Excerpt from The Works of Voltaire, Vol. 24 of 43: A Contemporary Version In your philosophical inquiries touching the con cerns of this globe, you naturally direct your first attention to the East, the nursery of the arts, to which the western world owes everything which it now enjoys. The oriental and southern climes inherit every advantage immediately from nature; whereas we, in these northern regions, owe all to time, to commerce, and to tedious industry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.