ADVANTAGES OF THE ANALYTICAL MIND. 637 



In her physical life there is no change, and hence none in her intellect- 

 ual. Her wandering central tribes encamp on the steppes in the same 

 felt huts that their ancestors did two thousand years ago ; her southern 

 people never vary their customs. That which, in a philosophical respect, 

 is the most important condition, domestic economy, has undergone no 

 kind of modification. 



But with us, how different ! The hardships of life have to a very great 

 extent been removed, and we are familiar with a degree of comfort to 

 which our predecessors were wholly strangers. Not that we have been 

 freed from all trials ; it has only been an exchange of bodily sufferings 

 for mental anxieties. Our higher condition has created new wants and 

 new sources of pain. 



With the transformations through which, as a race, we have passed, 

 and with the assumption of that analytical mental character Advantages 

 to which I have referred, there has been gained a capability arising from an 



< i * . i -!{ 1 j i /* c analytical and 



oi indefinitely modifying our state, and, therefore, ot improv- mental consti- 

 ing it. It is this which pre-eminently distinguishes the Eu- tution - 

 ropean ; that whatever scientific discovery he makes, or whatever inven- 

 tion occurs to him, he forthwith applies it to economic advantage, and is 

 thereby perpetually impressing a change on his own state. In this re- 

 spect, even a single generation often suffices to show the advances which 

 are made. We have only to recall the greatly improved means of loco- 

 motion ; the instantaneous transmission of intelligence through many 

 thousand miles ; the development of industrial art, and the rendering 

 available mechanical powers for many new purposes, which have been 

 achieved in less than a single century. Nor does there seem to be any 

 possible limit to human advance in this path. 



Since thus the mind of the European is essentially analytic, his ad- 

 vance in civilization, as it were in a geometrical progression, is the neces- 

 sary consequence thereof. If we examine his career in subordinate par- 

 ticulars, it illustrates equally his mental physiognomy ; it is the same 

 whether we look to his passage in philosophy, science, politics, or religion. 

 If I may be permitted without offense so to say, his divergence from a 

 single form of faith, the springing up of those numberless denominations 

 and sects which constitute the most observable feature of his present re- 

 ligious state, is a result which he can not help, for it is the consequence 

 of his organization. Things which were possible in the eighth century 

 had become impossible in the new state of the sixteenth. And so, too, 

 it is in his political relations. 



Herein consists the superiority of the analytical over the synthetical 

 mind. To the work of him who pulls to pieces there is no end, but he 

 who puts things together comes to an end of his task. 



