The question now arises, How are these contrasts and similarities to be accounted for? Must we suppose them to be due to mere accident? If not, what law has been at work? Why have different kinds of tales drifted in different directions? What current of distribution has carried one set of tales to Scotland, part of the same and part of a different set to Ireland, while Germany has received a much larger share of the latter than Ireland, though in the other she has been left poor? It is clearly not commercial intercourse that has been at work, nor exogamy, nor slavery. Some other agency has to be sought for.
In the case of ancient Greece we have an instance in which an exceptionally rich body of legend has been proved to consist of elements brought from divers nations and races. The birthplace of many of the most considerable personages in Greek mythology has been found in Asian lands. The Centaurs, Perseus, Dionysus and Semele, Artemis, Adonis and Aphrodite herself, are believed to be all Asiatic in origin. Nay, more. These Orientals are shown to belong to two distinct races commingled in Babylonia: the Semites, who may have had distant affinities with the Iberians of the West; and the Accadians, whose connections were Mongol. It is true that the Greeks are held to have received these additions to their own store by means of commercial intercourse. The Phœnicians, those restless honey-gatherers of the old Mediterranean world, went about everywhere fertilising Western flowers with Eastern pollen; but in the case of the wild and barbarous north-west a similar agency cannot be found; and while we are justified in taking the hint supplied by the discovery of the compound racial nature of Greek myth, we are compelled by circumstances to seek for a different solution of the problem.
I have already adverted to the differences of race which exist in Ireland, more or less masked by the long predominance of the Aryan Gael. Such differences are not confined to Ireland. It is now admitted that the apparent predominance of the Aryan over most of Europe is, to a great extent, one of language merely. Furthermore, the elements which make up our population are found everywhere; the differences, mental and physical, which characterise different nations, being mainly due, first, to the minor variations which mark the branches of the great stocks, such as Celt, Teuton, and Slav among the Aryans, and secondly, to the continually varying proportions in which the different elements are blended. The principal fact is, that far the larger part of the Old World, excluding Africa, is occupied by three or four varieties of man, such as the Aryan, the Mongol, and the Iberian; the others, even when as important as the Semitic, holding very limited areas, and subject to continual contact with those more predominant. Of these again, it is worthy of remark that the most widely spread is not the Aryan, but the Mongol. The latter, in addition to the vast regions which are his openly, such as Japan, China, Central Asia, and his outlying posts in Europe, Finland, Hungary, and Turkey, is recognised by the type as leading a masked existence in the most western portions of our quarter of the globe. “Scratch the Russian and you will find the Tartar” is a saying which may be applied, _mutatis mutandis_, to many a nation much more remote from Central Asia; nor can we be surprised that such should be the case when we call to mind that this powerful branch of mankind has actually, within recent historical times, run the Aryan a neck-and-neck race for outward supremacy, while to the Semites he has scarcely left even their deserts.