Fables Vol. 22 - Farewell Nahga

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Great Events By Famous Historians Volume 1Project Gutenberg's The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1, by VariousThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.netTitle: The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. See page 1 for an engraving and account of this famousstone.

It was found over a century ago and its value was instantlyrecognized, but many years passed before its secrets were deciphered. Itcontains an inscription repeated in three forms of writing: the earlyEgyptian of the hieroglyphics, a later Egyptian (the demotic), andGreek.THE RACES OF MANTurn now from this tracing of our means of knowledge, to speak of thefacts they tell us.

Fables Vol. 22 - Farewell Nahga Speech

When our humankind first become clearly visible theyare already divided into races, which for convenience we speak of aswhite, yellow, and black. Of these the whites had apparently advancedfarthest on the road to civilization; and the white race itself hadbecome divided into at least three varieties, so clearly marked as tohave persisted through all the modern centuries of communication andintermarriage.

Science is not even able to say positively that thesevarieties or families had a common origin. See Prince Jimmu, page 140.THE ARYANSOf our own progressive Aryan race, we have no monuments nor inscriptionsso old as those of the Hamites and the Semites.

What comparativephilology tells is this: An early, if not the original, home of theAryans was in Asia, to the eastward of the Semites, probably in themountain district back of modern Persia. That is, they were not, likethe other whites, a people of the marsh lands and river valleys.

Theylived in a higher, hardier, and more bracing atmosphere. Perhaps it washere that their minds took a freer bent, their spirits caught a boldertone. Wherever they moved they came as conquerors among other races.In their primeval home and probably before the year B.C. 3000, they hadalready acquired a fair degree of civilization. They built houses,ploughed the land, and ground grain into flour for their baking. Thefamily relations were established among them; they had some socialorganization and simple form of government; they had learned to worshipa god, and to see in him a counterpart of their tribal ruler.From their upland farms they must have looked eastward upon yet highermountains, rising impenetrable above the snowline; but to north andsouth and west they might turn to lower regions; and by degrees, perhapsas they grew too numerous for comfort, a few families wandered off alongthe more inviting routes.

Whichever way they started, their adventurousspirit led them on. We find no trace of a single case where heartsfailed or strength grew weary and the movement became retrograde, backtoward the ancient home. Spreading out, radiating in all directions, itis they who have explored the earth, who have measured it and marked itsbounds and penetrated almost to its every corner.

It is they who stillpant to complete the work so long ago begun.Before B.C. 2000 one of these exuded swarms had penetrated India,probably by way of the Indus River. In the course of a thousand years orso, the intruders expanded and fought their way slowly from the Indus tothe Ganges. The earlier and duskier inhabitants gave way before them orbecame incorporated in the stronger race. A mighty Aryan or Hindu empirewas formed in India and endured there until well within historic times.Yet its power faded. Life in the hot and languid tropics tends toweaken, not invigorate, the sinews of a race.

Then, too, a formalreligion, a system of castes as arbitrary as among the Egyptians,laid its paralyzing grip upon the land. 600 Buddhism, a newand beautiful religion, sought to revive the despairing people; but theywere beyond its help. Their slothful languor had become too deep.From having been perhaps the first and foremost and most civilized ofthe Aryan tribes, the Hindus sank to be degenerate members of the race.We shall turn to look on them again in a later period; but they will beseen in no favorable light.Meanwhile other wanderers from the Aryan home appear to the north andwest. Perhaps even the fierce Tartars are an Aryan race, much alteredfrom long dwelling among the yellow peoples. One tribe, the Persians,moved directly west, and became neighbors of the already noted Semiticgroup. After long wars backward and forward, bringing us well within therange of history, the Persians proved too powerful for the whole Semitegroup. They helped destroy Assyria, they overthrew the secondBabylonian empire which Nebuchadnezzar had built up, and then, pressingon to the conquest of Egypt, they swept the Hamites too from their placeof sovereignty.How surely do those tropic lands avenge themselves on each new savagehorde of invaders from the hardy North.

It is not done in a generation,not in a century, perhaps. But drop by drop the vigorous, tingling,Arctic blood is sapped away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loosepleasure, of the south land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors.As we watch the Persians, we see their kings go mad, or becomeeffeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for them.

Wesee the whole race visibly degenerate, until one questions ifMarathon were after all so marvellous a victory, and suspects thatat whatever point the Persians had begun their advance on Europe theywould have been easily hurled back.It was in Europe only that the Aryan wanderers found a temperateclimate, a region similar to that in which they had been bred. Recentspeculation has even suggested that Europe was their primeval home, fromwhich they had strayed toward Asia, and to which they now returned.Certainly it is in Europe that the race has continued to develop.Earliest of these Aryan waves to take possession of their modernheritage, were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the Europeancontinent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. Then came theGreeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, representing possibly a singlemigration, that spread westward along the islands and peninsulas of theMediterranean. The Teutons may have left Asia before B.C.

1000, for theyseem to have reached their German forests by three centuries beyond thattime, and these vast migratory movements were very slow. The latestAryan wave, that of the Slavs, came well within historic times. Wealmost fancy we can see its movement. Russian statesmen, indeed, havehopes that this is not yet completed.

They dream that they, the youngestof the peoples, are yet to dominate the whole.