CH. XX. I CONDITIONS OF PBOGEESS. 275 



been rewarded by unlimited progressiveness. We can thus 

 dimly discern the way in which China has become immobile, 

 while Europe has become ever more and more mobile. But 

 beyond these most general indications of what has happened, 

 we can discern but little. We cannot tell precisely, for 

 example, why the European Aryans won the day by preserv- 

 ing a modicum of flexibility, rather than by enforcing such a 

 monotony of disposition as would kill out all flexibility. At 

 the earliest dawn of history the European portion of the 

 Aryan race already surpasses all other races, both in individual 

 variety of character and in longlieadedness. The details of 

 the process by which this superiority was gained are hidden 

 from us in the night of time. Upon one point, however, we 

 may profitably speculate. Among all the historic civiliza- 

 tions, the Europeon is the one of which we can most de- 

 cidedly assert tliat it is not autochthonous. The Aryans 

 who conquered Europe in successive Keltic, Italo-Hellenic, 

 Teutonic, and Slavonic swarms, were not the quiet, conser- 

 vative, stay-at-home people of prehistoric antiquity, but 

 were rather the elect of all the most adventurous and 

 flexible-minded portions of the tribally-organized population 

 of Central Asia. Their invasion of Europe was in this 

 respect like the subsequent invasion of England by the mis- 

 cellaneous hordes roughly described as Angles and Saxons, 

 Danes and Normans, and like the still later colonization of 

 North America by the most mobile and adventurous elements 

 of West-European society. We may fairly suppose that the 

 Aryan invad(;rs of Europe were the most supple-minded of 

 their race, — uhe " come-outers," perhaps, for whom the cako 

 of custom at home was getting too firmly cemented, but who 

 had Undergone sufficient social discipline to enable them to 

 get along with a less solid cake in future. However this 

 may be, the main point is that they were not aborigines but 

 colonizers, and as such were subjected to a great hetere 

 geneity of environing circumstances from the time when we 



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