Morals.
Woman among the Turanian races was never regarded otherwise than as the helpmate of the poor and the plaything of the rich; born to work for the lower classes and to administer to the gratification of the higher. No equality of rights or position was ever dreamt of, and the consequence was polyandry where people were poor and women scarce, and polygamy where wealth and luxury prevailed; and with these it need hardly be added, a loss of half those feelings which ennoble man or make life valuable.
Neither loving nor beloved in the bosom of his own family,—too much of a fatalist to care for the future,—neither enjoying life nor fearing death,—the Turanian is generally free from those vices which contaminate more active minds; he remains sober, temperate, truthful, and kindly in all the relations of life. If, however, he has few vices, he has fewer virtues, and both are far more passive than active in their nature,—in fact, approach more nearly to the instincts of the lower animals than to the intellectual responsibilities of the highest class of minds.
Literature.
No Turanian race ever distinguished itself in literature, properly so called. They all possessed annals, because they loved to record the names, the dates, and the descent of their ancestors; but these never rose to the dignity of history even in its simplest form. Prose they could hardly write, because none of the greater groups ever appreciated the value of an alphabet. Hieroglyphics, signs, symbols, anything sufficed for their simple intellectual wants, and they preferred trusting to memory to remember what a sign stood for, rather than exercise their intellect to compound or analyse a complex alphabetical arrangement. Their system of poetry helped them, to some extent, over the difficulty; and, with a knowledge of the metre, a few suggestive signs enabled the reader to remember at least a lyric composition. But without a complex grammar to express and an alphabet to record their conceptions it is hopeless to expect that either Epic or Dramatic Poetry could flourish, still less that a prose narrative of any extent could be remembered; and philosophy, beyond the use of proverbs, was out of the question.
In their most advanced stages they have, like the Chinese, invented syllabaria of hideous complexity, and have even borrowed alphabets from their more advanced neighbours. By some it is supposed that they have even invented them; but though they have thus got over the mechanical difficulties of the case, their intellectual condition remains the same, and they have never advanced beyond the merest rudiments of a literature, and have never mastered even the elements of any scientific philosophy.
Arts.
If so singularly deficient in the phonetic modes of literary expression, the Turanian races made up for it to a great extent in the excellence they attained in most of the branches of æsthetic art. As architects they were unsurpassed, and in Egypt alone have left monuments which are still the world’s wonder. The Tamul race in Southern, the Moguls in Northern India, in Burmah, in China, and in Mexico, wherever these races are found, they have raised monuments of dimensions unsurpassed; and, considering the low state of civilisation in which they often existed, displaying a degree of taste and skill as remarkable as it is unexpected.
In consequence of the circumstance above mentioned of their gods having been kings, and after death still only considered as watching over and influencing the destiny of mankind, their temples were only exaggerated palaces, containing halls, and chambers, and thrones, and all the appurtenances required by the living, but on a scale befitting the celestial character now acquired. So much is this the case in Egypt that we hardly know by which name to designate them, and the same remark applies to all.
Even more sacred, however, than their temples were their tombs. Wherever a Turanian race exists or existed, there their tombs remain; and from the Pyramids of Egypt to the mausoleum of Hyder Ali, the last Tartar king in India, they form the most remarkable series of monuments the world possesses, and all were built by people of Turanian race. No Semite and no Aryan ever built a tomb that could last a century or was worthy to remain so long.