272 THE ARYAN QUESTION TI 



body ; fondly imagining that the strategic move- 

 ment to the rear, which occasionally follows, in- 

 dicates a battle lost by science. And it must be 

 confessed that the error is too often justified by 

 the effects of the irrepressible tendency which 

 men of science share with all other sorts of men 

 known to me, to be impatient of that most whole- 

 some state of mind suspended judgment; to 

 assume the objective truth of speculations which, 

 from the nature of the evidence in their favour, 

 can have no claim to be more than working hypo- 

 theses. 



The history of the " Aryan question " affords a 

 striking illustration of these general remarks. 



About a century ago, Sir William Jones pointed 

 out the close alliance of the chief European 

 languages with Sanskrit and its derivative dia- 

 lects now spoken in India. Brilliant and laborious 

 philologists, in long succession, enlarged and 

 strengthened this position, until the truth that 

 Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Lithua- 

 nian, Slavonian, German, Celtic, and so on, stand 

 to one another in the relation of descendants from 

 a common stock, became firmly established, and 

 thenceforward formed part of the permanent 

 acquisitions of science. Moreover, the term 

 " Aryan " is very generally, if not universally, 

 accepted as a name for the group of languages 

 thus allied. Hence, when one speaks of " Aryan 

 languages," no hypothetical assumptions are in- 



