274 THE ARYAN QUESTION. n 



But the close connection of these widely differ- 

 entiated languages remains altogether inexplicable, 

 unless it is admitted that they are modifications of 

 an original relatively undifferentiated tongue; just 

 as the intimate affinities 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 postu- 

 lated, unfortunately no longer exists. It is a hy- 

 pothetical entity, which corresponds with the 

 " primitive stock " of generic and higher groups 

 among plants and animals; and the acknowledg- 

 ment of its former 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 em- 

 ployed about things biological. 



Thus, the former existence of a body of rela- 

 tively uniform dialects, which may be called primi- 

 tive Aryan, may be added to the stock of definite- 

 ly acquired truths. But it is obvious that, in the 

 absence of writing or of phonographs, the exist- 

 ence of a language 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 neces- 

 sity, arrives, not only at the conceptions of Aryan 



