Among the boundless variety of opinions that make themselves heard in our day, there is not one that had not advocates in Rome. I alluded a while ago to the letters written from the villa of Tusculum; they express the sentiments of the Roman conservative _Progressist_ party. By the side of Sylla, Pompey and Cicero were Radicals.[176] Their notions were not sufficiently radical for Caesar; too much so for Cato. At a later period we find in Pliny the younger a mild royalist, a friend of quiet, even at some cost. Apprehensive of too much liberty, yet jealous of power too absolute; very practical in his views, caring but little for the poetical splendor of the age of the Fabii, he preferred the more prosaic administration of Trajan. There were others not of his opinion, good people who feared an insurrection headed by some new Spartacus, and who, therefore, thought that the Emperor could not hold the reins too tight. Then there were others, from the provinces, who obstreperously demanded and obtained what would now be called "const.i.tutional guaranties." Again, there were the socialists, and their views found no less an expounder than the Gallic Caesar, C. Junius Posthumus, who exclaims: "Dives et pauper, inimici," the rich and the poor are enemies born.
Every man who had any pretensions to partic.i.p.ate in the lights of the day, declaimed on the absolute equality of all men, their "inalienable rights," the manifest necessity and ultimate universality of the Greco-Latin civilization, its superiority, its mildness, its future progress, much greater even than that actually made, and above all its perpetuity. Nor were those ideas merely the pride and consolation of the pagans; they were the firm hopes and expectations of the earliest and most ill.u.s.trious Fathers of the Church, whose sentiments found so eloquent an interpreter in Tertullian.
And as a last touch, to complete the picture, let us not forget those people who, then as now, formed the most numerous of all parties: those that belonged to none--people who are too weak-minded, or indifferent, or apprehensive, or disgusted, to lay hold of a truth, from among the midst of contradictory theories that float around them--people who are content with order when it exists, submit pa.s.sively in times of disorder and confusion; who admire the increase of conveniences and comforts of life unknown to their ancestors, and who, without thinking further, centre their hope in the future and pride in the present, in the reflection: "What wonderful facilities we enjoy now-a-days."
There would be some reason for believing in an improvement in political science, if we had invented some governmental machinery which had hitherto been unknown, or at least never carried into practice. This glory we cannot arrogate to ourselves. Limited monarchies were known in every age. There are even some very curious examples of this form of government found among certain Indian tribes who, nevertheless, have remained savages. Democratic and aristocratic republics of every form, and balanced in the most varied manner, flourished in the new world as well as the old. Tlascala is as complete a model of this kind as Athens, Sparta, or Mecca before Mohammed"s times. And even supposing that we have applied to governmental science some secondary principle of our own invention, does this justify us in our exaggerated pretension to unlimited perfectibility? Let us rather be modest, and say with the wisest of kings: "_Nil novi sub sole._"[177]
It is said that our manners are milder than those of the other great human societies; this a.s.sertion also is very open to criticism. There are some philanthropists who would induce nations no longer to resort to armies in settling their quarrels. The idea is borrowed from Seneca.
Some of the Eastern sages professed the same principles in this respect as the Moravian Brethren. But a.s.suming that the members of the Peace Congress succeed in disgusting Europe with the turmoil and miseries of warfare, they would still have the difficult task left of forever transforming the human pa.s.sions. Neither Seneca nor the Eastern sages have been able to accomplish this, and it may reasonably be doubted whether this grand achievement is reserved for our generation. We possess pure and exalted principles, I admit, but are they carried into practice? Look at our fields, the streets of our cities--the b.l.o.o.d.y traces of contests as fierce as any recorded in history are scarcely yet effaced. Never since the beginning of our civilization has there been an interval of peace of fifty years, and we are, in this respect, far behind ancient Italy, which, under the Romans, once enjoyed two centuries of perfect tranquillity. But even so long a repose would not warrant us in concluding that the temple of Ja.n.u.s was thenceforth to be forever closed.
The state of our civilization does not, therefore, prove the unlimited perfectibility of man. If he have learned many things, he has forgotten others. He has not added another to his senses; his soul is not enriched by one new faculty. I cannot too much insist upon the great though sad truth, that whatever we gain in one direction is counterbalanced by some loss in another; that, limited as is our intellectual domain, we are doomed never to possess its whole extent at once. Were it not for this fatal law, we might imagine that at some period, however distant, man, finding himself in possession of the experience of successive ages, and having acquired all that it is in his power to acquire, would have learned at last to apply his acquisitions to his welfare--to live without battling against his kind, and against misery; to enjoy a state, if not of unalloyed happiness, at least of abundance and peace.
But even so limited a felicity is not promised us here below, for in proportion as man learns he unlearns; whatever he acquires, is at the cost of some previous acquisition; whatever he possesses he is always in danger of losing.
We flatter ourselves with the belief that our civilization is imperishable, because we possess the art of printing, gunpowder, the steam engine, &c. These are valuable means to accomplish great results, but the accomplishment depends on their use.
The art of printing is known to many other nations beside ourselves, and is as extensively used by them as by us.[178] Let us see its fruits. In Tonquin, Anam, j.a.pan, books are plentiful, much cheaper than with us--so cheap that they are within the reach of even the poorest--and even the poorest read them. How is it, then, that these people are so enervated, so degraded, so sunk in sloth and vice[179]--so near that stage in which even civilized man, having frittered away his physical and mental powers, may sink infinitely below the rude barbarian, who, at the first convenient opportunity, becomes his master? Whence this result? Precisely because the art of printing is a means, and not an agent. So long as it is used to diffuse sound, sterling ideas, to afford wholesome and refreshing nutriment to vigorous minds, a civilization never decays. But when it becomes the vile caterer to a depraved taste, when it serves only to multiply the morbid productions of enervated or vitiated minds, the senseless quibbles of a sectarian theology instead of religion, the venomous scurrility of libellists instead of politics, the foul obscenities of licentious rhymers instead of poesy--how and why should the art of printing save a civilization from ruin?
It is objected that the art of printing contributes to the preservation of a civilization by the facility with which it multiplies and diffuses the masterpieces of the human mind, so that, even in times of intellectual sterility, when they can no longer be emulated, they still form the standard of taste, and by their clear and steady light prevent the possibility of utter darkness. But it should be remembered that to delve in the h.o.a.rded treasures of thought, and to appropriate them for purposes of mental improvement, presupposes the possession of that greatest of earthly goods--an enlightened mind. And in epochs of intellectual degeneracy, few care about those monuments of lost virtues and powers; they are left undisturbed on their dusty shelves in libraries whose silence is but seldom broken by the tread of the anxious, painstaking student.
The longevity which Guttenberg"s invention a.s.sures to the productions of genius is much exaggerated. There are a few works that enjoy the honor of being reproduced occasionally; with this exception, books die now precisely as formerly did the ma.n.u.scripts. Works of science, especially, disappear with singular rapidity from the realms of literature. A few hundred copies are struck off at first, and they are seldom, and, after a while, never heard of more. With considerable trouble you can find them in some large collection. Look what has become of the thousands of excellent works that have appeared since the first printed page came from the press. The greater portion are forgotten. Many that are still spoken of, are never read; the t.i.tles even of others, that were carefully sought after fifty years ago, are gradually disappearing from every memory.
So long as a civilization is vigorous and flourishing, this disappearance of old books is but a slight misfortune. They are superseded; their valuable portions are embodied in new ones; the seed exists no longer, but the fruit is developing. In times of intellectual degeneracy it is otherwise. The weakened powers cannot grapple with the solid thought of more vigorous eras; it is split up into more convenient fragments--rendered more portable, as it were; the strong beverage that once was the pabulum of minds as strong, must be diluted to suit the present taste; and innumerable dilutions, each weaker than the other, immediately claim public favor; the task of learning must be lightened in proportion to the decreasing capacity for acquiring; everything becomes superficial; what costs the least effort gains the greatest esteem; play upon words is accounted wit; shallowness, learning; the surface is preferred to the depth. Thus it has ever been in periods of decay; thus it will be with us when we have once reached that point whence every movement is retrogressive. Who knows but we are near it already?--and the art of printing will not save us from it.
To enhance the advantages which we derive from that art, the number and diffusion of ma.n.u.scripts have been too much underrated. It is true that they were scarce in the epoch immediately preceding; but in the latter periods of the Roman empire they were much more numerous and much more widely diffused than is generally imagined. In those times, the facilities for instruction were by no means of difficult access; books, indeed, were quite common. We may judge so from the extraordinary number of threadbare grammarians with which even the smallest villages swarmed; a sort of people very much like the petty novelists, lawyers, and editors of modern times, and whose loose morals, shabbiness, and pa.s.sionate love for enjoyments, are described in Pretronius"s Satyricon.
Even when the decadence was complete, those who wished for books could easily procure them. Virgil was read everywhere; so much so, that the illiterate peasantry, hearing so much of him, imagined him to be some dangerous and powerful sorcerer. The monks copied him; they copied Pliny, Dioscorides, Plato, and Aristotle; they copied Catullus and Martial. These books, then, cannot have been very rare. Again, when we consider how great a number has come down to us notwithstanding centuries of war and devastation--notwithstanding so many conflagrations of monasteries, castles, libraries, &c.--we cannot but admit that, in spite of the laborious process of transcription, literary productions must have been multiplied to a very great extent. It is possible, therefore, to greatly exaggerate the obligations under which science, poetry, morality, and true civilization lie to the typographic art; and I repeat it, that art is a marvellous instrument, but if the arm that wields it, and the head that directs the arm, are not, the instrument cannot be, of much service.
Some people believe that the possession of gunpowder exempts modern societies from many of the dangers that proved fatal to the ancient.
They a.s.sert that it abates the horrors of warfare, and diminishes its frequency, bidding fair, therefore, to establish, in time, a state of universal peace. If such be the beneficial results attendant on this accidental invention, they have not as yet manifested themselves.
Of the various applications of steam, and other industrial inventions, I would say, as of the art of printing, that they are great means, but their results depend upon the agent. Such arts might be practised by rote long after the intellectual activity that produced them had ceased.
There are innumerable instances of processes which continue in use, though the theoretical secret is lost. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose, that the practice of our inventions might survive our civilization; that is, it might continue when these inventions were no longer possible, when no further improvements were to be hoped for.
Material well-being is but an external appendage of a civilization; intellectual activity, and a consequent progress, are its life. A state of intellectual torpor, therefore, cannot be a state of civilization, even though the people thus stagnating, have the means of transporting themselves rapidly from place to place, or of adorning themselves and their dwellings. This would only prove that they were the _heirs_ of a former civilization, but not that they actually possessed one. I have said, in another place, that a civilization may thus preserve, for a time, every appearance of life: the effect may continue after the cause has ceased. But, as a continuous change seems to be the order of nature in all things material and immaterial, a downward tendency is soon manifest. I have before compared a civilization to the human body. While alive, it undergoes a perpetual modification: every hour has wrought a change; when dead, it preserves, for a time, the appearance of life, perhaps even its beauty; but gradually, symptoms of decay become manifest, and every stage of dissolution is more precipitate than the one before, as a stone thrown up in the air, poises itself there for an inappreciable fraction of time, then falls with continually increasing velocity, more and more swiftly as it approaches the ground.
Every civilization has produced in those who enjoyed its fruits, a firm conviction of its stability, its perpetuity.
When the palanquins of the Incas travelled rapidly on the smooth, magnificent causeways which still unite Cuzco and Quito, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, with what feelings of exultation must they have contemplated the conquests of the present, what magnificent prospects of the future must have presented themselves to their imaginations! Stern time, with one blow of his gigantic wings, hurled their empire into the deepest depths of the abyss of oblivion. These proud sovereigns of Peru--they, too, had their sciences, their mechanical inventions, their powerful machines: the works they accomplished we contemplate with amazement, and a vain effort to divine the means employed. How were those blocks of stone, thirty-five feet long and eighteen thick, raised one upon another? How were they transported the vast distance from the quarries where they were hewn? By what contrivance did the engineers of that people hoist those enormous ma.s.ses to a dizzy height? It is indeed a problem--a problem, too, which we will never solve. Nor are the ruins of Tihuanaco unparalleled by the remains of European civilizations of ante-historic times. The cyclopean walls with which Southern Europe abounds, and which have withstood the all-destroying tooth of time for thousands upon thousands of years--who built them? Who piled these monstrous ma.s.ses, which modern art could scarcely move?
Let us not mistake the results of a civilization for its causes. The causes cease, the results subsist for a while, then are lost. If they again bear fruit, it is because a new spirit has appropriated them, and converted them to purposes often very different from those they had at first. Human intelligence is finite, nor can it ever reign at once in the whole of its domain:[180] it can turn to account one portion of it only by leaving the other bare; it exalts what it possesses, esteems lightly what it has lost. Thus, every generation is at the same time superior and inferior to its predecessors. Man cannot, then, surpa.s.s himself: man"s perfectibility is not infinite.
FOOTNOTES:
[174] The word _criticism_ has here been used by the translator in a sense somewhat unusual in the English language, where it is generally made to signify "the art of judging of literary or artistic productions." In a more comprehensive sense, it means _the art of discriminating between truth and error_, or rather, perhaps, between _the probable and the improbable_. In this sense, the word is often used by continental metaphysicians, and also, though less frequently, by English writers. As the definition is perfectly conformable to etymology, I have concluded to let the above pa.s.sage stand as it is.--H.
[175] It will be remembered that Mr. Gobineau speaks of Europe.--H.
[176] The term "Radical" is used on the European continent to designate that party who desire thorough, uncompromising reform: the plucking out of evils by the _root_.--H.
[177] The principles of government applied to practice at the formation of our Const.i.tution, Mr. Gobineau considers as identical with those laid down at the beginning of every society founded by the Germanic race. In his succeeding volumes he mentions several a.n.a.logues.--H.
[178] M. J. Mohl, _Rapport Annuel a la Societe Asiatique_, 1851, p. 92: "The Indian book trade of indigenous productions is extremely lively, and consists of a number of works which are never heard of in Europe, nor ever enter a European"s library even in India. Mr. Springer a.s.serts in a letter, that in the single town of Luknau there are thirteen lithographical establishments exclusively occupied with multiplying books for the schools, and he gives a list of considerable length of books, none of which have probably ever reached Europe. The same is the case in Delhi, Agra, Cawnpour, Allahabad, and other cities."
[179] The Siamese are probably the most debased in morals of any people on earth. They belong to the remotest outskirts of the Indo-Chinese civilization; yet among them every one knows how to read and write.
(Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. iii. p. 1152.)
[180] No individual can encompa.s.s the whole circle of human knowledge: no civilization comprise at once all the improvements possible to humanity.--H.
CHAPTER XIV.
MUTUAL RELATIONS OF DIFFERENT MODES OF INTELLECTUAL CULTURE.
Necessary consequences of a supposed equality of all races--Uniform testimony of history to the contrary--Traces of extinct civilizations among barbarous tribes--Laws which govern the adoption of a state of civilization by conquered populations--Antagonism of different modes of culture; the h.e.l.lenic and Persian, European and Arab, etc.
Had it been the will of the Creator to endow all the branches of the human family with equal intellectual capacities, what a glorious tableau would history not unfold before us. All being equally intelligent, equally aware of their true interests, equally capable of triumphing over obstacles, a number of simultaneous and flourishing civilizations would have gladdened every portion of the inhabited globe. While the most ancient Sanscrit nations covered Northern India with harvests, cities, palaces, and temples; and the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates shook under the trampling of Nimrod"s cavalry and chariots, the prognathous tribes of Africa would have formed and developed a social system, sagaciously constructed, and productive of brilliant results.
Some luckless tribes, whose lot fortune had cast in inhospitable climes, burning sands, or glacial regions, mountain gorges, or cheerless steppes swept by the piercing winds of the north, would have been compelled to a longer and severer struggle against such unpropitious circ.u.mstances, than more fortunate nations. But being not inferior in intelligence and sagacity, they would not have been long in discovering the means of bettering their condition. Like the Icelanders, the Danes, and Norwegians, they would have forced the reluctant soil to afford them sustenance; if inhabitants of mountainous regions, they would, like the Swiss, have enjoyed the advantages of a pastoral life, or like the Cashmerians, resorted to manufacturing industry. But if their geographical situation had been so unfavorable as to admit of no resource, they would have reflected that the world was large, contained many a pleasant valley and fertile plain, where they might seek the fruits of intelligent activity, which their stepmotherly native land refused them.
Thus all the nations of the earth would have been equally enlightened, equally prosperous; some by the commerce of maritime cities, others by productive agriculture in inland regions, or successful industry in barren and Alpine districts. Though they might not exempt themselves from the misfortunes to which the imperfections of human nature give rise--transitory dissensions, civil wars, seditions, etc.--their individual interests would soon have led them to invent some system of relative equiponderance. As the differences in their civilizations resulted merely from fortuitous circ.u.mstances, and not from innate inequalities, a mutual interchange would soon have a.s.similated them in all essential points. Nothing could then prevent a universal confederation, that dream of so many centuries; and the inhabitants of the most distant parts of the globe would have been as members of one great cosmopolite people.
Let us contrast this fantastic picture with the reality. The first nations worthy of the name, owed their formation to an instinct of aggregation, which the barbarous tribes near them not only did not feel then, but never afterward. These nations spread beyond their original boundaries, and forced others to submit to their power. But the conquered neither adopted nor understood the principles of the civilization imposed upon them. Nor has the force of example been of avail to those in whom innate capacity was wanting. The native populations of the Spanish peninsula, and of Transalpine and Ligurian Gaul, saw Phenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians, successively establish flourishing cities on their coasts, without feeling the least incitement to imitate the manners or forms of government of these prosperous merchants.
What a glorious spectacle do not the Indians of North America witness at this moment. They have before their eyes a great and prosperous nation, eminent for the successful practical application of modern theories and sciences to political and social forms, as well as to industrial art.
The superiority of this foreign race, which has so firmly established itself upon his former patrimony, is evident to the red man. He sees their magnificent cities, their thousands of vessels upon the once silent rivers, their successful agriculture; he knows that even his own rude wants, the blanket with which he covers himself, the weapon with which he slays his game, the ardent spirits he has learned to love so well, can be supplied only by the stranger. The last feeble hope to see his native soil delivered from the presence of the conqueror"s race, has long since vanished from his breast; he feels that the land of his fathers is not his own. Yet he stubbornly refuses to enter the pale of this civilization which invites him, solicits him, tries to entice him with superior advantages and comforts. He prefers to retreat from solitude to solitude, deeper and deeper into the primitive forest. He is doomed to perish, and he knows it; but a mysterious power retains him under the yoke of his invincible repugnances, and while he admires the strength and superiority of the whites, his conscience, his whole nature, revolts at the idea of a.s.similating to them. He cannot forget or smother the instincts of his race.
The aborigines of Spanish America are supposed to evince a less unconquerable aversion. It is because the Spanish metropolitan government had never attempted to civilize them. Provided they were Christians, at least in name, they were left to their own usages and habits, and, in many instances, under the administration of their Caziques. The Spaniards colonized but little, and when the conquest was completed and their sanguinary appet.i.tes glutted by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible disgrace, they indulged in a lazy toleration, and directed their tyranny rather against individuals than against modes of thinking and living. The Indians have, in a great measure, mixed with their conquerors, and will continue to live while their brethren in the vicinity of the Anglo-Saxon race are inevitably doomed to perish.
But not only savages, even nations of a higher rank in the intellectual scale are incapable of adopting a foreign civilization. We have already alluded to the failure of the English in India and of the Dutch in Java, in trying to import their own ideas into their foreign dependencies.
French philanthropy is at this moment gaining the same experience in the new French possession of Algeria. There can be no stronger or more conclusive proof of the various endowments of different races.
If we had no other argument in proof of the innate imparity of races than the actual condition of certain barbarous tribes, and the supposition that they had always been in that condition, and, consequently, always would be, we should expose ourselves to serious objections. For many barbarous nations preserve traces of former cultivation and refinement. There are some tribes, very degraded in every other respect, who yet possess traditional regulations respecting the marriage celebration, the forms of justice and the division of inheritances, which evidently are remnants of a higher state of society, though the rites have long since lost all meaning. Many of the Indian tribes who wander over the tracts once occupied by the Alleghanian race, may be cited as instances of this kind. The natives of the Marian Islands, and many other savages, practise mechanically certain processes of manufacture, the invention of which presupposes a degree of ingenuity and knowledge utterly at variance with their present stupidity and ignorance. To avoid hasty and erroneous conclusions concerning this seeming decadence, there are several circ.u.mstances to be taken into consideration.
Let us suppose a savage population to fall within the sphere of activity of a proximate, but superior race. In that case they may gradually learn to conform externally to the civilization of their masters, and acquire the technicalities of their arts and inventions. Should the dominant race disappear either by expulsion or absorption, the civilization would expire, but some of its outward forms might be retained and perpetuated.
A certain degree of mechanical skill might survive the scientific principles upon which it was based. In other words, practice might long continue after the theory was lost. History furnishes us a number of examples in support of this a.s.sertion.
Such, for instance, was the att.i.tude of the a.s.syrians toward the civilization of the Chaldeans; of the Iberians, Celts, and Illyrians towards that of the Romans. If, then, the Cherokees, the Catawbas, Muskogees, Seminoles, Natchez and other tribes, still preserve a feeble impress of the Alleghanian civilization, I should not thence conclude that they are the pure and direct descendants of the initiatory element of that people, which would imply that a race may once have been civilized, and be no longer so. I should say, on the contrary, that the Cherokees, if at all ethnically connected with the ancient dominant type, are so by only a collateral tie of consanguinity, else they could never have relapsed into a state of barbarism. The other tribes which exhibit little or no vestiges of the former civilization are probably the descendants of a different conquered population which formed no const.i.tuent element of the society, but served rather as the substratum upon which the edifice was erected. It is no matter of surprise, if this be the case, that they should preserve--without understanding them and with a sort of superst.i.tious veneration--customs, laws, and rites invented by others far more intelligent than themselves.
The same may be said of the mechanical arts. The aborigines of the Carolines are about the most interesting of the South Sea islanders.
Their looms, sculptured canoes, their taste for navigation and commerce show them vastly superior to the Pelagian negroes, their neighbors. It is easy to account for this superiority by the well-authenticated admixture of Malay blood. But as this element is greatly attenuated, the inventions which it introduced have not borne indigenous fruits, but, on the contrary, are gradually, but surely, disappearing.
The preceding observations will, I think, suffice to show that the traces of civilization among a barbarous tribe are not a necessary proof that this tribe itself has ever been really civilized. It may either have lived under the domination of a superior but consanguineous race, or living in its vicinity, have, in an humble and feeble degree, profited by its lessons. This result, however, is possible only when there exists between the superior and the inferior race a certain ethnical affinity; that is to say, when the former is either a n.o.ble branch of the same stock, or enn.o.bled by intermixture with another. When the disparity between races is too great and too decided, and there is no intermediate link to connect them, the contact is always fatal to the inferior race, as is abundantly proved by the disappearance of the aborigines of North America and Polynesia.