Volume II Part 20 (2/2)
[Sidenote: Causes of her depression.] Notwithstanding the adverse circ.u.mstances in which she has been placed, Italy has thus taken no insignificant part in the advancement of science. I may at the close of a work of which so large a portion has been devoted to the relation of her influences, political and religious, on the rest of Europe, be perhaps excused the expression of a hope that the day is approaching in which she will, with Rome as her capital, take that place in the modern system to which she is ent.i.tled. The course of centuries has proved that her ecclesiastical relation with foreign countries is incompatible with her national life. It is that, and that alone, which has been the cause of all her ills. She has a.s.serted a jurisdiction in every other government; the price she has paid is her own unity. The first, the all-important step in her rest.i.tution is the reduction of the papacy to a purely religious element. Her great bishop must no longer be an earthly prince. Rome, in her outcry for the preservation of her temporal possessions, forgets that Christian Europe has made a far greater sacrifice. It has yielded Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the Sepulchre, the Mount of the Ascension. That is a sacrifice to which the surrender of the fict.i.tious donations of barbarian kings is not to be compared.
The foregoing paragraphs were written in 1859. Since that time Italy has become a nation, Rome is its capital, Venice belongs to it. In 1870-71 I was an eye-witness of the presence of Italian troops in the Eternal City.
CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.--THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.
_Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Europe._
_Intellectual Development is the Object of Individual Life.--It is also the Result of social Progress._
_Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organization.--Example of the Manner in which this has been done in China.--Its Imperfection.--What it has accomplished._
_The Organization of public Intellect is the End to which European Civilization is tending._
A Philosophical principle becomes valuable if it can be used as a guide in the practical purposes of life.
[Sidenote: General summary of the work.] The object of this book is to impress upon its reader a conviction that civilization does not proceed in an arbitrary manner or by chance, but that it pa.s.ses through a determinate succession of stages, and is a development according to law.
[Sidenote: Individual and social life have been considered;] For this purpose we considered the relations between individual and social life, and showed that they are physiologically inseparable, and that the course of communities bears an unmistakable resemblance to the progress of an individual, and that man is the archetype or exemplar of society.
[Sidenote: in the intellectual history of Greece;] We then examined the intellectual history of Greece--a nation offering the best and most complete ill.u.s.tration of the life of humanity. From the beginnings of its mythology in old Indian legends and of its philosophy in Ionia, we saw that it pa.s.sed through phases like those of the individual to its decrepitude and death in Alexandria.
[Sidenote: and the history of Europe.] Then, addressing ourselves to the history of Europe, we found that, if suitably divided into groups of ages, these groups, compared with each other in chronological succession, present a striking resemblance to the successive phases of Greek life, and therefore to that which Greek life resembles--that is to say, individual life.
For the sake of convenience in these descriptions we have a.s.sumed arbitrary epochs, answering to the periods from infancy to maturity.
History justifies the a.s.sumption of such periods. [Sidenote: The contrasts its ages display.] There is a well-marked difference between the aspect of Europe during its savage and mythologic ages; its changing, and growing, and doubting condition during the Roman republic and the Caesars; its submissive contentment under the Byzantine and Italian control; the a.s.sertion of its manhood, and right of thought, and freedom of action which characterize its present state--a state adorned by great discoveries in science, great inventions in art, additions to the comforts of life, improvements in locomotion, and the communication of intelligence. Science, capital, and machinery conjoined are producing industrial miracles. Colossal projects are undertaken and executed, and the whole globe is literally made the theatre of action of every individual.
Nations, like individuals, are born, pa.s.s through a predestined growth, and die. One comes to its end at an early period and in an untimely way; another, not until it has gained maturity. One is cut off by feebleness in its infancy, another is destroyed by civil disease, another commits political suicide, another lingers in old age. But for every one there is an orderly way of progress to its final term, whatever that term may be.
[Sidenote: The object of development is intellect.] Now, when we look at the successive phases of individual life, what is it that we find to be their chief characteristic? Intellectual advancement. And we consider that maturity is reached when intellect is at its maximum. The earlier stages are preparatory; they are wholly subordinate to this.
[Sidenote: It is the same in individual life,] If the anatomist be asked how the human form advances to its highest perfection, he at once disregards all the inferior organs of which it is composed, and answers that it is through provisions in its nervous structure for intellectual improvement; that in succession it pa.s.ses through stages a.n.a.logous to those observed in other animals in the ascending scale, but in the end it leaves them far behind, reaching a point to which they never attain.
The rise in organic development measures intellectual dignity.
[Sidenote: and in the animal series,] In like manner, the physiologist considering the vast series of animals now inhabiting the earth with us, ranks them in the order of their intelligence. He shows that their nervous mechanism unfolds itself upon the same plan as that of man, and that, as its advancement in this uniform and predetermined direction is greater, so is the position attained to higher.
[Sidenote: and in the general life of the globe.] The geologist declares that these conclusions hold good in the history of the earth, and that there has been an orderly improvement in intellectual power of the beings that have inhabited it successively. It is manifested by their nervous systems. He affirms that the cycle of transformation through which every man must pa.s.s is a miniature representation of the progress of life on the planet. The intention in both cases is the same.
[Sidenote: Succession of automatism, instinct, and intelligence.]
The sciences, therefore, join with history in affirming that the great aim of nature is intellectual improvement. They proclaim that the successive stages of every individual, from its earliest rudiment to maturity--the numberless organic beings now living contemporaneously with us, and const.i.tuting the animal series--the orderly appearance of that grand succession which, in the slow lapse of time, has emerged--all these three great lines of the manifestation of life furnish not only evidences, but also proofs of the dominion of law. In all the general principle is to differentiate instinct from automatism, and then to differentiate intelligence from instinct. In man himself the three distinct modes of life occur in an epochal order through childhood to the most perfect state. And this holding good for the individual, since it is physiologically impossible to separate him from the race, what holds good for the one must also hold good for the other. Hence man is truly the archetype of society. His development is the model of social progress.
[Sidenote: The object of social development.] What, then, is the conclusion inculcated by these doctrines as regards the social progress of great communities? It is that all political inst.i.tutions--imperceptibly or visibly, spontaneously or purposely--should tend to the improvement and organization of national intellect.
The expectation of life in a community, as in an individual, increases in proportion as the artificial condition or laws under which it is living agree with the natural tendency. Existence may be maintained under very adverse circ.u.mstances for a season; but, for stability and duration, and prosperity, there must be a correspondence between the artificial conditions and the natural tendency.
<script>