History of the Intellectual Development of Europe Volume II Part 21

[Sidenote: Application of these principles to Europe.] Europe is now entering on its mature phase of life. Each of its nations will attempt its own intellectual organization, and will accomplish it more or less perfectly, as certainly as that bees build combs and fill them with honey. The excellence of the result will altogether turn on the suitability and perfection of the means.

[Sidenote: Example offered by China.] There are historical ill.u.s.trations which throw light upon the working of these principles. Thus, centuries ago, China entered on her Age of Reason, and instinctively commenced the operation of mental organization. What is it that has given to her her wonderful longevity? What is it that insures the well-being, the prosperity of a population of three hundred and sixty millions--more than one fourth of the human race--on a surface not by any means as large as Europe? Not geographical position; for, though the country may in former ages have been safe on the East by reason of the sea, it has been invaded and conquered from the West. Not a docility, want of spirit, or submissiveness of the people, for there have been b.l.o.o.d.y insurrections. The Chinese empire extends through twenty degrees of lat.i.tude; the mean annual temperature of its northern provinces differs from that of the southern by twenty-five Fahrenheit degrees. Hence, with a wonderful variety in its vegetation, there must be great differences in the types of men inhabiting it. But the principle that lies at the basis of its political system has confronted successfully all these human varieties, and has outlived all revolutions.

[Sidenote: She has organized her public intellect,] The organization of the national intellect is that principle. A broad foundation is laid in universal education. It is intended that every Chinese shall know how to read and write. The special plan then adopted is that of compet.i.tive examinations. The way to public advancement is open to all. Merit, real or supposed, is the only pa.s.sport to office. Its degree determines exclusively social rank. The government is organized on mental qualifications. The imperial const.i.tution is imitated in those of the provinces. Once in three years public examinations are held in each district or county, with a view of ascertaining those who are fit for office. The bachelors, or those who are successful, are triennially sent for renewed examination in the provincial capital before two examiners deputed from the general board of public education. The licentiates thus sifted out now offer themselves for final examination before the imperial board at Pekin. Suitable candidates for vacant posts are thus selected. There is no one who is not liable to such an inquisition. When vacancies occur they are filled from the list of approved men, who are gradually elevated to the highest honours.

[Sidenote: and obtains stability for her inst.i.tutions.] It is not because the talented, who, when disappointed const.i.tute in other countries the most dangerous of all cla.s.ses, are here provided for, that stability of inst.i.tutions has been attained, but because the political system approaches to an agreement with that physiological condition which guides all social development. The intention is to give a dominating control to intellect.

[Sidenote: Imperfection of the method she employs.] The method through which that result is aimed at is imperfect, and, consequently, an absolute coincidence between the system and the tendency is not attained, but the stability secured by their approximation is very striking. The method itself is the issue of political forms through which the nation for ages has been pa.s.sing. Their insufficiency and imperfections are incorporated with and reappear in it.

[Sidenote: Its literary basis inadequate.] To the practical eye of Europe a political system thus founded on a literary basis appears to be an absurdity. But we must look with respect on anything that one-fourth of mankind have concluded it best to do, especially since they have consistently adhered to their determination for several thousand years.

Forgetting that herein they satisfy an instinct of humanity which every nation, if it lives long enough, must feel, Europe often a.s.serts that it is the compet.i.tive system which has brought the Chinese to their present state, and made them a people without any sense of patriotism or honour, without any faith or vigour. These are the results, not of their system, but of old age. There are octogenarians among us as morose, selfish, and conceited as China.

[Sidenote: Relative position of Europe and China.] The want of a clear understanding of our relative position vitiates all our dealings with that ancient empire. The Chinese has heard of our discordant opinions, of our intolerance toward those who differ in ideas from us, of our wors.h.i.+p of wealth, and the honour we pay to birth; he has heard that we sometimes commit political power to men who are so little above the animals that they can neither read nor write; that we hold military success in esteem, and regard the profession of arms as the only suitable occupation for a gentleman. It is so long since his ancestors thought and acted in that manner that he justifies himself in regarding us as having scarcely yet emerged from the barbarian stage. On our side, we cherish the delusion that we shall, by precept or by force, convert him to our modes of thought, religious or political, and that we can infuse into his stagnating veins a portion of our enterprise.

[Sidenote: What China has really accomplished.] A trustworthy account of the present condition of China would be a valuable gift to philosophy, and also to statesmans.h.i.+p. On a former page I have remarked (Chap. I.

Vol. I.) that it demands the highest policy to govern populations living in great differences of lat.i.tude. Yet China has not only controlled her climatic strands of people, she has even made them, if not h.o.m.ogeneous, yet so fitted to each other that they all think and labour alike. Europe is inevitably hastening to become what China is. In her we may see what we shall be like when we are old.

A great community, aiming to govern itself by intellect rather than by coercion, is a spectacle worthy of admiration, even though the mode by which it endeavours to accomplish its object is plainly inadequate.

[Sidenote: Difference in government by force and intelligence.] Brute force holds communities together as an iron nail binds pieces of wood by the compression it makes--a compression depending on the force with which it has been hammered in. It also holds more tenaciously if a little rusted with age. But intelligence binds like a screw. The things it has to unite must be carefully adjusted to its thread. It must be gently turned, not driven and so it retains the consenting parts firmly together.

Notwithstanding the imperfections of a system founded on such a faulty basis, that great community has accomplished what many consider to be the object of statesmans.h.i.+p. They think that it should be permanence in Inst.i.tutions. But permanence is only, in an apparent sense, the object of good statesmans.h.i.+p; progression, in accordance with the natural tendency, is the real one. The successive steps of such a progression follow one another so imperceptibly that there is a delusive appearance of permanence. Man is so const.i.tuted that he is never aware of continuous motion. Abrupt variations alone impress his attention.

Forms of government, therefore, are of moment, though not in the manner commonly supposed. Their value increases in proportion as they permit or encourage the natural tendency for development to be satisfied.

While Asia has thus furnished an example of the effects of a national organization of intellect, Europe, on a smaller scale, has presented an ill.u.s.tration of the same kind. [Sidenote: A similar example in the case of Italy.] The papal system opened, in its special circ.u.mstances, a way for talent. It maintained an intellectual organization for those who were within its pale, irrespective of wealth or birth. It was no objection that the greatest churchman frequently came from the lowest walks of life. And that organization sustained it in spite of the opposition of external circ.u.mstances for several centuries after its supernatural and ostensible basis had completely decayed away.

[Sidenote: Approach of Europe to universal education.] Whatever may be the facts under which, in the different countries of Europe, such an organization takes place, or the political forms guiding it, the basis it must rest upon is universal, and, if necessary, compulsory education.

In the more enlightened places the movement has already nearly reached that point. Already it is an accepted doctrine that the state, as well as the parent, has rights in a child and that it may insist on education: conversely also, that every child has a claim upon the government for good instruction. After providing in the most liberal manner for that, free countries have but one thing more to do for the accomplishment of the rest.

[Sidenote: Necessity of intellectual freedom.] That one thing is to secure intellectual freedom as completely as the rights of property and personal liberty have been already secured. Philosophical opinions and scientific discoveries are ent.i.tled to be judged of by their truth, not by their relation to existing interests. The motion of the earth round the sun, the antiquity of the globe, the origin of species, are doctrines which have had to force their way in the manner described in this book, not against philosophical opposition, but opposition of a totally different nature. And yet the interests which resisted them so strenuously have received no damage from their establishment beyond that consequent on the discredit of having so resisted them.

There is no literary crime greater than that of exciting a social, and especially a theological odium against ideas that are purely scientific, none against which the disapproval of every educated man ought to be more strongly expressed. The republic of letters owes it to its own dignity to tolerate no longer offences of that kind.

[Sidenote: The future course of Europe.] To such an organization of their national intellect, and to giving it a political control, the countries of Europe are thus rapidly advancing. They are hastening to satisfy their instinctive tendency. The special form in which they will embody their intentions must, of course, depend to a great degree on the political forms under which they have pa.s.sed their lives, modified by that approach to h.o.m.ogeneousness which arises from increased intercommunication. The ca.n.a.l system, so wonderfully developed in China, exerted no little influence in that respect--an influence, however, not to be compared with that which must be the result of the railway system of Europe.

[Sidenote: Its hopefulness compared with that of China.] In an all-important particular the prospect of Europe is bright. China is pa.s.sing through the last stage of civil life in the cheerlessness of Buddhism; Europe approaches it through Christianity. Universal benevolence cannot fail to yield a better fruit than unsocial pride.

There is a fairer hope for nations animated by a sincere religious sentiment, who, whatever their political history may have been, have always agreed in this, that they were devout, than for a people who dedicate themselves to a selfish pursuit of material advantages, who have lost all belief in a future, and are living without any G.o.d.

I have now come to the end of a work which has occupied me for many years, and which I submit, with many misgivings as to its execution, to the indulgent consideration of the public. These pages will not have been written in vain if the facts they present impress the reader, as they have impressed the author, with a conviction that the civilization of Europe has not taken place fortuitously, but in a definite mariner, and under the control of natural law; that the procession of nations does not move forward like a dream, without reason or order, but that there is a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events; that individual life and its advancement through successive stages is the model of social life and its secular variations.

I have a.s.serted the control of natural law in the shaping of human affairs--a control not inconsistent with free-will any more than the unavoidable pa.s.sage of an individual as he advances to maturity and declines in old age is inconsistent with his voluntary actions; that higher law limits our movements to a certain direction, and guides them in a certain way. As the Stoics of old used to say, an acorn may lie torpid in the ground, unable to exert its living force, until it receives warmth, and moisture, and other things needful for its germination; when it grows, it may put forth one bud here and another bud there; the wind may bend one branch, the frost blight another; the innate vitality of the tree may struggle against adverse conditions or luxuriate in those that are congenial; but, whatever the circ.u.mstances may be, there is an overruling power for ever constraining and modelling it. The acorn can only produce an oak.

The application of this principle to human societies is completely established by a scientific study of their history; and the more extensive and profound that study, the better shall we be able to distinguish the invariable law in the midst of the varying events. But that once thoroughly appreciated, we have gained a philosophical guide for the interpretation of the past acts of nations, and a prophetic monitor of their future, so far as prophecy is possible in human affairs.