Topic: Origin Aryan Race 1888

[Prometheus]

https://archive.org/details/aryanraceitsorig00morr/page/n1



ARYAN RACE

ITS ORIGIN AND ITS ACHIEVEMENTS

BY

CHARLES MORRIS



1888
 
 PREFACE.



Itis our purpose briefly to outline the history of the
 Aryan Race, — that great and noble family of
mankind which has played so striking a part upon the
stage of the world; to seek it in its primitive home,
observe the unfoldment of its beliefs and institutions,
follow it in its migrations, consider the features of its
intellectual supremacy, and trace the steps by which it
has gained its present high position among the races of
mankind. The story of this people, despite the great
interest which surrounds it, remains unwritten in any
complete sense. There are many books, indeed, which
deal with it fragmentarily, — some devoted to its lan-
guages, others to its mythology, folk-lore, village com-
munities, or to some other single aspect of its many
sided story; yet no general treatment of the subject
lias been essayed, and the inquirer who wishes to learn
what is known of this interesting people must painfully
delve through a score of volumes to gain the desired
information.

Until within a recent period the actual existence of
such a race was not clearly recognized. A century
 iv

PREFACE.

ago there was nothing to show that nearly all the
nations of Europe and the most prominent of those
of southern Asia were first-cousins, descended from a
single ancestor, which, not very remotely in the past,
inhabited a contracted locality in some region as yet
unknown. Of late years much has been learned of the
conditions and mode of life of this people in their
original home, and of their migrations to the point
where they enter the field of written history. From
this point forward the part played by the Aryans in
the history of mankind has been a highly important
one, and there is no more interesting study than to
follow this giant from the days of its childhood to
those of its present imposing stature.

Our knowledge of the condition of the primitive
Aryans is not due only to studies in philology. The
subject has widened with the progress of research, and
now embraces questions of ethnology, archaeology,
mythology, literature, social and political antiquities,
and all the other branches of science which relate
particularly to the development of mankind. Enough
has been learned, through studies in these several
directions, to make desirable a general treatment of
the subject, and an effort to present as a whole the
story of that mighty race whose history is as yet
known to the world only in disconnected fragments.
The present work, however, pretends to be no more
than a preliminary handling of this extensive theme,
 PREFACE.

V

a brief popular exposition which may serve to fill a
gap in the realm of literature and to satisfy the curi-
osity of the reading world until some abler hand shall
grasp the subject and deal with it in a more exhaustive
manner.

Any attempt, indeed, to tell the story of the Aryan
race, even in outline, during the recent age of mankind
would be equivalent to an attempt to write the history
of civilization, — which is far from our purpose. But
in the comparison of the intellectual conditions and
products of the several races of mankind, and in the
consideration of the evolution of human institutions
and lines of thought and action, we have a field of
research which is by no means exhausted, and with
which the general world of readers is very little con-
versant. Our work will therefore be found to be
largely comparative in treatment, the characteristics
and conditions of the other leading races of mankind
being considered, and contrasted with those of the
Aryan, with the purpose not only of clearly showing
the general superiority of the latter, but also of point-
ing out the natural steps of evolution through which
it emerged from original savagery and attained to its
present intellectual supremacy and advanced stage of
enlightenment.

As regards the sources of the information con-
veyed in the following pages, we shall but say that
all the statements concerning questions of fact have
 VI

PREFACE.

been drawn from trustworthy authors, many of whom
are quoted in the text, — though it has not been
deemed necessary to crowd the pages with citations
of authorities.

In respect to the theoretical views advanced, they
are as a rule the author’s own, and must stand or fall
on their merits. Finally, it is hoped that the work
may prove of interest and value to those who simply
desire a general knowledge of the subject, and may in
some measure serve as a guide to those more ardent
students who prefer to continue the study by the
consultation of original authorities.
 CONTENTS.

Page

I.   Types op Mankind.............................. 1

II.   The Home of the Aryans........................30

III.   The Aryan Outflow.............................54

IY.   The Aryans at Home............................89

Y.   The Household and the Village................106

YI.   The Double System of Aryan Worship ....   132

VII.   The Course of Political Development ....   153

VIII.   The Development of Language..................189

IX.   The Age of Philosophy......................  215

X.   The Aryan Literature.........................243

XI.   Other Aryan Characteristics..................2/3

XII.   Historical Migrations........................290

XIII.   The Puture Status of Human Paces.............308

INDEX

335
 #
 THE ARYAN RACE.

i.

TYPES OF MANKIND.

OMEWHERE, no man can say just where ; at some

time, it is equally impossible to say when, — there
dwelt in Europe or Asia a most remarkable tribe or family
of mankind. Where or when this was we shall never
clearly know. No history mentions their name or gives
a hint of their existence; no legend or tradition has
floated down to us from that vanished realm of life. Not
a monument remains which we can distinguish as reared
by the hands of this people; not even the grave of one of
its members can be traced. Flourishing civilizations were
even then in existence; Egypt and China wrere already
the seats of busy life and active thought. Yet no prophet
of these nations saw the cloud on the sky “ of the size of
a man’s hand,” — a cloud destined to grow until its mighty
shadow should cover the whole face of the earth. As yet
the fathers of the Aryan race dwelt in unconsidered bar-
barism, living their simple lives and thinking their simple
thoughts, of no more apparent importance than hundreds
of other primeval tribes, and doubtless undreaming of the
grand part they were yet to play in the drama of human

history.

1
 2

THE ARYAN RACE.

Yet strangely enough this utterly prehistoric and ante-
legendary race, this dead scion of a dead past, has been
raised from its grave and displayed in its ancient shape
before the eyes of man, until we know its history as satis-
factorily as we know that of many peoples yet living upon
the face of the earth. We may not know its time or place
of existence, the battles it fought, the heroes it honored,
the songs it sang. But we know the words it spoke, the
gods it worshipped, the laws it made. We know the char-
acter of its industries and its possessions, its family and
political relations, its religious ideas and the conditions of
its intellectual development, its race-characteristics, and
much of the details of its grand migrations after its
growing numbers swelled beyond the boundaries of their
ancestral home, and went forth to conquer and possess
the earth.

How we have learned all this forms one of the most
interesting chapters in modern science. The reality of
our knowledge cannot be questioned. No history is half
so trustworthy. Into all written histoiy innumerable errors
creep ; but that unconscious history which survives in the
languages and institutions of mankind is, so far as it goes,
of indisputable authenticity. It is not, indeed, history in
its ordinary sense. It yields us none of the superficial and
individual details in the story of a people’s life, the deeds
of warriors and the tyrannies of rulers, the conquests,
rebellions, and class-struggles, the names and systems of
priests and law-givers, with which historians usually deal,
and which they weave into a web of inextricably-mingled
truth and falsehood. It is the rock-bed of history with
which we are here concerned, the solid foundation on
which its superficial edifice is built. We know nothing of
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

3

the deeds of this antique race. We are ignorant of the
numbers of its people, the location and extent of its terri-
tory, the period of its early development. But we know
much of its basal history, —that history which has wrought
itself deeply into the language, customs, beliefs, and insti-
tutions of its modern descendants, and which crops out
everywhere through the soil of modern European civiliza-
tion, as the granite foundations of the earth’s strata break
through the superficial layers, and reveal the conditions of
the remote past.

Such a germinal history of a people may very possibly
lack interest. It has in it nothing of the dramatic, nothing
on which the imagination can seize ; none of those per-
sonal details or stirring incidents which so strongly arrest
the attention of readers ; nothing to arouse the feelings or
awaken the passions and emotions of mankind. It has
none of the ever-alluring interest of individual human life,
— the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the sajungs
and doings of men, great and small, which give to the
gossipy details of history an attractiveness only a degree
below that of the imaginative novel. Over our work we
can cast none of this glamour of individualism. We have
to do with man in the mass, and to treat history as a
philosophy instead of as a romance. We are limited to
the description of what he has done, not how^ he did it,
and to the detail of results instead of processes. And
yet history in ‘its modern era is rapidly entering this philo-
sophic stage. For many centuries it has been confined to
the romance of individual life. It is now verging toward
the philosophy of existence, the scientific study of human
development. Kings and courtiers have too long dwarfed
the people. But the stature of the people is increasing,
 4

THE ARYAN RACE.

and that of rulers and heroes diminishing, while a growing
interest in the story of humanity as a whole is succeeding
that in the lives of individuals. This gives us some war-
rant for venturing to describe the history of a race whose
ancient life we know only as a whole, and of which we
cannot give the name of one of its heroes, the scene of
one of its exploits, or even the region of the earth which
it occupied. Yet this race is so important a one, and its
later history has been so grand and exciting, that the story
of what is known of its primitive life can scarcely fail to
find an interested audience, particularly when we remember
that we are here dealing with our own ancestors, and trac-
ing the pedigree of our own customs and institutions.

In this inquiry it is necessary to begin by considering
the claim of the Aryans to the title of “ race.” What posi-
tion do they hold in the category of human races, and what
were the steps of their derivation and development from
primitive man? We must locate them first as members of
the broad family of mankind before we can fairly enter
into tire study of their record as a separate group. We
have spoken of them somewhat indefinitely as a race,
family, or tribe. Indeed, they cannot justly be honored
with the title of race until we know more fully in what the
race-characteristic consists, and what is their claim to its
possession. In this respect ethnologists have so many
varying ideas that the number and limitations of the
human races are still far from being settled. We can
therefore but briefly detail some of the latest views upon
the subject.

[Prometheus]

.

Kace-divisions, indeed, have been made through two
widely different lines of research. Of these, the first and
most fundamental is that of physical characteristics ; the
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

5

second is that of linguistic conditions. The latter, based on
the radical diversities in human languages, doubtless indi-
cates a more recent separation of mankind. To a consider-
able extent it follows the lines of physical variation. It
seldom crosses these lines to any important extent, though
it separates some of the broad physical divisions into minor
races. The Aryan is one of these linguistic races. It is not
a true race in the wider sense, since, as at present consti-
tuted, it includes portions of two physical groups which
have so intimately intermingled that pure specimens of
either are somewhat exceptional, and are found in any
'considerable number only on the opposite border-lands of
these groups.

The primary separation of mankind into races very long
preceded the development of the modern families of lan-
guage, and wras due to strictly physical influences. The
mental lines of division, as indicated by language, are
much more recent. The physical races have been va-
riously classified by ethnologists, one of the latest schemes
beiug that of Professor Huxley, who distinguishes four
principal types of man, — the Mongoloid, the Negroid, the
Australioid, and the Xanthochroic ; to which lie adds a fifth
variety, the Melanochroic.1 It is only with the last two
of these that we are here directly concerned, since it is
these which enter into the composition of the Aryan race.
More recently Professor Flower has given an outline
of a system of human classification which he regards
as most in accordance with the present state of our
knowledge on the subject.2 He considers that there are
three extreme types, — those called by Blumenbach the

1   Journal of the Ethnological Society, ii. 404 (1870).

2   Address before the Anthropological Institute, Jan. 27, 1SS."*.
 6

THE ARYAN RACE.

Ethiopian, the Mongolian, and the Caucasian, around
which all existing individuals of the human species can
be ranged, but between which every possible intermediate
form can be found. Of these the Ethiopian is secondarily
divided into the African Negroes, the Hottentots and
Bushmen, the Oceanic Negroes or Melanasians, and the
Negritos as represented by the inhabitants of the Anda-
man and other Pacific islands. The Australians, whom
Huxley takes as the t3Tpe of a separate race, he considers
to be a mixed people, as they combine the Negro type of
face and skeleton, with hair of a different t37pe. His sec-
ond race is the Mongolian, represented in an exaggerated
form by the Eskimo, in its t3Tpical condition by^ most of
the natives of northern and eastern Asia, and in a modified
type by the Mala3Ts. Excluding the Eskimo, the Ameri-
cans form one group, whose closest affinity is with the
Mongolian, 3Tet which has so man3T special features that it
might be viewed as a fourth primaiy division. His third
or Caucasian race includes two sub-races, — the Xantho-
chroic and Melanochroic of IIuxle3T. The seat of this
race is Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern Asia,
its linguistic division being into Aiyans, Semites, and
Hamites.

Several recent writers are inclined to accept a conclusion
closely similar to that of Professor Flower, and to divide
man into three t3?pical races, — the Negro, the Mongolian,
and the Caucasian or Mediterranean; viewing all remain-
ing races as secondary derivatives of these : as, for in-
stance, the American and the Mala37 from the Mongolian;
or as mixtures, as the Australians from the combination of
the Oceanic Mongolians and Negroes. Topinard1 goes so

1 Anthropology, p. 510,
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

7

far as to divide man into three distinct species. The first
of these is the Mongolian, distinguished by a brachyceph-
alic, or short skull, by low stature, yellowish skin, broad,
flat countenance, oblique eyes, contracted eyelids, beard-
less face, hair scant}T, coarse, and round in section. The
second is the Caucasian, with moderately dolichocephalic,
or long skull, tall stature, fair, narrow face, projecting on
the median line, hair and beard abundant, light-colored,
soft, and somewhat elliptical in section. His third species
is the Negro, with skull strongly dolichocephalic, complex-
ion black, hair flat and rolled into spirals, face very prog-
nathous, and with several peculiarities of bodily structure
not necessary to name here.

It is not our purpose to express any opinion upon this
theory of specific differences in mankind, except to say
that if such differences exist they are probably limited to
the Negro and the Mongolian stocks. There are good
reasons for removing the Caucasian from this category.
That the Negroes and the Mongolians do differ in sufficient
particulars of structure to constitute a specific difference
in the lower animals, must be admitted.1 Their mental

1 Agassiz notes the following marked differences in physical structure
between the Negroes and the Indians of Brazil, —the latter in all proba-
bility originally of Mongolian race. His conclusions are based on the
comparison of a large number of photographs of the two races. The
Negroes are generally slender, with long.legs and arms, and a compara-
tively short body ; while the Indians have short arms and legs, and long
bodies, which are rather heavy, and square in build. He compares the
former to the slender, active Gibbons ; the latter to the slow, inactive,
stout Orangs. Another striking distinction is the short neck and great
•width of shoulder in the Indian, as compared with the narrow chest and
shoulder of the Negro. This difference exists in females as well as
males. The legs of the Indian are remarkably straight; those of the
Negro are habitually flexed, both at hip and knee. In the Indian the
 8

THE ARYAN RACE.

differences are equally marked. But these variations may
possibly have had another origin. The Negro is essen-
tially the man of the South, the developed scion of the
African or the Australasian tropics. The Mongolian is
the man of the North, his native region being the chill
tablelands of northern Asia, so far as the balance of indi-
cations goes. Whether these two races, with their specific
differences, arose as distinct species in these widely sepa-
rated localities, and spread outward from these centres of
dispersion until they met and intimately mingled at their
borders, or whether they indicate some very early division
of a single human species into two sections, and variation
under differing climatic influences, are questions which
science is not as yet prepared to answer. It is unques-
tionable that their well marked and strongly persistent
physical characteristics are the outcome of a very long
period of separate development. If there was a single
primitive type of man, its two main divisions must have
been long exposed to very diverse conditions of climate
and life-habits ; and its separation must have taken place
at a very early era in human existence,—perhaps, as sug-
gested by Professor Wallace,1 at that primitive epoch
when men were as yet too low in mind to combat against
the influences of nature, and were far more plastic to the
agency of natural selection than they have been during
the later epoch of weapons, clothing, and habitation.

If we now come to the consideration of the Caucasian

shoulder-blades are short, and separated by a wide interval ; in the Negro
they are long, with little space between them. There are other differ-
ences of structure, equally marked; but the above will suffice to show
the strong racial distinction. Vide “A Journey in Brazil,” pp.
529-32.

1 Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 319.
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

9

race, we have to deal with a series of facts markedly dis-
tinct from those relating to the other two races named.
In the Caucasian we certainly have not a primitive and
homogeneous type of mankind, but a race of varied mix-
ture and of much more recent origin, and therefore neces-
sarily not a distinct species of man, but a derivative from
primitive man.

In support of this view an argument of some cogency
can be offered. The opening of the historical era presents
the three races above indicated in very different relations
to those which now obtain. At the earliest date to which
we can trace them, the Mongolian and the Negro, with
their sub-types and hybrid races, divided the major part
of the earth between them. Hardly a foothold was left
for the Caucasian. Great part of Africa and many of the
Pacific islands were occupied by the Negro race. Others
of these islands, all of America, and nearly all of Asia,
were occupied by peoples of the Mongoloid t}Tpe. As for
Europe, late research has given us some very interesting
information concerning its early inhabitants. There is
reason to believe that it has been successively occupied by
sections of the three principal human races, and that its
general occupancy by Caucasians reaches not very remotely
beyond the historical era.

The skull is the truest index of human races, and the
ancient skulls found by modern man in Europe tell us
much concerning its early ethnological conditions. The
most ancient of these skulls belong to a long-headed,
strongly prognathous race, with characteristics of a lower
type than are to be found in existing man. This, called by
Quatrefages the Canstadt race, includes the famous Nean-
derthal skull, with its brute-like characters. Other skulls,
 10

THE ARYAN RACE.

of apparently later date, constitute the so-called Cro-
Magnon race. These are also dolichocephalic and progna-
thous, and approach nearer to the Negro than to any other
of the existing types. It is not impossible that a modi-
fied branch of the Negro race had spread itself over west-
ern Europe at this early period.

Still later appear the skulls of men of quite different
race-characteristics. These range from medium to short
heads, while the accompanying skeletons are of short stat-
ure, and present certain traces of affinity to the modern
Lapps. It is probable that the long-headed and possibly
Negroid earlier race had been driven back by a Mongoloid
migration, which in the Neolithic age became widely dis-
tributed. There are apparently two types, of which the
medium-skulled one may be to some extent a cross be-
tween the long-headed aborigines and the intruding short-
headed race. This “Neolithic” type has probably left a
remnant of its language in the Basrpie dialect, as spoken
by half a million of persons crowded into the Biscayan re-
gion of France and Spain, the relics of a people who once
may have occupied the greater part of Europe. Though
the language of Neolithic man has nearly vanished, his
race-characters still persist; for the skulls and bodies
of the ancient tombs seem reproduced in the physical
characters of many of the present inhabitants of the same
regions. The ancient race has held its own persistently
against the later infusion of Aiyan blood.

Thus in the outgrowth of what we incline to view as
the two original races, the Mongoloid and the Negroid,
the former seems to have been far the more energetic.
It not only occupied the continents of Asia, Europe, and
America, but pushed its way into northern Africa and the
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

11

islands of the Pacific, yielding in the line of demarcation
of the primitive races a type of man of intermediate
characteristics. Though Mongolian man is less prolific
than the Negro, his greater restlessness and spirit of enter-
prise seem to have placed him in possession, at a remote
period, of most of the earth outside of Africa and the
Asiatic islands.

In this glance at prehistoric man no clearly defined trace
appears of the Caucasian race, whose area at that era was
certainly very contracted as compared with that of the
Mongolian and the Negro. And yet at the earliest date
to which we can trace them the Caucasians exhibited the
qualities they still possess, — those of superior intellectu-
ality, enterprise, and migratory vigor. When we first gaze
upon the race,— or rather upon its Xanthochroic section,—
it is everywhere spreading and swelling, forcing its way to
the East and the West with resistless energy. Before its
energetic outflow the aborigines vanish or are absorbed.
In the continent of Europe no trace of them is left, with
the exception of the Basques, pushed back into a moun-
tain corner of Spain, and the Finns and Lapps, driven into
the arctic regions of the North. A similar fate has be-
fallen them in southern Asia. During the whole historical
era this migratory spirit has continued active. The sepa-
rate branches of, and the Aryans as a wiiole, have been
persistently seeking to extend their borders. They are
still doing so with all the old energy, driving the w^edge
of invasion deep into the domain of Mongoloid and Ne-
groid life, until the Caucasians of to-day number one
third of all mankind,1 and bid fair, ere many centuries, to

1 About 420,000,000. Two centuries ago their number was not more
than one tenth of the earth’s population.
 12

THE ARYAN RACE.

reduce the other races to mere fragments, like the Basques
or the North American Indians of the present day.

From these facts we certainly have some warrant to con-
clude that the Caucasian is not a primitive human race,
but a peculiar and highly endowed derivative of the pre-
ceding races. Otherwise we should not have found it at
the beginning of authentic history almost lost in the sea of
ruder life, but its superior qualities would have told at a far
more remote epoch, the Negro and the Mongolian expan-
sion have been checked long ages ago, and history opened
with the Caucasian as the dominant race of mankind. It
is generally acknowledged that from the primitive types
many sub-races have branched off, differing in mental and
physical characters; as, for instance, the American from
the Mongolian. The Caucasian may possibly be a very
divergent example of these sub-types, or rather, if we
may judge from certain highly significant indications, a
compound of two sub-types derived from the two pre-
ceding races.

Of the two sub-races which make up the Caucasian
stock of mankind, the Xanthochroi, or fair whites, are
now found most typically displayed in the north of
Europe, mainly in Denmark, Scandinavia, and Iceland.
The Melanochroi, or dark whites, have their t}Tpical region
in northern Africa and southwestern Asia. Between
these regions an intimate mixture of the two types exists,
endless intermediate grades being found; though as a
rule the Xanthochroic becomes more declared as we go
north, and the Melanochroic as we go south.

The combined race is described by Feschel1 in the
following terms: The shape of the Caucasian skull is
1 The Races of Man, p. 4S1.
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

13

intermediate between the short skull of the Mongolian
and the long skull of the Negro race. Prominence of the
cheek-bones and prognathism, or projection of the lower
jaw, common characters in the other races, are very rare
in the Caucasian, or the Mediterranean race, as he names
it. The skin varies in hue. Fair hair and blue eyes with
a florid complexion are very frequent among the Northern
Europeans. Such was also the case with the Gallic Celts,
as described in ancient history, though it is not so with
the modern French, with whom the darker hue prevails.
The skin is generally darker with the Southern Europeans,
and becomes yellow, reddish, or brown in Africa and
Arabia, while the hair and eyes become dark or black.
The hair of the Mediterraneans is not so long nor so
cylindrical in section as in the Mongolians; it is not so
short nor so elliptical as in the Negroes. It is generally
curly, being intermediate between the other two races in
this respect. The hair is more abundant than in the other
races, and the beard much more so, the Mongolians and
Americans being nearly beardless. The nose is a well-
marked feature, its high bridge and narrow form distin-
guishing it from the broad and flat nose of the Negroes
and Mongolians. The lips are usually thin, and never
present the swollen aspect of the Negro lips. As a whole,
the features of this race are more refined than those of the
other races, and the form is more symmetrically developed.

The Caucasian, indeed, seems as a rule intermediate
between the other two races. The Negro face, seen in
profile, recedes from the chin to the forehead; that of
the Caucasian is vertical. The Mongolian face is vertical
or projecting in profile, but in front view is of a triangular
outline, being broad at base and contracted at the fore-
 14

THE ARYAN RACE.

head ; the Caucasian outline is oval. The flat median line
of the Negro and the Mongolian is replaced by a pro-
jecting outline in the Caucasian, mainly due to the eleva-
tion and narrowness of the nose and the lack of expansion
in the cheek-bones.

In these particulars the two sub-races of the Caucasian
somewhat closely agree, their main distinction being in
color, though there is also a marked difference in form.
The Xanthochroic, or blond type, is distinguished by blue
or gray eyes, hair from straw-color to chestnut, and a
rosy or florid complexion, which burns to a brick-red or
becomes freckled under exposure. In form this race is
tall and stout, of square build though sometimes slim, with
rather ponderous limbs, and a squarer skull and coarser ^
features than in the Melanochroic.

The latter race is marked by a skin of brownish or olive
hue, which quickly blackens upon exposure, sometimes
enormously so ; it perhaps inherits a tendency to revert
to the typical Negro complexion. The color of the hair
and eyes is black, and the stature lower than in the
Xanthochroi. The form is very symmetrical in its pro-
portions, the skull round-domed, and the features are more
delicate than those of the blond type. These two types,
as we have said, have become intimately mingled, so that
every shade of gradation exists between them. Yet nu-
merous instances of the typical structure appear, and the
race-characteristics seem very persistent.

The blond race has its purest expression in Iceland,
Scandinavia, and Denmark, and next in Holland, north-
ern Germany, Saxony, Belgium, and the British Islands.
But it crops out throughout the whole range of the Cauca-
sian domain. In the far East, though the brown type is
 TYPES OF MAK KIND.

15

generally prevalent, the blond type frequently appears.
It is common among the Persians and Afghans, while the
Siah Posh of Kaffiristan are particularly marked by their
fair complexions, blue eyes, and chestnut hair. It exists
also in northern Africa, and on an Egyptian monument of
the twelfth dynasty there appears the representation of a
man with white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Yet in
this southern region the dark type is the prevalent one,
while it in its turn has forced its way far to the north,
though in diminishing frequency as it approaches the
colder regions.

[Prometheus]

The natural inference from these facts is that the blond
type has its native locality in the North and East, in con-
tiguity with the Mongolian, and the dark type in the South,
in contiguity with the Negro race. The expanding ten-
dency which these types of man have displayed during the
whole historical epoch must have existed since their first
origin, if we may judge from their very intimate com-
mingling, which has been so great that comparatively few
pure representatives of either type remain. No such com-
plete mixture is shown in the Mongolian and Negro races,
except in a narrow border region. This indicates a much
less energetic constitutional migratory spirit in the latter
than in the Caucasian, and is a further argument in proof
of the recent origin of this race ; since if of remote origin,
it could not possibly have been confined to the narrow
region in which we find it at the opening of the historic
period.

What, then, was the origin of the two Caucasian sub-races ?
In response to this question we may propound the viewrs
offered by Mr. J. W. Jackson,1 who advances the theory
1 Aryan and Semite, Anthropological Review, vii. 333.
 16

THE ARYAN RACE.

that the Semite (or, as we prefer to consider, all the
Melanochroi) is really a derivative from the Negro race;
and the Aryan (or rather the Xanthochroi) is a derivative
from the Mongolian. He bases this theory on mental
characteristics; but he should have considered also the
physical characters of the races. If we observe the
Melanochroi, or dark whites, it is to find their purest
specimens in the far South, on the immediate northern
limits of the Negro race. And here they present signifi-
cant points of affinity to the Negro type. Many of the
Berbers of the Sahara region approximate to the Negro
in feature, though some tribes are light olive in complex-
ion, with straight noses and thin lips. Of the ancient
Egyptian type we are told that they had “ thick lips, full
and prominent; mouths large, but cheerful and smiling;
complexions dark, ruddy, and coppery; and the whole as-
pect displaying — as one of the most graphic delineators
among modern travellers has observed — the genuine
African character, of which the Negro is the exaggerated
and extreme representation.”1 The Arabs present similar
affinities. Some of the Arab tribes of the Middle Desert
have crisp hair, approaching that of the Negroes in texture.
In bodily and mental character the Southern Arabs of pure
blood approximate to the Negro type,1 2 and in color they
may become of a jet black, as is the case with the Sliegya
Arabs of Africa. On the other hand, in northern and
more elevated regions the complexion of the Arabs is as
fair as that of Europeans.3 Quatrefages looks upon this

1   Denon, Voyage en Egypte.

2   Palgrave, article “Arabia,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (ninth
edition).

3   Prichard, Natural History of Man, p. 150.
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

17

race as one which has evolved a single step beyond the
“ arrested ” Negro phase.1

Tribes of mankind closely affiliated with the Melanochroi,
though with a stronger infusion of the Negro element, ex-
tend much farther south in Africa. In addition to the
Melanochroic Abyssinians and Gallas, may be mentioned
the more Negroid Nubas, with black skins, but features
of a type intermediate between the white and the black
races. But the most significant of the mid-African peoples
are the Foulahs, — an energetic and warlike tribe, distinc-
tively different from the Negroes, into whose domains
they are steadily intruding. This people has become much
modified by intercrossing with Negroes and Arabs, but
seems to have been originally of the Melanochroic type.
Dr. Lenz, in his recent work on Timbuktu, says of them
that they are of a distinctly non-Negro type. Pure speci-
mens of the Foulahs differ from the Negroes in almost
every racial characteristic,—in cranial conformation, com-
plexion, texture of hair, figure, proportion of limbs, and in
mental qualities. He was amazed at their striking resem-
blance to Europeans, and describes the pure-blooded
Foulahs as of light complexion, slightly arched nose,
straight forehead, fiery glance, long black hair, shapely
limbs, tall, slim figures, and of great intelligence.

In fact, the Melanochroi present indications, to judge
from their early wide extension, of being a much more
primitive race than the Xanthochroi. They are found
throughout northern Africa, extending to a line drawn con-
siderably south of the Sahara ; widely distributed through-
out southern Asia, from the Semitic regions to India, where
they give the main physical character to the Hindu Aryans ;

1 The Human Species, p. 351.
 18

THE ARY AX RACE.

everywhere in southern Europe, where their type greatly
predominates over that of the blonds; and in less pre-
ponderance in central Europe, where they have essentially
modified the original type of the Celtic and Teutonic
Aryans.

If we accept the indications here presented, in connection
with the apparently very limited extension of the blond
type of man in the recent pre-historic period, we are led to
the theory that the Eastern Hemisphere was divided at a
more remote period between three races of mankind, — the
Mongolian in the temperate and frigid zones, the Negro in
the tropics, and the Melanochroi occupying a broad inter-
mediate belt stretching across the whole continent from
the Atlantic to the borders of Farther India.

It is interesting to perceive that this zone occupied by
Melanochroic man is that of demarcation of the primitive
Mongoloid and Negroid races. Here they must have met
and mingled, and here a hybrid derivative of the two races
very probably arose, — an intermediate type of mankind,
with a preponderance of the Negro element, if we may judge
from existing indications. It is particularly in Europe
that we find evidence of this mingling of the long-headed
and short-headed aboriginal races, their resultant being a
type with skulls of medium length,—the Neolithic man of
western Europe. More extended investigation may yield
similar evidence all along the zone of demarcation. IVe
can picture to ourselves an original Negroid population in
this zone, a southward migratory movement of the more
enterprising Mongolians, and a long-continued mingling of
the two races, with a somewhat profound modification of
their physical characteristics, yielding a new type of man,
the Melanochroic, with considerably more of Negro than of
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

19

Mongolian blood, yet essentially diverse in character from
both the parental types.

If now we come to consider the origin of the blond type
of man, we find ourselves brought down to nearly historic
times. The widespread extension of this type at the open-
ing of the historic era can be traced back, almost step by
step, to an original central region, probably of small dimen-
sions, though of unknown location. We have evidence from
the Egyptian monuments of what may have been the first
appearance of blond man in that region. Of the type as
found in the north of Africa, in Tunis and Morocco,
among the Berbers of the Sahara, and in the Canary
Islands, Topinard remarks : “ It is derived from a Tama-
hou people who about the year 1500 before our era made
their appearance upon the frontier of Egypt, coming from
the North. . . . The blonds which we meet with in the
Basque territory and near the Straits of Gibraltar in Spain
are probably descendants of theirs.”1 In Europe and
Asia the movements of the blond race took place immedi-
ately before the opening of the historic epoch ; and though
the centre of dispersion is not clearly known, }Tet nearly
every step of migration has been traced. In every region
to which they migrated, with the exception of Scandinavia,
they seem to have mingled freely with the preceding Mela-
nochroic inhabitants, yielding that intimately mixed race
which constitutes the Aryan of to-day. To this fusion we
owe the modern man of southern Asia and Europe, from
the bronzed Brahman of the East to the round-headed and
dark-featured class among the Celts of the West. Only in
the extreme North did the Xanthochroic type sustain itself
in any purity, and only in Arabia and Africa did the
1 Anthropology, p. 4H2.
 20

THE ARYAN RACE.

Melanochroic type remain preponderant. In all the region
between, every possible intermediate gradation of the two
t}Tpes exists, though the dark type gradually decreases
as we move northward, and the blond type as we move
southward.

If we endeavor to seek the derivation of the blond type
of man the indications are very obscure. This type-differs
markedly from the Mongolian ; and yet we are not without
intermediate links of connection, or traces of a tendency in
the Mongolian to assume the Xanthochroic characters. We
are told by Chinese historians of certain mysterious tribes
in central Asia who were tall of stature and had green eyes
and red hair. Matuanlin, the historian, described one such
people as inhabiting western Mongolia at the opening of the
Christian era. A similar tribe existed beyond the Altai'
Mountains. Other tribes are mentioned, down to the twelfth
century, as tall, with red hair and green eyes, and of fair
complexion.

Some writers are inclined to consider these as members
of the Turkish Mongolians, who are known to have inhab-
ited the region mentioned. The physical appearance of the
modern Turks, indeed, strongly resembles the Aryan type
of man. The Turks of the Ottoman and Persian empires
are completely Europeanized in feature and structure.
This is by some ascribed to persistent intermarriage with
Circassian slaves ; yet such a theory applies only to the rich
and powerful, while the peasantry are equally European-
ized. The great mass of the lower population have
always strictly intermarried, difference of religion and
manners keeping them separate from the Greeks and Per-
sians. The Tadjiks of Persia, the true Aryans, are of a
sect of Mohammedanism hostile to that professed by the
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

21

Turks, and these two classes have kept rigidly separate.
The Aryan characteristics of the civilized Turks is there-
fore not so readily explainable.

Of the Turcomans Vambéry says that they alone of all
Mongolians do not possess high cheek-bones, while the
blond color is predominant among them. Yet the Turkish
hordes of the northern steppes are strongly Mongolian in
physical character, though occasionally blue and gray eyes
are observed among the Kirghiz. Still farther eastward
similar indications appear. Topinard quotes as follows:
“We saw Mantschu Tartars,” says Barrow, “ who accom-
panied Macartney’s embassy to Pekin, men as well as
women, who were extremely fair and of florid complexion;
some of the men had light blue eyes, a straight, aquiline
nose, brown hair, and a large and bushy beard.”1 All
this, however, might be due to mixture with the blond
race, even though we have no evidence of conditions
favorable to such a mixture. Yet such could not well be
the case in America, where similar variations are common.
King tells us that “ the oval face associated with the Ro-
man nose” is by no means rare among the Eskimos,
while the complexion is sometimes fair, sometimes dark.
Among the American tribes the nose is occasionally of the
Mongolian type, but is often large, prominent, bridged, and
even aquiline, while the stature is tall, and the skull lias a
tendency to the elongated shape. Several tribes, both of
North and South America, present a close approximation
to the European type. This is strikingly the case with
the Mandans, the so-called White Indians of the West, as
described by Catlin. The above facts seem to indicate a
ready variability in the Mongolian race, under the influence
1 Anthropology, p. 452.
 22

THE ARYAN RACE.

of diversity of climate and condition, since these widespread
modifications towards the European type can scarcely be
ascribed to mixture with a race as limited in numbers as
the Xanthochroi appear to have been at the opening of
the historic era.

There is yet, however, one branch of the linguistic
Mongolians to be considered, — the Finnish. And here
we find a strongly marked approximation towards the
Xanthochroic race, far too general to be ascribed to in-
termarriage. The Finns are to some degree intermediate
between the blond and the Mongolian types, though much
nearer the former. They are marked by long hair, usually
reddish or yellowish, or of a flaxen hue, and more rarely
chestnut. The European Finlanders have red hair, with a
moderately full beard, generally red. The eyebrows are
thick, the eyes sunken, and of a blue, greenish gray, or
chestnut hue. The complexion is fair, and usually freckled.
The nose is straight, with small nostrils ; the cheek-bones
are prominent, owing to the thinness of the face ; the lips
small. These characteristics clearly separate the Finns
from all the surrounding types, and bring them much closer
to the European than to the Mongolian race. The north-
ern Russians in particular are of very similar physical char-
acter. Very probably the green-eyed and red-haired race
spoken of by the Chinese Tvere Finnish tribes, though blue
is more common than green in the eyes of modern Finns.
We may also say here that the Finns approach the Aiyans
in the possession of a mythology and of a highly developed
poetry, — an evidence of mental power which is not found
in pure Mongolians of a similar state of civilization.

Thus though no direct clew to the origin of the Xantho-
chroic type of man exists, there are strong indications
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

23

that it was a derivative from the Mongolian, and that
it arose at a comparatively recent date. We have shown
that a tendency exists among the Mongolians of northern
Asia and America to deviate towards the Xanthochroic
character. In the case of the Finns this deviation has
yielded a strongly marked race, nearly approaching the
Xanthochroi both physically and mentally. It is of in-
terest, in this connection, to remark that the Finnish
race is native to a locality bordering upon that which the
latest archaeologists consider the original home of the Ary-
ans, and that it differs from the neighboring Russians
mainly in language, and veiy little in ph}rsical character. It
may be offered as a conjectural hypothesis that the prim-
itive Xantho.chroi were a derivative from the Finns at an
era before the languages of either had attained much de-
velopment, the further physical variation which took place
being probably due to climatic influences, and possibly to
residence of the Xanthochroi in a mountainous region.1

The mental characteristics of the several human races
lead us to similar conclusions. In the first place it may be
remarked that all the savage tribes of the earth belong to
the Negro or the Mongolian race. No Negro civilization
has ever appeared. No Mongolian one has ever greatly
developed. On the other hand, the Caucasian is pre-emi-

1 Tt seems probable that, the Lapps, the remaining European Mon-
golians, have close race-affinities with the Finns. Professor A. H. Keene
has recently examined a company of seven Lapps, in London, and de-
cides that in several respects they have deviated from their fundamental
Mongolian type, and have assimilated, especially in the color of the hair
and eyes, in the complexion, and in the shape of the nose, to the sur-
rounding Norse population. He attributes this assimilation to like cli-
matic influences rather than to intermixture, of which there is no direct
evidence. The family belonged to the mountain nomadic tribes, of purest
descent and of least intercourse with Europeans.
 24

THE ARYAN RACE.

nently the man of civilization. No traveller or historian
records a savage tribe of Caucasian stock. This race
everywhere enters history in a state of advanced bar-
barism or of rapidly advancing civilization.

But the Caucasian development is not the work of either
of the sub-races, but of their combined resultant. Men-
tally, each of the pure types too closely approaches its
assumed ancestral race to display vigorous intellectual
powers. The pure Melanochroi tend towards the Negro
type of intellectuality; the pure Xauthochroi approximate
to the Mongolian. The Negro race, as described by De
Gobiueau,1 is marked b}^ a low grade of intellectuality,
combined with a strongly emotional tendency. It is quick
in acquisition at first, but soon stops, and grows dull in-
tellectually. Emotionally the Negro is capable of violent
passions and strong attachments. He has a childish in-
stability of humor, intense but not enduring feelings,
poignant but transitory grief. lie is seldom vindictive,
his anger being violent but quickly appeased, his sensi-
bilities ardent but speedily subsiding. His amatory feel-
ings are strong, and his sensuality highly developed. In
these particulars he is akin to the Melanochroi of Arabia
and the West, in whom we find a sensual temperament, fierce
passions, intense emotions, and a mentality that requires
excitement more than reason for its exercise, and tends to
the fanciful far more strongly than to the logical.

If now we compare the yTellow race with the black, we
find them strongly opposite in mental characteristics. In
muscular vigor and intensity of feelings the t}rpical Mon-
golians are greatly inferior to the blacks. They are supple
and agile, but not strong. Their sensuality is less violent

1 Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, p. 445.
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

25

than that of the blacks, but less quickly appeased. They
are much less impulsive, aud rather obstinate than violent
in will-power. Their anger is vindictive, but not clamorous.
They are seldom prone to extremes, and while easily under-
standing what is not very profound and sublime, their lack
of emotional and imaginative energy prevents their attain-
ing an ardent faith or an exalted religious philosophy.
They love quiet and order, and keenly appreciate the useful
and practical. They are, indeed, a practical people in the
narrowest sense of the word. Their lack of imagination
renders them uninventive, but they easily understand and
adopt whatever is of practical utility.1 This description
applies mainly to the Asiatic Mongolians, and is shown
in the whole conditions of the Chinese civilization. It
cannot be extended to include the Americans, who have
a very marked development of the faculty of imagination.
It applies in some measure, however, to the blond race of
northern Europe, in whom we find a strong mental an-
tithesis to the ardent nations of the South. The pure
blonds replace the nervous temperament of the Melano-
chroi with a lymphatic temperament. They lack vivacity,
but are more reflective. They are controlled by reason
rather than by desire. Conclusions are not reached im-
pulsively, but are thought out, and are strongly held
when once arrived at. They are not of quick passion, are
slowly roused, but earnest and persevering, and are brave
without requiring the stimulus of enthusiasm. They are
sincere and simple-minded, but addicted to gluttony and
drunkenness, — faults to which the Melanochroi are much
less addicted. In these respects the blond white presents
the same affinity to the Mongolians as the dark white does
1 Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, A. de Gobineau, p. 445.
 26

[Prometheus]

THE ARYAN RACE.

to the Negroes, and they seem respectively the highest
expression of these two races.

But in the mentality of the two primary races we have
the germinal conditions of the highest phases of intellectual
development. The emotional characteristics of the Negro
are the germinal stage of the imaginative faculty; the
practical mentality of the Mongolian is the germinal con-
dition of the reasoning powers. In Scandinavia we find
a practical people, yet one not given to abstract thought.
In Arabia and northern Africa we find a highly emotional
people, }Tet one not noted for valuable imaginative produc-
tions. For the higher unfoldment of these mental faculties
a further step was needed, — that close fusion of the two
sub-races which has so widely taken place. The mixed race
of Europe presents us with the highest type of man. The
wild flights of Southern fancy have been tamed by the cool
decisions of practical sense, until we find, as the lineal
successor of the Oriental extravagance, the artistically
imaginative productions of the people of Greece. The
practical tendency of the Northern mind has been inspired
by imagination until it has yielded the exalted products of
Teutonic reason.

Despite the long and close intermingling of these sub-
races, the mental character of each crops out frequently in
strong isolation, now reason, now imagination, becoming
markedly predominant in an individual or a people. The
highest display of the reasoning faculty in modern Europe
is in the region of the Teutonic race, in which the infusion of
Xanthochroic blood is in excess. The imaginative faculty
has reached its highest development in the South, where
Melanochroic blood is in excess. This is markedly dis-
played in the literature of Greece, and yet more so in
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

27

India, where the flights of imagination have left reason
far in the rear. In mid-Europe of to-day these two facul-
ties exist in some degree of balance : though in France and
the South the preponderance of imagination is shown in the
artistic and picturesque tendency of thought, wrhile in Ger-
many a like preponderance of the logical faculty appears;
and iu England, the central meeting-place of the two races,
these two faculties seem more evenly combined than else-
where upon the earth. It is to this mingling of South and
North, of fair and dark, of judgment and emotion, of im-
agination and reason, that we owe the Aryan race, the
apex of human development, and the culminating point
in the long-continued evolution of man.

The comparative mental characteristics of the three typi-
cal human races are briefly enumerated by De Gobineau in
the following terms: The white race has great physical
vigor, capacity, and endurance. It has an intensity of will
and desire which is controlled by intellectuality. Great
things are undertaken readily, but not blindly. It mani-
fests a strong utilitarianism, united with a powerful imagi-
nation, which elevates, ennobles, and idealizes its practical
ideas. The Negro can only imitate, the Chinese only util-
ize, the work of the white; but the latter is abundantly
capable of producing new works. He has as keen a sense
of order as the yellow man, not from a love of repose,
however, but from the desire to protect and preserve his
acquisitions. He has a love of liberty far more intense
than exists in the black and yellow races, and clings
to life more earnestly. His high sense of honor is a
faculty unknown to the other races, and springs from
an exalted sentiment of which they show no indications.
His sensations are less intense than in either black
 28

THE ARYAN RACE.

or yellow, but bis mentality is far more developed and
energetic.

Our hypothetical line of human physical development
may be combined with one of mental development in a
brief synopsis of the progress of human mentality. Very
far back in time it is possible that a single race of man
occupied the earth, brute-like both in body and mind, if
we may judge from the most ancient traces of mankind
yet discovered. At a later epoch two strongly marked
races made their appearance, perhaps as derivatives from
the single primeval race. Or, in the opinion of some,
these two races were primitive, and constituted two origi-
nal species of man. They differed essentially both physi-
cally and mentally. The Negro race was marked by a
strong emotional tendency, in consonance with its tropical
climate ; the Mongolian by an equally strong phlegmatic
and practical mentality, in consonance with its frigid cli-
mate. At a much later date these races gave rise to two
more highly developed types of man,—the Melanochroi,
in which the Negro emotion had unfolded into imagination,
and the Xanthochroi, in which the Mongolian practicality
had developed into logic. Finally, an intonate mixture of
these two sub-races yielded the modern dominant t}Tpe of
man, the Aryan, ill whom logic and imagination have be-
come combined into reason and art, and the special, one-
sided mental development of earlier man has become a
generalized, intermediate condition of mentality which can
be most fairly characterized by the title of intellectuality.
Thus the Aryan stands as the type of intellectual man, the
central outcome of the races, in which the special condi-
tions of dark and light, North and South, emotional and
practical, have mingled and combined into the highest and
noblest states of mind and body.
 TYPES OF MANKIND.

29

If now we come to consider the lines of race as indicated
by language, they will be found to follow to some extent
those above given, though they separate mankind into
several minor racial divisions. The considerable diversity
in physical character between the Americans and the Asi-
atics, for instance, indicating, as it does, an early separa-
tion, is in conformity with the indications of language,
since each continent has its strongly marked linguistic
type. Linguistically the Caucasians are divided into three
sub-types,—the Aryans, the Semites, and the Hamites.
Between the first two of these the distinction in language
is very decided. Between the Semites and the Ilamites it
is much less declared, and their, types of language seem
to have grown up in close contiguity. Significantly, these
latter types of language are spoken by peoples of Melano-
chroic blood. But no Xanthochroic people has ever been
found speaking any but an Aryan tongue.
 II.

THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

IN seeking to trace the original home of the Aryans we
are concerned mainly with the Xanthochroic, or blond,
type of the race. The Melanochroic, or dark, type was
widely spread, in the later prehistoric era, throughout the
Mediterranean and the southern Asiatic region. But the
blonds were in all probability far more limited in local-
ity, and their place of residence remains one of the unsolved
problems of science, despite the persistent efforts which
have been made to discover it. Yet these blonds or
“fair whites” were the true Aryans, the people with
whom the type of language known as Aryan originated.
The languages of the “ dark whites ” belong to a very dis-
tinct family of speech, which is still spoken by most of the
typical representatives of the race, though Aryan tongues
are generally spoken by the tribes and peoples arising
from a mingling of the two races. It is therefore the
original home of the Xanthochroi — the blue-eyed and
fair-haired ancestors of the modern Aryans — that we
shall here endeavor to trace.

The effort to solve this problem has mainly been based
upon considerations of comparative philology. It has
been a fascinating pursuit to its devotees. The speech
of the original Aryans was wholly unknown ; yet frag-
ments of it lay buried in the depths of modern language,
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

31

and these have been assiduously wrought out and pieced
together, until, like an edifice built of disjointed materials,
they yield a complete and coherent image to our minds.
Word by word the language of the ancient Aryans has
been exhumed. But a word represents a thing, a relation,
or an action, and points to some possession or activity of
the people who used it; and the words of a language
embody the whole industrial, social, and political life of
a nation, down to its minutest detail. Unfortunately we
do not know the language of the ancient Aryans in any
such complete sense as this, nor are we quite sure what
meanings they attached to their words. Y"et their study
has given us some very interesting glimpses into the lives
of a vanished people, and enabled us, to some extent, to
bring them back again to the surface of the earth.

The discovery that a close affinity exists among the lan-
guages of Europe is a result of very recent research. The
resemblance between Greek and Latin, indeed, has long
been known, and the common descent of the Romanic lan-
guages,— the French, Spanish, and Italian, — was too evi-
dent to be lost sight of. But that the remaining languages
of Europe were first-cousins of these, was not perceptible
until philology had become a science. The divergences,
though of the same character, were much wider than those
between the Romanic languages, and needed a critical
study before the resemblance could be made apparent.

Ere this work had made any important progress another
and very distant language was brought into the same fam-
ily. The English in India had become acquainted with the
Sanscrit, — the noble and venerable language of the Vedic
literature of the Hindus. To their surprise and delight, they
discovered that this interesting language possessed close
 32

THE ARYAN RACE.

links of affinity, both in words and in structure, with the
European family of speech. This was first pointed out by
Sir William Jones about 1790, who declared that the three
languages, the Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit, had sprung
from “ some common source, which perhaps no longer
exists.” He was also inclined to attribute the Persian to
a similar source, and hinted at the possibility of the Celtic
and the Gothic being members of the same group.

This earliest conception of an Indo-European family of
languages was taken up and extended some twenty years
afterwards by Frederick Schlegel, who in 1808 main-
tained the theory that the languages of India, Persia,
Greece, Italy, and Germany were connected by common
descent from an extinct language, just as the modern
Romanic tongues were descended from the Latin. For
this vanished dialect he proposed the name Indo-Germanic.
The truth of this theory was first demonstrated by Bopp,
in his “ Comparative Grammar,” published from 1833 to
1852. He not only proved clearly the close affinity in
grammatical structure between the languages above named,
but also added the Zend, Armenian, Slavonic, and Lithu-
anian to the group. The Celtic dialects were included
about the same time ; and the relationship of all the mem-
bers of the great family of Aryan speech was thus made
evident. For this group the name “ Indo-European” was
proposed, — a name which is still used by many philolo-
gists. The term “ Aryan ” has more recentty come into
favor, mainly through the influence of Max Müller. This
title really applies only to the Persians and the Hindus,
being that by which they knew themselves before their sepa-
ration ; yet its shortness and ease of handling is giving it
ascendency over the complex compound titles as a name for
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

33

the whole widely extended family. Systematic philologists
have entered into long arguments to prove that the word
“Aryan” has no right to be applied to all Indo-European
peoples. No one disputes the validity of these arguments,
and yet the proscribed word has come generally into use.
It is short and convenient; and this is of tenfold more im-
portance to ordinary speakers than its etymology. To make
a close research into the origin of words is one of the tasks
of philology ; but this does not carry with it the necessity
of replacing accepted and convenient terms by more correct
but cumbrous synonyms. In all languages there are thou-
sands of words whose origin is quite lost in their applica-
tion ; philologists are aware of their original signification,
and nothing further is required.

The community of origin of the peoples above named
had been suspected from other lines of study long before
this linguistic demonstration was completed. Ethnologists
and mythologists had lent aid to the demonstration. A
connection between their religious ideas had become evi-
dent, and the similarity of their race-characteristics had
been observed. Dr. Pritchard suggested their affinity,
from a study of their skulls, years before it was proved
from a study of their languages. But the results of these
earlier investigations were only partially accepted, and the
work of the philologists was needed to round out the circle
of proof. This evidence from philology was no light task.
The separation of the Aryans into distinct branches had
taken place so long ago, aud the language of each branch
had so diverged from those of the others, that it was not
easy clearly to prove their relationship. But science is
patient and persistent; it has long sight and clear vision.
One by one the difficulties vanished, and the truth was made

3
 34

THE ARYAN RACE.

apparent. One of the most- striking forms of linguistic
divergence was that pointed out by Jacob Grimm and met
by the celebrated “ Grimm’s law.” He showed clearly
that each branch of the Aryan family had peculiar tenden-
cies of speech, resulting in certain variations of vowels
and consonants, which were constant for the same people.
Whether from some change in the vocal organs that ren-
dered one letter more easily pronounced than another, or
from some unknown cause, each nation developed its own
peculiar variations from the original Aiyan sounds, so that
a single primitive word often assumed forms quite unlike
in sound, and seemingly incompatible in form. Thus the
consonant sound that became v in one branch of the
Aryans became b in another. S with this people became
th with that. Here the vowel was aspirated, and there the
initial h was suppressed. Several such methods of change
might be named, each dialect branching off in its own
special direction, the German following one line, the Latin
another, etc. It is the discovery of the system of vocal
change prevailing with each people that constitutes Grimm’s
law, and that enables us to prove the identity of words
which at first sight seem to have nothing in common. As
one illustration of this we may quote Max Miiller’s identifi-
cation of the English word Nelly with the Saramd of the
Vedas. The s in Sanscrit often becomes h in Greek, and
the liquid r as often becomes l. Thus Sanscrit Saramd
became Greek Hcilama. This, by an ordinary Greek
modification, became contracted to Halan. But the San-
scrit a is often changed to e in Greek, and .by such a
change Halan became Helen. The further steps of change
were easy. Helen in English has become Ellen by the loss
of the aspirate, and Ellen has become transformed into
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

35

Nelly as a familiar name. Yet between these two words
of the same origin there is not a single letter in common.
Philologists do not often have to handle such intricate
tasks as this ; yet their labors have been by no means tri-
fling, and the above will serve as an extreme instance of
the changes with which they have had to deal.1

It will suffice here to say that this line of inquiry
has been carried to the point of absolute demonstration.
There is no more doubt entertained to-day by scientists
of the original community of the languages of the peoples
named than there is of the existence of the earth. The
proof does not rest upon a possibly chance resemblance of
?words, but deals with the very nerves and sinews of speech,
— that rigidly persistent grammatical structure which sur-
vives the most radical changes in the forms of words.
These separate peoples, as Whitney remarks, all count
with the same numerals, call individuals by the same pro-
nouns, address parents and relatives by the same titles,
decline nouns by the same system, compare adjectives
alike, conjugate verbs alike, and form derivatives in the
same method. The words in most ordinary use are similar
in them all. The terms for God, house, father, mother,
son, and daughter, for dog, cow, heart, tears, and tree, are
of the kind that would naturally persist. No chance
could produce abundant conformities of this close cliarac-

1 We may give, as an illustration of the verbal community of the Aryan
languages, the forms taken by one or two words in the several tongues.
Thus the word “house” is in Sanscrit, dama or dam.; in Zend, demand ;
in Greek, domos; in Latin, domus; in Irish, dahvi; in Slavonic, domu;
English derivative, domestic. In like manner, “boat” in Sanscrit is
naic or nauka ; in Persian, naiv or nawah ; in Greek, naus; in Latin,
navis; in old Irish, not or nai; in old German, nnica or nawi; in
Polish, nawa: English derivative, nautical.
 36

THE ARYAN RACE.

ter between a whole series of languages ; and the general
existence of such conformities absolutely demonstrates the
common origin of the Aryan tongues.

But a demonstration of the common origin of languages
leads to that of the common origin of the peoples who
speak them. If there was one original Aiyan language,
there was one original Aryan people. It does not follow,
however, that the modern speakers of Aryan tongues are
all descendants of this people. Oppert, Ilovelacque, and
other able philologists claim that the correspondence of
Aryan languages does not prove a common descent, but
is the result of the propagation of a language from a
single centre through heterogeneous populations, as the
Romans and Arabs spread Latin and Arabic over regions
inhabited by other races. This theory, as originally
advanced by M. Oppert, is vigorously contested by
Professor Whitney. lie cannot imagine that any cir-
cumstances existed in the early barbaric period similar
to those of the Roman and Arabian empires. In his
view, no aboriginal language has ever been entirely dis-
pelled without a complete incorporation of the people;
and this has never taken place except in the Roman
empire. Nothing of the kind appears in the conquests
of the Persians, Germans, Mongols, or even of the
Greeks, and certainly could not arise in a much less de-
veloped people. The complete political and social fusion
of the conquered with the conquering people of the Roman
empire has never been paralleled in history, and existed
only in those regions that were bound to Rome for many
centuries. The Arabic parallel is a very imperfect one ; it
represents an infusion of the Arabic rather than an aboli-
tion of the native languages. Barbarians do not conquer
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

[Prometheus]

in this complete way; they destroy or enslave, or their
conquests end, after a limited period, in a revolt of the
conquered tribe. Race-mingling may take place, but
hardly an acceptance of the language of a conquering
tribe by unamalgamated peoples. This argument of Pro-
fessor Whitney is not, however, in very strict agreement
with what race-indications tell us concerning the Aryan
peoples. There can scarcely be a doubt that, in some
instances, the vigor of the Aryans sufficed to impose
their language on more numerous aboriginal peoples, with
whom they became thoroughly mingled. Such, for in-
stance, is the case with the Celts, the Slavonians, and
the Hindus. There is much reason to believe that in all
these the original Aryan conquerors mingled their blood
with that of a considerably more numerous conquered
people. Yet the Aryan language has held its own with
very little modification, while the aboriginal speech has
vanished. Certainly the vigor, enterprise, and persistent
spirit of the Aryan migrants must have exerted a strong
influence upon the more yielding aborigines, and we cannot
be surprised if the latter often lost their language with
their nationality.

We have sufficiently considered in the preceding section
the question of the mingling of the “fair whites” and
“dark whites” of Europe, and endeavored to show the
probability that the development of this type of mankind,
with its distinctive family of language, took place in a
region distinct from that of the typical Melanochroic
people. Where was this region? On what area of the
earth’s surface was it that the Aryan-speaking people grew
into social, political, and linguistic coherence, and devel-
oped that budding civilization and migratory energy which
 38

THE ARYAN RACE.

were, at a later period, to send them forth to conquer the
world ? This is a question which has caused deep heart-
burnings among philologists, which is yet far from settle-
ment, and which may perhaps never be fully solved. Yet
the early and hasty conclusions have been succeeded by
better based and more consistent theories; and it is possi-
ble that the “home of the Aryans” may yet be deter-
mined with some satisfactory degree of approximation.
The present state of this much-vexed question we shall
briefly endeavor to set forth.

In the study of Aryan antiquity the languages of Europe
present us only with words. No historical details or tradi-
tions exist to show an early migration from some remote
locality. But in the eastern branch of the Aryan family
there is abundant evidence of a migration to India and
Persia. Literatures, reaching back beyond the date of
this migration, exist, comprising the Yedic hymns of the
Hindus, and the religious works of the Zoroastrian sect, in
which some historical and geographical details are pre-
served. These indicate the region of ancient Arya, the
common home of the Hindus and Persians while they yet
formed a single people, or of all the Aryans, as was long
maintained.

The theory of an eastern home of the Aryans was first
advanced by J. G. Rhodes in 1820. Thirty years ago
this home of the common Aryan tongue was supposed to
be, in the words of Pictet,1 the u vast plateau of Iran, that
immense quadrilateral stretching from the Indus to the
Tigris and Euphrates, from the Oxus and Jaxartes to the
Persian Gulf.” But this area was soon found to be too
extensive, and attempts were made to reduce it within
1 Les Origines Indo-Européennes, oil les Aiyas Primitifs, p. 35.
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

39

more probable limits. The traditions of the A vesta
seemed to point to the region of Bactria as the place of
common residence of Hindus and Persians while they still
formed one people. At that period, too, much was said
about the plateau of Pamir, the 44 roof of the world,” as
the birthplace of the civilized races, though it is now
clearly perceived that this inaccessible and inhospitable
highland is utterly uusuited for human residence. In fact,
the Avestan traditions were plainly stretched too far.
They indeed contained reminiscences of an older Iranian
land, but gave no warrant for the view that this land was
the cradle of the whole Aryan race. Philology was next
appealed to, and the claim made that the language which
had most faithfully preserved the ancient Aryan type must
have been the one that had migrated the least. This prim-
itive condition was found in the Sanscrit and the Zend,
while the Celtic, which had made its way farthest West,
had apparently suffered the greatest transformation.

To the above conclusions, however, several objections
may be made. In the first place, the fact that the early
Persian and Hindu literatures indicate a migration, while
no distinct tradition of the kind exists in the literatures of
early Europe, proves, if it proves anything, that the east-
ern Aryans were the only migrating members of the race.
And their comparatively small numbers and limited area in
their early daj^s is an evidence in the same direction. It
is far more probable that the migration of a tribe from the
West to the far East took place, than that the bulk of the
race moved from the East to the far West, leaving a single
tribe behind. And that these eastern Aryans were immi-
grants who forced- themselves among hostile strangers, is
abundantly indicated in their literature. It is a literature
 40

THE ARYAN RACE.

of battle, of deadly fray, of unyielding hostility. The
Vedas are the stirring hymns of a people surrounded by
strangers alien in race and religion, with whom there can
be no peace, and wdiose destruction is a duty to God and
man. They breathe the tone of an invading race full of
vigor and bent on conquest. The Hindus seem to have
been then, as they are to-day, plunged into the heart of
an alien population. The Eastern Aryans have expanded
much since those early days, but they are still everywhere
surrounded by Mongolian tribes. India is still largely in-
habited by members of the Mongolian race and by tribes
of other race-affinity, while its pure Aryans are compara-
tively few. This relation obtains also to some degree in
Persia and the other Asiatic Aryan districts. The vital
Aryan stock has held its own, but it has had to contend
with an alien multitude, and a great degree of mixture of
races has necessarily taken place.

The argument from philology seems no more cogent.
In the Vedas and the Avestas we have preserved to us
relics of an early stage of Aryan speech which no longer
exists as a living language in Asia, and has no counterpart
in the languages of Europe. Had we remains of the latter
from a period of equal antiquity, they might prove equally
primitive. And that the Celtic has undergone the extreme
transformation assumed, is questioned by recent philolo-
gists. In fact, the great probability is that the Aryans
before their dispersion occupied a somewhat wide locality,
into which they had gradually spread from their original
contracted domain. As a consequence, their common speech
must have undergone many changes and corruptions among
the various tribes during the ante-migration period. Bopp
found signs of many such derangements and disturbances
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

41

in the organism of the original Aryan speech, seeming to
show that they had dwelt in their early home for a long
period after the primary development of their linguistic
method. As they spread, dialectical changes necessarily
increased, and quite likely the peculiar dialect of each
branch of the race had become partly formed before the
era of dispersion. Thus the argument from special primi-
tiveness of any of the surviving modes of speech can
scarcely be maintained. We know far too little of the
diversities of speech in ancient Arya and of the early
form of the languages of modern Europe to be able to
come to any definite decision on this controverted point.

In fact the theory that the original Aryan home was in
Bactria is no longer held except by the older philologists.
The arguments upon which it was based have proved
insufficient to sustain it, and no new ones have been ad-
vanced. Another line of argument, to which little attention
was formerly paid, has led several recent writers to place
in Europe the ancient Aryan home. It was suggested,
early in the century, that the Slavonic was a primitive
European population. More recently it has been claimed
that Europe was the original seat of all the Aryans. This
theory is maintained by II. Schulz, D’Halloy, Latham,
Benfey, and others of the more recent writers, and is
rapidly becoming the prevailing view. It trusts for its
proof mainly to linguistic arguments.

Every word which is now used by all the Aryan peoples
is considered to be a direct descendant from the antique
speech of the race, and to indicate some ancient knowledge
or possession of the Aryans. A study of these words
• gives us much interesting information as to the con-
ditions of the original Aryan home. For instance, there
 42

THE ARYAN RACE.

is no common word for camel. The word in use has been
borrowed from the Semitic languages. This seems decisive
against Bactria, where the camel is an ordinary animal, and
must have received a name of Ar}Tan origin had the Ar}Tan
languages been formed in that region. In like manner no
name for the lion or the tiger is common to the Aryan lan-
guages, and the inference is that the ancient Aiyans
were ignorant of these animals. To this it is objected that
very many words must have been lost, and that these may
have dropped out and been replaced by other terms. Yet
such a conclusion is not based on probability. Many words
far less likely to persist have been retained, and it cannot
be reasonably maintained that the names of these terrible
and destructive wild beasts would have been utterly for-
gotten, if once known. Yet if there were no lions or tigers
in the primitive Aryan home we must seek this home in
Europe, since these animals are found throughout southern
Asia.

In this connection we may quote Peschel’s views as to
the original home of the Aryans, which are based on some-
what narrow grounds, it is true, yet have strong arguments
in their favor in addition to those which he gives. “ It
lay eastward of Nestus, now Karasu, in Macedonia, which
in the time of Xerxes was the limit of range of the Euro-
pean lion. It was still farther north than Chuzistan, Irak
Arabi, and even than Assyria, where lions are still to be
met with. It cannot have included the highlands of west
Iran and the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, for tigers
still wander in search of prey as far as these districts.
Hence, from all the facts here cited, every geographer will
agree that the Indo-Europeans occupied both slopes of the *
Caucasus, as well as the remarkable gorge of Dariel, and
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

43

were in the habit of visiting either the Euxine or the Cas-
pian Sea, or perhaps both. ... It is usually objected to this
argument that in the course of their migrations the Aryan
families abandoned the territory of the lion and the tiger,
and with the animals forgot their names also. But this
requires stronger evidence, for the Maori have preserved
the names for the domestic pig and the cocoanut, although
neither existed in New Zealand. Had the ancient Aryans
seen or fought against such magnificent animals in their
own country, their names would certainly have been re-
tained, even though with an altered significance.” 1

Other writers are inclined to place the Aryan home in
the plains of southern Russia, and still others on the
shores of the Baltic or in Scandinavia. In evidence of
these hypotheses they present the following facts: The
Aryans occupied a cold region. Of the seasons they have
names only for winter, spring, and summer. Autumn was
not recognized as a separate season. But the best series
of common names for climatic phenomena are those belong-
ing to winter. Cold and snow were well known. It was
a freezing and shivering home in which our ancestors
dwelt. Their dress consisted of tunic, coat, collar, and
sandals. These were formed of wool or leather. Abun-
dant provision was needed against the wintry chill. Among
their wild animals were the bear and the wolf, among their
common trees the lurch, — all natives of the European
temperate zone. They seem to have been unacquainted
with the ass and the cat, — ancient domesticated animals
of Africa. This indicates that they were too far removed
from Egypt to have any intercourse with this very ancient
civilization.

1 The Races of Mail, by Oscar Peschel, p. 507.
 44

THE ARYAN RACE.

That they were acquainted with some large inland body of
water, is admitted. They had boats, which they moved by
oars. They had names for salt, and for crabs and mussels ;
but the oyster was unknown to their language, and they
knew nothing of the ocean. The salt lake on which they
made their maritime excursions is supposed by the Asiatic
advocates to have been the Caspian. Those who advocate
the Caucasian region, or the plains of southern Russia,
suppose it to have been the Caspian or the Black Sea, or
both. Those who place them in northern Europe point
to the Baltic as their sea.1

Other evidences that Europe was the original Aryan
home may be drawn from their historical distribution. At
the earliest dawn of history they were found in possession
of all Europe, except the frozen regions of Finland and
Lapland in the extreme north. All Europe is named with
their names, except where the geographical titles of the
Basques persist. There is nothing to indicate that they
are intruders, as in the case of the eastern Aryans. All
tradition makes them natives of the regions where found.
When first seen in history they are moving to the east
and the south, not to the west.

As to the extreme migratory theory of Aryan dispersion,
it can hardly be sustained. There is no evidence in its
favor in the history of human migrations. The only tribes
in the history of mankind which have completely released
their hold of their earl}T homes, and poured out en masse
in search of a new home, have been pastoral peoples, with

1 Late advocates of this theory are Professor Penka, who finds the
ancient Aryan home in Scandinavia, and Professor Schrader, who locates
them in northeastern Europe. Professor Savce, noticing the works of
these writers, considers the neighborhood of the Baltic the most probable
region.
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

45

the possible exception of the legendary American migratory
movements of hunting tribes. In Europe and Asia such
complete migrations can be traced only to the pastoral
tribes of Arabia and Mongolia; there is no record of any
such movement of an agricultural people, such as the
Aryans had become in considerable measure at the period
of their supposed dispersion. That such a people could
have flowed out in several great successive waves of com-
plete migration to remote distances, is hardly credible,
and is utterly without warrant in the history of human
movements.

The Arabian outbreak of the Mohammedans was not a
migration in the complete sense. It was a swelling beyond
the national borders, incited by hope of plunder and desire
for religious propagandism. Arabia continued the centre
of the movement, and the only settlement made in a region
remote and disjoined from this central home was that
formed in Spain. This instance presents a suggestive par-
allel to that of the eastern Aryan branch, with its pious
horror of the impious tenets of its foes, and its wide sepa-
ration from its kindred race.

Yet the primitive Aryans, while advanced in great part
beyond that nomadic pastoral stage of industrial life which
has been the condition of all migrating peoples known to
history, had not yet reached that degree of political consol-
idation and religious culture requisite for definite invading
movements en masse for the purpose of propagandism. It
seems far more probable, therefore, that the movements of
the Aryans were expansions rather than migrations, — the
incessant bite of restless and enterprising tribes into the
domains of surrounding peoples. As their numbers in-
creased, and their primitive home became too small to hold
 46

THE ARYAN RACE.

them, they may have pushed out in this manner in all di-
rections with the restless energy which has always charac-
terized them, driving back the original populations before
their resistless expansion. This idea would seem to indi-
cate an original home in some such central region as that
suggested by Peschel, midway between the eastern and
western extremities of the Aryan outflow, and offering easy
roads for expansion alike to the East and the AVest.

The majority of the recent authors, however, seem inclined
to accept the Baltic or the Scandinavian region as the pri-
meval Aryan home. Of the several arguments offered in
support of the latter hypothesis the most potent one is the
fact that Scandinavia is the only region of the earth now
occupied by pure Xanthochroi, who lose their typical char-
acters more and more as we advance southward, until they
are quite lost in the strong preponderance of Melanochroic
blood. But this is by no means a convincing argument. The
degree of mingling with the aboriginal inhabitants depended
very much on the numbers of these inhabitants and on the
character of their treatment by their conquerors. Either
strong resistance or strong race prejudice might have re-
sulted in their annihilation or their complete disposses-
sion. The only Scandinavian aborigines of whom we have
any knowledge are the Lapps, — a Mongolian people with
whom the Aryans have shown no inclination to mingle, and
who may originally have been driven back to the frozen
plains which they at present inhabit. The Xanthochroic
purity of the Scandinavians can be accounted for quite as
well on this as on the other theory. The Germans and
the Celts of Gaul were of equally pure Xanthochroic blood
as recently as the times of Caesar and Tacitus. Their loss
of purity of type is due to a mixture since that period with
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

47

the Melanochroic aboriginal element. No such mixture
appears to have taken place between the Scandinavians
and the Lapps.

A potent argument against the Scandinavian theory is
that the Aryans were a pastoral people in the early era of
the formation of their language, and partly pastoral at the
period of their migrations, their domesticated animals,
with the exception of the camel, being the same as those
possessed by the nomads of the Asiatic steppes. No pas-
toral people has ever originated except on broad, open
levels, with abundant pasturage, — a condition which the
Scandinavian peninsula does not present. Hunting and
fishing habits were the only ones likely to originate in that
wooded and seagirt land, except in the far North, where
the snowy levels gave an opportunity for the use of the
reindeer as a domesticated animal. But this native Scan-
dinavian beast of burden does not seem to have been known
to the primitive Aryans, — which would certainly not have
been the case had it been used by them or their immediate
neighbors. As the lack of a common word for the camel
has been used as an argument against Asia, so the similar
lack of a common word for the reindeer tells against Scandi-
navia as the primitive home of the Aiyans.

[Prometheus]

Nor does the region of the Baltic or the levels of north-
ern Russia answer any better to the requirements of the
case. It is not simply a land which the Aryans might have
inhabited in accordance with the indications of philology,
but one that is in harmony with their mode of life and
process of development, that we seek; and this can cer-
tainly not be found in a densely wooded region, such as the
Baltic provinces were in primeval times.'

At the period in which the Aryan method of speech
 48

THE ARYAN RACE.

began to deviate from the Mongolian (to which it has the
closest affinities of type), and Aryan man to deviate per-
haps from the Finnish division of the Mongolian race
(which most closely approaches him in structure), the hab-
its of the Aryans appear to have been purely pastoral, and
probably long continued so. This is clearly indicated by
the character of the root-words of their languages. The
balance of probabilities, therefore, favors their residence in
a locality of Europe contiguous to that occupied by the
pastoral Mongolians and the Finns, and one naturally well
adapted to pastoral pursuits.

A brief study of the development of mankind shows us
that the pastoral habit has originated nowhere except on
the broad open plains and deserts of Asia and of north-
eastern Africa. No such pursuit has ever been followed
in mountain districts or forest regions. And the animals
possessed by the nomadic Aiyans were those indigenous
to Asia, with the exception of the camel, which is suited
only to sandy deserts. If the home of the pastoral
Aryans was in Europe, it must have been in a locality
adapted to this mode of life and contiguous to the Asiatic
steppes. The only European region which properly fulfils
these requirements is that of southern Russia. The re-
mainder of Russia and of northern Europe was then, and
is yet in considerable measure, a dense forest; while
southern Europe westward of this region is, from its moun-
tainous character, absolutely unfitted for the life of the
nomad shepherd and herdsman. But the region of south-
ern Russia, particularly in the vicinity of the Caspian, is
an open level plain, partly desert, partly of high fertility,
and presenting the requisites of contiguity to the Asiatic
steppes, the primeval home of the wandering herdsman,
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

49

and of excellent adaptation to pastoral pursuits. It is
simply impossible that such pursuits could have originated
or been maintained in a forest country, nor is it conceiv-
able that the barbarians of that age had the means or the
inclination to clear the land of forests for the purpose of
providing pasturage.

The next subject of consideration is the fact that the
Aryans gradually lost their nomadic habits, assumed a settled
state of existence, and began to practise agriculture, which
in time they developed to an extent that rendered their
pastoral pursuits of secondary importance. Their locality
must have been one suited to this change of industrial
habits. An inquiry into the requisites for the development
of agriculture is therefore here in place.

Again we must leave the forest and seek open and
naturally fertile regions. So far as we know or have
satisfactory reason to believe, agriculture in the Eastern
Hemisphere originated only in localities specially favored
by nature. It arose on the highly fertile banks of the
Nile, of the Tigris and the Euphrates, of the Ganges and
the Indus, and on the rich lowlands of the great rivers
of China. There were agricultural districts elsewhere in
Asia, it is true ; but it is probable that these localities
derived their knowledge of the art from the regions
named, and not from a spontaneous development. In
America similar indications present themselves. The agri-
culture of the United States region not improbably arose
on the rich border-lands of the lower Mississippi, and was
disseminated northward by the Mound-Builders. Like
conditions probably attended its origin in Mexico and
Peru.

There is, in fact, not a particle of evidence in existence

4
 50

THE ARYAN RACE.

that agricultural habits ever originated spontaneously in a
cold forest region such as that of the Baltic, while this
region was too far removed from the agricultural districts
of Africa and Asia for the art to be gained through com-
merce or instruction. Such a region, while utterly un-
adapted to pastoral pursuits, is equally unsuited to the
gradual exchange of these for agricultural conditions. In
short, the only pursuits which appear to have ever naturally
arisen in forest-covered countries are those of the hunter;
with those of the fisher where large bodies of water are
contiguous. And as respects the districts of northern
Germany, what we know of the habits of the tribes in the
days of the Roman empire indicates that they were not
only disinclined to agricultural progress, but that they
showed a tendency to neglect the agricultural knowledge
they already possessed, and to revert to the hunting stage,
so well suited to their forest surroundings.

On the contrary, the region of southern Russia and the
Caucasus, from its openness, its fertility of soil and suita-
bility of climate, and its contiguity to the Syrian district
of Asia, from which the art of the agriculturist might have
been readily gained, seems particularly well adapted to
the gradual change from pastoral to agricultural pursuits,
particularly within the limits of the mountain range, which
the expanding nomads would naturally have penetrated,
and which were unsuited to the life of the herdsman.

There is still one matter of importance to consider. We
have given what seem to us satisfactory reasons for the
belief that the Xanthochroi are not an original race of man-
kind, but a derivative from a preceding race, in all proba-
bility from the Mongolian, and that their origin dates from
a somewhat recent period. Yet the development of a new
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

51

type of feature and new structural conditions of body could
hardly have taken place in regions similar in physical char-
acter to those native to the parent race. We have seen that
this race frequently assumes a type of face and complexion
closely approaching the Aryan ; but such a tendency could
not well have a general development except as due to a
marked change in physical surroundings and conditions of
life, as in the case of the American Indians and the Mon-
golians of northern Europe. In the instance of the Aryans
the change may have been due to residence in a mountain-
ous district such as that of the Caucasus. In such a
region, with its great difference in climate, physical sur-
roundings, and necessary life-habits and industries from
life on a plain, a marked change in structure might well
have taken place, while the conditions of existence might
have necessitated a gradual development of that art of
agriculture which was already practised in the neighboring
district of southwestern Asia.

For the various reasons here given, and others which
will be advanced in the next chapter, we incline to look
upon southeastern Russia as the home of the Aryans dur-
ing their nomadic era, and the Caucasian mountain region
as the locality in which they gained their fair complexion
and the other characteristics of the Xanthochroic type, per-
fected the Aryan method of language, learned the art of
agriculture, and developed their political and religious
ideas and organization.

From this mountain stronghold, in which they could
well have sustained themselves against all aggression
during the long period of their development as a distinct
people, they probably spread into the fertile plains of
southeast Russia, occupying the district between the Cas-
 52

THE ARYAN RACE.

pian and the Sea of Azov, and extending an indefinite
distance northward and westward. Their northern border-
lands may have been the home of the primitive Russians,
since these deviate less from the Mongolians than any
other section of the Aryans, and bear to-day a close
resemblance in physical aspect to the Finns. Had the
Aryan type of language been imposed upon the Finns,
and the latter thus been classed as an outlying member
of the race, we should have an almost unbroken line of
deviation, leading from the typical Xanthochroi to the
Mongolian type of man.

The region we have indicated as the primitive home of
the Aryans has a further point in its favor. This is its
propinquity to the Semitic populations of the South, and
the ease with which the fair and dark types might have
mingled in that early stage of culture which preceded
strong political and religious antipathies. It seems a
natural point of meeting of the highest outcome of the
races of the North and the South, and may have much to
do with the existing strongly Melanochroic character of
the southern Aryans. And to it may be due that strong
invigoration of the Aryan intellect, by the infusion of the
imaginative element of the Southern mind into the practi-
cal groundwork of Mongolian mentality, which was neces-
sary to the unfoldment of its high powers of thought and
to the development of the energy which has carried the
race with unflagging persistence outward from its narrow
primeval home to the conquest of the world.

At a later period came the development of property
rights, of the exclusive Aryan system of clanship, and
of religious bigotry and fanaticism; and with it a strong
feeling of hostility to strangers, and a rigid effort at isola-
 THE HOME OF THE ARYANS.

53

tion, such as we find in similar historical cases. Such con-
ditions would have checked the infiltration of alien blood,
and given an opportunity for the full development of the
Aryan type of speech and of social, political, and religious
institutions undisturbed by foreign influence.

Scarcely a trace of such influences appears in the lan-
guage and institutions of the Aryans ; and whatever its
steps of origin, the Aryan, in all the details of structure
and in mental character, is among the most distinct and
declared of human races, and is markedly separated from
all other tribes and divisions of mankind.
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

TF we look back through time to the most remote point
to which the scope of history or tradition extends, it
is to behold Europe and Asia the scene of active movement
and endless turmoil. Everywhere tribes, communities, na-
tions,'are in motion, extending their borders, overrunning
one another’s domains, battling for the choice spots of the
earth, thirsting for the wealth which the industry of the
more civilized holds out to the avarice of the more bar-
barous. It is everywhere the same. Alike in Italy and
Greece, in Syria and Babylonia, in Persia and India, in
China and Scythia, the tribes and nations are moving with
the bewildering confusion of a phantasmagoria. It is to
us a shifting of names rather than of peoples. Numerous
titles of tribes have descended to our times, but we know
very little of the communities which these names represent;
and the surface of the earth at this early epoch appears to
us like that of a chess-board on which meaningless figures
are incessantly moving to and fro. Of only one thing we
can be sure. We are aware of the general race-relations
of these migrating peoples. We know that the movements
in Europe and in southern-central Asia are mainly Aryan,
while the Syrian movements are Semitic, and those of
northern Asia are Mongolian. Of the migratory excur-
sions of the period in question much the most extensive
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

55

are the Aryan, the movements being wider, and the hold
upon new regions more decided, than in the case of the
other races of mankind.

Cut that this condition of affairs is representative of the
whole scope of human history, from the earliest date of
man’s appearance upon the earth until the present time,
can hardly be affirmed. Such a migratory spirit has ex-
isted throughout the period of recorded history, but its
results have been steadily growing more extensive during
the progress of civilization. The movements which our
earliest records present to us are minor in character.
Wc perceive migrations of small tribes to short distances,
in place of the subsequent marches of great armies over
thousands of miles. Such is the character of the early
migratory movements and hostile excursions as recorded
in the Bible, and of the similar movements of the Italian
and Grecian tribes. Such was also the case with the mili-
tary enterprise of the primitive civilizations. The records
of the early dynasties of Egypt and Babylonia yield no
evidence of extensive operations. The story of ancient
China is that of the battling of tribes. Nor was this
growing empire as yet exposed to any serious danger from
the pastoral hordes of the North, who had not yet learned
the art of moving in mass.

The limited enterprise which we thus behold at the open-
ing of history, as compared with the extensive movements
of a later period, is significant of a still more diminished
migratory activity in the prehistoric ages. The spirit of
outflow had perhaps just become active, and the mingling
of the races but fairly commenced, when historical records
begin. In fact a considerable degree of intellectual ad-
vancement is necessary to any active enterprise of this
 56

THE ARYAN RACE.

character. We find nothing of the kind among the sav-
age peoples of the earth. The savages of to-day make
no effort to extend their domains. Each tribe naturally
spreads until it reaches the borders of another tribe, and
there it rests in dull contentment. This border-line is
usually a line of hostility, but not of energetic movements
of invasion. In Africa, for instance, we hear of no migra-
tions of the full-blooded Negro tribes. Activity is confined
to the Foulahs and other mixed races. That much move-
ment took place in the early epoch we have good reason
to believe, from the evidences of a very ancient occupation
of the whole earth. But this was perhaps largely due to
human fecundity, not to human enterprise. From the ori-
ginal centre or centres of population man slowly spread
out, as his numbers increased, to occupy the earth, with
only the difficulties of nature and the hostility of wild
beasts to check his outflow. This expansion may have
taken many thousands of years for its completion. But
when the earth was once fully occupied, a strong check
took place. Everywhere man met man. Doubtless an
incessant hostility ruled, but nothing existed which we
can properly term aggressive war. Each tribe or race
remained confined to its ancient domain, with but slow
and unimportant widening or shifting of borders. Only
those peoples who by a greater advance in intellect had
become superior in arms and in enterprise, slowly spread
outward, gradually pushing back their weaker and duller
neighbors.

The views here offered are in accordance with the facts
indicated by the existing condition of human races. We
are aware how great a mixture of races has taken place
since the opening of the historic period. Pure races are
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

57

in the minimum, mixed races are in the maximum, through-
out the earth. And this is particularly the case in the
regions of greatest civilization. It is strongly displayed
in southern Asia, and still more strongly in southern
Europe. For any near approach to purity of race in a
people we must seek the regions of barbarism and sav-
agery, mainly the locality bordering on the Arctic Circle,
and the tropics of Africa and America. Had an energetic
migratory and invasive spirit existed during the long
centuries of the human past bearing any close relation to
that of the early historic period, a complete mixture of
mankind must have taken place, and the existence of well-
marked races to-day would have been impossible. Race-
distinctions would have been obliterated, as they now are
to a great extent in the centres of active civilization. The
epoch of the rise of an active migratory spirit, then,
is one of great importance in the history of mankind.
This epoch was probably the one immediately preceding
the birth of recorded history, if we may judge from indi-
cations. "We see evidences of such a spirit in the early
history of China, Babylonia, and Egypt, probably con-
siderably preceding its appearance among the Aryans.
And yet the latter, when once they entered the circle of
migfatory activity, speedily became the most enterprising
of human races. There are reasons for these conclusions
in the history and conditions of these several races.

The industrial and political condition of the Aryans
greatly differed from that of the Semites and the Mongo-
lians. The latter were nomadic pastoral peoples. The
Aryans, though strongly pastoral at first, became to some
extent agricultural at a remote date. The indications are
that they were not nomadic in the period immediately pre-
 58

THE ARYAN RACE.

ceding history, and that they were divided into a great
number of small groups. This we judge from their politi-
cal system, that of the Village Communitj7, which must
have been long in developing, and which indicates a pro-
tracted period of fixed residence and agricultural habits.
As a result of this system they were greatly inferior in
political consolidation to the nomad tribes of the desert.
Each of these formed a single group. The Aryans were
divided into many small groups, diverse in their interests.
The desert tribes were accustomed to rapid and extensive
movements, in which they carried their property with them.
The Aryans were tied to their property, which consisted,
in part, at least, of fixed soil, and not entirely of moving
herds, as with the nomads. And, finally, the organization
of the nomad tribe was that of an army. It was under
its single sheik, or patriarchal leader, who directed all its
movements, and who might at any time set in train an
invading enterprise. The Aryan organization was that
of a community of equals. It was thoroughly democratic,
and only by a slow process of development did it come
under the control of warlike chiefs or leaders. It was
not invasive, though it probably held its own vigorously
against invasion.

From this difference in condition we can understand
the difference in the history of the agricultural and the
nomad peoples. The nomads of the northern and south-
ern deserts, while perhaps inferior, even then, to the Aiy-
ans in intellectual vigor and in industrial development,
were far better adapted for migratory movements and for
the invasion of neighboring regions. This doubtless
explains the invading movements in China, Babylonia,
and probably Egypt, and the establishment of powerful
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

59

agricultural kingdoms in these localities under a form of
government closely analogous to that of the .pastoral
hordes of the desert, while yet the Aryans remained in a
barbaric state, slowly advancing industrially, but almost
stagnant politically.

[Prometheus]

The subsequent difference in the historical development
of these races is due to the fact that the Aiyan political
organization is one that admits of steady unfoldment,
while that of the pastoral races is essentially primitive
and unprogressive. The only change the latter are capa-
ble of is the extension of the rule of an able chief from a
single tribe to a wide circle of tribes,—to which we owe
the terrible Mongolian migrations of the Middle Ages.
Yet these could produce no important permanent effect,
since they lacked any strong principle of political consoli-
dation. The Aryan principle, on the contrary, was one
which but slowly developed, with the increase of authority
in the tribal chief, but it was one that depended much less
on able leaders than on vitality of organization. Thus
the Aryan movements have beeu persistent instead of
occasional, and their effects permanent instead of transi-
tory. Where the Aryan sets his foot, there he stays.
There have been some temporary yieldings before the wild
onslaught of feebly combined pastoral hordes ; but these
have in nearly every instance been recovered from, and
the Aryan movement has been and is steadily onward,
driving back before its firm front all the other races of
mankind.

If now we come to consider particularly the outflow of
the Aryan race from its primitive home, we must begin by
seeking to trace its condition and relation to other tribes
at that epoch. As to the locality of this home, we have
 60

THE ARYAN RACE.

given what seems to us the most probable of the several
theories ; namety, that it w'as in the region of southeastern
Europe, stretching from the Black to the Caspian Sea,
and probably northward to a considerable distance over
the level steppes of Russia, with their chill climate and
their excellent natural adaptation to both pastoral and agri-
cultural habits. Southward it may have occupied the range
of the Caucasus, and perhaps have crossed this range and
extended some distance into the mountainous district to
the south.

In addition to the reasons alread}T given for this hypoth-
esis, it ma}T be remarked that it would be difficult to select
a region better adapted to be the cradle-spot of the future
conquerors of the earth. No district in Europe or Asia is
better protected against invasion. With broad seas to the
right and the left, and a lofty mountain-chain to the south,
passable only at two easily-defended points, it is only ap-
proachable from the north. In the early da}Ts of the race,
when it may have been stationed in close contiguity to and
within these mountain-fastnesses, it could have defied all
invaders, as the modern Caucasian mountaineers so long
defied the power of Russia. Here developing in stature,
in physical conformation, in intellect, and in habits of
settled life, of agricultural industry, and of democratic
organization ; and here perhaps receiving a new spirit of
enthusiasm through partial amalgamation with the Melano-
ehroic peoples of the South,— the typical Aiyan race origi-
nated, as we conceive, and began its outflow in a slow
movement northward over the flat and fertile plains which
stretch away from the very foot of the Caucasian chain.1

1 It may be said here that a movement of this precise character has
prevailed throughout the historic period among the Russian agricultu-
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

61

At a date preceding that of the more active migratory
movement, this slow preliminary growth northward may
have spread the Aryans over a district of considerable
extent, and already divided them into several distinct and
mutually hostile branches, with dialectical variations of
language and marked peculiarities of custom. The system
of language doubtless originated while the race was con-
tracted in locality and numbers. The dialectical varia-
tions arose after its expansion. The skeleton of Aryan
speech was the same in all the subsequent branches, yet
considerable superficial differences existed. Possibly the
Celtic, the Teutonic, the Greco-Italic, the Iranic, and the
other main steins of Aryan speech had already strongly
declared themselves while yet the race remained a compact
body, its outermost branch still in the vicinity of the
primeval home.

At this period the region which the Aryans were after-
ward to occupy was in the hands of alien races. Southern
Asia, from Armenia to India, was held by tribes partly
Mongolian, and partly perhaps of Melanochroic race. So
far as India is concerned, we know this to have been the
case, from the very abundant remains of the aborigines yet
existing. In Persia, Afghanistan, etc., there are fewer
traces of the aborigines; they have mainly perished or
been incorporated with the conquerors. In Europe the
only existing distinct communities of the aborigines are
the Lapps and Finns of the North, and the Basques of
the Southwest. All the remaining aborigines have sunk

rists, and still persists. There is plentiful room for expansion in that
broad land, and the farmers seek new localities as necessity or fancy
dictates. This migratory spirit has been made use of by the Russian
Government to colonize their newly conquered lands.
 62

THE ARYAN RACE.

beneath the Aryan tide, though it seems certain that much
amalgamation has taken place. In fact, at the very be-
ginning of European annals the domain of the Aryans
seemed nearly as extensive as now. TYe have no clear
trace of the aboriginal inhabitants. Several names sur-
vive, such as Pelasgians, Leleges, Amazons, Iberians, and
Aborigines, as the titles of ancient Mediterranean pop-
ulations ; but just what these names indicate, no one can
positively declare. The Pelasgians were possibly an early
Aryan tribe of migrants, though this lacks satisfactory evi-
dence. The Iberians are now taken as the clearest repre-
sentatives of the ancient European race. The Etruscans
of Italy may also have been members of this race ; but the
remnants of their language are too scanty to admit of a
decision, and it is held by man}7 that they were Aryans.

Of the nearly mythical peoples named, the title of
Iberians was applied by the old geographers to the pre-
Aryan inhabitants of the peninsula of Spain and the
southwest of France, whose final remnant is supposed to
exist in the Basques. But everything in relation to the
Iberians is exceedingly uncertain. \Ye now know, how-
ever, that an aboriginal people, the Neolithic, or users of
polished stone implements, of small stature, with round or
oval skulls, occupied this region at a remote period, and
extended into Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark.
They resembled the Basques physically more than any
other living people of that region, and possibly extended
into Africa and formed part of the Berber population.
This was probably the antique European element, semi-
savage or barbarous in condition, with which the Aryans
came into contact, and which they partly annihilated and
partly absorbed. Indications of such an amalgamation
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

63

exist in the historic Celtiberians of Spain, — a supposed
mingling of the Celts with the Iberians. Other indica-
tions exist in the small, dark type of man found to-day in
Aquitania and Brittany, and also in Wales, in the Scottish
Highlands, and in parts of Ireland.

As to the localities occupied by the branches of the
Aryan people in the period just preceding the era of inva-
sion, some tentative suggestions may be made. As above
said, the race probably occupied a considerable district,
and comprised several distinct and perhaps hostile divis-
ions. Of these, that which we now know as the Celtic
was the móst westerly in situation, the most divergent in
language, aud possibly the most hostile in feeling towards
its kindred. The Teutonic branch probably occupied the
most northwesterly situation, the Indo-Iranian the most
southeasterly, and the Greco-Italic the most south-
westerly, while the Slavonic occupied the central and
northern regions. This conjecture is mainly based on
what we know of the directions and dates of march of
the different branches, and partly upon another circum-
stance. This is that the northerly portion of the popu-
lation would naturally be least exposed to the influx of
Melanochroic blood, and the southerly portion the most
so. Thus the typical Xanthochroi would be specially
found in the border regions to the north and west, — those
here ascribed to the Celtic and Teutonic branches. It is
in the Teutonic branch that the typical Xanthochroi are
still mainly found, and particularly in its frontier portion,
— that which made its way to Scandinavia. As for the
adjoining Slavonians, their most northerly section, the
Lithuanian, is to-day distinguished by the fair hair and
blue eyes of the Xanthochroi from the darker Russians of
 64

THE ARYAN RACE.

the South. On the other hand, the Indo-Persian branch
is strongly Melanochroic. This is also the case with
the Greco-Italians. As for the Celts, they are known to
have presented originally a strong displaj- of Xanthochroic
characters, though these have been lost through their sub-
sequent amalgamations.

There is, therefore, reason to believe that all the north-
ern Aryans — the Celts, Teutons, and Slavonians — were
originally of the pure blond type, and very little affected
in their native home by admixture with an alien element.
This may be deduced from the fact that all the early his-
torians describe them, after the date of their migration, as
a large-framed, blue-eyed, fair-haired people. The strong
probability is that their present diversity of type resulted
from intermarriage with Melanochroic and Mongolian
aborigines at a comparatively recent period. In the geo-
graphical scheme we have adopted, this section of the
primitive Aryans occupied the fertile plains extending
northward and westward from the Caucasian range. The
southern section, the Greco-Italic and the Indo-Iranian,
which may have occupied the southern portion of the
range and the mountainous district farther south, would
be in a position to mingle freely with the Melanochroi of
Armenia, Asia Minor, etc., before their migration. Their
present strongly declared Melanochroic character may be
due mainly to such an antique intermixture, and in a lesser
degree to subsequent admixture with the aborigines of
their later homes.

It is not improbable that the Celts led the vanguard in
the great Aryan march. In fact they had begun to meet
the fate of their dispossessed foes at the opening of the
historic period, and were being more and more crowded
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

65

into the most westerly portions of the European continent
by later invaders of their own race. The incitement to
their first movement we shall never know. Probably the
Aryan giant was growing beyond the dimensions of its
natal home, and needed more space for its developing
limbs. More than one of the historic migrations has been
due to a pressure from behind, as in the case of the Huns.
Such a hostile pressure may have set the Celts in motion,
and, indeed, may have kept them in motion, it proving
easier to overcome the uncultured aborigines in front than
to endure the Aryan pressure from the rear. The move-
ment of the Celts seems to have been always one of
onward push, if we may judge from what is known of their
history.

The Celtic was probably the easiest of the Aryan mi-
grations. It met with less capable foes, as we may con-
jecture, than the eastern migration, while all subsequent
European invasions had Aryans to deal with, and there-
fore found a far more difficult path to victory. When
this first outflow took place it is impossible to guess. It
may, and may not, have been far back in the prehistoric
era; and it is impossible to say how many centuries were
occupied in the movement. The Aryans were yet learn-
ing the art of invasion. They had not the arms or the
military skill of the later migrants. Their progress was
possibly a very slow one. As for the extant history
of this Celtic migration, it may be outlined in a few words.
When first we become acquainted with the Celts, they
occupied a very extensive district, comprising most of
Europe west of the Rhine, and the domain of Cisalpine
Gaul in northern Italy. They had probably long before
crossed the Channel and settled the British Islands.
 66

THE ARYAN RACE.

But Spain appears still to have been held by the
aborigines.

The earliest of the Celtic military movements of which
history tells us was that famous one, under the lead of
Brennus, which captured the young city of Rome, and but
for a chance in the chapter of accidents might have stifled
that scorpion in its birth. A centuiy later another Brennus
led a Gaulish force far to the east, which ravaged Thrace,
pillaged the Grecian temple of Delphi, and received from
Nicomedus, king of Bithyuia, a settlement in Asia Minor,
in the district called after them Galatia. After having
met the ocean in its westward course, the Celtic migration
was apparently reacting eastward. As to the boundary
between the Germans and the Celts at this early period, it
cannot be clearly defined. Most probabty it was formed
by the Rhine, from its sources in Switzerland to its mouth
in the North Sea. The later history of the Celts is well
known, and we need not here concern ourselves with the
numerous invasions, Roman, German, Saxon, and Norman,
to which they were subjected, and by which they wrere
crowded into their present contracted domain.

But there are phenomena of race-variation in the history
of the Celts to which some allusion must be made. When
they first appeared in history they were of the pure blond
type, and had the stature, physical strength, and fierceness of
the barbaric Xanthochroi. The Gauls,” says Ammianus
Marcelliuus, u are almost all tall of stature, very fair and
red-haired, and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes;
fond of strife and haughtily insolent.” 1 This, in fact,
seems to have been the character, physical and mental, of
all the Aryans who peopled the north and wTest of Europe,
1 Latham, Natural History of Man, p. 194.
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

67

though it is by no means the case with the great mass of
the peoples who are supposed to be descended from them.
There seems to have been a very considerable infusion of
a darker and smaller human element, — probably that of the
aborigines, who doubtless much exceeded their invaders in
number. In this way a vigorous influx of Melanochroic
blood seems to have entered the veins of the blue-eyed and
fair-haired primitive Celts.

From this combination comes the French population of
to-day. Here we find a blond type yet existing in the
North, while the central districts are occupied by the mod-
ern Celtic type, with upturned nose, somewhat depressed
at the bridge and but little projecting, hair brown or dark
chestnut, eyes gray or light in shade. Such are the people
of Auvergne and the Low Bretons, —a small and swarthy,
round-headed race. In southern France several types are
found, and there seems a strong infusion of Basque and
Berber blood. Something similar might be said of the
Celtic districts of the British Islands. In fact, as the
Celts conquered the ancient inhabitants by force of arms
and of energy, the aborigines seem to have conquered the
Celts by force of numbers. As M. Roget says, the blue-
eyed, fair-haired, long-headed Celt has been giving place
in France in a direction from the south to the north to a
more ancient, dark-eyed, black-haired, round-headed type.
There has been a corresponding change in character, and
the impulsive, emotional mentality of the aborigines has
triumphed over the more staid and thoughtful character of
the Xanthochroic man.

So far as indications go, the path of the Celts from
ancient Ary a was due westward through middle Europe.
They seem to have been followed by two other Aryan
 68

THE ARYAN RACE.

branches,—that of the Teutons, which trod in the Celtic
path, and that of the Greco-Italic section, which may have
pushed through the mountains and along the southern
shores of the Black Sea, making Asia Minor its line of
march. Neither of these subsequent invasions found as
easy a task as that of the Celts, if we may judge by indi-
cations. The latter had only the aborigines to deal with;
but the former came into contact with the fierce and warlike
Celts, who were quite their equal in vigor and in the arts
of war. Perhaps in consequence of this we find a diver-
sion in these later lines of march, the southern branch con-
fining itself to the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, while
the northern branch pushed into upper Germany and sent
its leading tribes far into the Scandinavian peninsula. The
Celts may have stood as a firm wedge in the median line
of Europe, splitting the subsequent lines of march, and
forcing them to diverge to the south and the north.

Of these migrants the Teutonic were strongly of the
xanthous, or blond type, and their Scandinavian section
has continued so to this day, preserving for us in consider-
able purity that type of physical and mental character
which has been so greatly modified elsewhere by the infu-
sion of alien blood. The intellect of this Xanthochroic
division, as described by Dr. Knox,1 is not inventive, has
no genius for the abstract, no love for metaphysical specu-
lation, cares nothing for the transcendental, and is naturally
sceptical, bringing everything, even its religious faith, to
the test of reason. In this description we seem to have
the highest outcome of the practical Mongolian mind, — an
intellectual condition capable of the greatest things when
once kindled by the fire of imagination, but unprogressive
in itself.

1 The Paces of Man, p. 314.
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

G9

The ancient Aryan inhabitants of Germany are described
by Tacitus as a tall and vigorous people, with long, fair
hair and fierce blue eyes. They lacked somewhat the
reckless impulsiveness of the Gauls, yet were as fierce and
brave as the latter. To speak, however, of a Celtic fol-
lowed by a Teutonic Aryan migration, is to deal with the
subject from a general point of view. There seem to
have been many successive waves of the A^an flood, each
pushing forward the preceding, and giving rise to numer-
ous separate tribes. It is only linguistically that they can
be called distinctively Celtic and Teutonic. They formed
successive migrating sections of the two most northwest-
erly branches of the Aiyan stock. Thus Caesar describes
Gaul as inhabited by three distinct nations, — the Aquitani,
the Gauls, and the Belgae. Of these the Aquitani are
supposed to have been aborigines, with some Celtic admix-
ture. The Gauls are described as bright, intelligent, viva-
cious, frank, open, and brave. The Belgae were more
staid, less active, more thoughtful, and less easily exalted
or depressed. They approached the Germans in character,
and had least varied from the primitive type. The Ger-
mans, in their turn, were divided into several branches
which spoke distinct languages, and into numerous tribes.
Probably they entered the country in several successive
waves from the east. The Xanthochroic Germans of the
time of Tacitus, however, have since then suffered much
the same fate as the Celts. There has been a great amount
of mixture with a dark-haired people, and the modem Ger-
mans have lost all distinctiveness of race, though they are
less Melanochroic than the peoples of southern Europe.
Probably they, like the Celts, amalgamated with their con-
quered subjects and with the Melanochroic peoples border-
 70

[Prometheus]

THE ARYAN RACE.

ing their domain on the south. However that be, there is
to-day no distinctive Teutonic type; every variety of
man, from fair to dark, can be found on German soil.

Tacitus gives us much interesting information concern-
ing the habits and conditions of the Germans of his time,
which is of importance from its probable close affinity to
the life of the primitive Aryans. Their dress seems to
have been very scanty, consisting mainly of a mantle of
coarse woollen stuff, flung over the shoulders and fastened
with a pin or a thorn. Farther north mantles of fur were
worn. Their dwellings were low circular huts made of rough
timber, thatched with straw, and with a hole at the top for
the escape of the smoke. The inner walls were roughly
colored, and cattle sometimes shared the interior with the
family. Their dwellings did not stand close together, but
apart and scattered, each freeman choosing his own home.
Their favorite occupations were war and the chase, and
there is very little indication of agriculture. When not
thus engaged, they often lay idly on the hearth, leaving all
necessary labor to the women and to men not capable
of bearing arms. In their social gatherings drunkenness
and gambling were prevalent evils. Their arms were a
long spear and a shield, with occasionally clubs aud battle-
axes. Each freeman was expected to bear arms and
march to battle under his own clan head, the tribe being
led by its hereditary chief or its chosen herzog, or general.
Thus constituted, they rushed to battle, roused to fury by
the excitement of war, and striving to intimidate their foes
by loud shouts and the clashing of shields. The loss of a
shield in battle was the loss of honor, and the despair of
the loser frequently ended in suicide.

Latest of the northern Aryan migrations came that of
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

71

the Slavonic tribes, pushing hard on the heels of the Ger-
mans, and driving them forward into the heart of Europe.
This movement was probably contemporaneous with the
historic period of southern Europe. It carried the Slavic
race much farther into Europe than it has been able to
maintain itself, since the reaction of German valor has
driven back the Slavs to their present borders,—the west-
ern limits of Poland, Bohemia, and Russia. In this connec-
tion it is somewhat singular that both Berlin and Vienna,
the German capitals, stand on ancient Slavonic ground.
More to the south they have held their own, — in eastern
Austria and in the northern and western districts of Euro-
pean Turkey. Probably one of the earliest of the Slavonic
movements was that of the Lithuanians, — a people with a
language of distinct individuality, who have preserved the
Xanthochroic physical character far better than their Rus-
sian kindred. Back of all these outlying branches came the
Russians proper, — seemingly the last of the Aryans to leave
their ancestral home. In fact, if our idea of the location
of this home is correct, the Russians still occupied it at the
opening of the historic period, or had moved but a short
distance to the west. In the fifth and sixth centuries we
first gain a clear vision of this people, then occupying a
limited region in the territory of Little Russia, in the neigh-
borhood of the present Russian district of Kiev. Here
was the germ of the great empire which has since so widely
spread, under rulers of Teutonic blood. The region indi-
cated is in the immediate vicinity of that which we have
considered to be the probable locality of the northern sec-
tion of the primitive Aryans. The Slavonic branch was
doubtless the last to leave the old Aryan home, if it can
be said to have left it at all. There certainly remains a
 72

THE ARYAN RACE.

people of Slavonic affinity in the region which we have
conjectured to be the mountain birthplace of the Aryan
race; namely, the Ossetians of the Caucasian range.
“This people,” says Pallas, “exactly resemble the peas-
ants in the north of Russia; they have in general, like
them, either brown or light hair, occasionally also red
beards. They appear to be very ancient inhabitants of
these mountains.” The Slavonian migration, after its first
fierce outward push into western Europe, apparently be-
came a very deliberate one. It is important to notice
that it has not yet ceased. From the first entrance of the
Slavic race into history it has been yielding to the pressure
of the Teutonic race in the west, but pushing its way per-
sistently to the north and east. At the same time it has
been mingling intimately with the Mongolian race, and has
acquired strong peculiarities of feature and character in con-
sequence. The Mongolian blood and type of mind have
partly reconquered the Russian from the Aryan race.

The Slavonic movement has been one of slow agricul-
tural expansion rather than of warlike enterprise. The
Slavs are the least restless, the least warlike, and the least
progressive of all the Aiwan branches. They have the
most faithfully preserved to modern times the ancient
institutions and the antique grammatical methods; and
the indications are that they could have indulged but
little in the disturbing game of war and migration in the
prehistoric period. They seem to be the home-staying
Aryans, the keepers of the old homestead, who remained
on the ancestral domain while all their brethren wTent
abroad. Their movement has been mainly that steady
outgrowth of the- farm before which the nomad horde can
never sustain itself.
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

73

Gibbon remarks of them that ‘ ‘ the same race of Sclav-
onians appears to have maintained, in every age, the pos-
session of the same countries. . . . The fertility of the soil,
rather than the labor of the natives, supplied the rustic
plenty of the Sclavonians. Their sheep and horned cattle
were large and numerous, and the fields which they sowed
with millet or panic afforded, in the place of bread, a
coarse and less nutritious food.” 1 Such are the conditions
which probably existed in the primitive Aryan home. The
ancient Slavs were not distinguished for bravery. Their
military achievements were, as Gibbon remarks, those of
spies and stragglers rather than those of warriors, and
they were incessantly exposed to the rapine of fiercer and
more warlike neighbors. This hardly applies, however, to
the southern Slavonians, who invaded the eastern Roman
empire with vigor and success, and who treated their pris-
oners with the most savage cruelty.

The characteristics of the Russian Slavonic population,
as above given, are not those of the Aryan race as gener-
ally known. In fact, the Slavs of Russia have lost their
distinctive Aryan character yet more fully than the Celts
have in the West. In both cases the language and insti-
tutions have been retained, but the race-distinction has
largely vanished. The Russians frequently present a close
resemblance to the Mongolian type, and either have be-
come largely mingled with, or originally closely resembled,
the Finns, as is indicated by the dark skin and yellow
beard so common among the peasants. The face is hol-
lowed out, as it were, between the projecting brow and
chin. The race is tall, but not robust, strong, but not
energetic, and displays a general character of apathy.

1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, iv. 197.
 74

THE ARYAN RACE.

They lack invention, but are admirable imitators, like the
Mongolians. In fact they present decided Mongolian
characteristics. In the southeast the Slavs are dark, with
dark hair and eyes. These comprise the Croats, the Ser-
vians, and the Slavonians proper. But the Slovaks of
Austria possess the fair skin and red or flaxen hair of the
northern Russians. It is, in truth, a race of manifold
mixture, the only character common to all Slavs being
braehycephaly, — a Mongolian characteristic. It is a race
which lacks much of the intellectual vigor and the restless
energy of the purer Aryans. These remarks, however,
apply mainly to the peasantry. In the blood of the ruling
class there is a considerable infusion of the German and
Scandinavian element, and it is to this class that we owe
the migratory activity of modern Russia. The character-
istic of the peasantry is apathetically to stay where they
are placed, though always ready to migrate where a decided
agricultural advantage appears. This survival of an an-
tique custom is a valuable aid to the colonizing enterprise
of the Government.

The movements of the northern Aryans were matched by
an equally active expansion of the darker-skinned southern
sections, the fathers of the Greek and Latin, the Persian
and Indian, civilizations. We know as little concerning
the dates of these movements as of those of the North. In
speaking of the Celtic as the earliest migration, this may
apply only to the northern movement. That of the South
may have been contemporaneous with or antecedent to it.
When histoiy opens, the Celts are still in active movement.
The}7 have not completed their work. The Germans are
visibly moving, and the Slavonic tribes have probably not
yet left the region of ancient Arya. But no historic trace
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

75

of such a movement can be found in the story of the
Greeks and Italians. When first seen they are in full
possession of their historic realm, and retain not even a
tradition of a migratory movement. They proudly term
themselves autochthones, the original possessors of the
soil. We can deem their movement as contemporaneous
with, or later than, that of the Celts only from its south-
ward diversion and the fact of the Celtic possession of
central and western Europe. Yet this may be due to the
one migration being to the north, and the other to the
south, of the Black Sea.

In our scheme of the primeval Aryan home the ances-
tors of the Greeks and Italians occupy the southwestern re-
gion, — perhaps continuous in their northern borders with
the Celts, if we may judge from certain affinities of lan-
guage. Their location is the Caucasian mountain district
and the northeastern region of Asia Minor. Such seems
probable from what we are able to discover of their move-
ments, and also from their much greater loss of the Xan-
thochroic race-element than in the northern Aryans.
Though not destitute of the blond type of complexion,
the brown type was the prevalent one. They had proba-
bly considerably mixed with the brown Southerners before
their migration ; yet they never forgot that the blue-eyed
and fair-haired type was that of their ancestral race, and
to the last they preserved an admiration for it.

The line of Grecian march, so far as we can trace it by
linguistic evidence, appears to have been through Asia
Minor. The Greek testimon}T would make Greece their
native home, and the settlements in Asia Minor the out-
come of colonizing movements. But modern research has
led to a different opinion, and indicates that at least the
 76

THE ARYAN RACE.

Ionians originally came from Asia Minor. The typical
Hellenes can be traced, with considerable assurance, to the
highlands of Phrygia, — a fertile region of northwestern
Asia Minor, such as a tribe of mountaineers would natur-
ally make a stopping-place in its westward march. Here
perhaps they long halted, increased greatly in numbers,
and gave off successive divisions, which pushed westward
into Greece, while the vanguard of the march made its
way into Italy.

All we know of the history of early Greece is that it
was inhabited by a people called Pelasgians by the later
inhabitants, but of whose derivation we are in absolute
ignorance. Much has been written about them. We are
told of a great wave of migration which carried over the
Hellespont into Europe a population which diffused itself
through Greece and the Peloponnesus, as well as over the
coasts and islands of the Archipelago. To this antique
Aryan tribe are ascribed the most ancient architectural
monuments of Greece. We are further told that the com-
ing of later tribes pushed forward this Pelasgian outpost
until it overflowed into Italy, while it vanished from Greece
either by destruction or amalgamation. This, however, is
all pure conjecture; it has no historic basis. We know
nothing of the origin, race-character, or degree of culture
of the early inhabitants of Greece, though there can be
little doubt that the Aryans made their way by successive
waves into Greece and Italy.

Before the final Hellenic migration began, the Hellenes

had apparently divided into two distinct sections, well

/

marked in language and character, — the Doric and the
Ionic. A third section, the AEolic, separated at a later
period. It is conjectured that the Dorians continued to
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

77

occupy the highland region, while the Ionians moved
south to the sea-coast of Asia Minor, where they found a
softer climate and gained new habits of life. This con-
jecture seems borne out by their subsequent character and
history. Our first historic trace of the Dorians is in the
highlands of Macedonia. Here they displayed the type of
the hardy mountaineer, which was probably original with
them. From this position, at a later date, they pushed
southward and occupied the Peloponnesus, their historic
home, forcing back the Ionians who had preceded them.

We can recover no historic trace of the primitive Ionians.
They probably made their way into Greece over the islands
of the Archipelago, having long before come into contact
with the Phoenician navigators and gained the germ of the
maritime skill and enterprise which were afterwards to
distinguish them. Spreading themselves over these nu-
merous and fertile islands, they finally entered Attica, the
famous centre of their future civilization. But it is highly
probable that they still held possession of the coast of
Asia Minor, and that what were afterwards described as
colonies were really the original Ionian settlements. Here,
at least, their civilization first budded. Here the Grecian
arts first grew into prominence. Here was the land of the
Homeric song and the scene of the great poet’s life. Hence
came the earliest song-writers, philosophers, and historians
to the rising commercial city of Athens, to gain in its rich
precincts the reward of their genius and to implant that
seed of thought which was afterwards richly to grow and
bloom on Attic soil. That later colonies, Doric, Ionic, and
-ZEolic, settled on the shores of Asia Minor, there is historic
evidence ; but they evidently settled among Greeks, and
found there in a developing condition that literary and
 78

THE ARYAN RACE.

artistic culture which was afterwards to gain its highest
expression ou the peninsula of Greece.

As to when and how the Aryans came into Italy we know
absolutely nothing. AVe find them there at the opening of
history, and that is all. The earliest Greek colonies in the
south of Italy met there two peoples, called by them the
Iapygians and the iEnotrians, whom they looked upon as
Pelasgians or as remnants of the most ancient known pop-
ulation of Greece. They were possibly Aryans, but of this
we cannot be sure ; the extant relics of their language are
too slight to be of much utility. Central Italy was occu-
pied by numerous tribes, which have been divided into five
groups,—the Umbrians, Sabines, Latins, Volscians, and
Oscans. There is good reason to believe that these were
all of Aryan stock. The Umbrians have left an important
linguistic record in the celebrated inscriptions known as
the “ Eugubine Tablets,” which indicate a very primitive
Aryan dialect and stamp the Umbrians as one of the most
ancient Aryan nations of Italy. As for the remainder of
Italy, the North was occupied by several distinct peoples,
prominent among them being the strong Celtic settlement
known as Cisalpine Gaul. Southward lay the land of
Etruria, occupied by the remarkable people who rose into
the earliest Italian civilization, but whose ethnic affinities
are still a puzzle. AYhether they were or were not Aryans
is a question that remains to be settled. All we positively
know is that ancient authors represent them as a people
wholly distinct from all others in Italy. As for the Latins,
the race that was subsequently to make such a remarkable
figure in the world, and so greatly to advance the Aryan
civilization, their origin is in great obscurity. Their earli-
est traceable home seems to be the central Apennines, and
 THE ARYAN OUTFLOW.

79

their language has a considerable infusion of the old Greek
element, which indicates a very ancient branching off from
the original stock of Greco-Italic speech.

We have one remaining Aryan migration to trace, —the
Indo-Iranic, that which carried the fathers of the Hindu
and Persian empires to their temporary Bactrian home.
This branch of the Aryan stock, in our scheme of the
ancient home of the race, would have its location in the
southeastern Caucasian region, impinging on the southern
shores of the Caspian. Here, like their neighbors to the
west, they seem to have largely lost the distinctive Xan-
thochroic type, and to have been greatly modified by an
infusion of the Melanochroic element. Their migration
may have been considerably later than that of the Greeks.
Quite possibly, indeed, an Iranian pressure may have insti-
gated the Grecian movement, if we may judge from the fact
that Armenia is to-day occupied by an Aryan people who
speak an Iranic dialect. As for the march of this branch of
the race, we have no more historic evidence than in the case
of the other branches. All we can discover is an extended
line of Aryan peoples, leading from the Ossetes, who occupy
the pass of the Caucasus, successively to the Armenians,
the Kurds, the people of ancient Media and Persia, the
Afghan and Belooch Aryan tribes, and the Hindus of the
Indus and Ganges. At every point on the long line of
march divisions of the migrating army were seemingly
dropped, or perhaps the expansion of a growing people
pushed its vanguard farther and farther over the eastward
path, on a route probably much easier than that leading
to the civilized regions of the South.

Of all this, however, we have no historic evidence.
Though we are now dealing with a people who possess
 80

THE ARYAN RACE.

a considerable literature, dating from a period when their
migratory movement was yet far from completion, yet this
literature is the reverse of historical. It is simply calcu-
lated to bewilder and lead astray the earnest students of
history. The Vedas of the Hindus, indeed, make no pre-
tence to be historical. The Zend-Avesta of the Persians,
while not historical, lays down a geographical scheme,
which forms the sole basis for the selection of Bactria as
the primitive Aryan home. Yet this Avestan geography
is of the most mythical and unsatisfactory character. In
the “ Vendidad ” are enumerated sixteen lands created by
Ahura Mazda. Many attempts have been made to iden-
tify these, and draw historical conclusions from their order
in illustration of the line of Iranian migration. These
efforts have proved signally unsuccessful. Several of the
lands named are clearly mythical, and of only nine can
the location be traced. Yet in naming these the Persian'
author seems to have wandered at random over the map,
without regard to the cardinal points. No conclusion can
be drawn from their order of succession, since they have
no order.

[Prometheus]

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

[Prometheus]

THE ARYAN RACE.

indicates that certain branches of the Aryan race, after
breaking off from the main stem, again divided after their
special dialect had made considerable progress. Such was
the case with the eastern branch, and thus we may account
for common words in the Indian and Iranian tongues
which do not extend to the other branches of the race.
This special community between the languages of the two
great divisions of the eastern branch is paralleled by sim-
ilar special resemblances in the west, as between the Greek
and Latin. Efforts have been made, in consequence, to
divide the Aryan race up into secondary, or sub-races, the
product of a primary division, each of which sub-races
made considerable progress before a new division took
place. But from these efforts no very satisfactory result
has been achieved. Several unlike schemes have been
proposed, each of which has been contested and denied.
We need, therefore, concern ourselves here only with the
original Aryans, without heed to their assumed but as yet
unproved sub-branches.

The persevering and critical labor of the students of
language has, as we haATe said, isolated numerous words
which must have been in use by the Aiyan family before
its separation, since they are still in use by all, or nearly
all, its descendants. This work has gone so far that we
have now a dictionary of the ancient Aiyan in three stout
octavo volumes.1 And August Sleieher has taken the
trouble to write a short story in this prehistoric language.
It is quite likely, indeed, that the ancestral Aryans would
have had some difficulty in reading it, since it cannot be
supposed that the exact form of any of their words has
been preserved; yet it is curious, as showing the great

1 Fick’s Comparative Dictionary of Indo-Germanic Speech, 1S71—76.
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

93

progress which has been made during a few decades of
persistent study.

Words indicate things and conditions. No people has
ever invented a vocal sound without the purpose of nam-
ing something which they had or knew. It cannot be
supposed, however, that the Aryan words conveyed to the
minds of their early speakers the exact meaning which
they do to ours. The words of our languages have be-
come as full of mental as of physical significance. Philo-
sophical conceptions spread like a network through the
substance of our speech. But we have now to deal with
a people who had not devised a philosophy and had little
conception of mentality. They knew what they saw.
They named what their eyes beheld or their hands encoun-
tered. Their world existed outside them. The vast world
of the mind was as yet scarcely born. Numerous evi-
dences of this might be quoted. The names of the family
relations, for instance, originated in physical conceptions.
The Sanscrit _p?Yar, “ father,” comes from pa, “ to pro-
tect.” The original meaning of bhratar, “ brother,” was
“he who carries or assists.” Svasar, “ sister,” signified
“she who pleases.” Dahitar, “daughter,” is derived
from duh, a root which in Sanscrit means “ to milk.”
The daughter of the primeval household was valued mainly
for her use as a milkmaid. Thus what seem to us the
most primitive of words were really derived from prece-
ding physical terms. As yet no general or abstract con-
ceptions existed. Indeed we may come to far more recent
times without much improvement in this respect. Old
Anglo-Saxon, for instance, is far richer than old Aryan.
Yet if we should seek to converse on philosophy or science
in Anglo-Saxon speech we should soon find ourselves in
 94

THE ARYAN RACE.

difficulty. Only by a free use of metaphor, and mental
applications of words which have only a material signifi-
cance, could any progress be made in such a task. It is
very probable, however, that the antique Aryans had long
forgotten the derivation of their words ; they were mere
technical symbols to them as to us. Their language had
been developed probably many long centuries before the
era of their dispersal, and linguistic decay had already set
in. We know far more than they did of the origin of their
words, from our method of isolating the roots of lan-
guage, and reaching down to the deepest-buried seeds of
meaning.

Let us seek to rehabilitate this ancient Aryan community^,
so far as our knowledge of their words enables us to do so.
For this purpose we shall mainly follow Professor Sayce 1 in
his graphic rebuilding of old Arva from the words given in
Fick’s u Comparative Grammar.” If we look far back
through the revealing glass of science we seem to behold
these active aborigines on their native plains engaged in
all the vocations of a simple life. We see them em-
ployed in a twofold duty, — that of pastoral, and that of
agricultural life. Abundant flocks are scattered over their
grassy commons attended by the diligent herdsman. Of
domesticated animals the cow was their most valued pos-
session, as it still is with the pastoral tribes of northern
Asia. But in addition they had the horse, the sheep, the
goat, and the pig. There is nothing to show that the horse
was ridden. If we judge alone from the indications
of language, we must believe that it was, in common with
the ox, used only for drawing. Nor is there anything to
show that the dog was known in other than its wild state.

1 Introduction to the Science of Language. A. H. Sayce.
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

CJ5

And yet the exigencies of pastoral life may have required
the modern use of these animals. To their sheep and
cattle pastures the Aryan herdsmen added the shelter of
stables, sheepcots, and pigsties. Of other domesticated
animals may be mentioned the goose and fowl as proba-
ble, while the bee was undoubtedly one of their valued
possessions, its honey being made into mead, — then
and long afterwards a favorite Aryan beverage. Their
chief ordinary drink, however, was the milk of the cow,
sheep, and goat; and the morning milking scene by the
daughters of the tribe doubtless closely resembled that
still seen on the Asiatic steppes among the pastoral no-
mads of that region.

The community with which we have at present to deal
was not a nomadic one. It had doubtless passed through
that stage of existence ; but at the time in which we behold
it the development of agriculture had tied it to a fixed
locality, and the interests of agriculture were steadily rising
into prominence. There are indications to show that in the
early days of the development of Aryan speech the pastoral
interests were largely in the ascendent. But at the period
immediately preceding the Aryan dispersal, agriculture had
become considerably developed, the tribes were settled in
definitely arranged communities on a fertile region, well
watered and wooded, and farming and herding had become
common industries of the people, without the wide di-
vision between these interests which we now find in the
desert regions of Arabia and Turkestan, with their fertile
ooses alternated with scant}7 pasture regions.

The antique language has abundant indications of such
a primitive supremacy of pastoral interests. The names
for many of the family and tribal relations, for property,
 96

THE ARYAN RACE.

trade, etc., for inn, guest, master, and king, were taken
from words that applied to the herd. Dawn signified the
mustering-time of the cows. Evening was the time of
bringing home the herds. In the word “ cow ” itself we have
“ the slow walker; ” in ox, “ the vigorous oue ; ” in dog,
“speed;” in wolf, “destroyer,” etc. All this indicates
that the era of development of the language was an era
when pastoral interests were very prominent in men’s minds.

But evidently at the period of the Aryan dispersion the
interests of agriculture were becoming dominant, and those
of a pastoral life secondary. TVe have warrant for this in
the plentiful survival of common agricultural terms, and in
the word by which the eastern Aryan migrants called them-
selves at their first appearance on the stage of history, —
Aryas in the Vedas, Airyas in the Zend literature, — and
from which their modern title has been derived. This word
comes from a root which signifies “ ploughing.” It grew
eventually to mean “honorable,” or “noble.” The Ar-
yans, not without warrant, considered themselves the
noblest of human races.

If we now turn our mental gaze from the pastures to the
farming lands we see indications of a different mode of
activity. Here the earth is being turned up with a rude
plough drawn by the slow moving ox, or possibly the horse.
There the hay is bemg cut with the sickle. Yonder are
fields of ripe and waving grain of at least two kinds. Just
what grains these were, we cannot be quite sure. One of
them seems to have been barley, — the cereal of cold cli-
mates. The other may have been wheat, though this is
far from certain. These, with a few garden vegetables, are
all we can perceive through our highly imperfect observing-
glass. We can, however, see wheeled vehicles of some
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

97

sort, drawn by yoked oxen, and bringing the harvests from
the field. We can likewise perceive these antique farmers
threshing and winnowing their grain and grinding it in mills.
We have their words for wagon, wheel, and axle, and also
for hammer, anvil, and forge, —? the latter showing that
the smith was an active member of the community.

In the woods around them grew the pine and the birch,
— trees of cold regions ; and probably the beech and the
oak, though this is not positive. As to what fruit-trees they
possessed, we are in doubt; nor are we certain as to their
knowledge of the grape. They appear to have had three
metals, — gold, silver, and bronze. Their possession of
iron, copper, and lead is more doubtful, and there is rea-
son to believe that stone tools were still used. In fact, when
we consider that metals may have been articles of commerce
at an early date, and their names have travelled with them,
the existence of common Aryan names for any metal is not
as sure evidence of its early possession as in the case of
many other articles, and it is possible that their actual ac-
quaintance with metals was very slight. There is reason
to believe, however, that the class of smiths was held in
high honor, and that they sometimes had supernatural
powers attributed to them, as among other barbarian
communities.

The people whose life in the dim depths of time we are
thus observing had left behind them the tent-stage of exist-
ence. They dwelt in houses of wood, with regular doors,
instead of the hole through which the tenants of many
northern habitations crawl. We cannot identify any win-
dow. Straw seems to have been used to thatch the roofs.
It is possible that these houses were but rude huts. They
were combined into villages, whose name still survives in

7
 98

THE ARYAN RACE.

the icich or wick now often used as a termination of the
names of towns. There seems also to have been a fortress,
with protecting wall-or rampart.

As for domestic life and comforts, we know that baked
pottery was in common use, formed into vases, jars, pots,
and cups, some with the ends pointed so as to be driven
into the ground. This pottery may have been ornamented
by painting in colors. Vessels of wood and leather were
also probably in use. The hours of relaxation seem to
have been softened by music, derived from some stringed
instrument. The food used appears to have included baked
or roasted meat, and the eaters of raw flesh were looked
upon as utter barbarians. Quails and ducks were eaten,
and a black broth was apparently a principal article of food.
Their meal was baked into bread, and apples may have
been one of their edible fruits. Salt was used as a condi-
ment. Quite likely their diet was considerably more varied
than this, since many names of articles of food may have
died out of use, or been replaced by others in the long
course of time. Of the other household treasures may be
mentioned mcikshi, “ the buzzer,” our common fly. With
him was associated the less desirable flea, while the prowl-
ing mouse made up a trio of domestic pests. The art of
medicine was as yet in embryo, but our ancestral clan was
by no means free from the ravages of disease. Two names
of diseases have survived, — consumption and tetter. As
for cure, the power of charms seems to have been mainly
relied on.

In these households strict monogamy prevailed. There
was but one husband and one wife, and the family rela-
tions were clearly defined. In addition to words for father,
mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, etc., they had sepa-
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

99

rate words for a wife’s sister, syali, and for a brother’s
wife, yaiaras. The father was lord of the household, and
the wrife its mistress ; the subordination of the younger
members of the family to parental authority being far
greater than in our era. The names of these antique
Aryans were composed of two -words, as now. We may
instance Deva ’smta, “ heard by God,” as the title of one
of our extinct ancestors. As for their domestic industries,
they seem to have possessed the arts of sewing and spin-
ning. Wool was shorn and woven, and linen was known,
though probably little used. The art of tanning was prac-
tised, and leather was much used for clothing and other
purposes. Their dress apparently consisted of a tunic,
coat, collar, and sandals, made of leather or of woven
and sewn wool. But if we may judge from what we know
of the early Germaus, Slavs, and Celts, they were not
greatly protected by clothing from the cold.

If now we leave the domestic and industrial conditions
of the Aryans, and seek to follow them in the more stir-
ring details of their active lives, we behold them engaged in
what to them were doubtless nobler pursuits. Here we
perceive our ancestor actively engaged in the chase and
daringly entering into combat with the savage bear and wolf.
Of smaller game he seems to have pursued the hare, beaver,
and badger, and probably the fox. The wild duck was
one of his game-birds, and he knew several other birds,
such as the vulture, raven, starling, and goose. He had the
custom, preserved till a much later period, of divining the
future from the flight of birds, particularly of the falcon.
The serpent was known, and probably both hated and
revered for its deadly and mysterious power. Of his
water-dwelling game we may name the otter and the eel,
 100

THE ARYAN RACE.

the crab and the mussel. But his knowledge of fish
must have been very limited if we take language for our
guide.

Changing our field of observation, we behold him boldly
embarking on the waves of the great salt lake which ad-
joined his native land. The name he gave this watery ex-
panse is still preserved in meer, — a word which has been
since applied alike to sea and lake, moor and morass.
Here he launched his boat, guided it by a rudder, and pro-
pelled it by means of oars. His barbaric intellect was not
yet equal to the device of the sail, — or at least he has left
no word to signify that he had learned to spread the broad
sheet to the winds, and by their aid to avoid the laborious
straining of the muscles.

A glance in still another direction shows him to us en-
gaged in what he probably considered the noble pastime
of war. That he was of belligerent disposition we have
every reason to believe, judging from the irascible temper
he has transmitted to his descendants ; and doubtless his
peaceful labors were frequently broken by warlike raids
upon neighboring tribes or by fierce defence of his home
and fields against hostile invaders. In this stirring duty
the axe was apparently his chief weapon; but he fought
also with the club and the sword, while lie wore the helmet
and the buckler for defensive armor. The bow was also
probably one of his implements of offence. With these
weapons the blue-eyed and stout-hearted champion doubt-
less fought sturdily for home and freedom, or for fame
and spoil, doing doughty deeds of valor which may have
roused to noble inspiration the minstrels of his tribe, yet
which have vanished in the night of time and thrown not
a ray of their lustre down to our remote age. As yet
 THE ARYANS AT HOME.

101

no Homer had arisen to make imperishable the deeds of
warlike glory.

As for the acquirements of this strong-limbed and active
barbarian, beyond the requisites of industry and war we
know very little. He was acquainted with the decimal
system of numeration, counting by fives and tens, with his
fingers and toes as guides, at least up to a hundred. The
year was divided into lunar months, the moon being to him
the measurer of time. He doubtless had abundant super-
stitions. The evil spirits of night and darkness pursued
and affrighted his shrinking soul. Their symbol to him
was the serpent. Night was the demon, aj-dahaku, the
biting snake. Then was strongly felt the consciousness
of sin, when the gloom of midnight had densely gathered,
and ghosts and witches held high festival in the air. But
with the upspringing of the cheerful sun, and the forth-
flowing of its gleaming rays over the earth’s surface, these
forms of terror shrank cowering to their dens and caves,
and the Aryan stepped forth again in the proud conscious-
ness of strength and valor, fearing nothing living or dead,
and ready to cope with all the forces of the universe.

From such terrors and such deliverance, from the alter-
nation of day and night, of summer and winter, arose
his simple system of religious views. lie worshipped the
objects and the phenomena of Nature, and particularly the
dawn and the other bright powers of the day. The broad
blue sky was his supreme deity, to whom the stars and the
moon were sons and daughters. To these he prayed and ad-
dressed his hymns, —the seeds of the complex mythologies
into which his simple beliefs were destined to unfold. Of
the many gods devised, he probably thought of and prayed
to but one at a time; and supreme over them all was the
 102

[Prometheus]

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

[Prometheus]

modern Indian law. Originally it may have been as per-
manent as that of the Slavonic group. An interesting
instance of a similar character, in a non-Aryan Indian tribe,
is that of the Kandh hamlet, described by Dr. Hunter in
his “ Orissa.” This people is still a nomadic one, and its
institutions are strikingly like what those of the Aryans
must have been in their specially pastoral age. The Kandh
hamlet is a household unit in which individual rights are
unknown. The house-father exercises supreme control,
and the maxim is held that “ a man’s father is his god.”
Disobedience is the greatest of crimes. No son can pos-
sess property till the death of his father. Then a division
is made of the land and stock, and each son becomes the
head of a separate family.

The condition of society here reviewed is a highly ar-
chaic one, a survival from a very ancient period of Aryan
existence when it was yet in the nomadic pastoral state.
In its subsequent agricultural phase a different organization
arose ; but vestiges of the more ancient condition, in which
the family was the state, persisted throughout this later
period, and have, in the instances described, continued
unto our own times. It is the patriarchal stage of political
development, the stage which still persists generally among
nomads, and which has played a remarkable part in the
history of civilization, as we shall hereafter point out.
The nomadic tribes of northern Asia and of the desert of
Arabia are }Tet in this stage of organization. The princi-
ple of a single, supreme house-father has been there ex-
panded into the head of the clan, the chief of the tribe, the
ruler of the nation, through a direct process of develop-
ment which has been modified by no secondary principle.

. The only Aryan people in which this archaic system has to

8
 114

THE ARYAN RACE.

any extent held its own in clan-government are the High-
landers of Scotland under their recent S3Tstem of chieftain-
ship. The Highland clan was a distinctively patriarchal
organization, sustained by a people largely pastoral, and
to some extent nomadic in habit. It was an expanded
family group, in which the chief was the direct representa-
tive of the original ancestor, and was looked upon with a
partly superstitious reverence by his ignorant and faithful
followers. It seems to indicate a reversion to archaic
political conditions.

In ancient Arya — probably when agriculture had begun
to tie the former nomads to fixed locations, and to bring
new interests into the foreground of men’s thoughts — a
new principle of organization gradually declared itself, a
highly interesting outgrowth from the more ancient pa-
triarchal system. This was the system of the Village
Community, one of the most important stages in the de-
velopment of human institutions. It must be borne in
mind that with the acquirement of property iu land indus-
trial relations assumed a very different phase from that
governing property in flocks and herds. In all these,
ancient cases the idea of community in property was firmly
established. The common property of the family expanded
into the common property of the clan, which was }ret re-
garded as a single famity, of common descent and common
name. However greatly foreign elements came in, through
adoption or otherwise, this fiction was maintained, and in
several localities has not yet died out. There was no diffi-
culty in sustaining this idea of community in the case of
pastoral property. The herds were under the care of the
whole group, and there was nothing to call for individual-
ism in labor. And though they were held for the good
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE. 115

of all, the patriarchal head of the group claimed certain
supreme rights of ownership and management, and certain
controlling powers over the clansmen, which were but a
development of the original supremacy of the house-father.
An interesting instance of such an organization is that
of the patriarch Abraham and his followers and flocks as
given in the Scriptures.

This generalism of duties could not so well be exercised
in agricultural labor. Such labor could not properly be
performed in common, and it became necessary to break
up the tilled land into separate lots, each to be cultivated
by a single family. This was attended or followed by the
ownership of the product of its own lot by each family,
although the land as a whole continued to be the property
of the community. Instances of the growth of this s}ts-
tem may be found in American institutions. In the Inca
empire of Peru the system of agriculture and government
continued patriarchial in great part. The population as a
whole cultivated the lands of the Inca and the Church ; the
products, though held in part for the good of the people,
being under the supreme control of the ruler. But the
remainder of the lands, those specially appertaining to the
people, were divided into separate lots, each cultivated for
its own use by a single family. In the Aztec empire of
Mexico the supremacy of the Montezumas was much less
absolute. The lands were partly claimed by the Throne
and the Church; but the work on these lands was done by
dependants, not by the people as a whole. The remaining
lands belonged to the separate cities or districts, and were
divided among the people. But a part of all produce
went into the public storehouses, and was under the con-
trol of the government. Among the partly civilized tribes
 116

THE ARYAN RACE.

of the southern United States — the Creek confederacy
and the adjoining tribes — all the land was the property of
the people, and was divided into separate lots, apportioned
to the separate families, though some degree of individual
ownership was also exercised. But a portion of all pro-
duce, alike of agriculture and of hunting, was obliged to
be placed in certain public storehouses for the use of the
people in case of necessity. These public stores -were
under the supreme control of the mico, or village head-
man, in whom we have a close representative of the similar
officer in Aryan communities, though the mico had besides
an important spiritual authority.

Coming now to the Aryan organization, we discover the
final stage in this gradual separation of interests. Here
also the land as a whole is the property of the community;
but it is divided among the families for their separate
use, and all trace of community in its produce is lost.
The wise system of public storehouses of the Indian village
does not exist, and the product of each separate field is
the sole property of the family cultivating it, to be dis-
posed of without supervisal. Thus in these several peo-
ples every stage of growth, from the pastoral complete
community in cattle to the Aryan partial community in
land, can be traced.

It is to this separation of interests in the common prop-
erty that we must look for the origin of that peculiar
clan-organization which is, in nearly a complete sense, a
special characteristic of the Aryan people. In this organi-
zation the individuality of the family persisted. There was
no merging of the smaller into a larger patriarchal family
group. Each household became an equal unit of the vil-
lage group, with equal rights in the common property, and
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

117

with an equal voice in the decision of all questions relating
to the general interests. The head of each family was a
full member of the community, and the government was in
the hands of these freemen, organized into a council. So
far as we can discern, this was the archaic condition of
the village community. The tendency to continue the patri-
archal organization had been checked by the division of in-
terests, and the separate yet equal rights of every freeman
in the common property. The principal questions necessary
to decide related to industrial affairs, and in the disposal
of these every house-father had acquired an equal right.

Yet the patriarchal tendency was checked, not killed.
Old ideas have a persistent vitality in barbarian commu-
nities. The members of each village viewed themselves
as kindred, descendants of a common ancestor, and in
each village there were certain families which were regarded
as more directly in the line of descent from the ancient
ancestor. A certain gradation of rank existed, dependent
on honor, not on privilege ; and when it became necessary
to choose a leader in war, or to elect some umpire in vil-
lage disputes, the choice most naturally fell on those
deemed to have a hereditary claim to authority. The offices
of chieftain and of village head-man thus arose. The vil-
lage was constituted on the type of the family. In the
latter a council was called to decide important affairs, and
in certain cases to elect a family head. It was the same
with the village. The council of freemen held the rights
of decision and of election ; but in both family and village
the choice usually fell on those having the best claim of
hereditary right, and the election often became a mere ac-
clamation in favor of the person recognized as the natural
chieftain.
 118

THE ARYAN RACE.

All this is not mere conjecture. There is abundant
historical evidence of the organization of the ancient Ar-
yans. It was evidently at once a communistic and a highly
democratic society. In its latter characteristic it was
markedly different from the patriarchal society, which was
aristocratic in tendency, and which naturally tended to
despotism ; while in all Aryan communities the ancient
claim of equality of rights and privileges has had persist-
ent vitality, even under grinding despotisms. All modern
democratic governments are direct outgrowths of the an-
cient organization of the Aryan village, while the despot-
isms of Asia are as direct resultants of the patriarchal
system.

One statement more is necessary in regard to the division
of property in ancient Arya ere we adduce the historical
testimony. Each village claimed the right of eminent
domain over a landed district of definite extent. But in
the management of this landed property there were three
separate interests to be considered, — the pastoral, the agri-
cultural, and the domestic. It is interesting to observe the
disposition of these. The pastoral interests retained their
old generalism. The pasture-lands were held in common,
for the feeding of the flocks of the villagers. The arable
lands, on the contrary, were equally divided among the
several families for cultivation. But, as if to prevent any
claim to individual ownership, these lands were periodi-
cally redistributed. This system of redistribution is still
maintained in Russia. Finally, the village plot was di-
vided into house-lots, which were the absolute domains of
their proprietors. Each family held separate ownership in
its house and the plot of ground surrounding, and perhaps
partly for that reason jealously guarded it. Each man’s
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE. 119

house was liis stronghold; it was the only spot of earth
in which he could claim individual ownership ; and every
man who attempted to intrude on it without his permission
was an enemy whom he might repel as he would his dead-
liest foe. Possibly this may have had something to do with
the growth of that isolation of the household which became
so strongly developed in all Aryan communities.

If now we come to look for the historical evidences of this
assumed industrial and social status of the ancient Aryans,
it is remarkable, considering the numerous and radical
changes in human institutions since the opening of the
historic period, what clear traces of it remain. We have
already described the extant relics of a yet older Aryan
condition, — that of the patriarchal family. The clan sys-
tem has been equally persistent, and exists with little change
in Russia and India to-day, while historic traces of it can be
found in every other Aryan communit}7, with the exception
of that of Persia; and even in Persia the ancient demo-
cratic organization of the people can be clearly traced.

There is considerable evidence that the ancient Hellenes
and Romans were organized in village clans, with common
landed property. Morgan says that the Athenian gens,
or clan, in some cases, at least, held property in common.
Thucydides speaks of such communities as independent
systems of local government, and there was seemingly a
period in which there was no city of Athens, but many
village communities in Attica. The Roman gens was sim-
ilarly in possession of common lands, of a common clan-
name, and of common religious rites, burial-place, etc.
Mommsen describes “ village communities by the Tiber,”
out of which Rome arose. There is no doubt of the exist-
ence of such clan villages. The hills of Rome and the
 120

THE ARYAN RACE.

Acropolis of Athens formed originally centres of refuge
for the villagers in periods of invasion, and it is supposed
that in such hill forts we have the germ of many of the
ancient cities. The modern city of Calcutta had its origin
in an aggregation of several separate village communities.

The Celtic Aryans present similar indications. The
sense of kinship is deeply stamped on the Brehon laws of
ancient Ireland, and the Irish sept probably repeated the
joint family or the village clan of the Hindus. Private
ownership in land was common at the earliest historic
period, yet the rights of private owners were limited by the
communal rights of a brotherhood of kinsmen. Apparently
the original right to cultivate a fixed plot was then growing
into a claim of private ownership in that plot, as became
the case elsewhere. The power of the lord of the manor
over the communal lands was also beginning to show itself.
The fine or sept bore the name of its supposed ancestor,
and its territory also bore his name, — a condition which
has not yet died out. As elsewhere, the sept received
strangers by adoption; but this did not destroy the fiction
of kinship.

In Scotland the village community was a much more
persistent institution. It left its marks as late as the time
of Sir 'Walter Scott, who discovered traces of such an
institution in the islands of Orkney and Shetland. Very
recently, in the Lowlands of Scotland, in the borough of
Lauder, a condition of affairs has been discovered closely
analogous to the antique village community system.1 Sir
Henry Maine has also traced in France an indication of a
like condition of affairs, despite the violent revolutions to
which that country has been subjected.

1 Maine’s Village Communities, p. 95.
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

121

The facts relating to the Teutonic village communities,
as traced by Von Maurer in his valuable series of works on
the subject, and of vestiges of the same institution in Eng-
land, as shown by Nasse, may be here epitomized. The
ancient Teutonic agricultural group consisted of a number
of families holding a certain well-defined tract of land.
This tract was divided into three portions, known as the
mark of the township or village, the common mark, or
waste land, and the arable mark, or cultivated area. These
three sections were held under very different conditions.
The waste was the common property of the community,
held for purposes of pasturage, for gathering fire-wood, and
the like. It was the analogue of the old pastoral domain.1
The village section was divided into house and garden
plots, each the sole property of the family occupying it.
No one, not even the officers of the law, had the right to
intrude upon the family domain. There the house-father
was absolute lord. The arable mark seems in almost
every case to have been divided into three great fields,
only two of which were cultivated in any one year, the third
lying fallow. But tillage was not in common. Each house-

1 The waste formed the line of demarcation between different com-
munities,— the wooded region of the hunter, the hostile border-land
which the foot of the invader müst traverse. We have survivals of the
word which designated it in Denmark, or the Danes’ Mark ; in the
March or battle-border between England and Wales ; and in the marquis
or markgraf, the guardian of the mark. The waste mark was also the
seat of exchange of products between villages, the region of the market.
The forest of the waste was the temple of the Teutons, the home of the
unknown and uncanny, of ghost and goblin. It was the least-known and
most-dreaded of their dominions. Here dwelt Odin, the god of the
mark, the spirit of the tree and the forest breath, the god of the wind
and the tempest. Within the village domain dwelt order and peace ;
there man was master. But in the waste land beyond, terror was lord,
and the supernatural held high carnival.
 122

THE ARYAN RACE.

holder had his family lot in each of the three fields, which
he tilled by his own labor and that of the members of his
family, while he had absolute rights in the disposal of its
produce. But he could not cultivate as he pleased. He
must sow the same crop as the rest of the community, and
observe fixed rules as to modes and times of cultivation.
Nor could he interfere with the rights of other families to
sheep and cattle pasturage in the fallow lands, or in the
cultivated lands after the harvest. The rules of custom
governing the common interests were very intricate, and
extended to minute details. Many of them had come
down from very ancient times, while others were formed as
new questions arose. There was little difficulty in enforc-
ing them ; they had almost the force of sacred laws. The
main evidence of gradual change we can discover is that
from the antique periodical redistribution of family lots to
the continued cultivation of a single lot, and finally to the
restrictive ownership of this lot.

As to ancient evidences of this condition, we may quote
from Caesar, in his description of the Suevi (Swabians) :
“ They have no private and separate fields,” and “none
have fixed fields and private boundaries, but the magistrates
and princes in assembly annually divide the ground in
proportion and in place among the people, changing the
arable land every year.” 1 Tacitus gives testimony to the
same effect, saying that the lands were held by the farmers
in common, and the fields occupied in rotation. “They
change their tillage land annually, and let much lie fal-
low. . . . They do not hedge their meadows, nor water
their gardens, and they cultivate only com.” 2

1   De Bello Gallico, iv. 1, and vi. 22.

2   Germania, 25-26.
 THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VILLAGE.

123

[Prometheus]

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.

[Prometheus]

The worship of ancestors seems to have been almost
universal among mankind in a certain stage of develop-
ment. Traces of it can yet be found in all parts of the
earth. But, so far as appears, it became a well-defined aud
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 135

largely exclusive system only among the Chinese and the
ancient Aryans. And it is in all probability to this wor-
ship of its ancestors by the members of the Aryan house-
hold that we owe the peculiar secrecy of family life, the
supremacy of the house-father, and the strong resistance
to intrusion upon the domestic domain. According to the
theory of Cox, the original ancestor of the family became
a deity whom the survivors had to worship and propitiate.
His burial obsequies needed to be duly performed, and
rites of sacrifice to be paid to him. This could be done
only by the eldest son, his legal representative. Thus the
house-father became the house-priest, and the continuance
of the family a religious necessity. To let it die out from
lack of offspring would have been impious, and to this was
due the practice of adoption, in default of male heirs,
which afterwards became so extended a custom in the
Aryan clans. But the tendency was to reduce every kind
of association to that of kinship ; and this idea was kept
up long after the free adoption of strangers had rendered
it an utter myth. To the position of the father as the
family priest and the offerer of rites to the ancestral deity,
whom he represented, we owe his supremacy as the family
ruler. The family was a composite one, made up of sev-
eral generations of the liviug and the dead, of all of whom
the house-father stood as the central point. It was a sa-
cred group, which it was his duty to keep together, and to
suppress all insubordination that might threaten its integ-
rity. Doubtless from the position he thus held gradually
rose his absolute power and the unquestioning submission
to his decrees. He spoke with the voice of the whole body
of ancestral deities, and was responsible to the house-gods
for the rightful performance of his sacred function.
 136

THE ARYAN RACE.

Hearn, in his “ Aryan Household,” has given a highly
interesting description of this ancient system, which we
may here epitomize, at least in its more trustworthy de-
tails. Kinship and community of worship and property
were the ties which first bound men into definite groups,
the family bond expanding into the first national bond, —
that of industrial and religious communism. It began
with the family, extended to the clan, and thence to the
tribe, attaining a very considerable extension before it was
replaced by the territorial system of civilized nations.
Each family had its common burial-place. This in later
times became the common burial-place of the clan or
gens, in which it would have been sacrilege to inter a
stranger. In very early times it is probable that the
bodies of deceased ancestors were interred in the dwelling.
At a later date they were kept for some time in the dwell-
ing, and then interred outside. These customs are still in
vogue in China. They gave the deceased a very close
relation to the house, and to a very late period the hearth-
stone seemed to be considered in the light of an altar to
the ancestors, the sacred stone of oblation to the departed.

The common meal was apparently the symbol of the
common worship, though probably this symbolic signifi-
cance was only recognized in meals specially prepared in
honor of the dead. Spirits could not be expected to come
unless specially invited and their share set apart. Yet
they did not consume the gross part of the food, but only
its spiritual essence, — all objects being supposed to have
souls. In this we seem to have the origin of sacrifice,
while the after-consumption of the food by the priests was
but a sharing in the holy banquet, of which the deities had
regaled themselves on the spiritual portion. Many illus-
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OE ARYAN WORSHIP. 137

trations might be drawn from ancient history of such
sacred feasts to the deities of families and clans, and
feasts to the dead are celebrated in Russia to the present
day.

The evidences of this ancestral worship are abundant.
The Hindu Vedas distinctly recognize the worship of the
Pitris, or fathers, and to this worship the Sama-Veda is
specially devoted. “ The Piti'is are invoked almost like
gods; oblations are offered to them, and they are believed
to enjoy in company with the gods a life of never-ending
felicity.” 1 A similar belief existed among the Iranians,
who worshipped the Fravashis, or spirits of the dead, and
especially of their own ancestors. The latter worship was
conducted with strict privacy. With the Hellenes the
family worship of the house-spirits — the “Gods of the
Hearth,” or “ Gods of the Fathers ”—was common. On
the Romans it had a specially deep hold, and reduced the
public worship almost to a nonentity. For these house-
spirits we have many names, — the Genius, Lares, Penates,
Manes, and Vesta. Vesta was the hearth, with its holy
flame. The Lares and Penates were the true house-spir-
its, the ancestral gods so dear to the Roman heart. We
know little about this family worship with the Slavs,2
Teutons, and Celts. AVe have no ancient literature from
the pre-Christian days of these peoples. Strong efforts
were made by the Christian Church to abolish every phase
of heathen worship, yet it has not succeeded in suppress-

1   Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 46.

2   Ralston tells us that “the worship of the Slavonic Lares and
Penates, who were, as in other lands, intimately connected with the fire-
burning on the domestic hearth, retained a strong hold on the affections
of the people even after Christianity had driven out the great gods of
old.” — Songs of the Russian People, p. 84.
 138

THE ARYAN RACE.

ing all traces of the ancestral deity, — which indeed has
left its mark in the guardian or patron saint of the Catholic
devotee, and in the feasts to the dead among the Slavs
and elsewhere. With the Russians the ancient family god
yet lingers as the Domovoy, —the house-spirit, or angel in
the house; reproducing the “hero in the house” of the
Greeks, the Roman “ man in the house,” and the Teutonic
Hasing. Among the Teutonic nations, indeed, there are
man}7 traces of the house-spirit in its later form of a
half-demonic goblin. We have it in the Ilausgeist, the
Kobold, the Brownie, the Robin Goodfellow, etc., — prank-
ish elves, ready to do the house and hearth work of neat
housekeepers during the night, but apt to leave annoyance
for the idle and careless. These house-goblins could be
propitiated by offerings left them,—probably a relic of
the ancient sacrifice. But they became the foes of those
who neglected them, as the ancient house-spirits became
the deadly enemies of those who failed to offer them due
libations. In short, as to the general existence of ances-
tral worship, either as a persistent fact or as a transformed
survival, we may quote from Tylor: “In our time the dead
still receive worship from far the larger half of mankind.” 1
The Aryan house-worship seems to have been conducted
with inviolable secrecy. Each family had its own ritual,
which was a precious secret, never to be divulged, and
which appears indeed to have had the force of an amulet.
Thus in the Rig-Veda the antique poet sings: “I am
strong against my foes by reason of the hymns that I hold
from my family and that my father has transmitted to
me.” In Greek legend we find that Polyphemus scorns
the authority of Zeus; he will recognize no god but his
1 Primitive Culture, ii. 112..
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 139

own father» Poseidon. So the Russian peasant of to-day
draws a line of distinction between his own Domovoy and
that of his neighbor. The former will aid, but the latter
will seek to injure, him. The ancient house-spirit was the
house-guardian, who repelled thieves and warned tres-
passers. Little the ancient Aryan cared if the universe
had one or many authors. The gods of his own hearth
were nearer and dearer to him than these remote deities of
all mankind.

As the Aryan family expanded into the Aryan clan, so
did the house-worship into that of the clan, whose rites
were paid to the remote ancestor of the group of kindred.
It is a question of some interest to what limit of ancestry
the family worship extended. Mr. Hearn thinks it was lim-
ited to the great-grandfather, and that the household might
be made up of six generations, three of the living, and
three of the dead. At this point, in his view, the house
unfolded into the clan, colonists being sent out to found
new households, and the immediate kinship of the family
being exchanged for the more remote kinship of the clan,
while the common deity worshipped by the several families
was the spirit of the ancestral founder of the clan. It is
doubtful, however, if any such definite rule prevailed; and
no doubt inclination or internal disorganization had much
to do with the disintegration of families and the growth
of the wider and less intimate association of the village
or clan. The existing Chinese custom is of interest in this
connection. As a rule the Chinese family worships the
spirit of the father and the grandfather. But this home-
worship never seems to extend beyond the third generation
of the dead. The Chinese clan, on the contrary, worships
its remote ancestor whenever known, and the grave of such
 140

THE ARYAN RACE.

an ancestor, if preserved, forms a sacred centre for the
religions services of the clan. The descendants of Confu-
cius, for instance, worship their great ancestor to-day as
the chief of the gods to them.

So the Aryan clan-worship was as devoted and as exclu-
sive as that of the family. Special gods of tribes and
clans existed among the Teutonic and Celtic tribes, while
the worship of the ancestor of the gens was a common
custom with the Greeks and Romans. Mr. Hunter tells us
that it is the first duty of a good Hindu to worship his vil-
lage god.1 Among the Semitic tribes evidences of the same
custom exist. The Bible, in its story of the Hebrew patri-
archs, yields testimony to this effect. With the Aryan clans
this worship was secret and exclusive. A strong feeling
existed against intrusion on the sacred rites of a Greek or
Roman gens. We are told, indeed, that the presence of a
stranger at the religious ceremonies of a Greek clan was
intolerable. And these ceremonies seem to haAre been held
at the common burial-place of the clan, — a strong indica-
tion that the worship was paid to the original ancestor.
All these ceremonies, however, were conducted with such
secrecy that we know very little concerning them. There
seems to have been a dread that a god might be stolen or
seduced away if not guarded with strict care. For this
reason, perhaps, the name of the tutelary deity of Rome
was always kept a profound State secret.

On the other hand, the worshippers might reject or desert
their god, if found weak to redress their wrongs or to pro-
tect them from evil. Several amusing illustrations of this
may be given. The Finns of to-day in time of need do
not hesitate to neglect their gods and pray to the more

1 Orissa, i. 95.
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 141

powerful Russian deities. So we are told, as an incident
in Roman history, that “ the statue of the Cumaean Apollo
came near to being thrown into the sea, from an ill-timed
fit of weeping. Fortunately it was considered that the
tears were for his old friends the Greeks, not for his new
friends the Romans.” 1 As a more modem instance we
may quote : “ A prince of Nepaul, in his rage at the death
of a favorite wife, turned his artillery upon the temples of
his gods, and after six hours’ heavy cannonading effectu-
ally destroyed them.”2

It was this secret, domestic, and clannish worship of
the Aryans that hindered the public worship from gaining
a controlling influence, and checked the growth of a power-
ful priesthood in most branches of the race. There was
not the almost complete hindrance to the growth of my-
thology that we find in the early Chinese; yet the worship
of ancestors was sufficiently strong to prevent mythology
from becoming dominant as a religion. Beneath it, almost
unseen by us, yet vital and vigorous, lay the more ancient
s}Tstem, that of the worship of family and gentile ancestral
gods. Yet ancient Arya was not without its other deities.
Its people possessed an active imagination, and could not
avoid being vividly impressed with the mighty powers and
strange phenomena of Nature, which they naturally en-
deavored to explain or comprehend. And, as in every
ancient effort at such explanation, they arrived at the con-
ception that these phenomena were the work of intelligent
and powerful beings, the overruling gods of earth and
heaven. In the primitive era they had nothing that can
fairly be called a mythology. They worshipped Nature as

1   Saint Augustine, City of God, i. 101.

2   W. E. Hearn, The Aryan Household, p. 25.
 142

THE ARYAN RACE.

they saw it, with no idea of symbolism and no miscon-
ception of the meaning of their objects of reverence. It
was yet summer and winter, daylight and darkness, the
bright dawn and the terrible storm, thunder and sunshine,
which they looked upon as the powerful deities of the uni-
verse, and upon whom they called for protection, or whose
dark wrath they deprecated in cases of peril beyond the
power of their humbler domestic deities. Only by slow
degrees did these elemental gods lose their original signifi-
cance. Probably at an early period the Aryan imagination
had begun to invest them with metaphorical significance.
The Clouds became the cows of the gods, whose milk re-
freshes the earth, but which at times are hidden in caves
by robbers. The Dawn, the beautiful spirit, sends her
glad eye-beams over the earth, and is speedily pursued by
the glowing Sun. In winter the Earth mourns for the dead
Summer, which lies buried in the dark prison of Hades.
Or the Summer sleeps in the land of the Niflungs, the
cold mists, guarded by the serpent Fafnir, while her buried
treasures are watched by the dwarf Andvari. Hundreds
of such metaphors gradually grew around the movements
of the sun, the winds, and the clouds, the demon Night,
and the bright god Day, the all-destroying "Winter and the
all-restoring Summer. In time the origin of these meta-
phors became obscured, and even the derivation of the
names of many of the gods was forgotten. Anthology
gradually rose out of the primitive worship of the powers
of Nature, and the endless biographical details which
surrounded the mythologie deities testify to the original
activity of the Aryan imagination.

An interesting feature in the primitive Aiyan mythology
is the selection of the bright, broad arch of the heavens
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OE ARYAN WORSHIP. 143

as the primal deity, the great father-spirit of gods and
men. This deification of the sky was not peculiar to the
Allans. We find traces of it in Babjfionian, Chinese, and
American worship. But at a very remote period in the
civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia, Mexico and Peru,
the sun gained supremacy as the first and greatest of the
gods, the prime spirit of the universe. With the Aryans
the sun was much later in attaining acknowledgment, and
the shining arch of the sky continued the deity supreme.
This is the deity that descended to historic times as the
great father-god, the object of highest reverence to most
of the Aryan peoples when first they emerged into history.
Varuna, the elder god of the Vedas, was the veiling
heavens. He stands opposed to his brother Mitra, who
is the deity of the noontide sky, while Varuna appears to
represent the starlit firmament. We find this god again
in the Uranos of Greek mythology. He sits, in the words
of the Vedic poet, throned in splendor, clad in armor of
gold, and in a palace supported on a thousand columns,
while around him stand ready the swift messengers of his
will. At a later date another heaven-deity arose, Dyaus,
the god of the bright canopy of the day, before whose
worship that of Varuna died away. We have the same
god in the Zeus of the Greeks, the conqueror of his pre-
decessor, Uranos. He again appears in the Teutonic Tib,
the god of light. The Odin of the Scandinavians, with
the sun for his single eye, seems to be another lieaven-
deit}7. Again we have the heaven-god in his paternal
aspect as the Dyaus-pitar of the Hindus, the Zeus Pater
of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, — the kindly and
beneficent progenitor of gods and men, the supreme par-
ental deity of all that has life.
 144

THE ARYAN RACE.

With the Hindus the sun was S3Tmbolized by a later
deity, the golden-haired Indra, the god of light, whose
arrows were each hundred-pointed and thousand-feathered.
With the lightning for his beard, and brandishing a golden
whip, he drove his flaming chariot across the heavens.
The rains and the harvest were his gifts to mankind, while
the demons which threatened the human race found in him
a terrible foe. In Balder the Beautiful, the lord of light
of the Teutons, we discover the Sun-god again, dying
yearly at the winter solstice by the hand of the blind god
Hödr, the demon of darkness, and rising again in his
beauty as the shining summer returns.

But we cannot here attempt to name the interminable
list of deities of the later Aryan worship, many of them,
particularly in Greek n^tholog}7, borrowed from neighbor-
ing nations, and fitted, often ve^ awkwardty, into the
Olympian court of the Hellenic gods. It will suffice to say
that this ancient S3Tstem of worship is preserved to us in its
most archaic integrit3' in the Vedas, — the work which holds
the oldest recorded thoughts of man on natural phenom-
ena. In it we have the deific host as the Devas, the
shining ones ; the dawn as Ushas, the bright, loving, gen-
tle, white, and beautiful; the deities all simple in their
attributes, and without the wide garment of m3Tth that
afterward enfolded them, — plainty the elements half
transformed into the immortals.1 We find ourselves here

1 A striking instance exists in tlie story of Agni, the Fire-god of the
Hindus. The Vedas tell us that two sticks were the parents of this
deity, who was no sooner born than he turned upon and devoured them.
Here is the original method of obtaining fire by the friction of two sticks
transparently displayed. Yet Agni soon became one of the mightiest
of the gods. He grew rapidly from his humble origin, flaming upward,
as it were, from earth to heaven.
 THE DOUBLE SYSTEM OF ARYAN WORSHIP. 145

[Prometheus]

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.