570 MIGRATIONS OF RACES OF MEN CONSIDERED HISTORICALLY. 



SO spreads over another race or nation its language, its literature, 

 its religion, its institutions, its customs, or some one or more of 

 these sources of influence, as to impart its own character to the nation 

 so influenced, and thus to substitute its own for the original type. In 

 such a process the infusion of new blood from the stronger people to 

 the weaker may be comparatively slight, yet, if sufficient time be 

 allowed, the process may end by a virtual identification of the two. Of 

 course, when there is much intermairiage, not only does the change 

 proceed faster, but it tells on the permeating as well as on the perme- 

 ated race. The earliest recorded instance of this diffusion of a civiliza- 

 tion with little immixture of blood is to be found in the action of the 

 Greek language, ideas, and manners upon the countries round the east- 

 ern half of the Mediterranean, and i^articularly upon Asia Minor. 

 The native languages, to some extent, held their ground for a while in 

 the wilder parts of the interior, but the upper classes and the whole 

 type of culture became everywhere Hellenic. In the same way the 

 Eomans Romanized Gaul and Spain and the more fertile regions of 

 North Africa. In the same way the Arabs, in the centuries immedi- 

 ately after Mohammed, Arabized not only Egypt and Syria, but the 

 whole of North Africa down to and including the maritime parts of 

 Morocco, and ha^•e in later times, though to a far smaller extent, estab- 

 lished the influence of their language and religion on the coasts of 

 East Africa and in parts of the East Indian Archipelago. There is 

 reason to believe, though our data are scanty, that in somewhat simi- 

 lar way the Aryan tribes, who entered Iiulia at a very remote time, dif- 

 fused their language, religion, and customs over northern Hindustan 

 as far as the Bay of Bengal, changing to some extent the dark races 

 whom they found in ])ossession of the country, but being also so com- 

 mingled with those more numerous races as to lose much of their own 

 character. Hinduism and languages derived from Sanskrit came to 

 prevail from the Indus to the Brahmaputra, although it would seem 

 that to the east of the Jumna the proportion of Aryan intruders was 

 very small. We ourselves in India are giving to the educated and 

 wealthier class so nmch that is English in the way of ideas arid litera- 

 ture, that if the process continues for anotlier century, our tongue may 

 have become the lingua frauMi of India, and our type of civilization 

 have extinguished all others. Yet if this happens it will happen with 

 no mixture of blood between the European and the native races, possi- 

 bly with little social intimacy between them. The instances just men- 

 tioned show in what different ways and varying degrees assimilation 

 may take place. In some of them the assimilated race still retains a 

 distinct national chnractei'. The Moor of Morocco, for instance, differs 

 from the Arab mucli as the Greek-si)eaking Syrian and the Latin-speak- 

 ing Lusitanian differed from a Greek of Attica or a Roman of Latium. 

 But the Finnish tribes of northern and eastern Russia, Yoguls, Tcher^- 

 niisses, Tchuvasses, and Mordvins, who have been gradually Russified 



