M. de Gobineau enumerates ten civilizations, namely, Assyrian, Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, German, Alleghanian, Mexican, and Peruvian. All, according to him, were produced in consequence of the mixture of whites with coloured races. But admitting that such has been the case, is it not evident that this mixture has everywhere given rise to an immense progress. The ruins of Nineveh Thebes, Athens, Rome, and even those of Palanqué, certainly point to populations of a different civilization to that of the people who raised the tumuli in Central Asia. In order to draw their logical consequences from the facts which he admits or supposes, M. de Gobineau should regard the formation of half-breeds as the most powerful element of progress. As we have seen he adopts the opposite opinion. He considers that all these civilizations, which were splendid in the case of the Assyrians and Egyptians, have been dwindling away and diminishing, and what remains in our own days, only deserves our scorn. Without being blinded by self-conceit, we may protest against this conclusion. Doubtless we no longer raise towers of Babel, nor do we build pyramids. Gigantic works which are useless, or undertaken for the glorification of a single man, do not belong to our time. But when some generally useful work arises, do we recoil before the magnitude of the task? The time truly has been badly chosen to accuse us of feebleness. The Suez Canal has been made on a different scale to the small trench of the Pharaohs, and in tunnelling the Alps for a railway, we have accomplished what antiquity had never dared to dream of. It is still true that, taken _en masse_, we are less artistic than the Athenians. But without leaving the domain of the arts, there are points in which we surpass them. To judge from the anecdotes which throw light upon the nature of the talent of their greatest artists, painting and music among the Greeks were not up to the level of sculpture. If we have not our Phidias, they had not their Raphael, their Michael Angelo, their Beethoven, nor their Rossini. But, when he condemns us to a radical inferiority, M. de Gobineau especially forgets the most striking character of modern times. He disregards the _scientific development_, which is without example or analogy in the past, and which gives an absolutely fresh appearance to our civilization. We who are sprung from races crossed a hundred times, are at least the equals of our forefathers, but no longer resemble them. Inferior in some respects, we make up for it thoroughly in other respects. We manifest human power under different aspects.