PREFACE. xiii 



to Alexandria, it took a westerly course to 

 Athens, to Rome, and to the many illustrious 

 states which afterwards distinguished modern 

 Europe. But in tracing her progress we find 

 nothing left in her course, but the skeleton of 

 former greatness. The ruins of stupendous 

 cities once the ornament of the East ; the nu- 

 merous fortifications, walls, temples, aqueducts, 

 and other works of art, now nothing but the 

 desolated habitations of wild animals, and the 

 traces left of sciences which, like fruitless flowers, 

 bloomed in the spring of time only to decay, are 

 monuments of human fatality which must im- 

 press reflecting persons with gloomy notions of 

 the instability of society, and incline us to fear 

 that, in spite of all the efforts of genius and of 

 art of modern times, the light of knowledge 

 which rose in the East, and civilized the oriental 

 nations, will set on the Western parts of the 

 world, and leave us, ere long, a monument to 

 future ages of the fluctuating nature of human 

 perfection, unless by a strict attention to the 

 improvement of the physical organization of 

 our species, conjoined with the adoption of 

 some general plan of education superior to any 

 hitherto enforced, we should permanently im- 

 prove the moral and intellectual character of 



