368 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



possessed of the highest endowments of the other two, except- 

 ing perhaps the quality of reasoned patience; it is imaginative, 

 poetical, inventive, artful, eloquent, valiant, and indefatigable. 

 It has been the master stem from all antiquity; and, in par- 

 ticular, that ambitious rare, which is distinguished by high 

 features, has ever been the conquering, the imperious form, 

 that commands in battle and rules in peace, wherever it is 

 found mixed in the social life of nations. Although beauty, 

 valor, and logical capacity, may not by any means be denied 

 the more vertical profiles, yet mathematical, linguistic, and 

 experimental science belong more permanently to the less 

 admired lines of features. It is by the exercise of these facul- 

 ties, tempered with forbearance, that the resolute tenacity of 

 the last mentioned maintains its ground, and the public will 

 obtain modifications of the arbitrary canons which the others 

 have imposed. 



It is the Caucasian Man, who, in all regions and times, has 

 been the sole depositor of religion. The Papua and Xegro 

 races of antiquity do not appear to have possessed creeds at 

 any period deserving to be classed with reasoned allegorical 

 dogmas; they were merely absurd injunctions to commit 

 revolting bloodshed. Even when palliated, remodelled, and 

 systematized by the influence of Caucasian rulers, they con- 

 tinued more to degrade the masters than to elevate the van- 

 quished. Of the Mongolians, we know that the mythological 

 Foh, the Budhas, Fologes, Soloktais, and Siakas, or Sakias, 

 of China and Japan, were appropriated Hindu-Caucasians, 

 Yuchi, or Asiatic Finns. The bearded races alone had pos- 

 session of a true reminiscence of the diluvian cataclysis, and 

 transmitted it by their colonies to every part of the earth, 

 mutilated, altered, and debased, but still always discernible, 

 notwithstanding that in time the high plains of Asia had first 

 instituted a Sabaean worship, and subsequently implanted it 

 upon the Arkite creed, confounding the patriarch navigator 

 with the sun, typifying the deluge in the form of a dragon or 



