XXXI. There is then, scarce any people whatever, if you examine deeply into things, who can with justice be deemed barbarous. I will not however deny, that there is not between particular nations, some inequality in the use or application of their reason. Yes, but this depends in some measure, on the disposition of their organs, and the climate in which they are born, and these possibly may have some influence to promote this disposition. But if I was to be asked which are the most penetrating and acute nations, I should answer ingenuously that I could give no judgment in the matter that might safely be relied on. I see that the sciences, at one time flourished among the Phenicians, at another among the Chaldeans, at another among the Egyptians, at another among the Greeks, at another among the Romans, and at another among the Arabs, and that at last, they extended themselves to almost all the European nations. I observe also, that the inhabitants of every country into which they were not introduced, were looked upon as rude and uncivilized; but it was generally remarked, that after they came to be introduced into one of these last, the natives of it did not make less advances in them, than those did, who had the happiness to be the first visited by them. Perhaps if the world lasts much longer, and there should happen great revolutions of empire in it, as Minerva goes wandering about the earth, and continues to shift her station according to the violent agitations she receives from the impulse of Mars; I say if such revolutions should happen, the Iroquois, the Laplanders, the Troglodytes, the Garamantes, and other people, whom we now look upon with disdain, and whom we with repugnance admit to be members of our species, may one day possess the sciences in an eminent degree; so that experience will hardly assist us to determine, the inequality of ingenuity, that prevails in different nations.