third was the group for religious observance, — yet later
in its concrete organization. Eventually these three
groups appear to have become concentrated into one,
that of the family. The family, with its secondary ex-
pansion into the community of kinsmen, became at once
the social, the political, the religious, and the military
group of mankind. Such is the condition of developing
man everywhere that we can perceive him after he has
advanced from the savage into the barbaric stage of cul-
ture. The family idea becomes the ruling principle in
every interest of the tribe.

Early history, however, reveals to us two distinct stages
in this unfoldment, —that of the patriarchal group, and that
of the clan group; the latter an important step of advance
beyond the former. The patriarchal system is that of Asia
and northern Africa ; the clan system that of Aryan Europe
and North America. The desert was the native home of
the patriarchal group. In the broad and barren steppes
of northern Asia, and the great sandy plains of Arabia and
northern Africa, the pastoral nomadic habit naturally per-
sisted, agriculture in its faint first efforts remaining sec-
ondary to the interests of the wandering shepherd tribes.
Communism reigned supreme. The flocks were the prop-
erty of the tribe as a whole. Scarcely any individual
property existed. The narrow confines of the tent, and
the necessity of frequent movement, prevented the accu-
mulation of any large amount of household treasures.
Politically a like communism prevailed. There was no
 156

THE ARYAN RACE.

clear line of family demarcation. Each community was
a group of kindred, and was under the leadership of the
patriarchal representative of the remote ancestor of the
tribe. But this leadership was by no means an absolute
control. The separate families declared themselves suffi-
ciently to form an assembly of freemen, not nearly so
distinctly formulated as that of the Aryans, yet with a
proud sense of personal independence, and a voice in the
management of tribal concerns. The organization, how-
ever, was that of an army, with hereditary right in its
leader, and subordination to his authority in all warlike
affairs.

It is a striking evidence of the conservative persistency
of institutions among agriculturists to find that similar
conditions exist to-day in middle and south Germany,
with but slight modifications. The main change is that
communism in the arable lands has ceased, and the fields
of the peasants are held in private ownership. The valu-
able work on Germany by Baring-Gould gives some in-
teresting information and suggestions on this point. He
makes it clearly evident that the customs of the Aryans
changed in accordance with the variation in the character of
their soil. "Where the land was poor, as in northern Ger-
many, it was incapable of supporting a dense population,
and such regions became active centres of migration. The
seeming general migrations were in reality only partial, and
mainly consisted of the swarms of elder sons whom the
paternal estates could not support. In such cases but one
son remained under the paternal roof, perhaps in some
cases the eldest, but oftener the youngest, — from which may
have arisen the custom in some localities of inheritance by
the youngest, as already mentioned. Such was probably
the origin of the frequent invading movements of the Sax-
ons, Angles, Franks, etc. Room for the surplus population
was needed, and the}r obtained it by conquering a new
home, or died by the swords of the invaded people. It
was a system of the survival of the strongest which served
to settle the Malthusian difficulty during long ages of
human history.

In southern and middle Germany, where the land is
richer, the communal conditions more fully prevailed. In
the North the farm developed, descending to one son as
the heir, — a condition which still prevails in that locality.
In the South the village persisted, with its common lands.
 124

THE ARYAN RACE.

This system was nearly universal among the Franks, Ale-
manni, and Swabians, and survives unchanged in some
places. Thus at Gersbacli, in the Baden Schwarzwald,
all the tillage land is held in common and is periodically
redistributed. In the Altmark all the land is common,
and the agricultural work to be done the next day is de-
cided every evening by the heads of households. Similar
conditions exist in other places. The three-field system is
yet universal in this region, and in numerous cases the
pasture and forest land is still held in common. The Ge-
tucmnen, the village arable fields, consist of somewhat nar-
row strips, divided from each other by footpaths. These
are subdivided into still narrower family strips, marked off
by trenches or stones. They are usually rectangular, often
not more than seven yards wide, and in extreme cases
reduced to three or even one yard in width. In such cases
they are longer in proportion to their narrowness. These
fields are divided into the Felcl, the Flur, and the Zelg, the
winter, summer, and fallow field, in accordance with imme-
morial custom. The lots of peasant proprietors are thus
divided into narrow strips scattered all over the parish,
such a thing as a compact farm being very rare. Of recent
years, however, efforts have been made by the Governments
to end this state of affairs and redistribute the land so as
to bring each peasant’s holdings together. The indications
are that ere long the old and inconvenient system will
vanish under the force of modern ideas and governmental
initiative.

That the soil of England was originally divided in a
similar manner by its Saxon conquerors we have abundant
evidence in the many traces of communistic agriculture
which still exist. Fields known as “ common fields” may
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

125

yet be found in many of the English counties. These
fields are nearly always divided into three long strips like
the German Gewannen, separated by green baulks of turf.
The separate farms consist of subdivisions of these strips,
often very minute. There is evidence to show that the
same owner once held a share in each strip, and that these
shares were equal, or nearly so, though now many of them
may be accumulated in single hands. The methods of
agriculture closely reproduce those of old. One strip is
left fallow, while unlike crops are cultivated in the other
twro strips. The right of common pasturage for the cattle
of the farmers often exists ; and the shares in the arable
lands in rare cases shift owners annually, as in old Arya.
This is frequently the rule with the meadows, rights in
which are often redistributed annually by casting lots.1

In addition to these arable fields there are in many parts
of England open or common fields, sometimes comprising
more than half the area of certain counties. Mr. William
Marshall, in his “ Treatise on Landed Property,” estimates
that a few centuries ago nearly the whole of the lands of
England lay in this open state, and formed the common
property of cultivators. They seem to have been divided
into arable and waste or pasture lands on a principle
closely related to that of the Teutonic village. Similar
conditions yet exist in Lowland Scotland, as in the borough
of Lauder, already cited.

This persistence of the communistic village organization
in England, after all the wars and revolutions in that land,
shows a peculiar vitality in the ancient Aryan system of
property holding. Significantly similar institutions were
established in America, the yeoman settlers of New Eng-
1 Maine, Village Communities, pp. 78 to 89.
 126

THE ARYAN RACE.

land dividing their new soil on the principle to which
they had been accustomed at home. These American vil-
lage communities, however, never took a deep hold on the
soil. The flood of new emigrants soon drowned them out
of existence.

In two Aryan lands, India and Russia, the village com-
munity has been rigidty persistent, and exists at the pres-
ent day in a form not widety different from that which
must have prevailed in ancient Aiya. Only among the
Hindus and the Slavonians does the archaic house com-
munity persist, while they everywhere maintain the village
system. The Indian village closely repeats the Teutonic,
as above described. There is the arable domain, divided
among the families, yet cultivated under minute laws of
custom. "Where grass-crops can be raised, the meadows
persist, on the verge of the cultivated ground. Outside
appears the waste, the undivided pasture-ground of the
villagers. Centrally lies the village, with its individual
family plots and its strictty isolated households. And all
is under the control of an elected headman or a village
council which decides all questions. Two ancient ideas
have died out, however. The periodical redistribution has
disappeared, except as a tradition, and the villagers do not
consider themselves kinsmen. Perhaps the abundant infu-
sion of foreign blood has killed out this old conception.

The old system of government by an assembly of adult
males, as found in the ancient Teutonic community, has
partly vanished in India. In many cases the affairs of the
community are managed by a council of village elders,
but more generally this council is replaced by a head-
man,— a feature of later origin. This office is sometimes
hereditary, sometimes elective ; though in the latter case
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

127

usually confined to a particular famity, and generally to
the eldest male of that family.

The Indian villages are not solely cultivating communi-
ties. Manufacturing interests are also included. There
are families of hereditary artisans, as the blacksmith, the
shoemaker, etc. There is a village accountant, a village
police, and other necessary officers. But these persons
are included in the communistic system, and are paid
by an allowance of grain or a piece of cultivated land.
All their wares have a price, fixed by usage, and to
bargain with a Hindu tradesman for his goods is to insult
him.

In central and southern India are certain villages to
which is attached a class of persons who form no actual
part of the community. These persons are looked upon as
impure. Their touch is contaminating. They are not per-
mitted to enter the village, or only a reserved part of it.
Yet they have definite duties, one of which is the settle-
ment of boundaries. They probably are descendants of
the aboriginal population. Still, despite the rigid exclu-
sion of these “ outsiders,” there can be no question that
the alien population largely made its way into the village
in past times, as is shown by the evident great mixture
of race-characters in India, and by the loss of the idea
of kindred in the village groups. In the Russian commu-
nity this is avoided by the ease of swarming to new lands.
But in densely peopled India the contest between the group
of kindred and the alien class for a share in the land must
have been severe and persistent, and to it is probably due
the conditions we now find.

Of all modern Aryan nations, however, Russia is the
one that has deviated least from the ancient customs, and
 128

THE ARYAN RACE.

in the Russian mir we have the closest analogue of the
antique Aryan village. This is in accordance with the view
we have taken of Russia as the Aryan branch that has re-
mained nearest to or yet occupies the primitive home of
the race, and that has been least exposed to disturbing
influences. Yet the unwarlike character of the Russian,
as of the Hindu peasantry, and their close confinement to
agricultural duties, have doubtless had much to do with
their strict conservatism. In all lands and in all times the
agriculturist has been the conservative, the citizen the radi-
cal ; while but for the disturbing and destroying influences
of war we might have to-day the most archaic of institu-
tions persisting in their full vigor.

In ^Wallace’s admirable work on Russia is an interest-
ing description of the Russian mir, or village community,
which may be here epitomized. Ivanofka, a village in
northern Russia, is offered as a typical instance of a culti-
vating group. It embraces in its communal bounds about
two thousand acres of a light sandy soil. In the cultiva-
tion of this nearly all the women and about half the males
of the village are habitually engaged. The land is sepa-
rated into three portions, — arable, waste, and village ; the
arable being divided into three large fields, after the imme-
morial Aryan usage. The first field is reserved for the
crop of rye ; the second for oats and buckwheat; while the
third lies fallow, and is used as pasture-ground. This
distribution changes from field to field annually, so as to
make a rude rotation of crops and to give each field rest
one year in three. The fields are cut into long, narrow
strips, of which each family possesses, according to its
needs, one or more in each lot. Many of the villagers are
artisans, and live in the towns. Yet they cannot leave the
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

129

village without consent of the council, must return to it
when ordered, and must send part of their earnings home
to the village treasury. Otherwise they forfeit their heredi-
tary claims, and break a link of connection with the ances-
tral home and kindred which is dear to the heart of every
true Russian.

The chief person in the mir is the selski starosta, or vil-
lage elder, whose office is elective, and presents no trace of
heredity. The electing body is the selski skhocl, or village
assembly, composed of the adult members of the commu-
nity. This body settles all important affairs. As the
power of the elder here is limited, so is that of the house-
father. He has in recent times lost much of his ancient
absolutism, and no longer rules with unquestioned author-
ity over the adult members of the family. The affairs of
the village are closely regulated by custom. No one can
plough or mow until the assembly has met and passed a
resolution, and no peasant dreams of disputing a decree of
the assembly. These decrees are generally carried by accla-
mation, though there is a counting of heads by the elder
when any diversity of opinion appears. And it ma}' be
said that no one desires the office of elder. It brings with
it trouble and responsibility, with very little compensation.
Efforts are made to avoid the empty honor, though no one
dare dispute the decision of the electors.

In regard to the division of the fields among the house-
holders, the principle of periodical redistribution is yet
extant, and is practised whenever changes in the number
and size of families make it desirable. And the idea of
kinship still persists. The Russian villager believes him-
self allied by blood-ties with the members of his village
group. In the more fertile southern districts each peasant

9
 130

THE ARYAN RACE.

strives to obtain all the land he can get, — which is not the
case in the North, where the land-tax renders too large a
farm undesirable. All disputes thence arising are settled
by casting lots. In these districts the meadow-lands are
also divided into household shares ; but this division is
made annually instead of irregular^, as in the case of
arable lands. Occasionally the grass is cut in common,
and then divided. It may be said, in conclusion, that the
meetings of the assembly of the village are very infor-
mal, and discussion is carried on in a free and easy way,
though with considerable shrewdness. 'Wallace gives some
very amusing instances of these debates, — the direct
counterparts, probably, of the methods of government
that prevailed in ancient Arya centuries before history
was born.

The village community, however, while found univer-
sally among the Aryans, cannot be claimed as a peculiar
Aryan institution. It is one of the two forms under which
all ancient agricultural societies seem to have been organ-
ized ; the other being the more archaic patriarchal system.
Village communities have been discovered in Java and
among North African Semitic tribes, while they form the
ordinary t}Tpe of the Indian clan groups of North America.
It has been the custom to speak of the Indian tribes as in
the hunting-stage of development. But the fact is that
they were very largely agricultural. For one evidence of
this the reader may be referred to a paper in the u Amer-
ican Naturalist” of March, 1885. And their land-holding
customs, together with their system of organization, bore
a striking resemblance to those of the Aryans, though with
some features of variance, as will be seen when we come
to treat of their comparative political systems. This much
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE. 131

may be here said, — the idea of kinship in the clan was
strongly held by the Indian tribes, bnt the isolation and
rigid exclusiveness of the household was not maintained.
The belief that “ every man’s house is his castle,” to be
defended to the death if need be, is peculiarly Aryan. Its
counterpart is found nowhere else in the world.
 VI.

THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OP ARY AX WORSHIP.

IX the religion of the ancient Aryans is displayed, to a
more marked extent than in that of any other people,
two distinct systems of worship, arising from unlike in-
fluences, and struggling for precedence. This fact is of
importance, as it has had a vital influence on the history
of their descendants, and has done much for the preserva-
tion of their democratic spirit. For of these two systems
the one tended to aristocracy, the other to democracy ; and
in nearly all the ancient Aryan communities the democratic
religious system kept the ascendency.

YTe are apt, indeed, in considering the Aryan religions,
to call up before our mental vision simply the rich picture
of mythology, with its intricate and extraordinary details,
its surprising variety of conceptions, the physical splendor
of its deities and their habitation, and the crowding multi-
tude in which they inhabited earth, air, ocean, and the
over-arching skies. But these marvellous mythical deities
were not the oldest or the most venerated gods of the
Aryans. They grew into great prominence in the early
literary period of Greece and India and of the Teutonic
tribes, and became surrounded with a confusedly complex
series of biographical details, in which the vestiges of their
origin "were lost to their worshippers. But in ancient Arya
the nature gods lacked this complexity of myth and variety
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 133

of forms and attributes, and their true meanings were
plainly apparent. They were as yet the sky, the sun, and
the planets, the winds and the clouds, the summer and the
winter, the dawn and the darkness, and those varied ele-
mental phenomena which are of supernatural significance
to the simple fancies of all uncultured peoples. They
had not yet unfolded into the Supreme Deity of heaven
and earth, with his brilliant and marvellous court of sec-
ondary immortals.

Less striking, yet more ancient and more persistent, than
this system of worship was another, of which we see and
hear but little, yet which formed the most generally ob-
served religion of our far-off progenitors, so far as indi-
cations prove. This was the worship of ancestors, the
home-worship of the Aryan family, the exclusive worship
of the Aryan clan, the religion of the hearth and of the
ancestral tomb, —the only worship that really reached the
hearts of the earty Aryans.

Something very similar to the Aryan religious system
exists to-day in China as a phenomenon that has utterly
died out elsewhere in civilized lands. There, too, we find
a double system, — the worship of ancestors underlying
the more public systems of belief. But the Confucian phi-
losophy has never taken deep root as a popular religion,
while ancestral worship has a stronger hold on the public
heart than Taoism or Buddhism. On the Western conti-
nent, among the Indian tribes of the southern United
States, appears a similar double system. Here, however,
it was not an ancestral, but a demonic system, a developed
Shamanism, that was mingled with the worship of the
elemental gods. But while the worship of ancestors held
the supremacy in China, that of the solar deity and of
 134

THE ARYAN RACE.

later mythical gods did so in America. Among the
Aryans it is probable that there was a closer balance of
influence between the two systems of worship. Very prob-
ably in ancient Arya ancestral worship was strongly in
the ascendant. Later it became to some extent balanced
by the growing prominence of lithological -worship. But
the latter attained supremacy only in India and perhaps
among the Celts. Elsewhere the indications seem to show
that the former continued the dominant system.

In considering this question we are dealing with one of
which the history is somewhat obscure. The Aryan house
and clan worship did not attract the attention of the poets,
whose verses are filled with the marvels of mythical legend.
The family worship was in no sense public, like that of the
elemental deities. It was conducted in secrecy and mys-
tery. Strangers were not admitted to the sacred rites of
house and clan. And every family had its own ritual,
which was a secret never to be divulged. In consequence
very little testimony concerning this system of worship has
made its way into literature. It is only alluded to inci-
dentally, in vagrant paragraphs ; and what little is known
of it has been recovered only by patient research and by
piecing together flitting fragments of evidence. Neces-
sarily, to some extent, doubt creeps in. Vre can rebuild
the ancestral worship only in outline. It has nowhere in
the past been made the subject of brilliant essays and the
groundwork of great poems, like those devoted to the mul-
titudinous deities of mythology.

THE ARYAN RACE.

mighty cbjaush-pitar, the father of heaven, the guide and
ruler of the universe.

Y\re shall say as little here of his political as of his
religious system, since we must deal with these more fully
in future sections. It will suffice to observe that the
family was the germ of the village comm uni tj’, which was
constituted on the model of the household, and governed
by the vispciti, or head of the clan, or by the clan council.
Over the larger political group ruled an elected chief of the
tribe, who was assisted in his duties by a court or council,
composed of patara9, or fathers of families. The landed
property was held in common, the only individual property
being the house, its court, its goods, and its cattle. The
houses were grouped into villages, but the chief seems to
have had his special residence and domain marked off from
the common property. Each such community formed part
of a larger group,—a township, to use a modern name.
The separate townships were connected by roads, on
which pedlers travelled with their wares. These commu-
nities had their laws, mainly the growth of ancient custom,
for the prevention or punishment of crime. Justice was
ctivci, the path of right. Right was ycius, what one is
bound to. A person accused of crime had to procure
sureties, those who knew him, or members of his clan.
As yet there were only freemen in the community ; the
dire curse of slavery had not arisen. Yet free laborers
seem to have worked for hire. The community was on
its road toward slavery. The system of human bondage
has always made its appearance as an accompaniment of
the growth of industry, the increase of fixed property, and
the recognition of the value of labor as an element of
wealth. Slaves would be useless to hunting tribes, and
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

103

warlike hunters are apt to slaughter or burn their prison-
ers. To pastoral tribes they are of little more value.
Their great use has always been to agriculturists. With
the progress of agriculture prisoners speedily became too
valuable to be slaughtered, and slavery steadily grew in
its proportions, until in the great nations of Greece and
Rome all the labor of the fields was performed by men
of this class, and the noble art of war degenerated into
a great slave-hunting raid. With the growth of commerce
slavery has become again unprofitable, and a sentiment
has been roused against it which promises soon to banish
it from the earth. But the ancient community with whose
history we are now concerned was. as yet at the beginning
of this great cycle which is now approaching its end.
Only freemen existed in its midst.

We need not pursue this inquiry farther. We have
sought to present a graphic picture of a vanished commu-
nity whom we know mainly by our partial knowledge of
the words it used. We have looked, through the lens
of language, upon a primitive society, dwelling in barba-
rian rudeness and brutality, yet slowly advancing toward
civilization, — a vigorous, energetic, strong-bodied, and ac-
tive-minded race, stirring in body and soul, and destined
to play a most important part upon the stage of the world.
That we have given the whole story of their lives, cannot
be affirmed. It was doubtless much richer than we can
learn from our scanty stock of words. And much that
we have said is open to doubt. Very likely many of the
ancient Aryan words have died out of the languages of
the modern nations and been replaced by other terms.
Of those that have survived it is not always easy or possi-
ble to regain the original meaning, and it is quite probable
 104

THE ARYAN RACE.

that some of the interpretations adopted are incorrect.
The ancient tribe lived a simple life, thought simple
thoughts, and doubtless gave but a narrow and limited
significance to its words. l"et that the picture we have
presented is on the whole a faithful one there is little rea-
son to doubt. _ And in the annals of mankind there is cer-
tainly nothing more remarkable than this rehabilitation
of an antique community which had vanished ages before
a thought of writing its history existed.

After the separation of the eastern and the western
Aryans both branches advanced in knowledge and in the
arts of life, and new words caiiie into use. We may con-
clude with a brief glance at these new ideas and accom-
plishments as gained by the western branch. There arose
among them extended ideas of family relationship. Words
now came into use to designate the grandfather, the sister-
in-law, and the sister’s son. Terms of affection for old
people arose. There was a similar advance in civil rela-
tions, and the lines of the community were drawn more
closely. The citizen appeared as opposed to the stranger.
A special act became necessary for members of one com-
munity to enter into friendly relations with those of another.
In their industrial relations larger and better boats were
produced. The sea acquired a name, and sea-animals,
such as the lobster, the oyster, and the seal, became known.
New plants and animals received names, —the elm, alder,
hazel, fir, vine, willow, and nettle ; the stag, lynx, hedge-
hog, and tortoise. Some of these were probably known
before, but they had left no names. The duck seems to
have now become domesticated; agriculture greatly im-
proved. Millet, oats, and rye were cultivated. Peas,
beans, and onions became common garden-plants. Terms
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

105

for sowing, harrowing, and harvesting came into use.
Yeast was used in bread-making. Glue and pitch be-
came known ; leather-work improved ; the stock of tools
increased; hammers, knives, shields, and spears were
employed.

Yet withall these steps of progress the Aryans continued
barbarians of no high grade. Manners were still rude,
life coarse and hard, domestic relations harsh and oppres-
sive, war bloody and brutal. The custom of tattooing
and of painting their partly naked bodies with the blue
dye of the woad-plant may have been common. They
were yet rude barbarians, who had made scarce a step
toward civilization. Such was probably the condition of
the western Aryans when their later divisions took place
and the existing peoples of Europe entered upon the his-
torical path of their national development.
 V.

THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

IT is our task now to review, so far as it can be traced,
the general organization of the primitive Aryans,
social, political, and religious. Our knowledge of the
existence of this people has been gained mainly by the
aid of language. But later research has opened several
new lines of investigation, and taught us far more of the
Aryan organization than that relating to its industries,
habits, and possessions. Not only common words exist
in all the branches of the Aryan race, but also common
institutions, ideas, and beliefs; and by a co-ordination of
these latter we are enabled to gaze deeply, through the
shadows of time, into the very heart of that long-vanished
community.

Not to go too far back into the origin of human institu-
tions, modern research has made it plainly apparent that
the germ of all existing social and political organization
is the family. The domestic group appears everywhere as
the seed of civilization, as it yet constitutes the unit mass
of its organization. There is, it is true, another vital ele-
ment in political development: but its influence has been
of later date, and the family appears as the first clearly
defined stage of condensation in the long upward progress
of man from his very rude archaic condition. As to the
gradual development of the family through its varied
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE. 107

phases, embracing those of polygamy and polyandry, and
monogamy with descent in the female line, to its final
stage, with paternal headship and descent in the male line,
the reader must be referred to works on that special sub-
ject such as those of L. H. Morgan and McLennan. It is
sufficient for our present purpose to know that the Aryan
family, at its earliest discoverable date, had attained the
last-named stage of development, and as such formed
the definitely constituted unit of the Aryan industrial and
political organization.

Passing beyond the savage to the barbaric state of
human development, we find the latter everywhere based
on the family group. Alike in the agricultural tribes of
ancient Asia and Europe, and in the hunting and agri-
cultural tribes of America, this wras the case. The mo-
nogamous family, composed of husband, wife, and their
descendants, formed the unit of organization and the type
of the clan and the tribal groups. In the pastoral tribes of
Asia and the nations derived from them some degree of
polygamy has always prevailed. Yet the first wife retains
a position of special respect and authority, and monogamy
is the rule with the great mass of the population.

In the early state of all the Aryan branches the family
was organized under conditions of considerable similarity,
— conditions doubtless inherited from ancient Arya. Each
family, indeed, constituted a despotism on a small scale.
The house-father was the head of the domestic group, and
represented it in the community. "Within the house pre-
cincts he possessed the governing power, and the right —
if we may judge from the Roman example — to banish any
member of his household, to sell his sons or daughters into
slavery, to command them to marry whom he would, to
 108

THE ARYAN RACE.

seize on all their personal possessions, and to kill them at
his -will. It may be said, however, that some recent writ-
ers question the general absolutism of the Aryan house-
father. It is certain, at all events, that his house was his
castle. No one had the right to enter it without his per-
mission, not even an officer of the law. It was his private
kingdom, and for the acts of the members of the household
he alone stood responsible to the community. The idea
of personal individuality had not yet clearly arisen. The
household was the primitive Aryan individual.

Such was the constitution of the family in ancient Rome,
as declared in the extant Roman laws. The Roman father
had the power of life or death over his children, and could
banish them, sell them, or slay them at his will, and no
man had the right to interfere. All the acquisitions of the
son, all legacies left him, and the benefit from all contracts
he made, were at the father’s discretion ; while he was
bound to marry at his father’s command. In the house-
hold the gradation of rank passed downward from father
successively to mother, to sons, to daughters, to depend-
ants, and to slaves ; but the father was an absolute tyrant
over all. In Greece the same conditions prevailed. K. O.
Müller tells us that in Sparta the family formed an indi-
visible whole, under the control of one head, who was
privileged from his birth. Cox, the historian, says that
the house of each man was to him what the den is to the
wild beast, into which no living thing ma}T enter except
at the risk of life, but which his mate and offspring are
allowed to share.1 In the Hindu family of to-day this in-
violate character of the household is strictly maintained.
A m}Tstery overlies all its operations, — a remarkable se-

1 Greece, p. 13.
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

109

crecy, which is maintained in the humblest households, and
is probably a survival of a very ancient system of family
isolation. With the Celts and the early Greeks there
existed the right to expose or sell their children. This
had become obsolete among the Teutons, though the right
was recognized in case of necessity. With the Russians
the power of the house-father, says Mr. Dixon, is with-
out any check. He arranges the marriage of his son,
makes the son’s wife a servant, and stands above all law
in his own house. His cabin is not only a castle but a
church, and every act of his done within that cabin is
supposed to be not only private but divine.1

Over one point alone the authority of the house-father
was not absolute. He could do what he would with the
movable property of the household and the labor of its
inmates, but he could not sell or encumber the landed
property. This was not individual, but corporate wealth.
It belonged to the family as a whole, and was held invio-
lable. This was the law in all Aryan regions, from India
to Ireland, with the possible exception of Rome, whose
ancient laws relating to such matters are lost.

The heir to the family headship was usually the eldest
son, though by no means always so. In Wales and in
some other districts this office seems to have descended

1 According to Wallace, this is rather the old theory than the modern
practice. He remarks that “the relations between the head of the
household and the .other members depended on custom and personal
character, and consequently varied greatly in different families. If the
Big One was intelligent, of decided, energetic character, there was proba-
bly perfect discipline in the house. If not well fitted for his post, there
might be endless quarrel lings and bickerings.” But there is every reason
to believe that in earlier times the patriarchal power was absolute.
“Russia,” p. 88.
 no

THE ARYAN RACE.

to the youngest son ; and this is yet the rule among some
of the southern Slavs. In default of a male heir one
might be received by adoption.1 The adopted son left his
own household and became a full member of the new one,
changing his tutelar spirits for those of his new family.
The principle of adoption, indeed, was sometimes so ex-
tended in the clan as to make the claim of common descent
extremely mythical. The whole Aryan system rested upon
marriage and the birth of a male heir, who became eventu-
ally the head of the household, the system of family
government being the type of the public organization.
The ties of blood were scrupulously respected, and mar-
riage among blood-relations forbidden to a greater extent
than to-day. The wife became in every respect a member
of the family group into which she entered, changed her
household gods, and lost all obligations of duty to her
former family, replacing them by hew ties.

Such was the Aryan family, the antique political group
from which outgrew the later clan organization of Arya.
ITow it arose, with its peculiar feature of absolute domina-
tion of the head of the household, is not very clear. No
such absolutism exists in the family group of the Ameri-
can Indians, which otherwise bears a very interesting re-
semblance to that of the Aryans, and Cox and Ï learn trace it
to a religious origin, — a duty resting upon the house-father,
as representative of the departed ancestors, to pay due
worship to their spirits and to manage the inheritance left
him under responsibility only to these ancestral spirits.

1 Under certain conditions the wife succeeded to the family govern-
ment and care of the property, sometimes during the minority of the
male children, sometimes during life if there were no direct male descend-
ants. Maine’s “ Village Communities,” p. 51.
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND the village.

Ill

This subject will be dealt with in the next section; and
it will suflice to say. here that the family group was appar-
ently not limited to the living members, but included the
dead ones as well, to whom sacrifice was offered, —perhaps
as their share of the family food and wealth.1

Jn this religious duty we find a powerful check to the
absolutism of the house-father. He represented the de-
parted ancestors, and was answerable to them for a proper
discharge of his duty. For any wrongful act he was liable
to the vengeance of these powerful spirits, and might be
exposed to dreadful calamities or become an accursed felon
to the gods. It may here be said also that the power of
public opinion was by no means absent from these ancient
communities, and that it doubtless exercised a salutary
influence over the acts of the domestic despot. The house-
father was not expected to act by caprice, but to call a
council of the family and of its near relatives to decide
upon important matters ; and very likely he was ordinarily
governed by their decision. In this respect the family
was the prototype of the clan.

Ancient as is the period to which we here allude, and vital
as arc the changes which have since taken place, the antique
Aryan family, as a distinct political and industrial group,
has not yet died out. It still exists in India and among
the southern Slavonians, —the least progressed, politically,
of the Aryan peoples. In India, in addition to the village
communities, which form the ordinary industrial group, there
exists a group known in Hindu law .as the Join! Undivided

1 The most dignified of the Indian courts has recently laid it down,
after nn elaborate examination of all the authorities, that “the right of
inheritance, according to Hindoo haw, is wholly regulated with reference
to the spiritual benefits to he conferred on the deceased proprietor.” —
Village Communities, p. 53.
 112

THE ARYAN RACE.

Family. In this the system of co-ownership is carried to its
fullest extent. It is composed of the members of a single
family, usually including several generations, by whom all
things are held in common, — food, worship, and estate, —
under the control of an elected head. This represents the
primitive socialistic institution. The domain of the family
is cultivated in common, the produce is held in common, and
a common hearth and common meals are preserved through
several generations. Significantly, in a region far to the
west of this a closely similar institution survives. Among
the southern Slavonians, in Croatia, Servia, and Dalmatia,
the House Community is an ordinary institution. Here a
single roof covers the family, which often comprises sev-
eral generations and many individuals. The hearth and
the meal are enjoyed in common, the lands cultivated by
the common labor of the household, and all the produce
held as the common wealth; the whole being controlled by
an elected manager. These associations are not of recent
formation and dissolvable at will, like their Hindu ana-
logues, but have descended from far past time, each fam-
ily continuing its organization, but sending out its surplus
members, when they grow too numerous, to found other
families. We can scarcely doubt that some of these Sla-
vonian family groups have descended without a break from
primitive Aryan times, and that they preserve to us, per-
haps on original Aryan territory, the most antique form of
the Aryan industrial group, which became replaced in
later Arya by the institution of the village, next to be
considered.

It may be here said that the limited duration of the
Indian House Community — which rarely lasts beyond two
generations — is due to the facility of dissolution under the
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

113

This geographical record, however, appears to indicate
the region of ancient Bactria as the point of common resi-
dence of the Hindus and Iranians ere yet they had divided
into two sub-branches and begun their final migration. It
was a land adapted to their needs, with its mountain-slopes,
its tracts of rich soil and fine pasture-land, its abundance
of oxen and horses, its warm summer airs on the north-
west terraces of the Hindu-Kush. But that it formed the
original Aryan home there is not a shred of evidence, while
such an idea is surrounded by insuperable difficulties. In
all probability it was the halting-ground of the vanguard
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

81

of the Aryan march to the East, a land in which they may
have long rested, and where their numbers may have
greatly increased.1 All we really know is that, after prob-
ably a long residence in this locality, during which the
primitive Aryan ideas became much modified, a division
took place. Some claim that this was a religious schism.
Of this we have no evidence other than the strong religious
fervor manifested in their literature, and the diversity of
opinion concerning the gods that appears in the most
ancient documents of the Hindus and Persians. It is as-
sumed that a group of sectaries, under the leadership of
Xarathustra or Zoroaster, broke off from the main stock
and made their way towards the highlands of Iran, retra-
cing, as we assume, their original path, probably long for-
gotten. Here they established themselves, developed the
distinctive Zoroastrian faith, and became the root-bed of
the future great empire of Persia.

There is nothing surprising in such a reverse movement.
The whole of the Aryan population of Bactria seemed to
be in motion, and expanding in all available directions.
The Indie branch was pushing toward the rich plains
of the South, and there was but one path left open
for the Iranic, — that leading to the Persian highlands.
The march of the fathers of the Hindu race can be traced
writh some clearness. They seem to have pushed out from

1 A study of the map of A?yi shows a comparatively short route, by
way of the southern shores qi the Caspian, from the region of the Cau-
casus to that of the Hindi).-I|Insh. It may be conjectured that the
original Aryan migrants were forced to pursue this route by the hostile
resistance to invasion of the -primitive mountaineers of Persia, and that
only after they had greatly increased in numbers and warlike strength in
Bactria were they able to return and to cope with the foes whom they
had avoided in their original march.

6
 82

THE ARYAN RACE.

the western borders of Iran and made their way by slow
stages and in successive tribes into the rich, warm, and
moist valley of the Indus, seeking a new home in these
fertile plains. We can almost see them, in the pages of
the Vedas, marching resolutely south, singing their stirring
hymns of praise and invocation to their deities, led by
their priestly chiefs, and calling down the vengeance of
the gods on their enemies, the Dasyns, the u raw-eaters,”
the “ godless,” the “gross feeders on flesh/’ the “ disturbers
of sacrifices,” the “ monsters ” and “ demons ” who dared
resist the arms of the god-sent, the Ary a, the noble and
ruling race.

This movement was in no proper sense a migration. It
was, as we conceive was the case with all the Aryan move-
ments, an expansion caused by increasing numbers and
aided by hostile pressure from the rear. There are no
signs of a march in force, but rather of the movement of
successive tribes, each pushing the preceding one forward,
and the whole slowly gaining possession of the broad re-
gion of the “ five rivers,” and extending to the great plain
of the Ganges. We can trace the line of march in the
Yedic hymns. The earliest ones disclose the Hindu tribes
to the north of the Khyber Pass, in Cabul. The later ones
were written and sung on the banks of the Ganges. Along
the base of the'''Himalayas they pushed, and far down into
that fertile and enervating land, driving the dark-skinned
aborigines everywhere before them into the mountains
and the jungles, and probably, despite 'their religious dis-
taste, mingling their noble blood to* some extent with that
of these despised aborigines.

How long ago this was, can be conjectured with some
degree of probability. The first occupation of the valley
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

83

of the Indus, with its five tributaries, has been estimated,
from what we know of the subsequent history of the
Hindus, to have taken place about 2000 b. c. It could
hardly have been more recent, yet it may have been more
remote. According to the list of Babylonian dynasties
given by Berosus, the western part of Persia was occupied
by Aryans as early as 2500 b. c. All such estimates,
however, must be taken with many grains of allowance.1

As to the physical and mental character of these east-
ern Aryans, something may be said. The Hindu type is
decidedly Melanochroic. The Brahmin of the Ganges is
marked by a high, well-developed forehead, oval face,
horizontal eyes, a projecting nose, slightly thick at its
extremity, but with delicately shaped nostrils, a fair but
readily bronzed skin, and abundant black hair. Farther
south the mixture with the aborigines has been so great
that it is not easy to trace the typical Aryan. In fact
there has never been a Hindu conquest of the southern
half of India. There the Dravidian population still exists
to the number of fifty millions, though all race-purity has
vanished through the abundant mingling of types that has
seemingly taken place. The mentality of the ancient
Hindus was such as we might deduce from this mixture
of blood, one with highly acute powers of reasoning, but

1 This possibility of limiting the era of the Hindu-Tranian movement
within historic times, in connection with the remotely prehistoric char-
acter of the early European movements, is a strong argument against the
Bactrian locality for ancient Arya. No one can be asked to believe that
Aryan enterprise began with difficult and distant migrations, and left
the rich valleys of India, within easy reach, for its latest field of action.
Such a. reversal of the order of nature is inconceivable, and the prob-
ability is that the invasion of India was the final stage in a long-con-
tinued eastward migratory movement.
 84

THE ARYAN RACE.

with perhaps the most developed and exuberant imagi-
nation that has ever appeared upon the face of the earth.

The Iranian populations of to-day — the Kurds, the
Armenians, and the Tadjicks of Persia—are marked by
black eyes and brows. The Tadjicks, the purest descend-
ants of the old Persians, are described as of oval face,
broad, high forehead, large eyes, black eyebrows, straight,
prominent nose, large mouth, thin lips, complexion fair
and rosy, hair straight and black, beard and mustache
black and plentiful, and abundant hair over the whole
body. In Afghanistan the pure Aryan type is frequently
found. The Patans, or Afghan soldiers, are commonly
brown like the Iranians, but many of them have red hair
and blue eyes, with a florid complexion. This is particu-
larly the case with the Siali Posh of Kaffiristan, a tribe
which speaks a dialect derived from the Sanscrit. Thus
in the Iranian branch of the eastern Aryans the Xantho-
cliroic character has been much more fully preserved than
with the Hindus. It is possible that the separation of the
combined race may have been due to ethnic rather than to
religious causes. The Iranians are highlanders to-day, and
may always have been so. They may represent the moun-
taineer section of the original migrating horde, and there-
fore the one that had originally least of the Melanochroic
element. Possibly they occupied in Bactria the highland
region, and the Hindus the lower districts. If such were
the case, we should have an additional reason for the Iran-
ian movement towards the Persian highlands, and that of
the Hindus towards the Indian plains. It is a case parallel
to that of the Doric and Ionic peoples of Greece. In
ancient Arya the Dorian and Iranian tribes may have been
mountaineers, the Ionian and Hindu tribes lowlanders, and
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

85

each may have been governed by this original habit in all
subsequent movements. The Persians are distinguished
from the Hindus by characteristics not unlike those sepa-
rating the Dorians from the Ionians. They have the
mental character of mountaineers, are brave, enterprising,
earnest, and truthful, with a strong love of liberty, and
much warlike energy. They lack the highly active imagi-
nation of the Hindus, but have a sound common-sense and
vigor of thought which make them essentially practical in
their religious systems. The Persian myths have had a
profound influence over the practical religious history of
mankind, while the Hindu belief forms the basis of all the
involved figments of metaphysical philosophy.

But one thing more need here be said. Despite their
many differences, there is a remarkable degree of ho-
mogeneity among the early conditions of the several
branches of the Aryans, — alike in language, in religion,
in political and social institutions, and in physical and
mental character. This indicates an original great uni-
formity, a state of stagnant barbarity of long continu-
ance, during which the Aryans greatly extended the
borders of their primitive home without changing in any
important degree their primitive institutions. For the
second stage of progress a breaking-up and widespread
migration were requisite, — contact with alien peoples,
war, life in new lands, ethnic minglings, and all the varied
influences which play upon an actively moving people, but
to which a settled population is not exposed. To this di-
versity of influences, together with the inspiration of the
old civilizations with which the outspreading race came
into contact, we owe the highly developed Aryan enlight-
enment of the present age.
 86

THE ARYAN RACE.

Briefly to summarize some of the conclusions of this
chapter, it may be affirmed that the original Aryan migra-
tion had the character of an agricultural outpush similar
to that which exists in Russia to-day. It was the natural
expansion of an increasing race, at first of small, but of
gradually growing enterprise, spreading from a central
region in all directions to which fertility of soil invited.
It was the onward step from farm to farm, with hostile
aggression where this became necessary, the forward
movement occasionally accelerated by a hostile push of
other Aryan tribes from behind. These movements took
place to all parts of the compass except that leading to
the desert regions of Asia, and the whole intermedi-
ate region continued in Aiyan hands. In their advance
through Europe the Aryans have loosed their hold on no
land which they once occupied, except where forced to do
so by the invasions of the Huns and the Turks. In the
East they have left communities in Armenia, Kurdistan,
and other districts on their line of march, while the Aryan
tribe of the Caucasus known as the Iron or Ossetes sig-
nificantly occupies the path by which these southward
movements must have taken place, — the Gorge of Dariel,
the only natural road through the great mountain-chain.
This tribe seems to have been left behind as the rear-guard
of the Aryan army on its march to empire, while the
Caucasus generally has been occupied by alien peoples.

It was only at a later period, when migration and war
had consolidated and given new energy and enterprise to
the Aiyans, that they ventured on bolder movements.
We can perceive the gradual growth of this enterprise and
power of warlike massing in the German tribes, to whom
the immense wealth of Rome offered the strongest incite-
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

87

ment to hostile aggression. Yet at no time did they make
movements en masse like those of the nomadic Ilunnish
invaders. While crossing the borders into the Roman
Empire, they held on persistently to their fields and forests
at home.

The Aryan migration was evidently followed by an ex-
tensive intermarriage with the original inhabitants of the
conquered territories. There is no evidence to the con-
trary, except in the case of the settlers in Scandinavia,
who may have felt a strong antipathy to the widely differ-
ent Lapps. Elsewhere, however, they found their new
possessions occupied by tribes of Melanochroic blood, to
whom the Xanthocliroi have never shown any antipathy.
Instead of annihilating or dispossessing these, they appar-
ently simply subjugated them, and later on freely intermar-
ried with them. Only thus can we understand the great
change in physical characteristics of the Celts and Ger-
mans within the last eighteen centuries. In the former
case the conquered must have much exceeded the conquer-
ors in number, to judge from the strongly declared Melan-
ochroic character of the modern Celts. As regards the
Greeks and Latins, the Hindus and Persians, it is quite
piobable, as we have already conjectured, that they had
gained a strong infusion of Melanochroic blood before
their migration. This was undoubtedly largely added to
after reaching their new homes, and particularly so in
the case of the Hindus, who must have been greatly out-
numbered by the aborigines of their conquered territory.

Yet in all these cases the Aryan type of language held
its own persistently, doubtless adopting many words from
the dialects of the conquered races, but vigorously main-
taining its structure, and forcing out all the aboriginal
 88

THE ARYAN RACE.

tongues. This indicates that the aborigines were in every
instance subordinated to the conquerors, who retained
their ascendency firmly during the subsequent period of
amalgamation. Of variations of linguistic structure the
most marked were those which took place in the Celtic dia-
lects, which seem to have had impressed upon them some
of the characteristics of the aboriginal tongues, yet not
sufficiently so greatly to affect their Aryan type.
 IV.

THE ARYANS AT HOME.

HAT can we know about the mode of life of a

group of barbarians who have become extinct as

a primitive community without leaving a trace of their ex-
istence upon the face of the earth, who have written no
books, carved no monuments, built no great works of
architecture? The early Chinese and Egyptians, prob-
ably their contemporaries, have left abundant monuments,
— written, carved, erected, and excavated ; but the Aryans
ate, drank, fought, lived, and died without a thought that
the world to come might be curious about their doings,
and without an effort to stamp in stone, brick, or earth the
story of their existence. They had not yet reached that
stage of development in which men begin to think they are
doing great things and living great lives, and become
anxious to astonish the future world with a knowledge of
their prowess. This wish to astound posterity is a feature
of one stage of every advancing civilization. Primitive
barbarism troubles itself but little about the curiosity of
the future. High civilization is more concerned in work-
ing for the needs of the present. But the intermediate
stage of budding civilization has always wasted its strength
in building great tombs, pyramids, temples, and the like,
as monuments of its greatness, toiling with the strength
and blindness of the Cyclops to leave a message of empty
wonder for the world to come.
 90

THE ARYAN RACE.

The antique Aryans had not reached this stage of devel-
opment. And yet they have, withont knowledge or in-
tention, left a record of their lives and institutions hut
little less complete than that of their fame-seeking civilized
contemporaries. The political relations of the modern
world are the growth of the seed which they planted. The
religions of the mythological age were the unfoldment of
their germ of faith and worship. The languages of mod-
ern times are full of words which this antique group spoke
in their primeval homes. All these lines of development
have become great trees; but they can be traced back to
their roots, and in these roots we possess the life-conditions
of our ancestral clan.

As we have already said, all the languages of modern
Europe, the English, the Romanic, the German, the Celtic,
the Slavonic, and the Lithuanian ; those of ancient Europe,
the Greek, the Latin, the Teutonic; those of southern
Asia, the Sanscrit, the Persian, and their several minor
dialects, — are not alone closely similar in grammatical
structure, in skeletal type, as it were, but also are full of
verbal affinities. Erom Ireland on the west to India on
the east we find words essentially the same used to desig-
nate the same things. Very many such words exist, —
far too many to suppose that these languages could have
gained them by borrowing from one another. And these
words are not the terms employed by civilization to desig-
nate its newly acquired treasures, but they are the names
of things and ideas of simpler and more antique character,
the titles of the possessions and conditions of barbaric
life, for which every nation, if it had no primitive names,
would have been forced in the early stage of its existence
to invent names for itself. The conception, therefore, that
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

(Jl

these common terms were acquired during the process of
national development by borrowing or, like articles of
commerce, by interchange, cannot be entertained for a
moment. But if this explanation be thrown aside as in-
adequate, there remains only that of a common origin.
We are forced, in fact, to believe that all these widely
separated nations are descendants of a single primitive
people who once occupied a single, limited area, from
which they have outspread over the earth, and who spoke
a single and simple language, from which have come the
complex and varied systems of Aryan speech.

We have already sought to trace the origin, the primitive
locality, and the early migrations .of this people. A yet
more interesting inquiry is before us, —that of their mode
of life. What did they know ; how did they live ; what was
the character of their possessions? — such are the queries
which we must now seek to answer. We look back far
into the darkness of the past as into a mist-shrouded val-
ley, and perceive at first only impenetrable gloom. But
finally a ray of light of growing strength makes its way
through the thinning vapor, and by degrees a broad scene
of busy life is revealed to our eyes, — not with much clear-
ness, it is true ; not without wisps of shadow clinging to
and half enveloping its objects ; yet sufliciently clear to
yield a very considerable knowledge of the conditions of
that long-clouded scene of ancient life. This revealing ray
has sprung from several sources, one of the most important
of which is that of comparative philology.

In isolating the words common to the Aryan languages,
it has been necessary to place them in two divisions. One
is of words common to a part only of these languages ; the
other of words common to the whole. The former series
 92