Similarly, we call Semites those peoples who speak a Semitic language:  Arabs, Jews and Syrians.  But a people may speak an Aryan or a Semitic language and yet not be of Aryan or Semitic race; a negro may speak English without being of English stock.  Many of the Europeans whom we classify among the Aryans are perhaps the descendants of an ancient race conquered by the Aryans and who have adopted their language, just as the Egyptians received the language of the Arabs, their conquerors.

These two names (Aryan and Semite), then, signify today rather two groups of peoples than two distinct races.  But even if we use the terms in this sense, one may say that all the greater peoples of the world have been Semites or Aryans.  The Semitic family included the Phoenicians, the people of commerce; the Jews, the people of religion; the Arabs, the people of war.  The Aryans, some finding their homes in India, others in Europe, have produced the nations which have been, and still are, foremost in the world—­in antiquity, the Hindoos, a people of great philosophical and religious ideas; the Greeks, creators of art and of science; the Persians and Romans, the founders, the former in the East, the latter in the West, of the greatest empires of antiquity; in modern times, the Italians, French, Germans, Dutch, Russians, English and Americans.

The history of civilization begins with the Egyptians and the Chaldeans; but from the fifteenth century before our era, history concerns itself only with the Aryan and Semitic peoples.

FOOTNOTES: 

[3] Ethnography is the study of races from the point of view of their objects and customs.

[4] The Chinese only of the yellow race have elaborated among themselves an industry, a regular government, a polite society.  But placed at the extremity of Asia they have had no influence on other civilized peoples. [The Japanese should be included.—­Ed.]

[5] The English and French are mixtures of Celtic and German blood.

CHAPTER III

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST

THE EGYPTIANS

=The Land of Egypt.=—­Egypt is only the valley of the Nile, a narrow strip of fertile soil stretching along both banks of the stream and shut in by mountains on either side, somewhat over 700[6] miles in length and 15 in width.  Where the hills fall away, the Delta begins, a vast plain cut by the arms of the Nile and by canals.  As Herodotus says, Egypt is wholly the gift of the Nile.