208 



Tatars settled at the mouth of the Lena. The 

 barbarism that prevails throughout these differ- 

 ent regions is perhaps less owing to a primitive 

 absence of all kind of civilization, than to the 

 effects of a long degradation. The greater part 

 of the hordes, which we designate under the 

 name of savages, descend probably from nations 

 more advanced in cultivation ; and how can we 

 distinguish the prolonged infancy of the human 

 race, if indeed it any where exists, from that 

 state of moral degradation in which solitariness* 

 want, compulsory misery, forced migrations, or 

 the rigour of the climate, obliterate even the 

 traces of civilization ? If every thing which is 

 connected with the primitive state of man, and 

 the first population of a continent, could from 

 it's nature belong to the domain of history, we 

 should appeal to the traditions of India, to 

 that opinion so often expressed in the laws of 

 Menou and in the Ramajan, which considers 

 savages as tribes banished from civil society, 

 and driven into the forests. The word barbar- 

 ous, which we have borrowed from the Greeks 

 and the Romans, is perhaps only the particular 

 name of one of these rude hordes *. 



In the New World, at the beginning of it's 



* The Varvaras, the Palawas, the Sakas, the Jawanas, the 

 Kambodschas, the Tschinas. Wilkin's Heetopad., p. 310. 

 Bopp, on the Grammatical System of the Sanscrit, the Greek, 

 the Latin, and the Gothic (in German), 1816, p. 177. 



