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
ingenious guesses; but we cannot prove any of them. It may be that the
group which came together, and which formed the primeval society which
spoke the primeval Aryan tongue, were not brought together by community
of blood, but by some other cause which threw them in one another's way.
If we accept the Hebrew genealogies, they need not have had any
community of blood nearer than common descent from Adam and Noah. That
is, they need not have been all children of Shem, of Ham, or of
Japheth; some children of Shem, some of Ham, and some of Japheth may
have been led by some cause to settle together. Or if we believe in
independent creations of men, or in the development of men out of
mollusks, the whole of the original society need not have been
descendants of the same man or the same mollusk. In short, there is no
theory of the origin of man which requires us to believe that the
primeval Aryans were a natural family; they may have been more like an
accidental party of fellow-travellers. And if we accept them as a
natural family, it does not follow that the various branches which grew
into separate races and nations, speaking separate though kindred
languages, were necessarily marked off by more immediate kindred. It may
be that there is no nearer kindred in blood between this or that
Persian, this or that Greek, this or that Teuton, than the general
kindred of all Aryans. For, when this or that party marched off from the
common home, it does follow that those who marched off together were
necessarily immediate brothers or cousins. The party which grew into
Hindoos or Teutons may not have been made up exclusively of one set of
near kinsfolk. Some of the children of the same parents or forefathers
may have marched one way, while others marched another way, or stayed
behind. We may, if we please, indulge our fancy by conceiving that there
may actually be family distinctions older than distinctions of nation
and race. It may be that the Gothic _Ama