Renan ranked Semites as an eternally immature, incomplete race versus Indo-Europeans.

Evidence

One sees that in all things the Semitic race appears to us to be an incomplete race, by virtue of its simplicity. This race—if I dare use the analogy—is to the Indo-European family what a pencil sketch is to painting; it lacks that variety, that amplitude, that abundance of life which is the condition of perfectibility. Like those individuals who possess so little fecundity that, after a gracious childhood, they attain only the most mediocre virility, the Semitic nations experienced their fullest flowering in their first age and have never been able to achieve true maturity. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 382

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Gobineau’s racial ranking; useful contrast with how Islamophobia literature treats Semitic/Semite categories.
• SEED: The ‘pencil sketch to painting’ metaphor is a vivid exhibit for an essay on the aestheticizing of racial hierarchy.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 382