e root to
its qualifications and determinatives, to the adjectives and phrases which
give colour to a word, and indicate the precise _role_ it has to play in
the sentence in which it is used. These languages resemble each other
chiefly in their lacunae. Compare them in the dictionaries and they seem
very different, especially if we take two, such as Finnish and Chinese,
that are separated by the whole width of a continent.

It is the same with their physical types. Certain tribes whom we place in
the Turanian group have all the distinctive characteristics of the white
races. Others are hardly to be distinguished from the yellow nations.
Between these two extremes there are numerous varieties which carry us,
without any abrupt transition, from the most perfect European to the most
complete Chinese type.[39] In the Aryan family the ties of blood are
perceptible even between the most divergent branches. By a comparative
study of their languages, traditions, and religious conceptions, it has
been proved that the Hindoos upon the Ganges, the Germans on the Rhine, and
the Celts upon the Loire, are all offshoots of a single stem. Among the
Turanians the connections between one race and another are only perceptible
in the case of tribes living in close neighbourhood to one another, who
have had mutual relations over a long course of years. In such a case the
natural affinities are easily seen, and a family of peoples can be
established with certainty. The classification is less definitely marked
and clearly divided than that of the Aryan and Semitic families; but,
nevertheless, it has a real value for the historian.[40]

According to the doctrine which now seems most widely accepted, it was from
the crowded ranks of the immense army which peopled the north that the
tribes who first attempted a civilized life in the plains of Shinar and the
fertile slopes between the mountains and the left bank of the Tigris, were
thrown off. It is thought that these tribes already possessed a national
constitution, a religion, and a system of legislation, the art of writing
and the most essential industries, when they first took possession of the
lands in question.[41] A tradition still current among the eastern Turks
puts the cradle of the race in the valleys of the Altai, north of the
plateau of Pamir.[42] Whether the emigrants into Chaldaea brought the
rudiments of their civilization with them, or whether their inventive
faculties were only