That illustrious Frenchman, H. A. Taine (" History of English
Literature," p. 23), sees the unity of the Indo-European races manifest
in their languages, literature, and philosophies, and argues that these
pre-eminent traits are "the great marks of an original model," and that
when we meet with them "fifteen, twenty, thirty centuries before our
era, in an Aryan, an Egyptian, a Chinese, they represent the work of a
great many ages, perhaps of several myriads of centuries. . . . Such is
the first and richest source of these master faculties from which
historical events take their rise; and one sees that if it be powerful
it is because this is no simple spring, but a kind of lake, a deep
reservoir, wherein other springs have, for a multitude of centuries,
discharged their several streams." In other words, the capacity of the
Egyptian, Aryan, Chaldean, Chinese, Saxon, and Celt to maintain
civilization is simply the result of civilized training during "myriads
of centuries" in some original home of the race.
I cannot believe that the great inventions were duplicated
spontaneously, as some would have us believe, in different countries;
there is no truth in the theory that men pressed by necessity will
always hit upon the same invention to relieve their wants.
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