type of speech, and of accompanying
civilisation, which spread over all the peoples in question at a very
early time. Aryan language and civilisation laid hold of a number of
races not otherwise related to each other.

The view, however, still prevails that the various lands where Aryan
speech and culture prevail were settled from one centre. When society
was in the nomadic stage, it may naturally be presumed that a
superior civilisation which had established itself in any one quarter
of the world would be carried by wandering hordes in various
directions, and that the bearers of the new civilisation would become
the conquerors and masters of the countries to which their wanderings
led them. And there is now some agreement on the part of leading
authorities as to the quarter of the world from which the migrations
of the Aryans proceeded. In the Southern Steppes of Russia, in the
great plains north of the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of
Aral, there dwelt, we are told, in times far before the dawn of
history, hordes rather than tribes of men, who, though they had
originally spoken the same language, were coming to differ from each
other in speech and culture. These hordes were peoples in the process
of formation. It was natural to them to wander, and as each wandered
farther from the centre, it came to differ more markedly from the
common type. Some of these went southwards and eastwards to Persia
and India; others went westward, to conquer and possess the countries
of Europe.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_; Schrader
and Jevons (Griffin, 1890). This is the English of Schrader's
_Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_. Compare Dr. E. Meyer's
_History of Antiquity_, vol. i. book vi. Dr. Isaac Taylor's _Origin
of the Aryans_ gives a compendious account of the question,
concluding against the unity of the Aryans in point of race.]

The Aryan question lies at the threshold of the history of each of
the Aryan peoples, and has to be met in the study of each of the
religions. It must be confessed that the world now knows less on this
point than it thought it did a generation ago. The difference between
the Semitic and the Aryan spirit is real and substantial, as will
appear from the study of the Aryan religions, but it is more
important as well as more possible to know these well in their
individual character than to have a correct theory of their
historical relation to each other. The st