Part 32 (1/2)
For striking examples of the testimony of language to upward progress, see Tylor, chap. xii.
CHAPTER X. THE ”FALL OF MAN” AND HISTORY.
The history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the n.o.blest monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity; gives abundant proofs of the upward tendency of man from the rudest and simplest beginnings. Many columns of early Egyptian temples or tombs are but bundles of Nile reeds slightly conventionalized in stone; the temples of Greece, including not only the earliest forms, but the Parthenon itself, while in parts showing an evolution out of Egyptian and a.s.syrian architecture, exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations of earlier constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, while evolved out of Roman and Byzantine structures, constantly show unmistakable survivals of prehistoric construction. (195)
(195) As to evolution in architecture, and especially of Greek forms and ornaments out of Egyptian and a.s.syrian, with survivals in stone architecture of forms obtained in Egypt when reeds were used, and in Greece when wood construction prevailed, see Fergusson's Handbook of Architecture, vol. i, pp. 100, 228, 233, and elsewhere; also Otfried Muller, Ancient Art and its Remains, English translation, London, 1852, pp. 219, pa.s.sim. For a very brief but thorough statement, see A.
Magnard's paper in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, October, 1889, ent.i.tled Reminiscences of Egypt in Doric Architecture.
On the general subject, see Hommel, Babylonien, ch. i, and Meyer, Alterthum, i, S 199.
So, too, general history has come in, ill.u.s.trating the unknown from the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period from his development within historic times. Nothing is more evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the most unfavourable circ.u.mstances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from which they have been banished. Out of very many examples showing this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical.
The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that they gave the modern world a new word to express the most hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations peculiar to themselves; the barbarian tribes who ages ago took refuge amid the sand-banks and mora.s.ses of Holland, have developed one of the world's leading centres of civilization; the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of Venetia, developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the wonders of human history; the Puritans, driven from the civilization of Great Britain to the unfavourable climate, soil, and circ.u.mstances of early New England,--the Huguenots, driven from France, a country admirably fitted for the highest growth of civilization, to various countries far less fitted for such growth,--the Irish peasantry, driven in vast numbers from their own island to other parts of the world on the whole less fitted to them--all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought under the most depressing circ.u.mstances, not only retain what enlightenment they have, but go on increasing it. Besides these, we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various penal colonies, from whose descendants has been developed a better morality; and of pirates, like those of the Bounty, whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island, became sober, steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence of this same rule--that men in ma.s.ses do not forget the main gains of their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency is upward.
Another cla.s.s of historic facts also testifies in the most striking manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and destruction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated. These catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in, this development. The crumbling away of the great ancient civilizations based upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the decline and fall of Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most remarkable generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary to the development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared to be a mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in, with the downfall of feudalism, the beginnings of the centralizing, civilizing monarchical period; the French Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic pa.s.sion, but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the monarchical to the const.i.tutional epoch: all show that even widespread deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the greatest political and moral catastrophes--so far from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise humanity to higher planes.
Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology, and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet.
Nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's material condition. Far more important evidences have been found of upward evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual, and religious relations. The light thrown on this subject by such men as Lubbock, Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Draper, Max Muller, and a mult.i.tude of others, despite mistakes, haltings, stumblings, and occasional following of delusive paths, is among the greatest glories of the century now ending. From all these investigators in their various fields, holding no brief for any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth, comes the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of lower. The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruitful in sorrow as humanity goes on.(196)
(196) As to the good effects of migration, see Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, London, 1863, p. 345.
While, then, it is not denied that many instances of retrogression can be found, the consenting voice of unbiased investigators in all lands has declared more and more that the beginnings of our race must have been low and brutal, and that the tendency has been upward. To combat this conclusion by examples of decline and deterioration here and there has become impossible: as well try to prove that, because in the Mississippi there are eddies in which the currents flow northward, there is no main stream flowing southward; or that, because trees decay and fall, there is no law of upward growth from germ to trunk, branches, foliage, and fruit.
A very striking evidence that the theological theory had become untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scientific field, Von Martius, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly declared his conversion to the scientific view.
Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in recent times is unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is not yet ended. The bitterness of the Abbe Hamard in France has been carried to similar and even greater extremes among sundry Protestant bodies in Europe and America. The simple truth of history mates it a necessity, unpleasant though it be, to chronicle two typical examples in the United States.
In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise endowed at the capital of a Southern State a university which bore his name. It was given into the hands of one of the religious sects most powerful in that region, and a bishop of that sect became its president. To its chair of Geology was called Alexander Winch.e.l.l, a scholar who had already won eminence as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor greatly beloved and respected in the two universities with which he had been connected, and a member of the sect which the inst.i.tution of learning above referred to represented.
But his relations to this Southern inst.i.tution were destined to be brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were learned, attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were forced to admit; but he was soon found to believe that there had been men earlier than the period as signed to Adam, and even that all the human race are not descended from Adam. His desire was to reconcile science and Scripture, and he was now treated by a Methodist Episcopal Bishop in Tennessee just as, two centuries before, La Peyrere had been treated, for a similar effort, by a Roman Catholic vicar-general in Belgium. The publication of a series of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor to a Northern religious newspaper at its own request, brought matters to a climax; for, the articles having fallen under the notice of a leading Southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the Vanderbilt University, the result was a most bitter denunciation of Prof. Winch.e.l.l and of his views. Shortly afterward the professor was told by Bishop McTyeire that ”our people are of the opinion that such views are contrary to the plan of redemption,” and was requested by the bishop to quietly resign his chair. To this the professor made the fitting reply: ”If the board of trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for cause, and declare the cause, I prefer that they should do it. No power on earth could persuade me to resign.”
”We do not propose,” said the bishop, with quite gratuitous suggestiveness, ”to treat you as the Inquisition treated Galileo.”
”But what you propose is the same thing,” rejoined Dr. Winch.e.l.l. ”It is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be settled by scientific evidence.”
Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winch.e.l.l was informed that his chair had been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to those of a colleague; the public were given to understand that the reasons were purely economic; the banished scholar was heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he would keep silence.
Such was not Dr. Winch.e.l.l's view. In a frank letter to the leading journal of the university town he stated the whole matter. The intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and secular, did not hold its peace. In vain the authorities of the university waited for the storm to blow over. It was evident, at last, that a defence must be made, and a local organ of the sect, which under the editors.h.i.+p of a fellow-professor had always treated Dr. Winch.e.l.l's views with the luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, a.s.sumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be ”absurd,” ”vague and unintelligible,” ”preposterous and gratuitous.”
This new champion stated that ”the objections drawn from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the a.n.a.logy of Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a day old, and by the Flood of Noah and other cataclysms, which, with the constant change of Nature, are sufficient to account for the phenomena in question”!
Under inspiration of this sort the Tennessee Conference of the religious body in control of the university had already, in October, 1878, given utterance to its opinion of unsanctified science as follows: ”This is an age in which scientific atheism, having divested itself of the habiliments that most adorn and dignify humanity, walks abroad in shameless denudation. The arrogant and impertinent claims of this 'science, falsely so called,' have been so boisterous and persistent, that the unthinking ma.s.s have been sadly deluded; but our university alone has had the courage to lay its young but vigorous hand upon the mane of untamed Speculation and say, 'We will have no more of this.'” It is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly sought, has been achieved; for in the ”ode” sung at the laying of the corner-stone of a new theological building of the same university, in May, 1880, we read:
”Science and Revelation here In perfect harmony appear, Guiding young feet along the road Through grace and Nature up to G.o.d.”
It is also pleasing to know that, while an inst.i.tution calling itself a university thus violated the fundamental principles on which any inst.i.tution worthy of the name must be based, another inst.i.tution which has the glory of being the first in the entire North to begin something like a university organization--the State University of Michigan--recalled Dr. Winch.e.l.l at once to his former professors.h.i.+p, and honoured itself by maintaining him in that position, where, unhampered, he was thereafter able to utter his views in the midst of the largest body of students on the American Continent.