360 Comparative Physical Geography. 



In India, the nations of the White race, sprung from the West, 

 have founded a civilization wholly different, the character of which 

 is explained at once by the primitive qualities of the race and the 

 climate. 



Endowed with a higher intelligence, with a power of generaliza- 

 tion, with a profound religious sentiment, the Hindoo is the oppo- 

 site of the Chinese. For him the invisible world, unknown by 

 the Chinese, seems alone to exist. But the influence of the cli- 

 mate of the ti'opics gives to the intuitive faculties an exaggerated 

 preponderance over the active faculties. The real, positive world 

 disappears from his eyes. Thus in his literature, so rich in works 

 of high philosophy, of poetry, and religion, we seek in vain for the 

 annals of his history, or any treatise on science, any of those col- 

 lections of observations so numerous among the Chinese. In spite 

 of these defects the Hindoo civilization, compared to that of China, 

 bears a character of superiority which betrays its noble origin. It 

 is the civilization of the western races transported and placed under 

 the influence of the East, 



But there is one characteristic common to all these civilizations of 

 the uttermost East, which deserves our particular attention. Born 

 in the earliest ages of the world (for without admitting, — far from 

 it, — the fabulous antiquity their own traditions assign them, we may 

 regard them as belonging to the most ancient in the world), they 

 seem to grow rapidly at first ; and, at the remotest period recorded 

 by history, they have already acquired the degree of development, 

 and all the leading featui'es which distinguish them at the present 

 day. Nearly 1500 years before Christ, — others say 2000, — India 

 already possessed the Vedas, — those religious and philosophical 

 works, which already suppose a high culture and its accompanying 

 social state. Alexander finds it flourishing and brilliant still, but 

 little changed; the description the historians of his conquests have 

 left, is true of modern India when invaded by the English. As much 

 may be said of China, whose existing condition seems to present the 

 same essential features which we know it to have possessed from a 

 time long before our era. Thus, these nations offer us the astonish- 

 ing spectacle of civilized communities remaining perfectly stationary. 

 3000 years of existence have made no essential change in their con- 

 dition, — have taught them nothing, — have brought about no real 

 progress, — have developed none of those great ideas, which effect, in 

 the life of nations, a complete transformation. They are, as it were, 

 stereotyped. 



What, then, has been wanting to these people, that they have not 

 been favoured with a further progress ? W^liy do they all stop short 

 in the career upon which they have entered in so brilliant a manner, 

 — even the Hindoos of noble race, — of the race eminently progres- 

 sive ? 



What has been wanting to the communities of Eastern Asia 



