The Philosophy of History Part 5

The music, which is attributed to those primitive ages, consisted probably rather in a medicinal or even magical use of that art, than in the beautiful system of later melody. Among the various works and instruments of smith-craft, and productions of art which the knowledge of mines and metals led to, the momentous discovery of the sword is particularly mentioned: by the brief enigmatic words which relate this discovery, it is difficult to know whether we are to understand them as the expression of a spirit of warlike enthusiasm, or of a renewed curse and dire wailing over all the succeeding centuries of hereditary murder, and progressive evil, under the divine permission. In all probability, these words refer to the origin of human sacrifices, emanating as they did from an infernal design, which we must consider as one of the strongest characteristics of this race; and those b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices of the primitive world seem to have stamped on the rites and customs, as well as on the traditions and sentiments, of many nations a peculiar character of gloom and sadness. From this race were descended not only the inhabitants of cities, but nomade tribes, whereof many led, several thousand years ago, the same wandering life which they follow at the present day in the central parts of Eastern Asia; where vast remains of primitive mining operations are frequently found.

It is worthy of remark that, among one of these nations, the Ishudes, who inhabit a metallic mountain, we find, if we may so speak, an inverted history of Cain; mention is made of the enmity between the first two brothers of mankind, but all the circ.u.mstances are set forth in a party-spirit favourable to Cain. It is said that the elder brother acquired wealth by gold and silver mines, but that the younger, becoming envious, drove him away, and forced him to take refuge in the East.[40]

So is the race of Cain and Cain's sons represented from its origin, as one attached to the arts, versed in the use of metals, disinclined to peace, and addicted to habits of warfare and violence, as again at a later period, it appears in scripture as a haughty and wicked race of giants.

On the other hand the peaceful race of Patriarchs who lived in a docile reverence of G.o.d and with a holy simplicity of manners, were descended from Seth. This second progenitor of mankind occupies a very prominent place even in the traditions of other nations, which make particular mention of the columns of Seth, signifying no doubt, in the language of remote antiquity, very ancient monuments, and, as it were, the stony records of sacred tradition. In general the first ten holy Progenitors or Patriarchs of the primitive world are mentioned under different names in the Sagas, not only of the Indians, but of several other Asiatic nations, though undoubtedly with important variations, and not without much poetical colouring. But as in these traditions we can clearly discern the same general traits of history, this diversity of representation serves only to corroborate the main truth, and to ill.u.s.trate it more fully and forcibly. The views, therefore, of those modern theologians, who represent the concurrent testimony of Gentile nations to the truths of primitive history as derived solely from the Mosaic narrative, and as it were transcribed from a genuine copy of our Bible, are equally narrow-minded and erroneous.

It would be more just and more consonant with the whole spirit of the primitive world, to a.s.sert, what indeed may be conceded with little difficulty, that these nations had received much from the primeval source of sacred tradition; but they regarded as a peculiar possession, and represented under peculiar forms, the common blessings of primitive revelation; and, instead of preserving in their integrity and purity the traditions and oracles of the primitive world, they overlaid them with poetical ornament, so that their whole traditions wear a fabulous aspect, until a nearer and more patient investigation clearly discovers in them the main features of historic truth.

Under these two different forms, therefore doth Tradition reveal to us the primitive world, or in other words, these are the two grand conditions of humanity which fill the records of primitive history. On the one hand, we see a race, lovers of peace, revering G.o.d, blessed with long life which they spend in patriarchal simplicity and innocence, and still no strangers to deeper science, especially in all that relates to sacred tradition and inward contemplation, and transmitting their science to posterity in the old or symbolical writing, not in fragile volumes, but on durable monuments of stone. On the other hand, we behold a giant race of pretended demi-G.o.ds, proud, wicked and violent, or, as they are called in the later Sagas of the heroic times, the heaven-storming t.i.tans.

This opposition, and this discord,--this hostile struggle between the two great divisions of the human race, forms the whole tenour of primitive history. When the moral harmony of man had once been deranged, and two opposite wills had sprung up within him, a divine will or a will seeking G.o.d, and a natural will or a will bent on sensible objects, pa.s.sionate and ambitious, it is easy to conceive how mankind from their very origin must have diverged into two opposite paths.

Although this primitive division of mankind is now characterized as a difference of races, this is far from being merely the case; and that opposition which distracted the primitive world had far deeper causes than the mere distinction of a n.o.ble and a meaner race of men. It is somewhat in this manner a German scholar of the last generation, divided all nations now existing, or which have appeared within the later historical ages, into two cla.s.ses; wherever he imagined he found his favourite Celts and their descendants, he had not words strong enough to extol their romantic heroism; while he pursued with the most pitiless animosity, over the whole face of the earth, the unfortunate Monguls and all those he deduced from that stock. The struggle which divided the primitive world into two great parties arose far more from the opposition of feelings and of principles, than from difference of extraction. Great as is the interval which separates those ages and that world from our own, we can easily comprehend how this first mighty contest of nations, which history makes mention of, was in fact a struggle between two religious parties--two hostile sects, though indeed under far other forms, and in different relations from anything we witness in the present state of the world. It was, in one word, a contest between religion and impiety, conducted however on the mighty scale of the primitive world, and with all those gigantic powers which, according to ancient tradition, the first men possessed.[41]

The Greek Sagas represent this two-fold state of mankind in the primitive ante-historical ages in a very peculiar manner, as the gradual decline and corruption of successive generations; of this kind is the tradition of the ages of the world, whereof four or five are numbered.

The Golden age of human felicity and the brazen age of all-ruling violence form the two essential terms of this tradition; and the intermediate ages are mere links, or points of transition to render the account more complete.

In the age of Saturn, the first race allied to the G.o.ds lived in peace and happiness, and were blessed with eternal youth; the earth poured forth her fruits and gifts in spontaneous abundance, and even the end of human life was not a real or painful death, but a gentle slumber into another and higher world of immortal spirits. But the next generation in the age of Silver is represented as wicked, devoid of reverence for the G.o.ds, and giving loose to every turbulent pa.s.sion. In the Brazen age this state of crime and disorder reached its highest pitch; lordly violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic t.i.tans. Their arms were of copper and their instruments and utensils of bra.s.s, and even, in the construction of their edifices, they made use of copper; for as the old poet says, "black iron was not then known;" a circ.u.mstance which we must consider as strictly historical and as characteristic of the primitive nations. Between this and the following age, the better heroic race of poetical and even historic tradition is somewhat strangely introduced; and the whole series of generations is closed by the Iron age, the present and last period of the world--the term of man's progressive degeneracy.

This idea of a gradual and deeper degradation of human kind in each succeeding age appears at first sight not to accord very well with the testimony which sacred tradition furnishes on man's primitive state; for it represents the two races of the primitive world as cotemporary; and indeed Seth, the progenitor of the better and n.o.bler race of virtuous Patriarchs, was much younger than Cain. However, this contradiction is only apparent, if we reflect that it was the wicked and violent race which drew the other into its disorders, and that it was from this contamination a giant corruption sprang, which continually increased till, with a trifling exception, it pervaded the whole ma.s.s of mankind, and till the justice of G.o.d required the extirpation of degenerate humanity by one universal Flood.

In the Indian Sagas, the two races of the primitive world are represented in a state of continual or perpetually renewed warfare:--wicked nations of giants attack one or other of the two Brahminical races that descend from the virtuous Patriarchs; generous and divinely inspired heroes come to their a.s.sistance, and achieve many wonderful victories over these formidable foes. Such is the chief subject of all the great epic poems, and most ancient heroic Sagas of the Indians. In conformity to their present modes of thinking, and to their present const.i.tution of society, they describe that fierce race of giants as a degraded caste of warriors; and they even give that denomination to many nations well known in later history, such as the Chinese, who bear the same name with them as with ourselves; the Pahlavas, who were a tribe of the ancient Medes and Persians, corresponding to one of the two sacred languages of ancient Persia--the Pahlavi--and the Ionians or Yavanas according to the Asiatic denomination of the primitive Greeks. It may even be a matter of doubt, whether a regular caste of warriors, and an hereditary priesthood, according to the very ancient system of the hereditary division of cla.s.ses, did not exist in the primitive world. However great may be the chronological confusion evinced in these poems and Sagas, however much, perhaps, of later history may have been interwoven into their ancient narratives, and however much of poetical embellishment and gigantic hyperbole the whole may have received, the leading features of historic truth may still be distinguished with certainty in the chequered tablet of tradition. For the hostility of two rival races in the primitive world, considered in itself, and independently of advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances, must be looked upon as a positive and well authenticated fact. It might perhaps be proved before the tribunal of the severest historical criticism that poetry, that is to say, primitive historic tradition clothed with the ornaments of poetry--is often much nearer the truth in its representations of the primitive world than a dull Reason, that draws its estimate of probability from mere vulgar a.n.a.logies, and which sees or affects to see every where only stupid and brutish savages.

A circ.u.mstance which we must never lose sight of in this inquiry is that man did not suffer an immediate and entire loss of those high powers with which he had been endowed at his origin; but that the loss was gradual, and that for a long time yet he retained much of those powers, and that it was indeed the fearful abuse of those faculties in his last stage of degeneracy which produced that enormous licentiousness and wickedness spoken of in Holy Writ. And this is the real clue to the whole purport of primitive history, and to all that appears to us in it so full of enigma. This leading subject of primitive history--the struggle between two races, as it is the first great event in universal history, is also of the utmost importance in the investigation of the subsequent progress of nations; for this original contest and opposition among men, according to the two-fold direction of the will, a will conformable to that of G.o.d, and a will carnal, ambitious, and enslaved to Nature, often recurs, though on a lesser scale, in later history; or at least we can perceive something like a feeble reflection or a distant echo of this primal discord. And even at the present period, which is certainly much nearer to the last than to the first ages of the world, it would appear sometimes as if humanity were again destined, as at its origin, to be more and more separated into two parties, or two hostile divisions. And as the greatest of German philosophers, Leibnitz, admirably observed that the sect of atheism would be the last in Christendom and in the world; so it is highly probable that this sect was the last in the primitive world, though stamped with the peculiar form which society at that period must have given to it, and on a scale of more gigantic magnitude.

On this important subject we have another observation to make, which refers more properly to an incidental circ.u.mstance in primitive history; for our great business is with the moral and intellectual progress of man. But even in respect to this more important object, the circ.u.mstance which we allude to should not be pa.s.sed over in silence, as it tends to exemplify, ill.u.s.trate and confirm the principle we have already had occasion to enforce; namely that we ought not to estimate by the narrow standard of present a.n.a.logies and vulgar probabilities, all those facts in primitive nature and in primitive history which strike us as so strange, mysterious, and marvellous; provided they be really attested by ancient monuments and ancient tradition. We should ever bear in mind what a mighty wall of separation--what an impa.s.sable abyss--divides us from that remote world both of nature and of man. I refer to the unanimous testimony of ancient tradition respecting the gigantic forms of the first men, and their corresponding longevity, far exceeding, as it did, the present ordinary standard of the duration of human life.

With respect to the latter circ.u.mstance, indeed, there are so very many causes contributing to shorten considerably the length of human life, that we have completely lost every criterion by which to estimate its original duration; and it would be no slight problem for a profound physiological science to discover and explain from a deeper investigation of the internal const.i.tution of the earth, or of astronomical influences, which are often susceptible of very minute applications the primary cause of human longevity. By a simpler course of life and diet than the very artificial, unnatural and over-refined modes we follow, there are even at the present day numerous examples of a longevity far beyond the ordinary duration of human life. In India it is by no means uncommon to meet with men, especially in the Brahminical caste, more than a hundred years of age, and in the enjoyment of a robust, and even generative vigour of const.i.tution. In the labouring cla.s.s in Russia, whose mode of living is so simple, there are examples of men living to more than a hundred, a hundred and twenty, and even a hundred and fifty years of age; and although these instances form but rare exceptions, they are less uncommon there than in other European countries. There are even remarkable cases of old men, who after the entire loss of their teeth, have gained a complete new set as if their const.i.tution had received a new sap of life, and a principle of second growth. What, in the present physical degeneracy of mankind, forms but a rare exception, may originally have been the ordinary measure of the duration of human life, or at least may afford us some trace and indication of such a measure; more especially as other branches of natural science offer correspondent a.n.a.logies. On the other side of that great wall of separation which divides us from the primitive ages--in that remote world so little known to us, a standard for the duration of human life very different from the present may have prevailed; and such an opinion is extremely probable, supported as it is by manifold testimony, and confirmed by the sacred record of man's divine origin.

In order better to understand and judge more correctly of the biblical number of years in human life, we ought never to overlook the very religious purport of the symbolical relation of numbers in the divine chronology. We should thus ever keep ourselves in readiness, as, according to the expression of Holy Writ, the hairs on a man's head are numbered--and how much more so the years of his life!--and as nothing here must be considered fortuitous, but all things as predetermined and regulated according to the views of Providence. Again, as the Scripture often mentions that, in the hidden decrees of his mercy, the Almighty hath graciously been pleased to shorten the duration of a determined s.p.a.ce of time:--as, for example, a course of irreversible suffering--or on the other hand, hath added a certain number of years to a determined period of grace, or prolonged the duration of a man's life; it behoves us to examine which of these two courses of divine favour be in any proposed case discoverable. In the extreme longevity of the holy Patriarchs of the primitive world--a longevity which as has been long proved and acknowledged, must be understood with reference only to the common astronomical years, the latter course of the divine goodness is discernible, and human life in those ages must be regarded as miraculously and supernaturally prolonged.[42] In the duration of Enoch's life, that holy prophet of the primitive world, whose translation was no death, but which, as the exit originally designed for man, should on that account be considered natural, the coincidence with the astronomical number of days in the sun's course round the earth is the more striking, as in the number of 365 years the number 33 is comprised as the root--a number which, in every respect and in the most various application, is discovered to be the primary number of the earth. For, with the slight difference of an unit, the number of 365 years corresponds to the sum of 333, with the addition of 33; but the number of days strictly comprised in those 365 years amounts to four times 33,000, with the addition of four times 330 days.

With regard to the gigantic stature attributed to the primitive race of men, by the authentic testimony of universal tradition;--a testimony which it is easy to distinguish from mere poetical embellishment or exaggeration--it is singular that those who are otherwise so disposed to apply the a.n.a.logies of nature to the human species, should in this instance at least hold up the now ordinary scale of human bulk as the only standard of probability and certainty. The remains, more than once alluded to, of that primitive world which has perished, show that of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, the largest of all existing animals, there were originally from twenty to thirty different tribes and species which are now extinct. Of the mammoth, that gigantic animal of antiquity, remains of which are found not only in Siberia and America, but in the different counties of Europe, near Paris, and even in this immediate neighbourhood, a great number of various species have been also proved to have existed from the investigation of these ante-diluvian remains. Even of animals more familiar to us, bones and other remains have been discovered of a very unusual and truly gigantic size. Bulls' horns fastened together by a front-bone--antlers of stags, and elephants' tusks have been found, which prove those animals to have been of a dimension three, four, and even five times greater than they usually are at present. If in this elder period of organic nature, and of an animal kingdom which has become extinct, this gigantic style was so very prevalent, is it not reasonable to infer a similar a.n.a.logy in the human species, so far at least as relates to their physical conformation, especially when this a.n.a.logy is unanimously attested by the primitive Sagas and traditions of all nations?

As regards our sacred writings, I must observe that they tacitly imply and indeed pretty clearly attest the superior stature as well as great longevity of the first men; while, on the other hand, they represent the really gigantic structure of body as an organic degradation and degeneracy, originating in the illicit union of the two primitive races--the Cainites and the Sethites--an union which was the source of universal corruption--as the all-destroying deluge was a mighty judgment brought about by the pride and wickedness of those giants, and was indeed against these princ.i.p.ally directed.--Even at a later period, the Scripture speaks of some nations of giants, that, prior to the introduction of the Israelites into the promised land, occupied several of its provinces, such as Moab, Ammon, Bashan, and the country about the primitive city of giants--Hebron. These tribes are represented as celebrated for valour indeed, yet as inclined solely to warfare, wild, and wicked; and even the individual giants, that appear in the age of Moses and in the history of David, are described as peculiarly monstrous from their great corporal deformity. The only savage tribe now existing, (as far as our present knowledge of the globe can enable us to speak,) possessed of a very uncommon, enormous and almost gigantic stature--the Patagonians of America, are at the same time noted for their personal deformity. With them it is the upper part of the body that is of such a disproportionate length, for when seen on horseback they appear to be real giants, and hence they were so accounted at first. When on a closer inspection we see the whole length of their bodies in the att.i.tude either of standing or of walking, we perceive indeed they are of the very extraordinary height of from seven to eight feet, but not of that gigantic stature which the first impression led us to suppose, and which may so naturally have given rise to exaggerated accounts.

After all this, and what has been above stated, I need say no more than frankly declare that, as to these two points, the extraordinary longevity and gigantic stature of the first men,--I never could have the courage to raise a formal doubt against the plain declaration of Holy Writ, and the general testimony of primitive tradition. The full explanation, the more correct conception, and the perfect comprehension of these two facts are perhaps reserved for a later period, and the investigations of a deeper physical science.

There exist also monuments, or rather fragments of edifices, of the most primitive antiquity, which, as they are connected with the subject under discussion, are here deserving of a slight notice. I allude to those Cyclopean walls, which are to be found in several parts of Italy, and which those who have once seen will not easily forget, nor the singular stamp of antiquity they bear. In this very peculiar architecture, we see, instead of the stones of the usual cubical or oblong form, huge fragments of rock rudely cut into the shape of an irregular polygon, and skilfully enough joined together. Even the great, and often admired, subterraneous aqueduct, or Cloaca of ancient Rome is considered as belonging to this cyclopean architecture, remains of which exist also near Argos and in several other parts of Greece. These edifices were certainly not built by the celebrated nations that at a later period occupied those countries; for even they regarded them as the work and production of a primitive and departed race of giants; and hence the name which these monuments received. When we consider how very imperfect must have been the instruments of those remote ages, and that they cannot be supposed to have possessed that knowledge in mechanics which the Egyptians, for instance, display in the erection of their obelisks; we can easily conceive how men were led to imagine that more vigorous arms and other powers, than those belonging to the present race of men, were necessary to the construction of those edifices of rock.

Thus have we now endeavoured to explain, as far as was necessary for our purpose, the origin of that dissension, which is inherent in human nature, and forms the basis of all history. We have in the next place sought to unfold and ill.u.s.trate the universal tradition, which attests the hostility between the virtuous Patriarchs and the proud t.i.tans of the primitive world, or the different and opposite spirit that characterized the two primitive races of mankind; a.s.signing, at the same time, to savage nations, or to the more degraded portions of human kind, their proper place in history--a place important undoubtedly, but still secondary in the great scheme of humanity.

These facts, too important to be pa.s.sed over in silence, form the introduction and are, as it were, the porch to universal history, and to the civilization of the human species in the later historical ages. Now that we have seen mankind divided and split into a plurality of nations, our next task, in the period which follows, is to discover the most remarkable and most civilized nations, and to observe what peculiar form the Word, whether innate in man, or communicated to him--the word which may be considered as the essence of all the high prerogatives and characteristic qualities of man; to observe, we say, what peculiar form the word a.s.sumed among each of those nations, in their language and writing, in their religious traditions, their historical Sagas, their poetry, art, and science. In the account of ancient nations, we shall adopt the ethnographical mode of treating history; and it will be only in modern and more recent times that this method will gradually give place to the synchronical; and the reasons of this change will be suggested by the very nature of the subject. In this general survey, we must confine ourselves to those mighty and celebrated nations who have attained to a high degree of intellectual excellence; and we shall select and briefly state remarkable traits or extraordinary historical facts ill.u.s.trative of the manners, social inst.i.tutions, political refinement, and even political history of every nation, worthy of occupying a place in this sketch, in order the better to mark the progress of the intellectual principle in the peculiar culture and modes of thinking of each. It is only at a later period that political history becomes the main object of attention, and almost the leading principle in the progressive march, and even the partial retrogressions of mankind.

In this general picture of the earliest development of the human mind, we can select such nations only as are sufficiently well known, or respecting whom the sources of information are now at least of easier access; for were we to comprehend in this general survey, nations with whom we were less perfectly acquainted, we should be led into minute and interminable researches, without, after all, perhaps, obtaining any new or satisfactory result for the princ.i.p.al object in view. In the first period of antiquity will figure the Chinese, the Indians and the Egyptians, besides the isolated, and the so-called chosen people of the Hebrews; and if I commence by the remotest of the civilized countries of Asia, China, I beg leave to premise that I mean to determine no question of priority as to the respective antiquity of those nations, or to adjudge any preference to one or other amongst them. Indeed their own chronological accounts and pretensions, which often deserve the name of chronological fictions, turn out, on a closer inquiry, to be mere calculations of astronomical periods; and a sound historical criticism will not admit that they were originally meant to be chronological.

Suffice it to say that the three nations we have mentioned belonged to the same period of the world, and attained to an equal, or a very similar, degree of moral and intellectual refinement; and so in respect to that higher object, the chronological dispute becomes unnecessary, or is, at least, of minor importance. Among those, however, who take an active part in these researches, a partiality for one or other of these nations, and for their respective antiquity easily springs up; for even objects the most remote will excite in the human breast the spirit of party. In order to keep as free as possible from prepossessions of this kind, I have adopted a species of geographical division of my subject, which, when I come to treat later of the different periods of modern history, will give place to a more chronological arrangement. I said a _species_ of geographical division, for undoubtedly from the special nature of this historical enquiry, it must be supposed I shall take a different point of view in the geographical survey of the earth than ordinarily occurs in geographical investigations. The geographies for common use properly take as their basis the present situation of the different states and kingdoms now in existence. But a more scientific geography adopts the direction of mountains, and the course of rivers, the vallies produced by the former, and the s.p.a.ce occupied by the waters of the latter, as the leading clue to the division and arrangement of the earth. Thus in the philosophy of history the series of the princ.i.p.al civilized states will form a high, commanding chain; and the philosophic historian will have to follow from east to west, or in any other direction that history may point out, not merely rivers transporting articles of commerce, but the mighty stream of traditions and doctrines which has traversed and fertilized the world.

As the individuals who can be termed historical, form but rare exceptions among mankind, so in the whole circ.u.mference of the globe, there are only a certain number of nations that occupy an important and really historical place in the annals of civilization. By far the greater part of the inhabited or habitable globe, however rich and ample a field it may offer to the investigations of the naturalist, cannot be included in this cla.s.s, or has not attained to this degree of eminence.

In the whole continent of Africa there is, besides Egypt, only the northern coast stretching along the Mediterranean, that is at all connected with the history and intellectual progress of the civilized world. The other coasts of Africa, including its southernmost cape, furnish points of importance to commerce, navigation, and even some attempts at colonization; while the interior parts of this continent, still so little known, possess much to excite the attention and wonder of the naturalist; but beyond this, its maritime as well as central regions, cannot be said to occupy a place in the intellectual history, or in the moral progress, of our species. It is only since it has formed a province of the Russian empire that the vast territory of Northern Asia has become known to us, and has been, as it were, newly discovered.

From central and eastern Asia, from the south of Tartary and the north of China, many mighty and conquering nations have issued, that have spread the terror of their arms over the face of civilization, as far as the frontiers of Europe.

But, in the march and development of the human mind, these nations are far from occupying the same eminent station. In this respect, also, the fifth continent of the globe, Polynesia--though nearly equal to Europe in extent, counts as nought. Even America, the largest of those continents, occupies here a comparatively subordinate rank; and it is only in latter ages, and since its discovery, that it can be said to belong to history. Since that period, indeed, the inhabitants of this portion of the world have adopted, for the most part, the language, the manners, the modes of thinking, and the political Inst.i.tutions of Europe; for the still subsisting remnant of its ancient savages is very inconsiderable: so that America may be regarded as a remote dependency, and, as it were, a continuation of old Europe on the other side of the Atlantic. Great as the re-action may be, which this second Europe, sprung up in the solitudes of the new world, has during the last fifty years exerted on its mother-continent, still as this influence forms a part but of very recent history, it is only in very modern times that America has obtained any historical weight and importance.

Even in its natural configuration, the new world is more widely different from the old, than the princ.i.p.al parts of the latter are from each other. As in comparing the Northern extremity of the earth with its Southern or aqueous extremity, we observe a striking disparity, and almost complete opposition between the two; so we shall find this to be the case, if, in advancing in the opposite direction from east to west, we divide the whole surface of the earth into two equal parts. On one hand that more important division of the earth, extending from the Western coast of Africa to the Eastern coast of Asia, comprises the three ancient continents, which, from the upper to the middle part, occupy almost the whole s.p.a.ce of this half of the globe. Here is the greatest quant.i.ty of land, and the animal kingdom, too, is on a more large and magnificent scale. It is only at the Southern extremity of this hemisphere that sea and water are predominant; and here a continuous chain of islands from the southernmost point of Asia reaches to the fifth and last portion of the globe--Australia, making it a sort of Asiatic dependency. In the American hemisphere, the element of water is predominant, not only at the Southern extremity, but towards the middle; for, large as America may be, it can bear no comparison with the other continents in respect to extent of surface. Our hemisphere is more remarkable even for extent of population than for the quant.i.ty of land.

Here indeed is the chief seat of population, and the princ.i.p.al theatre of human history and human civilization.

The entire population of America, which, as it is for the most part of European extraction, is better known to us than that of many countries more contiguous--the entire population of America at the highest computation of the whole number of inhabitants on the globe, forms but a thirtieth part, and at the lowest computation, not a four-and-twentieth part of the whole. Widely extended as this thinly peopled continent is, the whole number of its inhabitants scarcely exceeds the population of a single great European state, such as either France or Germany, whose population, indeed, it about equals. Vegetation, indeed, is most rich and luxuriant in America; but the two most generous plants reared by human culture, and which are so closely connected with the primitive history of man--corn and the vine--were originally unknown in this quarter of the world. In the animal kingdom, America is far inferior to the other and more ancient continents of the globe. Many of the n.o.blest and most beautiful species of animals did not exist there originally; and others again were found most unseemly in form, and most degenerate in nature. Some species of animals indigenous to that continent form but a feeble compensation for the absence of others, the most useful and most necessary for the purposes of husbandry and the domestic uses of man. We may boldly lay it down as a general proposition not to be taxed with error or exaggeration, that in the new hemisphere, vegetation is predominant, while in the old, animal force preponderates, and is more fully developed. This superiority is apparent not only in the comparative extent of population, but in the organic structure of the human form. Even the African tribes are far superior in bodily strength and agility to the aboriginal natives of America; and in point of longevity and fecundity, the latter are not to be compared with the Malayan race, and the Mongul tribes in the central or North-eastern parts of Asia, and in Southern Tartary, races with whom, in other respects, they seem to bear some a.n.a.logy.

As the American continent, in other respects so incomplete, is mostly separated from all the others; and its form is more simple and less complex than that of the ancient divisions of the globe, it well deserves our consideration in that point of view; and it may perhaps furnish the general type and true geographical outline of a continent in its natural state. A narrow isthmus connects the upper half, stretching in a widely extended tract towards the North Pole, and the inferior part, with its Southern peak; and thus both form, according to general impression but one and the same continent; and so prove, in fact, how totally the Northern and Southern parts of a continent may differ. That now in the period when the Euxine was still united to the Caspian, when the White sea stretched farther into land, and the Ural mountains formed an island, or were surrounded to the North and South by the sea, Asia and Europe were probably separated towards the North, is a point to which we have already had occasion to allude. But if, on the one hand, Europe were separated from Asia, it might on the other have been easily joined to Africa by an isthmus, where it is now divided from it by a straight, and so have formed with it one connected continent; in the same way as Australia is united with Asia, if at least we consider the long chain of islands between them as one unbroken continuity. Then in truth there would have been but three continents of a form similar to the above-mentioned one of America; except that the two n.o.bler continents closely entangled with one another would not on that account have so well preserved the original conformation. That it is on the whole more correct, and more consonant with nature, as well as with theory, to suppose the existence of only three original portions of the globe, might be shown by much additional evidence.

But, laying aside these geological facts and observations, ideas and conjectures, the philosophic historian can reckon over the whole surface of the globe but fifteen historical and important civilized countries of greater or less extent, which can form the subject, and furnish the geographical outline of his remarks. This historical chain of lands, or this stream of historical nations from the south-east of Asia to the Northern and Western extremities of Europe, forms a tract, through both continents, which though of considerable breadth, is not, in proportion to the extent of these continents, of very great magnitude, and which may be divided into three cla.s.ses, coinciding chronologically in their several periods of historical glory and development with the great eras or sections of universal history from the primitive ages down to the present times. In the first cla.s.s of these mighty and celebrated civilized countries, I would place the three great magnificent regions in Eastern and Southern Asia, China, India, between which the ancient Bactriana forms a point of transition and connecting link--and lastly Persia. In a more westerly and somewhat more northerly direction than the three countries just named, the second or middle cla.s.s is composed of four or five regions remarkable for extent and beauty, and above all for their historical importance and celebrity. First of all, there is that middle country of Western Asia above-mentioned, which is situate near two great streams--the Tigris and the Euphrates, and bounded by four inland seas, the Persian and Arabian gulfs, and the Caspian and Mediterranean seas. Upon this midland country of ancient history, in every respect so worthy of notice, I have but one observation to add, that in this great series of civilized countries it occupies nearly the middle place; for the Southern extremity of India is about as far removed from it as, in the opposite direction, the North of Scotland.

And the Eastern part of China is not much more distant from this region than in the opposite quarter the Western coast of the Hesperian Peninsula. Next must be included in this cla.s.s the circ.u.mjacent countries, Arabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, together with the Caucasian regions.

As in the flourishing period of her ancient history, Greece was in every way far more closely connected with Asia Minor, Phnicia, and Egypt, than with the countries of Europe, she also must be comprised in this division of Central Asia. On the other hand, there is no country in Europe which, considered in itself, bears so strongly the distinctive geographical configuration peculiar to the European continent. This peculiar configuration of Europe, so well adapted to the purposes of settlement, and to the progress of civilization, consists in this--that in no other continent does the same given s.p.a.ce of territory present to the sea so extensive and diversified a line of coast, and furnish it with so many streams, great and small, as Europe shut in, as it is, between two inland seas, and the great ocean, and which runs out into so many great and commodiously situated Peninsulas, and possesses large, magnificent, and, in part, very anciently and highly civilized islands, like Sicily and the British Isles. What Europe is in a large way, Greece is in a small--a region of coasts, islands and peninsulas. Belonging more to one continent in its natural conformation, and to the other by its historical connexion, Greece forms the point of transition and the intermediate link between Asia and Europe.

The other six or seven princ.i.p.al countries in Europe, taken according to a strict geographical cla.s.sification, and without paying attention to the political variations of territory, whether in antiquity, the middle ages, or modern times, form the members of the third cla.s.s. These are first the two beautiful peninsulas, Italy and Spain; next France on the North and South washed by two different seas, and towards the North, jutting out into a by no means inconsiderable peninsula--further on, the British isles, the ancient Germany with its Northern coast stretching along two seas, to which must be annexed from the ancient consanguinity of their inhabitants, the Cimbric and Scandinavian islands and peninsulas; lastly, the vast Sarmatia, towards the North and East extending far into Asia, in the wide tract from the Euxine to the Frozen sea. From Sarmatia, however, must be separated, on account of their natural situation, the great Danubian countries, extending from the South of the Carpathian mountains, down to the other mountainous chain northward of Greece--such as the ancient Illyric.u.m, Pannonia and Dacia--regions which, in a strict geographical point of view, must be regarded as forming a distinct cla.s.s. In an historical point of view, the whole Northern coast of Africa, stretching along the Mediterranean, should be included in this division of European countries, not only from that early commercial and colonial connexion, established in the time of the Carthaginian republic, and in the first period of the Roman wars and conquests; but from the prevalence in that country, down to the fourth and fifth centuries, of European manners, language and refinement. Even during the existence of the Saracenic empire, a very close intercourse subsisted for many centuries between this coast and Spain.

Such, according to a general geographical survey of the globe, would be the historical land-chart of civilization, if I may so express myself, which forms the grand outline I must steadily keep in view, in the following sketch of nations, in which I will endeavour to explain with the utmost clearness and precision, and point out closely in all its particular bearings, the principle laid down in this work respecting the internal Word, as the essential characteristic of man.

END OF LECTURE II.

LECTURE III.

Of the const.i.tution of the Chinese Empire--the moral and political condition of China--the character of Chinese intellect and Chinese science.

"Man and the earth,"--this has been the subject of our previous disquisitions, and might serve as the superscription to this first portion of the work. In the second part, comprised in the four or five following lectures, the subject discussed is sacred Tradition, according to the peculiar form which it a.s.sumed among each of the great and most remarkable nations in primitive antiquity, and as it is known from the visible and universally scattered traces of a divine Revelation. It will be our duty to trace, with a discriminating eye, the various course which, in the lapse of ages, this sacred tradition followed among each of those nations; and at the same time to point out, as far as the subject will admit of historical proof, the one common source whence, as from a centre, issued those different streams of tradition to diffuse throughout all the regions of the earth fertility and life, or to be lost and dried up in the sterile sands of human error. It will be also our task more accurately to define the share allotted to each of those leading nations in divine truth, or the heritage of higher knowledge which had been imparted to them. Closely connected with this subject, is the designation of the internal Word, const.i.tuting as it does the distinguishing mark and intellectual being of man and mankind; and which, as it has been variously manifested and developed in the language, writings, Sagas, history, art and science--in the faith, the life and modes of thinking of each of those nations, will be described in its most essential traits.

I shall commence with the Chinese Empire, because, among the fifteen historical countries included in the line of civilization we have drawn above, it occupies the extreme point of Eastern Asia. The names of East and West are indeed purely relative; and have not the same permanent and definite signification as the North or South pole in every portion of the globe. China lies to the west of Peru; and to North America, or Brazil, Europe forms the east or north-east point. We still however adhere to common speech, purely relative as it is, and take our point of view from this Asiatic and European hemisphere, in which we dwell. If we would extend in a westerly direction and to the great continent of America, which is more and more a.s.suming an important place in the history of the world, that series of great and civilized states, stretching from the south-east to the north-west in our mightier, more celebrated, and earlier civilized hemisphere, we might add to the before-mentioned fifteen ancient and modern countries three young or rising states in the new world, which, springing in a three-fold division from British, Spanish, and Portuguese extraction, would const.i.tute the most recent, or last historical links in this chain of communities.

The Chinese empire is the largest of all the Monarchies now existing on the earth, and even in this respect may well challenge the attention of the historical enquirer. This empire is not absolutely the greatest in territorial extent, though even in this respect it is scarcely inferior to the greatest; but in point of population it is in all probability the first. Spain, if we could now include in the number of her possessions her American colonies, would exceed all empires in extent. The same may be said of Russia, with her annexed colonies, and boundless provinces in the north of Asia. But, great as the population of this Empire may be, when considered in itself and relatively to the other European states, it can sustain no comparison with that of China. England with the East Indies and her colonial possessions in the three divisions of the globe, Polynesia, Africa, and America, has indeed a very wide extent, and, perhaps, when we include the hundred and ten millions that own her sway in India, comes the nearest in point of population to China. Of the amount of the Chinese population, which is not with certainty known, that of India may furnish a criterion for a conjectural and probable estimate. The British amba.s.sador, Lord Macartney received an official doc.u.ment, in which the whole population of China was computed at the monstrous amount of 330 millions. Even if the Chinese possessed those exact statistical estimates we have in Europe, it would still be a matter of doubt how far in such cases we could confide in their veracity, especially in their relations with foreigners and Europeans.

In another and somewhat earlier statistical work, composed towards the close of the 18th century, the population of this empire is estimated at 147 millions; and the very incredible statement is added, that a hundred and fifty years before, or about the middle of the 17th century, the Chinese population amounted only to 27 millions and a half. This rapid rise, or rather this prodigious stride in the numbers of a people, would be in utter opposition to all principles and observations on the growth and progressive increase of population, even in the most civilized countries. Thus even the statistical estimates of the Chinese furnish us with no certain information on this subject. However as this vast region is every where intersected by navigable rivers and ca.n.a.ls, every where studded with large and highly populous cities, and enjoys a climate as genial, or even still more genial, and certainly far more salubrious than that of India; as, like the latter country, it every where presents to the eye the richest culture, and is in all appearance as much peopled, or over-peopled, we may take India, whose total population is not near included in the 110 millions under British rule, as furnishing a pretty accurate standard for the computation of the Chinese population. Now, when we reflect that even the proper China is larger than the whole western peninsula of India, and that the vast countries dependent on China, such as Thibet and southern Tartary are very populous, the conjectural calculation of the English writer, from whom I have taken these critical remarks on the early estimates of Chinese population, and who reckons it at 150 millions, may be regarded as a very moderate computation, and may with perfect safety, be considerably raised. Thus then the Chinese population is nearly as large as the whole population of Europe, and const.i.tutes, if not a fourth, at least a fifth, of the total population of the globe.

I permit myself to indulge in cursory comparisons of this kind, and for the reason that the history of civilization, which forms the basis, and as it were the outward body, of the philosophy of history, which should be the inner and higher sense of the whole, is deeply interested in all that refers to the general condition of humanity. And such an interest, which does not of itself lie in mere statistical calculations, but in the outward condition of mankind, as the symbol of its inward state, may very well attach to comparisons of this nature.

The interest, however, which the philosophic historian should take in all that relates to humanity in general, and to the various nations of the earth, ought not to be regulated by the false standard of an indiscriminate equality, that would consider all nations of equal importance, and pay equal attention to all without distinction. This would indeed betray an indifference to, or at least ignorance of, the higher principle implanted in the human breast. But this interest should be measured not merely by the degree of population in a state, or by geographical extent of territory, or by external power, but by population, territory and power combined--by moral worth and intellectual pre-eminence, by the scale of civilization to which the nation has attained. The Tongoosses, though a very widely diffused race, the Calmucks, though, compared with the other nations of central Asia, they have much to claim our attention, cannot certainly excite equal interest, or hold as high a place in the history of human civilization, as the Greeks or the Egyptians; though the territory of Egypt itself is certainly not particularly large, nor according to our customary standard of population, were its inhabitants in all probability ever very numerous. In the same way, the Empire of the Moguls, which embraced China itself, has not the same high interest and importance in our eyes as the Roman Empire either in its rise or in its fall. Writers on universal history have not however always avoided this fault, and have been too much disposed to place all nations on the same historical footing,--on the false level of an indiscriminate equality; and to regard humanity in a mere physical point of view, and according to the natural cla.s.sification of tribes and races. In these sketches of history, the high and the n.o.ble is often ranked with the low and the vulgar, and neither what is truly great, nor what is of lesser importance, (for this, too, should not be overlooked) has its due place in these portraits of mankind.

A numerous, or even excessive population is undoubtedly an essential element of political power in a state; but it is not the only, nor in any respect, the princ.i.p.al symptom or indication of the civilization of a country. It is only in regard to civilization that the population of China deserves our consideration. Although in these latter times, when Europe by her political ascendency over the other parts of the world has proved the high pre-eminence of her arts and civilization; England and Russia have become the immediate neighbours of China towards the north and west; still these territorial relations affect not the rest of Europe; and China, when we leave out of consideration its very important commerce, cannot certainly be accounted a political power in the general system. Even in ancient, as well as in modern times, China never figured in the history of Western Asia or Europe, and had no connection whatever with their inhabitants; but this great country has ever stood apart, like a world within itself, in the remote, unknown Eastern Asia. Hence the earlier writers on universal history have taken little or no notice of this great Empire, shut out as it was from the confined horizon of their views. And this was natural, when we consider that the conquests and expeditions of the Asiatic nations were considered by these writers as subjects of the greatest weight and importance. No conquerors have ever marched from China into Western Asia, like Xerxes, for instance, who pa.s.sed from the interior of Persia to Athens; or Alexander the Great, who extended his victorious march from his small paternal province of Macedon, to beyond the Indus, and almost to the borders of the Ganges, though the latter river, he was in despite of all his efforts, unable to reach. But the great victorious expeditions have proceeded not from China, but from central Asia, and the nations of Tartary, who have invaded China itself; though in these invasions the manners, mind, and civilization of the Chinese have evinced their power, as their Tartar conquerors, in the earliest as in the latest times, have after a few generations, invariably conformed to the manners and civilization of the conquered nation, and become more or less Chinese.

Not only the great population and flourishing agriculture of this fruitful country, but the cultivation of silk, for which it has been celebrated from all antiquity; the culture of the tea-plant, which forms such an important article of European trade; as well as the knowledge of several most useful medicinal productions of nature; and unique and, in their way, excellent products of industry and manufacture; prove the very high degree of civilization which this people has attained to. And how should not that people be ent.i.tled to a high or one of the highest places among civilized nations, which had known, many centuries before Europe, the art of printing, gun-powder, and the magnet--those three so highly celebrated and valuable discoveries of European skill? Instead of the regular art of printing with transposeable letters, which would not suit the Chinese system of writing, this people make use of a species of lithography, which, to all essential purposes is the same, and attended with the same effects. Gunpowder serves in China, as it did in Europe in the infancy of the discovery, rather for amus.e.m.e.nt and for fire-works, than for the more serious purpose of warlike fortification and conquest: and though this people are acquainted with the magnetic needle, they have never made a like extended application of its powers, and never employ it either in a confined river and coasting navigation, or on the wide ocean, on which they never venture.

The Chinese are remarkable too for the utmost polish and refinement of manners, and even for a fastidious urbanity and a love of stately ceremonial. In many respects indeed their politeness and refinement almost equal those of European nations, or at least are very superior to what we usually designate by the term of oriental manners--a term which in our sense can apply only to the more contiguous Mahometan countries of the Levant. Of this a.s.sertion we may find a sufficient proof in any single tale that pourtrays the present Chinese life and manners, in the novel, for instance, translated by M. Remusat.[43] In their present manners and fashions, however, there are many things utterly at variance with European taste and feelings; I need only mention the custom of the dignitaries, functionaries, and men of letters, letting their nails grow to the length of birds' claws, and that other custom in women of rank, of compressing their feet to a most artificial diminutiveness. Both customs, according to the recent account of a very intelligent Englishman, serve to mark and distinguish the upper cla.s.s; for the former renders the men totally incapable of hard or manual labour, and the latter impedes the women of rank in walking, or at least gives them a mincing gait, and a languid, delicate and interesting air. These minute traits of manners should not be overlooked in the general sketch of this nation, for they perfectly correspond to many other characteristic marks and indications of unnatural stiffness, childish vanity, and exaggerated refinement, which we meet with in the more important province of its intellectual exertions. Even in the basis of all intellectual culture, the language, or rather the writing of the Chinese, this character of refinement pushed beyond all bounds and all conception is visible, while on the other hand it is coupled with great intellectual poverty and jejuneness. In a language where there are not much more than three hundred, not near four hundred, and (according to the most recent critical investigation,) only 272 monosyllabic primitive roots without any kind of grammar; where the not merely various but utterly unconnected significations of one and the same word are marked in the first place by a varying modulation of the voice, according to a fourfold method of accentuation; in the next place, and chiefly by the written characters, which amount to the prodigious number of eighty thousand; while the Egyptian hieroglyphs do not exceed the number, of eight hundred; and this Chinese system of writing is the most artificial in the whole world. An inference which is not invalidated by the fact that, out of that great number of all actual or possible written characters, but a fourth part perhaps is really in use, and a still less portion is necessary to be learned. As the meaning, especially of more complex notions and abstract ideas can be fully fixed and accurately determined only by such artificial ciphers; the language is far more dependent on these written characters than on living sound; for one and the same sound may often be designated by 160 different characters, and have as many significations. It not rarely occurs that Chinese, when they do not very well understand each other in conversation, have recourse to writing, and by copying down these ciphers are enabled to divine each other's meaning, and become mutually intelligible. To comprehend rightly this immeasurable chaos of originally symbolic, but now merely conventional signs--in other words, to be able to read and write, though this science involves great and difficult problems even for the most practised, const.i.tutes the real subject and purport of the scientific education of a Chinese. Indeed it furnishes labour sufficient to fill up the life of man, for even the European scholars, who have engaged in this study, find it a matter of no small difficulty to devise a system whereby a dictionary, or rather a systematic catalogue of all these written characters may be composed, to serve as a fit guide on this ocean of Chinese signs.--But we shall have again occasion to recur to this subject; and indeed it is only in connexion with the peculiar bearings of the Chinese mind this writing system can be properly explained and understood in its true meaning, or rather its meaningless construction and elaborateness.

Of the external civilization of China, we have a striking proof and a standing monument in the construction of so many ca.n.a.ls that intersect the whole country, and in every thing connected therewith. As the extraordinary fertility of the soil is produced by the many rivers of greater or less magnitude that intersect the country, but which at the same time threaten the flat plains with inundation, it is the first object and most important care of government, to avert the danger of such inundations, to distribute the fertilizing waters in equal abundance over the whole country, and thus by means of ca.n.a.ls, to maintain in all parts the communication by water which is at the same time of equal benefit and importance to industry and internal commerce.

In no civilized state are establishments of this kind so extensively diffused and brought to so high a state of perfection as in China. The great imperial ca.n.a.l which extends to the length of 120 geographical leagues, has, it is said, no parallel on the earth. Although the construction of ca.n.a.ls, and all the regulations on water-carriage could have attained by degrees only to their present state of perfection, still this alone would prove the very early attention which this people had bestowed on the arts of civilized life. Mention is often made of them in the old Chinese histories and imperial annals; and the ca.n.a.ls of China, like the Nile in Egypt, were ever the objects of most anxious solicitude to the government. These annals, whenever they have occasion to speak of those great inundations and destructive floods, which are of such frequent occurrence in Chinese history, invariably represent the attention bestowed on water-courses and water-regulations, as the most certain mark of a wise, benevolent, and provident administration. On the other hand the neglect of this most important of administrative concerns is ever regarded as the proof of a wicked, reckless and unfortunate reign; and in these histories some great calamity, or even violent catastrophe, is sure to follow, like a stroke of divine vengeance, on this unpardonable neglect of duty. Together with the imperial ca.n.a.l, the great Chinese wall, which extends on the Northern frontier of China proper, to the length of 150 geographical leagues, is another no less important, and still standing monument of the comparatively high civilization which this country had very early attained. Such is the height and thickness of this wall, that it has been calculated that its cubic contents exceed all the ma.s.s of stone employed in all the buildings in England and Scotland; or again that the same materials would serve to construct a wall of ordinary height and moderate thickness round the whole earth. This great wall of China may be considered as a characteristic, and as it were a symbol of the seclusive spirit and aversion to every thing foreign in person, manners and modes of thinking which distinguish the Chinese state. This spirit, however has been as little able as the great wall itself, to defend China against foreign conquests, or even against the introduction of foreign sects. This wall, which was built about two centuries before the Christian era, is a historical monument, which furnishes far stronger proof than all the dubious accounts of the old annals that even in ancient times, and long before the conquest of the Monguls, and the establishment of the present dynasty of Mantchou Tartars, the empire had been often conquered, or at least was constantly exposed to the invasions of the Tartar tribes of the North.