In this investigation, indeed, historical circumstances may often occur--such as the popular commotions and intermixture of nations happening at all periods of the world--by which the question of the origin and affinity of different races undergoes considerable modifications, and the whole subject is rendered unsusceptible of a systematic division and arrangement. It often happens that one race adopts the language of another, without on that account losing its national identity, or being totally confounded with the other; for, on the contrary, its moral or intellectual character bears the clear traces of its original descent; so that here, at least, language alone will decide nothing. Often a less numerous tribe will stamp its own native moral and intellectual character on a whole people. In general the descent of nations can be clearly traced and demonstrated in those cases only, where the race has been kept up pure, and all marriage and connection with other nations been strictly prevented. But such has been the case among certain nations only; and even in those countries, where it was the law, it was not in every instance rigidly observed, nor constantly maintained; as is exemplified in the frequent intermarriages of the Hebrews with the Phœnicians, severely prohibited as such intermarriages were. The ancient law-givers attached, indeed, a very high importance to lineage, as is proved by all those restrictive laws on marriage, which were destined to preserve the purity of descent; but they set a far higher value on the patrimonial inheritance of ancient customs, institutions, doctrines, and intellectual qualities, as constituting the true essence of national character, and determining the rank which one race should hold above another. By Moses, in particular, this intellectual character of the different races--their feelings--modes of thinking--the whole spirit which animated them, in a word--the chain of sacred tradition, and its transmission and preservation among the different nations--all these are regarded of primary importance, and they alone furnish us with a clue to the discovery of his views.
The great middle country in Western Asia, where the true Eden, the original abode of the first man, and great progenitor of mankind, was situated, forms the central point in the general historical survey of Moses. The wide-spread race of Japhet comprehends the Caucasian nations in the North, and all its contiguous regions, and also those in the central Asia;--nations which were sound, vigorous, comparatively speaking, less corrupt, and by no means entirely barbarous: but which were debarred from that near and immediate participation in the sacred Traditions of primitive revelation, enjoyed by the peoples of the Semitic race in that midland country, whose distinctive character and high pre-eminence, according to Moses, consisted in this very participation. To the South, the race of Cham includes the degenerate, corrupt, and ungodly Egypt (a country which in its native language bore the name of Chemi), and beyond this, all the African tribes devoted to the dark rites of magic. How entirely subjective in itself--how exclusively adapted to his own people, and his own national object, is the genealogy of nations by Moses, may be proved among other things by the fact that, while many great nations in remoter lands, or in the distant Eastern Asia, cannot in this historical survey be traced without difficulty to their proper place, or forced therein without violence to the text, twelve or thirteen generations are given of the kindred Arabian branch, or of the hostile Phœnician race. If regarded in this simple point of view, the Mosaic genealogy of all the nations throughout the inhabited globe will be found very clear, and, though the names of some particular races remain matter of doubt, this summary is in general perfectly intelligible, and throws a broad light on the history of mankind.