252 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



to understand how and whence have arisen the elements of 

 that civilization, which history traces from country to country 

 throughout the course of centuries. See a Pascal reproducing 

 the Alexandrian's problems at fifteen ; a Ferguson making 

 clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while tending 

 cattle on a Morayshire heath ; a boy Lawrence, in an inn on 

 the Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings which 

 the educated could not but admire ; or look at Solon and 

 Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of all 

 but divine wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, 

 three thousand years ago, and the whole mystery is solved at 

 once. Amongst the arrangements of Providence is one for 

 the production of original, inventive, and aspiring minds, which, 

 when circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, strike out 

 new ideas for the benefit of their fellow-creatures, or put upon 

 them a lasting impress of their own superior sentiments. 

 Nations, improved by these means, become in turn foci for the 

 diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of barbarism 

 their very passions helping to this end, for nothing can be 

 more clear, than that ambitious aggression has led to the civili- 

 zation of many countries. Such is the process which seems to 

 form the destined means for bringing mankind from the darkness 

 of barbarism to the day of knowledge and mechanical and 

 social improvement. Even the noble art of letters is but, as 

 Dr. Adam Ferguson has remarked, " a natural produce of the 

 human mind, which will rise spontaneously, wherever men 

 are happily placed ;" original alike amongst the ancient 

 Egyptians and the dimly monumented Toltecans of Yucatan. 

 " Banish," says Dr. Gall, " music, poetry, painting, sculpture, 

 architecture, all the arts and sciences, and let your Homers, 

 Kaphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas, be forgotten, 

 yet let men of genius of every description spring up, and 

 poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the 

 arts and sciences, will again shine out in all their glory. Twice 

 within the records of history has the human race traversed 

 the great circle of its entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness 

 of barbarism been followed by a higher degree of refinement. 

 It is a great mistake to suppose one people to have proceeded 

 from another on account of their conformity of manners, 

 customs, and arts. The swallow of Paris builds its nest like 

 the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence follow that the former 

 sprung from the latter ? With the same causes we have the 

 same effects ; with the same organization we have the mani- 

 festation of the same powers." 



