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unknown to their mind, yet had they already firmly established 
both, and in their subsequent wanderings carried with them 
the same general linguistic peculiarities, and in a vast number 
of instances even the same words.* The position of Latin 
with respect to the Romance dialects exactly illustrates the 
position of Proto- Aryan with reference to the Aryan languages. 
As the Proto-Aryans had one language, one class of manners 
and customs, and one special type of idiosyncrasy, so naturally, 
and even necessarily, they had but one religion ; and just as 
the languages of Germany and of Iran are daughters of the 
common Aryan speech, so the religious mythologies or mytho- 
logical religions of Scandinavia and of Baktria are children of 
the common Aryan faith. What this primeval belief was is a 
matter for investigation ; but that, like the language, it was but 
one, is a proposition which has almost passed beyond the 
sphere of legitimate controversy into the region of historical 
certainties. To a hasty glance, the difference between the 
religious systems of India, Iran, Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, 
seems so vast as to absolutely preclude the possibility of their 
having sprung from a single source ; and the same remark 
applies equally to the languages of those countries. Yet, as 
no one who has investigated the languages doubts their kin- 
ship as children of a common parent, so no thorough student 
of the variant phases of Aryan belief will doubt their pristine 
unity. The comparative study of forms of belief, whether of 
the Aryan race or of mankind at large, has been styled some- 
what infelicitously <e the science of religion an expression 
which not unnaturally aroused the hostility of those who are 
more desirous of finding occasion of offence than of investigat- 
ing abstruse questions, and who hastily concluded that it was 
intended to put religion on a par with chemistry or engineer- 
ing, as a branch of knowledge to be acquired by a course of 
scientific study. It cannot, however, be too strongly insisted 
that the Christian religion has nothing to fear from any amount 
of real investigation, comparative, historical, scientific, or other- 
wise ; but that, on the contrary, ever y fact added to our know- 
ledge is more or less a gain to the (general) truth. It is easy 
to expose the scientific and other errors of individual Chris- 
tians, as, for instance. Professor Draper has cleverly done, in 
his popular History of the Conflict between Religion and Science , 
in which, however, he has somewhat disingenuously mainly 
resolved Christianity into the Latin Church and a selection of 
* Vide Appendix A. On the subject of primitive Aryan unity, vide Prof. 
Max Miiller, Chips, vol. ii., Essay xvi., “ Comparative Mythology.” 
