ent discovery (1908) has strongly confirmed and illumined this
view of the origin of Indian civilisation. Explorers in the ruins of the
ancient capital of the Hittite Empire (in North Syria and Cappadocia)
found certain treaties which had been concluded, about 1300 B.C.,
between the Hittites and the king of the Aryans. The names of the
deities which are mentioned in the treaties seem to show that the
Persian and Indian branches of the Aryan race were not yet separated,
but formed a united kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates. They seem to
have come from Bactria (and possibly beyond), and introduced the horse
(hitherto unknown to the Babylonians) about 1800 B.C. It is surmised by
the experts that the Indian and Persian branches separated soon
after 1300 B.C., possibly on account of religious quarrels, and the
Sanscrit-speaking branch, with its Vedic hymns and its Hinduism,
wandered eastward and northward until it discovered and took possession
of the Indian peninsula. The long isolation of India, since the
cessation of its commerce with Rome until modern times, explains the
later stagnation of its civilisation.

Thus the supposed "non-progressiveness" of the east, after once
establishing civilisation, turns out to be a question of geography and
history. We have now to see if the same intelligible principles will
throw light on the "progressiveness" of the western branch of the Aryan
race, and on the course of western civilisation generally. [*]

* In speaking of Europeans as Aryans I am, of course,
allowing for an absorption of the conquered non-Aryans. A
European nation is no more Aryan, in strict truth, than the
English are Anglo-Saxon.

The first two centres of civilisation are found in the valley of the
Nile and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; the civilisations of
Egypt and Babylon, the oldest in the world. There is, however, a good
deal of evidence by which we may bring these civilisations nearer to
each other in their earliest stages, so that we must not confidently
speak of two quite independent civilisations. The civilisation which
developed on the Euphrates is found first at Susa, on the hills
overlooking the plains of Mesopotamia, about 6000 B.C. A people akin
to the Turkish or Chinese lives among the hills, and makes the vague
advance from higher Neolithic culture to primitive civilisation. About
the same time the historical or dynastic civilisation begins in Egypt,
and some h