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A RETROSPECT AND A FORECAST. 31 
that, at least, much more might have been made of it, if the discoverers and those who 
succeeded them had been actuated by more humane and rational aims. 
Of the conquests of the Semitic languages, Christendom and the domain of the Prophet 
are the standing testimonies. If we add the from 350 to 380 millions who profess Chris- 
tianity to the 175 millions who obey the dictates of the Koran, it must be acknowledged 
that the Semites have done their share in making the world what it is. A people’s 
language contains the essence of its character and experience, and as the Bible is the 
highest product of Hebrew thought and speech, and the Koran of the language and ideas 
of the Arabs, these religious conquests may, in a certain sense, be set down as conquests 
of language. DuBois Reymond also credits the Semites with the creation of modern 
science: “The fearful earnestness of a religion which claimed for itself all knowledge 
* * %* imparted to humanity, in the lapse of centuries, that character of sobriety and 
of profundity which certainly fitted them better for patient research than did the light- 
hearted joy of life favored by the heathen religions.” 
We come lastly to ask what is the total of Aryan contribution to civilization and all 
that it implies. It cannot be denied that the three great religions of West Asia and 
Europe were the gift of the Semites. But the question naturally occurs whether the Jews, 
in the days of the Persian exile, may not have learned from Zoroastrian teachers some of 
the great truths which they were destined to impart to mankind. If Judaism be indebted 
to the Zendavesta, then to the Aryans will belong the glory of being the spiritual teachers 
of almost the whole human race. This is a problem, however, which is not yet solved and 
on which it would be vain to linger. Without robbing the Semites of any of the honour 
which has long been ascribed to them, the Aryans have had a share in the work of civiliza- 
tion which need fear no comparison with that of all the rest of mankind. In the East 
Sakyamuni, “of blameless life,” the “ finished model of all the virtues,” who holds a place in 
the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church as St. Josaphat, has been the spiritual teacher 
of more than a third of the human race. Even if we leave his work out of the list of 
Aryan conquests, there is still enough left to establish the claim of the Aryans to the first 
rank among the benefactors of mankind. The career of Greece alone may be set (religion 
apart) against all the achievements of the Semitic or “ Allophylian” races. Then Rome, in 
turn, laid the solid foundations of that modern civilization in which Teutons and Celts and 
Neo-Latins were to be fellow-workers, and in which the Slavonic nations have begun to 
have a part. All that Europe and America are to-day, and whatever of progress has been 
made in Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceanica during the last three centuries may be included 
in the Aryan conquest. 
It remains to inquire very briefly into the share which each of the European groups of 
tongues has had in the work of civilization. To pronounce on the relative importance of 
the great literatures of Europe would not be an easy task. Each of them has characteristic 
merits, to which the value of the language as an instrument of thought contributes ; each 
of them has its grandeur, its peculiar charms, which only those, perhaps, “to the manner 
born” can thoroughly appreciate. To every one who is normally constituted his own 
language and its literature must be supremely dear. But that fact ought not to prevent us 
from weighing carefully and deciding honestly as to the special claims of which justice 
demands the acknowledgment.* 


* Perhaps, no more telling instance could be adduced of the difference that lies between conquest in the vulgar 
