Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/145

Rh to be the peculiar inheritance of the Germanic and Celtic races. The tender, deep, melancholy emotions, those dreams of the infinite in which all the powers of the soul are mingled, that great consciousness of duty, which alone gives a solid basis to our faith and our hopes, are the work of our race and our climate. Here, then, the labour is mingled. The moral education of mankind is not the exclusive merit of any race. The reason of this is perfectly simple. Morality does not teach more than Poetry; beautiful aphorisms do not make an honest man. Everyone finds good in the loftiness of his nature, and in the immediate revelation of his own heart.

As regards industry, invention, material civilization, we owe, beyond contradiction, much to the Shemitic nations. Our race, gentlemen, did not begin with a taste for comfort and for business. It was a moral, brave, and warlike race, jealous of liberty and honour, loving Nature, capable of self-devotion, preferring many things to life. 6*