History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2)
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Title: History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2)
Author: John William Draper
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HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE.
by
JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Chemistry in the University of New York, Author of a
"Treatise on Human Physiology," "Civil Policy of America,"
"History of the American Civil War," &c.
REVISED EDITION, IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
New York:
Harper & Brothers, Publishers,
Franklin Square.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, held at Oxford in 1860, I read an abstract of the physiological
argument contained in this work respecting the mental progress of
Europe, reserving the historical evidence for subsequent publication.
This work contains that evidence. It is intended as the completion of my
treatise on Human Physiology, in which man was considered as an
individual. In this he is considered in his social relation.
But the reader will also find, I think, that it is a history of the
progress of ideas and opinions from a point of view heretofore almost
entirely neglected. There are two methods of dealing with philosophical
questions--the literary and the scientific. Many things which in a
purely literary treatment of the subject remain in the background,
spontaneously assume a more striking position when their scientific
relations are considered. It is the latter method that I have used.
Social advancement is as completely under the control of natural law as
is bodily growth. The life of an individual is a miniature of the life
of a nation. These propositions it is the special object of this book to
demonstrate.
No one, I believe, has hitherto undertaken the labour of arranging the
evidence offered by the intellectual history of Europe in accordance
with physiological principles, so as to illustrate the orderly progress
of civilization, or collected the facts furnished by other branches of
science with a view of enabling us to recognize clearly the conditions
under which that progress takes place. This philosophical deficiency I
have endeavoured in the following pages to supply.
Seen thus through the medium of physiology, history presents a new
aspect to us. We gain a more just and thorough appreciation of the
thoughts and motives of men in successive ages of the world.
In the Preface to the second edition of my Physiology, published in
1858, it was mentioned that this work was at that time written. The
changes that have been since made in it have been chiefly with a view of
condensing it. The discussion of several scientific questions, such as
that of the origin of species, which have recently attracted public
attention so strongly, has, however remained untouched, the principles
offered being the same as presented in the former work in 1856.
_New York, 1861._
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.
Many reprints of this work having been issued, and translations
published in various foreign languages, French, German, Russian, Polish,
Servian, &c., I have been induced to revise it carefully, and to make
additions wherever they seemed to be desirable. I therefore hope that it
will commend itself to the continued approval of the public.
_November, 1875._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW.
_The subject of this Work proposed.--Its difficulty._
_Gradual Acquisition of the Idea of Natural Government by
Law.--Eventually sustained by Astronomical, Meteorological,
and Physiological Discoveries.--Illustrations from Kepler's
Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of
Vegetable and Animal Life, Variation of Species and their
Permanence._
_Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and
Universal Humanity.--They exhibit Epochs of Life like his,
and, like him, are under the Control of Physical Conditions,
and therefore of Law._
_Plan of this Work.--The Intellectual History of Greece.--Its
Five characteristic Ages.--European Intellectual History._
_Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law._
Page 1
CHAPTER II.
OF EUROPE: ITS TOPOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY.
ITS PRIMITIVE MODES OF THOUGHT, AND THEIR PROGRESSIVE VARIATIONS,
MANIFESTED IN THE GREEK AGE OF CREDULITY.
_Description of Europe: its Topography, Meteorology, and
secular Geological Movements.--Their Effect on its
Inhabitants._
_Its Ethnology determined through its Vocabularies._
_Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the
Anthropocentric Stage.--Becomes connected with false Geography
and Astronomy.--Heaven, the Earth, the Under World.--Origin,
continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology.--It
introduces Ionic Philosophy._
_Decline of Greek Theology, occasioned by the Advance of
Geography and Philosophical Criticism.--Secession of Poets,
Philosophers, Historians.--Abortive public Attempts to sustain
it.--Duration of its Decline.--Its Fall._ 23
CHAPTER III.
DIGRESSION ON HINDU THEOLOGY AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.
_Comparative Theology of India; its Phase of Sorcery; its
Anthropocentric Phase._
VEDAISM _the Contemplation of Matter, or Adoration of Nature,
set forth in the Vedas and Institutes of Menu.--The Universe
is God.--Transmutation of the World.--Doctrine of
Emanation.--Transmigration.--Absorption.--Penitential
Services.--Happiness in Absolute Quietude._
BUDDHISM _the Contemplation of Force.--The supreme impersonal
Power.--Nature of the World--of Man.--The Passage of every
thing to Nonentity.--Development of Buddhism into a vast
monastic System marked by intense Selfishness.--Its practical
Godlessness._
EGYPT _a mysterious Country to the old Europeans.--Its
History, great public Works, and foreign Relations.--Antiquity
of its Civilization and Art.--Its Philosophy, hieroglyphic
Literature, and peculiar Agriculture._
_Rise of Civilization in rainless Countries.--Geography,
Geology, and Topography of Egypt.--The Inundations of the Nile
lead to Astronomy._
_Comparative Theology of Egypt.--Animal Worship, Star
Worship.--Impersonation of Divine Attributes.--Pantheism.--The
Trinities of Egypt.--Incarnation.--Redemption.--Future
Judgment.--Trial of the Dead.--Rituals and Ceremonies._ 56
CHAPTER IV.
GREEK AGE OF INQUIRY.
RISE AND DECLINE OF PHYSICAL SPECULATION.
IONIAN PHILOSOPHY, _commencing from Egyptian Ideas, identifies
in Water, or Air, or Fire, the First Principle.--Emerging from
the Stage of Sorcery, it founds Psychology, Biology,
Cosmogony, Astronomy, and ends in doubting whether there is
any Criterion of Truth._
ITALIAN PHILOSOPHY _depends on Numbers and Harmonies.--It
reproduces the Egyptian and Hindu Doctrine of Transmigration._
ELEATIC PHILOSOPHY _presents a great Advance, indicating a
rapid Approach to Oriental Ideas.--It assumes a Pantheistic
Aspect._
RISE OF PHILOSOPHY IN EUROPEAN GREECE.--_Relations and
Influence of the Mediterranean Commercial and Colonial
System.--Athens attains to commercial Supremacy.--Her vast
Progress in Intelligence and Art.--Her Demoralization.--She
becomes the Intellectual Centre of the Mediterranean._
_Commencement of the Athenian higher Analysis.--It is
conducted by_ THE SOPHISTS, _who reject Philosophy, Religion,
and even Morality, and end in Atheism._
_Political Dangers of the higher Analysis.--Illustration from
the Middle Ages._ 94
CHAPTER V.
THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH.
RISE AND DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
SOCRATES _rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and
asserts the Importance of Virtue and Morality, thereby
inaugurating an Age of Faith.--His Life and Death.--The
schools originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of
Pleasure and Gratification of Self._
PLATO _founds the Academy.--His three primal Principles.--The
Existence of a personal God.--Nature of the World and the
Soul.--The ideal Theory, Generals or
Types.--Reminiscence.--Transmigration.--Plato's political
Institutions.--His Republic.--His Proofs of the Immortality of
the Soul.--Criticism on his Doctrines._
RISE OF THE SCEPTICS, _who conduct the higher Analysis of
Ethical Philosophy.--Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of
Knowledge.--Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference,
Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by
Epicurus.--Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems
in the later Academies.--Their Errors and Duplicities.--End of
the Greek Age of Faith._ 143
CHAPTER VI.
THE GREEK AGE OF REASON.
RISE OF SCIENCE.
THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN.--_Disastrous in its political Effects
to Greece, but ushering in the Age of Reason._
ARISTOTLE _founds the Inductive Philosophy.--His Method the
Inverse of that of Plato.--Its great power.--In his own hands
it fails for want of Knowledge, but is carried out by the
Alexandrians._
ZENO.--_His Philosophical Aim is the Cultivation of Virtue and
Knowledge.--He is in the Ethical Branch the Counterpart of
Aristotle in the Physical._
FOUNDATION OF THE MUSEUM OF ALEXANDRIA.--_The great Libraries,
Observatories, Botanical Gardens, Menageries, Dissecting
Houses.--Its Effect on the rapid Development of exact
Knowledge.--Influence of Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes,
Apollonius, Ptolemy, Hipparchus, on Geometry, Natural
Philosophy, Astronomy, Chronology, Geography._
_Decline of the Greek Age of Reason._ 171
CHAPTER VII.
THE GREEK AGE OF INTELLECTUAL DECREPITUDE.
THE DEATH OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
_Decline of Greek Philosophy: it becomes Retrospective, and in
Philo the Jew and Apollonius of Tyana leans on Inspiration,
Mysticism, Miracles._
NEO-PLATONISM _founded by Ammonius Saccas, followed by
Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblicus, Proclus.--The Alexandrian
Trinity.--Ecstasy.--Alliance with Magic, Necromancy._
_The Emperor Justinian closes the philosophical Schools._
_Summary of Greek Philosophy.--Its four Problems: 1. Origin of
the World; 2. Nature of the Soul; 3. Existence of God; 4.
Criterion of Truth.--Solution of these Problems in the Age of
Inquiry--in that of Faith--in that of Reason--in that of
Decrepitude._
_Determination of the Law of Variation of Greek Opinion.--The
Development of National Intellect is the same as that of
Individual._
_Determination of the final Conclusions of Greek Philosophy as
to God, the World, the Soul, the Criterion of
Truth.--Illustrations and Criticisms on each of these Points._
207
CHAPTER VIII.
DIGRESSION ON THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES OF ROME.
PREPARATION FOR RESUMING THE EXAMINATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS
OF EUROPE.
_Religious Ideas of the primitive Europeans.--The Form of
their Variations is determined by the Influence of
Rome.--Necessity of Roman History in these Investigations._
_Rise and Development of Roman Power, its successive Phases,
territorial Acquisitions.--Becomes Supreme in the
Mediterranean.--Consequent Demoralization of
Italy.--Irresistible Concentration of Power.--Development of
Imperialism.--Eventual Extinction of the true Roman Race._
_Effect on the intellectual, religious, and social Condition
of the Mediterranean Countries.--Produces homogeneous
Thought.--Imperialism prepares the Way for
Monotheism.--Momentous Transition of the Roman World in its
religious Ideas._
_Opinions of the Roman Philosophers.--Coalescence of the new
and old Ideas.--Seizure of Power by the Illiterate, and
consequent Debasement of Christianity in Rome._ 239
CHAPTER IX.
THE EUROPEAN AGE OF INQUIRY.
THE PROGRESSIVE VARIATION OF OPINIONS CLOSED BY THE INSTITUTION OF
COUNCILS AND THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER IN A PONTIFF. RISE, EARLY
VARIATIONS, CONFLICTS, AND FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
_Rise of Christianity.--Distinguished from ecclesiastical
Organization.--It is demanded by the deplorable Condition of
the Empire.--Its brief Conflict with Paganism.--Character of
its first Organization.--Variations of Thought and Rise of
Sects: their essential Difference in the East and West.--The
three primitive Forms of Christianity: the Judaic Form, its
End--the Gnostic Form, its End--the African Form, continues._
_Spread of Christianity from Syria.--Its Antagonism to
Imperialism; their Conflicts.--Position of Affairs under
Diocletian.--The Policy of Constantine.--He avails himself of
the Christian Party, and through it attains supreme
Power.--His personal Relations to it._
_The Trinitarian Controversy.--Story of Arius.--The Council of
Nicea._
_The Progress of the Bishop of Rome to Supremacy.--The Roman
Church; its primitive subordinate Position.--Causes of its
increasing Wealth, Influence, and Corruptions.--Stages of its
Advancement through the Pelagian, Nestorian, and Eutychian
Disputes.--Rivalry of the Bishops of Constantinople,
Alexandria, and Rome._
_Necessity of a Pontiff in the West and ecclesiastical
Councils in the East.--Nature of those Councils and of
pontifical Power._
_The Period closes at the Capture and Sack of Rome by
Alaric.--Defence of that Event by St. Augustine.--Criticism on
his Writings._
_Character of the Progress of Thought through this
Period.--Destiny of the three great Bishops._ 266
CHAPTER X.
THE EUROPEAN AGE OF FAITH.
AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.
_Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church
and State.--The consequent Paganization of Religion and
Persecution of Philosophy._
_Political Necessity for the enforcement of Patristicism, or
Science of the Fathers.--Its peculiar Doctrines._
_Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge by
Patristicism.--The Libraries and Serapion of
Alexandria.--Destruction of the latter by Theodosius.--Death
of Hypatia.--Extinction of Learning in the East by Cyril, his
Associates and Successors._ 308
CHAPTER XI.
PREMATURE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.
THE THREE ATTACKS, VANDAL, PERSIAN, ARAB.
THE VANDAL ATTACK _leads to the Loss of Africa.--Recovery of
that Province by Justinian after great Calamities._
THE PERSIAN ATTACK _leads to the Loss of Syria and Fall of
Jerusalem.--The true Cross carried away as a Trophy.--Moral
Impression of these Attacks._
THE ARAB ATTACK.--_Birth, Mission, and Doctrines of
Mohammed.--Rapid Spread of his Faith in Asia and Africa.--Fall
of Jerusalem.--Dreadful Losses of Christianity to
Mohammedanism.--The Arabs become a learned Nation._
_Review of the Koran.--Reflexions on the Loss of Asia and
Africa by Christendom._ 326
CHAPTER XII.
THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST.
_The Age of Faith in the West is marked by Paganism.--The
Arabian military Attacks produce the Isolation and permit the
Independence of the Bishop of Rome._
GREGORY THE GREAT _organizes the Ideas of his Age,
materializes Faith, allies it to Art, rejects Science, and
creates the Italian Form of Religion._
_An Alliance of the Papacy with France diffuses that
Form.--Political History of the Agreement and Conspiracy of
the Frankish Kings and the Pope.--The resulting Consolidation
of the new Dynasty in France, and Diffusion of Roman
Ideas.--Conversion of Europe._
_The Value of the Italian Form of Religion determined from the
papal Biography._ 349
CHAPTER XIII.
DIGRESSION ON THE PASSAGE OF THE ARABIANS TO THEIR AGE OF REASON.
INFLUENCE OF MEDICAL IDEAS THROUGH THE NESTORIANS AND JEWS.
_The intellectual Development of the Arabians is guided by the
Nestorians and the Jews, and is in the Medical Direction.--The
Basis of this Alliance is theological._
_Antagonism of the Byzantine System to Scientific
Medicine.--Suppression of the Asclepions.--Their Replacement
by Miracle-cure.--The resulting Superstition and Ignorance._
_Affiliation of the Arabians with the Nestorians and Jews._
_1st. The Nestorians, their Persecutions, and the Diffusion of
their Sectarian Ideas.--They inherit the old Greek Medicine._
_Sub-digression on Greek Medicine.--The
Asclepions.--Philosophical Importance of Hippocrates, who
separates Medicine from Religion.--The School of Cnidos.--Its
Suppression by Constantine._
_Sub-digression on Egyptian Medicine.--It is founded on
Anatomy and Physiology.--Dissections and Vivisections.--The
Great Alexandrian Physicians._
_2nd. The Jewish Physicians.--Their Emancipation from
Superstition.--They found Colleges and promote Science and
Letters._
_The contemporary Tendency to Magic, Necromancy, the Black
Art.--The Philosopher's Stone, Elixir of Life, etc._
_The Arabs originate scientific Chemistry.--Discover the
strong Acids, Phosphorus, etc.--Their geological Ideas.--Apply
Chemistry to the Practice of Medicine.--Approach of the
Conflict between the Saracenic material and the European
supernatural System._ 383
CHAPTER XIV.
THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST--(_Continued_).
IMAGE-WORSHIP AND THE MONKS.
_Origin of_ IMAGE-WORSHIP.--_Inutility of Images discovered in
Asia and Africa during the Saracen Wars.--Rise of Iconoclasm._
_The Emperors prohibit Image-worship.--The Monks, aided by
court Females, sustain it.--Victory of the latter._
_Image-worship in the West sustained by the Popes.--Quarrel
between the Emperor and the Pope.--The Pope, aided by the
Monks, revolts and allies himself with the Franks._
THE MONKS.--_History of the Rise and Development of
Monasticism.--Hermits and Coenobites.--Spread of Monasticism
from Egypt over Europe.--Monk Miracles and
Legends.--Humanization of the monastic Establishments.--They
materialize Religion, and impress their Ideas on Europe._ 413
THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW.
_The subject of this Work proposed.--Its difficulty._
_Gradual Acquisition of the Idea of Natural Government by
Law.--Eventually sustained by Astronomical, Meteorological,
and Physiological Discoveries.--Illustrations from Kepler's
Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of
Vegetable and Animal Life, Variation of Species and their
Permanence._
_Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and
Universal Humanity.--They exhibit Epochs of Life like his,
and, like him are under the Control of Physical Conditions,
and therefore of Law._
_Plan of this Work.--The Intellectual History of Greece.--Its
Five characteristic Ages.--European Intellectual History._
_Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law._
[Sidenote: The subject proposed.]
I intend, in this work, to consider in what manner the advancement of
Europe in civilization has taken place, to ascertain how far its
progress has been fortuitous, and how far determined by primordial law.
Does the procession of nations in time, like the erratic phantasm of a
dream, go forward without reason or order? or, is there a predetermined,
a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly
advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events?
[Sidenote: Its difficulty and grandeur.]
In a philosophical examination of the intellectual and political history
of nations, an answer to these questions is to be found. But how
difficult it is to master the mass of facts necessary to be collected,
to handle so great an accumulation, to place it in the clearest point of
view; how difficult it is to select correctly the representative men,
to produce them in the proper scenes, and to conduct successfully so
grand and complicated a drama as that of European life! Though in one
sense the subject offers itself as a scientific problem, and in that
manner alone I have to deal with it; in another it swells into a noble
epic--the life of humanity, its warfare and repose, its object and its
end.
Man is the archetype of society. Individual development is the model of
social progress.
Some have asserted that human affairs are altogether determined by the
voluntary action of men, some that the Providence of God directs us in
every step, some that all events are fixed by Destiny. It is for us to
ascertain how far each of these affirmations is true.
[Sidenote: Individual life of a mixed kind.]
The life of individual man is of a mixed nature. In part he submits to
the free-will impulses of himself and others, in part he is under the
inexorable dominion of law. He insensibly changes his estimate of the
relative power of each of these influences as he passes through
successive stages. In the confidence of youth he imagines that very much
is under his control, in the disappointment of old age very little. As
time wears on, and the delusions of early imagination vanish away, he
learns to correct his sanguine views, and prescribes a narrower boundary
for the things he expects to obtain. The realities of life undeceive him
at last, and there steals over the evening of his days an unwelcome
conviction of the vanity of human hopes. The things he has secured are
not the things he expected. He sees that a Supreme Power has been using
him for unknown ends, that he was brought into the world without his own
knowledge, and is departing from it against his own will.
[Sidenote: It foreshadows social life.]
Whoever has made the physical and intellectual history of individual man
his study, will be prepared to admit in what a surprising manner it
foreshadows social history. The equilibrium and movement of humanity are
altogether physiological phenomena. Yet not without hesitation may such
an opinion be frankly avowed, since it is offensive to the pride, and to
many of the prejudices and interests of our age. An author who has been
disposed to devote many years to the labour of illustrating this topic,
has need of the earnest support of all who prize the truth; and,
considering the extent and profundity of his subject, his work, at the
best, must be very imperfect, requiring all the forbearance, and even
the generosity of criticism.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: First opinions of savage life.]
In the intellectual infancy of a savage state, Man transfers to Nature
his conceptions of himself, and, considering that every thing he does is
determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending
on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to
the world a constitution like his own. His tendency is necessarily to
superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his
imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations
of an indwelling spirit, and therefore worthy of his veneration.
After Reason, aided by Experience, has led him forth from these
delusions as respects surrounding things, he still clings to his
original ideas as respects objects far removed. In the distance and
irresistible motions of the stars he finds arguments for the
supernatural, and gives to each of those shining bodies an abiding and
controlling genius. The mental phase through which he is passing permits
him to believe in the exercise of planetary influences on himself.
[Sidenote: Fetichism displaced by star-worship.]
But as reason led him forth from fetichism, so in due time it again
leads him forth from star-worship. Perhaps not without regret does he
abandon the mythological forms he has created; for, long after he has
ascertained that the planets are nothing more than shining points,
without any perceptible influence on him, he still venerates the genii
once supposed to vivify them, perhaps even he exalts them into immortal
gods.
[Sidenote: The idea of government by law.]
Philosophically speaking, he is exchanging by ascending degrees his
primitive doctrine of arbitrary volition for the doctrine of law. As the
fall of a stone, the flowing of a river, the movement of a shadow, the
rustling of a leaf, have been traced to physical causes, to like causes
at last are traced the revolutions of the stars. In events and scenes
continually increasing in greatness and grandeur, he is detecting the
dominion of law. The goblins, and genii, and gods who successively
extorted his fear and veneration, who determined events by their fitful
passions or whims, are at last displaced by the noble conception of one
Almighty Being, who rules the universe according to reason, and
therefore according to law.
[Sidenote: Its application to the solar system.]
In this manner the doctrine of government by law is extended, until at
last it embraces all natural events. It was thus that, hardly two
centuries ago, that doctrine gathered immense force from the discovery
of Newton that Kepler's laws, under which the movements of the planetary
bodies are executed, issue as a mathematical necessity from a very
simple material condition, and that the complicated motions of the solar
system cannot be other than they are. Few of those who read in the
beautiful geometry of the 'Principia' the demonstration of this fact,
saw the imposing philosophical consequences which must inevitably follow
this scientific discovery. And now the investigation of the aspect of
the skies in past ages, and all predictions of its future, rest
essentially upon the principle that no arbitrary volition ever
intervenes, the gigantic mechanism moving impassively in accordance with
a mathematical law.
[Sidenote: And to terrestrial events.]
And so upon the earth, the more perfectly we understand the causes of
present events, the more plainly are they seen to be the consequences of
physical conditions, and therefore the results of law. To allude to one
example out of many that might be considered, the winds, how
proverbially inconstant, who can tell whence they come or whither they
go! If any thing bears the fitful character of arbitrary volition,
surely it is these. But we deceive ourselves in imagining that
atmospheric events are fortuitous. Where shall a line be drawn between
that eternal trade-wind, which, originating in well-understood physical
causes, sweeps, like the breath of Destiny, slowly, and solemnly, and
everlastingly over the Pacific Ocean, and the variable gusts into which
it degenerates in more northerly and southerly regions--gusts which seem
to come without any cause, and to pass away without leaving any trace?
In what latitude is it that the domain of the physical ends, and that of
the supernatural begins?
All mundane events are the results of the operation of law. Every
movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the
universe is under government.
But if we admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the
sunbeam to multiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to
carry our principles to their consequences, and recognise a like
operation of law among living as among lifeless things, in the organic
as well as the inorganic world? What testimony does physiology offer on
this point?
[Sidenote: And to the organic world.]
Physiology, in its progress, has passed through the same phases as
physics. Living beings have been considered as beyond the power of
external influences, and, conspicuously among them, Man has been
affirmed to be independent of the forces that rule the world in which he
lives. Besides that immaterial principle, the soul, which distinguishes
him from all his animated companions, and makes him a moral and
responsible being, he has been feigned, like them, to possess another
immaterial principle, the vital agent, which, in a way of its own,
carries forward all the various operations in his economy.
[Sidenote: Especially to man.]
But when it was discovered that the heart of man is constructed upon the
recognised rules of hydraulics, and with its great tubes is furnished
with common mechanical contrivances, valves; when it was discovered that
the eye has been arranged on the most refined principles of optics, its
cornea, and humours, and lens properly converging the rays to form an
image--its iris, like the diaphragm of a telescope or microscope,
shutting out stray light, and also regulating the quantity admitted;
when it was discovered that the ear is furnished with the means of
dealing with the three characteristics of sound--its tympanum for
intensity, its cochlea for pitch, its semicircular canals for quality;
when it was seen that the air brought into the great air-passages by the
descent of the diaphragm, calling into play atmospheric pressure, is
conveyed upon physical principles into the ultimate cells of the lungs,
and thence into the blood, producing chemical changes throughout the
system, disengaging heat, and permitting all the functions of organic
life to go on; when these facts and very many others of a like kind were
brought into prominence by modern physiology, it obviously became
necessary to admit that animated beings do not constitute the exception
once supposed, and that organic operations are the result of physical
agencies.
If thus, in the recesses of the individual economy, these natural agents
bear sway, must they not operate in the social economy too?
[Sidenote: In social as well as individual life.]
Has the great shadeless desert nothing to do with the habits of the
nomade tribes who pitch their tents upon it--the fertile plain no
connection with flocks and pastoral life--the mountain fastnesses with
the courage that has so often defended them--the sea with habits of
adventure? Indeed, do not all our expectations of the stability of
social institutions rest upon our belief in the stability of surrounding
physical conditions? From the time of Bodin, who nearly three hundred
years ago published his work 'De Republica,' these principles have been
well recognized: that the laws of Nature cannot be subordinated to the
will of Man, and that government must be adapted to climate. It was
these things which led him to the conclusion that force is best resorted
to for northern nations, reason for the middle, and superstition for the
southern.
[Sidenote: Effects of the seasons on animals and plants.]
In the month of March the sun crosses the equator, dispensing his rays
more abundantly over our northern hemisphere. Following in his train, a
wave of verdure expands towards the pole. The luxuriance is in
proportion to the local brilliancy. The animal world is also affected.
Pressed forward, or solicited onward by the warmth, the birds of passage
commence their annual migration, keeping pace with the developing
vegetation beneath. As summer declines, this orderly advance of light
and life is followed by an orderly retreat, and in its turn the southern
hemisphere presents the same glorious phenomenon. Once every year the
life of the earth pulsates; now there is an abounding vitality, now a
desolation. But what is the cause of all this? It is only mechanical.
The earth's axis of rotation is inclined to the plane of her orbit of
revolution round the sun.
Let that wonderful phenomenon and its explanation be a lesson to us; let
it profoundly impress us with the importance of physical agents and
physical laws. They intervene in the life and death of man personally
and socially. External events become interwoven in our constitution;
their periodicities create periodicities in us. Day and night are
incorporated in our waking and sleeping; summer and winter compel us to
exhibit cycles in our life.
[Sidenote: Individual existence depends on physical conditions.]
They who have paid attention to the subject have long ago ascertained
that the possibility of human existence on the earth depends on
conditions altogether of a material kind. Since it is only within a
narrow range of temperature that life can be maintained, it is needful
that our planet should be at a definite mean distance from the source of
light and heat, the sun; and that the form of her orbit should be so
little eccentric as to approach closely to a circle. If her mass were
larger or less than it is, the weight of all living and lifeless things
on her surface would no longer be the same; but absolute weight is one
of the primary elements of organic construction. A change in the time of
her diurnal rotation, as affecting the length of the day and night, must
at once be followed by a corresponding modification of the periodicities
of the nervous system of animals; a change in her orbitual translation
round the sun, as determining the duration of the year, would, in like
manner, give rise to a marked effect. If the year were shorter, we
should live faster and die sooner.
[Sidenote: Animal and vegetable life interbalanced by material
conditions.]
In the present economy of our globe, natural agents are relied upon as
the means of regulation and of government. Through heat, the
distribution and arrangement of the vegetable tribes are accomplished;
through their mutual relations with the atmospheric air, plants and
animals are interbalanced, and neither permitted to obtain a
superiority. Considering the magnitude of this condition, and its
necessity to general life, it might seem worthy of incessant Divine
intervention, yet it is in fact accomplished automatically.
[Sidenote: And also appearances and extinctions determined.]
Of past organic history the same remark may be made. The condensation of
carbon from the air, and its inclusion in the strata, constitute the
chief epoch in the organic life of the earth, giving a possibility for
the appearance of the hot-blooded and more intellectual animal tribes.
That great event was occasioned by the influence of the rays of the sun.
And as such influences have thus been connected with the appearance of
organisms, so likewise have they been concerned in the removal. Of the
myriads of species which have become extinct, doubtless every one has
passed away through the advent of material conditions incompatible with
its continuance. Even now, a fall of half-a-dozen degrees in the mean
temperature of any latitude would occasion the vanishing of the forms of
warmer climates, and the advent of those of the colder. An obscuration
of the rays of the sun for a few years would compel a redistribution of
plants and animals all over the earth; many would totally disappear, and
everywhere new comers would be seen.
[Sidenote: Permanence of organisms due to immobility of external
conditions.]
The permanence of organic forms is altogether dependent on the
invariability of the material conditions under which they live. Any
variation therein, no matter how insignificant it might be, would be
forthwith followed by a corresponding variation in the form. The present
invariability of the world of organization is the direct consequence of
the physical equilibrium, and so it will continue as long as the mean
temperature, the annual supply of light, the composition of the air, the
distribution of water, oceanic and atmospheric currents, and other such
agencies remain unaltered; but if any one of these, or of a hundred
other incidents that might be mentioned, should suffer modification, in
an instant the fanciful doctrine of the immutability of species would be
brought to its true value. The organic world appears to be in repose,
because natural influences have reached an equilibrium. A marble may
remain for ever motionless upon a level table; but let the surface be a
little inclined, and the marble will quickly run off. What should we say
of him, who, contemplating it in its state of rest, asserted that it was
impossible for it ever to move?
[Sidenote: Orderly sequence of conditions is followed by orderly organic
changes.]
They who can see no difference between the race-horse and the Shetland
pony, the bantam and the Shanghai fowl, the greyhound and the poodle
dog, who altogether deny that impressions can be made on species, and
see in the long succession of extinct forms, the ancient existence of
which they must acknowledge, the evidences of a continuous and creative
intervention, forget that mundane effects observe definite sequences,
event following event in the necessity of the case, and thus
constituting a chain, each link of which hangs on a preceding, and holds
a succeeding one. Physical influences thus following one another, and
bearing to each other the inter-relation of cause and effect, stand in
their totality to the whole organic world as causes, it representing the
effect, and the order of succession existing among them is perpetuated
or embodied in it. Thus, in those ancient times to which we have
referred, the sunlight acting on the leaves of plants disturbed the
chemical constitution of the atmosphere, gave rise to the accumulation
of a more energetic element therein, diminished the mechanical pressure,
and changed the rate of evaporation from the sea, a series of events
following one another so necessarily that we foresee their order, and,
in their turn, making an impression on the vegetable and animal economy.
The natural influences, thus varying in an orderly way, controlled
botanical events, and made them change correspondingly. The orderly
procedure of the one must be imitated in the orderly procedure of the
other. And the same holds good in the animal kingdom; the recognized
variation in the material conditions is copied in the organic effects,
in vigour of motion, energy of life, intellectual power.
When, therefore, we notice such orderly successions, we must not at once
assign them to a direct intervention, the issue of wise predeterminations
of a voluntary agent; we must first satisfy ourselves how far they are
dependent on mundane or material conditions, occurring in a definite and
necessary series, ever bearing in mind the important principle that an
orderly sequence of inorganic events necessarily involves an orderly and
corresponding progression of organic life.
[Sidenote: Universal control of physical agents over organisms.]
To this doctrine of the control of physical agencies over organic forms
I acknowledge no exception, not even in the case of man. The varied
aspects he presents in different countries are the necessary
consequences of those influences.
[Sidenote: The case of man.]
He who advocates the doctrine of the unity of the human race is plainly
forced to the admission of the absolute control of such agents over the
organization of man, since the originally-created type has been brought
to exhibit very different aspects in different parts of the world,
apparently in accordance with the climate and other purely material
circumstances. To those circumstances it is scarcely necessary to add
manner of life, for that itself arises from them. The doctrine of unity
demands as its essential postulate an admission of the paramount control
of physical agents over the human aspect and organization, else how
could it be that, proceeding from the same stock, all shades of
complexion in the skin, and variety in the form of the skull, should
have arisen? Experience assures us that these are changes assumed only
by slow degrees, and not with abruptness; they come as a cumulative
effect. They plainly enforce the doctrine that national type is not to
be regarded as a definite or final thing, a seeming immobility in this
particular being due to the attainment of a correspondence with the
conditions to which the type is exposed. Let those conditions be
changed, and it begins forthwith to change too. I repeat it, therefore,
that he who receives the doctrine of the unity of the human race, must
also accept, in view of the present state of humanity on various parts
of the surface of our planet, its necessary postulate, the complete
control of physical agents, whether natural, or arising artificially
from the arts of civilization and the secular progress of nations toward
a correspondence with the conditions to which they are exposed.
To the same conclusion also must he be brought who advocates the origin
of different races from different centres. It comes to the same thing,
whichever of those doctrines we adopt. Each brings us to the admission
of the transitory nature of typical forms, to their transmutations and
extinctions.
[Sidenote: Human variations.]
Variations in the aspect of men are best seen when an examination is
made of nations arranged in a northerly and southerly direction; the
result is such as would ensue to an emigrant passing slowly along a
meridional track; but the case would be quite different if the movement
were along a parallel of latitude. In this latter direction the
variations of climate are far less marked, and depend much more on
geographical than on astronomical causes. In emigrations of this kind
there is never that rapid change of aspect, complexion, and intellectual
power which must occur in the other. Thus, though the mean temperature
of Europe increases from Poland to France, chiefly through the influence
of the great Atlantic current transferring heat from the Gulf of Mexico
and tropical ocean, that rise is far less than would be encountered on
passing through the same distance to the south. By the arts of
civilization man can much more easily avoid the difficulties arising
from variations along a parallel of latitude than those upon a meridian,
for the simple reason that in that case those variations are less.
[Sidenote: Their political result.]
But it is not only complexion, development of the brain, and, therefore,
intellectual power, which are thus affected. With difference of climate
there must be differences of manners and customs, that is, differences
in the modes of civilization. These are facts which deserve our most
serious attention, since such differences are inevitably connected with
political results. If homogeneousness be an element of strength, an
empire that lies east and west must be more powerful than one that lies
north and south. I cannot but think that this was no inconsiderable
cause of the greatness and permanence of Rome and that it lightened the
task of the emperors, often hard enough, in government. There is a
natural tendency to homogeneousness in the east and west direction, a
tendency to diversity and antagonism in the north and south, and hence
it is that government under the latter circumstances will always demand
the highest grade of statesmanship.
[Sidenote: Nature of transitional forms.]
The transitional forms which an animal type is capable of producing on a
passage north and south are much more numerous than those it can produce
on a passage east and west. These, though they are truly transitional as
respects the type from which they have proceeded, are permanent as
regards the locality in which they occur, being, in fact, the
incarnation of its physical influences. As long, therefore, as those
influences remain without change the form that has been produced will
last without any alteration. For such a permanent form in the case of
man we may adopt the designation of an ethnical element.
[Sidenote: Conditions of change in an ethnical element.]
An ethnical element is therefore necessarily of a dependent nature; its
durability arises from its perfect correspondence with its environment.
Whatever can affect that correspondence will touch its life.
[Sidenote: Progress of nations like that of individuals.]
Such considerations carry us from individual man to groups of men or
nations. There is a progress for races of men as well marked as the
progress of one man. There are thoughts and actions appertaining to
specific periods in the one case as in the other. Without difficulty we
affirm of a given act that it appertains to a given period. We recognize
the noisy sports of boyhood, the business application of maturity, the
feeble garrulity of old age. We express our surprise when we witness
actions unsuitable to the epoch of life. As it is in this respect in the
individual, so it is in the nation. The march of individual existence
shadows forth the march of race-existence, being, indeed, its
representative on a little scale.
[Sidenote: Communities, like families, exhibit members in different
stages of advance.]
Groups of men, or nations, are disturbed by the same accidents, or
complete the same cycle as the individual. Some scarcely pass beyond
infancy, some are destroyed on a sudden, some die of mere old age. In
this confusion of events, it might seem altogether hopeless to
disentangle the law which is guiding them all, and demonstrate it
clearly. Of such groups, each may exhibit, at the same moment, an
advance to a different stage, just as we see in the same family the
young, the middle-aged, the old. It is thus that Europe shows in its
different parts societies in very different states--here the restless
civilization of France and England, there the contentment and
inferiority of Lapland. This commingling might seem to render it
difficult to ascertain the true movement of the whole continent, and
still more so for distant and successive periods of time. In each
nation, moreover, the contemporaneously different classes, the educated
and illiterate, the idle and industrious, the rich and poor, the
intelligent and superstitious, represent different contemporaneous
stages of advancement. One may have made a great progress, another
scarcely have advanced at all. How shall we ascertain the real state of
the case? Which of these classes shall we regard as the truest and most
perfect type?
Though difficult, this ascertainment is not impossible. The problem is
to be dealt with in the same manner that we should estimate a family in
which there are persons of every condition from infancy to old age. Each
member of it tends to pursue a definite course, though some, cut off in
an untimely manner, may not complete it. One may be enfeebled by
accident, another by disease; but each, if his past and present
circumstances be fully considered, will illustrate the nature of the
general movement that all are making. To demonstrate that movement most
satisfactorily, certain members of such a family suit our purpose better
than others, because they more closely represent its type, or have
advanced farthest in their career.
[Sidenote: The intellectual class the true representative of a
community.]
So in a family of many nations, some are more mature, some less
advanced, some die in early life, some are worn out by extreme old age;
all show special peculiarities. There are distinctions among kinsmen,
whether we consider them intellectually or corporeally. Every one,
nevertheless, illustrates in his own degree the march that all are
making, but some do it more, some less completely. The leading, the
intellectual class, is hence always the true representative of a state.
It has passed step by step through the lower stages, and has made the
greatest advance.
[Sidenote: Interstitial change and death the condition of individual
life.]
In an individual, life is maintained only by the production and
destruction of organic particles, no portion of the system being in a
state of immobility, but each displaying incessant change. Death is,
therefore, necessarily the condition of life, and the more energetic the
function of a part--or, if we compare different animals with one
another--the more active the mode of existence, correspondingly, the
greater the waste and the more numerous the deaths of the interstitial
constituents.
[Sidenote: Particles in the individual answer to persons in the state.]
To the death of particles in the individual answers the death of persons
in the nation, of which they are the integral constituents. In both
cases, in a period of time quite inconsiderable, a total change is
accomplished without the entire system, which is the sum of these
separate parts, losing its identity. Each particle or each person comes
into existence, discharges an appropriate duty, and then passes away,
perhaps unnoticed. The production, continuance, and death of an organic
molecule in the person answers to the production, continuance, and death
of a person in the nation. Nutrition and decay in one case are
equivalent to well-being and transformation in the other.
[Sidenote: Epochs in national the same as in individual life.]
In the same manner that the individual is liable to changes through the
action of external agencies, and offers no resistance thereto, nor any
indication of the possession of a physiological inertia, but submits at
once to any impression, so likewise it is with aggregates of men
constituting nations. A national type pursues its way physically and
intellectually through changes and developments answering to those of
the individual, and being represented by Infancy, Childhood, Youth,
Manhood, Old Age, and Death respectively.
[Sidenote: Disturbance through emigration.]
But this orderly process may be disturbed exteriorly or interiorly. If
from its original seats a whole nation were transposed to some new
abode, in which the climate, the seasons, the aspect of nature were
altogether different, it would appear spontaneously in all its parts to
commence a movement to come into harmony with the new conditions--a
movement of a secular nature, and implying the consumption of many
generations for its accomplishment. During such a period of
transmutation there would, of course, be an increased waste of life, a
risk, indeed, of total disappearance or national death; but the change
once completed, the requisite correspondence once attained, things would
go forward again in an orderly manner on the basis of the new
modification that had been assumed. When the change to be accomplished
is very profound, involving extensive anatomical alterations not merely
in the appearance of the skin, but even in the structure of the skull,
long periods of time are undoubtedly required, and many generations of
individuals are consumed.
[Sidenote: And through blood admixture.]
Or, by interior disturbance, particularly by blood admixture, with more
rapidity may a national type be affected, the result plainly depending
on the extent to which admixture has taken place. This is a disturbance
capable of mathematical computation. If the blood admixture be only of
limited amount, and transient in its application, its effect will
sensibly disappear in no very great period of time, though never,
perhaps, in absolute reality. This accords with the observation of
philosophical historians, who agree in the conclusion that a small tribe
intermingling with a larger one will only disturb it in a temporary
manner, and, after the course of a few years, the effect will cease to
be perceptible. Nevertheless, the influence must really continue much
longer than is outwardly apparent; and the result is the same as when,
in a liquid, a drop of some other kind is placed, and additional
quantities of the first liquid then successively added. Though it might
have been possible at first to detect the adulteration without trouble,
it becomes every moment less and less possible to do so, and before long
it cannot be done at all. But the drop is as much present at last as it
was at first: it is merely masked; its properties overpowered.
Considering in this manner the contamination of a numerous nation, a
trifling amount of foreign blood admixture would appear to be indelible,
and the disturbance, at any moment, capable of computation by the
ascertained degree of dilution that has taken place. But it must not be
forgotten that there is another agency at work, energetically tending to
bring about homogeneity: it is the influence of external physical
conditions. The intrusive adulterating element possesses in itself no
physiological inertia, but as quickly as may be is brought into
correspondence with the new circumstances to which it is exposed, herein
running in the same course as the element with which it had mingled had
itself antecedently gone over.
National homogeneity is thus obviously secured by the operation of two
distinct agencies: the first, gradual but inevitable dilution; the
second, motion to come into harmony with the external natural state. The
two conspire in their effects.
[Sidenote: Secular variations of nations.]
[Sidenote: Their institutions must correspondingly change.]
We must therefore no longer regard nations or groups of men as offering
a permanent picture. Human affairs must be looked upon as in continuous
movement, not wandering in an arbitrary manner here and there, but
proceeding in a perfectly definite course. Whatever may be the present
state, it is altogether transient. All systems of civil life are
therefore necessarily ephemeral. Time brings new external conditions;
the manner of thought is modified; with thought, action. Institutions of
all kinds must hence participate in this fleeting nature, and, though
they may have allied themselves to political power, and gathered
therefrom the means of coercion, their permanency is but little improved
thereby; for, sooner or later, the population on whom they have been
imposed, following the external variations, spontaneously outgrows them,
and their ruin, though it may have been delayed, is none the less
certain. For the permanency of any such system it is essentially
necessary that it should include within its own organization a law of
change, and not of change only, but change in the right direction--the
direction in which the society interested is about to pass. It is in an
oversight of this last essential condition that we find an explanation
of the failure of so many such institutions. Too commonly do we believe
that the affairs of men are determined by a spontaneous action or free
will; we keep that overpowering influence which really controls them in
the background. In individual life we also accept a like deception,
living in the belief that every thing we do is determined by the
volition of ourselves or of those around us; nor is it until the close
of our days that we discern how great is the illusion, and that we have
been swimming--playing and struggling--in a stream which, in spite of
all our voluntary motions, has silently and resistlessly borne us to a
predetermined shore.
In the foregoing pages I have been tracing analogies between the life of
individuals and that of nations. There is yet one point more.
[Sidenote: The death of nations.]
Nations, like individuals, die. Their birth presents an ethnical
element; their death, which is the most solemn event that we can
contemplate, may arise from interior or from external causes. Empires
are only sand-hills in the hour-glass of Time; they crumble
spontaneously away by the process of their own growth.
A nation, like a man, hides from itself the contemplation of its final
day. It occupies itself with expedients for prolonging its present
state. It frames laws and constitutions under the delusion that they
will last, forgetting that the condition of life is change. Very able
modern statesmen consider it to be the grand object of their art to keep
things as they are, or rather as they were. But the human race is not at
rest; and bands with which, for a moment, it may be restrained, break
all the more violently the longer they hold. No man can stop the march
of destiny.
[Sidenote: There is nothing absolute in time.]
Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its
duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling. For the same reason
that to the child the year is actually longer than to the adult, the
life of a nation may be said to be no longer than the life of a person,
considering the manner in which its affairs are moving. There is a
variable velocity of existence, though the lapses of time may be
equable.
[Sidenote: Nations are only transitional forms.]
The origin, existence, and death of nations depend thus on physical
influences, which are themselves the result of immutable laws. Nations
are only transitional forms of humanity. They must undergo obliteration
as do the transitional forms offered by the animal series. There is no
more an immortality for them than there is an immobility for an embryo
in any one of the manifold forms passed through in its progress of
development.
[Sidenote: Their course is ever advancing, never retrograde.]
[Sidenote: Variable rapidity of national life.]
The life of a nation thus flows in a regular sequence, determined by
invariable law, and hence, in estimating different nations, we must not
be deceived by the casual aspect they present. The philosophical
comparison is made by considering their entire manner of career or cycle
of progress, and not their momentary or transitory state. Though they
may encounter disaster, their absolute course can never be retrograde;
it is always onward, even if tending to dissolution. It is as with the
individual, who is equally advancing in infancy, in maturity, in old
age. Pascal was more than justified in his assertion that "the entire
succession of men, through the whole course of ages, must be regarded as
one man, always living and incessantly learning." In both cases, the
manner of advance, though it may sometimes be unexpected, can never be
abrupt. At each stage events and ideas emerge which not only necessarily
owe their origin to preceding events and ideas, but extend far into the
future and influence it. As these are crowded together, or occur more
widely apart, national life, like individual, shows a variable rapidity,
depending upon the intensity of thought and action. But, no matter how
great that energy may be, or with what rapidity modifications may take
place--since events are emerging as consequences of preceding events,
and ideas from preceding ideas--in the midst of the most violent
intellectual oscillations, a discerning observer will never fail to
detect that there exists a law of continuous variation of human
opinions.
[Sidenote: Plan of this work.]
[Sidenote: Selection among European communities.]
In the examination of the progress of Europe on which we now enter, it
is, of course, to intellectual phenomena that we must, for the most
part, refer; material aggrandisement and political power offering us
less important though still valuable indications, and serving our
purpose rather in a corroborative way. There are five intellectual
manifestations to which we may resort--philosophy, science, literature,
religion, government. Our obvious course is, first, to study the
progress of that member of the European family, the eldest in point of
advancement, and to endeavour to ascertain the characteristics of its
mental unfolding. We may reasonably expect that the younger members of
the family, more or less distinctly, will offer us illustrations of the
same mode of advancement that we shall thus find for Greece; and that
the whole continent, which is the sum of these different parts, will, in
its secular progress, comport itself in like manner.
[Sidenote: Our investigation limited to the intellectual, and commencing
with Greece.]
[Sidenote: From thence we pass to the examination of all Europe.]
Of the early condition of Europe, since we have to consider it in its
prehistoric times, our information must necessarily be imperfect.
Perhaps, however, we may be disposed to accept that imperfection as a
sufficient token of its true nature. Since history can offer us no aid,
our guiding lights must be comparative theology and comparative
philology. Proceeding from those times, we shall, in detail, examine the
intellectual or philosophical movement first exhibited in Greece,
endeavouring to ascertain its character at successive epochs, and
thereby to judge of its complete nature. Fortunately for our purpose,
the information is here sufficient, both in amount and distinctness. It
then remains to show that the mental movement of the whole continent is
essentially of the same kind, though, as must necessarily be the case,
it is spread over far longer periods of time. Our conclusions will
constantly be found to gather incidental support and distinctness from
illustrations presented by the aged populations of Asia, and the
aborigines of Africa and America.
[Sidenote: The five ages of European life.]
The intellectual progress of Europe being of a nature answering to that
observed in the case of Greece, and this, in its turn, being like that
of an individual, we may conveniently separate it into arbitrary
periods, sufficiently distinct from one another, though imperceptibly
merging into each other. To these successive periods I shall give the
titles of--1, the Age of Credulity; 2, the Age of Inquiry; 3, the Age of
Faith; 4, the Age of Reason; 5, the Age of Decrepitude; and shall use
these designations in the division of my subject in its several
chapters.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The world is ruled by law.]
From the possibility of thus regarding the progress of a continent in
definite and successive stages, answering respectively to the periods of
individual life--infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age--we may
gather an instructive lesson. It is the same that we have learned from
inquiries respecting the origin, maintenance, distribution, and
extinction of animals and plants, their balancing against each other;
from the variations of aspect and form of an individual man as
determined by climate; from his social state, whether in repose or
motion; from the secular variations of his opinions, and the gradual
dominion of reason over society: this lesson is, that the government of
the world is accomplished by immutable law.
Such a conception commends itself to the intellect of man by its
majestic grandeur. It makes him discern the eternal in the vanishing of
present events and through the shadows of time. From the life, the
pleasures, the sufferings of humanity, it points to the impassive; from
our wishes, wants, and woes, to the inexorable. Leaving the individual
beneath the eye of Providence, it shows society under the finger of law.
And the laws of Nature never vary; in their application they never
hesitate nor are wanting.
[Sidenote: And yet there is free-will for man.]
But in thus ascending to primordial laws, and asserting their
immutability, universality, and paramount control in the government of
this world, there is nothing inconsistent with the free action of man.
The appearance of things depends altogether on the point of view we
occupy. He who is immersed in the turmoil of a crowded city sees nothing
but the acts of men, and, if he formed his opinion from his experience
alone, must conclude that the course of events altogether depends on the
uncertainties of human volition. But he who ascends to a sufficient
elevation loses sight of the passing conflicts, and no longer hears the
contentions. He discovers that the importance of individual action is
diminishing, as the panorama beneath him is extending. And if he could
attain to the truly philosophical, the general point of view,
disengaging himself front all terrestrial influences and entanglements,
rising high enough to see the whole globe at a glance, his acutest
vision would fail to discover the slightest indication of man, his
free-will, or his works. In her resistless, onward sweep, in the
clock-like precision of her daily and nightly revolution, in the
well-known pictured forms of her continents and seas, now no longer dark
and doubtful, but shedding forth a planetary light, well might he ask
what had become of all the aspirations and anxieties, the pleasures and
agony of life. As the voluntary vanished from his sight, and the
irresistible remained, and each moment became more and more distinct,
well might he incline to disbelieve his own experience, and to question
whether the seat of so much undying glory could be the place of so much
human uncertainty, whether beneath the vastness, energy, and immutable
course of a moving world, there lay concealed the feebleness and
imbecility of man. Yet it is none the less true that these contradictory
conditions co-exist--Free-will and Fate, Uncertainty and Destiny, It is
only the point of view that has changed, but on that how much has
depended! A little nearer we gather the successive ascertainments of
human inquiry, a little further off we realize the panoramic vision of
the Deity. A Hindu philosopher has truly remarked, that he who stands by
the banks of a flowing stream sees, in their order, the various parts as
they successively glide by, but he who is placed on an exalted station
views, at a glance, the whole as a motionless silvery thread among the
fields. To the one there is the accumulating experience and knowledge of
man in time, to the other there is the instantaneous the unsuccessive
knowledge of God.
[Sidenote: Changeability of forms and unchangeability of law.]
Is there an object presented to us which does not bear the mark of
ephemeral duration? As respects the tribes of life, they are scarcely
worth a moment's thought, for the term of the great majority of them is
so brief that we may say they are born and die before our eyes. If we
examine them, not as individuals, but as races, the same conclusion
holds good, only the scale is enlarged from a few days to a few
centuries. If from living we turn to lifeless nature, we encounter again
the evidence of brief continuance. The sea is unceasingly remoulding its
shores; hard as they are, the mountains are constantly yielding to frost
and to rain; here an extensive tract of country is elevated, there
depressed. We fail to find any thing that is not undergoing change.
Then forms are in their nature transitory, law is everlasting. If from
visible forms we turn to directing law how vast is the difference. We
pass from the finite, the momentary, the incidental, the conditioned--to
the illimitable, the eternal, the necessary, the unshackled.
[Sidenote: The object of this book is to assert the control of law in
human affairs.]
It is of law that I am to speak in this book. In a world composed of
vanishing forms I am to vindicate the imperishability, the majesty of
law, and to show how man proceeds, in his social march, in obedience to
it. I am to lead my reader, perhaps in a reluctant path, from the
outward phantasmagorial illusions which surround us, and so
ostentatiously obtrude themselves on our attention, to something that
lies in silence and strength behind. I am to draw his thoughts from the
tangible to the invisible, from the limited to the universal, from the
changeable to the invariable, from the transitory to the eternal; from
the expedients and volitions so largely amusing the life of man, to the
predestined and resistless issuing from the fiat of God.
Chapter II.
OF EUROPE: ITS TOPOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY.
ITS PRIMITIVE MODES OF THOUGHT, AND THEIR PROGRESSIVE VARIATIONS,
MANIFESTED IN THE GREEK AGE OF CREDULITY.
_Description of Europe: its Topography, Meteorology, and
secular Geological Movements.--Their Effect on its
Inhabitants._
_Its Ethnology determined through its Vocabularies._
_Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the
Anthropocentric Stage.--Becomes connected with false Geography
and Astronomy.--Heaven, the Earth, the Under World.--Origin,
continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology.--It
introduces Ionic Philosophy._
_Decline of Greek Theology, occasioned by the Advance of
Geography and Philosophical Criticism.--Secession of Poets,
Philosophers, Historians.--Abortive public Attempts to sustain
it.--Duration of its Decline.--Its Fall._
Europe is geographically a peninsula, and historically a dependency of
Asia.
[Sidenote: Description of Europe.]
[Sidenote: The great path-zone.]
It is constructed on the western third of a vast mountain axis, which
reaches in a broken and irregular course from the Sea of Japan to the
Bay of Biscay. On the flanks of this range, peninsular slopes are
directed toward the south, and extensive plateaus to the north. The
culminating point in Europe is Mont Blanc, 16,000 feet above the level
of the sea. The axis of elevation is not the axis of figure; the incline
to the south is much shorter and steeper than that to the north. The
boundless plains of Asia are prolonged through Germany and Holland. An
army may pass from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of more
than six thousand miles, without encountering any elevation of more than
a few hundred feet. The descent from Asia into Europe is indicated in a
general manner by the mean elevation of the two continents above the
level of the sea; that for Asia being 1132 feet, that for Europe 671.
Through the avenue thus open to them, the Oriental hordes have again and
again precipitated themselves on the West. With an abundance of springs
and head-waters, but without any stream capable of offering a serious
obstacle, this tract has a temperature well suited to military
movements. It coincides generally with the annual isothermal line of
50°, skirting the northern boundary beyond which the vine ceases to
grow, and the limiting region beyond which the wild boar does not pass.
[Sidenote: Exterior and interior accessibility.]
Constructed thus, Europe is not only easily accessible from Asia, a fact
of no little moment in its ancient history, but it is also singularly
accessible interiorly, or from one of its parts to another. Still more,
its sea-line is so broken, it has so many intrusive gulfs and bays,
that, its surface considered, its maritime coast is greater than that of
any other continent. In this respect it contrasts strikingly with
Africa. Europe has one mile of coast-line for every 156 square miles of
surface, Africa has only one for every 623. This extensive maritime
contact adds, of course, greatly to its interior as well as exterior
accessibility.
[Sidenote: Distribution of heat in Europe.]
The mean annual temperature of the European countries on the southern
slope of the mountain axis is from 60° to 70° F., but of those to the
north the heat gradually declines, until, at the extreme limit on the
shores of Zembla, the ground is perpetually frozen. As on other parts of
the globe, the climate does not correspond to the latitude, but is
disturbed by several causes, among which may be distinguished the great
Atlantic current--the Gulf Stream coming from America--and the Sahara
Desert. The latter gives to the south of Europe an unduly high heat, and
the former to Ireland, England, and the entire west a genial
temperature. Together they press into higher latitudes the annual
isothermal lines. If in Europe there are no deserts, there are none of
those impenetrable forests seen in tropical countries. From the westerly
shores of Portugal, France, and Ireland, the humidity diminishes as we
pass to the east, and, indeed, if we advance into Asia, it disappears in
the desert of Gobi. There are no vast homogeneous areas as in Asia, and
therefore there is no widespread uniformity in the races of men.
[Sidenote: And the quantity of rain.]
But not only is the temperature of the European continent elevated by
the Gulf Stream and the south-west wind, its luxuriance of vegetation
depends on them; for luxuriance of vegetation is determined, among other
things, by the supply of rain. A profusion of water gives to South
America its amazing forests; a want inflicts on Australia its shadeless
trees, with their shrunken and pointed leaves. With the diminished
moisture the green gardens of France are replaced in Gobi by ligneous
plants covered with a gray down. Physical circumstances control the
vegetable as well as the animal world.
The westerly regions of Europe, through the influence of the south-west
wind, the Gulf Stream, and their mountain ranges, are supplied with
abundant rains, and have a favourable mean annual temperature; but as we
pass to the eastern confines the number of rainy days diminishes, the
absolute annual quantity of rain and snow is less, and the mean annual
temperature is lower. On the Atlantic face of the mountains of Norway it
is perpetually raining: the annual depth of water is there 82 inches;
but on the opposite side of those mountains is only 21 inches. For
similar reasons, Ireland is moist and green, and in Cornwall the laurel
and camellia will bear a winter exposure.
There are six maximum points of rain--Norway, Scotland, South-western
Ireland and England, Portugal, North-eastern Spain, Lombardy. They
respectively correspond to mountains. In general, the amount of rain
diminishes from the equator toward the poles; but it is greatly
controlled by the disturbing influence of elevated ridges, which in many
instances far more than compensate for the effects of latitude. The Alps
exercise an influence over the meteorology of all Europe.
[Sidenote: The number of rainy days;]
Not only do mountains thus determine the absolute quantity of rain, they
also affect the number of rainy days in a year. The occurrence of a
rainy season depends on the amount of moisture existing in the air; and
hence its frequency is greater at the Atlantic sea-board than in the
interior, where the wind arrives in a drier state, much of its moisture
having been precipitated by the mountains forcing it to a great
elevation. Thus, on the eastern coast of Ireland it rains 208 days in a
year; in England, about 150; at Kazan, 90; and in Siberia only 60 days.
[Sidenote: and of snowy days.]
When the atmospheric temperature is sufficiently low, the condensed
water descends under the form of snow. In general, the annual depth of
snow and the number of snowy days increase toward the north. In Rome the
snowy days are 1-1/2; in Venice, 5-1/2; in Paris, 12; in St.
Petersburgh, 171. Whatever causes interfere with the distribution of
heat must influence the precipitation of snow; among such are the Gulf
Stream and local altitude. Hence, on the coast of Portugal, snow is of
infrequent occurrence; in Lisbon it never snowed from 1806 to 1811.
Such facts teach us how many meteorological contrasts Europe presents,
how many climates it contains. Necessarily it is full of modified men.
[Sidenote: Vibrations of the isothermal lines.]
If we examine the maps of monthly isothermals, we observe how strikingly
those lines change, becoming convex to the north as summer approaches,
and concave as winter. They by no means observe a parallelism to the
mean, but change their flexures, assuming new sinuosities. In their
absolute transfer they move with a variable velocity, and through spaces
far from insignificant. The line of 50° F., which in January passes
through Lisbon and the south of the Morea, in July has travelled to the
north shore of Lapland, and incloses the White Sea. As in some grand
musical instrument, the strings of which vibrate, the isothermal lines
of Europe and Asia beat to and fro, but it takes a year for them to
accomplish one pulsation.
[Sidenote: Europe is full of meteorological contrasts, and therefore of
modified men.]
All over the world physical circumstances control the human race. They
make the Australian a savage; incapacitate the negro, who can never
invent an alphabet or an arithmetic, and whose theology never passes
beyond the stage of sorcery. They cause the Tartars to delight in a
diet of milk, and the American Indian to abominate it. They make the
dwarfish races of Europe instinctive miners and metallurgists. An
artificial control over temperature by dwellings, warm for the winter
and cool for the summer; variations of clothing to suit the season of
the year, and especially the management of fire, have enabled man to
maintain himself in all climates. The invention of artificial light has
extended the available term of his life; by giving the night to his use,
it has, by the social intercourse it encourages, polished his manners
and refined his tastes, perhaps as much as any thing else has aided in
his intellectual progress. Indeed, these are among the primary
conditions that have occasioned his civilization. Variety of natural
conditions gives rise to different national types, artificial inventions
occasion renewed modifications. Where there are many climates there will
be many forms of men. Herein, as we shall in due season discover, lies
the explanation of the energy of European life, and the development of
its civilization.
Would any one deny the influence of rainy days on our industrial habits
and on our mental condition even in a civilized state? With how much
more force, then, must such meteorological incidents have acted on the
ill-protected, ill-clad, and ill-housed barbarian! Would any one deny
the increasing difficulty with which life is maintained as we pass from
the southern peninsulas to the more rigorous climates of the north?
There is a relationship between the mean annual heat of a locality and
the instincts of its inhabitants for food. The Sicilian is satisfied
with a light farinaceous repast and a few fruits; the Norwegian requires
a strong diet of flesh; to the Laplander it is none the less acceptable
if grease of the bear, or train oil, or the blubber of whales be added.
Meteorology to no little extent influences the morals; the instinctive
propensity to drunkenness is a function of the latitude. Food, houses,
clothing, bear a certain relation to the isothermal lines.
[Sidenote: But, through artificial inventions, it tends to
homogeneousness in modern times.]
For similar reasons, the inhabitants of Europe each year tend to more
complete homogeneity. Climate and meteorological differences are more
and more perfectly equalized by artificial inventions; nor is it alone
a similarity of habits, a similarity of physiological constitution also
ensues. The effect of such inventions is to equalize the influences to
which men are exposed; they are brought more closely to the mean typical
standard, and--especially is it to be remembered--with this closer
approach to each other in conformation, comes a closer approach in
feelings and habits, and even in the manner of thinking.
[Sidenote: The Mediterranean peninsulas.]
On the southern slope of the mountain axis project the historic
peninsulas, Greece, Italy, Spain. To the former we trace unmistakably
the commencement of European civilization. The first Greeks
patriotically affirmed that their own climate was the best suited for
man; beyond the mountains to the north there reigned a Cimmerian
darkness, an everlasting winter. It was the realm of Boreas, the
shivering tyrant. In the early ages man recognized cold as his mortal
enemy. Physical inventions have enabled him to overcome it, and now he
maintains a more difficult and doubtful struggle with heat.
[Sidenote: The Mediterranean Sea.]
Beyond these peninsulas, and bounding the continent on the south, is the
Mediterranean, nearly two thousand miles in length, isolating Europe
from Africa socially, but uniting them commercially. The Black Sea and
that of Azof are dependencies of it. It has, conjointly with them, a
shore-line of 13,000 miles, and exposes a surface of nearly a million
and a quarter of square miles. It is subdivided into two basins, the
eastern and western, the former being of high interest historically,
since it is the scene of the dawn of European intelligence; the western
is bounded by the Italian peninsula, Sicily, and the African promontory
of Cape Bon on one side, and at the other has as its portal the Straits
of Gibraltar. The temperature is ten or twelve degrees higher than the
Atlantic, and, since much of the water is removed by evaporation, it is
necessarily more saline than that ocean. Its colour is green where
shallow, blue where deep.
[Sidenote: Secular geological movement of Europe and Asia, and its
social consequences.]
For countless centuries Asia has experienced a slow upward movement, not
only affecting her own topography, but likewise that of her European
dependency. There was a time when the great sandy desert of Gobi was
the bed of a sea which communicated through the Caspian with the Baltic,
as may be proved not only by existing geographical facts, but also from
geological considerations. It is only necessary, for this purpose, to
inspect the imperfect maps that have been published of the Silurian and
even tertiary periods. The vertical displacement of Europe, during and
since the latter period, has indisputably been more than 2000 feet in
many places. The effects of such movements on the flora and fauna of a
region must, in the course of time, be very important, for an elevation
of 350 feet is equal to one degree of cold in the mean annual
temperature, or to sixty miles on the surface northward. Nor has this
slow disturbance ended. Again and again, in historic times, have its
results operated fearfully on Europe, by forcibly precipitating the
Asiatic nomades along the great path-zone; again and again, through such
changes of level, have they been rendered waterless, and thus driven
into a forced emigration. Some of their rivers, as the Oxus and
Jaxartes, have, within the records of history, been dry for several
years. To these topographical changes, rather than to political
influences, we must impute many of the most celebrated tribal invasions.
It has been the custom to refer these events to an excessive
overpopulation periodically occurring in Central Asia, or to the
ambition of warlike chieftains. Doubtless those regions are well adapted
to human life, and hence liable to overpopulation, considering the
pursuits man there follows, and doubtless there have been occasions on
which those nations have been put in motion by their princes; but the
modern historian cannot too carefully bear in mind the laws which
regulate the production of men, and also the body of evidence which
proves that the crust of the earth is not motionless, but rising in one
place and sinking in another. The grand invasions of Europe by Asiatic
hordes have been much more violent and abrupt than would answer to a
steady pressure resulting from overpopulation, and too extensive for
mere warlike incitement; they answer more completely to the experience
of some irresistible necessity arising from an insuperable physical
cause, which could drive in hopeless despair from their homes the young
and the old, the vigorous and feeble, with their cattle, and waggons,
and flocks. Such a cause is the shifting of the soil and disturbance of
the courses of water. The tribes compelled to migrate were forced along
the path-zone, their track being, therefore, on a parallel of latitude,
and not on a meridian; and hence, for the reasons set forth in the
preceding chapter, their movements and journey of easier accomplishment.
[Sidenote: Rate and extent of these movements.]
These geological changes then enter as an element in human history, not
only for Asia, of which the great inland sea has dwindled away to the
Caspian, and lost its connection with the Baltic, but for Europe also.
The traditions of ancient deluges, which are the primitive facts of
Greek history, refer to such movements, perhaps the opening of the
Thracian Bosphorus was one of them. In much later times we are
perpetually meeting with incidents depending on geological disturbances;
the caravan trade of Asia Minor was destroyed by changes of level and
the accumulation of sands blown from the encroaching deserts; the Cimbri
were impelled into Italy by the invasion of the sea on their
possessions. There is not a shore in Europe which does not give similar
evidence; the mouths of the Rhine, as they were in the Roman times, are
obliterated; the eastern coast of England has been cut away for miles.
In the Mediterranean the shore-line is altogether changed; towns, once
on the coast, are far away inland; others have sunk beneath the sea.
Islands, like Rhodes, have risen from the bottom. The North Adriatic,
once a deep gulf, has now become shallow; there are leaning towers and
inclining temples that have sunk with the settling of the earth. On the
opposite extremity of Europe, the Scandinavian peninsula furnishes an
instance of slow secular motion, the northern part rising gradually
above the sea at the rate of about four feet in a century. This
elevation is observed through a space of many hundred miles, increasing
toward the north. The southern extremity, on the contrary, experiences a
slow depression.
These slow movements are nothing more than a continuation of what has
been going on for numberless ages. Since the tertiary period two-thirds
of Europe have been lifted above the sea. The Norway coast has been
elevated 600 feet, the Alps have been upheaved 2000 or 3000, the
Apennines 1000 to 2000 feet. The country between Mont Blanc and Vienna
has been thus elevated since the adjacent seas were peopled with
existing animals. Since the Neolithic age, the British Islands have
undergone a great change of level, and, indeed, have been separated from
the continent through the sinking of England and the rising of Scotland.
[Sidenote: Early inhabitants of Europe.]
At the earliest period Europe presents us with a double population. An
Indo-Germanic column had entered it from the east, and had separated
into two portions the occupants it had encountered, driving one to the
north, the other to the south-west. These primitive tribes betray,
physiologically, a Mongolian origin; and there are indications of
considerable weight that they themselves had been, in ancient times,
intruders, who, issuing from their seats in Asia, had invaded and
dislocated the proper autochthons of Europe. In the Pleistocene age
there existed in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and fishers,
closely allied to the Esquimaux. Man was contemporary with the cave
bear, the cave lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the mammoth. Caves
that have been examined in France or elsewhere have furnished for the
stone age, axes, knives, lance and arrow points, scrapers, hammers. The
change from what has been termed the chipped, to the polished stone
period, was very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the
dog, an epoch in hunting life. The appearance of arrow heads indicates
the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an
offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how
inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the
huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase;
bone whistles, his companionship with other huntsmen, or with his dog.
The scraping knives of flint, indicate the use of skin for clothing, and
rude bodkins and needles, its manufacture. Shells perforated for
bracelets and necklaces, prove how soon a taste for personal adornment
was acquired, the implements necessary for the preparation of pigments
suggest the painting of the body, and perhaps, tattooing; and batons of
rank bear witness to the beginning of a social organization.
We have thus as our starting-point a barbarian population, believers in
sorcery, and, in some places, undoubtedly cannibals, maintaining, in the
central and northern parts of Europe, their existence with difficulty by
reason of the severity of the climate. In the southern, more congenial
conditions permitted a form of civilization to commence, of which the
rude Cyclopean structures here and there met with, such as the ruins of
Orchomenos, the lion gate of Mycenæ, the tunnel of Lake Copais, are
perhaps the vestiges.
[Sidenote: Their social condition.]
At what period this intrusive Indo-Germanic column made its attack
cannot be ascertained. The national vocabularies of Europe, to which we
must resort for evidence, might lead us to infer that the condition of
civilization of the conquering people was not very advanced. They were
acquainted with the use of domestic animals, farming implements, carts,
and yokes; they were also possessed of boats, the rudder, oars, but were
unacquainted with the movement of vessels by sails. These conclusions
seem to be established by the facts that words equivalent to boat,
rudder, oar, are common to the languages of the offshoots of the stock,
though located very widely asunder; but those for mast and sails are of
special invention, and differ in adjacent nations.
[Sidenote: Their civil state deduced from their vocabularies.]
In nearly all the Indo-Germanic tongues, the family names, father,
mother, brother, sister, daughter, are the same respectively. A similar
equivalence may be observed in a great many familiar objects, house,
door, town, path. It has been remarked, that while this holds good for
terms of a peaceful nature, many of those connected with warfare and the
chase are different in different languages. Such facts appear to prove
that the Asiatic invaders followed a nomadic and pastoral life. Many of
the terms connected with such an avocation are widely diffused. This is
the case with ploughing, grinding, weaving, cooking, baking, sewing,
spinning; with such objects as corn, flesh, meat, vestment; with wild
animals common to Europe and Asia, as the bear and the wolf. So, too, of
words connected with social organization, despot, rex, queen. The
numerals from 1 to 100 coincide in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian,
Gothic; but this is not the case with 1000, a fact which has led
comparative philologists to the conclusion that, though at the time of
the emigration a sufficient intellectual advance had been made to invent
the decimal system, perhaps from counting upon the fingers, yet that it
was very far from perfection. To the inhabitants of Central Asia the sea
was altogether unknown; hence the branches of the emigrating column, as
they diverged north and south, gave it different names. But, though
unacquainted with the sea, they were familiar with salt, as is proved by
the recurrence of its name. Nor is it in the vocabularies alone that
these resemblances are remarked; the same is to be said of the grammar.
M. Max Müller shows that in Sanscrit, Zend, Lithuanian, Doric, Slavonic,
Latin, Gothic, the forms of the auxiliary verb _to be_ are all varieties
of one common type, and that "the coincidences between the language of
the Veda and the dialect spoken at the present day by the Lithuanian
recruits at Berlin are greater by far than between French and Italian,
and that the essential forms of grammar had been fully framed and
established before the first separation of the Aryan family took place."
But it should not be overlooked that such interesting deductions founded
on language, its vocabularies and grammar, must not be pressed too
closely. The state of civilization of the Indo-Germanic column, as thus
ascertained, must needs have been inferior to that of the centre from
which it issued forth. Such we observe to be the case in all migratory
movements. It is not the more intellectual or civilized portions of a
community which voluntarily participate therein, but those in whom the
physical and animal character predominates. There may be a very rough
offshoot from a very polished stock. Of course, the movement we are here
considering must have taken place at a period chronologically remote,
yet not so remote as might seem to be indicated by the state of
civilization of the invaders, used as an indication of the state of
civilization of the country from which they had come. In Asia, social
advancement, as far back as we can discover, has ever been very slow;
but, at the first moment that we encounter the Hindu race historically
or philologically, it is dealing with philosophical and theological
questions of the highest order, and settling, to its own satisfaction,
problems requiring a cultivated intellect even so much as to propose.
All this implies that in its social advancement there must have already
been consumed a very long period of time.
[Sidenote: Commingling of blood and of ideas.]
But what chiefly interests us is the relation which must have been
necessarily maintained between the intrusive people and those whom they
thus displaced, the commingling of the ideas of the one with those of
the other, arising from their commingling of blood. It is because of
this that we find coexisting in the pre-Hellenic times the sorcery of
the Celt and the polytheism of the Hindu. There can be no doubt that
many of the philosophical lineaments displayed by the early European
mythology are not due to indigenous thought, but were derived from an
Asiatic source.
[Sidenote: Climate-modification of Asiatic intruders.]
Moreover, at the earliest historic times, notwithstanding the
disturbance which must have lasted long after the successful and perhaps
slow advance of the Asiatic column, things had come to a state of
equilibrium or repose, not alone socially, but also physiologically. It
takes a long time for the conqueror and conquered to settle together,
without farther disturbance or question, into their relative positions;
it takes a long time for the recollection of conflicts to die away. But
far longer does it take for a race of invaders to come into unison with
the climate of the countries they have seized, the system of man
accommodating itself only through successive generations, and therefore
very slowly, to new physical conditions. It takes long before the skin
assumes its determinate hue, and the skull its destined form. A period
amply sufficient for all such changes to be accomplished in Europe had
transpired at the very dawn of history, and strands of population in
conformity with meteorological and geographical influences, though of
such origin as has been described, were already distributed upon it. A
condition of ethnical equilibrium had been reached. Along each
isothermal or climatic band were its correspondingly modified men,
spending their lives in avocations dictated by their environment. These
strands of population were destined to be dislocated, and some of them
to become extinct, by inventing or originating among themselves new and
unsuitable artificial physical conditions.
[Sidenote: First gleams of civilization]
Already Europe was preparing a repetition of those events of which Asia
from time immemorial has been the scene. Already among the nations
bordering on the Mediterranean, inhabitants of a pleasant climate, in
which life could be easily maintained--where the isothermal of January
is 41° F., and of July 73-1/2° F.--civilization was commencing. There
was an improving agriculture, an increasing commerce, and, the necessary
consequence thereof, germs of art, the accumulation of wealth. The
southern peninsulas were offering to the warlike chieftains of middle
Europe a tempting prize.
[Sidenote: and first religious opinions.]
Under such influences Europe may be considered as emerging from the
barbarian state. It had lost all recollection of its ancient relations
with India, which have only been disclosed to us by a study of the
vocabularies and grammar of its diverse tongues. Upon its indigenous
sorcery an Oriental star-worship had been ingrafted, the legends of
which had lost their significance. What had at first been feigned of the
heavenly bodies had now assumed an air of personality, and had become
attributed to heroes and gods.
The negro under the equinoctial line, the dwarfish Laplander beyond the
Arctic Circle--man everywhere, in his barbarous state, is a believer in
sorcery, witchcraft, enchantments; he is fascinated by the
incomprehensible. Any unexpected sound or sudden motion he refers to
invisible beings. Sleep and dreams, in which one-third of his life is
spent, assure him that there is a spiritual world. He multiplies these
unrealities; he gives to every grotto a genius; to every tree, spring,
river, mountain, a divinity.
[Sidenote: Localization of the invisible.]
Comparative theology, which depends on the law of continuous variation
of human thought, and is indeed one of its expressions, universally
proves that the moment man adopts the idea of an existence of invisible
beings, he recognizes the necessity of places for their residence, all
nations assigning them habitations beyond the boundaries of the earth. A
local heaven and a local hell are found in every mythology. In Greece,
as to heaven, there was a universal agreement that it was situated above
the blue sky; but as to hell, much difference of opinion prevailed.
There were many who thought that it was a deep abyss in the interior of
the earth, to which certain passages, such as the Acherusian cave in
Bithynia, led. But those who with Anaximenes considered the earth to be
like a broad leaf floating in the air, and who accepted the doctrine
that hell was divided into a Tartarus, or region of night on the left,
and an Elysium, or region of dawn on the right, and that it was equally
distant from all parts of the upper surface, were nearer to the original
conception, which doubtless placed it on the under or shadowy side of
the earth. The portals of descent were thus in the west, where the sun
and stars set, though here and there were passages leading through the
ground to the other side, such as those by which Hercules and Ulysses
had gone. The place of ascent was in the east, and the morning twilight
a reflection from the Elysian Fields.
[Sidenote: The anthropocentric stage of thought.]
The picture of Nature thus interpreted has for its centre the earth; for
its most prominent object, man. Whatever there is has been made for his
pleasure, or to minister to his use. To this belief that every thing is
of a subordinate value compared with himself, he clings with tenacity
even in his most advanced mental state.
Not without surprise do we trace the progress of the human mind. The
barbarian, as a believer in sorcery, lives in incessant dread. All
Nature seems to be at enmity with him and conspiring for his hurt. Out
of the darkness he cannot tell what alarming spectre may emerge; he may,
with reason, fear that injury is concealed in every stone, and hidden
behind every leaf. How wide is the interval from this terror-stricken
condition to that state in which man persuades himself of the human
destiny of the universe! Yet, wonderful to be said, he passes that
interval at a single step.
In the infancy of the human race, geographical and astronomical ideas
are the same all over the world, for they are the interpretation of
things according to outward appearances, the accepting of phenomena as
they are presented, without any of the corrections that reason may
offer. This universality and homogeneity is nothing more than a
manifestation of the uniform mode of action of human organization.
[Sidenote: From homogeneous ideas the comparative sciences emerge.]
But such homogeneous conclusions, such similar pictures, are strictly
peculiar to the infancy of humanity. The reasoning faculty at length
inevitably makes itself felt, and diversities of interpretation ensue.
Comparative geography, comparative astronomy, comparative theology thus
arise, homogeneous at first, but soon exhibiting variations.
[Sidenote: Introduction of personified forms.]
To that tendency for personification which marks the early life of man
are due many of the mythologic conceptions. It was thus that the Hours,
the Dawn, and Night with her black mantle bespangled with stars,
received their forms. Many of the most beautiful legends were thus of a
personified astronomical origin; many were derived from terrestrial or
familiar phenomena. The clouds were thus made to be animated things; a
moving spirit was given to the storm, the dew, the wind. The sun setting
in the glowing clouds of the west became Hercules in the fiery pile; the
morning dawn extinguished by the rising sun was embodied in the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice. These legends still survive in India.
[Sidenote: The gradual and affiliated advance of Greek theological
ideas.]
[Sidenote: The composite nature of the resulting mythology.]
But it must not be supposed that all Greek mythology can be thus
explained. It is enough for us to examine the circumstances under which,
for many ages, the European communities had been placed, to understand
that they had forgotten much that their ancestors had brought from Asia.
Much that was new had also spontaneously arisen. The well-known
variations of their theogony are not merely similar legends of different
localities, they are more frequently the successive improvements of one
place. The general theme upon which they are based requires the
admission of a primitive chaotic disturbance of incomprehensible
gigantic powers, brought into subjection by Divine agency, that agency
dividing and regulating the empire it had thus acquired in a harmonious
way. To this general conception was added a multitude of adventitious
ornaments, some of which were of a rude astronomical, some of a moral,
some, doubtless, of a historical kind. The primitive chaotic conflicts
appear under the form of the war of the Titans; their end is the
confinement of those giants in Tartarus; whose compulsory subjection is
the commencement of order: thus Atlas, the son of Iapetos, is made to
sustain the vault of heaven in its western verge. The regulation of
empire is shadowed forth in the subdivision of the universe between Zeus
and his brothers, he taking the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the
under world, all having the earth as their common theatre of action. The
moral is prefigured by such myths as those of Prometheus and Epimetheus,
the fore-thinker and the after-thinker; the historical in the deluge of
Deucalion, the sieges of Thebes and of Troy. A harmony with human nature
is established through the birth and marriage of the gods, and likewise
by their sufferings, passions, and labours. The supernatural is
gratified by Centaurs, Gorgons, Harpies, and Cyclops.
It would be in vain to attempt the reduction of such a patchwork system
to any single principle, astronomical or moral, as some have tried to
do--a system originating from no single point as to country or to time.
The gradual growth of many ages, its diversities are due to many local
circumstances. Like the romances of a later period, it will not bear an
application of the ordinary rules of life. It recommended itself to a
people who found pleasure in accepting without any question statements
no matter how marvellous, impostures no matter how preposterous. Gods,
heroes, monsters, and men might figure together without any outrage to
probability when there was no astronomy, no geography, no rule of
evidence, no standard of belief. But the downfall of such a system was
inevitable as soon as men began to deal with facts; as soon as history
commenced to record, and philosophy to discuss. Yet not without
reluctance was the faith of so many centuries given up. The extinction
of a religion is not the abrupt movement of a day, it is a secular
process of many well-marked stages--the rise of doubt among the candid;
the disapprobation of the conservative; the defence of ideas fast
becoming obsolete by the well-meaning, who hope that allegory and new
interpretations may give renewed probability to what is almost
incredible. But dissent ends in denial at last.
[Sidenote: Primitive astronomy and geography.]
[Sidenote: The under world and its spectres.]
Before we enter upon the history of that intellectual movement which
thus occasioned the ruin of the ancient system, we must bring to
ourselves the ideas of the Greek of the eighth century before Christ,
who thought that the blue sky is the floor of heaven, the habitation of
the Olympian gods; that the earth, man's proper abode, is flat and
circularly extended like a plate beneath the starry canopy. On its rim
is the circumfluous ocean, the source of the rivers, which all flow to
the Mediterranean, appropriately in after ages so called, since it is in
the midst, in the centre of the expanse of the land. "The sea-girt disk
of the earth supports the vault of heaven." Impelled by a celestial
energy, the sun and stars, issuing forth from the east, ascend with
difficulty the crystalline dome, but down its descent they more readily
hasten to their setting. No one can tell what they encounter in the land
of shadows beneath, nor what are the dangers of the way. In the morning
the dawn mysteriously appears in the east, and swiftly spreads over the
confines of the horizon; in the evening the twilight fades gradually
away. Besides the celestial bodies, the clouds are continually moving
over the sky, for ever changing their colours and their shape. No one
can tell whence the wind comes or whither it goes; perhaps it is the
breath of that invisible divinity who launches the lightning, or of him
who rests his bow against the cloud. Not without delight men
contemplated the emerald plane, the sapphire dome, the border of silvery
water, ever tranquil and ever flowing. Then, in the interior of the
solid earth, or perhaps on the other side of its plane--under world, as
it was well termed--is the realm of Hades or Pluto, the region of
Night. From the midst of his dominion, that divinity, crowned with a
diadem of ebony, and seated on a throne framed out of massive darkness,
looks into the infinite abyss beyond, invisible himself to mortal eyes,
but made known by the nocturnal thunder which is his weapon. The under
world is also the realm to which spirits retire after death. At its
portals, beneath the setting sun, is stationed a numerous tribe of
spectres--Care, Sorrow, Disease, Age, Want, Fear, Famine, War, Toil,
Death and her half-brother Sleep--Death, to whom it is useless for man
to offer either prayers or sacrifice. In that land of forgetfulness and
shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, Styx, the
groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. There are all
kinds of monsters and forms of fearful import: Cerberus, with his triple
head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades of the dead; the
Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple; the avenging
Erinnys; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must render his
account; Æacus, before whom every European; and Minos, the dread arbiter
of the judgment-seat. There, too, are to be seen those great criminals
whose history is a warning to us: the giants, with dragons' feet
extended in the burning gulf for many a mile; Phlegyas, in perpetual
terror of the stone suspended over him, which never falls; Ixion chained
to his wheel; the daughters of Danaus still vainly trying to fill their
sieve; Tantalus, immersed in water to his chin, yet tormented with
unquenchable thirst; Sisyphus despairingly labouring at his
ever-descending stone. Warned by such examples, we may learn not to
contemn the gods. Beyond these sad scenes, extending far to the right,
are the plains of pleasure, the Elysian Fields; and Lethe, the river of
oblivion, of which whoever tastes, though he should ascend to the
eastern boundary of the earth, and return again to life and day, forgets
whatever he has seen.
[Sidenote: The Argonautic voyage.]
If the interior or the under side of the earth is thus occupied by
phantoms and half-animated shades of the dead, its upper surface,
inhabited by man, has also its wonders. In its centre is the
Mediterranean Sea, as we have said, round which are placed all the known
countries, each full of its own mysteries and marvels. Of these how
many we might recount if we followed the wanderings of Odysseus, or the
voyage of Jason and his heroic comrades in the ship _Argo_, when they
went to seize the golden fleece of the speaking ram. We might tell of
the Harpies, flying women-birds of obscene form; of the blind prophet;
of the Symplegades, self-shutting rocks, between which, as if by
miracle, the Argonauts passed, the cliffs almost entrapping the stern of
their vessel, but destined by fate from that portentous moment never to
close again; of the country of the Amazons, and of Prometheus groaning
on the rock to which he was nailed, of the avenging eagle for ever
hovering and for ever devouring; of the land of Æêtes, and of the bulls
with brazen feet and flaming breath, and how Jason yoked and made them
plough, of the enchantress Medea, and the unguent she concocted from
herbs that grew where the blood of Prometheus had dripped; of the field
sown with dragons' teeth, and the mail-clad men that leaped out of the
furrows; of the magical stone that divided them into two parties, and
impelled them to fight each other; of the scaly dragon that guarded the
golden fleece, and how he was lulled with a charmed potion, and the
treasure carried away; of the River Phasis, through whose windings the
_Argo_ sailed into the circumfluous sea, of the circumnavigation round
that tranquil stream to the sources of the Nile; of the Argonauts
carrying their sentient, self-speaking ship on their shoulders through
the sweltering Libyan deserts, of the island of Circe, the enchantress;
of the rock, with its grateful haven, which in the height of a tempest
rose out of the sea to receive them; of the arrow shot by Apollo from
his golden bow; of the brazen man, the work of Hephæstos, who stood on
the shore of Crete, and hurled at them as they passed vast fragments of
stone; of their combat with him and their safe return to Iolcos; and of
the translation of the ship _Argo_ by the goddess Athene to heaven.
[Sidenote: Union of the geographical and the marvellous.]
Such were some of the incidents of that celebrated voyage, the story of
which enchanted all Greece before the Odyssey was written. I have not
space to tell of the wonders that served to decorate the geography of
those times. On the north there was the delicious country of the
Hyperboreans, beyond the reach of winter; in the west the garden of the
Hesperides, in which grew apples of gold; in the east the groves and
dancing-ground of the sun; in the south the country of the blameless
Ethiopians, whither the gods were wont to resort. In the Mediterranean
itself the Sirens beguiled the passers-by with their songs near where
Naples now stands; adjoining were Scylla and Charybdis; in Sicily were
the one-eyed Cyclops and cannibal Læstrygons. In the island of Erytheia
the three-headed giant Geryon tended his oxen with a double-headed dog.
I need not speak of the lotus-eaters, whose food made one forget his
native country; of the floating island of Æolus; of the happy fields in
which the horses of the sun were grazing; of bulls and dogs of immortal
breed; of hydras, gorgons, and chimeras; of the flying man Dædalus, and
the brazen chamber in which Danae was kept. There was no river, no
grotto that had not its genius; no island, no promontory without its
legend.
[Sidenote: Earliest Greek theological ideas indicate a savage state.]
It is impossible to recall these antique myths without being satisfied
that they are, for the most part, truly indigenous, truly of European
growth. The seed may have been brought, as comparative philologists
assert, from Asia, but it had luxuriantly germinated and developed under
the sky of Europe. Of the legends, many are far from answering to their
reputed Oriental source; their barbarism and indelicacy represent the
state of Europe. The outrage of Kronos on his father Uranos speaks of
the savagism of the times; the story of Dionysos tells of man-stealing
and piracy; the rapes of Europa and Helen, of the abduction of women.
The dinner at which Itys was served up assures us that cannibalism was
practised; the threat of Laomedon that he would sell Poseidon and Apollo
for slaves shows how compulsory labour might be obtained. The polygamy
of many heroes often appears in its worst form under the practice of
sister-marriage, a crime indulged in from the King of Olympus downward.
Upon the whole, then, we must admit that Greek mythology indicates a
barbarian social state, man-stealing, piracy, human sacrifice,
polygamy, cannibalism, and crimes of revenge that are unmentionable. A
personal interpretation, such as man in his infancy resorts to, is
embodied in circumstances suitable to a savage time. It was not until a
later period that allegorical phantasms, such as Death, and Sleep, and
Dreams were introduced, and still later when the whole system was
affected by Lydian, Phrygian, Assyrian, and Egyptian ideas.
[Sidenote: Their gradual improvement in the historic times.]
[Sidenote: The inevitable tendency is to the Ionic philosophy.]
Not only thus from their intrinsic nature, but also from their recorded
gradual development, are we warranted in imputing to the greater part of
the myths an indigenous origin. The theogony of Homer is extended by
Hesiod in many essential points. He prefixes the dynasty of Uranos, and
differs in minor conceptions, as in the character of the Cyclops. The
Orphic theogony is again another advance, having new fictions and new
personages, as in the case of Zagreus, the horned child of Jupiter by
his own daughter Persephone. Indeed, there is hardly one of the great
and venerable gods of Olympus whose character does not change with his
age, and, seen from this point of view, the origin of the Ionic
philosophy becomes a necessary step in the advance. That philosophy, as
we shall soon find, was due not only to the expansion of the Greek
intellect and the necessary improvement of Greek morals; an extraneous
cause, the sudden opening of the Egyptian ports, 670 B.C., accelerated
it. European religion became more mysterious and more solemn. European
philosophy learned the error of its chronology, and the necessity of
applying a more strict and correct standard of evidence for ancient
events.
It was an ominous circumstance that the Ionian Greeks, who first began
to philosophize, commenced their labours by depersonifying the elements,
and treating not of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, but of Air, Water, Fire.
The destruction of theological conceptions led irresistibly to the
destruction of religious practices. To divinities whose existence he
denied, the philosopher ceased to pray. Of what use were sacrificial
offerings and entreaties directed to phantasms of the imagination? but
advantages might accrue from the physical study of the impersonal
elements.
[Sidenote: Inevitable destruction of Greek religious ideas]
Greek religion contained within itself the principles of its own
destruction. It is for the sake of thoroughly appreciating this that I
have been led into a detail of what some of my readers may be disposed
to regard as idle and useless myths. Two circumstances of inevitable
occurrence insured the eventual overthrow of the whole system; they were
geographical discovery and the rise of philosophical criticism. Our
attention is riveted by the fact that, two thousand years later, the
same thing again occurred on a greater scale.
[Sidenote: by geographical discovery.]
As to the geographical discovery, how was it possible that all the
marvels of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the sorcerers, enchanters,
giants, and monsters of the deep, should survive when those seas were
daily crossed in all directions? How was it possible that the notion of
a flat earth, bounded by the horizon and bordered by the circumfluous
ocean, could maintain itself when colonies were being founded in Gaul,
and the Phoenicians were bringing tin from beyond the Pillars of
Hercules? Moreover, it so happened that many of the most astounding
prodigies were affirmed to be in the track which circumstances had now
made the chief pathway of commerce. Not only was there a certainty of
the destruction of mythical geography as thus presented on the plane of
the earth looking upward to day; there was also an imminent risk, as
many pious persons foresaw and dreaded, that what had been asserted as
respects the interior, or the other face looking downward into night,
would be involved in the ruin too. Well, therefore, might they make the
struggle they did for the support of the ancient doctrine, taking the
only course possible to them, of converting what had been affirmed to be
actual events into allegories, under which, they said, the wisdom of
ancient times had concealed many sacred and mysterious things. But it is
apparent that a system forced to this necessity is fast hastening to its
end.
[Sidenote: Fictitious marvels replaced by grand actualities.]
Nor was it maritime discovery only that thus removed fabulous prodigies
and gave rise to new ideas. In due course of time the Macedonian
expedition opened a new world to the Greeks and presented them with real
wonders; climates in marvellous diversity, vast deserts, mountains
covered with eternal snow, salt seas far from the ocean, colossal
animals, and men of every shade of colour and every form of religion.
The numerous Greek colonies founded all over Asia gave rise to an
incessant locomotion, and caused these natural objects to make a
profound and permanent impression on the Hellenic mind. If through the
Bactrian empire European ideas were transmitted to the far East, through
that and other similar channels Asiatic ideas found their way to Europe.
[Sidenote: Development of Mediterranean commerce.]
At the dawn of trustworthy history, the Phoenicians were masters of
the Mediterranean Sea. Europe was altogether barbarous. On the very
verge of Asiatic civilization the Thracians scalped their enemies and
tattooed themselves; at the other end of the continent the Britons
daubed their bodies with ochre and woad. Contemporaneous Egyptian
sculptures show the Europeans dressed in skins like savages. It was the
instinct of the Phoenicians everywhere to establish themselves on
islands and coasts, and thus, for a long time, they maintained a
maritime supremacy. By degrees a spirit of adventure was engendered
among the Greeks. In 1250 B.C. they sailed round the Euxine, giving rise
to the myth of the Argonautic voyage, and creating a profitable traffic
in gold, dried fish, and corn. They had also become infamous for their
freebooting practices. From every coast they stole men, women, and
children, thereby maintaining a considerable slave-trade, the relic of
which endures to our time in the traffic for Circassian women. Minos,
King of Crete, tried to suppress these piracies. His attempts to obtain
the dominion of the Mediterranean were imitated in succession by the
Lydians, Thracians, Rhodians, the latter being the inventors of the
first maritime code, subsequently incorporated into Roman law. The
manner in which these and the inhabitants of other towns and islands
supplanted one another shows on what trifling circumstances the dominion
of the eastern basin depended. Meantime Tyrian seamen stealthily sailed
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, visiting the Canaries and Azores, and
bringing tin from the British Islands. They used every precaution to
keep their secret to themselves. The adventurous Greeks followed those
mysterious navigators step by step; but in the time of Homer they were
so restricted to the eastern basin that Italy may be said to have been
to them an unknown land. The Phocæans first explored the western basin;
one of their colonies built Marseilles. At length Coleus of Samos passed
through the frowning gateway of Hercules into the circumfluous sea, the
Atlantic Ocean. No little interest attaches to the first colonial
cities; they dotted the shores from Sinope to Saguntum, and were at once
trading depôts and foci of wealth. In the earliest times the merchant
was his own captain, and sold his commodities by auction at the place to
which he came. The primitive and profitable commerce of the
Mediterranean was peculiar--it was for slaves, mineral products, and
articles of manufacture; for, running coincident with parallels of
latitude, its agricultural products were not very varied, and the wants
of its populations the same. But tin was brought from the Cassiterides,
amber from the Baltic, and dyed goods and worked metals from Syria.
Wherever these trades centred, the germs of taste and intelligence were
developed; thus the Etruscans, in whose hands was the amber trade across
Germany, have left many relics of their love of art. Though a
mysterious, they were hardly a gloomy race, as a great modern author has
supposed, if we may judge from their beautiful remains.
[Sidenote: Effect of philosophical criticism.]
Added to the effect of geographical discovery was the development of
philosophical criticism. It is observed that soon after the first
Olympiad the Greek intellect very rapidly expanded. Whenever man reaches
a certain point in his mental progress, he will not be satisfied with
less than an application of existing rules to ancient events. Experience
has taught him that the course of the world to-day is the same as it was
yesterday; he unhesitatingly believes that this will also hold good for
to-morrow. He will not bear to contemplate any break in the mechanism of
history; he will not be satisfied with a mere uninquiring faith, but
insists upon having the same voucher for an old fact that he requires
for one that is new. Before the face of History Mythology cannot stand.
[Sidenote: Secession of literary men from the public faith.]
The operation of this principle is seen in all directions throughout
Greek literature after the date that has been mentioned, and this the
more strikingly as the time is later. The national intellect became more
and more ashamed of the fables it had believed in its infancy. Of the
legends, some are allegorized, some are modified, some are repudiated.
The great tragedians accept the myths in the aggregate, but decline them
in particulars; some of the poets transform or allegorize them; some use
them ornamentally, as graceful decorations. It is evident that between
the educated and the vulgar classes a divergence is taking place, that
the best men of the times see the necessity of either totally abandoning
these cherished fictions to the lower orders, or of gradually replacing
them with something more suitable. Such a frittering away of sacred
things was, however, very far from meeting with public approbation in
Athens itself, although so many people in that city had reached that
state of mental development in which it was impossible for them to
continue to accept the national faith. They tried to force themselves to
believe that there must be something true in that which had been
believed by so many great and pious men of old, which had approved
itself by lasting so many centuries, and of which it was by the common
people asserted that absolute demonstration could be given. But it was
in vain; intellect had outgrown faith. They had come into that condition
to which all men are liable--aware of the fallacy of their opinions, yet
angry that another should remind them thereof. When the social state no
longer permitted them to take the life of a philosophical offender, they
found means to put upon him such an invisible pressure as to present him
the choice of orthodoxy or beggary. Thus they disapproved of Euripides
permitting his characters to indulge in any sceptical reflections, and
discountenanced the impiety so obvious in the 'Prometheus Bound' of
Æschylus. It was by appealing to this sentiment that Aristophanes added
no little to the excitement against Socrates. They who are doubting
themselves are often loudest in public denunciations of a similar state
in others.
[Sidenote: Secession of the philosophers.]
If thus the poets, submitting to common sense, had so rapidly fallen
away from the national belief, the philosophers pursued the same course.
It soon became the universal impression that there was an intrinsic
opposition between philosophy and religion, and herein public opinion
was not mistaken; the fact that polytheism furnished a religious
explanation for every natural event made it essentially antagonistic to
science. It was the uncontrollable advance of knowledge that overthrew
Greek religion. Socrates himself never hesitated to denounce physics for
that tendency; and the Athenians extended his principles to his own
pursuits, their strong common sense telling them that the philosophical
cultivation of ethics must be equally bad. He was not loyal to science,
but sought to support his own views by exciting a theological odium
against his competitors--a crime that educated men ought never to
forgive. In the tragedy that ensued the Athenians only paid him in his
own coin. The immoralities imputed to the gods were doubtless strongly
calculated to draw the attention of reflecting men, but the essential
nature of the pursuit in which the Ionian and Italian schools were
engaged bore directly on the doctrine of a providential government of
the world. It not only turned into a fiction the time-honoured dogma of
the omnipresence of the Olympian divinities--it even struck at their
very existence, by leaving them nothing to do. For those
personifications it introduced impersonal nature or the elements.
Instead of uniting scientific interpretations to ancient traditions, it
modified and moulded the old traditions to suit the apparent
requirements of science. We shall subsequently see what was the
necessary issue of this--the Divinity became excluded from the world he
had made, the supernatural merged in natural agency; Zeus was superseded
by the air, Poseidon by the water; and while some of the philosophers
received in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates,
or, like Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public
faith, others, like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient
blunder, converted by time into a national imposture.
[Sidenote: Antagonism of science and polytheism.]
As I shall have occasion to speak of Greek philosophy in a detailed
manner, it is unnecessary to enter into other particulars here. For the
present purpose it is enough to understand that it was radically opposed
to the national faith in all countries and at all times, from its origin
with Thales down to the latest critic of the Alexandrian school.
[Sidenote: Secession of historians.]
As it was with philosophers, so it was with historians; the rise of true
history brought the same result as the rise of true philosophy. In this
instance there was added a special circumstance which gave to the
movement no little force. Whatever might be the feigned facts of the
Grecian foretime, they were altogether outdone in antiquity and wonder
by the actual history of Egypt. What was a pious man like Herodotus to
think when he found that, at the very period he had supposed a
superhuman state of things in his native country, the ordinary passage
of affairs was taking place on the banks of the Nile? And so indeed it
had been for untold ages. To every one engaged in recording recent
events, it must have been obvious that a chronology applied where the
actors are superhuman is altogether without basis, and that it is a
delusion to transfer the motives and thoughts of men to those who are
not men. Under such circumstances there is a strong inducement to
decline traditions altogether; for no philosophical mind will ever be
satisfied with different tests for the present and the past, but will
insist that actions and their sequences were the same in the foretime as
now.
[Sidenote: Universal disbelief of the learned.]
Thus for many ages stood affairs. One after another, historians,
philosophers, critics, poets, had given up the national faith, and lived
under a pressure perpetually laid upon them by the public, adopting
generally, as their most convenient course, an outward compliance with
the religious requirements of the state. Herodotus cannot reconcile the
inconsistencies of the Trojan War with his knowledge of human actions;
Thucydides does not dare to express his disbelief of it; Eratosthenes
sees contradictions between the voyage of Odysseus and the truths of
geography; Anaxagoras is condemned to death for impiety, and only
through the exertions of the chief of the state is his sentence
mercifully commuted to banishment. Plato, seeing things from a very
general point of view, thinks it expedient, upon the whole, to prohibit
the cultivation of the higher branches of physics. Euripides tries to
free himself from the imputation of heresy as best he may. Æschylus is
condemned to be stoned to death for blasphemy, and is only saved by his
brother Aminias raising his mutilated arm--he had lost his hand in the
battle of Salamis. Socrates stands his trial, and has to drink hemlock.
Even great statesmen like Pericles had become entangled in the obnoxious
opinions. No one has anything to say in explanation of the marvellous
disappearance of demigods and heroes, why miracles are ended, or why
human actions alone are now to be seen in the world. An ignorant public
demands the instant punishment of every suspected man. In their
estimation, to distrust the traditions of the past is to be guilty of
treason to the present.
[Sidenote: Attempts at a reformation.]
But all this confusion and dissent did not arise without an attempt
among well-meaning men at a reformation. Some, and they were, perhaps,
the most advanced intellectually, wished that the priests should abstain
from working any more miracles; that relics should be as little used as
was consistent with the psychical demands of the vulgar, and should be
gradually abandoned; that philosophy should no longer be outraged with
the blasphemous anthropomorphisms of the Olympian deities. Some, less
advanced, were disposed to reconcile all difficulties by regarding the
myths as allegorical; some wished to transform them so as to bring them
into harmony with the existing social state; some would give them
altogether new interpretations. With one, though the fact of a Trojan
War is not to be denied, it was only the eidolon of Helen whom Paris
carried away; with another expressions, perhaps once intended to
represent actual events, are dwindled into mere forms of speech.
Unwilling to reject the attributes of the Olympian divinities, their
human passions and actions, another asserts that they must once have all
existed as men. While one denounces the impudent atheists who find
fault with the myths of the Iliad, ignorant of its allegorical meaning,
another resolves all its heroes into the elements; and still another,
hoping to reconcile to the improved moral sense of the times the
indecencies and wickednesses of the gods, imputes them all to demons; an
idea which found much favour at first, but became singularly fatal to
polytheism in the end.
[Sidenote: Inveterate superstition of the vulgar.]
[Sidenote: Their jealous intolerance of doubts.]
In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the
higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most
surprising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of weeping
statues, and winking pictures. The tools with which the Trojan horse was
made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops was still
preserved at Chæroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of
Memnon at Nicomedia; the Tegeates could still show the hide of the
Calydonian boar, very many cities boasted their possession of the true
palladium from Troy. There were statues of Athene that could brandish
spears, paintings that could blush, images that could sweat, and
numberless shrines and sanctuaries at which miracle-cures were
performed. Into the hole through which the deluge of Deucalion receded
the Athenians still poured a customary sacrifice of honey and meal. He
would have been an adventurous man who risked any observation as to its
inadequate size. And though the sky had been proved to be only space and
stars, and not the firm floor of Olympus, he who had occasion to refer
to the flight of the gods from mountain tops into heaven would find it
to his advantage to make no astronomical remark. No adverse allusions to
the poems of Homer, Arctinus, or Lesches were tolerated; he who
perpetrated the blasphemy of depersonifying the sun went in peril of
death. It was not permitted that natural phenomena should be substituted
for Zeus and Poseidon; whoever was suspected of believing that Helios
and Selene were not gods, would do well to purge himself to public
satisfaction. The people vindicated their superstition in spite of all
geographical and physical difficulties, and, far from concerning
themselves with the contradictions which had exerted such an influence
on the thinking classes, practically asserted the needlessness of any
historical evidence.
[Sidenote: Slowness of the decline and fall of Polytheism.]
[Sidenote: The secondary causes of its downfall.]
It is altogether erroneous to suppose that polytheism maintained its ground
as a living force until the period of Constantine and Julian. Its downfall
commenced at the time of the opening of the Egyptian ports. Nearly a
thousand years were required for its consummation. The change first
occurred among the higher classes, and made its way slowly through the
middle ranks of society. For many centuries the two agencies--geographical
discovery, arising from increasing commerce and the Macedonian expedition,
and philosophical criticism--silently continued their incessant work, and
yet it does not appear that they could ever produce a change in the lowest
and most numerous division of the social grade. In process of time, a third
influence was added to the preceding two, enabling them to address
themselves even to the humblest rank of life; this influence was the rise
of the Roman power. It produced a wonderful activity all over the
Mediterranean Sea and throughout the adjoining countries. It insured
perpetual movements in all directions. Where there had been only a single
traveller there were now a thousand legionaries, merchants, government
officials, with their long retinues of dependents and slaves. Where
formerly it was only the historian or philosopher in his retirement who
compared or contrasted the laws and creeds, habits and customs of different
nations incorrectly reported, now the same things were vividly brought
under the personal observation of multitudes. The crowd of gods and
goddesses congregated in Rome served only to bring one another into
disrepute and ridicule.
[Sidenote: The alarm of good and religious men.]
[Sidenote: Plato's remedy for the evil.]
Long, therefore, previous to the triumph of Christianity, paganism must
be considered as having been irretrievably ruined. Doubtless it was the
dreadful social prospect before them--the apparent impossibility of
preventing the whole world from falling into a totally godless state,
that not only reconciled so many great men to give their support to the
ancient system, but even to look without disapprobation on that
physical violence to which the uneducated multitude, incapable of
judging, were so often willing to resort. They never anticipated that
any new system could be introduced which should take the place of the
old, worn-out one; they had no idea that relief in this respect was so
close at hand; unless, perhaps, it might have been Plato, who,
profoundly recognizing that, though it is a hard and tedious process to
change radically the ideas of common men, yet that it is easy to
persuade them to accept new names if they are permitted to retain old
things, proposed that a regenerated system should be introduced, with
ideas and forms suited to the existing social state, prophetically
asserting that the world would very soon become accustomed to it, and
give to it an implicit adhesion.
[Sidenote: The Greek movement has been repeated on a greater scale by
all Europe.]
In this description of the origin and decline of Greek religion I have
endeavoured to bring its essential features into strong relief. Its fall
was not sudden, as many have supposed, neither was it accomplished by
extraneous violence. There was a slow, and, it must be emphatically
added, a spontaneous decline. But, if the affairs of men pass in
recurring cycles--if the course of events with one individual has a
resemblance to the course of events with another--if there be analogies
in the progress of nations, and circumstances reappear after due periods
of time, the succession of events thus displayed before us in the
intellectual history of Greece may perhaps be recognised again in
grander proportions on the theatre of all Europe. If there is for the
human mind a predetermined order of development, may we not reasonably
expect that the phenomena we have thus been noticing on a small scale in
a single nation will reappear on the great scale in a continent; that
the philosophical study of this history of the past will not only serve
as an interpretation of many circumstances in the history of Europe in
the Dark and Middle Ages, but will also be a guide to us in pointing out
future events as respects all mankind? For, though it is true that the
Greek intellectual movement was anticipated, as respects its completion,
by being enveloped and swallowed up in the slower but more gigantic
movements of the southern European mind, just as a little expanding
circle upon the sea may be obliterated and borne away by more imposing
and impetuous waves, so even the movement of a continent may be lost in
the movement of a world. It was criticism and physical discovery, and
intellectual activity, arising from political concentration, that so
profoundly affected the modes of Grecian thought, and criticism and
discovery have within the last four hundred years done the same in all
Europe. To one who forms his expectations of the future from the history
of the past--who recalls the effect produced by the establishment of the
Roman empire, in permitting free personal intercommunication among all
the Mediterranean nations, and thereby not only destroying the ancient
forms of thought which for centuries had resisted all other means of
attack, but also replacing them by a homogeneous idea--it must be
apparent that the wonderfully increased facilities for locomotion, the
inventions of our own age, are the ominous precursors of a vast
philosophical revolution.
[Sidenote: The organization of hypocrisy.]
Between that period during which a nation has been governed by its
imagination and that in which it submits to reason, there is a
melancholy interval. The constitution of man is such that, for a long
time after he has discovered the incorrectness of the ideas prevailing
around him, he shrinks from openly emancipating himself from their
dominion, and, constrained by the force of circumstances, he becomes a
hypocrite, publicly applauding what his private judgment condemns. Where
a nation is making this passage, so universal do these practices become
that it may be truly said hypocrisy is organized. It is possible that
whole communities might be found living in this deplorable state. Such,
I conceive, must have been the case in many parts of the Roman empire
just before the introduction of Christianity. Even after ideas have
given way in public opinion, their political power may outlive their
intellectual vigour, and produce the disgraceful effect we here
consider.
It is not to be concealed, however, that, to some extent, this evil is
incident to the position of things. Indeed, it would be unfortunate if
national hypocrisy could not find a better excuse for itself than in
that of the individual. In civilized life, society is ever under the
imperious necessity of moving onward in legal forms, nor can such forms
be avoided without the most serious disasters ensuing. To absolve
communities too abruptly from the restraints of ancient ideas is not to
give them liberty, but to throw them into political vagabondism, and
hence it is that great statesmen will authorize and even compel
observances the essential significance of which has disappeared, and the
intellectual basis of which has been undermined. Truth reaches her full
action by degrees, and not at once; she first operates upon the reason,
the influence being purely intellectual and individual; she then extends
her sphere, exerting a moral control, particularly through public
opinion; at last she gathers for herself physical and political force.
It is in the time consumed in this gradual passage that organized
hypocrisy prevails. To bring nations to surrender themselves to new
ideas is not the affair of a day.
CHAPTER III.
DIGRESSION ON HINDU THEOLOGY AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.
_Comparative Theology of India; its Phase of Sorcery; its
Anthropocentric Phase._
VEDAISM _the Contemplation of Matter, or Adoration of Nature,
set forth in the Vedas and Institutes of Menu.--The Universe
is God.--Transmutation of the World.--Doctrine of
Emanation.--Transmigration.--Absorption.--Penitential
Services.--Happiness in Absolute Quietude._
BUDDHISM _the Contemplation of Force.--The supreme impersonal
Power.--Nature of the World--of Man.--The Passage of every
thing to Nonentity.--Development of Buddhism into a vast
monastic System marked by intense Selfishness.--Its practical
Godlessness._
EGYPT _a mysterious Country to the old Europeans.--Its
History, great public Works, and foreign Relations.--Antiquity
of its Civilization and Art.--Its Philosophy, hieroglyphic
Literature, and peculiar Agriculture._
_Rise of Civilization in rainless Countries.--Geography,
Geology, and Topography of Egypt--The Inundations of the Nile
lead to Astronomy._
_Comparative Theology of Egypt.--Animal Worship, Star
Worship.--Impersonation of Divine Attributes--Pantheism.--The
Trinities of Egypt.--Incarnation.--Redemption.--Future
Judgment.--Trial of the Dead.--Rituals and Ceremonies._
At this stage of our examination of European intellectual development,
it will be proper to consider briefly two foreign influences--Indian and
Egyptian--which affected it.
[Sidenote: Of Hindu philosophy.]
From the relations existing between the Hindu and European families, as
described in the preceding chapter, a comparison of their intellectual
progress presents no little interest. The movement of the elder branch
indicates the path through which the younger is travelling, and the goal
to which it tends. In the advanced condition under which we live we
notice Oriental ideas perpetually emerging in a fragmentary way from the
obscurities of modern metaphysics--they are the indications of an
intellectual phase through which the Indo-European mind must pass. And
when we consider the ready manner in which these ideas have been adopted
throughout China and the entire East, we may, perhaps, extend our
conclusion from the Indo-European family to the entire human race. From
this we may also infer how unphilosophical and vain is the expectation
of those who would attempt to restore the aged populations of Asia to
our state. Their intellectual condition has passed onward, never more to
return. It remains for them only to advance as far as they may in their
own line and to die, leaving their place to others of a different
constitution and of a renovated blood. In life there is no going back;
the morose old man can never resume the genial confidence of maturity;
the youth can never return to the idle and useless occupations, the
frivolous amusements of boyhood; even the boy is parted by a long step
from the innocent credulity of the nursery.
[Sidenote: The phase of sorcery, and anthropocentric phase.]
The earlier stages of the comparative theology of India are now
inaccessible. At a time so remote as to be altogether prehistoric the
phase of sorcery had been passed through. In the most ancient records
remaining the Hindu mind is dealing with anthropocentric conceptions,
not, however, so much of the physical as of the moral kind. Man had come
to the conclusion that his chief concern is with himself. "Thou wast
alone at the time of thy birth, thou wilt be alone in the moment of
death; alone thou must answer at the bar of the inexorable Judge."
[Sidenote: Comparative theology advances in two directions--Matter,
Force.]
[Sidenote: Vedaism contemplates matter, Buddhism force.]
From this point there are two well-marked steps of advance. The first
reaches the consideration of material nature; the second, which is very
grandly and severely philosophical, contemplates the universe under the
conceptions of space and force alone. The former is exemplified in the
Vedas and Institutes of Menu, the latter in Buddhism. In neither of
these stages do the ideas lie idle as mere abstractions; they introduce
a moral plan, and display a constructive power not equalled even by the
Italian papal system. They take charge not only of the individual, but
regulate society, and show their influence in accomplishing political
organizations, commanding our attention from their prodigious extent,
and venerable for their antiquity.
I shall, therefore, briefly refer, first, to the older, Vedaism, and
then to its successor, Buddhism.
[Sidenote: Vedaism is the adoration of Nature.]
Among a people possessing many varieties of climate, and familiar with
some of the grandest aspects of Nature--mountains the highest upon
earth, noble rivers, a vegetation incomparably luxuriant, periodical
rains, tempestuous monsoons, it is not surprising that there should have
been an admiration for the material, and a tendency to the worship of
Nature. These spectacles leave an indelible impression on the thoughts
of man, and, the more cultivated the mind, the more profoundly are they
appreciated.
[Sidenote: The Vedas and their doctrines.]
[Sidenote: The Veda doctrine of God,]
[Sidenote: and of the world.]
The Vedas, which are the Hindu Scriptures, and of which there are four,
the Rig, Yagust, Saman and Atharvan, are asserted to have been revealed
by Brahma. The fourth is, however, rejected by some authorities and
bears internal evidence of a later composition, at a time when
hierarchical power had become greatly consolidated. These works are
written in an obsolete Sanscrit, the parent of the more recent idiom.
They constitute the basis of an extensive literature, Upavedas, Angas,
&c., of connected works and commentaries. For the most part they consist
of hymns suitable for public and private occasions, prayers, precepts,
legends, and dogmas. The Rig, which is the oldest, is composed chiefly
of hymns, the other three of liturgical formulas. They are of different
periods and of various authorship, internal evidence seeming to indicate
that if the later were composed by priests, the earlier were the
production of military chieftains. They answer to a state of society
advanced from the nomad to the municipal condition. They are based upon
an acknowledgment of a universal Spirit pervading all things. Of this
God they therefore necessarily acknowledge the unity: "There is in truth
but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the universe, whose work
is the universe." "The God above all gods, who created the earth, the
heavens, the waters." The world, thus considered as an emanation of God,
is therefore a part of him; it is kept in a visible state by his energy,
and would instantly disappear if that energy were for a moment
withdrawn. Even as it is, it is undergoing unceasing transformations,
every thing being in a transitory condition. The moment a given phase is
reached, it is departed from, or ceases. In these perpetual movements
the present can scarcely be said to have any existence, for as the Past
is ending the Future has begun.
[Sidenote: Its transformation.]
In such a never-ceasing career all material things are urged, their
forms continually changing, and returning as it were, through revolving
cycles to similar states. For this reason it is that we may regard our
earth, and the various celestial bodies, as having had a moment of
birth, as having a time of continuance, in which they are passing onward
to an inevitable destruction, and that after the lapse of countless ages
similar progresses will be made, and similar series of events will occur
again and again.
[Sidenote: It is the visi-semblance of God.]
But in this doctrine of universal transformation there is something more
than appears at first. The theology of India is underlaid with
Pantheism. "God is One because he is All." The Vedas, in speaking of the
relation of nature to God, make use of the expression that he is the
Material as well as the Cause of the universe, "the Clay as well as the
Potter." They convey the idea that while there is a pervading spirit
existing everywhere of the same nature as the soul of man, though
differing from it infinitely in degree, visible nature is essentially
and inseparably connected therewith; that as in man the body is
perpetually undergoing changes, perpetually decaying and being renewed,
or, as in the case of the whole human species, nations come into
existence and pass away, yet still there continues to exist what may be
termed the universal human mind, so for ever associated and for ever
connected are the material and the spiritual. And under this aspect we
must contemplate the Supreme Being, not merely as a presiding intellect,
but as illustrated by the parallel case of man, whose mental principle
shows no tokens except through its connexion with the body; so matter,
or nature, or the visible universe, is to be looked upon as the
corporeal manifestation of God.
[Sidenote: The nature of mundane changes.]
Secular changes taking place invisible objects, especially those of an
astronomical kind, thus stand as the gigantic counterparts both as to
space and time of the microscopic changes which we recognize as
occurring in the body of man. However, in adopting these views of the
relations of material nature and spirit, we must continually bear in
mind that matter "has no essence independent of mental perception; that
existence and perceptibility are convertible terms; that external
appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing
if the divine energy which alone sustains them were suspended but for a
moment."
[Sidenote: Of the soul of man.]
[Sidenote: Its final absorption in God.]
[Sidenote: Of purifying penances,]
[Sidenote: and transmigration of souls.]
As to the relation between the Supreme Being and man, the soul is a
portion or particle of that all-pervading principle, the Universal
Intellect or Soul of the World, detached for a while from its primitive
source, and placed in connexion with the bodily frame, but destined by
an inevitable necessity sooner or later to be restored and rejoined--as
inevitably as rivers run back to be lost in the ocean from which they
arose. "That Spirit," says Varuna to his son, "from which all created
beings proceed, in which, having proceeded, they live, toward which they
tend, and in which they are at last absorbed, that Spirit study to know:
it is the Great One." Since a multitude of moral considerations assure
us of the existence of evil in the world, and since it is not possible
for so holy a thing as the spirit of man to be exposed thereto without
undergoing contamination, it comes to pass that an unfitness may be
contracted for its rejoining the infinitely pure essence from which it
was derived, and hence arises the necessity of its undergoing a course
of purification. And as the life of man is often too short to afford the
needful opportunity, and, indeed, its events, in many instances, tend
rather to increase than to diminish the stain, the season of
purification is prolonged by perpetuating a connexion of the sinful
spirit with other forms, and permitting its transmigration to other
bodies, in which, by the penance it undergoes, and the trials to which
it is exposed, its iniquity may be washed away, and satisfactory
preparation be made for its absorption in the ocean of infinite purity.
Considering thus the relation in which all animated nature stands to us,
being a mechanism for purification, this doctrine of the transmigration
of the soul leads necessarily to other doctrines of a moral kind, more
particularly to a profound respect for life under every form, human,
animal, or insect.
[Sidenote: The religious use of animal life.]
The forms of animal life, therefore, furnish a grand penitential
mechanism for man. Such, on these principles, is their teleological
explanation. In European philosophy there is no equivalent or
counterpart of this view. With us animal life is purposeless. Hereafter
we shall find that in Egypt, though the doctrine of transmigration must
of course have tended to similar suggestions, it became disturbed in its
practical application by the base fetich notions of the indigenous
African population. Hence the doctrine was cherished by the learned for
philosophical reasons, and by the multitude for the harmony of its
results with their idolatries.
[Sidenote: Of proper modes of devotion.]
From such theological dogmas a religious system obviously springs having
for its object to hasten the purification of the soul, that it may the
more quickly enter on absolute happiness, which is only to be found in
absolute rest. The methods of shortening its wanderings and bringing it
to repose are the exercises of a pious life, penance, and prayer, and
more especially a profound contemplation of the existence and attributes
of the Supreme Being. In this profound contemplation many holy men have
passed their lives.
[Sidenote: Minor Vedic doctrine.]
Such is a brief statement of Vedic theology, as exhibited in the
connected doctrines of the Nature of God, Universal Animation,
Transmutation of the World, Emanation of the Soul, Manifestation of
Visible Things, Transmigration, Absorption, the uses of Penitential
Services, and Contemplation for the attainment of Absolute Happiness in
Absolute Rest. The Vedas also recognize a series of creatures superior
to man, the gods of the elements and stars; they likewise personify the
attributes of the Deity. The three Vedic divinities, Agni, Indra, and
Surya, are not to be looked upon as existing independently, for all
spirits are comprehended in the Universal Soul. The later Hindu trinity,
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is not recognized by them. They do not
authorize the worship of deified men, nor of images, nor of any visible
forms. They admit the adoration of subordinate spirits, as those of the
planets, or of the demigods who inhabit the air, the waters, the woods;
these demigods are liable to death. They inculcate universal
charity--charity even to an enemy: "The tree doth not withdraw its shade
from the woodcutter." Prayers are to be made thrice a day, morning,
noon, evening; fasting is ordained, and ablution before meals; the
sacrificial offerings consist of flowers, fruits, money. Considered as a
whole their religious tendency is selfish: it puts in prominence the
baser motives, and seeks the gratification of the animal appetites, as
food, pleasure, good fortune. They suggest no proselyting spirit, but
rather adopt the principle that all religions must be equally acceptable
to God, since, if it were otherwise, he would have instituted a single
one, and, considering his omnipotence, none other could have possibly
prevailed. They contain no authorization of the division of castes,
which probably had arisen in the necessities of antecedent conquests,
but which have imposed a perpetual obstacle to any social progress,
keeping each class of society in an immovable state, and concentrating
knowledge and power in a hierarchy. Neither in them, nor, it is
affirmed, in the whole Indian literature, is there a single passage
indicating a love of liberty. The Asiatics cannot understand what value
there is in it. They have balanced Freedom against Security; they have
deliberately preferred the latter, and left the former for Europe to
sigh for. Liberty is alone appreciated in a life of action; but the life
of Asia is essentially passive, its desire is for tranquillity. Some
have affirmed that this imbecility is due to the fact that that
continent has no true temperate zone, and that thus, for ages, the weak
nations have been in contact with the strong, and therefore the hopeless
aspirations for personal freedom have become extinct. But nations that
are cut off from the sea, or that have accepted the dogma that to
travel upon it is unholy, can never comprehend liberty. From the general
tenor of the Vedas, it would appear that the condition of women was not
so much restrained as it became in later times, and that monogamy was
the ordinary state. From the great extent of these works, their various
dates and authorship, it is not easy to deduce from them consistent
principles, and their parts being without any connexion, complete copies
are very scarce. They have undergone mutilation and restoration, so that
great discordances have arisen.
[Sidenote: The Institutes of Menu.]
In the Institutes of Menu, a code of civil and religious law, written
about the ninth century before Christ, though, like the Vedas, betraying
a gradual origin, the doctrine of the Divine unity becomes more
distinctly mixed up with Pantheistic ideas. They present a description
of creation, of the nature of God, and contain prescribed rules for the
duty of man in every station of life from the moment of birth to death.
Their imperious regulations in all these minute details are a sufficient
proof of the great development and paramount power to which the
priesthood had now attained, but their morality is discreditable. They
indicate a high civilization and demoralization, deal with crimes and a
policy such as are incident to an advanced social condition. Their
arbitrary and all-reaching spirit reminds one of the papal system; their
recommendations to sovereigns, their authorization of immoralities,
recall the state of Italian society as reflected in the works of
Machiavelli. They hold learning in the most signal esteem, but concede
to the prejudices of the illiterate in a worship of the gods with
burnt-offerings of clarified butter and libations of the juices of
plants. As respects the constitution of man, they make a distinction
between the soul and the vital principle, asserting that it is the
latter only which expiates sin by transmigration. They divide society
into four castes--the priests, the military, the industrial, the
servile. They make a Brahmin the chief of all created things, and order
that his life shall be divided into four parts, one to be spent in
abstinence, one in marriage, one as an anchorite, and one in profound
meditation; he may then "quit the body as a bird leaves the branch of a
tree." They vest the government of society in an absolute monarch,
having seven councillors, who direct the internal administration by a
chain of officials, the revenue being derived from a share of
agricultural products, taxes on commerce, imposts on shopkeepers, and a
service of one day in the month from labourers.
[Sidenote: Both the Vedas and Institutes are pantheistic.]
In their essential principles the Institutes therefore follow the Vedas,
though, as must be the case in every system intended for men in the
various stages of intellectual progress from the least advanced to the
highest, they show a leaning toward popular delusions. Both are
pantheistic, for both regard the universe as the manifestation of the
Creator; both accept the doctrine of Emanation, teaching that the
universe lasts only for a definite period of time, and then, the Divine
energy being withdrawn, absorption of everything, even of the created
gods, takes place, and thus, in great cycles of prodigious duration,
many such successive emanations and absorptions of universe occur.
[Sidenote: Disappearance of the philosophical classes, and consequent
prominence of anthropocentric ideas.]
The changes that have taken place among the orthodox in India since the
period of the Institutes are in consequence of the diminution or
disappearance of the highly philosophical classes, and the comparative
predominance of the vulgar. They are stated by Mr. Elphinstone as a
gradual oblivion of monotheism, the neglect of the worship of some gods
and the introduction of others, the worship of deified mortals. The
doctrine of human deification is carried to such an extent that Indra
and other mythological gods are said to tremble lest they should be
supplanted by men. This introduction of polytheism and use of images has
probably been connected with the fact that there have been no temples to
the Invisible God, and the uneducated mind feels the necessity of some
recognizable form. In this manner the Trinitarian conception of Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva, with fourteen other chief gods, has been introduced.
Vishnu and Siva are never mentioned in the Institutes, but they now
engross the public devotions; besides these there are angels, genii,
penates, and lares, like the Roman. Brahma has only one temple in all
India, and has never been much worshipped. Chrishna is the great
favourite of the women. The doctrine of incarnation has also become
prevalent; the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable. The opinion has
also been spread that faith in a particular god is better than
contemplation, ceremonial, or good works. A new ritual, instead of the
Vedas, has come into use, these scriptures being the eighteen Puranas,
composed between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. They contain
theogonies, accounts of the creation, philosophical speculations,
fragmentary history, and may be brought to support any sectarian view,
having never been intended as one general body, but they are received as
incontrovertible authority. In former times great efficacy was attached
to sacrifice and religious austerities, but the objects once
accomplished in that way are now compassed by mere faith. In the
Baghavat Gita, the text-book of the modern school, the sole essential
for salvation is dependence on some particular teacher, which makes up
for everything else. The efficacy which is thus ascribed to faith, and
the facility with which sin may be expiated by penance, have led to
great mental debility and superstition. Force has been added to the
doctrine of a material paradise of trees, flowers, banquets, hymns; and
to a hell, a dismal place of flames, thirst, torment, and horrid
spectres.
[Sidenote: The philosophical schools.]
If such has been the gradual degradation of religion, through the
suppression or disappearance of the most highly cultivated minds, the
tendency of philosophy is not less strikingly marked. It is said that
even in ancient times not fewer than six distinct philosophical schools
may be recognized: 1, the prior Mimansa; 2, the later Mimansa, or
Vedanta, founded by Vyasa about 1400 B.C. having a Vedanta literature of
prodigious extent; 3, the Logical school, bearing a close resemblance to
that of Aristotle, even in its details; 4, the Atomic school of Canade;
5, the Atheistical school of Capila; 6, the Theistical school of
Patanjali.
[Sidenote: The rise of Buddhism.]
This great theological system, enforced by a tyrannical hierarchy, did
not maintain itself without a conflict. Buddhism arose as its
antagonist. By an inevitable necessity, Vedaism must pass onward to
Buddhism. The prophetic foresight of the great founder of this system
was justified by its prodigious, its unparalleled and enduring
success--a success that rested on the assertion of the dogma of the
absolute equality of all men, and this in a country that for ages had
been oppressed by castes. If the Buddhist admits the existence of God,
it is not as a Creator, for matter is equally eternal; and since it
possesses a property of inherent organization, even if the universe
should perish, this quality would quickly restore it, and carry it on to
new regenerations and new decays without any external agency. It also is
endued with intelligence and consciousness. The Buddhists agree with the
Brahmins in the doctrine of Quietism, in the care of animal life, in
transmigration. They deny the Vedas and Puranas, have no castes, and,
agreeably to their cardinal principle, draw their priests from all
classes like the European monks. They live in monasteries, dress in
yellow, go barefoot, their heads and beards being shaved; they have
constant services in their chapels, chanting, incense, and candles;
erect monuments and temples over the relics of holy men. They place an
especial merit in celibacy; renounce all the pleasures of sense; eat in
one hall; receive alms. To do these things is incident to a certain
phase of human progress.
[Sidenote: Life of Arddha Chiddi.]
Buddhism arose about the tenth century before Christ, its founder being
Arddha Chiddi, a native of Capila, near Nepaul. Of his epoch there are,
however, many statements. The Avars, Siamese, and Cingalese fix it B.C.
600; the Cashmerians, B.C. 1332; the Chinese, Mongols, and Japanese,
B.C. 1000. The Sanscrit words occurring in Buddhism attest its Hindu
origin, Buddha itself being the Sanscrit for intelligence. After the
system had spread widely in India, it was carried by missionaries into
Ceylon, Tartary, Thibet, China, Japan, Burmah, and is now professed by a
greater portion of the human race than any other religion. Until quite
recently, the history of Arddha Chiddi and the system he taught have,
notwithstanding their singular interest, been very imperfectly known in
Europe. He was born in affluence and of a royal family. In his
twenty-ninth year he retired from the world, the pleasures of which he
had tasted, and of which he had become weary. The spectacle of a
gangrened corpse first arrested his thoughts. Leaving his numerous
wives, he became a religious mendicant. It is said that he walked about
in a shroud, taken from the body of a female slave. Profoundly impressed
with the vanity of all human affairs, he devoted himself to
philosophical meditation, by severe self-denial emancipating himself
from all worldly hopes and cares. When a man has brought himself to this
pass he is able to accomplish great things. For the name by which his
parents had called him he substituted that of Gotama, or "he who kills
the senses," and subsequently Chakia Mouni, or the Penitent of Chakia.
Under the shade of a tree Gotama was born; under the shade of a tree he
overcame the love of the world and the fear of death; under the shade of
a tree he preached his first sermon in the shroud; under the shade of a
tree he died. In four months after he commenced his ministry he had five
disciples; at the close of the year they had increased to twelve
hundred. In the twenty-nine centuries that have passed since that time,
they have given rise to sects counting millions of souls, outnumbering
the followers of all other religious teachers. The system still seems to
retain much of its pristine vigour; yet religions are perishable. There
is no country, except India, which has the same religion now that it had
at the birth of Christ.
[Sidenote: The organization of Buddhism.]
Gotama died at the advanced age of eighty years; his corpse was burnt
eight days subsequently. But several years before this event his system
must be considered as thoroughly established. It shows how little
depends upon the nature of a doctrine, and how much upon effective
organization, that Buddhism, the principles of which are far above the
reach of popular thought, should have been propagated with so much
rapidity, for it made its converts by preaching, and not, like
Mohammedanism, by the sword. Shortly after Gotama's death, a council of
five hundred ecclesiastics assembled for the purpose of settling the
religion. A century later a second council met to regulate the monastic
institution; and in B.C. 241, a third council, for the expulsion of
fire-worshippers. Under the auspices of King Asoka, whose character
presents singular points of resemblance to that of the Roman emperor who
summoned the Council of Nicea, for he, too, was the murderer of his own
family, and has been handed down to posterity, because of the success of
the policy of his party, as a great, a virtuous, and a pious
sovereign--under his auspices missionaries were sent out in all
directions, and monasteries richly endowed were everywhere established.
The singular efficacy of monastic institutions was rediscovered in
Europe many centuries subsequently.
[Sidenote: Contest between the Brahmans and Buddhists.]
In proclaiming the equality of all men in this life, the Buddhists, as
we have seen, came into direct collision with the orthodox creed of
India, long carried out into practice in the institution of castes--a
collision that was embittered by the abhorrence the Buddhists displayed
for any distinction between the clergy and laity. To be a Brahmin a man
must be born one, but a Buddhist priest might voluntarily come from any
rank--from the very dregs of society. In the former system marriage was
absolutely essential to the ecclesiastical caste; in the latter it was
not, for the priestly ranks could be recruited without it. And hence
there followed a most important advantage, that celibacy and chastity
might be extolled as the greatest of all the virtues. The experience of
Europe, as well as of Asia, has shown how powerful is the control
obtained by the hierarchy in that way. In India there was, therefore, no
other course for the orthodox than to meet the danger with bloody
persecutions, and in the end, the Buddhists, expelled from their native
seats, were scattered throughout Eastern Asia. Persecution is the mother
of proselytes.
[Sidenote: Buddhism is founded on the conception of Power or Force.]
[Sidenote: It does not recognize a personal God,]
The fundamental principle of Buddhism is that there is a supreme power,
but no Supreme Being. From this it might be inferred that they who adopt
such a creed cannot be pantheists, but must be atheists. It is a
rejection of the idea of Being, an acknowledgment of that of Force. If
it admits the existence of God, it declines him as a Creator. It asserts
an impelling power in the universe, a self-existent and plastic
principle, but not a self-existent, an eternal, a personal God. It
rejects inquiry into first causes as being unphilosophical, and
considers that phenomena alone can be dealt with by our finite minds.
Not without an air of intellectual majesty, it tolerates the Asiatic
time-consecrated idea of a trinity, pointing out one not of a corporeal,
but of an impersonal kind. Its trinity is the Past, the Present, the
Future. For the sake of aiding our thoughts, it images the Past with his
hands folded, since he has attained to rest, but the others with their
right hands extended in token of activity. Since he has no God, the
Buddhist cannot expect absorption; the pantheistic Brahmin looks forward
to the return of his soul to the Supreme Being as a drop of rain returns
to the sea. The Buddhist has no religion, but only a ceremonial. How can
there be a religion where there is no God?
[Sidenote: nor a providential government,]
[Sidenote: but refers all events to resistless law.]
[Sidenote: Doubts the actual existence of the visible world.]
In all this it is plain that the impersonal and immaterial predominates,
and that Gotama is contemplating the existence of pure Force without any
association of Substance. He necessarily denies the immediate
interposition of any such agency as Providence, maintaining that the
system of nature, once arising, must proceed irresistibly according to
the laws which brought it into being, and that from this point of view
the universe is merely a gigantic engine. To the Brahman priesthood such
ideas were particularly obnoxious; they were hostile to any
philosophical system founded on the principle that the world is governed
by law, for they suspected that its tendency would be to leave them
without any mediatory functions, and therefore without any claims on the
faithful. Equally does Gotama deny the existence of chance, saying that
that which we call chance is nothing but the effect of an unknown,
unavoidable cause. As to the external world, we cannot tell how far it
is a phantasm, how far a reality, for our senses possess no trustworthy
criterion of truth. They convey to the mind representations of what we
consider to be external things, by which it is furnished with materials
for its various operations; but, unless it acts in conjunction with the
senses, the operation is lost, as in that absence which takes place in
deep contemplation. It is owing to our inability to determine what share
these internal and external conditions take in producing a result that
the absolute or actual state of nature is incomprehensible by us.
Nevertheless, conceding to our mental infirmity the idea of a real
existence of visible nature, we may consider it as offering a succession
of impermanent forms, and as exhibiting an orderly series of
transmutations, innumerable universes in periods of inconceivable time
emerging one after another, and creations and extinctions of systems of
worlds taking place according to a primordial law.
[Sidenote: Of the nature of man.]
[Sidenote: Of transmigration and penance,]
[Sidenote: and the passage to nonentity.]
Such are his doctrines of a Supreme Force, and of the origin and
progress of the visible world. With like ability Gotama deals with his
inquiry into the nature of man. With Oriental imagery he bids us
consider what becomes of a grain of salt thrown into the sea; but, lest
we should be deceived herein, he tells us that there is no such thing as
individuality or personality--that the Ego is altogether a nonentity. In
these profound considerations he brings to bear his conception of force,
in the light thereof asserting that all sentient beings are homogeneous.
If we fail to follow him in these exalted thoughts, bound down to
material ideas by the infirmities of the human constitution, and inquire
of him how the spirit of man, which obviously displays so much energy,
can be conceived of as being without form, without a past, without a
future, he demands of us what has become of the flame of a lamp when it
is blown out, or to tell him in what obscure condition it lay before it
was kindled. Was it a nonentity? Has it been annihilated? By the aid of
such imagery he tries to depict the nature of existence, and to convey a
vivid idea of the metamorphoses it undergoes. Outward things are to him
phantasms; the impressions they make on the mind are phantasms too. In
this sense he receives the doctrine of transmigration, conceiving of it
very much as we conceive of the accumulation of heat successively in
different things. In one sense it may be the same heat which occupies
such objects one after another, but in another, since heat is force and
not matter, there can be no such individuality. Viewed, however, in the
less profound way, he is not unwilling to adopt the doctrine of the
transmigration of the soul through various forms, admitting that there
may accumulate upon it the effect of all those influences, whether of
merit or demerit, of good or of evil, to which it has been exposed. The
vital flame is handed down from one generation to another, it is
communicated from one animated form to another. He thinks it may carry
with it in these movements the modifications which may have been
impressed on it, and require opportunity for shaking them off and
regaining its original state. At this point the doctrine of Gotama is
assuming the aspect of a moral system, and is beginning to suggest means
of deliverance from the accumulated evil and consequent demerit to which
the spirit has been exposed. He will not, however, recognize any
vicarious action. Each one must work out for himself his own salvation,
remembering that death is not necessarily a deliverance from worldly
ills, it may be only a passage to new miseries. But yet, as the light of
the taper must come at last to an end, so there is at length, though it
may be after many transmigrations, an end of life. That end he calls
Nirwana, a word that has been for nearly three thousand years of solemn
import to countless millions of men;--Nirwana, the end of successive
existences, that state which has no relation to matter, or space, or
time, to which the departing flame of the extinguished taper has gone.
It is the supreme end, Nonentity. The attaining of this is the object to
which we ought to aspire, and for that purpose we should seek to destroy
within ourselves all cleaving to existence, weaning ourselves from every
earthly object, from every earthly pursuit. We should resort to monastic
life, to penance, to self-denial, self-mortification, and so gradually
learn to sink into perfect quietude or apathy, in imitation of that
state to which we must come at last, and to which, by such preparation,
we may all the more rapidly approach. The pantheistic Brahman expects
absorption in God; the Buddhist, having no God, expects extinction.
[Sidenote: Philosophical estimate of Buddhism.]
India has thus given to the world two distinct philosophical systems:
Vedaism, which takes as its resting-point the existence of matter, and
Buddhism, of which the resting-point is force. The philosophical ability
displayed in the latter is very great; indeed it may be doubted whether
Europe has produced its metaphysical equivalent. And yet, if I have
correctly presented its principles, it will probably appear that its
primary conception is not altogether consistently carried out in the
development of the details. Great as was the intellectual ability of its
author--so great as to extort our profoundest, though it may be
reluctant admiration--there are nevertheless moments in which it appears
that his movement is becoming wavering and unsteady--that he is failing
to handle his ponderous weapon with self-balanced power. This is
particularly the case in that point at which he is passing from the
consideration of pure force to the unavoidable consideration of visible
nature, the actual existence of which he seems to be obliged to deny.
But then I am not sure that I have caught with precision his exact train
of thought, or have represented his intention with critical correctness.
Considering the extraordinary power he elsewhere displays, it is more
probable that I have failed to follow his meaning, than that he has
been, on the points in question, incompetent to deal with his task.
The works of Gotama, under the title of "Verbal Instructions," are
published by the Chinese government in four languages--Thibetan, Mongol,
Mantchou, Chinese--from the imperial press at Pekin, in eight hundred
large volumes. They are presented to the Lama monasteries--a magnificent
gift.
[Sidenote: Displacement of its higher ideas by base ones.]
[Sidenote: Its anthropocentric phase remains, its philosophical
declining.]
In speaking of Vedaism, I have mentioned the manner in which its more
elevated conceptions were gradually displaced by those of a base grade
coming into prominence; and here it may be useful in like manner to
speak of the corresponding debasement of Buddhism. Its practical working
was the introduction of an immense monastic system, offering many points
of resemblance to the subsequent one of Europe. Since its object was
altogether of a personal kind, the attainment of individual happiness,
it was not possible that it should do otherwise than engender extreme
selfishness. It impressed on each man to secure his own salvation, no
matter what became of all others. Of what concern to him were parents,
wife, children, friends, country, so long as he attained Nirwana!
[Sidenote: Its legends and miracles.]
Long before Buddhism had been expelled from India by the victorious
Brahmins, it had been overlaid with popular ornaments. It had its
fables, legends, miracles. Its humble devotees implicitly believed that
Mahamia, the mother of Gotama, an immaculate virgin, conceived him
through a divine influence, and that thus he was of the nature of God
and man conjoined; that he stood upon his feet and spoke at the moment
of his birth; that at five months of age he sat unsupported in the air;
that at the moment of his conversion he was attacked by a legion of
demons, and that in his penance-fasting he reduced himself to the
allowance of one pepper-pod a day; that he had been incarnate many times
before, and that on his ascension through the air to heaven he left his
footprint on a mountain in Ceylon; that there is a paradise of gems, and
flowers, and feasts, and music for the good, and a hell of sulphur, and
flames, and torment for the wicked; that it is lawful to resort to the
worship of images, but that those are in error who deify men, or pay
respect to relics; that there are spirits, and goblins, and other
superhuman forms; that there is a queen of heaven; that the reading of
the Scriptures is in itself an actual merit, whether its precepts are
followed or not; that prayer may be offered by saying a formula by rote,
or even by turning the handle of a mill from which invocations written
on paper issue forth; that the revealer of Buddhism is to be regarded as
the religious head of the world.
The reader cannot fail to remark the resemblance of these ideas to some
of those of the Roman Church. When a knowledge of the Oriental forms of
religion was first brought into Europe, and their real origin was not
understood, it was supposed that this coincidence had arisen through the
labours of Nestorian, or other ancient missionaries from the West, and
hopes were entertained that the conversion of Eastern Asia would be
promoted thereby. But this expectation was disappointed, and that which
many good men regarded as a preparation for Christianity proved to be a
stumbling-block in its way. It is not improbable that the
pseudo-Christianity of the Chinese revolters, of which so much has
recently been said, is of the same nature, and will end with the same
result.
[Sidenote: The great diffusion of Buddhism.]
[Sidenote: Its practical godlessness.]
Decorated with these extraneous but popular recommendations, Buddhism
has been embraced by two-fifths of the human race. It has a prodigious
literature, great temples, many monuments. Its monasteries are scattered
from the north of Tartary almost to the equinoctial line. In these an
education is imparted not unlike that of the European monasteries of the
Middle Ages. It has been estimated that in Tartary one-third of the
population are Lamas. There are single convents containing more than two
thousand individuals; the wealth of the country voluntarily pours into
them. Elementary education is more widely diffused than in Europe: it is
rare to meet with a person who cannot read. Among the priests there are
many who are devout, and, as might be expected, many who are impostors.
It is a melancholy fact that, in China, Buddhism has led the entire
population not only into indifferentism, but into absolute godlessness.
They have come to regard religion as merely a fashion, to be followed
according to one's own taste; that as professed by the state it is a
civil institution necessary for the holding of office, and demanded by
society, but not to be regarded as of the smallest philosophical
importance; that a man is entitled to indulge his views on these matters
just as he is entitled to indulge his taste in the colour and fashion of
his garments; that he has no more right, however, to live without some
religious profession than he has a right to go naked. The Chinese cannot
comprehend how there should be animosities arising on matters of such
doubtful nature and trivial concern. The formula under which they live
is: "Religions are many; reason is one; we are brothers." They smile at
the credulity of the good-natured Tartars, who believe in the wonders of
miracle-workers, for they have miracle-workers who can perform the most
supernatural cures, who can lick red-hot iron, who can cut open their
bowels, and, by passing their hand over the wound, make themselves whole
again--who can raise the dead. In China, these miracles, with all their
authentications, have descended to the conjurer, and are performed for
the amusement of children. The common expressions of that country betray
the materialism and indifferentism of the people, and their consequent
immorality. "The prisons," they say, "are locked night and day, but they
are always full; the temples are always open, and yet there is nobody in
them." Of the dead they say, with an exquisite refinement of euphemism,
"He has saluted the world." The Lazarist Huc, on whose authority many of
these statements are made, testifies that they die, indeed, with
incomparable tranquillity, just as animals die; and adds, with a bitter,
and yet profoundly true sarcasm, they are what many in Europe are
wanting to be.
* * * * *
From the theology of India I turn, in the next place, to the
civilization of Egypt.
[Sidenote: Egypt a mysterious country to Europe.]
[Sidenote: Its reported wonders.]
The ancient system of isolation which for many thousand years had been
the policy of Egypt was overthrown by Psammetichus about B.C. 670. Up to
that time the inhabitants of that country had been shut out from all
Mediterranean or European contact by a rigorous exclusion exceeding that
until recently practised in China and Japan. As from the inmates of the
happy valley, in Rasselas, no tidings escaped to the outer world, so, to
the European, the valley of the Nile was a region of mysteries and
marvels. At intervals of centuries, individuals, like Cecrops and
Danaus, had fled to other countries, and had attached the gratitude of
posterity to their memories for the religion, laws, or other
institutions of civilization they had conferred. The traditions
connected with them served only to magnify those uncertain legends met
with all over Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Sicily, of the prodigies and
miracles that adventurous pirates reported they had actually seen in
their stealthy visits to the enchanted valley--great pyramids covering
acres of land, their tops rising to the heavens, yet each pyramid
nothing more than the tombstone of a king; colossi sitting on granite
thrones, the images of Pharaohs who lived in the morning of the world,
still silently looking upon the land which thousands of years before
they had ruled; of these, some obedient to the sun, sainted his approach
when touched by his morning rays; obelisks of prodigious height, carved
by superhuman skill from a single block of stone, and raised by
superhuman power erect on their everlasting pedestals, their faces
covered with mysterious hieroglyphs, a language unknown to the vulgar,
telling by whom and for what they had been constructed; temples, the
massive leaning and lowering walls of which were supported by countless
ranges of statues; avenues of sphinxes, through the shadows of which,
grim and silent, the portals of fanes might be approached; catacombs
containing the mortal remains of countless generations, each corpse
awaiting, in mysterious embalmment, a future life; labyrinths of many
hundred chambers and vaults, into which whoso entered without a clue
never again escaped, but in the sameness and solitude of those endless
windings found his sepulchre. It is impossible for us to appreciate the
sentiment of religious awe with which the Mediterranean people looked
upon the enchanted, the hoary, the civilized monarchy on the banks of
the Nile. As Bunsen says, "Egypt was to the Greeks a sphinx with an
intellectual human countenance."
[Sidenote: Its history: the old empire; the Hycksos; the new empire.]
[Sidenote: Opening of the Egyptian ports.]
Her solitude, however, had not been altogether unbroken. After a
duration of 1076 years, and the reign of thirty-eight kings, illustrated
by the production of the most stupendous works ever accomplished by the
hand of man, some of which, as the Pyramids, remain to our times, the
old empire, which had arisen from the union of the upper and lower
countries, had been overthrown by the Hycksos, or shepherd kings, a race
of Asiatic invaders. These, in their turn, had held dominion for more
than five centuries, when an insurrection put an end to their power, and
gave birth to the new empire, some of the monarchs of which, for their
great achievements, are still remembered. In the middle period of this
new empire those events in early Hebrew history took place--the visit
of Abram and the elevation of Joseph--which are related with such
simplicity in the Holy Scriptures. With varied prosperity, the new
empire continued until the time of Psammetichus, who, in a civil war,
having attained supreme power by the aid of Greek mercenaries, overthrew
the time-honoured policy of all the old dynasties, and occasioned the
first grand impulse in the intellectual life of Europe by opening the
ports of Egypt, and making that country accessible to the blue-eyed and
red-haired barbarians of the North.
[Sidenote: This compels Egypt to become a maritime state,]
[Sidenote: and brings on collisions with the Babylonians.]
[Sidenote: Opening of the Suez Canal.]
[Sidenote: Circumnavigation of Africa.]
[Sidenote: History of the Great Canal.]
It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of this event upon
the progress of Europe. An immense extension of Greek commerce by the
demand for the products of the Euxine as well as of the Mediterranean
was the smallest part of the advantage. As to Egypt herself, it entailed
a complete change in her policy, domestic and foreign. In the former
respect, the employment of the mercenaries was the cause of the entire
emigration of the warrior caste, and in the latter it brought things to
such a condition, that, if Egypt would continue to exist, she must
become a maritime state. Her geographical position for the purposes of
commerce was excellent; with the Red Sea on the east and the
Mediterranean on the north, she was the natural entrepôt between Asia
and Europe, as was shown by the prosperity of Alexandria in later ages.
But there was a serious difficulty in the way of her becoming a naval
power; no timber suitable for ship-building grew in the country--indeed,
scarcely enough was to be found to satisfy the demands for the
construction of houses and coffins for the dead. The early Egyptians,
like the Hindus, had a religious dread of the sea, but their
exclusiveness was, perhaps, not a little dependent on their want of
material for ship-building. Egypt was therefore compelled to enter on a
career of foreign conquest, and at all hazards possess herself of the
timber-growing districts of Syria. It was this urgent necessity which
led to her collisions with the Mesopotamian kings, and drew in its train
of consequence the sieges, sacks, and captivities of Jerusalem, the
metropolis of a little state lying directly between the contending
powers, and alternately disturbed by each. Of the necessity of this
course of policy in the opinion of the Egyptian kings, we can have no
better proof than the fact that Psammetichus himself continued the siege
of Azotus for twenty-nine years; that his son Necho reopened the canal
between the Nile at Bubastes and the Red Sea at Suez--it was wide enough
for two ships to pass--and on being resisted therein by the priests, who
feared that it might weaken the country strategically, attempted the
circumnavigation of Africa, and actually accomplished it. In those times
such expeditions were not undertaken as mere matters of curiosity.
Though this monarch also despatched investigators to ascertain the
sources of the Nile, and determine the causes of its rise, it was
doubtless in the hope of making such knowledge of use in a material or
economical point of view, and therefore it may be supposed that the
circumnavigation of Africa was undertaken upon the anticipated or
experienced failure of the advantages expected to arise from the
reopening of the canal; for the great fleets which Necho and his father
had built could not be advantageously handled unless they could be
transferred as circumstances required, either by the circumnavigation or
by the canal, from one sea to the other. The time occupied in passing
round the continent, which appears to have been three years, rendered
the former method of little practical use. But the failure experienced,
so far from detracting from the estimation in which we must hold those
kings who could thus display such a breadth of conception and vigour of
execution, must even enhance it. They resumed the policy of the
conqueror Rameses II., who had many centuries before possessed the
timber-growing countries, and whose engineers originally cut the canal
from the Nile to the Red Sea, though the work cost 120,000 lives and
countless treasuries of money. The canal of Rameses, which, in the
course of so many centuries, has become filled up with sand, was thus
cleaned out, as it was again in the reign of the Ptolemies, and again
under the khalifs, and galleys passed from sea to sea. The Persians,
under Darius Hystaspes, also either repaired it, or, as some say,
attempted a new work of the kind; but their engineering must have been
very defective, for they were obliged to abandon their enterprise after
carrying it as far as the bitter lakes, finding that salt water would be
introduced into the Delta. The Suez mouth of the canal of Rameses was
protected by a system of hydraulic works, to meet difficulties arising
from the variable levels of the water. It was reserved for the French
engineer Lesseps in the nineteenth century to cut the direct canal from
the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, an exploit which the Pharaohs and
Ptolemies had considered to be impossible.
[Sidenote: Attempts of the Asiatics on the south Mediterranean shore.]
[Sidenote: Egypt overthrown by Cambyses.]
The Egyptian policy continued by Pharaoh Hophra, who succeeded in the
capture of Sidon, brought on hostilities with the Babylonian kings, who
were now thoroughly awakened to what was going on in Egypt--a collision
which occasioned the expulsion of the Egyptians from Syria, and the
seizure of the lower country by Nebuchadnezzar, who also took vengeance
on King Zedekiah for the assistance Jerusalem had rendered to the
Africans in their projects: that city was razed to the ground, the eyes
of the king put out, and the people carried captive to Babylon, B.C.
568. It is a striking exemplification of the manner in which national
policy will endure through changes of dynasties, that after the
overthrow of Babylon by the Medes, and the transference of power to the
Persians, the policy of controlling the Mediterranean was never for an
instant lost sight of. Attempts were continually made, by operating
alternately on the southern and northern shores, to push westward. The
subsequent history of Rome shows what would have been the consequences
of an uncontrolled possession of the Mediterranean by a great maritime
power. On the occasion of a revolt of Egypt, the Persian King Cambyses
so utterly crushed and desolated it, that from that day to this, though
twenty-four centuries have intervened, it has never been able to recover
its independence. The Persian advance on the south shore toward Carthage
failed because of the indisposition of the Phoenicians to assist in
any operations against that city. We must particularly remark that the
ravaging of Egypt by Cambyses was contemporaneous with the cultivation
of philosophy in the southern Italian towns--somewhat more than five
hundred years before Christ.
[Sidenote: The Fall of Tyre.]
Among the incidents occurring during the struggles between the Egyptian
and Babylonian kings there is one deserving to be brought into
conspicuous prominence, from the importance of its consequences in
European history. It was the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. So long
as that city dominated in the Mediterranean, it was altogether
impossible for Greek maritime power to be developed. The strength of
Tyre is demonstrated by her resistance to the whole Babylonian power for
thirteen years, "until every head was bald and every shoulder peeled."
The place was, in the end, utterly destroyed. It was made as bare as the
top of a rock on which the fisherman spreads his nets. The blow thus
struck at the heart of Tyrian commerce could not but be felt at the
utmost extremities. "The isles of the sea were troubled at her
departure." It was during this time that Greece fairly emerged as a
Mediterranean naval power. Nor did the inhabitants of New Tyre ever
recover the ancient position. Their misfortunes had given them a rival.
A re-establishment in an island on the coast was not a restoration of
their supremacy. Carrying out what Greece instinctively felt to be her
national policy, one of the first acts of Alexander's Asiatic campaign,
two hundred and fifty years subsequently, was the siege of the new city,
and, after almost superhuman exertions, its capture, by building a mole
from the mainland. He literally levelled the place to the ground; a
countless multitude was massacred, two thousand persons were crucified,
and Tyrian influence disappeared for ever.
[Sidenote: Foreign epochs in Greek history.]
In early Greek history there are, therefore, two leading foreign events:
1st, the opening of the Egyptian ports, B.C. 670; 2nd, the downfall of
Old Tyre, 573. The effect of the first was chiefly intellectual; that of
the second was to permit the commencement of commercial prosperity and
give life to Athens.
[Sidenote: Antiquity of civilization and art in Egypt.]
At the dawn of European civilization, Egypt was, therefore, in process
of decadence, gradually becoming less and less able to resist its own
interior causes of destruction, or the attempts of its Asiatic rivals,
who eventually brought it to ruin. At the first historical appearance of
the country of the Nile it is hoary and venerable with age. The
beautiful Scripture pictures of the journey of Abram and Sarai, in the
famine, the going down of Joseph, the exodus of the Israelites, all
point to a long-settled system, a tranquil and prosperous state. Do we
ask any proof of the condition of art to which the Egyptians had
attained at the time of their earliest monuments? The masonry of the
Great Pyramid, built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, has never
yet been s
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