Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/701

Rh Nothing is more certain than that the immense advance of the European Aryans (so styled) beyond those of Asia has been due mainly to the aboriginal races whom the Asiatic invaders overcame by virtue of their superior organization, but whose posterity still constitutes the main element in the population of Europe. The simple comparison of the Iranians, ancient and modern, with the nations of the West, affords ample evidence on this point. Of the ancient Persians we have had a vivid portraiture from Rawlinson. Their modern descendants are described to us by a late traveler, Mr. Arthur Arnold, an English gentleman of keen discernment and of much experience among Oriental races. In his recent work, "Through Persia by Caravan," he gives an account of the government and the people, which shows them both to be much as they were in the days of Xerxes. Of all governments above the grade of savagery, the Persian seems to be the worst; and all that can be said for it is that it faithfully reflects the character of its people. The ordinary punishments are still, as in former days, death and the bastinado; and each of these punishments is inflicted with the most ingenious refinement of cruelty. Shortly before Mr. Arnold's arrival, the governor of Ears had endeavored to repress crime in that province by a special exhibition of energy. "He tried," we are told, "throat-cutting, and left the bleeding bodies exposed to the view of all comers in the public square of Shiraz. He tried crucifixion, nailing the wretches by the hands and feet to the walls of the town, and leaving them under a guard of soldiers to die of exhaustion and starvation. Finally,manual correction? [sic] he tried burial alive in pits, or cylinders of brick-work, of depth such as to allow the criminal's head to appear above the top;" in which condition, we are told, "the miserable men were in their dying hours barbarously ill-treated, on their exposed and defenseless heads, by the rabble and soldiery of Shiraz."

Such is the race whose ancestors achieved the conquest of Europe some two or three thousand years before the Christian era, subduing gradually the scattered and disorganized tribes of Semitic, Iberian, and Uralian origin. As has been already noted, the two traits of Aryan character which, in addition to the personal valor shared by them with their opponents, especially insured the success of the invaders, were their worship of hereditary rank—a base sentiment, almost unknown to the other great races of mankind—and their ruthless cruelty to the conquered. The former trait gave them union and discipline, the other made them terribly formidable. Both traits have survived to our own day in the dominant class throughout Europe. In the feudal system, the state of society to which these qualities gave rise attained its highest development. A carnival of tyranny, superstition, and cruelty prevailed for several centuries throughout the finest