598 PATMAKCHAL GOVERNMENT. Chap. XXIX. 



The African form of government is patriarchal, and, ac- 

 cording to the temperament of the Chief, despotic, or guided 

 by the counsel of the elders of the tribe. Keverence for 

 royalty sometimes leads the mass of the people to submit to 

 great cruelty, and even murder, at the hands of a despot or 

 madman ; but on the whole the rule is mild, and the same 

 remark applies in a degree to their religion. The races 

 of this Continent seem to have advanced to a certain point 

 and no further ; their progress in the arts of working iron and 

 copper, in pottery, basket-making, spinning, weaving, making 

 nets, fish-hooks, spears, axes, knives, needles, and other 

 things, whether originally invented by this people or com- 

 municated by another instructor, appears to have remained 

 in the same rude state for a great number of centuries. This 

 apparent stagnation of mind in certain nations we cannot 

 understand ; but, since we have in the later ages of the world 

 made what we consider great progress in the arts, we have 

 unconsciously got into the way of speaking of some other 

 races in much the same tone as that used by the Celestials in 

 the Flowery Land. These same Chinese anticipated us in 

 several most important discoveries by as many centuries as we 

 may have preceded others. In the knowledge of the proper- 

 ties of the magnet, the composition of gunpowder, the 

 invention of printing, the manufacture of porcelain, of silk, 

 and in the progress of literature, they were before us. But 

 then the power of making further discoveries was arrested, 

 and a stagnation of the intellect prevented their advancing 

 in the path of improvement or invention. 



To the Asiatics we owe cotton, sugar, clepsydras, and sun- 

 dials. From the East we have derived algebra, the game of 

 chess, coffee, tea, alcohol, and steel. The servile imitation, 

 which took the place of mental activity and invention, seems 

 to have fallen on Chinese, Japanese, Asiatics, Arabians, and 

 Africans alike. Does this paralysis of the inventive faculties 

 indicate that each race is destined to perform its own part in 



