ssia. What distinguishes them is their spiritual bent and especially
their language, sometimes also their religion. Scholars by common
consent call those peoples Aryan who speak an Aryan language: in Asia,
the Hindoos and Persians; in Europe, the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards,
Germans, Scandinavians, Slavs (Russians, Poles, Serfs), and Celts.[5]

Similarly, we call Semites those peoples who speak a Semitic language:
Arabs, Jews and Syrians. But a people may speak an Aryan or a Semitic
language and yet not be of Aryan or Semitic race; a negro may speak
English without being of English stock. Many of the Europeans whom we
classify among the Aryans are perhaps the descendants of an ancient
race conquered by the Aryans and who have adopted their language, just
as the Egyptians received the language of the Arabs, their conquerors.

These two names (Aryan and Semite), then, signify today rather two
groups of peoples than two distinct races. But even if we use the
terms in this sense, one may say that all the greater peoples of the
world have been Semites or Aryans. The Semitic family included the
Phoenicians, the people of commerce; the Jews, the people of religion;
the Arabs, the people of war. The Aryans, some finding their homes in
India, others in Europe, have produced the nations which have been,
and still are, foremost in the world--in antiquity, the Hindoos, a
people of great philosophical and religious ideas; the Greeks,
creators of art and of science; the Persians and Romans, the
founders, the former in the East, the latter in the West, of the
greatest empires of antiquity; in modern times, the Italians, French,
Germans, Dutch, Russians, English and Americans.

The history of civilization begins with the Egyptians and the
Chaldeans; but from the fifteenth century before our era, history
concerns itself only with the Aryan and Semitic peoples.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Ethnography is the study of races from the point of view of their
objects and customs.

[4] The Chinese only of the yellow race have elaborated among themselves
an industry, a regular government, a polite society. But placed at the
extremity of Asia they have had no influence on other civilized peoples.
[The Japanese should be included.--ED.]

[5] The English and French are mixtures of Celtic and German blood.

CHAPTER III

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST

THE EGYPTIANS

=The Land of Egypt.=--Egypt is only the valley of the Nile, a narrow
strip