Part 7 (1/2)

It is surely time that this palaeo-theological fas.h.i.+on of explaining human affairs were superseded by the more fruitful method of positive science, even as regards China, which is perhaps the worst explained of all sociological cases. Like others, it had been intelligently taken up by sociologists of the eighteenth century before the conservative reaction (see the _Esprit des Lois_, vii, 6; viii, 21; x, 15; xiv, 8; xviii, 6; xix, 13-20; Dunbar's _Essays_, as cited, pp. 257, 258, 262, 263, 321; and Walckenaer, _Essai_ cited, pp. 175, 176); but that impetus seems to have been thus far almost entirely lost. Voltaire's fallacy is remembered and his truth ignored; and the methods of theology continue to be applied to many questions of moral science after they have been wholly cast out of physics and biology. The old ”falsisms” of empirical politics are repeated even by professed biologists when they enter on the field of social science. Thus we have seen them accepted by Dr. Draper, and we find Professor Huxley (_Evolution and Ethics_, Romanes Lecture for 1893, p. 4) rhetorically putting ”that successive rise, apogee, and fall of dynasties and states which is the most prominent topic of civil history,” as scientifically a.n.a.logous to the process of growth and decay and death in the human organism. Any comparative study of history shows the a.n.a.logy to be spurious. Professor Whitney was doubtless influenced, like Dr. Draper, by the American habit of regarding European and ancient civilisations as necessarily decrepit because ”slow” and ”old.” Cp. Draper as cited, ii, 393-98.

In the cases above dealt with, however, and in many others, there is seen to have been _intellectual_ decay, in the sense of, first, a cessation of forward movement, and, next, a loss of the power to appreciate ideas once current. A common cause of such paralysis of the higher life is the malignant action of dogmatic religious systems, as in the cases of Persia, Jewry, Byzantium, Islam, Spain under Catholicism, and Scotland for two centuries under Protestantism. Such paralysis by religion may arise alike in a highly-organised but isolated State like Byzantium, and in a semi-civilised country like Anglo-Saxon England.[145] The special malignity of dogma in these cases is itself of course a matter for a.n.a.lysis and explanation. Other cases are partly to be explained by (_a_) the subst.i.tution of systematic militarism, always fatal to progressive culture, for a life of only occasional warfare, favourable to study among the leisured cla.s.s.[146] But (_b_) there is reason to surmise a further and profoundly important cause of intellectual retrogression in the usage which develops the culture of a people for the most part in one s.e.x only. The thesis may be ventured that whereas vigorous and creative brains may arise in abundance in a young civilisation, where the s.e.xes are physiologically not far removed from the approximate equality of the semi-barbarous stage, the psychological divergence set up by mentally and physically training the males and not the females is likely to be unfavourable to the breeding of mentally energetic types.

(12) Whether or not the last hypothesis be valid, it is clear that the co-efficient or const.i.tuent of intellectual progress in a people, given the necessary conditions of peace and sufficient food, is multiplication of ideas; and this primarily results from international contact, or the contact of wholly or partly independent communities of one people.

Multiplication of arts and crafts is of course included under the head of ideas. But unless the stock of ideas is not merely in constant process of being added to among the studious or leisured cla.s.s, but disseminated among the other cla.s.ses, stagnation will take place among these, and will inevitably infect the educated cla.s.s.

De Tocqueville, balancing somewhat inconclusively, because always _in vacuo_, the forces affecting literature in aristocratic and democratic societies, says decisively enough (_Democratie en Amerique_, ed. 1850, ii, 62-63) that ”Toute aristocratie qui se met entierement a part du peuple devient impuissante. Cela est vrai dans les lettres aussi bien qu'en politique.” This holds clearly enough of Italian literature in the despotic period. Mr. G.o.dkin's criticism (_Problems of Modern Democracy_, p. 56) that ”M. de Tocqueville and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy,” is hardly accurate. De Tocqueville puts the case judicially enough, so far as he goes; and Mr. G.o.dkin falls into strange extravagance in his counter statement that there is ”hardly a single historical work composed prior to the end of the last [eighteenth] century, except perhaps Gibbon's, which, judged by the standard that the criticism of our day has set up, would not, though written for the 'few,' be p.r.o.nounced careless, slipshod, or superficial.”

Tillemont, by the testimony of Professor Bury, was a more thorough worker in his special line than Gibbon. It would be easy to name scores of writers in various branches of history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whom no good critic to-day would call careless or slipshod; and if Hume and Robertson, Clarendon and Burnet, be termed superficial, the ”standard” will involve a similar characterisation of most historical writers of our own day.

As regards present-day literary productions, De Tocqueville and Mr.

G.o.dkin alike omit the necessary economic a.n.a.lysis.

(13) In the intellectual infectiousness of all cla.s.s degradation, properly speaking, lies the final sociological (as apart from the primary ethical) condemnation of slavery. The familiar argument that slavery first secured the leisure necessary for culture, even were it wholly instead of being merely partially true, would not rebut the censure that falls to be pa.s.sed on slavery in later stages of civilisation. All the ancient States, before Greece, stood on slavery: then it was not slavery that yielded her special culture. What she gained from older civilisations was the knowledge and the arts developed by _specialisation_ of pursuits; and such specialisation was not necessarily dependent on slavery, which could abound without it. It was in the special employment, finally, of the exceptionally large _free_ population of Athens that the greatest artistic output was reached.[147]

In later periods, the slave population was the great nucleus of superst.i.tion and anti-culture.

Inasmuch, then, as education is in only a small degree compatible with toilsome poverty, the betterment of the material conditions of the toiling cla.s.s is essential to progress in ideas. That is to say, continual progress implies gradual elimination of cla.s.s inequality, and cannot subsist otherwise. At the same time, a culture-cla.s.s must be maintained by new machinery when leisured wealth is got rid of.[148]

(14) Again, it follows from the foregoing (4-10) that the highest civilisation will be that in which the greatest number of varying culture-influences meet,[149] in the most happily-crossed stock, under climatic conditions favourable to energy, on a basis of a civilisation sufficiently matured.[150] But in order to the effectual action of such various culture-influences through all cla.s.ses of the nation in which they meet, there is needed a constant application of social or political regimen. In the lack of that, a great conflux of culture-forces may miss fruition. A mere fortuitous depression of the rich cla.s.s, and elevation of the poor, will not suffice to place a society on a sound or even on an improved footing. Such a change occurred in ancient Athens after Salamis, when the poorer sort, who had const.i.tuted the navy, flourished[151] as against the richer, who had been the land soldiery, and whose lands had been ravaged. But the forces of disintegration played afresh. Yet again, transient financial conditions, such as those of Italy before the Reformation, of Holland until the decline of its fis.h.i.+ng and trade, and of Venice until its final commercial decay, may sustain a great artistic life, art having always depended on private or public demand. Thus with a change in the geographical course of trade, a great phase of culture-life may dwindle. So many and so complex are the forces and conditions of progress in civilisation.

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It will readily be seen that most of the foregoing propositions have direct reference to well-known facts of history. Thus (_a_) ancient Egypt represents a primary civilisation, marked indeed by some fluctuations connected with dynastic changes which involved mixture of stocks, but on the whole singularly fixed; while ancient Greek civilisation was emphatically a secondary one, the fruit of much race-mixture and many interacting culture-forces, all facilitated by the commercial position and coast-conformation of h.e.l.las.

This view is partly rejected by Grote in two pa.s.sages (pt. i, chs.

xvi, xvii, ed. 1888, i, 326, 413) in which he gives to the ”inherent and expansive force” of ”the Greek mind” the main credit of Greek civilisation. But his words, to begin with, are confused and contradictory: ”The transition of the Greek mind from its poetical to its comparatively positive stage was self-operated, accomplished by its own inherent and expansive force--_aided indeed, but by no means either impressed or provoked_ from without.” In the second place, there is no basis for the denial of ”impression or provocation” from without. And finally, what is decisive, the historian himself has in other pa.s.sages acknowledged that the Greeks received from Asia and Egypt just such ”provocation” as is seen to take place in varying degrees in the culture-contacts of all nations (chs. xv, xvi, pp. 307, 329). Of the contact with Egypt he expressly says that it ”enlarged the range of their thoughts and observations.” His whole treatment of the rise of culture, however, is meagre and imperfect relatively to his ample study of the culture itself. Later students grow more and more unanimous as to the composite character of the Greek-speaking stock in the earliest traceable periods of h.e.l.lenic life (cp. Bury, _History of Greece_, ed. 1906, pp. 39-42, and Professor Burrows, _The Discoveries in Crete_, 1907, p. 144), and the consequent complexity of the entire h.e.l.lenic civilisation. The case is suggestively put by Eduard Meyer (_Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii, 155) in the observation that while the west coast of Greece had as many natural advantages as the eastern, it remained backward in civilisation when the other had progressed far. ”_Here there lacked the foreign stimulus_: the west of Greece is away from the source of culture. Here, accordingly, primitive conditions continued to rule, while in the east a higher culture evolved itself.... Corinth in the older period played no part whatever, whether in story or in remains.” The same proposition was put a generation ago by A.

Bertrand, who pointed out that the coasts of Elis and Messenia are ”incomparably more fertile” than those of Argolis and Attica (_etudes de mythologie et d'archeologie grecques_, 1858, pp.

40-41); and again by Winwood Reade in _The Martyrdom of Man_ (1872, p. 64): ”A glance at the map is sufficient to explain why it was that Greece became civilised before the other European lands. It is nearest to those countries in which civilisation first arose ...

compelled to grow towards Asia as a tree grows towards the light.”

But to this generalisation should be put the qualifying clause (above, p. 55) that fertile coasts when developed are defensible only by a strongly organised community. Thus an early exploitation of Elis and Messenia would be checked by piracy.

The question as to the originality of Greek culture, it is interesting to note, was already discussed at the beginning of the eighteenth century. See Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, Misc. iii, ch. i.

(_b_) The Greek land as a whole, especially the Attic, was only moderately fertile, and therefore not so cheaply and redundantly populated as Egypt.

The bracing effect of their relative poverty was fully recognised by the Greeks themselves. Cp. Herodotus, vii, 102, and Thucydides, i, 123. See on the same point Heeren, _Political History of Ancient Greece_, Eng. tr. pp. 24-33; Thirlwall, _History of Greece_, small ed. i, 12; Duncker, _Gesch. des Alterthums_, iii, ch. i, -- 1; Wachs.m.u.th, _Hist. Antiq. of the Greeks_, -- 8; Duruy, _Hist.

Grecque_, 1851, p. 7; Grote, part ii, ch. i (ed. 1888, ii, 160); Boeckh, _Public Economy of Athens_, B. i, c. 8; Niebuhr, _Lectures_, li (Eng. tr. 3rd ed. p. 265); Mahaffy, _Rambles and Studies in Greece_, 4th ed. pp. 137, 164-67. Dr. Grundy (_Thucydides and the History of his Age_, 1911, p. 58 _sq._) lays stress on the fertility of the valleys, but recognises the smallness of the fertile areas.

(_c_) h.e.l.las was further so decisively cut up into separate cantons by its mountain ranges, and again in respect of the mult.i.tude of the islands, that the Greek districts were largely foreign to each other,[152] and their cultures had thus the advantage of reacting and interacting, as against the disadvantage of their incurable political separateness--that disadvantage in turn being correlative with the advantage of insusceptibility to a despotism.

The effect of geographical conditions on Greek history is discussed at length in Conrad Bursian's essay, _Ueber den Einfluss des griechischen Landes auf den Charakter seiner Bewohner_, which I have been unable to procure or see; but I gather from his _Geographie von Griechenlands_ that he takes the view here set forth. Cp. Senior's _Journal kept in Turkey and Greece_, 1859, p.

255, for a modern Greek's view of the state of his nation, ”divided into small districts by mountain ranges intersecting each other in all directions without a road or ca.n.a.l”; the deduction from the same perception made by the young Arthur Stanley (Prothero's _Life of Dean Stanley_, 1-vol. ed. p. 143); and the impression retained from his travels by M. Bertrand, _etudes de mythologie et d'archeologie grecques_, 1858, p. 199.

The profound importance of the geographical fact has been recognised more or less clearly and fully by many writers--_e.g._, Hume, essay Of the _Rise and Progress of the Arts and the Sciences_ (ed. 1825 of _Essays_, i, 115-16); Gillies, _History of Greece_, 1-vol. ed. p. 5; Heeren, as cited, pp. 35, 75; Duncker, as last cited, also ch. iii, -- 12 (2te Aufl. 1860, p. 601); Duruy, ch. i; c.o.x, _General History of Greece_, bk. i, ch. i; Thirlwall, ch. x; Wachs.m.u.th, Eng. tr. i, 87; Comte, _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, Lecon 53ieme; Grote, pt. ii, ch. i (ii, 155); Finlay, _History of Greece_, Tozer's ed. i, 28; K.O. Muller, _Introd. to Scientific Mythology_, Eng. tr. p. 179; Hegel, as last cited; Hertzberg, _Geschichte von h.e.l.las und Rom_, 1879 (in Oncken's series), i, 9; Winwood Reade, _The Martyrdom of Man_, 1872, p. 65 sq.; Bury, _History of Greece_, ed. 1906, pp. 2-4; Fyffe (very explicitly), _Primer of Greek History_, p. 8--but it is strangely overlooked by writers to whom one turns for a careful study of causes. Even Grote, after having clearly set forth (ii, 150) the predetermining influence of land-form, attributes Greek divisions to the ”character of the race,” which even in this connection, however, he describes as ”splitting _by natural fracture_ into a mult.i.tude of self-administering, indivisible cities” (pt. ii, ch. 28, beginning); and Sir George c.o.x, after specifying the geographical factor, speaks of it as merely ”fostering” a love of isolation _resulting_ from ”political creed.” Freeman (_History of Federal Government_) does not seem to apply the geographical fact to the explanation of any phase of Greek history, though he sees in Greece (ed. 1893, pp. 92, 554) ”each valley and peninsula and island marked out by the hand of nature for an independent being,” and quotes (p. 559) Cantu as to the effect of land-form on history in Italy. In so many words he p.r.o.nounces (p. 101) that the love of town-autonomy was ”inherent in the Greek mind.” Mr. Warde Fowler (_City-State of the Greeks and Romans_) does not once give heed to the geographical conditions of causation, always speaking of the Greeks as lacking the ”faculty” of union as compared with the Latins, though the Eastern Empire finally showed greater cohesive power than the Western. Even Mr. Fyffe (_Primer_ cited, p. 127), despite his preliminary recognition of the facts, finally speaks of the Greeks as relatively lacking in the ”gift for government.”

The same a.s.sumption is made in Lord Morley's _Compromise_ (ed.

1888, p. 108) in the allusion to ”peoples so devoid of the sovereign faculty of political coherency as were the Greeks and the Jews.” Lord Morley's proposition is that such peoples may still evolve great civilising ideas; but though that is true, the implied thesis as to ”faculty” weakens even the truth. The case of the Jews is to be explained in exactly the same way as that of the Greeks, the face of Palestine being disjunct and segregate in a peculiar degree. Other ”Semites,” living in great plains, were united in great monarchies. The sound view of the case as to Rome is put by Hertzberg: ”Soll man im Gegensatze zu der h.e.l.lenischen Geschichte es in kurzester Fa.s.sung bezeichnen, so kann man etwa sagen, die italische Landesnatur stellte der Ausbildung eines grossen _einheitlich_ geordneten Staates durchaus nicht die gewaltigen Hindernisse entgegen, wie das in Griechenland der Fall war” (_Gesch. von h.e.l.las und Rom_, ii, 7). Cp. Shuckburgh, _History of Rome_, 1894, p. 9, as to ”the vast heights which effectually separate tribes.” Dr. Cunningham puts it (_Western Civilisation_, i, 152, 160) that Roman expansion in Italy came of the need to reach a true frontier of defence, in the lack of physical barriers to the early States. (So Lord Cromer, _Anc. and Mod. Imperialism_, 1910, p. 19.) It seems more plausible to say that all of the States concerned were positively disposed to conquest, and that the physical conditions of Italy made possible an overrunning which in early Greece was impossible.