wealth in the society,—and for all these reasons, to
the means of enslaving the people, or, in other
words, of repressing the nobler sentiments which
are natural to independent man, when individual
character is permitted to develope itself. In proportion
as the soil and climate improve, or perhaps
nearly in the degree in which we proceed eastward,
or towards the equator, and nature furnishes
man with necessaries with the smallest effort,
despotism increases, and the human intellect
becomes weaker. The Persians, Turks, and Arabs,
whose individual characters are unquestionably the-
most independent and energetic of all eastern nations,
have also the best poetry ; that of the Hindus
is much worse ; the best poetry of Java is
borrowed from the latter. The Burmans and
Siamese, from all accounts, are as tame in poetic
genius as the Javanese ; and for the poetry of the
nations which write in the Hieroglyphics of China,
nonsense is hardly too bad a name.
I have sometimes thought, that the extreme
monotony and uniformity of season, production,
and scenery, in the East, might contribute, with
political institutions, to deaden and tranquillize the
faculties, removing from the mind the powerful incentive
of variety, to animate, and rouse it to action.
In further illustration of this subject, I may observe,
that to this cause, too, may possibly be owing
the great similarity, not only between the different
nations of the East at the same period, but the
same nation with itself at every known period of
its existence. While the nations of the West, like
their seasons and productions, are liable to fluctuation
and change ; now in the savage state j now
emerging from i t ; now semi-barbarians ; now civilized,
polished, and refined; then decaying, and
again relapsing into barbarity; the nations of the
East, in point of civilization, continue unchanged,—
seem rapidly to advance to a certain state of improvement,
and then to continue in all ages the same
unchangeable semi-barbarians, when circumstances
have not detained them in the state of primeval
barbarity and savage existence.