Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/281

Rh the phases of natural life with a personality like his own; on this all-absorbing theme he lavished his nascent powers of literary expression in the significant epithet; and all this with such truth and vitality that, from Homer down to the latest modern novel, the primitive solar myth—the varying fortunes of hero and heroine, the cruel machinations that separate them, and their final re-union-dominates the whole realm of literary make-believe.

Professor Max Müller sums up the results of the foregoing inquiry in these words:—"Looking then at the whole evidence which the languages of the various Aryan nations still supply, we perceive that before their separation their life was that of agricultural nomads, and probably most like the life of the ancient Germans, as described by Tacitus. They knew the arts of plonghing, of making roads, of building ships and carts, of weaving and sewing, and of erecting strongholds and houses, more or less substantial. They could count, and they had divided the year into months. They had tamed the most important domestic animals; they were acquainted with the most useful metals, and were armed with hatchets and swords, whether for peaceful or for warlike purposes. They followed their leaders and kings, obeyed their laws and customs; and were impressed with the idea of a Divine being, which they invoked by various names."

It is impossible to say when or in what way the causes which have produced the existing distribution of the Aryan tongues began to take effect. It is due to a highly-elaborated flexional system, and a very early appearance of literary forms, among many other considerations, that philologists like Max Müller were led to place the common centre of emanation nearer to the Asiatic than to the European unity. There is no doubt, moreover, that these tongues range themselves in groups that travel on divergent lines. We are on historical ground, too, in saying that the original rupture between North-west and Southeast was rendered permanent by internal causes due to the growth of an elaborate social and sacerdotal system peculiar to the Asiatic section, and boy such external agencies as the inroads of the Tartar hordes from Central Asia, and the spread of Semitic influences from the South-West. Bearing