Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/125

 General Outlines of Sardinian Civilization. 107 us to gauge the results of an experience which no other country offers in exactly the same conditions. The sequel of this work will take us among peoples who, as the Etruscans and Romans, looked to Greece as their model ; we shall see what they learnt at that school, and what resources they therein found for the unfolding of their inventive genius and mode of thought. On the other hand, the study of tribes whose sole instruction was derived from Phoenicia was quaint and instructive at the same time. In the space of five or six hundred years they entertained no relationship with the civilized world, save what was yielded by Tyrian traders or Carthaginian colonists. Hence anything that recalls, however dimly, the appliances and usages of cultured life, was drawn from these sources ; as were the rudiments of their nascent industry and such scanty means of expression which they had made their own. Are there weighty reasons for believing that the Sardi were naturally opposed to civilization ? Did they belong to a stock whose physical and moral state condemned them to remain, no matter in what surroundings, on the lowest grades of human progress ? But has it been proved that there exist races upon whom is laid a similar curse ? The more deeply we look into history, past and present, the more are we loth to admit that the feelings, ideas, and all that goes to make up the problem of human destiny and its consequent solution, are the sole and exclusive patrimony of the Aryan race. We know not to what stock belonged the Sardi ; but what does that prove ? Are there wanting brilliant instances of nationalities, whose high standard of culture will favourably compare with any the world has ever known, but whom no stretch of imagination, however vivid, could in any way connect with the Aryan family ? Cannot we point to Egypt and Chaldtea, to Japan and China, whose dense populations cover the better half of an immense continent and with whom we were foolish enough to quarrel ? If the Sardi never stepped beyond the rudiments of culture, the fault was less theirs than their masters. Had we desired to test the soundness of the ideas adumbrated in this essay, we could not have resorted to a more effective method than that which we adopted in summing up this chapter ; namely, by reference to texts and "finds" in as brief a manner as lucidity of exposition would permit. Our conclusion has been arrived at by direct observation