Chapter VIII.
THE OLDEST SON OF NOAH.
That eminent authority, Dr. Max Müller, says, in his "Lectures on the Science of Religion,"
"If we confine ourselves to the Asiatic continent, with its important peninsula of Europe, we find that in the vast desert of drifting human speech three, and only three, oases have been formed in which, before the beginning of all history, language became permanent and traditional—assumed, in fact, a new character, a character totally different from the original character of the floating and constantly varying speech of human beings. These three oases of language are known by the name of Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic. In these three centres, more particularly in the Aryan and Semitic, language ceased to be natural; its growth was arrested, and it became permanent, solid, petrified, or, if you like, historical speech. I have always maintained that this centralization and traditional conservation of language could only have been the result of religious and political influences, and I now mean to show that we really have clear evidence of three independent settlements of religion—the Turanian, the Aryan, and the Semitic—concomitantly with the three great settlements of language."
There can be no doubt that the Aryan and another branch, which Müller calls Semitic, but which may more properly be called Hamitic, radiated from Noah; it is a question yet to be decided whether the Turanian or Mongolian is also a branch of the Noachic or Atlantean stock.
To quote again from Max Müller:
"If it can only be proved that the religions of the Aryan nations are united by the same bonds of a real relationship
