The study of the myths of various peoples is receiving the attention of numerous students, and in Germany certain ethnologists, such as Ehrenreich, Foy,[118] and Frobenius,[119] find sun and moon gods in the most unlikely places. There is, however, considerable danger that this nature-mythology is being carried too far. Footnote 118: _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, x., 1907, etc. Footnote 119: “Die Weltanschauung der Naturvölker,” _Beitr. z. Volks-und Völkerkunde_, vi., 1898; _Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes_, i., 1904; _The Childhood of Man_, 1909. The origin of the moral idea has also been discussed from the ethnological point of view, as Hobhouse (1906) and Westermarck (1906) have exemplified in their great books. Magic, religion, and morality have, as we have seen, especially of late years, been regarded almost entirely from the anthropological standpoint. But a new school of French students has arisen who maintain that these are essentially social phenomena. The writings of Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss[120] have initiated a new method of study which promises to have far-reaching results. Footnote 120: The work of this school is mainly to be found in _L’Année sociologique_ (1898). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI. LINGUISTICS LINGUISTICS as a department of Anthropology may be regarded from many points of view. To the evolutionist language forms one of the tests dividing the Hominidæ from the other anthropoids; the somatologist is interested in correlating the phonetic system with the structure of the organs connected with the mechanism of speech; and the ethnologist studies language for the evidence it affords of ethnic affinity or social contact, or as a means of determining the grade of culture to which a particular people has attained, or, again, as a reflection of their character or psychology. The linguistic classifications of Gallatin, Humboldt, and Müller are referred to later. [Sidenote: =The Aryan Controversy.=] The connection between linguistics and anthropology assumed its greatest importance in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the discoveries and theories of philologists were adopted wholesale to explain the problems of European ethnology, and the Aryan controversy became the _locus_ of disturbance throughout the Continent. “No other scientific question, with the exception, perhaps, of the doctrine of evolution, was ever so bitterly discussed or so infernally confounded at the hands of Chauvinistic or otherwise biassed writers.”[121] Footnote 121: Ripley, 1899, p. 453. In 1786 Sir William Jones had pointed out the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and Celtic, and suggested a common parentage, which was confirmed by Bopp in 1835. Unfortunately, a primitive unity of speech was held to imply a primitive unity of race.