A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayFergusson, James
History
A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- History
There is no reason to suppose that any people occupying so low a
position in the intellectual scale could ever cultivate anything
approaching to abstract science, and there is no proof of it existing.
Living, however, as they did, on the verge of the tropics, in the most
beautiful climates of the world, and where the sky is generally serene
and unclouded, it was impossible but that they should become to some
extent astronomers.
It is not known that any of them ever formed any theory to account for
the phenomena they observed, but they seem to have watched the paths of
the planets, to have recorded eclipses, and generally to have noted
times and events with such correctness as enabled them to predict their
return with very considerable precision; but here their science stopped,
and it is not known that they ever attempted any other of the
multifarious branches of modern knowledge.
We have only very imperfect means of knowing what their agriculture was;
but it seems always to have been careful when once they passed from the
shepherd state, though whether scientific or not it is not easy to say.
On the point of artificial irrigation the Turanians have always been
singularly expert. Wherever you follow their traces, the existence of a
tunnel is almost as certain an indication of their pre-existence as that
of a tomb. It is amusing, as it is instructive, to see at this hour an
Arab Pacha breaking down in his attempts to restore the irrigation works
of the old Pharaohs, or an English Engineer officer blundering in his
endeavours to copy the works instinctively performed by a Mogul, or a
Spaniard trying to drain the lakes of Mexico. Building and irrigation
were the special instincts of this old people, and the practical
intellect of the higher races seems hardly yet to have come up to the
point where these arts were left by the early Turanian races, while the
perfection they attained in them is the more singular from the contrast
it affords to what they did, or rather, did not do, in other branches of
art or science.
III.—SEMITIC RACES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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