PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN.
Imperfect notions of the capability of savage tribes--Parallel
between our civilization and those that preceded it--Our modern
political theories no novelty--The political parties of Rome--Peace
societies--The art of printing a means, the results of which depend
on its use--What constitutes a "living" civilization--Limits of the
sphere of intellectual acquisitions.
To understand perfectly the differences existing among races, in regard
to their intellectual capacity, it is necessary to ascertain the lowest
degree of stupidity that humanity is capable of. The inferior branches
of the human family have hitherto been represented, by a majority of
scientific observers, as considerably more abased than they are in
reality. The first accounts of a tribe of savages almost always depict
them in exaggerated colors of the darkest cast, and impute to them such
utter intellectual and reasoning incapacity, that they seem to sink to
the level of the monkey, and below that of the elephant. There are,
indeed, some contrasts. Let a navigator be well received in some
island--let him succeed in persuading a few of the natives to work,
however little, with the sailors, and praises are lavished upon the
fortunate tribe: they are declared susceptible of every improvement; and
perhaps the eulogist will go so far as to assert that he has found among
them minds of a very superior order.
To both these judgments we must object--the one being too favorable, the
other too severe. Because some natives of Tahiti assisted in repairing a
whaler, or some inhabitant of Tonga Tabou exhibited good feelings
towards the white strangers who landed on his isle, it does not follow
that either are capable of receiving our civilization, or of being
raised to a level with us. Nor are we warranted in classing among brutes
the poor naturals of a newly-discovered coast, who greet their first
visitors with a shower of stones and arrows, or who are found making a
dainty repast on raw lizards and clods of clay. Such a meal does not,
indeed, indicate a very superior intelligence, or very refined manners.
But even in the most repulsive cannibal there lies latent a spark of the
divine flame, and reason may be awakened to a certain extent. There are
no tribes so very degraded that they do not reason in some degree,
whether correctly or otherwise, upon the things which surround them.
This ray of human intelligence, however faint it may be, is what
distinguishes the most degraded savage from the most intelligent brute,
and capacitates him for receiving the teachings of religion.
But are these mental faculties, which every individual of our species
possesses, susceptible of indefinite development? Have all men the same
capacity for intellectual progress? In other words, can cultivation
raise all the different races to the same intellectual standard? and are
no limits imposed to the perfectibility of our species? My answer to
these questions is, that all races are capable of improvement, but all
cannot attain the same degree of perfection, and even the most favored
cannot exceed a certain limit.
The idea of infinite perfection has gained many partisans in our times,
because we, like all who came before us, pride ourselves upon possessing
advantages and points of superiority unknown to our predecessors. I have
already spoken of the distinguishing features of our civilization, but
willingly revert to this subject again.
It may be said, that in all the departments of science we possess
clearer and more correct notions; that, upon the whole, our manners are
more polished, and our code of morals is preferable to that of the
ancients. It is further asserted, as the principal proof of our
superiority, that we have better defined, juster and more tolerant ideas
with regard to political liberty. Sanguine theorists are not wanting,
who pretend that our discoveries in political science and our
enlightened views of the rights of man will ultimately lead us to that
universal happiness and harmony which the ancients in vain sought in the
fabled garden of Hesperides.
These lofty pretensions will hardly bear the test of severe historical
criticism.
If we surpass preceding generations in scientific knowledge, it is
because we have added our share to the discoveries which they bequeathed
to us. We are their heirs, their pupils, their continuators, just as
future generations will be ours. We achieve great results by the
application of the power of steam; we have solved many great problems in
mechanics, and pressed the elements as submissive slaves into our
service. But do these successes bring us any nearer to omniscience. At
most, they may enable us ultimately to fathom all the secrets of the
material world. And when we shall have achieved that grand conquest, for
which so much requires still to be done that is not yet commenced, nor
even anticipated; have we advanced a single step beyond the simple
exposition of the laws which govern the material world? We may have
learned to direct our course through the air, to approach the limits of
the respirable atmosphere; we may discover and elucidate several
interesting astronomical problems; we may have greater powers for
controlling nature and compelling her to minister to our wants, but can
all this knowledge make us better, happier beings? Suppose we had
counted all the planetary systems and measured the immense regions of
space, would we know more of the grand mystery of existence than those
that came before us? Would this add one new faculty to the human mind,
or ennoble human nature by the eradication of one bad passion?
Admitting that we are more enlightened upon some subjects, in how many
other respects are we inferior to our more remote ancestors? Can it be
doubted, for instance, that in Abraham's times much more was known of
primordial traditions than the dubious beams which have come down to us?
How many discoveries which we owe to mere accident, or which are the
fruits of painful efforts, were the lost possessions of remote ages? How
many more are not yet restored? What is there in the most splendid of
our works that can compare with those wonders by which Egypt, India,
Greece, and America still attest the grandeur and magnificence of so
many edifices which the weight of centuries, much more than the impotent
ravages of man, has caused to disappear? What are our works of art by
the side of those of Athens; our thinkers by the side of those of
Alexandria or India; our poets by the side of a Valmiki, Kalidasa,
Homer, Pindar?
The truth is, we pursue a different direction from that of the human
societies whose civilization preceded ours. We apply our mind to
different purposes and different investigations; but while we clear and
cultivate new lands, we are compelled to neglect and abandon to
sterility those to which they devoted their attention. What we gain in
one direction we lose in another. We cannot call ourselves superior to
the ancients, unless we had preserved at least the principal
acquisitions of preceding ages in all their integrity, and had succeeded
in establishing by the side of these, the great results which they as
well as we sought after. Our sciences and arts superadded to theirs have
not enabled us to advance one step nearer the solution of the great
problems of existence, the mysteries of life and death. "I seek, but
find not," has always been, will ever be, the humiliating confession of
science when endeavoring to penetrate into the secrets concealed by the
veil that it is not given to mortal to lift. In criticism[174] we are,
undoubtedly, much in advance of our predecessors; but criticism implies
classification, not acquisition.
Nor can we justly pride ourselves upon any superiority in regard to
political ideas. Political and social theories were as rife in Athens
after the age of Pericles as they are in our days. To be convinced of
this, it is necessary only to study Aristophanes, whose comedies Plato
recommends to the perusal of whoever wishes to become acquainted with
the public morals of the city of Minerva. It has been pretended that our
present structure of society, and that of the ancients, admit of no
comparison, owing to the institution of slavery which formed an element
of the latter. But the only real difference is that demagogism had then
an even more fertile soil in which to strike root. The slaves of those
days find their precise counterpart in our working classes and
proletarians.[175] The Athenian people propitiating their servile class
after the battle of Arginuses, might be taken for a picture of the
nineteenth century.
Look at Rome. Open Cicero's letters. What a specimen of the moderate
Tory that great Roman orator was; what a similarity between his republic
and our constitutional bodies politic, with regard to the language of
parties and parliamentary debates! There, too, the background of the
picture was occupied by degraded masses of a servile and prædial
population, always eager for change, and ready to rise in actual
rebellion.
Let us leave those dregs of the population, whose civil existence the
law ignored, and who counted in politics but as the formidable tool of
designing individuals of free birth. But does not the free population of
Rome afford a perfect analogue to a modern body politic? There is the
mob crying for bread, greedy of shows, flattery, gratuitous
distributions, and amusements; the middle classes (_bourgeoisie_)
monopolizing and dividing among themselves the public offices; the
hereditary aristocracy, continually assailed at all points, continually
losing ground, until driven in mere self-defence to abjure all superior
claims and stipulate for equal rights to all. Are not these perfect
resemblances?
Among the boundless variety of opinions that make themselves heard in
our day, there is not one that had not advocates in Rome. I alluded a
while ago to the letters written from the villa of Tusculum; they
express the sentiments of the Roman conservative _Progressist_ party. By
the side of Sylla, Pompey and Cicero were Radicals.[176] Their notions
were not sufficiently radical for Cæsar; too much so for Cato. At a
later period we find in Pliny the younger a mild royalist, a friend of
quiet, even at some cost. Apprehensive of too much liberty, yet jealous
of power too absolute; very practical in his views, caring but little
for the poetical splendor of the age of the Fabii, he preferred the more
prosaic administration of Trajan. There were others not of his opinion,
good people who feared an insurrection headed by some new Spartacus, and
who, therefore, thought that the Emperor could not hold the reins too
tight. Then there were others, from the provinces, who obstreperously
demanded and obtained what would now be called "constitutional
guaranties." Again, there were the socialists, and their views found no
less an expounder than the Gallic Cæsar, C. Junius Posthumus, who
exclaims: "Dives et pauper, inimici," the rich and the poor are enemies
born.
Every man who had any pretensions to participate in the lights of the
day, declaimed on the absolute equality of all men, their "inalienable
rights," the manifest necessity and ultimate universality of the
Greco-Latin civilization, its superiority, its mildness, its future
progress, much greater even than that actually made, and above all its
perpetuity. Nor were those ideas merely the pride and consolation of the
pagans; they were the firm hopes and expectations of the earliest and
most illustrious Fathers of the Church, whose sentiments found so
eloquent an interpreter in Tertullian.
* * * * *
And as a last touch, to complete the picture, let us not forget those
people who, then as now, formed the most numerous of all parties: those
that belonged to none--people who are too weak-minded, or indifferent,
or apprehensive, or disgusted, to lay hold of a truth, from among the
midst of contradictory theories that float around them--people who are
content with order when it exists, submit passively in times of disorder
and confusion; who admire the increase of conveniences and comforts of
life unknown to their ancestors, and who, without thinking further,
centre their hope in the future and pride in the present, in the
reflection: "What wonderful facilities we enjoy now-a-days."
There would be some reason for believing in an improvement in political
science, if we had invented some governmental machinery which had
hitherto been unknown, or at least never carried into practice. This
glory we cannot arrogate to ourselves. Limited monarchies were known in
every age. There are even some very curious examples of this form of
government found among certain Indian tribes who, nevertheless, have
remained savages. Democratic and aristocratic republics of every form,
and balanced in the most varied manner, flourished in the new world as
well as the old. Tlascala is as complete a model of this kind as
Athens, Sparta, or Mecca before Mohammed's times. And even supposing
that we have applied to governmental science some secondary principle of
our own invention, does this justify us in our exaggerated pretension to
unlimited perfectibility? Let us rather be modest, and say with the
wisest of kings: "_Nil novi sub sole._"[177]
It is said that our manners are milder than those of the other great
human societies; this assertion also is very open to criticism. There
are some philanthropists who would induce nations no longer to resort to
armies in settling their quarrels. The idea is borrowed from Seneca.
Some of the Eastern sages professed the same principles in this respect
as the Moravian Brethren. But assuming that the members of the Peace
Congress succeed in disgusting Europe with the turmoil and miseries of
warfare, they would still have the difficult task left of forever
transforming the human passions. Neither Seneca nor the Eastern sages
have been able to accomplish this, and it may reasonably be doubted
whether this grand achievement is reserved for our generation. We
possess pure and exalted principles, I admit, but are they carried into
practice? Look at our fields, the streets of our cities--the bloody
traces of contests as fierce as any recorded in history are scarcely yet
effaced. Never since the beginning of our civilization has there been an
interval of peace of fifty years, and we are, in this respect, far
behind ancient Italy, which, under the Romans, once enjoyed two
centuries of perfect tranquillity. But even so long a repose would not
warrant us in concluding that the temple of Janus was thenceforth to be
forever closed.
The state of our civilization does not, therefore, prove the unlimited
perfectibility of man. If he have learned many things, he has forgotten
others. He has not added another to his senses; his soul is not enriched
by one new faculty. I cannot too much insist upon the great though sad
truth, that whatever we gain in one direction is counterbalanced by some
loss in another; that, limited as is our intellectual domain, we are
doomed never to possess its whole extent at once. Were it not for this
fatal law, we might imagine that at some period, however distant, man,
finding himself in possession of the experience of successive ages, and
having acquired all that it is in his power to acquire, would have
learned at last to apply his acquisitions to his welfare--to live
without battling against his kind, and against misery; to enjoy a state,
if not of unalloyed happiness, at least of abundance and peace.
But even so limited a felicity is not promised us here below, for in
proportion as man learns he unlearns; whatever he acquires, is at the
cost of some previous acquisition; whatever he possesses he is always in
danger of losing.
We flatter ourselves with the belief that our civilization is
imperishable, because we possess the art of printing, gunpowder, the
steam engine, &c. These are valuable means to accomplish great results,
but the accomplishment depends on their use.
The art of printing is known to many other nations beside ourselves, and
is as extensively used by them as by us.[178] Let us see its fruits. In
Tonquin, Anam, Japan, books are plentiful, much cheaper than with
us--so cheap that they are within the reach of even the poorest--and
even the poorest read them. How is it, then, that these people are so
enervated, so degraded, so sunk in sloth and vice[179]--so near that
stage in which even civilized man, having frittered away his physical
and mental powers, may sink infinitely below the rude barbarian, who, at
the first convenient opportunity, becomes his master? Whence this
result? Precisely because the art of printing is a means, and not an
agent. So long as it is used to diffuse sound, sterling ideas, to afford
wholesome and refreshing nutriment to vigorous minds, a civilization
never decays. But when it becomes the vile caterer to a depraved taste,
when it serves only to multiply the morbid productions of enervated or
vitiated minds, the senseless quibbles of a sectarian theology instead
of religion, the venomous scurrility of libellists instead of politics,
the foul obscenities of licentious rhymers instead of poesy--how and why
should the art of printing save a civilization from ruin?
It is objected that the art of printing contributes to the preservation
of a civilization by the facility with which it multiplies and diffuses
the masterpieces of the human mind, so that, even in times of
intellectual sterility, when they can no longer be emulated, they still
form the standard of taste, and by their clear and steady light prevent
the possibility of utter darkness. But it should be remembered that to
delve in the hoarded treasures of thought, and to appropriate them for
purposes of mental improvement, presupposes the possession of that
greatest of earthly goods--an enlightened mind. And in epochs of
intellectual degeneracy, few care about those monuments of lost virtues
and powers; they are left undisturbed on their dusty shelves in
libraries whose silence is but seldom broken by the tread of the
anxious, painstaking student.
The longevity which Guttenberg's invention assures to the productions of
genius is much exaggerated. There are a few works that enjoy the honor
of being reproduced occasionally; with this exception, books die now
precisely as formerly did the manuscripts. Works of science, especially,
disappear with singular rapidity from the realms of literature. A few
hundred copies are struck off at first, and they are seldom, and, after
a while, never heard of more. With considerable trouble you can find
them in some large collection. Look what has become of the thousands of
excellent works that have appeared since the first printed page came
from the press. The greater portion are forgotten. Many that are still
spoken of, are never read; the titles even of others, that were
carefully sought after fifty years ago, are gradually disappearing from
every memory.
So long as a civilization is vigorous and flourishing, this
disappearance of old books is but a slight misfortune. They are
superseded; their valuable portions are embodied in new ones; the seed
exists no longer, but the fruit is developing. In times of intellectual
degeneracy it is otherwise. The weakened powers cannot grapple with the
solid thought of more vigorous eras; it is split up into more convenient
fragments--rendered more portable, as it were; the strong beverage that
once was the pabulum of minds as strong, must be diluted to suit the
present taste; and innumerable dilutions, each weaker than the other,
immediately claim public favor; the task of learning must be lightened
in proportion to the decreasing capacity for acquiring; everything
becomes superficial; what costs the least effort gains the greatest
esteem; play upon words is accounted wit; shallowness, learning; the
surface is preferred to the depth. Thus it has ever been in periods of
decay; thus it will be with us when we have once reached that point
whence every movement is retrogressive. Who knows but we are near it
already?--and the art of printing will not save us from it.
To enhance the advantages which we derive from that art, the number and
diffusion of manuscripts have been too much underrated. It is true that
they were scarce in the epoch immediately preceding; but in the latter
periods of the Roman empire they were much more numerous and much more
widely diffused than is generally imagined. In those times, the
facilities for instruction were by no means of difficult access; books,
indeed, were quite common. We may judge so from the extraordinary number
of threadbare grammarians with which even the smallest villages swarmed;
a sort of people very much like the petty novelists, lawyers, and
editors of modern times, and whose loose morals, shabbiness, and
passionate love for enjoyments, are described in Pretronius's Satyricon.
Even when the decadence was complete, those who wished for books could
easily procure them. Virgil was read everywhere; so much so, that the
illiterate peasantry, hearing so much of him, imagined him to be some
dangerous and powerful sorcerer. The monks copied him; they copied
Pliny, Dioscorides, Plato, and Aristotle; they copied Catullus and
Martial. These books, then, cannot have been very rare. Again, when we
consider how great a number has come down to us notwithstanding
centuries of war and devastation--notwithstanding so many conflagrations
of monasteries, castles, libraries, &c.--we cannot but admit that, in
spite of the laborious process of transcription, literary productions
must have been multiplied to a very great extent. It is possible,
therefore, to greatly exaggerate the obligations under which science,
poetry, morality, and true civilization lie to the typographic art; and
I repeat it, that art is a marvellous instrument, but if the arm that
wields it, and the head that directs the arm, are not, the instrument
cannot be, of much service.
Some people believe that the possession of gunpowder exempts modern
societies from many of the dangers that proved fatal to the ancient.
They assert that it abates the horrors of warfare, and diminishes its
frequency, bidding fair, therefore, to establish, in time, a state of
universal peace. If such be the beneficial results attendant on this
accidental invention, they have not as yet manifested themselves.
Of the various applications of steam, and other industrial inventions, I
would say, as of the art of printing, that they are great means, but
their results depend upon the agent. Such arts might be practised by
rote long after the intellectual activity that produced them had ceased.
There are innumerable instances of processes which continue in use,
though the theoretical secret is lost. It is therefore not unreasonable
to suppose, that the practice of our inventions might survive our
civilization; that is, it might continue when these inventions were no
longer possible, when no further improvements were to be hoped for.
Material well-being is but an external appendage of a civilization;
intellectual activity, and a consequent progress, are its life. A state
of intellectual torpor, therefore, cannot be a state of civilization,
even though the people thus stagnating, have the means of transporting
themselves rapidly from place to place, or of adorning themselves and
their dwellings. This would only prove that they were the _heirs_ of a
former civilization, but not that they actually possessed one. I have
said, in another place, that a civilization may thus preserve, for a
time, every appearance of life: the effect may continue after the cause
has ceased. But, as a continuous change seems to be the order of nature
in all things material and immaterial, a downward tendency is soon
manifest. I have before compared a civilization to the human body. While
alive, it undergoes a perpetual modification: every hour has wrought a
change; when dead, it preserves, for a time, the appearance of life,
perhaps even its beauty; but gradually, symptoms of decay become
manifest, and every stage of dissolution is more precipitate than the
one before, as a stone thrown up in the air, poises itself there for an
inappreciable fraction of time, then falls with continually increasing
velocity, more and more swiftly as it approaches the ground.
Every civilization has produced in those who enjoyed its fruits, a firm
conviction of its stability, its perpetuity.
When the palanquins of the Incas travelled rapidly on the smooth,
magnificent causeways which still unite Cuzco and Quito, a distance of
fifteen hundred miles, with what feelings of exultation must they have
contemplated the conquests of the present, what magnificent prospects of
the future must have presented themselves to their imaginations! Stern
time, with one blow of his gigantic wings, hurled their empire into the
deepest depths of the abyss of oblivion. These proud sovereigns of
Peru--they, too, had their sciences, their mechanical inventions, their
powerful machines: the works they accomplished we contemplate with
amazement, and a vain effort to divine the means employed. How were
those blocks of stone, thirty-five feet long and eighteen thick, raised
one upon another? How were they transported the vast distance from the
quarries where they were hewn? By what contrivance did the engineers of
that people hoist those enormous masses to a dizzy height? It is indeed
a problem--a problem, too, which we will never solve. Nor are the ruins
of Tihuanaco unparalleled by the remains of European civilizations of
ante-historic times. The cyclopean walls with which Southern Europe
abounds, and which have withstood the all-destroying tooth of time for
thousands upon thousands of years--who built them? Who piled these
monstrous masses, which modern art could scarcely move?
Let us not mistake the results of a civilization for its causes. The
causes cease, the results subsist for a while, then are lost. If they
again bear fruit, it is because a new spirit has appropriated them, and
converted them to purposes often very different from those they had at
first. Human intelligence is finite, nor can it ever reign at once in
the whole of its domain:[180] it can turn to account one portion of it
only by leaving the other bare; it exalts what it possesses, esteems
lightly what it has lost. Thus, every generation is at the same time
superior and inferior to its predecessors. Man cannot, then, surpass
himself: man's perfectibility is not infinite.
FOOTNOTES:
[174] The word _criticism_ has here been used by the translator in a
sense somewhat unusual in the English language, where it is generally
made to signify "the art of judging of literary or artistic
productions." In a more comprehensive sense, it means _the art of
discriminating between truth and error_, or rather, perhaps, between
_the probable and the improbable_. In this sense, the word is often used
by continental metaphysicians, and also, though less frequently, by
English writers. As the definition is perfectly conformable to
etymology, I have concluded to let the above passage stand as it is.--H.
[175] It will be remembered that Mr. Gobineau speaks of Europe.--H.
[176] The term "Radical" is used on the European continent to designate
that party who desire thorough, uncompromising reform: the plucking out
of evils by the _root_.--H.
[177] The principles of government applied to practice at the formation
of our Constitution, Mr. Gobineau considers as identical with those laid
down at the beginning of every society founded by the Germanic race. In
his succeeding volumes he mentions several analogues.--H.
[178] M. J. Mohl, _Rapport Annuel à la Société Asiatique_, 1851, p. 92:
"The Indian book trade of indigenous productions is extremely lively,
and consists of a number of works which are never heard of in Europe,
nor ever enter a European's library even in India. Mr. Springer asserts
in a letter, that in the single town of Luknau there are thirteen
lithographical establishments exclusively occupied with multiplying
books for the schools, and he gives a list of considerable length of
books, none of which have probably ever reached Europe. The same is the
case in Delhi, Agra, Cawnpour, Allahabad, and other cities."
[179] The Siamese are probably the most debased in morals of any people
on earth. They belong to the remotest outskirts of the Indo-Chinese
civilization; yet among them every one knows how to read and write.
(Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. iii. p. 1152.)
[180] No individual can encompass the whole circle of human knowledge:
no civilization comprise at once all the improvements possible to
humanity.--H.