290 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



mental purpose, as would prove nothing even between races 

 which were really related to each other. With these draw- 

 backs it is only to be expected that Hellenic anthropology 

 should be inconclusive and inconsistent in detail ; but for the 

 same reason it will be the more noteworthy if we find that its 

 main outlines still prove serviceable as a working hypothesis. 



70. One cardinal belief in particular could hardly have 

 passed into common acceptance if it had not been founded 

 upon appreciable fact. The Greeks of the classical period 

 firmly believed themselves to be a mixed race, and held 

 further that each of the primary components of the mixture 

 was itself composite ; and variously composed in different 

 districts. Stripped of its mythical and personal presentation, 

 their view in outline was that a little leaven of a race of 

 superior natural endowments, to which the name of Hellene 

 more peculiarly belongs, had descended from South 

 Thessaly, if not from Macedon, and had worked among a 

 great mass of non-Hellenic barbarians, until the whole was 

 leavened with Hellenic culture. Herodotus affirms dis- 

 tinctly that the inhabitants of Attica, and of some other 

 districts, were not originally Hellenes, and had become so 

 by acquiring Hellenic language and institutions. Thuky- 

 dides adds that the superior race need never have been 

 many in number, and that they owed their influence to the 

 superiority of their civilisation, and not to any appreciable 

 displacement of population. 



71. The aboriginal pre-Hellenic stock passed under 

 many names, among which " Pelasgian," the commonest 

 and least vaguely conceived, passed in some measure into 

 generic use. Prehistoric forts and other remains, mysterious 

 cults and grotesque customs, archaic words of uncertain 

 meaning, were explained as relics of "Pelasgian" barbarism; 

 some Greek-speaking tribes in a backward stage of culture 

 were thought to be still imperfectly "Hellenised"; and other 

 remnants of earlier stocks lingering on either side of the 

 ALgean highlands or on capes and islands, and still speak- 

 ing a language which could not be recognised as Hellenic, 

 were regarded as actual survivals of " Pelasgian," " Hele- 

 gian," or " Minyan " peoples. A variety of evidence points 



