on differences of appearance, and that certain hereditary mental characteristics belong to each type of man.
In Europe, the occurrence of local types has led to the concept of distinct races, identified with certain national groups: the blond representing the Teuton; the heavy, darker type, the Slav; and the Mediterranean, the typical Spaniard or Italian.
On account of the peculiar position of the blond type, it has been pre-eminently identified with the so-called Aryan race. As is well known, most of the languages of Europe are derived from one ancient form of speech,—the parental Aryan language. Slavic, Teutonic, and Romance languages are the most important modern divisions of this group in Europe, to which Greek, Celtic, Lithuanian, and Albanian also belong. Among European languages, only Finnish and its relatives on the Baltic, Magyar, Turkish, and Basque, do not belong to this extended group. Aryan languages are spoken by people of the most diverse racial types; nevertheless there are scientists who try to identify the blond north-European with the ancient pure Aryan, and who claim for the race pre-eminent hereditary gifts, because the people who at present and in our concept are the leaders of the world speak Aryan languages.
Scientific proof of these contentions cannot be given. They are rather fancies of north-European dreamers, based on the complaisant love of the achievements of the blondes. No one has ever proved either that all the Aryans of the earliest times were blondes, or that people speaking other languages may not have been blond, too; and nobody would be able to show that the great achievements of mankind were due to blond thinkers. On the contrary, the men to whom we are indebted for the basic advance of civil-
