THE HUMAN SPECIES. J7o 



!Neel-ab, Blue River, given to the Indus by the earliest 

 Semitic tribes in the east, and similarly applied to the 

 Nile of Egypt, causing that confusion in geographical 

 ideas which believed the river of Africa to come, by 

 some unknown way, from the east, until the expedition 

 of Alexander cleared up the error. It is curious, that 

 the Sutledge of the Punjab is still the Blue River; 

 pointing to Cashmere (Kaspapyrus) as the first seat of 

 the Perso- Arabian races. 



The oldest form of social existence was parental, or 

 by families, which soon expanded into the patriarchal, 

 still retained by nomad pastoral nations. With others 

 it broke up by the separation of the priestly dignity 

 from the head paternity of tribes. As soon as dogmas 

 and political considerations multiplied, the struggle 

 between authority by birth, and the suggestions of 

 expediency, began ; for ambition pleaded the claims of 

 valour, justifying them by surrounding dangers and the 

 inefficiency of nonage ; the pontificate demanded an 

 undying adequacy of purpose, upheld by sanctity of 

 example : arguments which, being repeated as the social 

 existence spread wider, hierarchies were instituted, and 

 ike rights of pleading the cause of justice, or the art of 

 healing the sick, became separated, or classified into 

 learned orders. 



In religious feeling a deism, perhaps a form of Bud- 

 hism, can be traced back to Central Asia as early as 

 the reign of Sesostris. The Vedas, not much, if at all 

 later, show the possession of a higher truth than the 

 subsequent philosophizing social dogmas, depending 



