purpose, the origin of that dissension, which is inherent in human
nature, and forms the basis of all history. We have in the next place
sought to unfold and illustrate the universal tradition, which attests
the hostility between the virtuous Patriarchs and the proud Titans of
the primitive world, or the different and opposite spirit that
characterized the two primitive races of mankind; assigning, at the same
time, to savage nations, or to the more degraded portions of human kind,
their proper place in history--a place important undoubtedly, but still
secondary in the great scheme of humanity.
These facts, too important to be passed over in silence, form the
introduction and are, as it were, the porch to universal history, and to
the civilization of the human species in the later historical ages. Now
that we have seen mankind divided and split into a plurality of nations,
our next task, in the period which follows, is to discover the most
remarkable and most civilized nations, and to observe what peculiar form
the Word, whether innate in man, or communicated to him--the word which
may be considered as the essence of all the high prerogatives and
characteristic qualities of man; to observe, we say, what peculiar form
the word assumed among each of those nations, in their language and
writing, in their religious traditions, their historical Sagas, their
poetry, art, and science. In the account of ancient nations, we shall
adopt the ethnographical mode of treating history; and it will be only
in modern and more recent times that this method will gradually give
place to the synchronical; and the reasons of this change will be
suggested by the very nature of the subject. In this general survey, we
must confine ourselves to those mighty and celebrated nations who have
attained to a high degree of intellectual excellence; and we shall
select and briefly state remarkable traits or extraordinary historical
facts illustrative of the manners, social institutions, political
refinement, and even political history of every nation, worthy of
occupying a place in this sketch, in order the better to mark the
progress of the intellectual principle in the peculiar culture and modes
of thinking of each. It is only at a later period that political history
becomes the main object of attention, and almost the leading principle
in the progressive march, and even the partial retrogressions of
mankind.
In this general picture of the earliest development of the human mind,
we can select such nations only as are sufficiently well known, or
respecting whom the sources of information are now at least of easier
access; for were we to comprehend in this general survey, nations with
whom we were less perfectly acquainted, we should be led into minute and
interminable researches, without, after all, perhaps, obtaining any new
or satisfactory result for the principal object in view. In the first
period of antiquity will figure the Chinese, the Indians and the
Egyptians, besides the isolated, and the so-called chosen people of the
Hebrews; and if I commence by the remotest of the civilized countries of
Asia, China, I beg leave to premise that I mean to determine no question
of priority as to the respective antiquity of those nations, or to
adjudge any preference to one or other amongst them. Indeed their own
chronological accounts and pretensions, which often deserve the name of
chronological fictions, turn out, on a closer inquiry, to be mere
calculations of astronomical periods; and a sound historical criticism
will not admit that they were originally meant to be chronological.
Suffice it to say that the three nations we have mentioned belonged to
the same period of the world, and attained to an equal, or a very
similar, degree of moral and intellectual refinement; and so in respect
to that higher object, the chronological dispute becomes unnecessary, or
is, at least, of minor importance. Among those, however, who take an
active part in these researches, a partiality for one or other of these
nations, and for their respective antiquity easily springs up; for even
objects the most remote will excite in the human breast the spirit of
party. In order to keep as free as possible from prepossessions of this
kind, I have adopted a species of geographical division of my subject,
which, when I come to treat later of the different periods of modern
history, will give place to a more chronological arrangement. I said a
_species_ of geographical division, for undoubtedly from the special
nature of this historical enquiry, it must be supposed I shall take a
different point of view in the geographical survey of the earth than
ordinarily occurs in geographical investigations. The geographies for
common use properly take as their basis the present situation of the
different states and kingdoms now in existence. But a more scientific
geography adopts the direction of mountains, and the course of rivers,
the vallies produced by the former, and the space occupied by the waters
of the latter, as the leading clue to the division and arrangement of
the earth. Thus in the philosophy of history the series of the principal
civilized states will form a high, commanding chain; and the philosophic
historian will have to follow from east to west, or in any other
direction that history may point out, not merely rivers transporting
articles of commerce, but the mighty stream of traditions and doctrines
which has traversed and fertilized the world.
As the individuals who can be termed historical, form but rare
exceptions among mankind, so in the whole circumference of the globe,
there are only a certain number of nations that occupy an important and
really historical place in the annals of civilization. By far the
greater part of the inhabited or habitable globe, however rich and ample
a field it may offer to the investigations of the naturalist, cannot be
included in this class, or has not attained to this degree of eminence.
In the whole continent of Africa there is, besides Egypt, only the
northern coast stretching along the Mediterranean, that is at all
connected with the history and intellectual progress of the civilized
world. The other coasts of Africa, including its southernmost cape,
furnish points of importance to commerce, navigation, and even some
attempts at colonization; while the interior parts of this continent,
still so little known, possess much to excite the attention and wonder
of the naturalist; but beyond this, its maritime as well as central
regions, cannot be said to occupy a place in the intellectual history,
or in the moral progress, of our species. It is only since it has formed
a province of the Russian empire that the vast territory of Northern
Asia has become known to us, and has been, as it were, newly discovered.
From central and eastern Asia, from the south of Tartary and the north
of China, many mighty and conquering nations have issued, that have
spread the terror of their arms over the face of civilization, as far as
the frontiers of Europe.
But, in the march and development of the human mind, these nations are
far from occupying the same eminent station. In this respect, also, the
fifth continent of the globe, Polynesia--though nearly equal to Europe
in extent, counts as nought. Even America, the largest of those
continents, occupies here a comparatively subordinate rank; and it is
only in latter ages, and since its discovery, that it can be said to
belong to history. Since that period, indeed, the inhabitants of this
portion of the world have adopted, for the most part, the language, the
manners, the modes of thinking, and the political Institutions of
Europe; for the still subsisting remnant of its ancient savages is very
inconsiderable: so that America may be regarded as a remote dependency,
and, as it were, a continuation of old Europe on the other side of the
Atlantic. Great as the re-action may be, which this second Europe,
sprung up in the solitudes of the new world, has during the last fifty
years exerted on its mother-continent, still as this influence forms a
part but of very recent history, it is only in very modern times that
America has obtained any historical weight and importance.
Even in its natural configuration, the new world is more widely
different from the old, than the principal parts of the latter are from
each other. As in comparing the Northern extremity of the earth with its
Southern or aqueous extremity, we observe a striking disparity, and
almost complete opposition between the two; so we shall find this to be
the case, if, in advancing in the opposite direction from east to west,
we divide the whole surface of the earth into two equal parts. On one
hand that more important division of the earth, extending from the
Western coast of Africa to the Eastern coast of Asia, comprises the
three ancient continents, which, from the upper to the middle part,
occupy almost the whole space of this half of the globe. Here is the
greatest quantity of land, and the animal kingdom, too, is on a more
large and magnificent scale. It is only at the Southern extremity of
this hemisphere that sea and water are predominant; and here a
continuous chain of islands from the southernmost point of Asia reaches
to the fifth and last portion of the globe--Australia, making it a sort
of Asiatic dependency. In the American hemisphere, the element of water
is predominant, not only at the Southern extremity, but towards the
middle; for, large as America may be, it can bear no comparison with the
other continents in respect to extent of surface. Our hemisphere is more
remarkable even for extent of population than for the quantity of land.
Here indeed is the chief seat of population, and the principal theatre
of human history and human civilization.
The entire population of America, which, as it is for the most part of
European extraction, is better known to us than that of many countries
more contiguous--the entire population of America at the highest
computation of the whole number of inhabitants on the globe, forms but a
thirtieth part, and at the lowest computation, not a four-and-twentieth
part of the whole. Widely extended as this thinly peopled continent is,
the whole number of its inhabitants scarcely exceeds the population of a
single great European state, such as either France or Germany, whose
population, indeed, it about equals. Vegetation, indeed, is most rich
and luxuriant in America; but the two most generous plants reared by
human culture, and which are so closely connected with the primitive
history of man--corn and the vine--were originally unknown in this
quarter of the world. In the animal kingdom, America is far inferior to
the other and more ancient continents of the globe. Many of the noblest
and most beautiful species of animals did not exist there originally;
and others again were found most unseemly in form, and most degenerate
in nature. Some species of animals indigenous to that continent form but
a feeble compensation for the absence of others, the most useful and
most necessary for the purposes of husbandry and the domestic uses of
man. We may boldly lay it down as a general proposition not to be taxed
with error or exaggeration, that in the new hemisphere, vegetation is
predominant, while in the old, animal force preponderates, and is more
fully developed. This superiority is apparent not only in the
comparative extent of population, but in the organic structure of the
human form. Even the African tribes are far superior in bodily strength
and agility to the aboriginal natives of America; and in point of
longevity and fecundity, the latter are not to be compared with the
Malayan race, and the Mongul tribes in the central or North-eastern
parts of Asia, and in Southern Tartary, races with whom, in other
respects, they seem to bear some analogy.
As the American continent, in other respects so incomplete, is mostly
separated from all the others; and its form is more simple and less
complex than that of the ancient divisions of the globe, it well
deserves our consideration in that point of view; and it may perhaps
furnish the general type and true geographical outline of a continent in
its natural state. A narrow isthmus connects the upper half, stretching
in a widely extended tract towards the North Pole, and the inferior
part, with its Southern peak; and thus both form, according to general
impression but one and the same continent; and so prove, in fact, how
totally the Northern and Southern parts of a continent may differ. That
now in the period when the Euxine was still united to the Caspian, when
the White sea stretched farther into land, and the Ural mountains formed
an island, or were surrounded to the North and South by the sea, Asia
and Europe were probably separated towards the North, is a point to
which we have already had occasion to allude. But if, on the one hand,
Europe were separated from Asia, it might on the other have been easily
joined to Africa by an isthmus, where it is now divided from it by a
straight, and so have formed with it one connected continent; in the
same way as Australia is united with Asia, if at least we consider the
long chain of islands between them as one unbroken continuity. Then in
truth there would have been but three continents of a form similar to
the above-mentioned one of America; except that the two nobler
continents closely entangled with one another would not on that account
have so well preserved the original conformation. That it is on the
whole more correct, and more consonant with nature, as well as with
theory, to suppose the existence of only three original portions of the
globe, might be shown by much additional evidence.
But, laying aside these geological facts and observations, ideas and
conjectures, the philosophic historian can reckon over the whole surface
of the globe but fifteen historical and important civilized countries of
greater or less extent, which can form the subject, and furnish the
geographical outline of his remarks. This historical chain of lands, or
this stream of historical nations from the south-east of Asia to the
Northern and Western extremities of Europe, forms a tract, through both
continents, which though of considerable breadth, is not, in proportion
to the extent of these continents, of very great magnitude, and which
may be divided into three classes, coinciding chronologically in their
several periods of historical glory and development with the great eras
or sections of universal history from the primitive ages down to the
present times. In the first class of these mighty and celebrated
civilized countries, I would place the three great magnificent regions
in Eastern and Southern Asia, China, India, between which the ancient
Bactriana forms a point of transition and connecting link--and lastly
Persia. In a more westerly and somewhat more northerly direction than
the three countries just named, the second or middle class is composed
of four or five regions remarkable for extent and beauty, and above all
for their historical importance and celebrity. First of all, there is
that middle country of Western Asia above-mentioned, which is situate
near two great streams--the Tigris and the Euphrates, and bounded by
four inland seas, the Persian and Arabian gulfs, and the Caspian and
Mediterranean seas. Upon this midland country of ancient history, in
every respect so worthy of notice, I have but one observation to add,
that in this great series of civilized countries it occupies nearly the
middle place; for the Southern extremity of India is about as far
removed from it as, in the opposite direction, the North of Scotland.
And the Eastern part of China is not much more distant from this region
than in the opposite quarter the Western coast of the Hesperian
Peninsula. Next must be included in this class the circumjacent
countries, Arabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, together with the Caucasian
regions.
As in the flourishing period of her ancient history, Greece was in every
way far more closely connected with Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt,
than with the countries of Europe, she also must be comprised in this
division of Central Asia. On the other hand, there is no country in
Europe which, considered in itself, bears so strongly the distinctive
geographical configuration peculiar to the European continent. This
peculiar configuration of Europe, so well adapted to the purposes of
settlement, and to the progress of civilization, consists in this--that
in no other continent does the same given space of territory present to
the sea so extensive and diversified a line of coast, and furnish it
with so many streams, great and small, as Europe shut in, as it is,
between two inland seas, and the great ocean, and which runs out into so
many great and commodiously situated Peninsulas, and possesses large,
magnificent, and, in part, very anciently and highly civilized islands,
like Sicily and the British Isles. What Europe is in a large way, Greece
is in a small--a region of coasts, islands and peninsulas. Belonging
more to one continent in its natural conformation, and to the other by
its historical connexion, Greece forms the point of transition and the
intermediate link between Asia and Europe.
The other six or seven principal countries in Europe, taken according to
a strict geographical classification, and without paying attention to
the political variations of territory, whether in antiquity, the middle
ages, or modern times, form the members of the third class. These are
first the two beautiful peninsulas, Italy and Spain; next France on the
North and South washed by two different seas, and towards the North,
jutting out into a by no means inconsiderable peninsula--further on, the
British isles, the ancient Germany with its Northern coast stretching
along two seas, to which must be annexed from the ancient consanguinity
of their inhabitants, the Cimbric and Scandinavian islands and
peninsulas; lastly, the vast Sarmatia, towards the North and East
extending far into Asia, in the wide tract from the Euxine to the Frozen
sea. From Sarmatia, however, must be separated, on account of their
natural situation, the great Danubian countries, extending from the
South of the Carpathian mountains, down to the other mountainous chain
northward of Greece--such as the ancient Illyricum, Pannonia and
Dacia--regions which, in a strict geographical point of view, must be
regarded as forming a distinct class. In an historical point of view,
the whole Northern coast of Africa, stretching along the Mediterranean,
should be included in this division of European countries, not only from
that early commercial and colonial connexion, established in the time of
the Carthaginian republic, and in the first period of the Roman wars and
conquests; but from the prevalence in that country, down to the fourth
and fifth centuries, of European manners, language and refinement. Even
during the existence of the Saracenic empire, a very close intercourse
subsisted for many centuries between this coast and Spain.
Such, according to a general geographical survey of the globe, would be
the historical land-chart of civilization, if I may so express myself,
which forms the grand outline I must steadily keep in view, in the
following sketch of nations, in which I will endeavour to explain with
the utmost clearness and precision, and point out closely in all its
particular bearings, the principle laid down in this work respecting the
internal Word, as the essential characteristic of man.
END OF LECTURE II.
LECTURE III.
Of the constitution of the Chinese Empire--the moral and political
condition of China--the character of Chinese intellect and Chinese
science.
"Man and the earth,"--this has been the subject of our previous
disquisitions, and might serve as the superscription to this first
portion of the work. In the second part, comprised in the four or five
following lectures, the subject discussed is sacred Tradition, according
to the peculiar form which it assumed among each of the great and most
remarkable nations in primitive antiquity, and as it is known from the
visible and universally scattered traces of a divine Revelation. It will
be our duty to trace, with a discriminating eye, the various course
which, in the lapse of ages, this sacred tradition followed among each
of those nations; and at the same time to point out, as far as the
subject will admit of historical proof, the one common source whence, as
from a centre, issued those different streams of tradition to diffuse
throughout all the regions of the earth fertility and life, or to be
lost and dried up in the sterile sands of human error. It will be also
our task more accurately to define the share allotted to each of those
leading nations in divine truth, or the heritage of higher knowledge
which had been imparted to them. Closely connected with this subject, is
the designation of the internal Word, constituting as it does the
distinguishing mark and intellectual being of man and mankind; and
which, as it has been variously manifested and developed in the
language, writings, Sagas, history, art and science--in the faith, the
life and modes of thinking of each of those nations, will be described
in its most essential traits.
I shall commence with the Chinese Empire, because, among the fifteen
historical countries included in the line of civilization we have drawn
above, it occupies the extreme point of Eastern Asia. The names of East
and West are indeed purely relative; and have not the same permanent and
definite signification as the North or South pole in every portion of
the globe. China lies to the west of Peru; and to North America, or
Brazil, Europe forms the east or north-east point. We still however
adhere to common speech, purely relative as it is, and take our point of
view from this Asiatic and European hemisphere, in which we dwell. If we
would extend in a westerly direction and to the great continent of
America, which is more and more assuming an important place in the
history of the world, that series of great and civilized states,
stretching from the south-east to the north-west in our mightier, more
celebrated, and earlier civilized hemisphere, we might add to the
before-mentioned fifteen ancient and modern countries three young or
rising states in the new world, which, springing in a three-fold
division from British, Spanish, and Portuguese extraction, would
constitute the most recent, or last historical links in this chain of
communities.