The science of comparative ethnology is one which has been greatly developed during the last twenty-five years. The persistence of race tendencies, as in the Semitic tribes, Jews and Arabs, or in the Teutonic and Celtic branches of the great Aryan stock, has been generally admitted. Though few would now say, with the ethnologist Knox, "Race is everything," none would wholly dispense with this factor, as Buckle did, in writing a history of civilization.

Racial varieties have existed from prehistoric times. Their origin is lost in the remote past. As far as history goes back, we find them the same that they are now. When and how the primitive stock differentiated itself into the great varieties which we call Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian, no one can tell. But there are well-established varieties of which we can trace the rise and development; I mean national varieties. The character of an Englishman or a Frenchman is as distinctly marked as that of a Greek or Roman. There is a general resemblance among all Englishmen; and the same kind of resemblance among all Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swedes, Poles. But this crystallization into national types of character has taken place in a comparatively short period. We look back to a time when there were no Englishmen in Great Britain; but only Danes, Saxons, Normans, and Celts; no Frenchmen in France; but Gauls, Franks, and Romans. Gradually a distinct quality emerges, and we have Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen. The type, once arrived at, persists, and becomes more marked. It is marked by personal looks and manners, by a common temperament, a common style of thinking, feeling, acting; the same kind of morals and manners. This type was formed by the action and reaction of the divers races brought side by side—Normans and Saxons mutually influencing each other in England, and being influenced again by climate, conditions of life, forms of government, national customs. So, at last, we have the well-developed national character,—a mysterious but very certain element, from which no individual can wholly escape. All drink of that one spirit.

Thus far I have been stating what we all know. But now I would call your attention to a curious fact, which, so far as I am aware, has not before been noticed. It is this,—that when two nations, during their forming period, have been in relation to each other, there will be a peculiar character developed in each. That is to say, they will differ from each other according to certain well-defined lines, and these differences will repeat themselves again and again in history, in curious parallelisms, or dualisms.

To take the most familiar illustration of this: consider the national qualities of the French and English. The English and French, during several centuries, have been acting and reacting on each other, both in war and peace. Now, what are the typical characteristics of these two nations? Stated in a broad way they might be described something as follows:—

The English mind is more practical than ideal; its movement is slow but persistent; its progress is by gradual development; it excels in the industrial arts; it reverences power; it loves liberty more than equality, not objecting to an aristocracy. It tends to individualism. Its conquests have been due to the power of order, and adherence to law.

The French mind is more ideal than practical; versatile, rather than persistent; its movements rapid, its progress by crises and revolution, rather than by development; it excels in whatever is tasteful and artistic; it admires glory rather than power; loves equality more than liberty; objects to an aristocracy, but is ready to yield individual rights at the bidding of the community; renouncing individualism for the sake of communism; and its successes have been due to enthusiasm rather than to organization.

Next, look at the Greeks and Romans. These peoples were in intimate relations during the forming period of national life; and we find in them much the same contrasts of character that we do in the English and the French. The Romans were deficient in imagination, rather prosaic, fond of rule and fixed methods, conservative of ancient customs. The Greeks were quick and versatile; artistic to a high degree; producing masterpieces of architecture, painting, statuary, and creating every form of literature; inventing the drama, the epic poem, oratory, odes, history, philosophy. The Romans borrowed from them their art and their literature, but were themselves the creators of law, the organizers of force. The Greeks and Romans were the English and French of antiquity; and you will notice that they occupy geographically the same relative positions,—the Greeks and French on the east; the Romans and English on the west.

But now observe another curious fact. The Roman Empire and the Greek republics came to an end; and in Greece no important nationality took the place of those wonderful commonwealths. But in Italy, by the union of the old inhabitants with the Teutonic northern invaders, modern Italy was slowly formed into a new national life. No longer deriving any important influence from Greece (which had ceased to be a living and independent force), Italy, during the Middle Ages, came into relations with Spain and the Spaniards. In Spain, as in Italy, a new national life was in process of formation by the union of the Gothic tribes, the Mohammedan invaders, and the ancient inhabitants. The Spaniards occupied Sicily in 1282, and Naples fell later into their hands, about 1420, and in 1526 took possession of Milan. Thus Italy and Spain were entangled in complex relations during their forming period. What was the final result? Modern Italians became the very opposite of the ancient Romans. The Spaniards on the west are now the Romans, and the Italians, the Greeks. The Spaniards are slow, strong, conservative; the Italians, quick-witted, full of feeling and sentiment, versatile. The Spaniards trust to organization, the Italians to enthusiasm. The Spaniards are practical, the Italians ideal. In fine, the Spaniards, on the west, are like the English and the ancient Romans; the Italians, on the east, like the French and the Greeks. The English pride, the Roman pride, the Spanish pride, we have all heard of; but the French, the Greeks, and the Italians are not so much inclined to pride and the love of power, as to vanity and the love of fame. England, Rome, and Spain, united by law and the love of organization, gradually became solidified into empires; Greece, Italy, and France were always divided into independent states, provinces, or republics.

Now, let us go east and consider two empires that have grown up, side by side, with constant mutual relations: Japan and China. The people of Japan, on the east, are described by all travelers in language that might be applied to the ancient Greeks or the modern French. They are said to be quick-witted, lively, volatile, ready of apprehension, with a keen sense of honor, which prefers death to disgrace; eminently a social and pleasure-seeking people, fond of feasts, dancing, music, and frolics. Men and women are pleasing, polite, affable. On the other hand, the Chinese are described as more given to reason than to sentiment, prosaic, slow to acquire, but tenacious of all that is gained, very conservative, great lovers of law and order; with little taste for art, but much national pride. They are the English of Asia; the Japanese, the French.

Go back to earlier times, when the two oldest branches of the great Aryan stock diverged on the table-lands of central Asia; the Vedic race descending into India, and the Zend people passing west, into Persia. The same duplex development took place that we have seen in other instances. The people on the Indus became what they still are,—a people of sentiment and feeling. Like the French, they are polite, and cultivate civility and courtesy. The same tendency to local administration which we see in France is found in India; the commune being, in both, the germ-cell of national life. The village communities in India are little republics, almost independent of anything outside. Dynasties change, new rulers and kings arrive; Hindoo, Mohammedan, English; but the village community remains the same. Like the Japanese, the French, the Italians, the inhabitants of India are skillful manufacturers of ornamental articles. Their religion tends to sentiment more than to morality,—to feeling, rather than to action. This is the development which India took when these races inhabited the Punjaub. But the ancient Persians were different. Their religion included a morality which placed its essence in right thinking and right action. A sentimental religion, like that of India and of Italy, tends to the adoration of saints and holy images and to multiplied ceremonies. A moral religion, like that of Persia, of Judea, and of the Teutonic races, tends to the adoration and service of the unseen. The Hindoos had innumerable gods, temples, idols. The Persians worshiped the sacred fire, without temple, priest, altar, sacrifice, or ritual. The ancient Persians, wholly unlike the modern Persians, were a people of action, energy, enterprise. But when the old Persian empire fell, the character of the people changed. Just as in Italy the old Roman type disappeared, and was replaced by the opposite in the modern Italian, so modern Persia has swung round to the opposite pole of national character. The Persians and Turks, both professing the Mohammedan religion, belong to different sects of that faith. The Turks are proud, tenacious of old customs, grave in their demeanor, generally just in their dealings, keeping their word. The Persians, as they appear in the works of Malcolm and Monier, are changeable, kindly, polite, given to ceremonies, fond of poetry, with taste for fine art and decoration,—a mobile people. The Turk is silent, the Persian talkative. The Turk is proud and cold, the Persian affable and full of sentiment. In short, the Persian is the Frenchman, and the Turk the Englishman. And here again, as in the other cases, the French type of nationality unfolds itself on the east, and the English on the west.

These national doubles have not been exhausted. We have other instances of twin nations, born of much the same confluence of race elements, of whom, as of Esau and Jacob, it might be predicted to the mother race, "Two nations shall be born of thee; two kinds of people shall go forth from thee; and the one shall be stronger than the other." Thus there are the twin races which inhabit Sweden and Norway; the Swedes, on the east, are more intelligent, quick-witted, and versatile; the Norwegians, on the west, slow, persistent, and disposed to foreign conquest and adventure, as shown in the sea-kings, who discovered Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland; and the modern emigrants who reap the vast wheatfields of Minnesota. So, too, we might speak of the Poles and Germans. The Polish nation, on the east, resembling the French; the German, on the west, the English.

But time will not allow me to carry out these parallels into details. The question is, are these mere coincidences, or do they belong to the homologons of history, where the same law of progress repeats itself under different conditions, as the skeleton of the mammal is found in the whale. Such curious homologons we find in national events, and they can hardly be explained as accidental coincidences. For instance, the English and French revolutions proceeded by six identical steps. First, an insurrection of the people. Secondly, the dethronement and execution of the king. Thirdly, a military usurper. Fourthly, the old line restored. Fifthly, after the death of the restored king, his brother succeeds to the throne. Sixthly, a second revolution drives the brother into exile, and a constitutional king of a collateral branch takes his place.

But if these doubles which I have described come by some mysterious law of polar force, as in the magnet, where the two kinds of electricity are repelled to opposite poles, and yet attract each other, how account for the regularity of the geographical position? Why is the French, Greek, Hindoo, Persian, Italian, Polish, Swedish type always at the east, and the English, Roman, Iranic, Ottoman, Spanish, German, Norwegian type always at the west? Are nations, like tides, affected by the diurnal revolution of the globe? This, I confess, I am unable to explain; and I leave it to others to consider whether what I have described is pure coincidence, or if it belongs in some way to the philosophy of history and comes under universal law.