Books and Bookmen

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 18, 28 October 1908, Page 11

Books and Bookmen

RACE LIFE OF THE ARYAN PEOPLES: Joseph P. Widney. (Funk and Wagnall's Company, New York and London. 2vols. 4d015.)

The origin and evolution of the great races into whieh mankind is divided must always prove a subject of absorbing interest. Whether we accept the old theological doctrine of special creation, or the scientific theory of anthropogenesis, with which the name of Charles Darwin is so closely identified, we are bound to believe that ail races had, in the far distant past, a common ancestor. Whatever resemblances there may be between the highest species of ape and the lowest tribe of savage, there is still a wide and unbridgable gulf whieh separates the human family from every other species in the animal creation. Nevertheless, the line of development from the primitive pair to which man owes his place in nature appears at a very early stage in the evolutionary process to have diverged along several very distinct lines; and though it is impossible now to penetrate the mists that have gathered around our first parents, or to do more than hazard an idle conjecture whether they were white or black or yellow, it is possible to trace, with a measure of scientific certainty, the broad family relationships of the inhabitants of the widely separated nationalities that occupy the earth to-day, to follow the course of their migrations, define the influences that have controlled their destiny and prognosticate their future from their past. It is to this problem, with respect to the Aryan peoples, that Dr. Widney has applied liimself in the erudite work now before us.

The author accepts as coming within the Aryan family the Brahmins of India, the Medo-Persians of Iran, the Graeeo-Latins, the Celts, the Slavs, and the Teutons, with their sub-divisions into smaller groups or families. He advances as reasons for classing these races as kin—the kinship of language; myths, traditions, and folk-lore held in common; likeness in mental and spiritual types; trend to similar political institutions, and the race history so far as traceable. Of course, he recognises the extent to which racial purity has become contaminated by admixtures of alien blood, and perhaps the most interesting chapters in his book are those devoted to a study of the conditions which have brought about the very wide differentiation that has arisen between existing branches of the same family; nevertheless, the contamination has never overwhelmed tho basic characteristics of the primary stock.

The original homeland of the ProtoAryan peoples, Dr Widney believes to have been the inland plains which stretch from the westerly slopes of the Thian Shan Mountains, and on to. and about, the shores of the Caspian. “The Indo-Aryan, when he first comes into historic view as he emerges from the Asiatic highlands to enter upon the lowlying Indian plain, was already well started upon the pathway of civilisation; he already had a settled form of Government, and a well-ordered social and civic framework; he was mentally intensely active and alert; he was spiritually alive and,healthy, not morbid, nor moribund; he was a masterful man, and came as the superior race, and, as conqueror to the Negroid and the Mongol of the Indian plains; but he w T as himself in the end overcome by climate.” The deteriorating effect of tropical conditions, the author observes, is demonstrated in the case of the Englishman to-day, who only maintains his political ascendancy in India by means of a constant influx of fresh blood. The branch of the Aryan race, Which afterwards became the Brahmin of India, made its way through those low north-west passes of the Hindu Kush, which have always been the gateway to India, and entering the plain whieh is traversed by the headwaters of the Indies. The other southward stream of migration, passed westward to the plateaus of ancient Iran, becoming in the new home the Mede of Herodotus, but afterwards incorporated together with the adjoining tribes into the Kingdom of Persia. This branch also gave birth to one of the great religions of the earth, that whieh comes <o us with Avestas from Zoroaster. The

Aryans, who peopled Europe, had two routes open to them, one along the narrow and broken plain at the north base of the Hindu Kush, and Elburz mountains to the south shores of the Caspian, and this was probably taken by the ancestors of the Graeeo-Latin races. The other open route passed by way of the steppes of what is now Kirgui’s land, a long whieh came the migratory stream that ultimately broke upon the northwestern shores of Europe, and crossed the narrow sea to Britain. Dr Widney for some time held a post as surgeon at Camp Bouri on the Southern Overland Road, which formed the great highway from the Southern States of America to California, and his observations in immigrant camps enabled him to note the influence on physique and character which such migrations exercise. He found that those who had long been following a nomadie life represented a distinct type of American. A similar modification of type may also be observed already among the present generation of Australians, who have been reared under the conditions of bush life. The northern emigrants in Europe, moreover, passed completely out of the influence of the Asiatic Aryans, whom they had left behind, whereas, those who occupied Southern Europe never really lost touch with the inhabitants of Western Asia, and the contact left its impress upon their colour and civilisation.

Dr. Widney traces the evolution of religious belief in these two great divisions of the Aryans who occupied Europe, and he shows how their early polytheism tinctured Christianity. But the worst calamity that befell the Latin races was when Rome, no longer content to guide, claimed as divine the right to drive. The Inquisition burned the heart out of the whole Spanish peninsula. “It was not,” remarks Dr. Widney, “the mere numerical loss of the thirty-two thousand burned at the stake in Spain alone that the great harm to the Latin people came; or in the two hundred thousands of Spain’s best citizens sent to the dungeons; or in the other thousands of victims in Portugal and Italy and France; or in the thousands of the Huguenot who fell in the religious massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day. ... It was not simply so many thousands of the best blood of the Latin race that were murdered in the name of religion; it was freedom of thought among the Latin peoples as well that was slain. . . . It is estimated that during the hundred years which have St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes as their central events, France lost through religious expatriation a million of. her people. And these were not the vicious, the ignorant, the idle, but the moral, the intelligent, the industrious.” The Teuton was not, apparently the first Aryan man to reach the shores of Europe. The Celt seems to have preceded him; a man only presumably Aryan because of his speech; for the route or even the direction of his niigraroute is largely a matter of conjecture. Dr. Widney thinks it probable that the Celt, like the Basque in France, is a man of mixed blood. He discusses at conof the various types of Celts in Scotland, Ireland, France, and Wales, and siderable length the racial characteristics also the distinctions between the German Teuton and other brandies of the same family. The colonising success of the English he attributes to racial vitality. This was especially manifested in the struggle for the possession of America where the Latin races both Spanish and French, were first in possession, but were finally displaced by the greater racial energy of the English, a vitality that was displayed in their capacity to go on stubbornly fighting after defeat; taking up the fight again the next day, the next month, the next year, arid on indefinitely.” The readiness with which the Latin races assimilated with inferior blood, while the English Puritan, migrating with his family, maintained his racial purity unimpaired, also counted for much in this struggle for supremacy in America. New factors which must have an important influence upon the future of the race have been brought into play in the conditions of life in the Western States, arid Dr. Widney reviews the prob-

lems of religion, social life, and Government which await solution in the Greater England that has grown up across the seas, in America, in Australasia and South Africa. He says: “Tho whole English folk arc so intimately bound together by ties of speech, of literature, of religion, of trade, and by the aspirations of a common future, that the English man of Britain can scarcely long withstand the influence of his kin. He too must sooner or later full into political line with his kinsman of the Greater England. When he does, the federation of all English-speaking peoples passes beyond the mere possibilities into the region of the probabilities.” America has many difficult problems to solve —not least among them the final destiny of the negro race in relation to the white population. Dr. Widney discusses these questions in several thoughtful chapters. He also considers the probable influence of Japan and China in relation to the civilisation of Ihe future. lie takes a hepeful view: “The Q.n-eoming centuries open out to an ever-widening horizon with ever broadening possibilities. And the Aryan blood which three thousand years ago set out in its world-mar* b is not exhausted. Whatever may be in the future, it shows no sign of failure. The epic is to be lived on.”