Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/30

 Method and Plan pursued in this History. 9 enrolled in the golden book of this patriciate of the human race. When the student sits down to a careful and unprejudiced study of history, he soon perceives that systems based upon hasty generalizations fall away like castles built with pieces of cardboard. We shall not lay stress therefore on racial considerations, to which some have accorded so much weight. They have often pointed out that nations living at great distances from one another, yet exhibit features common to all, and speak languages of which both grammar and vocabulary offer analogies with each other ; from these resemblances they assume that the peoples in question have a common origin, and that they sprang from the same stock. It is a theory which holds good as far as modern times are concerned, where direct observation falls on such groups as constituted themselves in the broad light of history ; but do not we expose ourselves to grievous errors if we apply the same methods to remote and shadowy ages, when nations, now disappeared, came into existence and con- stituted themselves ? Languages have been made the principal vehicle from which peoples are classified and connected with this or that race ; but, on the one hand, it is quite possible for science to be at fault respecting the affinities of this or that idiom, and on the other hand, instances might be multiplied of a mixed people, the Bulgarians for example, having been led by circumstances to adopt a speech which originally was not that of the main ethnological group to which it belonged. Then, too, how are we to choose in a contest between specialists, which has been going on for some time and is not likely to be settled yet awhile, as to the nature of the primitive populations of Chaldaea ? Chaldaean culture is tossed to and fro between the Semitic race and the race to which the name of Touranian or Finn has been applied ; but on what foundations do they rest either of these attributions ? On texts, the decipherment of which is by no means certain, on words and shapes found in these same texts, the real nature of which has given rise and is still giving rise to impassioned and sharp discussions. When we have to deal with hoary antiquity, racial notions and classifications deduced from them hang therefore on a single supposition, a supposition which after all may, in some cases, bring no more with it than a greater or lesser degree of