We say this of nations which, like the Gothic and other Caucasian races,
were originally well organized and endowed with higher capacities. This
higher organization exhibits itself—whatever the degrees of
Cogitativeness which incidental circumstances may have added, or
adeemed—in a profile, Roman, or Greek, or compounded of both; and which
may therefore be called nationally Romano-Greek. The profile not being
so subject to variation from the pressure of external circumstances as
the breadth, remains still pretty uniformly the same in all the
Caucasian races in Europe, which might be written I⁄II. Other races
there are which, either naturally of less penetrable stuff, and a lower
and more obtuse organization, or longer ground down beneath a more
crushing and uniform despotism, remain contented slaves and willing
bondmen. This degradation, as we shall see when we come to speak of the
Asiatic nations, appears also in their Noses.
France, Spain, and Italy have been depressed, not only beneath a
political despotism till within a very recent period, but under the
still more soul-crushing despotism of a gross superstition and corrupt
religion—the latter even more than the former has repressed
Cogitativeness in those nations. If there is one subject which more than
another interests the human mind and occupies the thoughts, it is its
religion—its eternal prospects—for Man is essentially a religious
animal. Debarred from exercising thought upon its most natural and
interesting topics—and all other subjects being dragged within the
jealous circle of a religious despotism—so stern a barrier is opposed to
thought that the mind rarely dare overleap it. While a political
despotism may be well pleased to see its subjects occupied in scientific
or metaphysical researches, in order to wean them from too critical an
examination of itself, a religious despotism forbids any such researches
unless made within the small circle it has prescribed. Death or
imprisonment awaits a Galileo or a Copernicus, as it would under a
similar rule, even now, await a Buckland or a Lyell.
At present, we lament that we can see nothing in the recent
revolutionary movements in France and Italy, to indicate the existence
of those Cogitative powers, the want of which has always hitherto
checked their advancement towards true liberty and self-government.
Now, as in 1793, there seems “equally a want of books and men; without
which, after a few years of bloodshed and anarchy, those countries must
again submit to a despotic form of government. No country can be
governed without intellect; and if that is not to be found in the many,
the few who possess it must become the ruler.
“By the SOUL
Only, the Nations shall be great and free.”
WORDSWORTH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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