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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, by HARPER BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
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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 volume contains that evidence. It is intended as the completion of my work on Human Physiology, in which man was treated of 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 labor 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 endeavored 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 tlat time written. The
iv PREFACE
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.
POSTSCRIPT. OWING to the Civil War, the publication of this work has been postponed for nearly two years. I do not regret the delay. The American reader, for whom it is chiefly intended, will find on many of its pages suggestions arising from the history of other people and other institutions, which may be profitably considered in connection with the great events now transpiring. When a nation has reached one of the epochs of its life, and is preparing itself for another period of progress under new conditions, it is well for every thoughtful man interested in its prosperity to turn his eyes from the contentions of the present to the accomplished facts of the past, and to seek for a solution of existing difficulties in the record of what other people in former times have done.
NEW YORK, 1863. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. IN the course of a few months a large edition of this work has been exhausted, and a second one is called for. For this token of public approval and encouragement I return my sincere thanks. In this edition I have not thought it necessary to make any changes. There had been so long a delay between the original composition of the work and its publication, that unusual opportunities had already been afforded for revising it. NEW YORK, 1864.
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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.-It is 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; it was peopled from Asia. 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 issues in 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....................................................................... 17
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.-The Happiness of 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-its Fall.-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................................ 41
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vi CONTENTS. 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 attain# 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...........
Page 69 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 SKEPTICS, 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.............................................................................................. 106
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................................................................... 127
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CONTENTS. Vii 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, lamblicus, Proclus.- The Alexandrian Trinity.-Ecstasy.-Alliance with M]agic, 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............. Page 153
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........................ 177
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 Gnostic Form, its End-the African Form, continues. Spread of Christianity from Syria.-Its Antagonism to Imperialism; their Conflicts.-Position of Affairs under Dioclesian.-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.-Defense 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........................................................................................................ 197
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Viii CONTENTS. 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............................ Page 228
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 M ohammedanism.-The Arabs become a learned Nation. Review of the Koran.-Reflections on the Loss of Asia and Africa by Christendom......... 241 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 with 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............ 258
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 Medicines. 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. 2d. 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.,
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CONTENTS. ix
Their geological Ideas. - Apply Chemistry to the Practice of Medicine.-Approach of the Conflict between the Saracenic material and the European supernatural System....... Page 284
CHAPTER XIV. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST-( Continued). IMAGE-WORSHIP AND THE MONKS. Origin of IMAGE-WORSHIP.-utility 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.-Final 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 Cenobites. -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......................................................................................... 306
CHAPTER XV. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. THE THREE ATTACKS: NORTHERN OR MORAL; WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL; EASTERN OR MILITARY. THE NORTHERN OR MORAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM, AND ITS TEMPORARY REPULSE. Geographical Boundaries of Italian Christianity.-Attacks upon it. The Northern or moral Attack.-The Emperor of Germany insists on a reformation in the Papacy.- Gerbert, the representative of these Ideas, is made Pope.-They are both poisoned by the Italians. Commencement of the intellectual Rejection of the Italian System.-Originates in the Arabian doctrine of the supremacy of Reason over Authority.-The question of Transubstantiation.-~Rise and development of Scholasticism.-Mutiny among the Monks. Gregory VII. spontaneously accepts and enforces a Reform in the Church. - Overcomes the Emperor of Germany.-Is on the point of establishing a European Theocracy.-The Popes seize the military and monetary Resources of Europe through the Crusades................. 326
CHAPTER XVI. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST-(Continued). THE WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM. The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of Arabian Spain. Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and Sicily.-Examples of Saracen Science in Alhazen, and of Philosophy in Algazzali.-Innocent III. prepares to combat these Influences.-Results to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics. The spread of Mohammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy. - The crushing of heresy in the South of France by armed Force, the Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, and Casuistry. The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily.-His Conflict with and Overthrow by the Pope.-Spread of Mutiny among the mendicant Orders............................... 345
CHAPTER XVII. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST-(Continued). OVERTHROW OF THE ITALIAN SYSTEM BY THE COMBINED INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ATTACK. Progress of Irreligion among the mendicant Orders. -Publication of heretical Books.-The Everlasting Gospel and the Comment on the Apocalypse. Conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII.-Outrage upon and death of the Pope. The French King removes the Papacy from Rome to Avignon.-Post-mortem Trial of the Pope for Atheism and Immorality.-Causes and Consequences of the Atheism of the Pope.
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Page image X CONTENTS. The Templars fall into Infidelity.-Their Trial, Conviction, and Punishment. Immoralities of the Papal Court at Avignon.-Its return to Rome. - Causes of the great Schism. -Disorganization of the Italian System.-Decomposition of the Papacy.-Three Popes. The Council of Constance attempts to convert the papal Autocracy into a constitutional Monarchy. -It murders John Huss and Jerome of Prague.-Pontificate of Nicolas V.-End of the intellectual influence of the Italian System..................................................... Page 382
CHAPTER XVIII. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST-(Concluded). EFFECT OF THE EASTERN OR MILITARY ATTACK.-GENERAL REVIEW OF THE AGE OF FAITH. The Fall of Constantinople.-Its momentary Effect on the Italian System. GENERAL REVIEW OF THE INTELLECTUAL CONDITION IN THE AGE OF FAITH.-Supernaturalism and its Logic spread all over Europe.-It is destroyed by the Jews and Arabians.Its total Extinction. The Jewish Physicians.- Their Acquirements and Influence.- Their Collision with the Imposture medicine of Europe.-Their Effect on the higher Classes.-Opposition to them. Two Impulses, the Intellectual and Moral, operating against the Medieval] state of Things.Downfall of the Italian System through the intellectual Impulse from the West and the moral from the North.-Action of the former through Astronomy.-Origin of the moral Impulse.Their conjoint irresistible Effect.-Discovery of the state of Affairs in Italy. The Writings of Machiavelli.- What the Church had actually done. Entire M3ovement of the Italian System determined from a consideration of the four Revolts against it.................................................................................................. 402
CHAPTER XIX. APPROACH OF THE AGE OF REASON IN EUROPE. IT IS PRECEDED BY MARITIME DISCOVERY. Consideration of the definite Epochs of Social Life. Experimental Philosophy emerging in the Age of Faith. The Age of Reason ushered in by Maritime Discovery and the rise of European Criticism. MARITIME DISCOVERY.- The three great Voyages. COLUMBUS discovers America.-DE Gama doubles the Cape and reaches India.-MAGELLAN circumnavigates the Earth.-The material and intellectual Results of each of these Voyages. DIGRESSION ON THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF AMERICA.-In isolated human Societies the process of Thought and of Civilization is always the same. man passes through a determinate succession of Ideas and imbodies them in determinate Institutions. The state of Mexico and Peru proves the influence of Law in the development of Man.......................................... 436
CHAPTER XX. APPROACH OF THE AGE OF REASON IN EUROPE. IT IS PRECEDED BY THE RISE OF CRITICISM. Restoration of Greek Literature and Philosophy in Italy.-Development of Modern Languages and Rise of Criticism.-Imminent Danger to Latin Ideas. Invention of Printing.-It revolutionizes the Communication of Knowledge, especially acts on Public Worship, and renders the Pulpit secondary. THE REFORMATION.-Theory of Supererogation and Use of Indulgences.-The Right of Individual Judgment asserted.-Political History of the Origin, Culmination, and Check of the Reformation.-Its Effects in Italy. Causes of the Arrest of the Reformation.-Internal Causes in Protestantism.-External in the Policy of Rome.-The Counter-Reformation.-Inquisition.-Jesuits.-Secession of the great Critics.-Culmination of the Reformation in America.-Emergence of Individual Liberty of Thought........................................................................................... 465
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Page image CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XXI. DIGRESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH. RESULTS PRODUCED BY THE AGE OF FAITH. Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries. Condition of England at the Close of the seventeenth Century.-Locomotion, Literature, Libraries.-Social and private Life of the Laity and Clergy.-Brutality in the Administration of Law.-Profligacy of Literature.- The Theatre, its three Phases.-Miracle, Moral, and Real Plays. Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith.-Comparison with that already made in the Age of Reason.................................................................................... 494
CHAPTER XXII. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON. REJECTION OF AUTHORITY AND TRADITION, AND ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH.-DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE POSITION OF THE EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE. Ecclesiastical Attempt to enforce the GEOCENTRIC DOCTRINE that the Earth is the Centre of the Universe, and the most important Body in it. The HELIOCENTRIC DOCTRINE that the Sun is the Centre of the Solar System, and the Earth a small Planet, comes gradually into Prominence. Struggle between the Ecclesiastical and Astronomical Parties.-Activity of the Inquisition.Burning of Bruno.-Imprisonment of GALILEO. INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. - Complete Overthrow of the Ecclesiastical Idea.- Rise of Physical Astronomy.-NEWTON.-Rapid and resistless Development of all Branches of Natural;al Philosophy. Final Establishment of the Doctrine that the Universe is under the Dominion of mathematical, and, therefore, necessary Laws. Progress of Man from Anthropocentric Ideas to the Discovery of his true Position and Insignificance in the Universe................................................................................ 511
CHAPTER XXIII. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON-( Continued). HISTORY OF THE EARTH.-HER SUCCESSIVE CHANGES IN THE COURSE OF TIME. Oriental and Occidental Doctrines respecting the Earth in Time.-Gradual Weakening of the Latter by astronomical Facts, and the Rise of Scientific Geology. Impersonal Manner in which the Problem was eventually solved, chiefly through Facts connected with Heat. Proofs of limitless Duration from inorganic Facts.-Igneous and Aqueous Rocks. Proofs of the same from organic Facts.-Successive Creations and Extinctions of living Forms, and their contemporaneous Distribution. Evidences of a slowly declining Temperature, and, therefore, of a long Time.-The Process of Events by Catastrophe and by Law.-Analogy of Individual and Race Development.-Both are determined by unchangeable Law. Conclusion that the Plan of the Universe indicates a 1Multiplicity of Worlds in infinite Space, and a Succession of Worlds in infinite Time...................................................... 542
CHAPTER XXIV. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON-(Continued). THE NATURE AND RELATIONS OF MAN. Position of Man according to the Heliocentric and Geocentric Theories. OF ANIMAL LIFE.-The transitory Nature of living Forms.-Relations of Plants and Animals.-Animals are Aggregates of Matter expending Force originally derived from the Sun. THE ORGANIC SERIES.-Man a Member of it.-His Position determined by Anatomical and Physiological Investigation of his Nervous System.-Its triple Form: Automatic, Instinctive, Intellectual.
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Page image xii CONTENTS. The same progressive Development is seen in individual Man, in the entire animal Series, and in the Life of the Globe.-They are all under the Control of an eternal, universal, irresistible Law. The Aim of Nature is intellectual Development, and human Institutions must conform thereto. Summary of the Investigation of the Position of Man.-Production of Inorganic and Organic Forms by the Sun.-Nature of Animals and their Series.-Analogies and Differences between them and Man.- The Soul.-The World............................................. Page 574
CHAPTER XXV. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON ( Continued). TIE UNION OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. European Progress in the Acquisition of exact Knowledge.-Its Resemblance to that of Greece. Discoveries respecting the Air.-Its mechanical and chemical Properties.-Its Relation to Animals and Plants.-The WInds.-Meteorology. -Sounds.-Acoustic Phenomena. Discoveries respecting the Ocean.-Physical and chemical Phenomena.-Tides and Currents.Clouds.-Decomposition of TWater. Discoveries respecting other material Substances.-Progress of Chemistry. Discoveries respecting Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat. Mechanical Philosophy and Inventions.-Physical Instruments.-The Result illustrated by the Cotton Manufacture-Steam-engine-Bleaching- Canals-Railways.-Improvements in the Construction of Machinery. -Social Changes produced.-Its Effect on intellectual Activity. The scientific Contributions of various Nations, and especially of Italy.......................... 595
CHAPTER XXVI. CONCLUSION.-THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Europe. Intellectual Development is the Object of individual Life.-It is also the Result of social Progress. Nations arriving at M2laturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organization.-Example of the Manner in which this has been done in China.-Its Imperfection.- What it has accomplished. 7The Organization of public Intellect is the End to which European Civilization is tending.. 615
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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.-It is 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.
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 restlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events? 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 arrange 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.
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2 PRIMITIVE OPINIONS OF MAN.
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. 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. 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 labor 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. 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. The 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
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THE IDEA OF GOVERNMENT BY LAW. 3
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. 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. 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. 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 can not be other than what 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 virtue of a mathematical law. 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 trial events. 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-un-
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4 LAW IN THE INORGANIC AND ORGANIC WORLD.
derstood 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 recognize 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? 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. But when it was discovered that the heart of man is constructed upon the recognized 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 humors, 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 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 that 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?
Page 5
DOMINION OF LAW IN SOCIAL LIFE. 5
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 can not 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. 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 toward 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 autumn comes on, 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 does the life of the earth pulsate; 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. 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
Page 6
6 ORIGIN, VARIATION, AND EXTINCTION OF SPECIES.
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. 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. 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 removals. 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 away 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 every where new-comers would be seen. 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 forever motionless
Page 7
VARIATION OF SPECIES BY ORDERLY CHANGE. 7
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? 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 inorganic 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 vigor 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 upon 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. To this doctrine of the control of physical agencies over organic forms I acknowledge no exceptions, not even in the case of man. The varied aspects he presents in different countries are the necessary consequences of those influences. 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
Page 8
8 VARIATIONS IN MAN.
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. Either brings us to the admission of the transitory nature of typical forms, to their transmutations and extinctions. 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 was 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. But it is not only complexion, development of the brain, and, therefore, intellectual power, which are thus affected. With difference of
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PROGRESS OF AN ETHNICAL ELEMENT. 9
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 is an element of strength, an empire that lies east and west must be more powerful than one that lies north and south. I can not 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. The transitional forms 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, indeed, the incarnation of its physical influences. As long, therefore, as those influences remain without change will the form that has been produced last without any alteration. For such a permanent form in the case of man we may adopt the designation of an ethnical element. An ethnical element is therefore necessarily of a dependent nature; its durability arises from its perfect correspondence with which it is surrounded. Whatever can affect that correspondence will touch its life. 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 of individuals. 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. 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 Communities, 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
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10 DETERMINATION OF THE TRUE REPRESENTATIVE OF SOCIETY.
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 most completely in their career. 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 of a community 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. 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. 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
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DISTURBANCE OF THE COURSE OF AN ETHNICAL ELEMENT. 11
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. 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. 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. 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 is 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
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12 THE SECULAR VARIATIONS OF NATIONS. 4
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 can not 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 homogeneousness: 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 homogeneousness 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. 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
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THE DEATHE OF NATIONS. 13
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. 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. 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 absolute in time. 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. 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. 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
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14 PLAN OF THIS WORK.
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, nor with what rapidity modifications may take place-since events are springing 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. 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 aggrandizement and political power offering us less important though sill 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 Selection among study the progress of that member of the European family, European communities. the eldest in point of advancement, and to endeavor 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 a like way. 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 these times, we shall, in detail, examine the intellectual or philosophical movement first exhibited in Greece, endeavoring 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.
Page 15
THE FIVE EUROPEAN AGES. 15
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; 8, 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. 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 through 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. 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 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 opinion1 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 from 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
Page 16
16 THE CONTRAST OF FORMS AND OF LAW.
free-will, or his works. In her resistless, onward sweep, in the clocklike 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 movement 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, and all are watched by the sleepless eye of Providence. 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 farther off we realize the panoramic vision of the Deity. Well has a Hindu philosopher remarked, that he who stands by the bank 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 and unsuccessive knowledge of God. Is there an object presented to us which does not bear the mark of ephemeral duration? As respects the tribes of life, they are of form and 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 it is 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. 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
Page 17
DESCRIPTION OF EUROPE. 17
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; it was peopled from Asia. 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 issues in 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. 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 Description 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, and 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 track has
Page 18
18 DESCRIPTION OF EUROPE.
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. 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. 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 the other parts of the globe, the climate does not correspond to the latitude, but 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, disappears in the desert of Gobi. There are no vast homogeneous geographical areas as in Asia, and therefore no wide-spread uniformity in the races of men. But not only is the temperature of the European continent elevated by the Gulf Stream and the southwest wind, its luxuriance of vegetation depends on them; for luxuriance of vegetation is determined, among other things, by the supply of rain. A profusion gives to South America its amazing forests, a want to 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 countries of Europe, through the influence of the southwest wind, the Gulf Stream, and their mountain ranges, are supplied with abundant rains, and have a favorable mean annual temperature; but as we pass to the eastern confines the number of rainy days dimin-
Page 19
DISTRIBUTION OF RAIN, SNOW, HEAT. 19
ishes, 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 it is only 21 inches. For similar reasons, Ireland is moist and green, and in Cornwall the laurel and camellia will bear the winter exposure. There are six maximum points of rain-Norway, Scotland, Southwestern Ireland and England, Portugal, Northeastern 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. 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. 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 11; in Venice, 5-; in Paris, 12; in St. Petersburg, 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 unfrequent occurrence; in Lisbon it never snowed from 1806 to 1811. From such facts as that the difference between the summer and winter temperature increases toward the interior of the continent; that the amount of rain, greatest on the mountain axis, diminishes as we go north or south, and also as we pass from the west to the east, and in like manner the number of rainy days; but snowy days, and the duration of snow, in an opposite way; we may learn how full of physical contrasts Europe is, and how many climates it presents. It necessarily follows that it is full of modified men. If we examine the maps of monthly isothermals, we observe how wonderfully those lines change, becoming convex to the north as summer approaches, and concave as the winter. They by no means observe a parallelism to the mean, but change their flexures, assuming new sinuosities. In their absolute transfer they move
Page 20
20 EUROPE IS FULL OF MODIFIED MEN.
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 traveled 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 back and forth, but it takes a year for them to accomplish one pulsation. 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 single 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. For similar reasons, the inhabitants of Europe each year tend to more complete homogeneousness. Climate and meteorological differences are more and more perfectly equalized by artificial inventions; nor is it
Page 21
THE MEDITERRANEAN PENINSULAS AND SEA. 21
alone a similarity of habits, but also a similarity of physiological constitution that is ensuing. 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 th6 manner of thinking. 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. 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 color is green where shallow, blue where deep. 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 horizontally northward. Nor is this slow disturbance ended.
Page 22
22 SECULAR CHANGES OF LEVEL IN EUROPE.
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 should 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 can not 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 wagons, 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. These geological changes enter then as an element in human history, and extent of 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; oth-
Page 23
THE ETHNOLOGY OF EUROPE. 23
ers 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 to 3000, the Apennines 1000 to 2000. The country between Mont Blanc and Vienna has been thus elevated since the adjacent seas were peopled with existing animals. So intimately are the interests and occupations of men connected with the soil, that it is impossible for changes to take place on the great scale in it without being promptly followed by an equivalent political result. 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 southwest. 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. But, setting this aside, we have, 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 Mycenae, the tunnel of Lake Copais, are perhaps the vestiges. 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, with 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
Page 24
24 ITS INDO-GERMANIC INVADERS.
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. 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 plowing, 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 Muller 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 recruit 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
Page 25
THEIR MODIFICATION BY CLIMATE. 25
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 see, 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. 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 and 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 with 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. 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 accomodating 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 surrounding circumstances. 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. 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 cli-
Page 26
26 ORIGIN OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY.
mate, in which life could be easily maintained-where the isothermal of January is 41~ F, and of July. 73~ 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. So it had been in Asia. 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 every where, 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. 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 then 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.
Page 27
ITS GRAIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 27
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, the 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 homogeneousness is nothing more than a manifestation of the uniform mode of action of the human organization. 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 of interpretation ensue. Comparative geography, comparative astronomy, comparative theology thus arise, homogeneous at first, soon exibiting variations, but ending in identity. 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 physical nature. 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 becomes Hercules in the fiery pile; the morning dawn' extinguished by the rising sun is embodied in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. These legends still survive in India. 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 different legends of different locali-
Page 28
28 ITS RESULTING COMPOSITE NATURE.
ties, they are more frequently successive improvements of the same 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; their 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 labors. 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 marvelous, 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 defense 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. Before we enter upon the history of that intellectual movement which thus occasioned the ruin of the ancient system, we must bring to our
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CONCEPTIONS OF HEAVEN, EARTH, HELL. 29
selves 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 seat, 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, swiftly spreading 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, forever changing their colors 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 might men contemplate 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 the 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; iEacus, 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 try-
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30 THE ARGONAUTIC VOYAGE.
ing to fill their sieve; Tantalus, immersed in the water to his chin, yet tormented with unquenchable thirst; Sisyphus despairingly laboring 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. 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 and the self-shutting rocks Symplegades, between which, as if by miracle, the Argonauts passed, the colliding 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 forever hovering and forever devouring; of the land of AEetes, and of the bulls with brazen feet and flaming breath, and how Jason yoked and made them plow; 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 mailclad 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 Hephsestos, 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. Such were some of the incidents of that celebrated voyage, the story of which enchanted all Greece before the Odyssey was written. I have
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GEOGRAPHICAL WONDERS. 31
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 Laesestrygons. 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 AEolus; 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 Daedalus, 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. 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 savageism of the times; the story of Dionysos tells of stealing and piracy; the rapes of Europa and Helen, of the abduction of women. The dinner in which Itys was served up assures us that cannibalism was practiced; the threat of Laomedon that he would sell Poseidon and Apollo for slaves shows how compulsory labor 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 barbaric 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 h later period that allegorical phantasms, such as Death, and Sleep, and Dreams were introduced, and still later when the old system was affected by Lydian, Phrygian, Assyrian, and Egyptian ideas. 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.
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32 SUCCESSIVE TRANSFORMATIONS OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY.
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 labors 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. 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. As to 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 down-
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EFFECT OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY. 33 ward 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 which is forced to this necessity is fast hastening to its end. 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 marvelous diversity, vast deserts, mountains covered with eternal snow, salt seas far from the ocean, colossal animals, and men of every shade of color 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. At the dawn of reliable tradition 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 every where 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 away 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
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34 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM.
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 Phocaeans 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-depots 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 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 those beautiful remains. 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 today 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. The operation of this principle is seen in all directions t