THE INDO•GERMANIC FAMILY.
The Indo-Germans are the most widely diffused race of mankind, and they still continue to sprehd. They are the true standard-bearers of civil ization, and they have not only absorbed whatever of its elements the Semites had created and developed, but have so fostered them that now Semitic culture has no place by the side of the Indo-Germanic.
In language they occupy the highest rank. This is not so much clue to the fact that their tongues are the highest in logical precision and in emotional depth, for that is disputed; and, besides, the Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, and many Semitic tongues are not inferior to the Indo-Germanic in practical value. We therefore will not insist upon this superiority, although it can hardly be denied. But it is a most important fact that those Indo-Germanic nations which have no historical importance occupy the same high rank in linguistic development which is held by the most prominent.
This proves that the entire race is more highly developed than any other; for among others we find but one or a few languages and peoples who have developed into a civilization similar to, or even comparable with, the Indo-Germanic, while the great majority of the remainder con tinue undeveloped.
It was not the events of history or favorable natural environment which thus highly developed the Indo-Germans. We are obliged to believe that they remained longest in the original home of mankind, and that by this quiet stay they became more developed than the others, who had migrated earlier. Consequently, they were able to subdue the wild and inhospitable regions which then constituted' Europe. These earliest migrations from the aboriginal centre of humanity must be cor rectly considered. The word "migration," Nvhich we, yielding to the common use of language, employ, means something entirely different from what actually occurred. The dispersion of mankind took place by a very gradual, unintentional pushing forward as the stock became more numerous; and gradually, as this extension occurred in different direc tions, a separation took place, which was all the more positive the more gradually it had been performed. The races spread in the same manner
as the original stock; those more quickly whose new home was not in viting, as was the case in Northern Asia; but those slowly who early found a rich and comfortable region.
Thus it was with the Indo-Germans who spread over Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, and gradually into Europe. They seem to have moved along the southern edge of the Caucasus to the Crimea, and from Asia Minor across the sea, and perhaps also north of the Caucasus along the western coast of the Caspian Sea, as is shown by two facts—that the Ossetes, an independent Indo-Germanic nation, dwell in the Caucasus, and that the southern Seythians, the inhabitants of the Crimea and of Southern Russia, have been pronounced Indo-Germans (Miillenhoff).
The advance into Europe was in the beginning very gradual, but in their new homes and in their entirely different environment the European Indo-Germans became distinct from their Asiatic relatives. Thus the original single race became divided into two great divisions—the European and the Asiatic Indo-Germans. These two experienced the same fate as the whole race, and were again subdivided into distinct divisions—the Asiatic into the Indian and Iranian, the European Indo-Germans into North and South European nations. But the common language had been so much developed, and had become so firmly established, that, though it indeed might separate into numerous idioms, it could nowhere exhibit such pro nounced dissimilarities, either in vocabulary or form, as we have found in the languages of other races.
Passing to a brief view of the individual nations, we may begin with the eastern half of the Asiatic Indo-Germans.