342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of that most wholesome state of mind suspended judgment ; to 

 assume the objective truth of speculations which, from the nature 

 of the evidence in their favor, can have no claim to be more than 

 working hypotheses. 



The history of the "Aryan question " affords a striking illustra- 

 tion of these general remarks. 



About a century ago, Sir William Jones pointed out the close 

 alliance of the chief European languages with Sanskrit and its 

 derivative dialects now spoken in India. Brilliant and laborious 

 philologists, in long succession, enlarged and strengthened this 

 position until the truth that Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, 

 Latin, Lithuanian, Slavonian, German, Celtic, and so on, stand to 

 one another in the relation of descendants from a common stock 

 became firmly established, and thenceforward formed part of the 

 permanent acquisitions of science. Moreover, the term "Aryan" 

 is very generally, if not universally, accepted as a name for the 

 group of languages thus allied. Hence, when one speaks of 

 "Aryan languages," no hypothetical assumptions are involved. 

 It is a matter of fact that such languages exist, that they present 

 certain substantial and formal relations, and that convention 

 sanctions the name applied to them. But the close connection of 

 these widely differentiated languages remains altogether inexpli- 

 cable, unless it is admitted that they are modifications of an origi- 

 nal relatively undifferentiated tongue ; just as the intimate affini- 

 ties of the Romance languages French, Italian, Spanish, and the 

 rest would be incomprehensible if there were no Latin. The 

 original or " primitive Aryan " tongue, thus postulated, unfortu- 

 nately no longer exists. It is a hypothetical entity, which corre- 

 sponds with the " primitive stock " of generic and higher groups 

 among plants and animals ; and the acknowledgment of its for- 

 mer existence, and of the process of evolution which has brought 

 about the present state of things philological, is forced upon us 

 by deductive reasoning of similar cogency to that employed about 

 things biological. 



Thus, the former existence of a body of relatively uniform dia- 

 lects, which may be called primitive Aryan, may be added to the 

 stock of definitely acquired truths. But it is obvious that, in 

 the absence of writing or of phonographs, the existence of a lan- 

 guage implies that of speakers. If there were primitive Aryan 

 dialects, there must have been primitive Aryan people who used 

 them ; and these people must have resided somewhere or other on 

 the earth's surface. Hence philology, without stepping beyond its 

 legitimate bounds and keeping speculation within the limits of bare 

 necessity, arrives, not only at the conceptions of Aryan languages 

 and of a primitive Aryan language, but of a primitive Aryan peo- 

 ple and of a primitive Aryan home, or country occupied by them. 



