DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.638#0025
INTRODUCTION xxiii
both peoples of Aryan speech. A scornful scientist has
dismissed as a "prehistoric romance", the theory that the
fair Scandinavian "long heads" are identical with the
brunet "long heads" of India. Both the Celtic (Alpine)
and Indo-Germanic racial theories are as inconclusive as
they are diametrically in opposition.
The science of philology, which, at its inception,
"dazzled and silenced all", has been proved to be no safe
guide in racial matters. We must avoid, as Professor
Ripley says, " the error of confusing community of lan-
guage with identity of race. Nationality may often follow
linguistic boundaries, but race bears no' necessary relation
whatever to them."1
By way of illustration, it may be pointed out in this
connection that English is spoken at the present day by,
among others, the Hong Kong Chinamen, the American
Red Indians and negroes, by the natives of Ireland,
Wales, Cornwall, and the Scottish Highlands, besides
the descendants of the ancient Britons, the Jutes, the
Angles, the Saxons, the Norsemen, the Danes, and the
Normans in England, but all these peoples cannot be
classified in the racial sense simply as Englishmen.
Similarly, the varied types of humanity who are Aryan
in speech cannot all be regarded as representatives of the
" Aryan race", that is, if we accept the theory of an
"Aryan race", which Virchow, by the way, has charac-
terized as "a pure fiction".
Max Mailer, in his closing years, faced this aspect
of the problem frankly and courageously. "Aryas", he
wrote, " are those who speak Aryan languages, whatever
their colour, whatever their blood. In calling them Aryas
we predicate nothing of them except that the grammar
of their language is Aryan. ... I have declared again
1 Thi Races ofEunfe, W.Z. Ripley, p. 17.
both peoples of Aryan speech. A scornful scientist has
dismissed as a "prehistoric romance", the theory that the
fair Scandinavian "long heads" are identical with the
brunet "long heads" of India. Both the Celtic (Alpine)
and Indo-Germanic racial theories are as inconclusive as
they are diametrically in opposition.
The science of philology, which, at its inception,
"dazzled and silenced all", has been proved to be no safe
guide in racial matters. We must avoid, as Professor
Ripley says, " the error of confusing community of lan-
guage with identity of race. Nationality may often follow
linguistic boundaries, but race bears no' necessary relation
whatever to them."1
By way of illustration, it may be pointed out in this
connection that English is spoken at the present day by,
among others, the Hong Kong Chinamen, the American
Red Indians and negroes, by the natives of Ireland,
Wales, Cornwall, and the Scottish Highlands, besides
the descendants of the ancient Britons, the Jutes, the
Angles, the Saxons, the Norsemen, the Danes, and the
Normans in England, but all these peoples cannot be
classified in the racial sense simply as Englishmen.
Similarly, the varied types of humanity who are Aryan
in speech cannot all be regarded as representatives of the
" Aryan race", that is, if we accept the theory of an
"Aryan race", which Virchow, by the way, has charac-
terized as "a pure fiction".
Max Mailer, in his closing years, faced this aspect
of the problem frankly and courageously. "Aryas", he
wrote, " are those who speak Aryan languages, whatever
their colour, whatever their blood. In calling them Aryas
we predicate nothing of them except that the grammar
of their language is Aryan. ... I have declared again
1 Thi Races ofEunfe, W.Z. Ripley, p. 17.