Volume I Part 2 (2/2)
Perhaps, however, we may be disposed to accept that imperfection as a sufficient token of its true nature. Since history can offer us no aid, our guiding lights must be comparative theology and comparative philology. Proceeding from those times, we shall, in detail, examine the intellectual or philosophical movement first exhibited in Greece, endeavouring to ascertain its character at successive epochs, and thereby to judge of its complete nature. Fortunately for our purpose, the information is here sufficient, both in amount and distinctness. It then remains to show that the mental movement of the whole continent is essentially of the same kind, though, as must necessarily be the case, it is spread over far longer periods of time. Our conclusions will constantly be found to gather incidental support and distinctness from ill.u.s.trations presented by the aged populations of Asia, and the aborigines of Africa and America.
[Sidenote: The five ages of European life.]
The intellectual progress of Europe being of a nature answering to that observed in the case of Greece, and this, in its turn, being like that of an individual, we may conveniently separate it into arbitrary periods, sufficiently distinct from one another, though imperceptibly merging into each other. To these successive periods I shall give the t.i.tles of--1, the Age of Credulity; 2, the Age of Inquiry; 3, the Age of Faith; 4, the Age of Reason; 5, the Age of Decrepitude; and shall use these designations in the division of my subject in its several chapters.
[Sidenote: The world is ruled by law.]
From the possibility of thus regarding the progress of a continent in definite and successive stages, answering respectively to the periods of individual life--infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age--we may gather an instructive lesson. It is the same that we have learned from inquiries respecting the origin, maintenance, distribution, and extinction of animals and plants, their balancing against each other; from the variations of aspect and form of an individual man as determined by climate; from his social state, whether in repose or motion; from the secular variations of his opinions, and the gradual dominion of reason over society: this lesson is, that the government of the world is accomplished by immutable law.
Such a conception commends itself to the intellect of man by its majestic grandeur. It makes him discern the eternal in the vanis.h.i.+ng of present events and through the shadows of time. From the life, the pleasures, the sufferings of humanity, it points to the impa.s.sive; from our wishes, wants, and woes, to the inexorable. Leaving the individual beneath the eye of Providence, it shows society under the finger of law.
And the laws of Nature never vary; in their application they never hesitate nor are wanting.
[Sidenote: And yet there is free-will for man.]
But in thus ascending to primordial laws, and a.s.serting their immutability, universality, and paramount control in the government of this world, there is nothing inconsistent with the free action of man.
The appearance of things depends altogether on the point of view we occupy. He who is immersed in the turmoil of a crowded city sees nothing but the acts of men, and, if he formed his opinion from his experience alone, must conclude that the course of events altogether depends on the uncertainties of human volition. But he who ascends to a sufficient elevation loses sight of the pa.s.sing conflicts, and no longer hears the contentions. He discovers that the importance of individual action is diminis.h.i.+ng, as the panorama beneath him is extending. And if he could attain to the truly philosophical, the general point of view, disengaging himself front all terrestrial influences and entanglements, rising high enough to see the whole globe at a glance, his acutest vision would fail to discover the slightest indication of man, his free-will, or his works. In her resistless, onward sweep, in the clock-like precision of her daily and nightly revolution, in the well-known pictured forms of her continents and seas, now no longer dark and doubtful, but shedding forth a planetary light, well might he ask what had become of all the aspirations and anxieties, the pleasures and agony of life. As the voluntary vanished from his sight, and the irresistible remained, and each moment became more and more distinct, well might he incline to disbelieve his own experience, and to question whether the seat of so much undying glory could be the place of so much human uncertainty, whether beneath the vastness, energy, and immutable course of a moving world, there lay concealed the feebleness and imbecility of man. Yet it is none the less true that these contradictory conditions co-exist--Free-will and Fate, Uncertainty and Destiny, It is only the point of view that has changed, but on that how much has depended! A little nearer we gather the successive ascertainments of human inquiry, a little further off we realize the panoramic vision of the Deity. A Hindu philosopher has truly remarked, that he who stands by the banks of a flowing stream sees, in their order, the various parts as they successively glide by, but he who is placed on an exalted station views, at a glance, the whole as a motionless silvery thread among the fields. To the one there is the acc.u.mulating experience and knowledge of man in time, to the other there is the instantaneous the unsuccessive knowledge of G.o.d.
[Sidenote: Changeability of forms and unchangeability of law.]
Is there an object presented to us which does not bear the mark of ephemeral duration? As respects the tribes of life, they are scarcely worth a moment's thought, for the term of the great majority of them is so brief that we may say they are born and die before our eyes. If we examine them, not as individuals, but as races, the same conclusion holds good, only the scale is enlarged from a few days to a few centuries. If from living we turn to lifeless nature, we encounter again the evidence of brief continuance. The sea is unceasingly remoulding its sh.o.r.es; hard as they are, the mountains are constantly yielding to frost and to rain; here an extensive tract of country is elevated, there depressed. We fail to find any thing that is not undergoing change.
Then forms are in their nature transitory, law is everlasting. If from visible forms we turn to directing law how vast is the difference. We pa.s.s from the finite, the momentary, the incidental, the conditioned--to the illimitable, the eternal, the necessary, the unshackled.
[Sidenote: The object of this book is to a.s.sert the control of law in human affairs.]
It is of law that I am to speak in this book. In a world composed of vanis.h.i.+ng forms I am to vindicate the imperishability, the majesty of law, and to show how man proceeds, in his social march, in obedience to it. I am to lead my reader, perhaps in a reluctant path, from the outward phantasmagorial illusions which surround us, and so ostentatiously obtrude themselves on our attention, to something that lies in silence and strength behind. I am to draw his thoughts from the tangible to the invisible, from the limited to the universal, from the changeable to the invariable, from the transitory to the eternal; from the expedients and volitions so largely amusing the life of man, to the predestined and resistless issuing from the fiat of G.o.d.
Chapter II.
OF EUROPE: ITS TOPOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY.
ITS PRIMITIVE MODES OF THOUGHT, AND THEIR PROGRESSIVE VARIATIONS, MANIFESTED IN THE GREEK AGE OF CREDULITY.
_Description of Europe: its Topography, Meteorology, and secular Geological Movements.--Their Effect on its Inhabitants._
_Its Ethnology determined through its Vocabularies._
_Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the Anthropocentric Stage.--Becomes connected with false Geography and Astronomy.--Heaven, the Earth, the Under World.--Origin, continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology.--It introduces Ionic Philosophy._
_Decline of Greek Theology, occasioned by the Advance of Geography and Philosophical Criticism.--Secession of Poets, Philosophers, Historians.--Abortive public Attempts to sustain it.--Duration of its Decline.--Its Fall._
Europe is geographically a peninsula, and historically a dependency of Asia.
<script>