27s Timehri 



applicable to them. Similarly with regard to languages : developed 

 Babylonian was a Semitic language, that is undoubted ; if there was 

 difference of opinion ou the point before 1892. when Father Brosse 

 wrote his Hist great work. •' Les Chamites," recent researches have 

 removed the doubt ; Sumerian elements no doubt survived in it — pro- 

 bably very considerable elements, but its essential characteristics were 

 Semitic. Hebrew is Semitic : Arabic is Semitic : Egyptian, as developed 

 in historical times, was enormously influenced by the Semitic ; and the 

 ( lushite or Hamitic elements can only conjecturally be identified. What 

 reliance, therefore, can be placed on analogies from these languages to 

 prove that others, such as those of Polynesia, are Hamitic also ? Might 

 it not with equal or greater force be argued that such analogies go to 

 show that the Polynesian tongues too were Semitic, or influenced by the 

 Semitic ? With the best good will in the world I cannot follow Father 

 Brosse into some of his conclusions ; yet, on a lower plane, it does 

 appear to me that there is evidence of various kinds to support, con- 

 jecturally at least, the main contention of the westward and possibty also 

 eastward, dispersion of an Asiatic race, whose origin may not improbably 

 have been in North Western India as he maintains. If that lower plane 

 on which the matter seems to me to be arguable be adopted, then step 

 by step the student and this lecture will not have been wholly in vain 

 if it induces even one or two to become students of works so worthy of 

 study may advance to altitudes of comprehension and verification to 

 which I have not attained, and find that it is not Father Brosse who 

 overstates his ease, but 1 who have understated it. 



You may say I have not yet said a word with regard to the Kev. 

 Father's views concerning the native races of America. Well, I have said 

 so much — that he adopted the Asiatic theory ; and as I have said before. 

 I think that is the main point. With the utmost respect for Father 

 Brosse, I cannot help feeling, that he makes perhaps rather too much 

 of his favourite stock, the Hamites. To sa}^ he finds them everywhere 

 would be an exaggeration : but he certainly follows them over a great part 

 of the habitable globe and identifies them with races their kinship to 

 which is on the face of the matter somewhat improbable. His hypothesis 

 involves this : that the Hamites were not a black but a brown race, 

 with straight hair, morally inferior, but intellectually much in advance 

 of their contemporaries ; artistic, laborious, with a special genius for 

 colossal and especially megalithic architecture, and cunning iD the work- 

 ing of metals. Where he finds all or most of these characteristics 

 present in a particular race with the addition of a greater or smaller 

 number of confirmatory circumstances, such as local traditions as to 

 their having originally migrated from somewhere else, customs resem- 

 bling those of the inhabitants of Northern India, or of ancient Egypt, 

 Babylonia, and Chaldea (which, as I have before indicated, he seemingly 

 treats as being Hamitic), he extends that designation to the race under 

 consideration, and that race in turn becomes a link in his chain. Now, as 

 everybody knows, there were three areas in the New World where prior 

 to the coming of Columbus civilisation, various arts, and architecture in 



