790 EEPORT— 1891. 



descendants of one couple, the first father teing dolichocephalic and the first 

 mother brachycephalic. They might, after a time, all choose to speak an Aryan 

 language, but they could not choose their skulls, hut would have to accept them 

 from nature, whether dolichocephalic or brachycephalic. 



"Who, then, would dare at present to lift up a skull and say this skull must 

 have spoken an Arj'an language, or lift up a language and say this language must 

 have been spoken by a dolichocephalic skull ? Yet, though no serious student would 

 any longer listen to such arguments, it takes a long time before theories that were 

 maintained for a time by serious students, and were then surrendered by them, can 

 be completely eradicated. I shall not touch to-day on the hackneyed question of 

 the ' Home of the Aryas' except as a warniug. There are two quite distinct 

 questions concerning the home of the Aryas. 



When students of Philology speak of Aryas, they mean by Aryas nothing 

 but people speaking an Aryan language. They affirm nothing about skulls, skins, 

 hair, and all the rest. Arya with them means speakers of an Aryan language. 

 When, on the contrary, students of Physiology speak of dolichocephalic, ortho- 

 gnathic, euthycomic people, they speak of their physiological characteristics only, and 

 affirm nothing whatever about language. 



It is clear, therefore, that the home of the Aryas, in the proper sense of that 

 word, cau be determined by linguistic evidence only, while the home of a blue- 

 eyed, blond-haired, long-skulled, fair-skinned people can be determined by physio- 

 logical evidence only. Any kind of concession or compromise on either side is 

 simply fatal, and has led to nothing but a promiscuous slaughter of innocents. 

 Separate the two armies, and the whole physiological evidence collected by 

 D'Omalius d'llalloy, I^atham, and their followers will not fill more than an octavo 

 page ; while the linguistic evidence collected by Benfey and his followers will 

 not amount to more than a few words. Everything else is mere rhetoric. 



The physiologist is grateful, no doubt, for any additional skull whose historical 

 antecedents can be firmly established ; the philologist is grateful for an}' additional 

 word that can help to indicate the historical or geographical whereabouts of the 

 unknjwn speakers of Aryan speech. On these points it is possible to argue. 

 Thej' alone have a really scientific value in the eyes of a scholar, because, if there 

 is any difference of opinion on them, it is possible to come to an agreement. As 

 soon, however, as we go beyond these mere matters of fact, which have been 

 collected by real students, everything becomes at once mere vanity and vexation 

 of spirit. I know the appeals that have been made for concessions and some kind 

 of compromise between Physiology and Philology ; but lionest students know that 

 on scientific subjects no compromise is admissible. With regard to the home of 

 the Aryas, no honest philologist will allow liimself to be driven one step beyond 

 the statement that the unknown people who spoke Aryan languages were, at one 

 time, and before their final separation, settled somewhere in Asia. That may seem 

 very small comfort, but for the present it is all that we have a right to say. Even 

 this must be taken with the limitations which, as all true scholars know, apply to 

 speculations concerning what may have happened, say, five thousand or ten 

 thousand years ago. As to the colour of the skin, the hair, the eyes of those 

 unknown speakers of Aryan speech, the scholar says nothing ; and when he speaks 

 of their blood he knows that such a word can be taken in a metaphorical sense 

 only. If we once step from the narrow domain of science into the vast wilderness 

 of mere assertion, then it does not matter what we say. We may say, with Penka, 

 that all Aryas are dolichocephalic, blue eyed, and blond, or we may say, with 

 Pidtrement, that all Aryas are brachycephalic, with brown eyes and black hair.* 

 There is no difi'erence between the two assertions. They are both perfectly un- 

 meaning. They are vo.v et jirccterea nihil. May I be allowed to add that Latham's 

 theory of the European origin of Sanskrit, which has lately been represented as 

 marking the newest epoch in the study of Anthropologv, was discussed by me in 

 the ' Edinburgh Eeview ' of 1 851 ? 



My experiences during the last forty years have only served to confirm the 



' V. d. Gheyn, 1889, p. 26. 



