Joseph Pomeroy Widney’s "Race Life of the Aryan Peoples"

Joseph Pomeroy Widney’s Race Life of the Aryan Peoples is a two-volume work published in 1907 by Funk and Wagnalls. At the time, Widney was the chancellor of the University of Southern California, and his book was intended for a general audience. The work reflects the late 19th- and early 20th-century belief in a distinct Aryan race, purportedly descended from the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European. Widney presented the Aryan race as a driving force in shaping human civilization, tracing its influence from ancient Hittites to contemporary Anglo-Americans.

Widney’s work embodies the romanticized and expansive use of the term "Aryan" that was prevalent in popular discourse of the era. The book is a detailed study of Indo-European-speaking peoples as understood in its time. The first volume focuses on the early history of the so-called Aryan peoples, exploring their migration patterns and cultural developments. The second volume delves into the social and political structures of these societies, including their religious beliefs, family systems, and political institutions.  His perspective, rooted in the racial classifications of his time, places Aryans as one of three major branches of the broader Caucasian race, alongside the Semitic and Hamitic races. The book also discusses the "racial characteristics" of the various subgroups of the Aryan race and their constituent ethnic groups. Widney believed that these characteristics were determined by the soil and climate of the original homeland of each subgroup or individual ethnic group.

Widney outlines his belief that the "Proto-Aryans" originated in Central Asia around 7000 years ago and later expanded to establish what he termed the great "Aryan empires." He identified these as empires primarily associated with Indo-European languages, including the Hittite Empire, Persian Empire, Mauryan Empire, Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, Gupta Empire, Spanish Empire, First French Empire, and British Empire. According to Widney, this expansion ultimately led to the colonization of North America by the "Aryans," culminating in what he described as the manifest destiny of "Aryan Americans" to build an American Empire.

Excerpt from Race Life of the Aryan Peoples 

Every masterful race of the world's history has its epic. It is the tale of the fathers told to the sons. But side by side with the spoken epic is another, unspoken, yet truer and deeper. It is the tale of the race life, not told in words, but lived in deeds done. And the epic lived is always more wonderful than the epic told. The true epic is found, not in the story of the battles or of the deeds of the rulers, but in the race life. In the perspective of time men become less, man grows greater. Race life is broader, deeper, richer than the life of any man,or of any men. The great men of a race are only an evolution of its race force; and the reserve force is greater than its product. They are indices, race marks. The great man is as the mountain peak; for the mountains that loom up above the wide-spread plain are not the land; they are only the land-marks, marks of the land. Kings are the accident; the people, the law. The Greek colonies, not Ilium and Atreides Agamemnon, are the true epic of Hellas, vastly more marvelous. So of the Aryan folk; not the Vedas, not the Avestas, not the Iliad, or the Nibelungen, or Beowulf, but the marvelous tale of what the A ryan man has lived—how he has subdued the wild and waste lands—how he has made the desert to blossom as the rose—how he has built up empire with ax and plow, and has sailed the unknown paths of the seas —these are his true race epic . The others are only as the fairy tales which old wives tell to their children . We read between the lines of the written epic to find the truer and greater epic which lies beyond. This book is an attempt to unfold somewhat of the race epic which the Aryan peoples have lived. ..." 

— Joseph Pomeroy Widney, Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (1907), vol. I, pgs. iii-iv.

Extract:

"Every land is filled with the nameless graves of races which have died out, from the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley to the Hittites of upper Syria, or the Negroid of the lower Euphratean plain—disappeared from the earth; supplanted by some other and more efficient race type. The earth is only one vast grave of dead and buried races-even the tombs forgotten until the spade of the antiquary chances upon them. It is some times said that these failing races did not have the same chance as the Aryan. In one sense this is true ; for races seem to differ in original capacity for development. The Bushman of Australia apparently exhausted his capacity in the evolution of the boomerang; the Indian of the Orinoco, in his blow-pipe and poisoned arrow. But original capacity is gift, not evolution. It takes hold upon some deeper law of being. There are tongues, there are races, there are civilizations, which seem to lack the power of more than a limited growth. They quickly reach a maturity of a low type; then seem to have in them no further possibility of development. But in an other sense they have had the same chance as the Aryan. They, too, have had earth, and sea, and sky. But while the Aryan out of these same material surroundings has evolved a civilization of the higher type, they only evolved the lower type. And the Aryan did not borrow; he evolved. The question naturally arises, Why did they not do the same? We can only drop back upon the one explanation-lack of original capacity.... Every racial division of mankind seems to have a type of civilization which, and which only, is normal to that especial race . All other types seem to be abnormal and alien to it. Its own type is normal because it is in harmony with the individual race type of mind, and has been evolved by it. A borrowed civilization ignores and violates this law, for the types are dissimilar. It is not a difference of degree, but an unlikeness of type. This fact explains why borrowed civilizations have always proven to be failures when taken from radically unlike peoples."

— Joseph Pomeroy Widney, Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (1907), vol. II, pgs. 234-235.

He was quite selective in identifying these "Aryans":

The Eastern branch, according to Widney, included the Indo-Aryans (including the Maldivians) and the Iranian peoples (including Kurds).

The Western branch included the Armenians, Balts, Slavs, Romani, Albanians, Greeks, Romanics, Teutonics, Celts, Anglo-Americans (includes the European-Americans and the Anglo-Canadians), Québécois, North American White Hispanics, White Latin Americans, Anglo-Australians, Anglo-New Zealanders, British diaspora in Africa, and Boers.

Reference:
Widney, Joseph P  'Race Life of the Aryan Peoples' New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1907 in Two Volumes: Volume One--The Old World Volume Two--The New World ISBN B000859S6O

External links 

• Race Life of the Aryan Peoples Vol.1--"The Old World"--Google PDF download:
• Race Life of the Aryan Peoples vol.2--"The New World"--Google PDF download:
  
  

.This book is also widely available as a facsimile reprint on various bookshops of the Right.