The Columbiad: A Poem Part 24

From these principles we may conclude that cultivation, in a woody country, tends to warm the atmosphere and ameliorate a cold climate; as, by removing the forests and marshes, it opens the earth to the sun, and allows them to act in conjunction upon the air.

According to the descriptions given of the middle parts of Europe by Cesar and Tacitus, it appears that those countries were much colder in their days than they are at present; cultivation seems to have softened that climate to a great degree. The same effect begins to be perceived in North America.

Possibly it may in time become as apparent as the present difference in the temperature of the two continents.

No. 12.

_A ruddier hue and deeper shade shall gain, And stalk, in statelier figures, on the plain._

Book II. Line 127.

The complexion of the inhabitants of North America, who are descended from the English and Dutch, is evidently darker, and their stature taller, than those of the English and Dutch in Europe.

No. 13.

_Like Memphian hieroglyphs, to stretch the span Of memory frail in momentary man._

Book II. Line 287.

We may reckon three stages of improvement in the graphic art, or the art of communicating our thoughts to absent persons and to posterity by visible signs. First, The invention of _painting ideas,_ or representing actions, dates and other circ.u.mstances of historical fact, by the images of material things, drawn usually on a flat surface, or sometimes carved or moulded in a more solid form. This was the state at which the art had arrived in Egypt before the introduction of letters, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. The Greeks in Egypt called it hieroglyphic.

Second, The invention of _painting sounds,_ which we do by the use of letters, or the alphabet, and which we call writing. This was a vast improvement; as it simplified in a wonderful degree the communication of thought. For ideas are infinite in number and variety; while the simple sounds we use to convey them to the ear are few, distinct and easy to be understood. It would indeed be impossible to express all our ideas by distinct and visible images. And even if the writer were able to do this, not many readers could be made to understand him; since it would be necessary that every new idea should have a new image invented and agreed upon between the writer and the reader, before it could be used. Which preliminary could not be settled without the writer should see and converse with the reader. And he might as well, in this case, convey his ideas by oral speech; so that his writing could be of little use beyond a certain routine of established signs.

The number of simple sounds in human language, used in discourse, is not above eighteen or twenty; and these are so varied in the succession in which they are uttered, as to express an inconceivable and endless variety of thought and sentiment. Then, by the help of an alphabet of about twenty-six letters or visible signs, these sounds are translated from the ear to the eye; and we are able, by thus painting the sound, to arrest its fleeting nature, render it permanent, and talk with distant nations and future ages, without any previous convention whatever, even supposing them to be ignorant of the language in which we write. This is the present state of the art, as commonly practised in all the countries where an alphabet is used. It is called the art of writing; and to understand it is called reading.

Third, Another invention, which is still in its infancy, is the art of _painting phrases,_ or sentences; commonly called shorthand writing.

This is yet but little used, and only by a few dexterous persons, who make it a particular study. Probably the true principles on which it ought to be founded are yet to be discovered. But it may be presumed, that in this part of the graphic art there remains to the ingenuity of future generations a course of improvements totally inconceivable to the present; by which the whole train of impressions now made upon the mind by reading a long and well written treatise may be conveyed by a few strokes of the pen, and be received at a glance of the eye. This desideratum would be an abridgment of labor in our mental acquisitions, of which we cannot determine the consequences. It might make, in the progress of human knowledge, an epoch as remarkable as that which was made by the invention of alphabetical writing, and produce as great a change in the mode of transmitting the history of events.

One consequence of the invention of alphabetical writing seems to have been to throw into oblivion all previous historical facts; and it has thus left an immense void, which the imagination knows not how to fill, in contemplating the progress of our race. How many important discoveries, which still remain to our use, must have taken their origin in that s.p.a.ce of time which is thus left a void to us! A vast succession of ages, and ages of improvement, must have preceded (for example) the invention of the wheel. The wheel must have been in common use, we know not how long, before alphabetical writing; because we find its image employed in painting ideas, during the first stage of the graphic art above described. The wheel was likewise in use before the mysteries of Ceres or those of Isis were established; as is evident from its being imagined as an instrument of punishment in h.e.l.l, in the case of Ixion, as represented in those mysteries. The taming of the ox and the horse, the use of the sickle and the bow and arrow, a considerable knowledge of astronomy, and its application to the purposes of agriculture and navigation, with many other circ.u.mstances, which show a prodigious improvement, must evidently have preceded the date of the zodiac; a date fixed by Dupuis, with a great degree of probability, at about seventeen thousand years from our time.

This epoch would doubtless carry us back many thousand years beyond that of the alphabet; the invention of which was sufficient of itself to obliterate the details of previous history, as the event has proved.

How far the loss of these historical details is to be regretted, as an impediment to our progress in useful knowledge, I will not decide; but in one view, which I am going to state, it may be justly considered as a misfortune.

The art of painting ideas, being arrested in the state in which the use of the alphabet found it, went into general disuse for common purposes; and the works then extant, as well as the knowledge of writing in that mode, being no longer intelligible to the people, became objects of deep and laborious study, and known only to the learned; that is, to the men of leisure and contemplation. These men consequently ran it into mystery; making it a holy object, above the reach of vulgar inquiry. On this ground they established, in the course of ages, a profitable function or profession, in the practice of which a certain portion of men of the brightest talents could make a reputable living; taking care not to initiate more than a limited number of professors; no more than the people could maintain as priests. This mode of writing then a.s.sumed the name of hieroglyphic, or sacred painting, to distinguish it from that which had now become the vulgar mode of writing, by the use of the alphabet. This is perhaps the source of that ancient, vast and variegated system of false religion, with all its host of errors and miseries, which has so long and so grievously weighed upon the character of human nature.

In noticing the distinction of the three stages in the graphic art above described, I have not mentioned the wonderful powers we derive from it in the language of the mathematics and the language of music. In each of these, though its effects are already astonishing, there is no doubt but great improvements are still to be made. Our present mode of writing in these, as in literature, belongs to the _second_ or _alphabetical_ stage of the graphic art. The ten ciphers, and the other signs used in the mathematical sciences, form the alphabet in which the language of those sciences is written. The few musical notes, and the other signs which accompany them, furnish an alphabet for writing the language of music.

The mode of writing in China is still different from any of those I have mentioned. The Chinese neither paint ideas nor sounds: but they make a character for every word; which character must vary according to the different inflections and uses of that word. The characters must therefore be insupportably numerous, and be still increasing as the language is enriched with new words by the augmentation and correction of ideas.

The English language is supposed to contain about twelve thousand distinct words, and the Italian about seventeen thousand, in the present state of our sciences. I know not how many the Chinese may contain; but if we were to write our languages in the Chinese method, it would be the business of a whole life for a man to learn his mother tongue, so as to read and write it for his ordinary purposes.

As the Chinese have not adopted an alphabet, but have adhered to an invariable state of the graphic art, which is probably more ancient by several thousand years than our present method, may we not venture to conjecture that the traces of their very ancient history have been, for that reason, better preserved? and that their pretensions to a very high antiquity, which we have been used to think extravagant and ridiculous, are really not without foundation? If so, we might then allow a little more lat.i.tude to ourselves, and conclude that we are in fact as old as they, and might have been as sensible of it, if we had adhered to our ancient method of writing; and not changed it for a new one which, while it has facilitated the progress of our science, has humbled our pride of antiquity, by obliterating the dates of those labors and improvements of our early progenitors, to which we are indebted for more of the rudiments of our sciences and our arts than we usually imagine.

It is much to be regretted, that the Spanish devastation in Mexico and Peru was so universal as to leave us but few monuments of the history of the human mind in those countries, which presented a state of manners so remarkably different from what can be found in any other part of the world.

The pictorial writing of the Mexicans, tho sometimes called hieroglyphic, does not appear to merit that name, as it was not exclusively appropriated by the priests to sacred purposes. Indeed it could not be so appropriated till a more convenient method could be discovered and adopted for common purposes. For a thing cannot become sacred, in this sense of the word, until it ceases to be common.

No. 14.

_No Bovadilla seize the tempting spoil, No dark Ovando, no religious Boyle,_

Book II. Line 303.

Bovadilla and Ovando are mentioned in the Introduction as the enemies and successors of Columbus in the government of Hispaniola. They began that system of cruelty towards the natives which in a few years almost depopulated that island, and was afterwards pursued by Cortez, Pizarro and others, in all the first settlements in Spanish America.

Boyle was a fanatical priest who accompanied Ovando, and, under pretence of christianizing the natives by the sword, gave the sanction of the church to the most shocking and extensive scenes of slaughter.

No. 15.

_He gains the sh.o.r.e. Behold his fortress rise, His fleet high flaming suffocates the skies._

Book II. Line 329.

The conduct of Cortez, when he first landed on the coast of Mexico, was as remarkable for that hardy spirit of adventure, to which success gives the name of policy, as his subsequent operations were for cruelty and perfidy.

As soon as his army was on sh.o.r.e, he dismantled his fleet of such articles as would be useful in building a new one; he then set fire to his ships, and burnt them in presence of his men; that they might fight their battles with more desperate courage, knowing that it would be impossible to save themselves from a victorious enemy by flight. He constructed a fort, in which the iron and the rigging were preserved.

No. 16.

_With cheerful rites their pure devotions pay To the bright orb that gives the changing day._

Book II. Line 421.

It is worthy of remark, that the countries where the worship of the sun has made the greatest figure are Egypt and Peru; the two regions of the earth the most habitually deprived of rain, and probably of clouds, which in other countries so frequently obstruct his rays and seem to dispute his influence. Tho in the rude ages of society it is certainly natural in all countries to pay adoration to the sun, as one of the visible agents of those changes in the atmosphere which most affect the people's happiness, yet it is reasonable to suppose that this adoration would be more unmixed, and consequently more durable, in climates where the agency of the sun appears unrivalled and supreme.

On the supposition that Greece and Western Asia, regions whose early traditions are best known to us, derived their first theological ideas from Egypt, it is curious to observe how the pure heliosebia of Egypt degenerated in those climates in proportion as other visible agents seemed to exert their influence in human affairs. Greece is a mountainous country, subject to a great deal of lightning and other meteors, whose effects are tremendous and make stronger impressions on rude savages than the gentle energies of the sun.

The Greeks therefore, having forgotten the source of their religious system, ceased to consider the sun as their supreme G.o.d; his agency being, in their opinion, subject to a more potent divinity, the Power of the air or Jupiter, whom they styled the Thunderer. So that Apollo, the G.o.d of light, became, in their mythology, the subject and offspring of the supreme G.o.d of the atmosphere. This religion became extremely confused and complicated with new fables, according to the temperature and other accidents of the different climates thro which it pa.s.sed. The G.o.d of thunder obtained the supreme veneration generally in Europe: known in the south by the name of Jupiter or Zeus and in the north by that of Thor.

Europe in general has an uneven surface and a vapory sky, liable to great concussions in the lower regions of the atmosphere which border the habitation of man. There is no wonder that in such a region the G.o.d of the air should appear more powerful than the G.o.d of light. This disposition of the elements has given a gloomy cast to the mind, and in the north more than in the south. The Thor of the Celtic nations was more tremendous, more feared and less beloved, than the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans; he was worshipped accordingly with more b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices. But in all Europe, Western Asia and the northwestern coast of Africa, where the earth is uneven and the climate variable, their religion was more gloomy and their G.o.ds more ferocious than among the ancient Egyptians.

A like difference is observed in the religions of the two countries in America where civilization was most advanced before the arrival of the Spaniards. Peru enjoyed a climate of great serenity and regularity. Of all the sensible agents that operated on the earth and air, the sun was apparently the most uniform and energetic. The worship of the sun was therefore the most predominant and durable; and it inspired a mildness of manners a.n.a.logous to his mild and beneficent influence. In Mexico and other uneven countries, where storms and earthquakes were frequent, the sun, altho he was reckoned among their deities, was not considered so powerful as those of a more boisterous and maleficent nature. The Mexican worship was therefore addressed chiefly to ferocious beings, enemies to human happiness, who delighted in the tears and blood of their votaries. The difference in the moral cast of religion in Peru and Mexico, as well as in Egypt and Greece, must have been greatly owing to climate. Indeed in what else should it be found? since the origin of religious ideas must have been in the energies of those visible agents which form the distinctive character of climates.