It is true he was darker than the Jew. Little, however, can be inferred from this, for the Jews were an extremely mixed people. Abraham came from Haran, in Mesopotamia, and is called in Deuteronomy a Syrian. He must, in fact, have been a Chaldean. The wife of Joseph was a high-caste Egyptian. The wife of Moses was a Cushite. And when the Israelites went up out of Egypt ‘a mixed multitude’ went out with them. This can only mean that in the multitude of those who threw in their lot with them there was a great deal of Semitic blood, through the remnant of the Hyksos, which had been left behind when the great mass of that people had been expelled from Egypt, and also a great deal of Egyptian blood. From these sources, then, were derived no inconsiderable ingredients for the formation of what was afterwards the Jewish nation. The great-grandmother of David was a Moabitish woman. Solomon’s mother was a Hittite, and one of his wives an Egyptian. And we know that a very considerable proportion of conquered Canaanites were eventually absorbed by their conquerors. No argument, therefore, can be founded upon the complexion of so mixed a people as the Jews. In features, taking the sculptures and paintings for our authority, the Egyptian was not a Semite. His nostrils and lips were not so thin, and his nose was not so prominent. In this particular, which is important, he presents indications of a cross between the Caucasian and the Ethiopian, or modern Nubian. Their social and political organization—that of castes, and of a well-ordered, far-extended state—was completely opposed to Semitic freedom and equality, in which the ideas of the tribe, and of the individual, preponderated over those of the state, and of classes. Religion is the interpretation of the _ensemble_. It takes cognizance of the powers that are behind, or within, visible external nature, and of the reciprocal relations between these powers and man. The mind of man is the interpreter. As is the interpreter so will be the interpretation.