NATURE IN MOTION. 83 



elements they rapidly developed to a high degree of power 

 and culture, but the latter withered and disappeared as 

 rapidly again, for* it was not grown on its native soil, not 

 favored by the sun of their true home. Hence they either 

 ceased to have a real history as the Chinese and the In- 

 dians, or they became rude barbarians, as the Shemitic 

 races. 



Different, however, was the destiny of the third great 

 family of men, the Indo-Germans, who probably left, last 

 of all children, the paternal house of the East. In mil- 

 lions they poured wave after wave of migrating nations 

 into Europe, the last of which, fortunately, belongs already 

 to historical times, and under the well-known name of the 

 great Migration of Nations, changed completely the whole 

 ethnography of Europe. Still, among all the numerous 

 Indo-German nations, there lives not a single legend con- 

 nected with the time of their existence in Asia. They 



% 



seem to have broken with the past for ever, to have ut- 

 terly abandoned their early home, and perhaps even the 

 civilization which they left behind them. They have de- 

 voted themselves, instead, to that grand future, which alone 

 seems to embody, and to realize the great destiny of man- 

 kind. 



The only great riddle in the history of the migrations 

 of men, to which neither revelation nor science has as yet 

 offered the key, is the origin of the natives of this con- 

 tinent. Surmises abound, from the most absurd to the 

 most plausible. The poor redskins have been, at will, 

 transformed into exiled Jews or banished Chinese ; their 

 language has been called Syriac, Welsh, and Celtic. Their 



