than the
general kindred of all Aryans. For, when this or that party marched
off from the common home, it does not 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
_Amali_ and the Roman _Aemilii_--I throw out the idea as a mere
illustration--were branches of a family which had taken a name before
the division of Teuton and Italian. Some of the members of that family
may have joined the band of which came the Goths, while other members
joined the band of which came the Romans. There is no difference but
the length of time to distinguish such a supposed case from the case of
an English family, one branch of which settled in the seventeenth
century at Boston in Massachusetts, while another branch stayed behind
at Boston in Holland. Mr. Sayce says truly that the use of a kindred
language does not prove that the Englishman and the Hindoo are really
akin in race; for, as he adds, many Hindoos are men of non-Aryan race
who have simply learned to speak tongues of Sanscrit origin. He might
have gone on to say, with equal truth, that there is no positive
certainty that there was any community in blood among the original
Aryan group itself, and that if we admit such community of blood in the
original Aryan group, it does not follow that there is any further
special kindred between Hindoo and Hindoo or between Englishman and
Englishman. The original group may not have been a family, but an
artificial union. And if it was a family, those of its members who
marched together east or west or north or south may have had no tie of
kindred beyond the common cousinship of all.

Now the tendency of this kind of argument is to lead to something a
good deal more startling than the doctrine that language is no certain
test of race. Its tendency is to go on further, and to show that race
is no certain test of community of blood. And this comes pretty nearly
to saying that there is no such thing as race at all. For our whole
conception of race starts from the idea of community of b