Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl.

  • Edward Anwyl
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/88 (page 4)
    Aryan in speech came necessarily from the con¬ querors rather than the conquered. In the last century it was long held that in countries of Aryan speech the essential features of their civili¬ sation, their religious ideas, their social institu¬ tions, nay, more, their inhabitants themselves, were of Aryan origin. A more critical investigation has, however, enabled us to distinguish clearly between the de¬ velopment of various factors of human life which in their evolution can follow and often have followed more or less independent lines. The physical history of race, for instance, forms a problem by itself and must be studied by anthropological and ethnological methods. Language, again, has often spread along lines other than those of race, and its investigation appertains to the sphere of the philologist. Material civilisation, too, has not of necessity followed the lines either of racial or of linguistic development, and the search for its ancient trade-routes may be safely left to the archaeologist. Similarly the spread of ideas in religion and thought is one which has advanced on lines of its own, and its investigation must be conducted by the methods and along the lines of the comparative study of religions. In the wide sense, then, in which the word