THE ARYANS IN SCIENCE AND HISTORY. 679 



the excellence of a language ; and, though the Aryan speech un- 

 doubtedly ranks well in this quality, there are found to be many 

 languages in America and in Africa which decidedly surpass it. 

 In certain other characteristics it is anything but admirable. 

 Those who created and fashioned it seem to have been endowed 

 with a peculiar linguistic talent or language-making faculty, 

 which was not under the control of any logical force. What could 

 be more absurd than the preposterous gender-system which the 

 Sanskrit, the Greek, and the German have inherited from this 

 Aryan mother-tongue, and from whose ridiculous trammels the 

 speakers of all the later derived idioms in Asia and Europe have 

 been for centuries striving to shake themselves free ? The sense- 

 less superfluity of declensions and conjugations, the needless vari- 

 ety in the methods of forming the plural, the inordinate perplex- 

 ity of the irregular verbs, are only a few of the evidences to be 

 noted of the striking deficiency in logical and classifying power 

 which, amid all their unquestioned excellences, the earlier Aryan 

 languages everywhere betray. 



But, it will naturally be asked, if the primitive Aryans were 

 really a people of such moderate endowments, both in intellect 

 and in morality, how do we explain the immense progress and 

 the admitted headship and mastery among the nations of the 

 world which their descendants have attained in Europe ? The an- 

 swer is ready at hand, and, indeed, almost self-evident. The peo- 

 ple of Europe are of mixed race. They are Aryan exactly as the 

 modern Peruvians are Spanish, or as the modern Egyptians are 

 Arab. There is good reason to believe that primeval Europe was 

 inhabited by tribes belonging to. various races, differing consider- 

 ably in character, but all of them distinguished by a love of free- 

 dom and a sentiment of personal independence. These traits 

 caused the population to be broken up into numerous petty com- 

 munities, each of which fell an easy prey to the Aryan invaders. 

 The latter were not only, as we have seen, a race of remarkably 

 brave and energetic warriors, but they had also the immense ad- 

 vantage, for an invading force, of a disposition which led them to 

 render implicit obedience to their rulers. It is this trait of char- 

 acter which in Africa has often enabled the leader of a horde to 

 establish his sway over a vast agglomeration of disconnected tribes. 

 It is evident that in such a case, as in the case of the Turkish con- 

 quest of Asia Minor and eastern Europe, the subdued populations 

 may be superior to their conquerors in every quality except in the 

 capacity for combined effort. 



The earlier inhabitants of Europe seem to have been of three 

 distinct races — in the southeast Semitic, in the southwest Iberian, 

 in the north and center Uralian. The Semitic tribes, which peo- 

 pled Greece and probably a part of Italy and of the Mediterranean 



