DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4668#0097
TL] Note on the Sacred Angle. 79
It is true that these traditions, like those of other
nations also, are entirely at variance with the remarkable
adventures of the famous " Aryan race," that marvellous
creature of modern myth-making which flits with all the
brilliance of a will of the wisp over the most impossible
morasses of Imaginative History. Happily however, its
illustrious creator, Professor Max Miiller, has himself
given what we may hope will prove the death-blow to
his scarcely less celebrated offspring, by utterly denying
before the British Association any reality to its existence ;
by laughing to scorn the idea of any such thing as an
Aryan skull, and by stating plainly that the Aryan race
is nothing more or less than a figment of philological
convenience. For not until the last glimmer of that
alluring but most misleading meteor has disappeared,
will the ancient records of nations be permitted to throw
their true light upon the past. Nor until then shall we
understand our own laws and language, our customs and
constitution, or trace the history of that Imperial nation
of the waters which perpetuates the name of the sacred
Angle. And surely no kingdom ever yet possessed a
more romantic story in the past, or attained a position
of more absorbing interest or more perilous pre-eminence
than that occupied by England to-day, as she stands in
the central land of highest antiquity, with hands stretch-
ing to every quarter of the globe—a solitary figure of
commanding majesty, but uncertain in policy, unguarded
'n frontier, and almost unarmed in defence ; while sur-
rounded by the Beething nations which count their host>
by the million, and listening with a careless ear to the
muttered breathings of universal war.
It is true that these traditions, like those of other
nations also, are entirely at variance with the remarkable
adventures of the famous " Aryan race," that marvellous
creature of modern myth-making which flits with all the
brilliance of a will of the wisp over the most impossible
morasses of Imaginative History. Happily however, its
illustrious creator, Professor Max Miiller, has himself
given what we may hope will prove the death-blow to
his scarcely less celebrated offspring, by utterly denying
before the British Association any reality to its existence ;
by laughing to scorn the idea of any such thing as an
Aryan skull, and by stating plainly that the Aryan race
is nothing more or less than a figment of philological
convenience. For not until the last glimmer of that
alluring but most misleading meteor has disappeared,
will the ancient records of nations be permitted to throw
their true light upon the past. Nor until then shall we
understand our own laws and language, our customs and
constitution, or trace the history of that Imperial nation
of the waters which perpetuates the name of the sacred
Angle. And surely no kingdom ever yet possessed a
more romantic story in the past, or attained a position
of more absorbing interest or more perilous pre-eminence
than that occupied by England to-day, as she stands in
the central land of highest antiquity, with hands stretch-
ing to every quarter of the globe—a solitary figure of
commanding majesty, but uncertain in policy, unguarded
'n frontier, and almost unarmed in defence ; while sur-
rounded by the Beething nations which count their host>
by the million, and listening with a careless ear to the
muttered breathings of universal war.