hat it is a
most flagrant fallacy to suppose that modern ages have a monopoly of
scientific discovery. The greatest discoveries are not those of modern
ages. 'No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a
discovery as writing, or algebra, or language. What are the most
brilliant of our chemical discoveries compared with the invention of
fire and the metals?' Hipparchus ranks with the Keplers and Newtons; and
Copernicus was but the champion of Pythagoras. To say nothing of the
characteristic assumption that somebody 'discovered' language and fire
in the same sense as modern chemists discovered spectrum analysis, the
argument is substantially that, because Hipparchus was as great a genius
as Newton, the views of the ancients upon religious or historical
questions deserve just as much respect as those of the moderns. In other
words, the accumulated knowledge of ages has taught us nothing. 'What is
conveniently called progress' is merely a polite name for change; and
one clever man's guess is as good as another, whatever the period at
which he lived. This theory is the correlative of Sidonia's assertion,
that experience is useless to the man of genius. The experience of the
race is just as valueless. Modern criticism is nothing but an
intellectual revolt of the Teutonic races against the Semitic
revelation, as the French revolution was a political revolt of the
Celtic races. The disturbance will pass away; and we shall find that
Abraham and Moses knew more about the universe than Hegel or Comte. The
prophets of the sacred race were divinely endowed with an esoteric
knowledge concealed from the vulgar behind mystic symbols and
ceremonies. If the old oracles are dumb, some gleams of the same power
still remain, and in the language of mere mortals are called genius. We
find it in perfection only amongst the Semites, whose finer
organisation, indicated by their musical supremacy, enables them to
catch the still small voice inaudible to our grosser ears. The Aryans,
indeed, have some touches of a cognate power, but it is dulled by a more
sensuous temperament. They can enter the court of the Gentiles; but
their mortal vesture is too muddy for admission into the holy of holies.
If ever they catch a glimpse of the truth, it is in their brilliant
youth, when, still uncorrupted by worldly politics, they can induce some
Sidonia partly to draw aside the veil.

The intellect, then, as Disraeli conceives it, is not the facu