Читать книгу The Philosophy of History (Vol.1&2) - Friedrich von Schlegel - Страница 8

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"In the beginning man had the word, and that word was from God."

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 God, 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 God—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 assumed; 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 principal point on which every thing turns, and the all-deciding problem, is whether all things should be deduced from God, and God 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 God and that beginning of nature appointed by God, 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 God 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 God 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 God. 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 class, 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 God—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—constitute 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 passion 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 God 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 God'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 God, man fell more and more into a state of internal conflict and confusion.—Thus there sprang up a multitude 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 constitution 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 identity 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 constituting the same species.—Even the apparent chaos of different languages may be classed 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 noble 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 analogy with eastern Asia and its inhabitants.

When man had once fallen from virtue, no determinable limit could be assigned 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 proneness 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 noble 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 noblest 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 noblest 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 classes. 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 circumstance serves only for the better confirmation of the fundamental truth, if we separate the essential matter from the adventitious details. Before I attempt to place in a clearer light this first great historical event, which indeed constitutes 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 circumstances 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 classes, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Greek Sagas represent this two-fold state of mankind in the primitive ante-historical ages in a very peculiar manner, as the gradual decline and corruption of successive generations; of this kind is the tradition of the ages of the world, whereof four or five are numbered. The Golden age of human felicity and the brazen age of all-ruling violence form the two essential terms of this tradition; and the intermediate ages are mere links, or points of transition to render the account more complete.

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

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

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

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

On this important subject we have another observation to make, which refers more properly to an incidental circumstance in primitive history; for our great business is with the moral and intellectual progress of man. But even in respect to this more important object, the circumstance which we allude to should not be passed over in silence, as it tends to exemplify, illustrate and confirm the principle we have already had occasion to enforce; namely that we ought not to estimate by the narrow standard of present analogies and vulgar probabilities, all those facts in primitive nature and in primitive history which strike us as so strange, mysterious, and marvellous; provided they be really attested by ancient monuments and ancient tradition. We should ever bear in mind what a mighty wall of separation—what an impassable abyss—divides us from that remote world both of nature and of man. I refer to the unanimous testimony of ancient tradition respecting the gigantic forms of the first men, and their corresponding longevity, far exceeding, as it did, the present ordinary standard of the duration of human life. With respect to the latter circumstance, indeed, there are so very many causes contributing to shorten considerably the length of human life, that we have completely lost every criterion by which to estimate its original duration; and it would be no slight problem for a profound physiological science to discover and explain from a deeper investigation of the internal constitution of the earth, or of astronomical influences, which are often susceptible of very minute applications the primary cause of human longevity. By a simpler course of life and diet than the very artificial, unnatural and over-refined modes we follow, there are even at the present day numerous examples of a longevity far beyond the ordinary duration of human life. In India it is by no means uncommon to meet with men, especially in the Brahminical caste, more than a hundred years of age, and in the enjoyment of a robust, and even generative vigour of constitution. In the labouring class in Russia, whose mode of living is so simple, there are examples of men living to more than a hundred, a hundred and twenty, and even a hundred and fifty years of age; and although these instances form but rare exceptions, they are less uncommon there than in other European countries. There are even remarkable cases of old men, who after the entire loss of their teeth, have gained a complete new set as if their constitution had received a new sap of life, and a principle of second growth. What, in the present physical degeneracy of mankind, forms but a rare exception, may originally have been the ordinary measure of the duration of human life, or at least may afford us some trace and indication of such a measure; more especially as other branches of natural science offer correspondent analogies. On the other side of that great wall of separation which divides us from the primitive ages—in that remote world so little known to us, a standard for the duration of human life very different from the present may have prevailed; and such an opinion is extremely probable, supported as it is by manifold testimony, and confirmed by the sacred record of man's divine origin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this general picture of the earliest development of the human mind, we can select such nations only as are sufficiently well known, or respecting whom the sources of information are now at least of easier access; for were we to comprehend in this general survey, nations with whom we were less perfectly acquainted, we should be led into minute and interminable researches, without, after all, perhaps, obtaining any new or satisfactory result for the principal object in view. In the first period of antiquity will figure the Chinese, the Indians and the Egyptians, besides the isolated, and the so-called chosen people of the Hebrews; and if I commence by the remotest of the civilized countries of Asia, China, I beg leave to premise that I mean to determine no question of priority as to the respective antiquity of those nations, or to adjudge any preference to one or other amongst them. Indeed their own chronological accounts and pretensions, which often deserve the name of chronological fictions, turn out, on a closer inquiry, to be mere calculations of astronomical periods; and a sound historical criticism will not admit that they were originally meant to be chronological. Suffice it to say that the three nations we have mentioned belonged to the same period of the world, and attained to an equal, or a very similar, degree of moral and intellectual refinement; and so in respect to that higher object, the chronological dispute becomes unnecessary, or is, at least, of minor importance. Among those, however, who take an active part in these researches, a partiality for one or other of these nations, and for their respective antiquity easily springs up; for even objects the most remote will excite in the human breast the spirit of party. In order to keep as free as possible from prepossessions of this kind, I have adopted a species of geographical division of my subject, which, when I come to treat later of the different periods of modern history, will give place to a more chronological arrangement. I said a species of geographical division, for undoubtedly from the special nature of this historical enquiry, it must be supposed I shall take a different point of view in the geographical survey of the earth than ordinarily occurs in geographical investigations. The geographies for common use properly take as their basis the present situation of the different states and kingdoms now in existence. But a more scientific geography adopts the direction of mountains, and the course of rivers, the vallies produced by the former, and the space occupied by the waters of the latter, as the leading clue to the division and arrangement of the earth. Thus in the philosophy of history the series of the principal civilized states will form a high, commanding chain; and the philosophic historian will have to follow from east to west, or in any other direction that history may point out, not merely rivers transporting articles of commerce, but the mighty stream of traditions and doctrines which has traversed and fertilized the world.

As the individuals who can be termed historical, form but rare exceptions among mankind, so in the whole circumference of the globe, there are only a certain number of nations that occupy an important and really historical place in the annals of civilization. By far the greater part of the inhabited or habitable globe, however rich and ample a field it may offer to the investigations of the naturalist, cannot be included in this class, or has not attained to this degree of eminence. In the whole continent of Africa there is, besides Egypt, only the northern coast stretching along the Mediterranean, that is at all connected with the history and intellectual progress of the civilized world. The other coasts of Africa, including its southernmost cape, furnish points of importance to commerce, navigation, and even some attempts at colonization; while the interior parts of this continent, still so little known, possess much to excite the attention and wonder of the naturalist; but beyond this, its maritime as well as central regions, cannot be said to occupy a place in the intellectual history, or in the moral progress, of our species. It is only since it has formed a province of the Russian empire that the vast territory of Northern Asia has become known to us, and has been, as it were, newly discovered. From central and eastern Asia, from the south of Tartary and the north of China, many mighty and conquering nations have issued, that have spread the terror of their arms over the face of civilization, as far as the frontiers of Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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