DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE INDIANS. 6*97 



the first who boldly rent asunder these fetters of the intellect, 

 and thus as it were absolved nature, and restored her to her 

 ancient rights. 



We have hitherto depicted the contrasts manifested accord- 

 ing to the different periods of time in the closely allied litera- 

 ture of the Greeks and Romans. But differences in the mode 

 of thought are not limited to those which must be ascribed to 

 the age alone, that is to say, to passing events which are con- 

 stantly modified by changes in the form of government, social 

 manners, and religious belief; for the most striking differences 

 are those generated by varieties of races and of intellectual 

 development. How different are the manifestations of an 

 animated love for nature and a poetic colouring of natural 

 descriptions amongst the nations of Hellenic, Northern Ger- 

 manic, Semitic, Persian, or Indian descent ! The opinion has 

 been repeatedly expressed, that the love of nature evinced by 

 northern nations, is to be referred to an innate longing for the 

 pleasant fields of Italy and Greece, and for the wonderful 

 luxuriance of tropical vegetation, when contrasted with their 

 own prolonged deprivation of the enjoyment of nature during 

 the dreary season of winter. We do not deny that this long- 

 ing for the land of palms diminishes as we approach Southern 

 France or the Spanish peninsula, but the now generally 

 adopted and ethnologically correct term of Indo- Germanic 

 nations should remind us that too general an influence ought 

 not to be ascribed to northern winters. The luxuriant poetic 

 literature of the Indians teaches us that within and near the 

 tropics south of the chain of the Himalaya, ever verdant and 

 ever blooming forests have at all times powerfully excited the 

 imaginations of the East-Arian nations, and that they have 

 always been more inclined towards poetic delineations of 

 nature, than the true Germanic races who have spread theni- 



1754; and on the Council at Paris in 1209, and the Bull of Gregory 

 IX., from the year 1231, see Jourdain, jRecherchcs crit. sur les traduc- 

 tions d'Aristote, 1819, p. 204--206. The perusal of the physical works 

 of Aristotle was forbidden under penalty of severe penance. In the 

 Concilium Lateranense of 1139, Sacror. Condi, nova Collectio, ed. 

 Ven. 1776, t. xxi. p. 528, the practice of medicine was interdicted to 

 monks. See on this subject the learned and agreeable work of the young 

 Wolfgang von Gothe, Der Mensch und die dementarische Natur, 

 1844, s. 10. 



