PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 75 



hideous ; it is only inferior in relation to ourselves ; it is equal 

 to some, and superior to others, not partaking, indeed, of all 

 the advantages of the Iranian or Semitic races, but able to 

 display other qualities which belong particularly to itself. 



In the place of this spectacle, which is thus presented to 

 our view, of degraded beings covering half the earth, we 

 simply see, for our part, intelligence developing itself in each 

 race, following certain directions and tendencies at the expense 

 of others. These special tendencies are sometimes very re- 

 markable. In his intercourse with the Esquimaux, Sir John 

 Ross, whose observing mind we have several times had occa- 

 sion to notice, found that they were nearly all good geogra- 

 phers. He put into their hands a pencil and paper (of the use 

 of which they were certainly ignorant), and they drew with 

 great correctness the bays, rivers, islands, and lakes of their 

 country, as well as the exact spots where they had encamped 

 at some former emigration. This is a curious contrast with 

 most of the African and Arab peoples, who seem to have but a 

 very vague idea of distance or time ; indeed, the difficulty of find- 

 ing out routes among the inhabitants of Soudan, which we have 

 ourselves experienced, has become almost proverbial.* With- 

 out going so far as all that, our neighbours, the Semites, differ 

 from ourselves in the manner and quality of their mind to an 

 extraordinary degree ; on the one side is the Aryan, an analyst, 

 a pantheist, given to the plastic or perspective reproduction of 

 everything which surrounds him ; on the other, the Semite, a 

 sensualist, a monotheist, an iconoclast. If it is radically im- 

 possible for the Semite to follow us in the depths of meta- 

 physics, his language even being opposed to all philosophic 

 demonstration ; in our turn, perhaps, we are lees religious, 

 that is to say, less solemnly struck by the universe. The 

 thought of demonstrating God, and proving this thought, will 

 never come to the Semite as it did to Bossuet, Fenelon, and 



* Compare D'Escayrac de Lauture, Le Desert et le Soudan ; Memoire sur le 

 Soudan, etc. [These people are not so very peculiar in this respect. Even in 

 our own land, there is sometimes a good deal of difficulty in obtaining informa- 

 tion about routes ; and agricultural labourers especially are much given to 

 scratching their heads and chewing the cud of meditation, ending with an 

 indecision quite delightful to the tired traveller. EDITOB.] 



