Ethnology : in two parts, I. Fundamental ethnical problems. II. The primary ethnical groups / by A.H. Keane.
- Augustus Henry Keane
- Date:
- 1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Ethnology : in two parts, I. Fundamental ethnical problems. II. The primary ethnical groups / by A.H. Keane. Source: Wellcome Collection.
430/484 page 394
![fully on a level with the highest European standard, approaches nearest to the Hamitic, at least as represented by the Mauritanian Berbers, from which it differs chiefly in the more perfectly oval contour Hnes of face and head. Compared with the Aryan, the Semitic intellect may be described as less varied, ])ut more intense, a contrast due perhaps to their monotonous and almost changeless environment of yellow sands and blue skies, with a flora and fauna limited to a few species, and these mainly confined to oases and steppes encircled by the desert and everywhere presenting the same uniform aspect. Hence to the Semites mankind is indebted for little philosophy and science, but for much sublime poetry associated with many profound conceptions of a moral order, resulting in the three great monotheistic religions—the Jewish, Christian and Muhammadan. Expansion and progress are the dominant cha- racteristics of the Aryan, concentration and immutability of the Semitic intellect. This mental temperament finds its outward expression in the Semitic form of speech, which is distinguished above Languag^'.*' Others for great stability and persistence; so much so that the various branches (Assyrian, Ara- maic, Hebre7v, Arabic, Himyaritic) may be regarded as mere dialects of a long extinct Semitic mother-tongue. They differ less from each other—Hebrew, for instance, from Syriac, or Assyrian from Arabic—than do many members of the same branch in the Aryan family—English from Gothic in the Teutonic, Hindi from Sanskrit in the Indie branch. On comparing the Chaldean of the fragments of Esdras, representing the Aramaic of the 5th century B.C., with the Syriac still written in our day, scarcely any essential differences can be detected between texts composed at so long an interval. Between these two limits Aramaic may be said to have varied no more than the language of Cicero from that of Ennius'. Semitic speech presents some most remarkable phonetic and structural features, such as the series of deep gut- turals (kh, hh, q, gh) unpronounceable by Europeans, and conse- quently of racial value; and the verbal roots, mainly triliteral, moved by vowels, but never changed in sound or sequence in E. Renan, Histoire...des langues shiitiqiies.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21500666_0430.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
