EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



of inquiry we have followed, something might 

 be brought out concerning the political organi- 

 zation of the primitive Aryans, which appears to 

 have been extremely simple. " The people," 

 says Professor Whitney, " was doubtless a con- 

 geries of petty tribes, under chiefs and leaders 

 rather than kings, and with institutions of a 

 patriarchal cast, among which the reduction to 

 servitude of prisoners taken in war appears not 

 to have been wanting." This inquiry, however, 

 would take us far beyond our limits, and might 

 be more advantageously conducted in another 

 connection, where we might avail ourselves of 

 the harmonious results which Sir Henry Maine, 

 Mr. Freeman, and others have elicited from a 

 comparative survey of Indo-European politics 

 and jurisprudence. But this most interesting and 

 profitable study must be postponed to another 

 occasion. In the present paper, confining my- 

 self chiefly to the material circumstances of the 

 primitive Aryans, I have endeavoured only to 

 give some idea of the method by which sound 

 conclusions are reached, through the study of 

 words, concerning the civilization of an age of 

 which the historic tradition has been utterly lost. 

 More than this could not well be attempted in 

 so brief an exposition. The examples have been 

 scanty, and from the nature of the subject they 

 may perhaps have seemed rather dry. It is not 

 in a moment that one can become fully possessed 

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