234 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



organization, and another point has been established, that 

 onlj when some favourable circumstances have settled a 

 people in one place, do arts and social arrangements get leave 

 to flourish. If we were to limit our view to humbly endowed 

 nations, or the common class of minds in those called civilized, 

 we should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origi- 

 nation of new ideas and devices. But let us look at the in- 

 ventive class of minds which stand out amongst their fellows 

 the men, who, with little prompting or none, conceive new 

 ideas in science, arts, morals and we can be at no loss to 

 understand how and whence have arisen the elements of that 

 civilization which history traces from country to country 

 throughout the course of centuries. See a Pascal repro- 

 ducing the Alexandrian's problems at fifteen ; a Ferguson 

 making clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while 

 tending cattle on a Morayshire heath ; a boy Lawrence, in an 

 inn on the Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings 

 which the educated could not but admire ; or look at Solon and 

 Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of 

 all but divine wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, 

 three thousand years ago and the whole mystery is solved 

 at once. Amongst the arrangements of Providence is one 

 for the production of original, inventive, and aspiring minds, 

 which, when circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, 

 strike out new ideas for the benefit of their fellow- creatures, 

 or put upon them a lasting impress of their own superior sen- 

 timents. Nations, improved by these means, become in turn 

 foci for the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of 

 barbarism their very passions helping to this end, for no- 

 thing can be more clear, than that ambitious aggression has 

 led to the civilization of many countries. Such is the process 

 which seems to form the destined means for bringing man- 

 kind from the darkness of barbarism to the day of knowledge 

 and mechanical and social improvement. Even the noble art 

 of letters is but, as Dr. Adam Ferguson has remarked, " a 

 natural produce of the human mind, which will rise spon- 

 taneously, wherever men are happily placed ;" original alike 

 amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly monumented 



