190 ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 



variety of climates, under very diverse physical con- 

 ditions, admirably illustrates my argument. It is 

 manifest that the Mahomedan civilization is everywhere 

 much the same. The Malay of the Eastern Archipelago 

 is about as high in the scale of civilization, but no 

 higher than the Moor of Fez, than the Turcoman raider 

 on the Oxus, or the Arab slave-trader on the Congo. 

 All these widely separated peoples, of such diverse races, 

 have much the same degree of prosperity and en- 

 lightenment, and practically they all think and act 

 much alike. In other words, being in common under 

 the influence of a dominant educational factor, their 

 acquired knowledge, modes of thought, and motives 

 for action, and the state of society resulting therefrom, 

 are much the same. The Turk alone has received a thin 

 veneer of the civilization of the Christians. Forced by 

 the exigencies of his position, he has adopted the quick- 

 firing rifles, the big guns, the ironclad ships, and the 

 public debt of his Western neighbours ; but everything 

 that he has in excess of other Mahomedans is imported, 

 purchased by the superior command of money, which 

 the extent and populous condition of his territories 

 bestows. At the bottom he remains the man that 

 Mahomed made him, and, if the pressure of the Chris- 

 tian civilization were removed, would lapse back to 

 what he was in the days of Osman. All the swarming 

 millions of the Buddhists think and act much alike to 

 one another, but differently from the peoples of other 

 religions; their strange civilization is unlike all other 

 civilizations, and their various communities have about 

 an equal degree of prosperity. The same is true of the 

 Hindoos, and of the adherents of all other religions. 



We have here a law of civilization which has all the 

 force of a law of nature, so uniform is its action ; 

 namely, that a civilization or a state of society in- 

 variably conforms to the religion with which it is 



