By developing the train of thought thus indicated, we imagine that the philosophical reader will conclude that amongst men, some race, family, or tribe, has been created with intelligence, as much above the rest of their kind as the elephant is superior to the hippopotamus, and the dog to the cat, and that others are generically as low as is the Australian "dingo" in the canine race. Those once perfect may deteriorate, yet carry with them the power of rising again--whilst those originally low never rise at all, no matter what example may be set them, unless force is used to make them learn. To these we must add a third set, specially to include the American, for we have no evidence whatever that the civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian was anything more than a restoration of the scientific knowledge of a more ancient people, possibly of an Aryan stock. Who that is acquainted with the Shemitic race can fail to see in its people the type of an ancient condition which has decayed, until, like a fallen gentleman, it can only show what once it was, by conserving and exhibiting a few ornaments of no value, save from their age, but whose sons may yet become princes in their paternal domains? Who that studies the negro in Africa, America, and St. Domingo, can fail to see that he is, or, at any rate has hitherto shown himself, almost wholly incapable of development as a philosophic man? And who can read the pages of Prescott without recognizing the fact that some of the ancient inhabitants of America inaugurated--unassisted, as we judge by any example from others--a style of religion and government of which the world has hardly, if at all, seen an equal? Yet it is remarkable, that both the Mexican and Peruvian traced their laws and institutions to strangers who came amongst them, as Oannes did to the Babylonians, and who taught them what arts, religion, and science they themselves had. The subject of centres of human life into which our considerations have drawn us, is by far too vast for discussion here. It involves the study of geology, of anthropology, of glossology, of navigation, of physical geography, of climate, of the laws of reproduction, of the influences of climate over animals, and of diet upon man. Into all these we dare not enter: we shall confine ourselves rather to considering the religious ideas of the lowest of the known races of mankind; and then proceed to those which have been held by what we may call the oscillating people, i.e., those vibrating repeatedly between a state of empire and one of slavery, like the people of Hindostan, Babylon, Judea, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Egypt.