BABYLON AND PERSIA

36 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.rills and driblets, tinged and flavored by contactwith the various substances through which they pass,that determine the purity and wholesoraeness of thewaters which are to slake the thirst of thousands.4. We have hitherto been exclusively occupiedwith the thoughts and deeds of three out of thehalf dozen leading races of humanity. Of these,onethe Shumiro-Accads of Ch-aldea belonged tothe yellow, or Turanian, race ; the second the peo¬ples of Canaan to the much-mixed Hamitic stock;and the third Babylonians, Assyrians, and. Jewsto the Semitic division of the great white family.We saw the moral and intellectual characteristics ofeach reflected in their religions, while these againreacted on their destinies. The nations of Eran-,which in the course of history next claim our atten¬tion, belonging asthey do to our own division ofmankind, the Aryan or Indo-European race, presenta subject of study in many ways more congenial, andwc feel in far more direct sympathy with their spirit¬ual life, the workings of which, from our kinship ofblood and mind, we find it easy to follow and toshare.It is, however, scarcely possible, in dealingwith them, entirely to separate them from theirbrethren of India. These two Asiatic branches ofthe Aryan tree are so closely connected in their be¬ginnings, the sap that courses through both is soevidently the same life-blood, that a study of the onealmost necessarily involves a parallel study of theother. Wc must at all events pause here to attempta sketch of the conditions of Aryan life, from whichboth those branches originally drew their being.