COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



term a " family-tree." And on the general prin- 

 ciples of hereditary relationship, we see that ob- 

 jects near the common trunk will depart less 

 widely from the primitive ancestral type, and 

 will therefore resemble each other more closely, 

 than objects far up on the ends of the branches. 

 A comparison of the different races of Aryan 

 men would bring out the same results as the 

 comparison of their languages. After making all 

 allowances for the intermixture of the Aryans 

 with divers aboriginal races in Europe and Asia, 

 it remains generally admitted that every Aryan 

 language is spoken by men who are predomi- 

 nantly Aryan in blood. Now it would be im- 

 possible to arrange Hindus, Greeks, Italians, 

 Russians, Germans, and English in any linear 

 series. We can only divide and subdivide, ar- 

 ranging them in groups that diverge and re- 

 diverge. Such must always be the case when we 

 have to deal with phenomena due to hereditary 

 relationship * and wherever we find a set of ob- 

 jects thus arranged in groups within groups, 

 converging at the bottom and diverging at the 

 top, we have the very strongest possible prima 

 facie ground for asserting hereditary relation- 

 ship. 



Coming now to our main thesis, we can be- 

 gin to appreciate the strength of the evidence 

 in favour of the derivation theory, which is 

 furnished by the classification of animals, as ef- 

 386 



