PT. HI. Progress and Civilisation. 141 



fidelity. They seem never to attain to inventive 

 genius, or even in practice or in theory to be gifted 

 with a capacity for Science. They are wonderfully 

 stationary ; what they are now they appear to have 

 been, as far as we have any records, two thousand 

 years ago. Arrian's ' History of Alexander' describes 

 the natives of India much as they exist at the present 

 day. The History of Asia, too, reproduces at suc- 

 cessive epochs the same series of events. The natives 

 of the southern and more fertile and genial regions 

 seem to become relaxed and effeminate ; the tribes 

 of Central Asia swell in numbers, and under the 

 command of some great conqueror, Zingis Khan or 

 Tamerlane, fall like an avalanche upon the effemi- 

 nate natives of the southern regions and extirpate 

 or reduce them to slavery, settle in their country, 

 and are by the operation of the same causes cor- 

 rupted and rendered effeminate, to be in their turn 

 subjugated by new eruptions from the North. 



Asia is certainly the earliest seat of Civilisation, 

 and, if mankind were all equal in natural powers, 

 would have had the advantage of a start of at least 

 two thousand years. But the Asiatic races, having 

 attained a certain imperfect stage of culture, seem 

 never to have made any further advance. They have 



