Part 4 (2/2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

END OF LECTURE I.

LECTURE II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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