Moral and intellectual qualities. 417 



climate, but have not condescended to shew, either by ex- 

 ample or reasoning, how climate can operate on the moral 

 feelings and intellect, or that it has actually so operated in 

 any instance. The native Americans are spread over that 

 vast continent from the icy shores of the Arctic Ocean to 

 the neighbourhood of the Antarctic Circle ; the Africans 

 have a tolerably wide range in their quarter of the globe ; 

 the Mongolian tribes cover a tract including every variety of 

 climate from the coldest to the most warm. Yet in such 

 diversities of situation, the respective races exhibit only mo- 

 difications of character. White people have distinguished 

 themselves in all climates ; every where preserving their su- 

 periority. Two centuries have not assimilated the Anglo- 

 Americans to the Indian aborigines, nor prevented them 

 from establishing in America the freest government in the 

 world. A Washington and a Franklin prove that the 

 noble qualities of the race have suffered no degeneracy by 

 crossing the Atlantic. 



Accurate observers have found the hypothesis of climate 

 equally unsatisfactory in other parts of the world. " The 

 philosophy which refers exclusively to the physical influence 

 of climate, this most remarkable p}ienomenon of the moral 

 world, is altogether insufficient to satisfy the rational inquirer; 

 the holy spirit of liberty was cherished in Greece and its 

 Syrian colonies by the same sun which warms the gross and 

 ferocious superstition of the Mohammedan zealot : the con- 

 querors of half the world issued from the scorching deserts 

 of Arabia, and obtained some of their earliest triumphs over 

 one of the most gallant nations of Europe (Spain). 



" A remnant of the disciples of Zoroaster, flying from 

 Mohammedan persecution, carried with them to the western 

 coast of India the -religion, the hardy habits, and athletic 

 forms of the north of Persia; and their posterity may at this 

 day be contemplated in the Parsees of the English settle- 

 ment at Bombay, with mental and bodily powers absolutely 

 unimpaired, after the residence of a thousand years in that 

 burning climate. Even the passive but ill-understood cha- 

 racter of the Hindoos, exhibiting few and unimportant 



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