The Ugrians of Lapland, Finland, Permia, the Ural Mountains and
the Volga--area of the light-haired families--Turanians--the
Kelts of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Gaul--the Goths--the
Sarmatians--the Greeks and Latins--difficulties of European
ethnology--displacement--intermixture--identification of ancient
families--extinction of ancient families--the Etruscans--the
Pelasgi--isolation--the Basks--the Albanians--classifications and
hypotheses--the term Indo-European--the Finnic hypothesis.
V. _From Lapland to North-western Asia._--That the Norwegian of Norway
stands in remarkable contrast to the Lap of Finmark has already been
stated. There is nothing wonderful in this. The Norwegian is a German
from the south, and, consequently, a member of an intrusive population.
The extent to which a similar contrast exists between the Lap and
Finlander is more remarkable; since both belong to the same family. Of
this family the Laps are an extreme branch both in respect to physical
conformation and geographical position. The term most conveniently used
to designate the stock in question is _Ugrian_. In Asia the Voguls,
Ostiaks, Votiaks, Tsheremis, Morduins, and other tribes are _Ugrian_.
The Laps are generally speaking swarthy in complexion, black-haired
and black-eyed; and so are the Majiars of Hungary. The other
Ugrians, however, are remarkable for being, to a great extent, a
_blonde_ population. The Tshuvatsh have a light complexion with
black and somewhat curly hair, and grey eyes. The Morduins fall
into two divisions, the Ersad and Mokshad; of which the former are
more frequently _red_-haired than the latter. The Tsheremiss are
light-haired; the Voguls and Ostiaks often red-haired; the Votiaks the
most red-haired people in the world. Of course, with this we have blue
or grey eyes and fair skins.
Few writers seem ever to have considered the exceptional character of
this physiognomy: indeed, it is unfortunate that no term like _blanco_
(or _branco_), denoting men lighter-coloured than the Spaniards and
Portuguese, in the same way that _Negro_ denotes those who are darker,
has been evolved. It is, probably, too late for it being done now.
At any rate, complexions like those of the _fair_ portion of the
people of England are quite as exceptional as faces of the hue of the
Gulf-of-Guinea Blacks.
Like the Negro, the White-skin is chiefly found within certain limits;
and like _Negro_ the term _White_ is anthropological rather than
ethnological, _i. e._ the physiognomy in question is spread over
different divisions of our species, and by no means coincides with
ethnological relationship.
Nine-tenths of the fair-skinned populations of the world are to be
found between 30° and 65° N. lat., and west of the Oby. Nine-tenths of
them also are to be found amongst the following four families:--1. The
Ugrian. 2. The Sarmatian. 3. The Gothic. 4. The Keltic.
The physical conditions which most closely coincide with the
geographical area of the _blonde_ branches of the _blonde_ families
require more study than they have found. From the parts to north and
south it is distinguished by the palpably intelligible differences
of latitude. The parts to the east of it differ less evidently;
nevertheless, they are steppes and table-lands rather than tracts of
comparatively low forests. The _blonde_ area is certainly amongst the
moister parts of the world[23].
That the Ugrians graduate into the Turks of Tartary and
Siberia--themselves a division of a class containing the great
Mongolian and Tungusian branches--has been admitted by most writers;
Schott having done the best work with the philological part of the
question.
Gabelentz has, I am informed, lately shown that the _Samoeid_ tongues
come within the same class;--a statement which, without having seen
his reasons, I am fully prepared to admit.
Now what applies to the Samoeids[24] applies to two other classes as
well:--
1. The Yeniseians[24] on the Upper Yenisey; and
2. The Yukahiri[24] on the Kolyma and Indijirka.
This gives us one great stock, conveniently called _Turanian_, whereof--
1. The Mongolians--
2. The Tungusians--of which the Mantshús are the best known
representatives--
3. The Ugrians, falling into the Lap, Finlandic, Majiar and other
branches;--along with
4. The Hyperboreans, or Samoeids, Yeniseians, and Yukahiri--are
branches.
And this stock takes us from the North Cape to the Wall of China.
VI. _From Ireland to the Western parts of Asia._--The rule already
referred to, viz. that an island must always be considered to have been
peopled from the nearest part of the nearest land of a more continental
character than itself, unless reason can be shown to the contrary,
applies to the population of Ireland; subject to which view, the point
of emigration from Great Britain must have been the parts about the
Mull of Cantyre; and the point of immigration into Ireland must have
been the province of Ulster, and the parts that are nearest to Scotland.
Upon this doctrine I see no reason whatever to refine, since the
unequivocal fact of the Scotch and Irish Gaelic being the same language
confirms it. Here, however, as in so many other cases, the opinions and
facts by no means go together; and the notion of Scotland having been
peopled from Ireland, and Ireland from some other country, is a common
one. The introduction of the _Scots_ of _Scotland_ from the west, when
examined, will be found to rest almost wholly on the following extract
from Beda:--“procedente tempore, tertiam Scottorum nationem in parte
Pictorum recepit, qui duce Reudâ de Hiberniâ progressi, amicitiâ vel
ferro sibimet inter eos has sedes quas hactenus habent vindicârunt; à
quo videlicet duce, usque hodie Dalreudini vocantur: nam eorum linguâ
_Daal_ partem significat.”
Now, as this was written about the middle of the eighth century, there
are only two statements in it that can be passed for contemporary
evidence, viz. the assertion that at the time of Beda a portion of
Scotland was called the country of the _Dalreudini_; and that in their
language _daal_ meant _part_. The Irish origin, then, is grounded upon
either an _inference_ or a _tradition_; an inference or a tradition
which, if true, would prove nothing as to the _original_ population
of either country; since, the reasoning which applies to the relation
between the peninsula of Malacca and the island of Sumatra applies
here. _There_, the population first passed from the peninsula to the
island, and then back again--reflected so to say--from the island to
the peninsula. _Mutatis mutandis_ this was the case with Scotland and
Ireland, provided that there was any migration at all.
Upon this point the evidence of Beda may or may not be sufficient for
the historian. It is certainly unsatisfactory to the ethnologist.
In saying this, I by no means make the disparaging insinuation that
the historian is unduly credulous, or that the ethnologist is a
model of caution. Neither assertion would be true. The ethnologist,
however, like a small capitalist, cannot afford so much credit as his
fellow-labourer in the field of Man. He is like a traveller, who,
leaving home at the twilight of the evening, must be doubly cautious
when he comes to a place where two roads meet. If he take the wrong
one, he has nothing but the long night before him; and his error grows
from bad to worse. But the historian starts with the twilight of the
dawn; so that the further he goes the clearer he finds his way, and the
easier he rectifies any previous false turnings. To argue from cause
to effect is to journey in the dim light of the early morn till we
reach the blazing noon. To argue from effect to cause is to change the
shades of evening for the gloom of night.
As Scotland is to Ireland, so is Gaul to England. From the Shannon to
the Loire and Rhine, the stock is one; one, but not indivisible--the
British branch (containing the Welsh) and the Gaelic (containing the
Scotch) forming its two primary sections.
Next to the Kelts come the Goths; the term _Gothic_ being a general
designation taken from a particular people. Germany is the native
land of these; just as Gaul was of the Kelts. Hence, they lie to the
north of that family, as well as to the west of it. Intrusive above
all the other populations of the earth, the branches of the Gothic
tribes have brought themselves in contact and collision with half the
families of the world. First, they encroached upon the Kelts, and, for
a time, the tide of conquest fluctuated. It was the Rhine which was
the disputed frontier--disputed as much in Cæsar’s time as our own.
Next, they revenged themselves on the aggressions of Rome; so that the
Ostro-_goths_ conquered Italy, and the Visi-_goths_ Spain. Then came
the Franks of France, and the Anglo-Saxons of England. In the ninth
and tenth centuries the edges of the German swords turned another way,
and Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, and part of Courland, Silesia,
Lusatia, and Saxony were wrested from the _Sarmatians_, lying to the
west and south-west.
It is not unusual to raise the two divisions of the great Sarmatian
stock to the rank of separate substantive groups--independent of each
other, though intimately allied. In this case Lithuania, Livonia,
and Courland contain the smaller division, which is conveniently and
generally called the _Lithuanic_; the population being agricultural,
scanty, limited to the country in opposition to the towns, and
unimportant in the way of history; a population, which in the tenth and
eleventh centuries was cruelly conquered under the plea of Christianity
by the German Knights of the Sword--rivals in rapacity and bloodshed to
their equivalents of the Temple and St. John--a population which, at
the present moment, lies like iron between the hammer and the anvil,
between Russia and Prussia; and which, for one brief period only,
under the Jagellons, exercised the equivocal rights of a dominant
and encroaching family--for one brief period only within the true
historical æra. How far it may have done more at an earlier epoch
remains to be considered.
The other branch is the _Slavonic_; comprising the Russians, the
Servians, the Illyrians, the Slovenians of Styria and Carinthia, the
Slovaks of Hungary, the Tsheks of Bohemia, and the Lekhs (or Poles) of
Poland, Mazovia, and Gallicia. A great deal is said about the future
prospects of this stock; the doctrine of certain able historians
being, that as they are the youngest of nations--a term somewhat
difficult to define--and have played but a small part in the world’s
history hitherto, they have a grand career before them; a prospect
more glorious than that of the Romano-Keltic French, or the Germanic
English of the Old and New World. I doubt the inference, and I doubt
the fact on which it rests. But of this more anon. The Sarmatian
Slavono-Lithuanians are the fourth great family of Europe. They
certainly lie in the line of migration which peopled Ireland from Asia.
South of these lie two branches of a fresh stock, divided from each
other, and presenting the difficult phænomenon of geographical
discontinuity conjoined with ethnological affinity. Separated from
the most southern Slavonians by the two intrusive populations of
the Wallachians and the Majiars, and by the primitive family of the
Albanians, come--
_a._ _The Greeks_--and separated from the Slavonians of Carinthia
and Bohemia by intrusive Germans at the present moment, and by the
mysterious Etruscans in ancient times, come--
_b._ _The Italians._--We may call these two families Latin or Hellenic
instead of Greek and Italian, if we choose; and as the distribution of
nations is best studied during the earliest periods of their history,
the former terms are the better.
Before we can consider the classification of these four
families--Ugrian, Kelt, Gothic, and Græco-Latin--some fresh
observations and certain new facts are requisite.
The ethnology of Europe is undoubtedly more difficult than that of any
of the three other quarters of the globe--perhaps more so than that of
all the world besides. It has not the character of being so--but so it
is. The more we know the more we may know. Illustrated as is Europe by
the historian and the antiquarian, it has its dark holes and corners
made all the more visible from the illumination.
In the first place, the very fact of its being the home of the great
historical nations has made it the scene of unparalleled displacements;
for conquest is the great staple of history, and _conquest_ and
_displacement_ are correlative terms. A greater portion of Europe can
be shown to be held by either mixed or conquering nations than is to be
found elsewhere--not that this absolutely proves the encroachments to
have been greater; but that gives prominence to the greater degree in
which they have been recorded. Hence, where in other parts of the world
we shut up our papers and say _de non apparentibus_, &c., in Europe we
are forced upon the obscurest investigations, and the subtlest trains
of reasoning.
How great is this displacement? The history of only a few out of many
of the conquering nations tells us a pregnant story in this respect. It
shows us what has taken place within the comparatively brief span of
the historical period. What lies beyond this it only suggests.
The Ugrians with one exception have ever suffered from the
encroachments of others rather than been encroachers themselves. But
the exception is a remarkable one.
It is that of the Majiars of Hungary, who, whatever claims they may
set up for an extraction more illustrious than the one which they
share with the Laplanders and Ostiaks, are unequivocally Ugrians--no
Circassians, as has been vainly fancied, and no descendants from the
Huns of Attila, as has been more reasonably supposed. This latter,
however, is a supposition invalidated by the high probability of the
warriors of the Scourge of God having been Turk.
Be this, however, as it may, their advent into Europe is no earlier
than the tenth century, the country which they left having been the
present domain of the Bashkirs.
The amount of displacement effected by the Kelts is difficult to
determine. We hear of them in so many places that the family seems
to be ubiquitous. Utterly disbelieving the Cimmerii of the Cimmerian
Bosphorus to have been Keltic, and doubtful about both the Scordisci
of the ancient Noricum, and the Celtiberians of ancient Spain, I am
inclined to limit the Keltic area at its _maximum_ extension, to Venice
westwards, and to the neighbourhood of Rome southwards. But this is not
enough. They may have been aboriginal in parts which they _seem_ to
have invaded as immigrants. This complicates the question and makes it
as hard to ascertain the extent of their encroachments on others, as
the extent to which others have encroached on them--a point for further
notice.
The Goths have ever extended their frontier--a frontier which I believe
to have once reached no farther than the Elbe[25]. From thence to the
Niemen they have encroached at the expense of the Sarmatians--Slavonic
or Lithuanic as the case may be.
In the time of Tacitus[25] it is highly probable that there were no
Goths north of the Eyder. Since then, however, Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway have been wrested from earlier occupants and become Scandinavian.
The Ugrian family originally extended as far south as the Valdai
Mountains. This part of their area is now Russian.
The conquests of Rome have given languages derived from the Latin to
Northern Italy, the Grisons, France, Spain and Portugal, Wallachia and
Moldavia.
This brings us to another question, that of--
_Intermixture._--It is certain that the language of England is of
Anglo-Saxon origin, and that the remains of the original Keltic are
unimportant. It is by no means so certain that the blood of Englishmen
is equally Germanic. A vast amount of Kelticism, not found in our
tongue, very probably exists in our pedigrees.
The ethnology of France is still more complicated. Many writers make
the Parisian a Roman on the strength of his language; whilst others
make him a Kelt on the strength of certain moral characteristics
combined with the previous Kelticism of the original Gauls.
Spanish and Portuguese, as languages, are derivatives from the Latin.
Spain and Portugal, as countries, are Iberic, Latin, Gothic, and Arab
in different proportions.
Italian is modern Latin all the world over: yet surely there must
be much Keltic blood in Lombardy, and much Etruscan intermixture in
Tuscany.
In the ninth century every man between the Elbe and the Niemen spoke
some Slavonic dialect. They now nearly all speak German. Surely the
blood is less exclusively Gothic than the speech.
I have not fallen in with any evidence which induces me to consider
the great Majiar invasion of Hungary as anything other than a simple
military conquest. If so--and the reasoning applies to nine conquests
out of ten--the female half of the ancestry of the present speakers of
the Majiar language must have been the women of the country. These were
Turk, Slavonic, Turko-Slavonic, Romano-Slavonic, and many other things
besides--anything, in short, but Majiar.
The Grisons language is of Roman origin.
So is the Wallachian of Wallachia and Moldavia.
Nevertheless, in each country, the original population must be, more or
less, represented in blood by the present.
This is enough to show what is meant by intermixture of blood, the
extent to which it demands a special investigation of its own, and the
number of such investigations required in the ethnology of Europe.
Indeed, it is the subject of a special department of the science,
conveniently called _minute ethnology_.
_Identification of ancient nations, tribes, and families._--If there
were no such thing as migration and displacement, the study of the
ancient writers would be an easy matter. As it is, it is a very
difficult one. Nine-tenths of the names of Herodotus, Strabo, Cæsar,
Pliny, Tacitus, and similar writers on ethnology and geography, are not
to be found in the modern maps; or, if found, occur in new localities.
Such is the case with the name of our own nation, the _Angli_, who
are now known as the people of _Engl-land_; whereas, in the eyes of
Tacitus they were Germans. Others have not only changed place, but have
become absolutely extinct. This is, of course, common enough. Again,
the _name_ itself may have changed, though the population to which it
applies may have remained the same, or name and place may have each
changed.
All this creates difficulties, though not such as should deter us
from their investigation. At the same time, the criticism that must
be applied is of a special and peculiar sort. _One_ of the more
complex questions with which it has to deal is the necessary but
neglected preliminary of _determining the language in which this or
that geographical or ethnological name occurs_; which is by no means
an off-hand process. When Tacitus talks of _Germans_, or Herodotus of
_Scythians_, the terms _Scythian_ and _German_ may or may not belong
to the language of the people thus designated; in other words, they may
or may not be _native_ names--names known to the tribes to which the
geographer applies them.
Generally such names are _not_ native--a statement which, at first,
seems hazardous; since the _primâ facie_ view is in favour of the name
by which a particular nation is known to its neighbours, being the name
by which it characterizes itself. Do not our neighbours call themselves
_Français_, whilst we say _French_, and are not the names identical?
In this particular case they are; but the case is an exceptional
one. Contrast with it that of the word _Welsh_. _Welsh_ and _Wales_
are the _English_ names of the _Cymry_--English, but by no means
native; English, but as little _Welsh_ (strictly speaking) as the word
_Indian_, when applied to the Red Men of America, is _American_.
_Welsh_ is the name by which the Englishman denotes his fellow-citizens
of the Principality. The German of Germany calls the _Italians_ by
the same designation; the same by which he knows the _Wallachians_
also--since _Wallachia_ and _Wales_ and _Welschland_ are all from
the same root. What an error would it be to consider all these three
countries as identical, simply because they were so in name! Yet if
that name were _native_, such would be the inference. As it is,
however, the chief link which connects them is their common relation
to Germany (or Germanic England); a link which would have been wholly
misinterpreted had we overlooked the German origin of the term, and
erroneously referred it to the languages of the countries whereto it
had its application.
An extract from Klaproth’s ‘Asia Polyglotta’ shall further illustrate
this important difference between the name by which a nation is known
to itself, and the name by which it is known to its geographer. A
certain population of Siberia calls itself _Nyenech_ or _Khasovo_. But
_none_ of its neighbours so call it. On the contrary, each gives it a
different appellation.
The Obi-Ostiaks call it _Jergan-Yakh_.
„ Tungúsians „ _Dyândal_.
„ Syranians „ _Yarang_.
„ Woguls „ _Yarran-Kum_.
„ Russians „ _Samöeid_.
What if some ancient tribe were thus polyonymous? What if five
different writers of antiquity had derived their information from the
five different nations of its neighbours? In such a case there would
have been five terms to one object; none of them belonging to the
language for which they were used.
The name, then, itself of each ancient population requires a
preliminary investigation. And these names are numerous--more so in
Europe than elsewhere.
The importance of the populations to which such names apply is greater
in Europe than elsewhere. It is safe to say this; because there is a
reason for it. From its excessive amount of displacement, Europe is
that part of the world where there are the best grounds for believing
in the previous existence of absolutely extinct families, or rather
in the absolute extinction of families previously existing. There are
no names in Asia that raise so many problems as those of the European
_Pelasgi_ and _Etrurians_.
The changes and complications involved in the foregoing observations
(and they are but few out of many) are the results of comparatively
recent movements; of conquests accomplished within the last twenty-five
centuries; of migrations within (or nearly within) the historical
period. Those truly ethnological phænomena which belong to the
_distribution itself_ of the existing families of Europe are, at least,
of equal importance.
The most marked instances of _philological isolation_ are European; the
two chief specimens being the _Basque_ and _Albanian_ languages.
The _Basque_ language of the Pyrenees has the same relation to the
ancient language of the Spanish Peninsula that the present Welsh
has to the old speech of Britain. It represents it in its fragments;
fragments, whereof the preservation is due to the existence of a
mountain stronghold for the aborigines to retire to. Now so isolated is
this same Basque that there is no language in the world which is placed
in the same class with it--no matter what the magnitude and import of
that class may be.
The _Albanian_ is just as isolated. As different from the Greek,
Turkish and Slavonic tongues of the countries in its neighbourhood,
as the Basque is from the French, Spanish and Breton, it is equally
destitute of relations at a distance. It is _unclassed_--at least its
position as Indo-European is doubtful.
What the Pelasgian and old Etruscan tongues were is uncertain. They
were probably sufficiently different from the languages of their
neighbourhood for the speakers of them to be mutually unintelligible.
Beyond this, however, they may have been anything or nothing in the
way of isolation. They _may_ have been as peculiar as the Basque and
Albanian. They _may_, on the other hand, have been just so unlike the
Greek and Latin as to have belonged to another class--the value of
that class being unascertained. Again, that class may or may not have
existing representatives amongst the tongues at present existing. I
give no opinion on this point. I only give prominence to the isolation
of the Basque and Albanian. We _know_ these last to be so different
from each other, and from all other tongues, as to come under none of
the recognized divisions in the way of ethnographical philology and its
classifications.
_Indo-Germanic._--This brings us to the term _Indo-Germanic_; and
the term _Indo-Germanic_ brings us to the retrospect of the European
populations--all of which, now in existence, have been enumerated, but
all of which have not been classified.
I. The Ugrians are a branch of the Turanians.
The Turanians form either a whole class or the part of one, according
to the light in which we view them; in other words, the group has
one value in philology, and another in anatomy. This is nothing
extraordinary. It merely means that their speech has more prominent
characters than their physical conformation.
I proceed, however, to our specification:--
_a._ The Turanians in respect to their _physical conformation_ are
a branch of the _Mongolians_; the Chinese, Eskimo and others, being
members of similar and equivalent divisions.
_b._ In respect to their _language_, they are the highest group
recognized, a group subordinate to none other.
To change the expression of this difference, the anatomical naturalist
of the Human Species has in the word _Mongolian_ a term of generality
to which the philologist has not arrived.
II. The Greeks and Latins--the Sarmatians--and the Germans are
referrible to a higher group; a group of much the same value as the
Turanian.
The characteristics of this group are philological.
_a._ The _numerals_ of the three great divisions are alike.
_b._ A large per-centage of the names of the commoner objects are alike.
_c._ The signs of _case_ in nouns, and of _person_ in verbs, are alike.
So wide has been the geographical extent of the populations speaking
languages thus connected (languages which separated from the common
mother-tongue subsequent to the evolution of both the cases of nouns
and the persons of verbs), that the literary language of India belongs
to the class in question. Hence, when this fact became known, and when
India passed for the _eastern_ and Germany for the _western_ extremity
of the great area of this great tongue, the term _Indo-Germanic_
became current.
But its currency was of no long duration. Dr. Prichard showed that
the Keltic tongues had Indo-Germanic numerals, a certain per-centage
of Indo-Germanic names for the commoner objects, and Indo-Germanic
personal terminations of verbs. Since then, the Keltic has been
considered as a fixed language, with a definite place in the
classification of the philologist; and the term _Indo-European_[26],
expressive of the class to which, along with the Sarmatian, the
Gothic, and the Classical tongues of Greece and Italy, it belongs, has
superseded the original compound _Indo-Germanic_.
We now know what is meant by _Indo-European_; a term of, at least,
equal generality with the term _Turanian_.
_a._ In _physical conformation_ the Indo-Europeans are a branch of the
higher division so improperly and inconveniently called _Caucasian_.
_b._ In _language_ they are the highest group hitherto recognized, a
group subordinate to none other.
And we have also improved our measure of the isolation of the--
III. _Basques._--Anatomically these are _Caucasian_ so-called.
Philologically, they are the only members of the group to which
they belong, and that group is the highest recognized. They are like
a species in natural history, which is the only one of its genus,
the genus being the only one of its order, and the order being so
indeterminate as to have no higher class to which it is subordinate.
IV. _The Albanians_ are in the same predicament.
This is the state of classification which pre-eminently inspires
us with the ambition of making higher groups; higher groups in
_philology_, since in _anatomy_ we have them ready-made--_i. e._
expressed by the terms Mongolian and Caucasian. The school which has
made the most notable efforts in this way is the Scandinavian. In
England it is, perhaps, better appreciated than in Germany, and in
Germany better than in France.
I think it had great truth in fragments. It will first be considered
on its philological side. Rask--the greatest genius for comparative
philology that the world has seen--exhibited the germs of it in his
work on the Zendavesta. Herein his hypothesis was as follows. The
geologist will follow him with ease. Just as the later formations,
isolated and unconnected of themselves, lie on an earlier, and
comparatively continuous, substratum of secondary, palæozoic or primary
antiquity, so do the populations speaking Celtic, Gothic, Slavonic,
and Classical languages. Conquerors and encroachers wherever they
came in contact with stocks alien to their own, they made, at an
early period of history, nine-tenths of Europe and part of Asia their
own. But before them lay an aboriginal population--_before them_ in
the way of _time_. This consisted of tribes, more or less related to
each other, which filled Europe from the North Cape to Cape Comorin
and Gibraltar--progenitors of the Laplanders on the north, and the
progenitors of the Basques of the Pyrenees on the south--_all at one
time continuous_. This time was the period anterior to the invasion of
the oldest of the above-mentioned families. More than this--Hindostan
was similarly peopled; and, by assumption, the parts between Northern
Hindostan and Europe.
Such the theory. Now let us look to the present distribution. Almost
all Europe is what is called Indo-European, _i.e._ Celtic, Gothic,
Slavonic, or Classical. But it is not wholly so. In Scandinavia we
have the Laps; in Northern Russia the Finns; on the junction of Spain
and France the Basques. These are fragments of the once continuous
Aborigines--separated from each other by Celts, Goths, and Slavonians.
Then, as to India. In the Dekhan we have a family of languages called
the Tamul--isolated also. Between each of these points the population
is homogeneous as compared with itself; heterogeneous as compared with
the tribes just enumerated. But there was once a continuity--even as
the older rocks in geology are connected, whilst the newer ones are
dissociated.
Such was the hypothesis of Rask; an hypothesis to which he applied
the epithet _Finnic_--since the Finn of Finland was the type and
sample of these early, aboriginal, hypothetically continuous, and
hypothetically connected tongues. The invasion, however, of the
stronger Indo-Europeans broke them up. Be it so. It was a grand guess;
even if wrong, a grand and a suggestive one. Still it was but a guess.
I will not say that no details were worked out. Some few were indicated.
Points which connected tongues so distant as the Tamul and the Finn
were noticed--but more than this was not done. Still, it was a doctrine
which, if it were proved false, was better than a large per-centage
of the true ones. It taught inquirers where to seek the affinities of
apparently isolated languages; and it bade them pass over those in the
neighbourhood and look to the quarters where other tongues equally
isolated presented themselves.
I have mentioned Rask as the apostle of it. Arndt, I am told, was the
originator. The countrymen, however, of Rask have been those who have
most acted on it.
But they took up the weapon at the other end. It is the _anatomists_
and _archæologists_ of Scandinavia who have worked it most. The Celts
have a skull of their own just as they have a language. So have the
Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch, and Englishmen. Never
mind its characteristics. Suffice, that it was--or was supposed
to be--different from that of the Finns and Basques. So had the
Hindús--different from that of the Tamuls. Now the burial-places of the
present countries of the different Gothic populations contain skulls
of the Gothic character only up to a certain point. The _very oldest_
stand in contrast with the oldest forms but one. The _very oldest_ are
Lap, Basque, and Tamul. Surely this--if true--confirms the philological
theory. But is it true? I am not inclined to change the terms already
used. It is a grand and a suggestive _guess_.
More than this it is not necessary to say at present; since any further
speculation in respect to the migration (_or migrations_) which peopled
Europe from the hypothetical centre in Asia is premature. The ethnology
of Asia is necessary as a preliminary.
FOOTNOTES
[23] When ethnological medicine shall have become more extensively
studied than it is, it will probably be seen that the populations of
the area in question are those which are most afflicted by scrofula.
[24] A table showing this is printed in the author’s ‘Varieties of
Man,’ pp. 270–272.
[25] Both these points are worked out in detail in the Author’s _Taciti
Germania, with ethnological notes_.
[26] For a criticism on this term see pp. 86–89.