676 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Of the moral qualities of the race, the account given by the 

 historian — whom no one will suspect of hostile prejudice — is not 

 altogether so favorable. " Among their moral characteristics/' 

 he tells us, " the one most obvious is their bravery " — which (we 

 are elsewhere told) was combined with a remarkable and persist- 

 ent energy. " But this valor/' he adds, " was of the merciless 

 kind.'* Not only did their armies (in Scriptural phrase) " dash to 

 pieces " the fighting men of the nations opposed to them, allowing 

 apparently no quarter, but the women and children suffered in- 

 dignities and cruelties at the hands of the savage warriors which 

 the pen unwillingly records. " Spoil, it would seem, was disre- 

 garded in comparison with insult and vengeance ; and the brutal 

 soldiery cared little for silver or gold, provided they could indulge 

 freely in that thirst for blood which man shares with the hyena 

 and the tiger." This inclination to cruelty, as he shows more 

 fully in his subsequent account of the Persians, was a marked 

 characteristic of the race. Their ordinary punishments were of 

 the most barbarous nature. They were not content with merely 

 putting their criminals or enemies to death, but sought out in- 

 geniously the methods of execution that would cause the most 

 protracted torture. Crucifixion, impalement, flaying alive, and 

 the terrible infliction of "the boat," described with revolting 

 minuteness by Plutarch in his life of Artaxerxes, were common 

 methods. Scourging and mutilation — the lopping of hands and 

 feet, the tearing out of eyes — were the usual " secondary punish- 

 ments." 



This propensity to cruelty seems to be, in a certain way, con- 

 nected with another governing trait of the Aryan character — a 

 trait which, at first thought, might appear to be not merely alien 

 but opposed to that propensity. This trait may be described as a 

 constant and overwhelming sense of reverence. When we peruse 

 the earliest known compositions of this race, the Vedas and the 

 Avesta, and compare them with the Hebrew Scriptures and the 

 poems of Homer and Hesiod, we observe one striking difference. 

 With the Hebrews and Greeks religion was much, but their own 

 people, their national history, their laws and institutions, their 

 homes and their families, had a large place in their thoughts. 

 With the early Aryans, of the unmixed race, their gods were all 

 in all. Everything else, in comparison, was too insignificant to 

 be dwelt upon for a moment. In this great mass of their primi- 

 tive literature we find not a word relating to their history, except 

 the merest hints, thrown out incidentally and, in a manner, un- 

 consciously. With them man. and his interests were as nothing. 

 Why should not this worthless being, if he became offensive, be 

 treated like a noxious insect or poisonous reptile — be crushed, 

 impaled, flayed, or buried alive ? Thus we may see how, with this 



