CAN ANYTHING BE DONE FOR THE EAST?
Well begun is half-done.
Can the oriental mind be roused into new life and activity? Can it be
made more fruitful than it has proved of late, in what conduces to the
well-being of communities, and of individuals? I see no reason why
Egypt and Syria should not, in the future, as they did in the past,
support populous, wealthy, and orderly communities, which might occupy a
creditable position, even in the modern world, in respect of that moral
and intellectual power, which is the distinguishing mark of man. But what
might bring about this desirable result among them could only be that
which has brought it about among other men.
The first requisite is security for person and property. No people were
ever possessed of this without advancing, or were ever deprived of it
without retrograding. The pursuit of property is the most universal, and
the most potent of all natural educators. It teaches thoughtfulness,
foresight, industry, self-denial, frugality, and many other valuable, if
secondary and minor virtues, more generally and effectually than schools,
philosophers, and religions have ever taught them. But where the local
Governor, and the tax-collector are the complete lords of the ascendant,
the motive to acquire property is nearly killed; and where it does in
some degree survive, it has to be exercised under such disadvantages,
that it becomes a discipline of vice rather than of virtue. Such, for
centuries, has been the condition, under the rule of the Turk, of these
by nature, in many respects, highly-favoured countries. The first step,
then, towards their recovery must be to give them what they never have
had, and never can have, we may almost affirm, under Eastern despots,
perfect security for person and property. That would alone, and in
itself, be a resurrection to life. It would lead on to everything that is
wanted.
An auxiliary might be found in (which may appear to some equally, or even
more prosaic) a larger and freer use of the printing press, that is, of
books and newspapers. This would, of course, naturally, and of itself,
follow the security just spoken of. It would, however, be desirable in
this fargone and atrophied case, if some means for the purpose could
be discovered, or created, to anticipate a little, to put even the
cart before the horse, and to introduce at once, I will not say a more
extended use, but the germ of the use, of books and newspapers. I am
afraid the effort would be hopeless, as things are now; and I know it
would spring up of itself, if things were as they ought to be. Still the
effort might be made. It is the only useful direction in which there
appears to be at present an opening for philanthropic work.
And, to speak sentimentally, what country has a more rightful claim to
the benefits of the printing press than Egypt? It is only the modern
application of the old Egyptian discovery of letters. To carry back to
Egypt its own discovery, advanced some steps farther, is but a small
acknowledgment that without that discovery none of our own progress,
nor much, indeed, of human progress of any kind, would ever have been
possible. There are a printing press, and even a kind of newspaper at
Cairo, and, of course, at Alexandria; and at Jerusalem it is possible to
get a shopkeeper’s card printed. But what is wanted is that there should
be conferred on the people, to some considerable proportion—if such a
thing be possible—the power of reading; and that there should be awakened
within them the desire to read. No efforts, I think, would be so useful
as those which might have these simple aims.
The great thing is to stir up mind. Great events and favouring
circumstances do this naturally, by self-acting and irresistible means;
and literature is one of the spontaneous fruits of the stirring of mind
they give rise to. And the work does not stop there; for literature
re-acts on the mental activity which produced it. It stimulates to still
greater exertions; and, what is more, it guides to right, and useful, and
fruitful conclusions. Perhaps it is hopeless to attempt to get literature
to do its work, when the conditions which are requisite for producing a
literature are absent, but the attempt might be made. There is nothing
else to do now.
This process is seen clearly enough in history. Look at Athens. Its
greatness produced its literature; and its literature supported and
advanced its greatness. Public life, of course, at Athens was such that
many things there gave increased power to literature; and some in a way
acted as substitutes for it. The public assemblies, the administration of
justice, the schools of philosophy, the theatres, were to the Athenians,
to a great extent, what books and newspapers are to us. They were a
machinery by which the thought and knowledge of those who, more or less
to the purpose, could think, and who had knowledge, were brought into
contact with the minds of all; so that all were put in the way of
thinking, and of attaining knowledge for themselves; and were obliged,
to some extent, to do it: and thus the thought and the knowledge of the
best men became the thought and the knowledge of all, or were, at least,
submitted to the attention of all. And so knowledge went on increasing,
and thought went on achieving fresh conquests, and Greece became the Holy
Land of mind.
Every one can see how large a share in producing the mental activity
of the Americans must be assigned to books and newspapers. Facts, and
men’s thoughts about these facts, are each day laid before the minds
of a greater proportion of the population in the United States than
elsewhere. Take away this apparatus for awakening and guiding thought,
and their wonderful mental activity would disappear. As it is, all the
counteracting influences of the rough and hard life most of them have
to live cannot repress it. Suppose as large a proportion of our own
population could read, and that they were treated in the same way—that is
to say, that an equal amount of seed was deposited in their minds, and
an equal amount of light, air, and warmth poured in—then I doubt not but
that we should see, down even to the lower strata of society, an equal
amount of mental activity.
This is a wide and fruitful subject. It is by the aid of this Egyptian
discovery of letters, and of letters only, no one other thing beneath
the sun being, without it, of any use in this matter, that the better
thought, which is the thought of a few, sometimes originally of a single
mind only, gains the upper hand of the inferior thought, which is the
thought of the many; that error, which naturally commends itself to the
ignorant, is slowly and painfully demonstrated to be error; and that
many forms of injustice, notwithstanding their hoar antiquity, the
memory of man never having run to the contrary, are shown at last to be
inhumanities. It is by their aid, and their aid only, that an inch of
good ground gained to-day, is not lost to-morrow, but kept for ever; that
hints are treasured up till what they hinted at is discovered; that what
has been observed by one man is set alongside of what has been observed
by another, till at last the fruitful conclusion grows out of the
connected view; that the experience of individuals, and of generations,
is stored up for those who are to come after; that the spark kindled
in a single mind becomes a common light. All this must be despaired of
without printed records, statements, and discussions, without books,
without newspapers; and the more largely these means for arriving at, and
conveying knowledge are used, the greater is the effect of them. If the
effect is so much when the seed is sown in ten thousand minds, it will be
proportionately greater when it is sown in ten millions.
Nothing else has done in this matter for any people, and nothing else
will do for the Egyptians and Syrians. Their circumstances, over which
we appear to have no control, may make the effort barren; but there is
nothing else we can do for them. It is ‘the one way of salvation’ for the
state in which they now are. Nothing else can bring them to see except
printed discussion, in which what is gained is retained, and what is
discredited dies away, that for one disease the dung of a black dog is
not a sovereign remedy, nor for another the dung of a white cow; and that
the only preservative against the Evil Eye is the security good laws,
well administered, give to person and property.
As to ourselves, had it not been for the assistance we received from
letters we should still have here the Druid, or some one or other of
his congeners, offering human holocausts to the accompaniment of the
approving shouts of frantic multitudes; and we should still be, at this
day, as far from the ideas of liberty of thought, and of humanity, as
Galgacus was from the conception of the steam-engine, or of the electric
telegraph.
* * * * *
The restorative, I have been prescribing, is one which must be
designedly, and, when designedly, can never be very widely, applied.
Another, however, there is, which will come spontaneously, and have
a very diffusive effect. Its germs are now quickening in the womb
of time. It is that of the outflow of western capital to the East,
accompanied by those to whom it will belong, or who will be needed for
the superintendence and direction of its employment. There is plenty the
West wants which the East can supply: cotton, silk, wool, hides, wheat,
maize, beans, peas, dried fruits, oil, &c. And, in return, the East
will take iron, copper, gold, silver, clothing, pottery, &c. The only
point that is uncertain is that of time. The trade of the East has once
already been taken possession of by Europe. Two thousand years ago it
was everywhere in the hands of the Greeks. The same kind of thing will
be seen again. But this time the invasion will consist of Englishmen,
Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians; amongst whom the irrepressible Greek
will reappear. But the future trade between the East and the West will
differ widely from the old in the amount of commodities to be produced,
and moved, and exchanged. That will be such as modern capital only could
deal with, and railways and steamboats transport. Of the dawning of
the day for the expansion of this commerce to its natural dimensions
I think there are some indications even now. The railway is beginning
to penetrate into the East. It will, before long, be seen that much we
are in want of can be produced there, at a profit, by the employment of
our capital, its employment being superintended by Europeans. Security
to person and property will accompany the employment of capital. And
then the civilization of the East will be rehabilitated, with a life
and activity it never had in the glorious days of old. The rule then
was that some one district was to conquer, devastate, and plunder all
the rest; so that, at one time, only one locality, almost only one
city, could be great and prosperous. Looking back over the past we are
misled by observing the traces only of what was mighty and magnificent;
for wretchedness, degradation, and suffering leave no monuments. The
prosperity, however, that is coming will be diffusive, and universal; for
it will be supported not by arms, loot, and extortion, but by capital,
peace, knowledge, and industry.