Note 172 — Chapter V

See De Maillet, Telliamed, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 187, Amsterdam, 1748. For want of those passages of the Korán to which he refers, we give the whole of Maillet’s remark on the subject:—“Mohammed was so struck with the difference between white and black men, that he did not hesitate to say, that God had made the first with white earth, and the latter with black. He did not imagine that men so different, not only in colour but in figure and inclination, could possibly be of one and the same origin. He observes, in another place, that although there have been prophets of all other nations, there was never one among the blacks; which shows that they have so little mind, that the gift of foresight,—the effect of natural wisdom, which has sometimes been honoured with the name of prophecy,—has never fallen to the lot of any of them.” This passage is, besides, remarkable; because this custom of prophecy seems to be a special attribute of the Semitic race (compare Renan, Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques, 8vo, p. 8, Paris, 1855), and Mohammed, in making this distinction, declared almost a specific characteristic. In the translation of the “Évangile de l’Enfance,” by G. Brunet (Evangiles Apocryphes, 12mo, Paris, 1849), there is this curious document (Jesus had just changed some children into rams in the sight of some women, who asked for their pardon), “The Lord Jesus having answered, that the children of Israel were, among other nations, like the Ethiopians; the women said,” etc. This is merely a proof of the contempt which overwhelmed this unhappy race in the east.