keep forethought alive, and give birth to the useful arts
and to the sciences of observation. The abundance of
resources, the absence of every obstacle, of all separation
between the different parts of these vast plains, allow the
aggregation of a great number of men upon one and the same
space, and facilitate the formation of those mighty
primitive states which amaze us by the grandeur of their
proportions.

"Each of them finds upon its own soil all that is necessary
for a brilliant exhibition of its resources. We see those
nations come rapidly forward, and reach in the remotest
antiquity a degree of culture of which the temples and the
monuments of Egypt and of India, and the recently discovered
palaces of Nineveh are living and glorious witnesses.

"Great nations, then, are separately formed in each of these
areas, circumscribed by nature within natural limits. Each
has its religion, its social principles, its civilization
severally. But nature, as we have seen, has separated them;
little intercourse is established between them; the social
principle on which they are founded is exhausted by the very
formation of the social state they enjoy, and is never
renewed. A common life is wanting to them: they do not
reciprocally share with each other their riches. With them
movement is stopped: every thing becomes stable and tends to
remain stationary.

"Meantime, in spite of the peculiar seal impressed on each
of these Oriental nations by the natural conditions in the
midst of which they live, they have, nevertheless some grand
characteristics common to all, some family traits that
betray the nature of the continent and the period of human
progress to which they belong, making them known on the one
side as Asiatic, and on the other side as primitive."[56]

Is it asked what caused the decline of all this glory of the primitive
Negro? why this people lost their position in the world's history?
Idolatry! Sin![57]

Centuries have flown apace, tribes have perished, cities have risen
and fallen, and even empires, whose boast was their duration, have
crumbled, while Thebes and Meroe stood. And it is a remarkable fact,
that the people who built those cities are less mortal than their
handiwork. Notwithstanding their degradation, their woes and wrongs,
the perils of th