636 CONDITION OF EUROPEAN IMPROVEMENT. 



principles of order to emerge, and this not by any process of compression 

 or suppression, but spontaneously in the natural course of events. In 

 the outset of this brief historical description I have alluded to the adop- 

 tion of alphabetic writing in Europe as a signal illustration of the mental 

 peculiarity of the inhabitants ; this may also serve to make clear the 

 paradoxical assertion that systems founded on indefinite subdivision 

 may suddenly free themselves from complexity and become simple and 

 perspicuous. On a superficial consideration of the thing, one might im- 

 agine that to decompose articulate sounds into their constituent syllables, 

 with a view of representing those syllables by symbols, would be at- 

 tended with a prodigious complication, and that such is the case the Chi- 

 nese have found, who have pursued this plan in its details until it is 

 said that their alphabet contains 80,000 letters ; but still more would it 

 be supposed that if those syllables were in their turn decomposed into 

 their constituent parts, the required elements would be utterly unman- 

 ageable by reason of their number, and the art of writing utterly imprac- 

 ticable ; yet do we not find, on the contrary and it may be an instruct- 

 ive lesson to us that when the decomposition is thus pushed to its ex- 

 treme, instead of myriads of characters b$ing required, as we might have 

 plausibly expected, an alphabet of 20 or 30 letters is all we want ? The 

 state of opinion in Europe is illustrated by the state of writing in China. 



In view of the facts presented in this and the foregoing chapter, we 

 may come to the general conclusion that the extremes of humanity, which 

 are represented by a prognathous aspect and by a complexion either very 

 dark or very fair, are equally unfavorable to intellect, which reaches its 

 greatest perfection in the intermediate phase ; that, even in the condition 

 which was presented by the inhabitants of Europe three thousand years 

 ago, no advance in civilization was possible, save by first accomplishing 

 Conditions of an ^solute physical change in their constitution through 

 European im- modifications in their habits of life equivalent to a true cli- 

 3nt * mate change a preparation for a higher mental development 

 by an amelioration of their condition of life. 



The civilization of the European could never have been accomplished 

 save by preparing the way through such a physical change. It followed 

 that change in the manner that effect follows its cause. Its incident was 

 the transformation of the fair race which then occupied all Europe to an- 

 other of a darker hue ; the extinction of the disappearing people not be- 

 ing accomplished by such means as an extermination, after the manner 

 in which the North American Indian is dying out, but by a slow and true 

 metamorphosis into another form. 



Advance in civilization takes place during such a metamorphosis. Asia, 

 Stationary con- which, at an early period, must have exhibited a mental de- 



tion of Asia, yelopment of great rapidity, has long ago become stationary. 



