The Philosophy of History Part 4

There is a point of view, indeed, from which the matter appears under a different aspect, and is really different. To the all-seeing eye of Providence, every human life, however brief its duration, however apparently insignificant, presents a point of internal development and crisis, consequently a species of history, cognizable and visible to that Eye only, and therefore not entirely without an object. But this point of view belongs to another order of things, and is no longer historical--it has reference to the immortal destinies of the human soul, and the connection of the present life with another world invisible to us. But our historical science is limited to the department of man's present existence; and in our historical enquiries we must not lose sight of this principle.

But the internal development of mind, so far as it is historical, belongs as much as the external events of politics to the department of human history, and must by no means be excluded from it. Among these rare exceptions of historical men, must be named that ancient master of human acuteness who was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and who perhaps holds not an humbler or less important place in this exalted sphere than the conqueror himself, although this philosopher, whose genius embraced nature, the world and life, was by his own contemporaries less honoured and celebrated than by a remote posterity.

Here in our western world, and long after the kingdoms founded by the Macedonian conqueror had disappeared, and were forgotten, Aristotle for many centuries reigned the absolute lord of the Christian schools, and directed the march of human science and human speculation in the middle age. Whether he were always rightly understood and studied in the right way is another question, for here we are speaking of his overruling influence and historical importance. Nay, in later times, he has materially served the cause of the better natural philosophy founded on experience, in which he himself accomplished things so extraordinary for his age, and was originally, and for a long while, the guide and master.

The first fundamental rule of historical science and research, when by these is sought a knowledge of the general destinies of mankind, is to keep these and every object connected with them steadily in view, without losing ourselves in the details of special enquiries and particular facts, for the mult.i.tude and variety of these subjects is absolutely boundless; and on the ocean of historical science the main subject easily vanishes from the eye. In history, as in every branch of mental culture, the first elementary school--instruction is not merely an important, but an essential, condition to a higher and more scientific knowledge. At first indeed it is merely a nomenclature of celebrated personages and events--a sketch of the great historical eras, divided according to chronological dates, or a geographical plan--which must be impressed on the memory, and which serves as a basis preparatory to that more vivid and comprehensive knowledge to be obtained in riper years. Thus this first knowledge stored up in the memory, and necessary for methodizing and arranging the ma.s.s of historical learning to be afterwards acquired, is more a preparation for the study of history, than the real science of history itself. In the higher grades of academic instruction, the lessons on history must vary with each one's calling and pursuits--one course of historical reading is necessary for the Theologian, another for the lawyer or civilian. To the physician, and in general to the naturalist, natural history, and what in the history of man is most akin to that science, will ever be the most captivating. And the philologist will find a boundless field for enquiry in special antiquarian researches, particularly now when, in addition to cla.s.sical learning and the more common oriental tongues, the languages and historical antiquities of the remoter nations of Asia have attracted the attention of European scholars, and the original sources are becoming every day more accessible.

Even the sphere of modern political history, from which for the practical business of government so much is to be learned, will be found equally extensive--when, besides the modern cla.s.sical works, we look to the countless mult.i.tude of private memoirs and other historical and political writings; especially at a time and in a world where even periodical publications and newspapers have become a power and an art or a science, and society itself falls more and more under the sway of journalism. If in this department of politics and statistics, we add also the number of unprinted doc.u.ments, we shall find that the archives of many a state would alone furnish occupation for more than a man's life.

In all such special departments of historical science, the great whole of history is made subordinate to some secondary object; and this cannot be otherwise. It may even be advantageous for the profounder knowledge and more skilful exposition of universal history that we should seriously investigate some particular branch of history; and, in a science so various, select some special subject for more minute enquiry; but this can never be done without some decided predilection--some almost party bias towards the subject. Yet such special enquiries are only preparatory or auxiliary to the general science or philosophy of history--but not that science itself. Thus at the outset of my literary career, I devoted a considerable time to a very minute study of the Greeks--[35] and subsequently I applied myself to the Hindoo language and philosophy, at that time more difficult of access than at the present day.[36] In the struggles of life, and amid the public dangers of our times, I was alive to a patriotic feeling for the history of my own country, and recent times; and, perhaps, there are some among my present hearers who remember the historical lectures I delivered in this spirit eighteen years ago in this imperial city.[37] It is now my wish, and the object I propose to myself, to discard all antiquarian, oriental or European predilections for particular branches of history, and to unfold to view, and render completely clear and intelligible, the great edifice of universal history in all its parts, members and degrees.

The first fundamental rule here laid down, with respect to the mode of treating general history--namely to keep the attention fixed on the main subject, and not to let it be distracted or dissipated by a number of minute details--concerned more the method of historical science. The second rule regards the subject and purport of history, and stands in more immediate connexion with the first portion of this work--that relating to primitive history. This second fundamental rule of historical science may be thus simply expressed:--we should not wish to explain every thing. Historical tradition must never be abandoned in the philosophy of history--otherwise we lose all firm ground and footing.

But historical tradition, ever so accurately conceived and carefully sifted, doth not always, especially in the early and primitive ages, bring with it a full and demonstrative certainty. In such cases, we have nothing to do but to record, as it is given, the best and safest testimony which tradition, so far as we have it, can afford; supposing even that some things in that testimony appear strange, obscure and even enigmatical; and perhaps a comparison with some other part of historical science--or, if I may so speak, stream of tradition, will unexpectedly lead to the solution of the difficulty. Extremely hazardous is the desire to explain every thing, and to supply whatever appears a gap in history--for in this propensity lies the first cause and germ of all those violent and arbitrary hypotheses which perplex and pervert the science of history far more than the open avowal of our ignorance, or the uncertainty of our knowledge: hypotheses which give an oblique direction, or an exaggerated and false extension, to a view of the subject originally not incorrect. And even if there are points which appear not very clear to us, or which we leave unexplained--this will not prevent us from comprehending, so far at least as the limited conception of man is able, the great outline of human history, though here and there a gap should remain.

This matter will be best explained by an example that will bring us at once to the subject we propose to treat. Let us imagine some bold Navigators (and what we here suppose by way of example has more than once actually occurred) touching at some island inhabited by wild savages in the midst of the great ocean between America and Eastern Asia. This island lies, we suppose, at a very great distance from either Continent, and the same will hold good of it, though there be a group of islands. These savages have but miserable fis.h.i.+ng-boats made of hollow trunks of trees, by which it is not easy to conceive how they could have been transported so far. The question now naturally occurs how has this race of men come hither?--

A Pagan natural philosophy, which even now dares often enough to raise its voice, would be very ready with its answer: "There, it would say, you see plainly how every thing has sprung from the pap of the earth--the primitive slime--there is no need of the far-fetched idea of an imaginary Creator--these self-existing men of the earth--these well known autocthones of the ancients--these true sons of nature--have risen up or crawled out of the fruitful slime of the earth."

A deeper physiological science would, independently of every other consideration, and looking merely to the natural organization of man, scout this wild chaotic hypothesis respecting his origin from slime. For this organic frame of the human body, which has become a body of death, is still endowed with many and wonderful powers, and still encloses the hidden light of its celestial origin.--Without, however, entering further into this enquiry, which falls not within the limits here prescribed, let us rather tacitly believe that although, as the ancient history saith, man was formed out of the slime of the earth; yet it was by the same Hand which invisibly conducts each individual through life, and has more than once rescued all mankind from the brink of the abyss, that his marvellous body was framed, into which the Maker himself breathed the immortal spirit of life. This divine in-dwelling spark in man, the Heathens themselves, notwithstanding the opinion about the autocthones, recognized in the beautiful tradition or fiction of Prometheus; and many of their first spirits, philosophers, orators and poets, and grave and moral teachers, have in one form or another, and under a variety of figurative expressions, borne frequent and loud and repeated testimony to the truth of a higher spirit, a divine flame, animating the breast of man. This universal faith in the heavenly Promethean light--or as we should rather say, this spark of our bosoms--is the only thing we must here pre-suppose, and from which all our historical deductions must be taken. With the opposite doctrine--with the absolute unbelief in all which const.i.tutes man really man--no history, and no science of history, is possible; and this is the only remark we shall here oppose to an infidelity that denies the existence of every thing high and G.o.dly. For the question respecting the creation of man, or as atheism terms it, the first springing up of the human race, is beyond the limits of history, and must be left to the decision of revelation and faith; for the question can be reached by no history, no science of history--no historical research. History begins, as this will be presently shown, with man's second step; which immediately follows his concealed origin antecedent to all history.

To recur now to the example already given of an island situated in the middle of the ocean, with its savage inhabitants and their miserable fis.h.i.+ng-boats--the real solution, as experience has really proved, of this apparent difficulty is, on a nearer acquaintance with the subject, easily found. If, for example, the language and traditions of this rude, savage, or at least degraded, tribe, are minutely studied and investigated, then so striking a resemblance and affinity will be found with the languages and traditions of the races in either of the remotely situated continents, that the most sceptical mind will hardly entertain a doubt respecting the common origin of both; for this community in language and traditions is too strong, too strikingly evident, to be ascribed with any degree of probability to the sport of accident. This truth now once firmly established, (for a community of language, tradition and race among all the nations of the earth is a truth almost unanimously received and acknowledged by those historical enquirers most versed in nature, and most learned in philology of the present age,) it becomes a mere matter of indifference, or one at least of minor importance, how and in what way this originally savage, or at least barbarized tribe first arrived hither; and it were a mere waste of labour to select, among the hundred conceivable or inconceivable accidents and possibilities which may have occasioned or led to this arrival, any particular one as the best explanation, and to found thereon some ingenious hypothesis, how the land on both sides may have been differently situated, before a closer connexion with this little island was broken off by the destructive floods; or in which of the last great catastrophes of the earth that disjunction may have taken place.

We may leave such conjectures to themselves, and, satisfied with the main result, proceed further in the historical investigation and survey of the earth. For, in truth, the earth's surface more narrowly and carefully examined, furnishes in reference to man and his primitive history, far other and weightier problems than those involved in the example first selected.

It is generally known that in a great many places situated in various parts of the earth, in the interior of mountains and even on plains, sometimes near the surface, and sometimes at a greater or less depth in the interior of mountainous chains rising to a very great elevation above the level of the sea, there are found whole strata of scattered bones belonging to animal species either actually existing, or which formerly existed and are now totally extinct--the chaotic remains of an all destroying inundation that immediately remind us of the general tradition respecting the great Flood. In other places again extensive layers of coral, sea-sh.e.l.ls, marine plants, and other products of the sea, imbedded in the firm soil, prove these tracts of land to have been an ancient bottom of the sea. According to all appearance, these are not only monuments of one great natural revolution, but these elemental gigantic sepulchres of the primitive world offer to the mind many and various problems which more nearly, indeed, regard the earth, but as that planet is the habitation of man, have in consequence an indirect, but proximate, reference to mankind and their earliest history. A single example will best serve to point out among so many things, which are no longer perhaps susceptible of explanation, that which is of most moment to the historian; as well as the limits within which he should keep.

Not long back, about nine years ago, a cave was discovered in the county of Yorks.h.i.+re in England, filled for the most part with the bones and skeletons of hyaenas, of the same species now found in the southernmost point of Africa--the Cape of Good Hope. These bones were intermixed with those of tigers, bears, wolves, as also of elephants, rhinosceri, and other animals, among which were found the remains of the old large deer, that is not now to be met with in England. The profound Naturalist, Schubert, whom, in subjects of this kind, I willingly take for my guide, observes in his natural history with respect to this newly discovered cavern (which evidently belongs to another, long extinct, and anterior world of nature); that the opinion which would make a whole stratum of bones to have been swept thither by floods in so sound a state, and from so remote a distance, is perfectly inadmissible. He shews it to be much more probable that this cave was the den of a troop of hyaenas, which had dragged thither the bones of the other animals; for this fell and rapacious animal feeds by preference on bones, which it knows how to break, as it is in the habit of raking up dead bodies.--What an immense interval separates that now highly civilized state--those flouris.h.i.+ng provinces--that country abounding, and almost overteeming with all the fruits of human industry, with all the productions of mechanic skill;--that cultivated garden, that Island-Queen, the mistress of every sea;--what an immense interval separates her from those savage times, when troops of hyaenas prowled about the land, together with the other gigantic animals of the southern zone, and tropic clime!

Thus it is natural to suppose that in one of the last great revolutions of nature the climate of the earth has undergone a total change; and that originally the now icy north enjoyed a glowing warmth, a rich fertility, and all the fulness of luxuriant life. A number of still more decisive facts declare for this supposition, or, to speak more properly, this certainty; since we discover in the upper parts of Northern Asia, and in general throughout the Polar regions, entire forests of palm in the subterraneous strata, as also well-preserved remains of whole herds of elephants, and of many other kindred species of animals now totally extinct. Long before most of these facts were discovered, Leibnitz had conjectured that originally the earth in general, even in the north, enjoyed a much warmer temperature than in the present period of all-ruling and progressive frost; and Buffon and others have established on this idea their hypothesis of a vast central fire in the interior of the earth. The interior parts of the earth and its internal depths are a region totally impervious to the eye of mortal man, and can least of all be approached by those ordinary paths of hypothesis adopted by naturalists and geologists. The region designed for the existence of man, and of every other creature endowed with organic life, as well as the sphere open to the preception of man's senses, is confined to a limited s.p.a.ce between the upper and lower parts of the earth, exceedingly small in proportion to the diameter, or even semi-diameter of the earth, and forming only the exterior surface, or outer skin, of the great body of the earth. Even at a very slight depth below the earth's surface, all change of seasons ceases, and an even temperature eternally prevails, approximating rather to cold, than living heat. Yet on this side the earth is more easy of access than in the upper regions, where not only the higher Alps and glaciers are the last attainable limit to human daring, but even the pure ether of the supernal atmosphere made an aeronaut, celebrated for his disaster, learn at his own cost, how very near is that boundary where, in deadening cold, all life and all observation cease. It is in the physical, as in the moral world--where light and heat should exist, there two things are necessary--a power to give light and communicate heat, and a substance capable of receiving and absorbing the one and the other. Where either condition is wanting, there reigns eternal darkness, and deadly and eternal cold; and so the fact, that the whole action of heat, and of all the life it produces, is confined entirely to this lower atmosphere, should awake attention rather than create surprise. In all matters, even of this sort, we cannot be too mindful of the necessity of confining our researches to that small narrowly circ.u.mscribed sphere inhabited by man, and of never exceeding those limits.

Thus to explain the fact that the habitable earth has not, as originally, so warm a temperature as the north, we need not have recourse to any supposition of a central fire suddenly extinguished, like an oven that becomes cold, or to any other violent hypothesis of the same kind; for this fact may be sufficiently accounted for by the last great revolution of Nature--the general deluge, which as may be a.s.sumed with great probability, produced a change in the heretofore much purer, balmier, and more genial atmosphere. That, towards the equator, the position of the earth's axis has undergone a change, and that thereby this great revolution in the earth's climate was occasioned, is indeed a bare possibility; but until further proof, this must be regarded as a purely gratuitous hypothesis. But without subscribing to these fanciful suppositions, and mathematical theories, and without wis.h.i.+ng to penetrate, with some geologists, into the hidden depths of the earth in quest of an imagined central fire, we shall find on the inhabited surface of the globe, or very near it, many proofs and indications of the once superior energy of the principle of fire--a principle whereof volcanoes whether subsisting or extinct, and the kindred phenomena of earthquakes, may be considered the last feeble, surviving effects; for not basalt only, but porphyry, granite, and in general all the primary rocks, and those which, according to the cla.s.sifications of geologists, are more immediately akin to them, can be proved to be of a volcanic nature with as much certainty, as we can trace, in the horizontal secondary formations, the destructive influence and operation of the element of water. Hence this layer of subterraneous, though now in general slumbering fire, with all its volcanic arteries and veins of earthquakes, may once have been as widely diffused over the surface of the globe as the element of water, now occupying so large a portion of that surface. As volcanic rocks exist in the ocean, or rather at its bottom, and as their eruptions burst through the body of waters up to the surface of the sea; as their volcanic agency gives birth to earthquakes, and not unfrequently raises and heaves up new islands from the depths of the ocean; naturalists have concluded, with reason from these various facts, that the volcanic basis of the earth's surface though tolerably near, must still be somewhat deeper than the bottom of the sea. And without stopping to examine the hypothesis relative to the immeasurable depth of the ocean, the opinion which fixes the earth's basis at about 30,000 feet, or one geographical mile and a half below the surface of the sea, does not exceed the modest limits of a well-considered probability. In the present period of the globe, water is the predominant element on the earth's surface. But if that volcanic power which lies deeper in the bosom of the earth, and the kindred principle of fire, had at an earlier epoch of nature, the same influence and operation on the earth, as water afterwards had; we can well imagine such an influence to have materially affected the lower atmosphere, and to have rendered the climate of the earth, even in the North, totally different from what it is at present.

The strata of bones formed by the old flood, and the buried remains of a former race of animals, call forth a remark, which is not without importance in respect to the primitive history of man:--it is, that among the many bones of other large and small land animals, which form of themselves a rich and varied collection of the subterraneous products of nature, the fossile remains of man are scarcely any where to be found. It has sometimes happened that what were at first considered the bones of human giants have been afterwards proved to have been those of animals. It is so very rare an instance to meet in fossile remains with a real human bone, skull, jaw-bone or entire human skeleton (as in one particular instance was found enclosed in a lime-stone, mixed with some few utensils and instruments of the primitive world, such as a stone-knife, a copper axe, an iron club, and a dagger of a very ancient form, together with some human bones); that the very rareness of the exception serves only to confirm the general rule. Were we from this fact immediately to draw the conclusion that during all those revolutions of nature mankind had not yet existence, such an hypothesis would be rash, groundless, completely at variance with history--one to which many even physical objections, too long to detail here, might be opposed. That so very few, and indeed scarcely any human bones are to be found among the fossile remains of the primitive world, may possibly be owing to the circ.u.mstance that by the very artificial, hot, and highly seasoned food of men, their bones, from their chemical nature and qualities, are more liable to destruction than those of other animals. I may here repeat what I have already had occasion to remark, and what is here of especial importance, as applying particularly to the history and circ.u.mstances of the primitive world;--namely, that all things are not susceptible of an entire, satisfactory, and absolutely certain explanation; and that yet we may form a tolerably correct conception of general facts; though many of the particulars may remain for a time unexplained, or at least not capable of a full explanation. So on the other hand, it would be premature, and little conformable to the grave circ.u.mspection of the historian, to reduce all those natural catastrophes (the vouching monuments and mysterious inscriptions of which are now daily disclosed to the eye of Science as she explores the deep sepulchres of the earth)--to reduce, I say, all those natural catastrophes exclusively to the one nearest to the historical times, and which indeed is attested by the clear, unanimous tradition of all, or at least of most ancient nations; for several mighty and violent, revolutions of nature, of various kinds, though of a less general extent, may possibly have happened, and very probably did really happen simultaneously with, or subsequently, or even previously to the last general flood.

The irruption of the Black Sea into the Thracian Bosphorus is regarded by very competent judges in such matters, as an event perfectly historical, or at least, from its proximity to the historical times, as not comparatively of so primitive a date. A celebrated Northern naturalist has shewn it to be extremely probable, that the Caspian Sea, and the lake Aral were originally united with the Euxine, and that on the other hand the North Sea extended very far over land, and even near to those regions, leaving some marine plants very different from those of the Southern Seas. The sea originally must have stretched much farther over the earth and even over many places where now is dry land, as may easily be inferred from the great and extensive salt-steppes in Asia, Africa, and some parts of Eastern Europe, which furnish many and irrefragable proofs that the land was once occupied by the sea.

All these great physical changes are not necessarily and exclusively to be ascribed to the last general deluge. The presumed irruption of the Mediterranean into the ocean, as well as many other mere partial revolutions in the earth and sea, may have occurred much later and quite apart from this great event. The original magnificence of the climate of the North, as displayed in the luxuriant richness of all organic productions, is commemorated in many traditions of the primitive nations, especially those of Southern Asia; and in these sagas, the North is ever made the subject of uncommon eulogy. That the North enjoys a certain natural pre-eminence appears to be matter of certainty, and to be even susceptible of scientific demonstration. The northern and southern extremities of our planet appear at least to be very unlike, if we judge the terraqueous globe according to the present state of geographical knowledge. While the old and new continents, the north of Asia and of America, extend in long and wide tracts of land high up towards the North Pole, so that the boundaries of land cannot be every where perfectly defined; water is the predominant element around the colder South Pole, towards which even the southernmost point of America, and the remotest Island of Polynesia--the extreme verge of land--make no near approach; and beyond these points, so far as the boldest navigators have been able to penetrate, they have discovered only sea and ice, and no where a real Polar region of any great extent. Thus the South Pole is the cold and watery side, or as we should say in dynamics, the negative and weaker end of the earth's body, while the North Pole on the other hand appears to be the positive and stronger extremity; for, though the centre of the earth's magnetic attraction and magnetic life, accords not mathematically with the northern point, yet it lies at no very great distance from it. In other phenomena of nature, too, the real seat and principle of life will be found, not at the mathematical point, but a little removed from it.

Another circ.u.mstance worthy of consideration is, that the Northern firmament possesses by far the largest and most brilliant constellations, and that though the Southern firmament is embellished by its own, they are neither in the same number, nor of the same beauty. To the impressions made by such objects, the men of the primitive ages were certainly far more alive than those of the present day; and an obscure feeling for nature, grounded on the real natural superiority of the North, as well as the poetical sagas which were in part the natural offspring of such feelings, may have contributed to direct the stream of the first migrations of nations towards the North, and have occasioned the very early colonization and settlement of its regions: for, in primitive antiquity, a certain presentient instinct, it is right to suppose, was much oftener the primary cause of those migrations than such a spirit of commercial speculation as afterwards animated the Phnicians and their various colonies. We may here also observe that even in its present state, the remoter North has its own peculiar charms and advantages, and that by human industry it may attain to a much higher degree of productiveness, than we should be at first-sight tempted to suppose. In this sense ought to be taken the tradition of antiquity, as to the happy and virtuous people of the Hyperboreans; and it is easy to understand it in this sense without inferring thence too many consequences. If on the other hand, some able and learned naturalists, led away by this fact, appear almost inclined to regard the region of the North Pole, once in the enjoyment of a warm southern temperature, as one of the earliest, nay the very earliest abode of the human race; I cannot follow them in their hypothesis, opposed as it is to the positive and unanimous tradition of many and most ancient nations, pointing with one concurrent voice to central Asia as man's primitive dwelling-place. It appears indeed that the tradition of antiquity as to the Island of Atlantis ought to be considered historical; but instead of regarding this country as an island of the Blessed situated in the arctic circle, I think it much more natural to refer the whole tradition to an obscure nautical knowledge of America, or of those adjacent islands at which Columbus first touched, and to which the Phnician pilots (who beyond all doubt circ.u.mnavigated Africa) may not improbably have been driven in the course of their voyage.

I have laid it down as an invariable maxim constantly to follow historical tradition, and to hold fast by that clue, even when many things in the testimony and declarations of tradition appear strange and almost inexplicable, or at least enigmatical; for so soon as in the investigations of ancient history, we let slip that thread of Ariadne, we can find no outlet from the labyrinth of fanciful theories, and the chaos of clas.h.i.+ng opinions. For this reason I cannot concur in the very violent hypothesis which a celebrated geologist, towards the close of the last century, M. De Luc, has hazarded respecting the deluge, and which the excellent s...o...b..rg has adopted in his great historical work;[38] although the author of this theory, so far from intending to oppose it to the Mosaic account of the deluge, or to set aside the narrative of the inspired historian, conceived his hypothesis was calculated to furnish the strongest confirmation and clearest ill.u.s.tration of the sacred text. But I cannot reconcile his theory either with Holy Writ, or with the general testimony of historical tradition. The supposition is this, that the deluge was not a general inundation of the whole earth, according to the ordinary belief, but a mere change of the solid and fluid parts of the earth's surface, a dynamical trans.m.u.tation of land and sea, so that what was formerly land became sea, and vice versa. This is much more than can be found in the old account of the Noachian flood, or than a sound critical interpretation would infer; and the supposition that the names of rivers and countries occurring in the Bible, refer to those objects as they existed in the original dry land; and are again to be transferred to similar objects in the new land that sprang up with, or after, or out of the deluge; this supposition, I say, bears too evidently the stamp of arbitrary conjecture, to gain admission and credit with those who have taken historical tradition for their guide. If by the geological facts which offer, or which we think offer, satisfactory proof, not only of the general Noachian flood, but of more than one deluge and of still more violent catastrophes of nature; if by these geological facts before our eyes, such a total revolution and dynamic trans.m.u.tation of land and sea were really proved (and the character of these proofs I must abandon to the investigation and judgment of others); this great revolution examined in an historical point of view, and in reference to the Mosaic history, must then be rather referred to that elder period, whereof it is said: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; but the Spirit of G.o.d moved upon the face of the waters."

These words which announce the presage of a new morn of creation, not only represent a darker and wilder state of the globe, but very clearly show the element of water to be still in predominant force. Even the division of the elements of the waters above the firmament, and of the waters below it, on the second day of creation--the permanent limitation of the sea for the formation and visible appearance of dry land, necessarily imply a mighty revolution in the earth, and afford additional proof that the Mosaic history speaks not only of one, but of several catastrophes of nature; a circ.u.mstance that has not been near enough attended to in the geological interpretation and ill.u.s.tration of the Bible. But to the bold and ill-founded hypothesis above-mentioned, many geological facts may be opposed, for in the midst of vast tracts and strata of an ancient bottom of the sea, many spots are found covered with the acc.u.mulated remains of land animals, with trunks of trees and various other products of vegetation, pertaining not to the sea, but to dry land.

With the clearest and most indubitable precision, the Mosaic history fixes the primitive dwelling-place of man in that central region of Western Asia situate near two great rivers, and amid four inland seas, the Persian and Arabian gulfs on the one hand, and the Caspian and Mediterranean seas on the other, and which is likewise designated for the same purpose by the concurrent traditions of most other primitive nations. The ancient tradition of the European nations as to their own origin and early history, conducts the enquirer constantly to the Caucasian regions, to Asia Minor, to Phnicia, and to Egypt; countries all of them contiguous to, in the vicinity and even on the coast of, that central region. Among the primitive Asiatic nations, the Chinese place the cradle of their origin and civilization in the north-western province of Shensee; and the Indians fix theirs towards the north of the Himalaya mountains. Thus this last tradition points to Bactriana, which, as it borders on Persia, approximates consequently to that central region; whereof the holy and primitive country of the Persian Sagas, Atropatena or land of fire, now known by the name of Adherbijan forms a part. With a clearness and precision which admit of no doubt, the Mosaic history designates the two great rivers of that central region, the Tigris and Euphrates, by the same names which they have ever afterwards borne; and even the name of Eden, down to a later period, was affixed to a country near Damascus, and to another in a.s.syria. The third river of Paradise has been sought for by some in a more Northerly direction--in the region of Mount Caucasus; and though not with equal certainty as in the other two instances, they have thought to find it in the Phasis. The fourth river towards the South, the old Interpreters generally took to be the Nile; but the description of its course is so widely different from the present situation of that river, and the present geography of the whole of those regions, that here at least a very great change must have occurred, in order to occasion this discrepancy between the old description of this river's course, and the present geography of the country.

In another circ.u.mstance, also, which has been mostly too little attended to, this disparity between the Mosaic description and the present conformation of those regions is particularly striking. The geography of the rivers of Paradise, at least of two or three, may be easily traced, though the fourth remains a matter of uncertainty; but the one source of Paradise in which those four rivers had their rise, in order thence to spread, and diffuse fertility over the whole earth--this one source, which is precisely the object of most importance, can no where be found on the earth; whether it be dried or filled up, or howsoever it has been removed. In attending to some indications in Scripture, and without transgressing the due limits of interpretation, may we not be permitted to conjecture that the first chastis.e.m.e.nt inflicted on man by expulsion from his first glorious habitation and primeval home, may have been accompanied by a change in Paradise brought about by some natural convulsion? To judge by a.n.a.logy, and from circ.u.mstances, which even a pa.s.sage in Holy Writ alludes to, this convulsion must have been rather a volcanic eruption, by which even at the present day the sources of rivers are dried up, and their course completely changed, than a mere inundation that we are ever wont to regard as the sole possible cause of physical revolutions. Many vestiges of such changes may perhaps be proved from even geological observation;--thus to cite only one example, the dead sea in Palestine itself may be included in the number of those lakes that bear very evident traces of a volcanic origin. The supposition, however, which we have ventured to make, must not be looked upon in the light of a formal hypothesis, but rather as a question dictated by a love of enquiry, and by a desire for the further elucidation of a subject not yet sufficiently understood.

Thus have I now taken a general survey of the early condition of the globe, considered as the habitation of man, and as far as was necessary for that object; and in this rapid sketch, I have endeavoured, as far as was possible for a layman, to place in the clearest light the most remarkable and best attested facts and discoveries of geology, with a constant attention to the testimony of primitive and historical tradition. No longer embarra.s.sed by these physical discussions, we may now proceed to meet the main question: "What relation hath man to this his habitation--earth; what place doth he occupy therein; and what rank doth he hold among the other creatures and co-habitants of this globe, what is his proper destiny upon, and in relation to, the earth, and what is it which really const.i.tutes him Man?"

The absolute, and, for that reason, Pagan system of natural philosophy spoken of above, has indeed in these latter times had the courage, laudable perhaps in the perverse course which it had taken, to rank man with the ape, as a peculiar species of the general kind. When in its anatomical investigations, it has numbered the various characteristics of this human ape, according to the number of its vertebrae, its toes, &c. it concedes to man, as his distinguis.h.i.+ng quality, not what we are wont to call reason, perfectibility, or the faculty of speech, but "a capacity for Const.i.tutions!" Thus man would be a liberal ape! And so far from disagreeing with the author of this opinion, we think man may undoubtedly become so to a certain extent, although the idea that he was originally nothing more than a n.o.bler or better disciplined ape is alike opposed to the voice of history, and the testimony of natural science.

If in the examination of man's nature we will confine our view exclusively to the lower world of animals, I should say that the possible contagion and communication of various diseases, and organic properties and powers of animals, would prove in man rather a greater sympathy and affinity of organic life and animal blood with the cow, the sheep, the camel, the horse and the elephant, than with the ape. Even in the venomous serpent and the mad dog, this deadly affinity of blood and this fearful contact of internal life exist in a different and nearer degree, than have yet been discovered in the ape. The docility too, of the elephant and other generous animals, bears much stronger marks of a.n.a.logy with reason than the cunning of the ape, in which the native sense of a sound, unprejudiced mind will always recognize an unsuccessful and abortive imitation of man. The resemblance of physiognomy and cast of countenance in the lion, the bull, and the eagle, to the human face--a resemblance so celebrated in sculpture and the imitative arts, and which was interwoven into the whole mythology and symbolism of the ancients--this resemblance is founded on far deeper and more spiritual ideas than any mere comparison of dead bones in an animal skeleton can suggest.

The extremes of error, when it has reached the height of extravagance, often accelerate the return to truth; and thus to the a.s.sertion that man is nothing more than a liberalized ape, we may boldly answer that man, on the contrary, was originally, and by the very const.i.tution of his being, designed to be the lord of creation, and, though in a subordinate degree, the legitimate ruler of the earth and of the world around him--the vice-gerent of G.o.d in nature. And if he no longer enjoys this high prerogative to its full extent, as he might and ought to have done, he has only himself to blame; if he exercises his empire over creatures rather by indirect means and mechanical agency than by the immediate power and native energy of his own intellectual pre-eminence, he still is the lord of creation, and has retained much of the power and dignity he once received, did he but always make a right use of that power.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of man, and the peculiar eminence of his nature and his destiny, as these are universally felt and acknowledged by mankind, are usually defined to consist, either in reason, or in the faculty of speech. But this definition is defective in this respect, that, on one hand, reason is a mere abstract faculty, which to be judged, requires a psychological investigation or a.n.a.lysis; and that on the other hand, the faculty of speech is a mere potentiality, or a germ which must be unfolded before it can become a real ent.i.ty. We should therefore give a much more correct and comprehensive definition, if, instead of this, we said: The peculiar pre-eminence of man consists in this--that to him alone among all other of earth's creatures, the word has been imparted and communicated. The word actually delivered and really communicated is not a mere dead faculty, but an historical reality and occurrence; and for that very reason, the definition we have given stands much more fitly at the head of history, than the other more abstract one.

In the idea of the word, considered as the basis of man's dignity and peculiar destination, the internal light of consciousness and of our own understanding, is undoubtedly first included--this word is not a mere faculty of speech, but the fertile root whence the stately trunk of all language has sprung. But the word is not confined to this only--it next includes a living, working power--it is not merely an object and organ of knowledge--an instrument of teaching and learning; but the medium of affectionate union and conciliatory accommodation, judicial arbitrement and efficacious command, or even creative productiveness, as our own experience and life itself manifest each of those significations of the word; and thus it embraces the whole plenitude of the excellencies and qualities which characterize man.

Nature too, has her mute language and her symbolical writing; but she requires a discerning intellect to gain the key to her secrets, to unravel her profound enigmas; and, piercing through her mysteries, interpret the hidden sense of her word, and thus reveal the fulness of her glory. But he, to whom alone among all earth's creatures, the word has been imparted has been for that reason const.i.tuted the lord and ruler of the earth. As soon, however, as he abandons that divine principle implanted in his breast; as soon as he loses that word of life which had been communicated and confided to him; he sinks down to a level with nature, and, from her lord, becomes her va.s.sal; and here commences the history of man.

END OF LECTURE I.

LECTURE II.

ON THE DISPUTE IN PRIMITIVE HISTORY, AND ON THE DIVISION OF THE HUMAN RACE.

"In the beginning man had the word, and that word was from G.o.d."

Thus the divine, Promethean spark in the human breast, when more accurately described and expressed in less figurative language, springs from the word originally communicated or intrusted to man, as that wherein consist his peculiar nature, his intellectual dignity and his high destination.--The pregnant expression borrowed above from the New Testament, on the mystery and internal nature of G.o.d, may with some variation, and bating, as is evident, the immense distance between the creature and the Creator, be applied to man and his primitive condition; and may serve as a superscription or introduction to primitive history in the following terms: "In the beginning man had the word, and that word was from G.o.d--and out of the living power communicated to man in and by that word, came the light of his existence."--This is at least the divine foundation of all history--it falls not properly within the domain of history, but is anterior to it.--To this position the _state of nature_ among savages forms no valid objection; for that this was the really original condition of mankind is by no means proved, and is arbitrarily a.s.sumed; nay, on the contrary, the savage state must be looked upon as a state of degeneracy and degradation--consequently not as the first, but as the second, phenomenon in human history--as something which, as it has resulted from this second step in man's progress, must be regarded as of a later origin.

In history, as in all science and in life itself the princ.i.p.al point on which every thing turns, and the all-deciding problem, is whether all things should be deduced from G.o.d, and G.o.d himself should be considered the first, nature the second, existence--the latter holding undoubtedly a very important place;--or, whether, in the inverse order, the precedency should be given to nature, and, as invariably happens in such cases, all things should be deduced from nature only, whereby the deity, though not by express, unequivocal words, yet in fact is indirectly set aside, or remains at least unknown. This question cannot be settled, nor brought to a conclusion, by mere dialectic strife, which rarely leads to its object. It is the will which here mostly decides; and, according to the nature and leaning of his character, leads the individual to choose between the two opposite paths, the one he would follow in speculation and in science, in faith and in life.

Thus much at least we may say, in reference to the science of history, that they who in that department will consider nature only, and view man but with the eye of a naturalist (specious and plausible as their reasons may at first sight appear), will never rightly comprehend the world and reality of history, and never obtain an adequate conception, nor exhibit an intelligible representation of its phenomena.--On the other hand, if we proceed not solely and exclusively from nature, but first from G.o.d and that beginning of nature appointed by G.o.d, so this is by no means a degradation or misapprehension of nature; nor does it imply any hostility towards nature--an hostility which could arise only from a very defective, erroneous, or narrow-minded conception of historical philosophy. On the contrary, experience has proved that by this course of speculation we are led more thoroughly to comprehend the glory of G.o.d in nature, and the magnificence of nature herself--a course of speculation quite consistent with the full recognition of nature's rights, and the share due to her in the history and progress of man.

Regarded in an historical point of view, man was created free--there lay two paths before him--he had to choose between the one, conducting to the realms above, and the other, leading to the regions below;--and thus at least he was endowed with the faculty of two different wills. Had he remained steadfast in his first will--that pure emanation of the deity--had he remained true to the word which G.o.d had communicated to him--he would have had but one will. He would, however, have still been free; but his freedom would have resembled that of the heavenly spirits, whom we must not imagine to be devoid of freedom because they are no longer in a state of trial, and can never be separated from G.o.d. We should, besides, greatly err, if we figured to ourselves the Paradisaic state of the first man as one of happy indolence; for, in truth, it was far otherwise designed, and it is clearly and expressly said that our first parent was placed in the garden of the earth to guard and to cultivate it. "To guard," because an enemy was to be at hand, against whom it behoved to watch and to contend. "To cultivate," possibly in a very different manner, yet still with labour, though, doubtless, a labour blessed with far richer and more abundant recompense than afterwards when, on man's account, the earth was charged with malediction.

This first divine law of nature, if we may so speak, by virtue of which labour and struggle became from the beginning the destiny of man, has retained its full force through all succeeding ages, and is applicable alike to every cla.s.s, and every nation, to each individual as well as to mankind in general, to the most important, as to the most insignificant, relations of society. He who weakly shrinks from the struggle, who will offer no resistance, who will endure no labour nor fatigue, can neither fulfil his own vocation, whatever it be, nor contribute aught to the general welfare of mankind.--But since man hath been the prey of discord, two different wills have contended within him for the mastery--a divine and a natural will. Even his freedom is no longer that happy freedom of celestial peace--the freedom of one who hath conquered and triumphed--but a freedom, as we now see it--the freedom of undetermined choice--of arduous, still undecided, struggle. To return to the divine will, or the one conformable to G.o.d--to restore harmony between the natural and the divine will, and to convert and transform more and more the lower, earthly and natural will into the higher, and divine one, is the great task of mankind in general, as of each individual in particular. And this return--this restoration--this transformation--all the endeavours after such--the progress or retrogressions in this path--const.i.tute an essential part of universal history, so far as this embraces the moral development and intellectual march of humanity.--But the fact that man, so soon as he loses the internal sheet-anchor of truth and life--so soon as he abandons the eternal law of divine ordinance, falls immediately under the dominion of nature, and becomes her bondsman, each individual may learn from his own interior, his own experience, and a survey of life; since the violent, disorderly might of pa.s.sion herself is only a blind power of nature acting within us. Although this fact is historical, and indeed the first of all historical facts, yet as it belongs to all mankind, and recurs in each individual, it may be regarded as a psychological fact and phenomenon of human consciousness. And on this very account it does not precisely fall within the limits of history, and it precedes all history; but all the consequences or possible consequences of this fact, all the consequences that have really occurred, are within the essential province of history.

The next consequence which, after this internal discord had broken out in the consciousness and life of man, flowed from the developement of this principle, was the division of the single race of man into a plurality of nations, and the consequent diversity of languages. As long as the internal harmony of the soul was undisturbed and unbroken, and the light of the mind unclouded by sin, language could be nought else than the simple and beautiful copy or expression of internal serenity; and consequently there could be but one speech. But after the internal word, which had been communicated by G.o.d to man, had become obscured; after man's connection with his Creator had been broken; even outward language necessarily fell into disorder and confusion. The simple and divine truth was overlaid with various and sensual fictions, buried under illusive symbols, and at last perverted into a horrible phantom.

Even Nature, that, like a clear mirror of G.o.d's creation, had originally lain revealed and transparent to the unclouded eye of man, became now more and more unintelligible, strange and fearful; once fallen away from his G.o.d, man fell more and more into a state of internal conflict and confusion.--Thus there sprang up a mult.i.tude of languages, alien one from the other, and varying with every climate, in proportion as mankind became morally disunited, geographically divided and dispersed, and even distinguished by an organic diversity of form;--for when man had once fallen under the power and dominion of nature, his physical conformation changed with every climate. As a plant or animal indigenous to Africa or America has a totally different form and const.i.tution in Asia, so it is with man; and the races of mankind form so many specific variations of the same kind, from the negro to the copper-coloured American and the savage islander of the south sea.--The expression _races_, however, applied to man, involves something abhorrent from his high uplifted spirit, and debasing to its native dignity.--This diversity of races among men no one ought to exaggerate in a manner so as to raise doubts as to the ident.i.ty of their origin, for, according to a general organic law, which indeed is allowed to hold good in the natural history of animals, races capable of a prolific union must be considered of the same origin, and as const.i.tuting the same species.--Even the apparent chaos of different languages may be cla.s.sed into kindred families, which though separated by the distance of half the globe, seem still very closely allied. Of these different families of tongues, the first and most eminent are those which by their internal beauty, and by the n.o.ble spirit breathing through them and apparent in their whole construction, denote for the most part a higher origin and divine inspiration; and, much as all these languages differ from each other, they appear, after all, to be merely branches of one common stem.

The American tribes appeared indeed to be singularly strange, and to stand at a fearful distance from the rest of mankind; yet the European writer[39] most deeply conversant with those nations and their languages has found in their traditions and tongues, and even in their manners and customs, many positive and incontestable points of a.n.a.logy with eastern Asia and its inhabitants.

When man had once fallen from virtue, no determinable limit could be a.s.signed to his degradation; nor how far he might descend by degrees, and approximate even to the level of the brute; for, as from his origin he was a being essentially free, he was in consequence capable of change, and even in his organic powers most flexible.

We must adopt this principle as the only clue to guide us in our enquiries, from the negro who, as well from his bodily strength and agility as from his docile and in general excellent character, is far from occupying the lowest grade in the scale of humanity, down to the monstrous Patagonian, the almost imbecile Peshwerais, and the horrible cannibal of New Zealand, whose very portrait excites a shudder in the beholder. How, even in the midst of civilization, man may degenerate into the savage state; to what a pitch of moral degradation he may descend, those can attest who have had opportunities of investigating more closely the criminal history of great culprits, and even, at some periods, the history of whole nations. In fact, every revolution is a transient period of barbarism, in which man, while he displays partial examples of the most heroic virtue and generous self-devotion, is often half a savage. Nay, a war conducted with great animosity and protracted to extremities, may easily degenerate into such a state of savage ferocity: hence it is the highest glory of truly civilized nations to repress and subdue by the sentiment of honour, by a system of severe discipline, and by a generous code of warfare, respected alike by all belligerent parties, that tendency and p.r.o.neness to cruelty and barbarity inherent in man.

Among the different tribes of savages, there are many indeed that appear to be of a character incomparably better and more n.o.ble than those above mentioned; yet, after the first ever so favourable impression, a closer investigation will almost always discover in them very bad traits of character and manners.--So far from seeking with Rousseau and his disciples for the true origin of mankind, and the proper foundation of the social compact, in the condition even of the best and n.o.blest savages; and so little disposed are we to remodel society upon this boasted ideal of a pretended state of nature, that we regard it, on the contrary, as a state of degeneracy and degradation. Thus in his origin, and by nature, man is no savage:--he may indeed at any time and in any place, and even at the present day, become one easily and rapidly, but in general, not by a sudden fall, but by a slow and gradual declension; and we the more willingly adopt this view as there are many historical grounds of probability that, in the origin of mankind, this second fall of man was not immediate and total, but slow and gradual, and that consequently all those tribes which we call savage are of the same origin with the n.o.blest and most civilized nations, and have only by degrees descended to their present state of brutish degradation.

Even the division of the human race into a plurality of nations, and the chaotic diversity of human tongues, appear, from historical tradition, to have become general and complete only at a more advanced period; for, in the beginning, mention is made but of one separation of mankind into two races or hostile cla.s.ses. I use the general expression historical tradition; for the brief and almost enigmatical, but very significant and pregnant, words, in which the first great outward discord, or conflict of mankind in primitive history, is represented in the Mosaic narrative, are corroborated in a very remarkable degree by the Sagas of other nations, among which I may instance in particular those of the Greeks and the Indians. Although this primitive conflict, or opposition among men, is represented in these traditions under various local colours, and not without some admixture of poetical embellishment, yet this circ.u.mstance serves only for the better confirmation of the fundamental truth, if we separate the essential matter from the advent.i.tious details. Before I attempt to place in a clearer light this first great historical event, which indeed const.i.tutes the main subject of all primitive history, by showing the strong concurrence of the many and various authorities attesting it; it may be proper to call your attention to a third fundamental canon of historical criticism, which indeed requires no lengthened demonstration, and is merely this, that in all enquiries, particularly into ancient and primitive history, we must not reject as impossible or improbable whatever strikes us at first as strange or marvellous. For it often happens that a closer investigation and a deeper knowledge of a subject proves those things precisely to be true, which at the first view or impression, appeared to us as the most singular; while on the other hand, if we persist in estimating truth and probability by the sole standard of objects vulgar and familiar to ourselves; and if we will apply this exclusive standard to a world and to ages so totally different, and so widely remote from our own, we shall be certainly led into the most violent, and most erroneous hypotheses.

In entering on this subject we must observe that, in the Mosaic account, primitive and, what we call, universal history, does not properly commence with the first man, his creation or ulterior destiny, but with Cain--the fratricide and curse of Cain. The preceding part of the sacred narrative regards, if we may so speak, only the private life of Adam, which however will always retain a deep significacy for all the descendants of the first progenitor.

The origin of discord in man, and the transmission of that mischief to all ages and all generations, is indeed the first historical fact; but on account of its universality, it forms, at the same time, as I have before observed, a psychological phenomenon; and while, in this first section of sacred history, everything points and refers to the mysteries of religion; the fratricide of Cain on the other hand, and the flight of that restless criminal to Eastern Asia, are the first events and circ.u.mstances which properly belong to the province of history. In this account we see first the foundation of the most ancient city, by which undoubtedly we must understand a great, or at least an old and celebrated city of Eastern Asia; and secondly, the origin of various hereditary cla.s.ses, trades and arts; especially of those connected with the first knowledge and use of metals, and which doubtless hold the first place in the history of human arts and discoveries.