There is one point in regard to the theory that the Aryas were originally a European race, which, so far as I know, has not been taken into consideration. The Aryas were obviously a superior people. That they proved wherever they went. In every migration they came, conquered and remained. Has there ever been known a case where a superior race—not a handful of men, like the crew of the _Mayflower_, but a whole nation—has migrated, taking all the risks and uncertainties incident to travel and climate, and leaving the inferior race to enjoy the old well-proved home undisturbed? Yet that is what the Aryas must have done if they left Europe for the terrors and privations of the Highlands of Asia, remaining to face the hardships of that inhospitable region for long centuries, until its insufficiencies drove them to seek the kindlier soil and climate which their forbears had deserted. But whether the Aryas left Europe for Asia and thence again descended upon Europe, or whether they were originally an Asiatic race of dominant nobility, that is a question over which we may leave the doctors to break their learned heads, in the confident assurance that never can they arrive at any certainty. Theory without a backing of facts, without documentary evidence, must remain valueless. Only one thing in regard to the European migration or migrations is certain, and that is the fact that all the European languages, barring those of the Huns, their cousins the Finns, the Basques and the Turks (if we may call them Europeans, which let us hope will soon no longer be the case), can be traced back to the speech of the old tribe which perhaps three or four thousand years ago flitted south, east and west from the storm-vexed valleys of the Pamirs, conquering and civilizing, driving the aborigines before it like chaff before the wind. When I was a lad we used to be taught by such pedagogues as were sufficiently advanced to have heard of Sanskrit, that this and that Greek or Latin or other European word was “derived from the Sanskrit.” That is all changed, and no teacher would nowadays dare to preach such nonsense. We know now that Sanskrit, which must have been more or less a dead language in Buddha’s time, only known at any rate by the more learned among the priests, was the descendant, like Greek, Latin, Russian, English, the Celtic tongues and others, from a much older language which was spoken by our forefathers in the Highlands of Central Asia. But Sanskrit, albeit not our parent speech, but rather a distant cousin of our own European tongues, dead and buried though it has been for some two thousand years, has been the key by which the learned have unlocked the door of the most secret muniment-room of ethnological lore.