WORLD
How great has been the progress in the art of printing is seen from
these two pictures. The modern Hoe printing press is a marvel of
mechanism. The first editions of this History were printed on a
similar machine.
]
[Sidenote: Markets and Prices]
Country becomes city; centres of population which rest upon an
industrial basis arise; in many cases growth of the various
manufacturing industries is furthered by unfavourable agricultural
conditions. Such industrial centres require markets and market-places;
it is necessary for the producers of raw materials to come to market
from the country with their goods, in order that they may meet
together with the craftsmen of the city, and with other producers from
the country who offer their wares in turn. The market town is the
point of departure for further culture. Here, too, the endeavour to
harmonise individual incongruities exists. Fruit is sent to market;
each man has his choice; an exchange value is determined by means of
comparison, through analysis of the individual prices which themselves
do not furnish any rational determination of worth, and therefore
expose both buyer and seller to chance. Thus a market-price develops.
The city is the living agency promoting industry and exchange; it
brings its population into contact with the population of the country
by means of the market, and prevents men from separating into isolated,
unsympathetic, or even hostile groups.
Here industry flourishes--arts, crafts, and large manufactures. In
the latter, division of labour is developed to a maximum degree,
and production in factories derives a further impulse through the
introduction of machinery. Machines, in contrast to implements and
utensils, are inanimate but organised instruments for labour, requiring
subordinate human activity only (attendance) so that they may impart
force and motion in a manner corresponding with the designs of the
inventor. Machinery is originally of simple form, dependent on water or
wind for motive power--rude mills, and contrivances for the guiding of
water in canals or conduits belong to its primitive varieties.
[Sidenote: The Use of Natural Forces]
But man’s power of invention increases, and in the higher stage of
industrial evolution the facilities for labour are enormous. We have
but to think of steam and of electricity with all their tremendous
developments of power. Finally the discovery of the unity of force
leads men to look upon Nature as a storehouse of energy and to devise
means by which natural forces may be guided, one form of energy
converted into another and transferred from place to place; and thus
man becomes almost all-powerful. He is not able to create, it is true,
but he may at least mould and shape to his desire that which Nature
has already formed. Thus the discovery how to direct the forces of
Nature enables us again, according to the principle already cited, to
escape the disabilities of human differentiation with its attendant
incongruities.
[Sidenote: Boundless Growth of Commerce]
As already stated, division of labour leads to exchange; exchange leads
to commerce. Commerce is exchange on a large scale, organised into a
system with special regard to the production of a store, or supply. The
latter requires a certain knowledge of trade; the centres of demand
must be sought out, and the goods transported to these centres. In this
way a fruitful reciprocal action develops; and as production influences
trade, so may trade influence production, governing it according to
the fluctuations of demand, and leading to the creation of stores of
commodities for which a future market is to be expected. Thus commerce
presupposes special knowledge and special skill; it develops a special
technique through which it is enabled to execute its complicated
tasks. Men who live by trade become distinct from craftsmen; and the
mercantile class results. Merchants are men whose task is to effect
an organised exchange of natural and manufactured products. Commerce
always displays an impulse to extend itself beyond the borders of
single nations--not to remain inland only, but to become a foreign
trade also; for the products of foreign countries and climates, however
valuable they may be, would be inaccessible except for commerce.
Thus trade becomes both import and export. The first step is for the
tradesman or his representative to travel about peddling goods, or for
an owner of wares or money to offer capital to an itinerant merchant
with the object that the latter may divide the profits with him later
on. This leads to the sending of merchandise to a middleman, who
places it on the market in a distant region--commission business. The
establishment of a branch or agency in a foreign country, in order to
trade there while in immediate connection with the main business house,
follows; and, finally, merchants deal directly with foreign houses
without the intervention of middlemen, thus entering into direct export
trade. This, of course, presupposes a great familiarity with foreign
affairs and confidence in their soundness; consequently it is possible
only in a highly developed state of civilisation.
[Illustration: “THE SHIP OF THE DESERT”: THE CARAVAN IS THE OLDEST
EXISTING MEANS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PEOPLES
From J. F. Lewis’s picture “The Halt in the Desert,” in the South
Kensington Museum
(Photo, Mansell)
]
[Sidenote: Birth of New Trades and Institutions]
Foreign trade is carried on overland by means of caravans, and,
in later times, by railways; over sea, through a merchant
marine--sailing vessels and steamships. The magnitude of commerce, its
peculiar methods, and its manifold, varying phases combine to produce
new and surprising phenomena: traffic by sea leads to insurance and
to different forms of commercial associations; intercourse by caravan
gives rise to the construction of halting-stations, establishments for
refreshment and repair, that finally develop into taverns and inns. And
that which first arose from necessity is subsequently turned to use
for other purposes: insurance is one of the most fruitful ideas of the
present day; hotels are an absolute necessity.
Commerce is able to bring further contrivances and institutions into
being, here, again, overcoming individual incongruity by means of
combination. Trade cannot always be carried on directly between the
places of production and of consumption; one district requires more,
another less; it would be difficult to supply all from one centre
of distribution. Thus an intermediate carrying trade is developed,
rendering the surmounting of obstacles less difficult and increasing
the stability of the market. The demands of the middleman are
compensated for by these advantages.
[Sidenote: Commerce Brings the World Together]
Thus the world’s commerce develops, and that which is accomplished
by market traffic in lesser districts is brought about by the
concentrative influence of bourses, or exchanges, in the broadest
spheres. Here, as in the smaller markets, the tendency is for all
prices to seek a level, to become as independent as possible of
individual conditions; and so commerce between nations, and the
possibility of ordering goods from the most distant lands, bring with
them an adjustment: world prices are formed; and to establish these,
is the business of the exchanges. The exchange is a meeting together
of merchants for the transaction of business by purchase or sale. It
has acquired still more the character of a world institution since
men have been able to interchange advices by means of telegraph and
telephone; it is possible for the bourses of different countries to
transact business with one another from moment to moment, so that the
ruling prices of the world can be immediately known. It has already
been stated that commerce leads to a taking up of residence in foreign
countries; it also leads to colonisation, and it is chiefly due to
commerce that civilisation is introduced into foreign lands.
[Sidenote: Supply of Human Labour]
In earlier centuries the labour question was settled by means of the
legal subjection of certain classes of men, until complete injustice
was reached in slavery. The system was rendered still more efficient
by making slave-ownership hereditary. Slavery, originated in wars and
man-hunting, in times when there were but few domesticated animals
and no machines, when utensils, were very imperfect and a more or
less developed mode of life could only be conducted by means of the
manual labour of individuals. Therefore, in order to obtain labourers,
men resorted to force, introducing a slave population of which the
individuals were either divided among households or kept in special
slave habitations. The industry of the slave was often increased by the
promise of definite privileges or private possessions. He was often
granted a home and family life, and thus he became a bondman--burdened
and taxed and bound to the soil, it is true, but otherwise looked
upon as a man possessed of ordinary rights and privileges. Even
during the days of slavery there were instances of emancipation, and
the possibility was opened up of rising to the social position of a
slave-owner.
The evolution of a free working class, with recompense for labour,
is one of the most important chapters in the history of modern
civilisation. The chief sphere of development is that of the crafts
and trades. The power of guilds often induces legislation in their
favour; thus they become monopolies, and only such individuals as are
members of an association may adopt its particular trade or craft
as a profession. Sometimes the unity of a guild is broken, and the
individual right to form judgments enters in place of the rules laid
down by the corporation. From this results competition, which finally
leads up to free competition. Through free competition, the encumbering
rigidity of the guilds is avoided; it leads to a high development
of the individual, and is therefore a great source of progress; it
discloses the secrets of the craft, freeing men from deeply-rooted
prejudices in regard to different vocations; and it increases man’s
inventive capacity, producing new methods for carrying on trades and
new combinations and connections.
[Illustration: THE PROMISE OF PEACE: THE HAGUE CONFERENCE OF THE
NATIONS OF THE WORLD IN 1907
Nothing could more effectively illustrate the ideal of
international peaceful co-operation to which hopeful historians
look forward than this photograph of the representatives of all the
leading Powers of the world, met together at The Hague, in the year
1907, to promote the amity of nations and the eventual abolition of
war.
]
[Illustration: STEPS IN MAN’S DEVELOPMENT II
Professor
JOSEPH KOHLER]
THE HIGHER PROGRESS OF MANKIND
Spiritual culture may develop in the directions of knowing and of
feeling. These two forms of the manifestation of consciousness are
originally not to be separated from each other; but as time goes on,
a preponderance of one or the other becomes noticeable. Language is
the first result of spiritual culture: the communication of thoughts
by means of words (sound pictures of ideas). Language arises from the
necessities of life, from the need for communication among the members
of a social aggregate.
[Illustration: GUTENBERG, THE INVENTOR OF PRINTING
Nothing has eclipsed the printing press as an agency of man’s
intellectual and spiritual advancement.
]
A much later acquisition, the art of writing, or the fixation of
language in a definite, permanent form, stands in close connection with
speech. Writing develops according to two systems: the one based on
the symbolising or picturing of ideas--picture-writing, hieroglyphics;
and the other on the breaking up of the speech-sounds of a language
into a notation of syllables or letters--syllabic or letter writing.
According to the first method thoughts are directly pictured; according
to the second, sounds, not ideas, are represented by symbols--that is,
the sounds which stand for the ideas are transformed into signs. The
transition from sign to syllabic writing comes about in this manner:
if, during its development, a language uses the same sound to express
various conceptions, men represent this sound by one sign; and whenever
a foreign word is reproduced in writing it is first separated into
syllables, and the syllables are then pictured by the same signs as
are employed to represent similar sounds--but different ideas--in the
native speech. Thus symbols are employed more and more phonetically,
and less and less meaning comes to be attached to them. This process
must continue its development if the pronunciation changes as time
goes on; the old writing, with its national symbol-method, may be
retained; but with the changing of speech-sounds the new writing is
altered; syllables are now represented by signs, and combinations
of syllables are reproduced by means of a combination of their
corresponding symbols. Thus phonetic writing was not an invention, but
a gradual development. Together with the phonetic symbols, ideograms or
hieroglyphs also exist, as in Babylonian. It is especially interesting,
and indicative of the unity of the human mind, that the transition to
syllabic writing has been arrived at independently by different races;
the Aztecs, for example, exhibit a wholly independent development.
[Sidenote: The Spreading of Ideas]
Communication by writing may be either single or private, or general
and public; in the latter case plurality is attained through such
methods as the affixing of bills and placards, or by means of
transcripts or reproductions of the original copy. At first the latter
are made in accordance with the ordinary methods of writing; and in
slave-holding communities--Rome, for example--slaves who wrote to
dictation were employed as scribes. The discovery of a method by which
to obtain a plurality of copies through a single mechanical process was
epoch-making. The printing-press has performed a far greater service
to humanity than have most inventions; for, with the possibility of
producing thousands of copies of a communication, the thoughts embodied
in it become forces; they may enter the minds of many individuals who
are either convinced or actually guided by them. Ideas become active
through their suggestion on the masses of the population. This may lead
to a one-sided rule of public opinion; but a healthy race will travel
intellectually in many directions, and various beliefs supplement one
another, struggle together, conquer, and are conquered. In this manner
thoughts awaken popular movements, rousing a people to a hitherto
unknown degree, and forcing men to think and to join issues. Thus the
Press becomes a factor in civilisation of the very first importance.
The necessity for periodic communication, together with curiosity
that refuses to wait long for information, leads to the establishment
of regularly recurrent publications; and thus, in addition to the
book-press, the newspaper-press, that has learned how to hold great
centres of population under its control, appears. Naturally this method
of aiding the progress of civilisation has its disadvantages, as have
all other methods; the conception of the world becomes superficial;
individuality loses in character; not only a certain levelling of
education, but also a levelling of views of life and of modes of
thought, results. But, on the whole, knowledge is spread abroad as it
never was before.
[Illustration: EXAMPLES OF AZTEC HIEROGLYPHIC SCULPTURE AND WRITING
The hieroglyphics and script of the Aztecs were independently
developed. The first illustration is from a sculpture in Mexico,
and the other is a small reproduction of a page of the Maya
manuscript at Dresden. In both cases the symbolism is only
imperfectly understood at present.
]
Man, as a thinking being, craves for a conception of life; and in his
inmost thoughts he seeks for an explanation of the double relationship
of Man to Nature and of Nature to Man, striving to bring all into
harmony. This he finds in religion.
[Illustration:
Frith
THE GREAT BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA, IN JAPAN
Professor Kohler points out that in the history of the world’s
religions, although the belief in the omnipotence of God has become so
widespread, it is not thought inconsistent that a Buddha, claiming to
incarnate the Supreme Being completely within himself, should appear.]
[Sidenote: Man’s Craving for Religion]
[Sidenote: Beginnings of Nature Worship]
[Sidenote: The Realm of Shadows]
Religion is belief in God; that is, belief in spiritual forces
inseparable from and interwoven through the universe--forces that
render all things distinct and separate, yet make all coalescent and
firm, permeating all, and giving to every object its individuality.
Man is impelled by Nature to conceive of the universe as divine. This
idea exhibits itself universally among primitive folk in the form
of animism--a belief that the entire internal and external world is
animated, filled with supernatural beings that have originally no
determinate nature, but which may appear in the most varied of forms,
may vanish and may create themselves anew, as clouds arise from unseen
vapour in the air. Spirits are supposed to be not far removed from
man; families as well as individuals consider themselves to stand more
or less in connection with them; and men, too, have a share in the
invisible world when they have cast aside the garment of the body in
dream or in death. Thus, every man is thought to have his protecting
spirit, his _manitou_, that reveals itself to him through signs and
dreams. Special incarnations, objects in which supernatural beings
are inherent or with which they are in some way connected, are called
“fetiches”; hence arises fetichism, in regard to which the strangest
ideas were held in previous centuries when the science of anthropology
was unknown. Trees, rocks, rivers, bits of wood, images of one’s own
making--any of these are thought capable of containing beings of divine
nature. Naturally, the tree or the fragment of wood or of stone is not
worshipped, as men formerly thought, but the spirit that is believed
to have entered it. In many cases the belief approaches worship of
Nature, especially among agricultural peoples. Divinity is recognised
in the shape of factors essential to agriculture--sun, sky, lightning,
thunder; these being the beneficent deities, in contrast to whom are
the earth-spirits who bring pestilences, earthquakes, and other evils
to mankind. Thus the cult is refined; spirits are no longer attached
to fetiches, but men worship the heavens, and the earth also. Religion
accompanies man from birth to death. Spirits both for good and for evil
are supposed to hover about him at his very birth. The soul of some
being--perhaps an animal, perhaps an ancestor--enters into the new-born
child, and from this spirit he receives his name.
Oftentimes there is a new consecration at the time of marriage;
often when an heir-apparent succeeds to the chieftainship. At his
decease primitive folk believe that man enters the realm of shadows.
At first he hovers over the sea or river of death, and often only
after having passed through many hardships does he arrive in the new
kingdom, where he either continues to live after the manner of his
former existence, or, according to whether his life on earth has been
good or evil, inhabits a higher or a lower supernatural sphere. To
the dead are consecrated their personal possessions--horses, slaves,
wives even--that they may make use of them during the new existence;
men go head-hunting in order to send them new helpmates. On the other
hand great care is often taken that the spirits of the departed,
satisfied with their new existence, may no longer molest the world of
the living: propitiative offerings are made; men avoid mentioning the
name of the departed, that he may not be tempted to visit them with
his presence; they seek to make themselves unrecognisable during the
time immediately following his death, wear different clothes, and adopt
other dwelling-places. Sometimes the light placed near the deceased for
the purpose of guiding him back to his old home is moved further and
further away, so that his ghost, unable to find the right path, shall
never return.
Thus the belief in spirits encompasses primitive man, following him
step by step.
[Sidenote: The Belief in Many Gods]
[Sidenote: Happiness found in Religion]
From animism develops worship of heroes and polytheism, with their
attendant mythological narrations. The idea of the unity of the
supernatural world becomes lost; and the indefinite forms of spirit
become separate, independent beings, that are developed more and
more in the direction of the souls either of animals or of men.
This splitting up of the deity, which destroys the tendency toward
unity in religion, is followed by a reaction that comes about partly
through a belief in creation by a father of the gods, partly through
acceptance of a historical origin of the mythological world from a
single source (theogonic myths), and partly through direct banishment
of the plurality of gods and a new formation of the belief in a unity
according either to theistic or to pantheistic ideas. In spite of the
conception of a world permeated and pervaded by God alone, the belief
that certain persons and places are more powerful in respect to the
divinity than others is retained; and the appearance from time to time
of a Buddha who incarnates and manifests the Supreme Being directly and
completely within himself--in a special manner apart from other natural
phenomena--is also not looked upon as inconsistent.
[Illustration: A STRANGE RELIGIOUS RITE: FUNERAL SACRIFICE OF THE TODAS
IN SOUTHERN INDIA
The elaborate and extraordinary funeral rites of the Todas
illustrate admirably the older notions of life and death. A funeral
endures for several days; the body is cremated; last of all the
buffaloes of the deceased are slaughtered at the grave and thought
to enter into mystic reunion with their master. In olden times a
whole troop would be slaughtered, but under British influence the
number has been limited to one for a common person and two for a
chief.
]
Religion is a thing of the emotions, not merely in the sense of having
its origin in fear, or in the remembrance of lasting sensations derived
from visions or dreams, but emotional in so far that it satisfies
the necessity felt by men for a consistent life-conception--not an
intellectual but an emotional conception. It is not the matter-of-fact
desire for knowledge that finds its expression in religion, but the
joy of the heart in a supreme power, the call for help of the needy,
and the consciousness of our own insignificance and our mortality.
Judgment is not yet abstracted from the other psychic functions;
indeed, it really retires behind the emotions.
[Illustration: NOAH’S SACRIFICE
From the painting by Daniel Maclise, R.A.
]
[Sidenote: The Basis of Worship]
[Sidenote: The Growth of the Priesthood]