knew the arts of ploughing, of making roads, of building ships, of weaving and sewing, of erecting houses; they had counted at least as far as one hundred. They had domesticated the most important animals the cow, the horse, the sheep, the dog; they were acquainted with the most useful metals, and armed with iron hatchets whether for peaceful or warlike purposes. They had recognized the bonds of blood and the bonds of marriage; they followed their leaders and kings, and the distinction between right and wrong was fixed by law and customs. They were impressed with the idea of a Divine Being, and they invoked it by various names." Their name is now only preserved in India in the term Aryavartâ, the abode of the aryans. The followers of Zoroaster maintained it longer, and in their Zendavesta it still means venerable as in sanskrit it meant noble. The land which they spoke of as the aryan must have been " as far east as the western slopes of the Belurtag and Mustag near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes," from whence they spread away like rivers south and west, till they reached the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, pouring away over Persia, Greece, and Italy, until they possessed all the great lands which have ever been famous in history as the seats of letters and arts. Nay we are told that late researches have rendered it not improbable that they reached Ireland. There is nothing improbable in the whole matter, but the reader who imagines that this theory is based on documents, inscriptions, and buildings, and who might credit it if supported on such grounds, will scarcely be prepared to yield a blind assent when he is told that the assumption of their having overrun a country is often based on the fact that the root of their name Ar has been found in the language of the country. The proof that they poured from Chorassan to northern Greece is found in the old name of Thrace, which was Aria-that they stretched along the Danube to Germany is known by the solitary scrap of evidence that in the west of Germany near the Vistula we meet with a german tribe called Arii, a name which Grimm, a man of profound learning, derived with much more probability from a gothic word signifying army. Ireland was peopled with them, because Erin can be traced through a dozen phases to Er, which of course is the same as Ar, and even according to O'Reilly meant noble in Irish as Arya did in Sanskrit. Aryan is proved to have been used as a title of honour among the persians on the faith of the cuneiform inscriptions, but the Rev. Mr. Forster has I think shown that the translations of these inscriptions are not in any way to be relied on. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the welsh were aryans, for Silure, their ancient name, comes from Zil or worshippers of the sun, and Ur as clearly comes from Ar. Elymais was aryan because "its name has been derived from Ailama, a supposed corruption of Airyama." Classical latin is said to be one of "many dialects spoken by the aryan inhabitants of Italy;"* but further on we are told that we look in vain for any traces of the national name among the greeks and romans. Well indeed might one of our greatest modern writers say that "words are the most vital and the most imperish * Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 58. able of man's creations." Why at this rate every word with an r in it might be traced back to this prolific radical. This word of might, Aryan, comes from Ar, to plough or open the soil—the old english ear used in the sense of plough by Shakspere. It was the root of the latin word for plough, it is found in the old Norse for the same thing, and aroma very likely came from the same source, because the smell of a ploughed field is pleasant. Prior however even to the aryan there was a turanian tongue used by a people of vast antiquity. Their language is even now spoken over a vast portion of Europe and Asia. What portions these are our author leaves us rather uncertain about. He tells us the turanian family of languages "comprises in reality all languages spoken in Asia and Europe and not included under the Aryan and Semitic families, with the exception of Chinese and its cognate dialects. In the great continent of the Old World the semitic and the aryan languages occupy only what may be called the four western peninsulas, namely India with Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor, and Europe, and we have reason to believe that even these countries were held by turanian tribes previous to the arrival of the aryan and semitic nations."* According to this account then the turanian language comprises with certain exceptions all the languages spoken in Asia and Europe, and in the very next sentence we are told that the semitic languages occupy four peninsulas in Asia, the names of which are given, and Europe, leaving us plainly to infer that they occupy Europe. * Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 290. Yet for all this the turanian, aryan, and semitic languages need not necessarily have sprung from independent and separate roots, so that I suppose we must still find some grand radical tongue, some prearyan or ur-aryan, from which they come, only the aryan language was it seems a vast improvement upon the older turanian, the words being far more symmetrically and naturally constructed. Professor Müller is however very cautious about drawing the inference that because all dialects of mankind issued from one fountain-head, the human race must therefore have descended from one common pair. "For language may have been the property of one favoured race and have been communicated to the other races in the progress of history." But at p. 290 our author has told us that a great language has descended from a race which held a great part of Asia and Europe "previous to the arrival of the aryan and semitic nations." Under such circumstances Professor Müller has exercised a wise discretion in arguing, not for the necessity, but for the possibility of a common origin of language. He speaks repeatedly of the science of language, but how he proves it to be a science or indeed what he proves it to be at all passes my comprehension. He carries us on to a height where we expect to behold the source of language revealed to view as the traveller is carried by his guide to the source of some sacred river, and there he disappears; just as we think we are getting to a point where we must be told the grand mystery of speech our light vanishes * Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 329. like a will-o'-th'-wisp, and we find ourselves deep in all the mysteries of the classification of tongues. He expects us to believe in the science of language and yet tells us that what confirmation about its origin his belief was wanting in has been supplied by Darwin's "Origin of Species," a kind of proof which however easily it may satisfy Professor Müller will most certainly not be admitted by some of the coolest and most cautious reasoners. He believes in Mr. Darwin's theory yet he justly assails one of the most vital points in the doctrine, the possibility of a transition between man and the brute. He utterly scouts the idea. "Man speaks," he says, "and no brute has ever uttered a word. Language is our Rubicon and no brute will dare to cross it. This is our matter-offact answer to those who speak of such development as if it were established beyond all contradiction, who think they discover the rudiments at least of all human faculties in apes, and who would fain keep open the possibility that man is only a more favoured beast, the triumphant conqueror in the primeval struggle for life. Language is something more palpable than a fold of the brain or an angle of the skull. It admits of no cavilling, and no process of natural selection. will ever distil significant words out of the notes of birds or the cries of beasts."* This is something like writing. There has been so much rubbish written about anatomy, with these interminable strings of dry names which teach nothing about the real pith of natural history and leave people only more bewildered, there is such a sickening heap * Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 357. |