PROGRESS.
"'Tis the sublime of man,
Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!
This fraternizes man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings."
COLERIDGE.
"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."
BURNS.
However widely men may differ as to the way to social perfection, all
whose minds have turned in that direction agree as to the end. All agree
that if the whole race could live as brethren, society would be in the
most advanced state that can be conceived of. It is also agreed that the
spirit of fraternity is to be attained, if at all, by men discerning
their mutual relation, as "parts and proportions of one wondrous whole."
The disputes which arise are about how these proportions are to be
arranged, and what those qualifications should be by which some shall
have an ascendancy over others.
This cluster of questions is not yet settled with regard to the
inhabitants of any one country. The most advanced nations are now in a
condition of internal conflict upon them. As for the larger idea,--that
nations as well as individuals are "parts and proportions of one
wondrous whole," it has hardly yet passed the lips or pen of any but
religious men and poets. Its time will come when men have made greater
progress, and are more at ease about the domestic arrangements of
nations. As long as there are, in every country of the world, multitudes
who cannot by any exertion of their own redeem themselves from hardship,
and their children from ignorance, there is quite enough for justice and
charity to do at home. While this is doing,--while the English are
striving to raise the indigent classes of their society, the French
speculating to elevate the condition of woman, and to open the career of
life to all rational beings, the Germans waiting to throw off the
despotism of absolute rulers, and the Americans struggling to free the
negroes,--the fraternal sentiment will be growing, in preparation for
yet higher results. The principle, acted upon at home, will be gaining
strength for exercise abroad; and the more any society becomes like a
band of brothers, the more powerful must be the sympathy which it will
have to offer to other such bands.
Far off as may be the realization of such a prospect, it is a prospect.
For many ages poets and philosophers have entertained the idea of a
general spirit of fraternity among men. It is the one great principle of
the greatest religion which has ever nourished the morals of mankind.
It is the loftiest hope on which the wisest speculators have lived.
Poets are the prophets, and philosophers the analysers of the fate of
men, and religion is the promise and pledge of unseen powers to those
who believe in them. That cannot be unworthy of attention, of hope, of
expectation, which the poets and the analysers of the race, have reposed
upon, and on which the best religion of the world (and that which
comprehends all others) is based. That which has never, for all its
splendour, been deemed absurd by the wisest of the race is now beginning
to be realized. We have now something more to show for our hope than
what was before enough for the highest minds. The fraternal spirit has
begun to manifest itself by its workings in society. The helpless are
now aided expressly on the ground of their helplessness,--not from the
emotions of compassion excited by the spectacle of suffering in
particular cases, but in a nobler and more abstract way. Classes,
crowds, nations of sufferers are aided and protected by strangers,
powerful and at ease, who never saw an individual of the suffering
thousands, and who have none but a spiritual interest in their welfare.
Since missions to barbarous countries, action against slavery, and the
care of the blind, deaf and dumb, and paupers, have become labours of
society, the fraternity of men has ceased to be a mere aspiration, or
even prophecy and promise. It is not only that the high-placed watchmen
of the world have announced that the day is coming,--it has dawned; and
there is every reason to expect that it will brighten into noon.
The traveller must be strangely careless who, in observing upon the
morals of a people, omits to mark the manifestations of this
principle;--to learn what is its present strength, and what the promise
of its growth. By fixing his observation on this he may learn, and no
otherwise can he learn, whether the country he studies is advancing in
wisdom and happiness, or whether it is stationary, or whether it is
going back. The probabilities of its progress are wholly dependent upon
this.--It will not take long to point out what are the signs of
progression which he must study.
* * * * *
It is of great consequence whether the nation is insular or continental,
independent or colonial. Though the time seems to be come when the sea
is to be made a highway, as easy of passage as the land, such has not
been the case till now. Even in the case of Great Britain,--the most
accessible of islands, and the most tempting to access,--before the last
series of wars, a much smaller number of strangers visited her than
could have been supposed to come if they had only to pass land
frontiers. During the wars, she was almost excluded from continental
society. The progress that her people have made in liberality and
humanity since communication has been rendered easy, is so striking that
it is impossible to avoid supposing the enlarged commerce of mind which
has taken place to be one of the chief causes of the improvement. It is
probable that the advancement of the nation would have been still
greater if the old geological state of junction with the continent had
been restored for the last twenty years. She would then have been
almost such a centre of influx as France has been, and by which France
has so far profited that the French are now, it is believed, the most
active-minded and morally progressive nation in the world. Much of the
vigour and progression of France is doubtless owing to other causes; but
much also to her rapid and extensive intercourse with the minds of many
nations. The condition of the inhabitants of other islands is likely to
be less favourable to progression than that of the British, in
proportion as they have less intercourse. They are likely to have even
more than the English proportion of self-satisfaction, dislike of
foreigners, and reserve. Generally speaking, the inhabitants of islands
are found to be to those of continental countries as villagers to
citizens: they have good qualities of their own, but are behind the
world. Malta has not the chance that she would have if we could annex
her to the South of France; nor will the West India islands advance as
they would do if we could throw them all into one, and intersect the
whole with roads leading on either side from the great European and
American cities.
Malta and the West India islands have, however, the additional
disadvantage of being colonies. The moral progression of a people can
scarcely begin till they are independent. Their morals are overruled by
the mother-country,--by the government and legislation she imposes, by
the rulers she sends out, by the nature of the advantages she grants and
the tribute she requires, by the population she pours in from home, and
by her own example. Accordingly, the colonies of a powerful country
exhibit an exaggeration of the national faults, with only infant
virtues of their own, which wait for freedom to grow to maturity, and
among which an enlarged sympathy with the race is seldom found. This is
a temper uncongenial with a confined, dependent, and imitative society;
and the first strong symptoms of it are usually found in the persons of
those whose mission it is to lead the colony out of its minority into
independence.
These are conditions of a people which may guide the traveller's
observations by showing him what to expect. Remembering these
conditions, he will mark the greater or less enlargement and generosity
of the spirit of society, and learn from these the fact or promise of
progression, or whether it is too soon to look for either.
There is another important condition which can hardly escape his notice:
whether the people are homogeneous or composed of various races. The
inhabitants of New England are a remarkable specimen of the first, as
the inhabitants of the middle states of America will be of the last, two
or three generations hence. Almost all the nations of Europe are
mongrel; and those which can trace their descent from the greatest
variety of ancestors have, other circumstances remaining the same, the
best chance of progression. Among a homogeneous people, ancestral
virtues flourish; but these carry with them ancestral faults as their
shadow; and there is a liability of a new fault being added,--resistance
to the spirit of improvement. If the chances of severity of ancient
virtue are lessened in the case of a mongrel people, there is a
counterbalancing advantage in the greater diversity of interests,
enlargement of sympathy, and vigour of enterprise introduced by the
close union of the descendants of different races. The people of New
England, almost to a man descended from the pilgrim fathers, have the
strong religious principle and feeling, the uprightness, the domestic
attachment, and the principled worldly prudence of their ancestors, with
much of their asceticism (and necessarily attendant cant) and bigotry.
Their neighbours in the middle states are composed of contributions from
all countries of the civilized world, and have, as yet, no distinctive
character; but it is probable that a very valuable one will be formed,
in course of time, from such elements as the genial gaiety of the
cavaliers, the patient industry of the Germans and Dutch, the vivacity
of the French, the sobriety of the Scotch, the enterprise of the Irish,
and the domestic tastes of the Swiss,--all of which, with their
attendant drawbacks, go to compose the future American character. The
chief pride of the New Englanders is in their unmixed descent;--a
virtuous pride, but not the most favourable to a progression which must
antiquate some of the qualities to which they are most attached. The
European components of the other population cherish some of the feudal
prejudices and the territorial pride which they imported with them, and
this is their peculiar drawback: but it appears that the enlarged
liberality which they enjoy from being intermingled more than
countervails the religious spirit of New England in opening the general
heart and mind to the interests of the race at large. The progression of
the middle states seems likely to be more rapid than that of New
England, though the inhabitants of the northern states have hitherto
taken and kept the lead.
It is the traveller's business to enter upon this course of observation
wherever he goes. When he has ascertained the conditions under which the
national character is forming,--whether its situation is insular or
continental, colonial or independent, and whether it is descended from
one race or more, he will proceed to observe the facts which indicate
progress or the reverse.
* * * * *
The most obvious of these facts is the character of charity. Charity is
everywhere. The human heart is always tender, always touched by visible
suffering, under one form or another. The form which this charity takes
is the great question.
In young and rude countries, an open-handed charity pervades the land.
Everyone who comes in want to a dwelling has his immediate want
relieved. The Arab gives from his mess to the hungerer who appears at
the entrance of his tent. The negro brings rice and milk to the
traveller who lies fainting under the palm. The poor are fed round
convent-doors, morning and evening, where there are convents. In
Ireland, it is a common practice to beg, in order to rise in the
world,--a clear testimony to the practice of charity there. In all
societies, the poor help the poorer; the depressed class aids the
destitute. The existence of the charity may be considered a certainty.
The inquiry is about its direction.
The lowest order of charity is that which is satisfied with relieving
the immediate pressure of distress in individual cases. A higher is that
which makes provision on a large scale for the relief of such distress;
as when a nation passes on from common alms-giving to a general
provision for the destitute. A higher still is when such provision is
made in the way of anticipation, or for distant objects; as when the
civilization of savages, the freeing of slaves, the treatment of the
insane, or the education of the blind and deaf mutes is undertaken. The
highest charity of all is that which aims at the prevention rather than
the alleviation of evil. When any considerable number of a society are
engaged in this work, the spirit of fraternity is busy there, and the
progression of the society is ascertained. In such a community, it is
allowed that though it is good to relieve the hungry, it is better to
take care that all who work shall eat, as a matter of right: that though
it is good to provide for the comfort and reformation of the guilty, it
is better to obviate guilt: that though it is good to teach the ignorant
who come in one's way, it is better to provide the means of knowledge,
as of food, for all. In short, it is a nobler charity to prevent
destitution, crime, and ignorance, than to relieve individuals who never
ought to have been made destitute, criminal, and ignorant.
This war against the evils themselves, in preference to, but accompanied
by, relief of the victims, has begun in many countries; and those which
are the most busily occupied in the work must be considered the most
advanced, and the most certain to advance. The observer must note the
state of the work everywhere. In one country he will see the poor fed
and clothed by charity, without any effort being made to relieve them
from the pressure by which they are sunk in destitution. The spirit of
brotherhood is not there; and such charity has nothing of the spirit of
hope and progress in it. In another country, he will see the independent
insisting on the right of the destitute to relief, and providing by law
or custom for such relief. This is a great step, inasmuch as the
interests of the helpless are taken up by the powerful,--a movement
which must have something of the fraternal spirit for its impulse. In a
third, he hears of prison discipline societies, missionary societies,
temperance societies, and societies for the abolition of slavery. This
is better still. It is looking wide,--so wide as that the spirit of
charity acts as seeing the invisible,--the pagan trembling under the
tabu, the negro outraged in his best affections, and the criminal hidden
in the foul retreat of the common jail. It is also a training for
looking deep; for these methods of charity all go to prevent the woes of
future heathen generations, future slaves, drunkards, and criminals, as
well as to soften the lot of those who exist. If, in a fourth society,
the observer finds that the charity has gone deep as well as spread
wide, and that the benevolent are tugging at the roots of indigence and
crime, he may place this society above all the rest as to the brightness
of its prospects. Such a movement can proceed only from the spirit of
fraternity,--from the movers feeling it their own concern that any are
depressed and endangered as they would themselves refuse to be. The
elevation of the depressed classes in such a society, and the consequent
progression of the whole, may be considered certain; for "sooner will
the mother forget her sucking child" than the friends of their race
forsake those for whom they have cared and laboured with disinterested
love and toil. Criminals will never be plunged back into their former
state in America, nor women in France, nor negroes in the colonies of
England. The spirit of justice (which is ultimately one with charity)
has gone forth, not only conquering, but still to conquer.
To the prospects of the sufferers of society let the observer look; and
he will discern the prospects of the society itself.
* * * * *
Useful arts and inventions spread so rapidly in these days of improving
communication, that they are no longer the decisive marks of
enlightenment in a people that they were when each nation had the
benefit of its own discoveries, and little more. Yet it is worthy of
remark what kinds of improvement are the most generally adopted; whether
those which enhance the luxury of the rich, or such as benefit the whole
society. It is worthy of remark whether the newest delight is in
splendid club-houses, where gentlemen may command the rarest luxuries at
a smaller expense than would have been possible without the aid of the
principle of economy of association, or in the groups of mechanics'
dwellings, where the same principle is applied in France to furnishing
numbers with advantages of warmth, light, cookery, and cleanliness,
which they could no otherwise have enjoyed. It is worth observing
whether there are most mechanical inventions dedicated to the
selfishness of the rich, or committed to the custom of the working
classes. If the rich compose the great body of purchasers who are to be
considered by inventors, the working classes are probably depressed. If
there are most purchasers among the most numerous classes, the working
order is rising, and the state of things is hopeful.--How speed the
great discoveries and achievements which cannot, by any management, be
confined to the few? How prospers the steam-engine, the
rail-road,--strong hands which cannot be held back, by which a multitude
of the comforts of life are extended to the poor, who could not reach up
to them before? Do men glory most in the activity of these, or in the
invention of a new pleasure for the satiated?
In the finer arts, for whom are heads and hands employed? The study of
the ruins of all old countries tells the antiquary of the lives of the
rich alone. There are churches which record the living piety or the
dying penitence of the rich; priories and convents which speak of
monkish idleness, and the gross luxuries which have cloaked themselves
in asceticism; there are palaces of kings, castles of nobles, and villas
of opulent commoners; but nowhere, except in countries recently
desolated by war, are the relics of the abodes of the poor the study of
the traveller. If he now finds skill bestowed on the buildings which are
the exclusive resort of the labouring classes, and taste employed in
their embellishment, it is clear that the order is rising. The record of
each upward heave will remain for the observation of the future
traveller, in the buildings to which they resort;--a record as
indisputable as a mountain fissure presents to the geologist.
Time was when the dwellings of the opulent were ornamented with costly
and beautiful works of art, while the eye of the peasant and the artisan
found no other beauty to rest on than the face of his beloved, and the
forms of his children. At this day, there are countries in Europe where
the working man aspires to nothing more than to stick up an image of the
Virgin, gay with coloured paper, in a corner of his dwelling. But there
are other lands where a higher taste for beauty is gratified. There are
good prints provided cheap, to hang in the place of the ancient sampler
or daub. Casts from all the finest works of the statuary, ancient and
modern, are hawked about the streets, and may be seen in the windows
where green parrots and brown cats in plaster used to annoy the eye. In
societies where the working class is thus worked for, in the
gratification of its finer tastes, the class must be rising. It is
rising into the region of intellectual luxury, and must have been borne
up thither by the expansion of the fraternal spirit.
* * * * *
The great means of progress, for individuals, for nations, and for the
race at large, is the multiplication of Objects of interest. The
indulgence of the passions is the characteristic of men and societies
who have but one occupation and a single interest; while the passions
cause comparatively little trouble where the intellect is active, and
the life diversified with objects. Pride takes a safe direction,
jealousy is diverted from its purposes of revenge, and anger combats
with circumstances, instead of with human foes. The need of mutual aid,
the habit of co-operation caused by interest in social objects, has a
good effect upon men's feelings and manners towards each other; and out
of this grows the mutual regard which naturally strengthens into the
fraternal spirit. The Russian boor, imprisoned in his serfhood, cannot
comprehend what it is to care for any but the few individuals who are
before his eyes, and the Grand Lama has probably no great sympathy with
the race; but in a town within whose compass almost all occupations are
going forward, and where each feels more or less interest in what
engages his neighbour, nothing of importance to the race can become
known without producing more or less emotion. A famine in India, an
earthquake in Syria, causes sorrow. The inhabitants meet to petition
against the wrongs inflicted on people whom they have never seen, and
give of the fruits of their labour to sufferers who have never heard of
them, and from whom they can receive no return of acknowledgment. It is
found that the more pursuits and aims are multiplied, the more does the
appreciation of human happiness expand, till it becomes the interest
which predominates over all the rest. This is an interest which works
out its own gratification, more surely than any other. Wherever,
therefore, the greatest variety of pursuits is met with, it is fair to
conclude that the fraternal spirit of society is the most vigorous, and
the society itself the most progressive.
This is as far as any nation has as yet attained,--to a warmer than
common sympathy among its own members, and compassion for distant
sufferers. When the time comes for nations to care for one another, and
co-operate as individuals, such a people will be the first to hold out
the right hand.
* * * * *
Manners have not been treated of separately from Morals in any of the
preceding divisions of the objects of the traveller's observation. The
reason is, that manners are inseparable from morals, or, at least, cease
to have meaning when separated. Except as manifestations of morals, they
have no interest, and can have no permanent existence. A traveller who
should report of them exclusively is not only no philosopher, but does
not merit the name of an observer; for he can have no insight into the
matter which he professes to convey an account of. His interpretation of
what is before his eyes is more likely to be wrong than correct, like
that of the primitive star-gazers, who reported that the planets went
backwards and forwards in the sky. To him, and to him only, who has
studied the principles of morals, and thus possessed himself of a key to
the mysteries of all social weal and woe, will manners be an index
answering as faithfully to the internal movements, harmonious or
discordant, of society, as the human countenance to the workings of the
human heart.