PROFESSOR RIDGEWAY AND RACIAL ORIGINS 275 



tolerance, but a callous brutality of suppression, too often awaited 

 the mother-speech of the conquered. Of languages it may truly 

 be said, " tout casse, tout passe." Just as Heligoland stands the 

 sole remnant of a vanquished country, so do isolated tongues 

 like Basque in the West Pyrenees, and Hunza, south of the 

 Pamirs, remind us of realm upon realm of lost languages and 

 forgotten dialects. 



But apart from these considerations, the mere fact that at the 

 dawn of history certain dark-haired tribes used Aryan dialects 

 is by no means inconsistent with a previous conquest or sub- 

 jugation by a blond-haired race. In this matter we deal with 

 times of immemorial antiquity stretching far beyond the earliest 

 twilight of the Latin and Greek nations. In the gloom and 

 uncertainty which enshroud this remote period, an uncertainty 

 lifted only fitfully by the discoveries at Halstatt and at Knossos, 

 who can say what kingdoms rose and waned, what turbulent 

 streams of tribal conquest, after sweeping with irresistible force 

 over European countries, checked, halted, and finally ebbed 

 away, leaving only the dimmest vestiges of their power and 

 glory or perhaps no trace at all ? But for the accident of a 

 dry climate, who would have suspected the very existence of 

 such cultured languages as Sumerian and Assyrian, or even 

 that of Khotan ? You might as well argue that the Pliocene 

 horse was the original type of Equidce as allege Aryan to be the 

 Ursprache of the Arcadians or Picts. 



Not content with this rapid career over fields anthropologi- 

 cal and linguistic, Prof. Ridgeway next plunges hardily into the 

 thickets of sociology and of comparative legislation, and from 

 these brings back spoils even more surprising and unusual. 

 He alleges that social institutions and even religion are derived 

 from physical environment. " We might," he says, " as well ask 

 the Ethiopian to change his skin as to change radically his social 

 and religious ideas " ; and he goes on gravely to attribute the 

 success of Mahommedanism in tropical Africa to the fact that it 

 was " evolved " — save the mark — from a Semitic stock living in 

 a low latitude. Christianity is equally a Semitic religion, so 

 possibly it was the ten degrees of latitude between Jerusalem 

 and Mecca which in the tropics have trammelled and impaired 

 its progress. But if so, how account for the Christians in tropical 

 America, not to mention the flourishing churches in Uganda and 

 South Madras, or contrariwise the Mahommedan races such as 



