theological
questions of the highest order, and settling, to its own satisfaction,
problems requiring a cultivated intellect even so much as to propose.
All this implies that in its social advancement there must have already
been consumed a very long period of time.

[Sidenote: Commingling of blood and of ideas.]

But what chiefly interests us is the relation which must have been
necessarily maintained between the intrusive people and those whom they
thus displaced, the commingling of the ideas of the one with those of
the other, arising from their commingling of blood. It is because of
this that we find coexisting in the pre-Hellenic times the sorcery of
the Celt and the polytheism of the Hindu. There can be no doubt that
many of the philosophical lineaments displayed by the early European
mythology are not due to indigenous thought, but were derived from an
Asiatic source.

[Sidenote: Climate-modification of Asiatic intruders.]

Moreover, at the earliest historic times, notwithstanding the
disturbance which must have lasted long after the successful and perhaps
slow advance of the Asiatic column, things had come to a state of
equilibrium or repose, not alone socially, but also physiologically. It
takes a long time for the conqueror and conquered to settle together,
without farther disturbance or question, into their relative positions;
it takes a long time for the recollection of conflicts to die away. But
far longer does it take for a race of invaders to come into unison with
the climate of the countries they have seized, the system of man
accommodating itself only through successive generations, and therefore
very slowly, to new physical conditions. It takes long before the skin
assumes its determinate hue, and the skull its destined form. A period
amply sufficient for all such changes to be accomplished in Europe had
transpired at the very dawn of history, and strands of population in
conformity with meteorological and geographical influences, though of
such origin as has been described, were already distributed upon it. A
condition of ethnical equilibrium had been reached. Along each
isothermal or climatic band were its correspondingly modified men,
spending their lives in avocations dictated by their environment. These
strands of population were destined to be dislocated, and some of them
to become extinct, by inventing or originating among themselves new and
unsuitable artificial physical conditions.

[Sid