THE ARYANS IN SCIENCE AND HISTORY. 685 



confirm what has been said on this point. The conquest of 

 France, Spain, England, and other portions of Europe, by the 

 Romans took place about two thousand years ago. The evidences 

 and results of this conquest, in the languages, institutions, feat- 

 ures, and character of the conquered nations, are everywhere ap- 

 parent at the present day. No one dreams of doubting them, and 

 this simply because we have written and monumental evidence of 

 the facts. Why should we doubt that the results of a conquest 

 made two thousand years earlier may survive in equal vigor, 

 though in the nature of things no written or monumental record 

 of it can have come down to our time ? The memorials of it 

 which remain are of a different, but, to an ethnologist, not less 

 convincing character. One of these may be noted in the other 

 fact to which reference has been made. A very high authority 

 in comparative philology. Dr. Friedrich Mliller, in his great 

 work on Linguistic Science {Grundriss der Sprachivissenscliaft), 

 after remarking that the numerical system of the Indo-Germanic 

 languages rests on the decimal system, adds that the Celtic alone 

 shows traces of the vigesimal system, which are to be referred 

 to the influence of the Basque language. The Iberian Basques 

 reckon by digits to twenty, which is, in their language, a distinct 

 word, liogei (or oguei); forty is herrogei, "two hogeis"; eighty 

 is " four hogeis " ; and ninety-seven would be " four hogeis and 

 ten-seven." The Celtic has a double system. Twenty is fiche, 

 a corruption of the Aryan term ; for forty the Celt can say 

 either cethor cha, an Aryan contraction of " four-tens," or da 

 fichit, "two twenties." Ninety-seven is either "nine tens and 

 seven," or, as in the Basque, " four twenties and ten-seven." Now, 

 the French language, as is well known, adopts both methods, in 

 different parts of its ascending scale. As far as sixty it proceeds 

 by the decimal system ; then it abruptly changes to the vigesimal. 

 The Frenchman, when for ninety-seven he says " four-twenties- 

 ten-seven" {quatre-vingt-dix-sept), has no idea — unless he is a 

 philologist — that he is translating an ancient Iberian idiom into a 

 corrupt form of Aryan speech. If we consider what this fact 

 really signifies, we shall see that the whole ethnological history of 

 France is embodied in it. This French system of enumeration, 

 now in actual use, tells us that the people who employ it are 

 mainly of Iberian origin ; that an Aryan language in its most cor- 

 rupt and disintegrated form, the Celtic, was once imposed upon 

 them ; that this has again given place to the Latin form, which 

 has been further mangled and debased by the influence of a still 

 later Teutonic conquest ; and that through the whole of these over- 

 lying strata, caste imposed upon caste, the vigorous Iberian ele- 

 ment has forced its way to the light, and governs to this day, 

 in this composite population, that most striking manifestation 



