In Persia, the pure and exalted consciousness of a first, incomprehensible cause leaving its products, the special manifestations of its creative power, _free_ in themselves, was fostered and developed. To the Persians we owe the first clear conception of a God independent of nature. Spirit and matter are not _one_ with them, as with the Indians. With the Persians God is separated from His creation--the universe. God, as the ruling Spirit, acquires subjective reality; man, His creature, whether good or bad, whether poor or rich, whether righteous or unrighteous, whether high or low, is, as His creature, equal and free. Man thus obtained a free position face to face, if we may say so, with the Supreme Being--the Creator. What a totally different mode of thinking to that in China or India! In China man is a mere machine, regulated by stereotyped moral maxims. In India duties and rights depend on the chance of birth; the Brahman is a born priest, whether he has talent or not for his vocation; the Kshattriya, a born soldier, though he may be the greatest coward; the Vaisya, a born merchant or artisan, in spite of his utter incapacity for business; and the S’udra, a born slave, though he may be gifted with greater wisdom than the Brahman, more heroic virtues than the Kshattriya, and more talent for commerce, trade, or art than the Vaisya. In Persia the Aryans acquired, for the first time, a kind of collective freedom, but not yet an individual consciousness as free agents. The Indian language and Indian metaphysics, in the garb of mythology, were undoubtedly components of Egyptian, Persian, Assyrian, Chaldæan, and Babylonian art, and the forms thus produced, in their turn, became the direct elements out of which Grecian art in its infancy developed itself. The Persians are direct descendants of the Zend people. Their language is nearly the same as Sanskrit. Out of ten Zend words, seven or eight are Sanskrit. Persian history may be traced back into time relative; for, when it passes into time absolute, the advanced state of the people in science, especially in astronomy, their social condition, and their architecture and ornamental art, prove that they must have existed in a social bond for thousands of years, in order to develop and to attain that progress which excites our astonishment even after the lapse of more than 6,000 years. Their history may be divided into the following periods:-- 1. The mythic period, from an unknown time down to the foundation of the vast, well-organised, and powerful Persian empire by Kai-Khorus, or Kyrus, in the sixth century B.C. 2. The second period affords reliable accounts of the existence of the empire down to Alexander the Great, from 560 B.C.-330 B.C. 3. The history of the Persians, as members of the Greek-Makedonian empire, ending with the conquest of Persia by the Arabs from 330 B.C.-137 B.C. 4. The empire of Central Persia, under the Arabs, down to its extinction by the Mahomedans in 651 A.D.