so express it; and, as if absorbed and astounded by this personified creative force, whose shadow presses on him, he does not understand the arts of reproduction, although among all the people who excel in it. In fact, history itself will teach us that these tendencies are so much accused and so general, that they are found everywhere; in one place rising even above conquest, in another, modifying itself to imported religions. When a religion, in accordance with the genius of the men to whom it has been addressed from the cradle, passes from this race to another, it is necessarily modified. Pure monotheism, born in the east, has only conquered the west and the Iranian race by transforming itself to their pleasure. The Persians accepted Islam; but they have not been able to renounce this necessity for plastic reproduction, which is one of the characteristics of the Iranian family: a schism became formed, which authorised all the arts, and left in entire freedom that natural tendency which could not be smothered. Far more than the monsters in Isaiah’s dream, the lions of the Alhambra were a terrible prophesy. Those who see them may read in their huge figures the vitality of a conquered nation, whose love of the living form invaded even the palace of the conquerors, and which were soon to make them fly. The race which flourished at Athens and at Rome only accepted Christianity, which also came from the east, by despoiling it of its original character; and this religion would, at the present day, be incapable of making proselytes in that east where it first took its rise. The preaching of Mohammed was, as M. Renan has remarked, but a reaction of pure monotheism against degenerated Christianity, concealing but badly its polytheistic tendencies. In truth, the psychological study of the human race is a new science, which has been examined into on some points, but not in all. To desire to sketch it would be to fall into the alternative either of doing what others have done perfectly, or to fall into error for want of necessary materials. We can only quote, as having been well studied,--first, the Iranian race, by all our moralists and philosophers; secondly, the Semitic race, by M. Renan; and thirdly, the American race, by Humboldt and Bonpland,[198] by d’Orbigny,[199] Morton,[200] and Coombe.[201]