warnings are scientifically true. Yet any one who begins his studies on
these matters with Professor Müller's famous Oxford Essay will
practically come to another way of looking at things. He will fill his
mind with a vivid picture of the great Aryan family, as yet one,
dwelling in one place, speaking one tongue, having already taken the
first steps toward settled society, recognizing the domestic relations,
possessing the first rudiments of government and religion, and calling
all these first elements of culture by names of which traces still abide
here and there among the many nations of the common stock. He will go on
to draw pictures equally vivid of the several branches of the family
parting off from the primeval home. One great branch he will see going
to the south-east, to become the forefathers of the vast, yet isolated
colony in the Asiatic lands of Persia and India. He watches the
remaining mass sending off wave after wave, to become the forefathers of
the nations of historical Europe. He traces out how each branch starts
with its own share of the common stock--how the language, the creed, the
institutions, once common to all, grow up into different, yet kindred,
shapes, among the many parted branches which grew up, each with an
independent life and strength of its own. This is what our instructors
set before us as the true origin of nations and their languages. And,
in drawing out the picture, we cannot avoid, our teachers themselves do
not avoid, the use of words which imply that the strictly family
relation, the relation of community of blood, is at the root of the
whole matter. We cannot help talking about the family and its branches,
about parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins. The nomenclature of
natural kindred exactly fits the case; it fits it so exactly that no
other nomenclature could enable us to set forth the case with any
clearness. Yet we cannot be absolutely certain that there was any real
community of blood in the whole story. We really know nothing of the
origin of language or the origin of society. We may make a thousand