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CHAPTER VIII
THE HERITAGE OF THE ARYAN PEOPLES
THE history of Thought and its expression must be regarded as a branch of inquiry that surpasses all others in interest. It includes those conceptions of religion and philosophy by which the human race has been moulded, and even the history of language by which those conceptions have been transmitted. The oldest records of human thought in the world are the Vedas produced by our Aryan forefathers in that part of the world we call the cradle of the human race.
Of this remote region in midmost Asia Ernest Renan has written in an eloquent passage:
Let us salute these sacred summits where the great races which bore in their bosom the future of Humanity for the first time contemplated the Infinite, and inaugurated the two facts which have changed the face of the world, morality and reason. When the Aryan race shall have become, after thousands of years of effort, mistress of the planet which it inhabits, its first duty will be to explore this mysterious region
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