The Crest-Wave of Evolution - A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19 by Kenneth Morris
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of a spirit, of a psychic something. People that were before
Celts (just as Mr. Dooley is an Anglo-Saxon) become somehow Teutons. The language expands, and carries a tradition with it. Head measurements show that neither Southern Germany nor England differs very much towards Teutonicism from the Mediterranean type; yet the one is thoroughly Teutonic, the other Anglo-Saxon. Sometimes the blood may be changed materially; often, I suppose, it is changed to some extent; but the main change takes place in the language and tradition; sometimes in tradition alone. There was a minor Celtic quickening in the twelfth century A. D.; then Wales was in a fervor of national life. She had not the resources, or perhaps the will, for outside conquest. But her Authurian legend went forth, and drove Beowulf and Child Horn out of the memory of the English, Charlemagne out of the memory of the French; invaded Germany, Italy, even Spain: absolutely installed Welsh King Arthur as the national hero of the people his people were fighting; and infused chivalry with a certain uplift and mysticism through-out western Europe. Or again, in the Cinquecento and earlier, the Italian center quickened; and learning and culture flowed up from Italy through France and England; and these countries, with Spain, become the leaders in power and civilization. England since that Teutonic expansion which made her English was spent, has grown less and less Teutonic, more and more Latin; the Italian impulse of the Renaissance drove her far along that path. In the middle of the eleventh century, her language was purely Teutonic; you could count on the fingers of your hand the words derived from Latin or Celtic. And now? Sixty percent of all English words are Latin. At the beginning of the fifth |
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