272 



NATURAL HISTORY OF 



cruelty, plunder, and desolation, more congenial than 

 open battle and victory. 



With the mind more vacant than contemplative, the 

 religious sentiment, that source of all exalted and prac- 

 tical feeling, has never risen above an indistinct idea 

 of a Supreme Being, a heaven, or a solar worship : 

 it is better satisfied with the true northern impostures 

 of Shamanism, and with the borrowed demon worship 

 engrafted on Budhistic doctrines ; for what is of true 

 moral tendency, either in the ethics of Foh or Budh, is 

 of foreign origin, and repugnant to the intellectual 

 puerilities which are his substitutes for reason, philo- 

 sophy, and science. A deified, ancestral, and paternal 

 obedience, stands in lieu of practical religion his only 

 support of that innate moral feeling belonging to all 

 human beings. It is the key-stone of absolute power 

 in the state ; hence coercion is the civilization of the 

 masses, ceremonious punctiliousness that of their supe- 

 riors, ignorant self-laudation the acquirement of lite- 

 rati, and insolence the portion of all. The discoveries 

 they possess in physics are the results of chance : all 

 the maxims of state are immutable, and repressive of 

 progress. Though early in possession of the mariner's 

 compass, and (particularly the Japanese) long compelled 

 to a familiarity with the sea, none of the beardless 

 tribes ever became true navigators, or reasoning ship- 

 builders. 



The typical nations have monosyllabic languages, 

 depending greatly upon phonetic expression, and their 

 laUors are pictorial symbols, immensely diversified: 



