XII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 445 



quality of prestige, offer no compensating advantages in respect 

 of clearness and scientific accuracy. It would be well if innova- 

 tors in these matters were to take to heart the sober language of 

 Dr Ehrenreich, who reminds us that the accepted names are, 

 what they ought to be, "purely conventional," and "historically 

 justified," and "should be held as valid until something better 

 can be found to take their place 1 ." Meanwhile can anything 

 more illogical be imagined than, for instance, the fierce objections 

 to "Caucasic" by the very writers who meekly accept "Hamitic" 

 and "Semitic"? Doubtless, as we all know, the multitudinous 

 populations covered by the symbol "Caucasic" did not originate 

 in the Caucasus; but, on the other hand are the objectors pre- 

 pared to assert that "Shem" or "Ham" had ever any ethnic 

 origin at all, were ever even so much as mythical eponymous 

 heroes, such as "Hellen," "Italus," "Brutus" and the rest of 

 them? It was considerations such as these, weighing so strongly 

 in favour of current usage, that induced me stare per vias anti- 

 quas in the Ethnology, and consequently also in the present work. 

 Hence, here as there, the Caucasic Division retains its title, 

 together with those of its main subdivisions Hamitic, Semitic, 

 Keltic, Slavic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Iranic, Galchic and so on. 



The chief exception is "Aryan," a linguistic expression forced 

 by the philologists into the domain of Ethnology, where it has 

 no place or meaning 2 . There was of course a time when a com- 

 munity, or group of communities, existed probably in the steppe 

 region between the Carpathians and the Hindu-Kush, by whom 

 the Aryan mother-tongue was evolved, and who still for a time 

 presented a certain uniformity in their physical characters, were, 

 in fact, of Aryan speech and type. But while their Aryan speech 



both sides of the Mediterranean, I proposed the form "Afro-European" (Eth. 

 p. 409). Hence it was with some surprise that I found myself charged with 

 plagiarism by the originator of Eurafrican in its objectionable sense, a sense 

 in which I have never used it, and which I hold in the strongest aversion. Nor 

 is Eurafrican a proper substitute for Caucasic, because it leaves out the vast 

 Asiatic and wide-spread Indonesian sections of this division. 



1 "Diese Namen sind natiirlich rein conventionell. Sie sind historisch 

 berechtigt...und mogen Geltung behalten, so lange wir keine zutrefferenden an 

 ihre Stelle setzen konnen" (Anthropologische Studien etc., p. 15). 



2 Eth. p. 395 sq. 



