mercantile enterprise, or guide the opinions of the rest of Europe, share in the general European progress of the useful arts, and the general refinement of manners. § 12 It results from the preceding inquiry, that the progress of civilization cannot properly be treated as an abstract problem, applicable to all mankind. The most advanced communities may be compared at two successive epochs, and a judgment may then be formed whether any, and what, progress in the four several elements above noted has taken place. But this progress is confined to certain eminent populations—it is not common to the entire human race. Mankind does not advance by an equable rate of <Within progress. any given period, some communities advance rapidly; others advance slowly; others do not advance at all. Again,<upon comparing different periods, the rate of progress of the same community, both absolutely and in comparison with others, may be variable? Some communities, moreover, though placed in immediate contact with civilization, have never made any advance, and, therefore (so far as we can judge from experience), must be considered as having no tendency to move beyond their existing state of society. The Oriental nations have risen considerably above barbarism, but their political, religious, and ethical condition has been nearly stationary since the commencement of authentic history. The Hindus, for example, have scarcely improved since the time of Alexander, and the Turkish empire is not, in material respects, more civilized than the ancient Persian monarchy. Babylonia and Asia Minor were more populous, wealthy, and thriving, under Darius and Xerxes than they have ever been under the Porte. With respect to arts they have, however, made some progress, inasmuch as they have learnt the use of fire-arms, and some other modern inventions, from the Europeans. Savage tribes, moreover, remain quite stationary, and show no capacity for advancing even to the Oriental stage of civilization, though the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, whose society was completely of the Oriental type, were of the same race as the Red Men of North America, ン r who are in the savage state. We can therefore only say, that though a capacity for progressive improvement is a characteristic of men, as distinguished from animals-and any individual man, if taken at an early age, and subjected to proper influences, is susceptible of cultivation-yet there are communities composed of men of certain races which have hitherto shown little or no aptitude for a common and pervading civilization; and, therefore, if we are to judge from experience, must be considered as having little or no capacity for national or aggregate progress. The history of civilization cannot be reduced to certain algebraic symbols and impersonal entities, which equally represent all nations. It is impossible, consistently with the positive conditions of the problem, to establish a universal series, of which the successive terms are expressed by abstract ideas.' 'It is impossible, in the history of progress, to eliminate all names of places and men-to exclude all mention of time-and to describe a necessary succession, which shall be common to the entire human race. All history, as we have already shown, (") is essentially national. It cannot be treated independently of given communities, actually existing at a certain time and in a certain country. It is, indeed, possible to form a continuous series, by tracing the history of progress through the most advanced nations at each successive period of time. But even their history is peculiar, and the changes which they undergo cannot be taken as immutable types of the changes through which all other communities are to pass. Universal history consists of numerous parallel lines, and cannot be confined within a single stream. The contemporary movements of the entire human race cannot be included in one narrative; and those who have professed to find a unity of progress in universal history have attempted a simplification which the subject does not admit.(*) § 13 From what has been already said, it follows that the comparison which is sometimes instituted between the progress (46) Above, ch. ii. § 7. (47) See above, ch. vii. § 24. of a community and the life of a man() fails in essentials, and is therefore misleading. Both a man and a community, indeed, advance from small beginnings to a state of maturity; but a man has an allotted term of life, and a culminating point from which he descends; whereas a community has no limited course to run-it has no necessary period of decline and decay, similar to the old age of a man; its national existence does not necessarily cease within a certain time. Nations, as compared with other nations, have periods of prosperity and power; but even these periods often ebb and flow, and when a civilized nation loses its pre-eminence-as Italy in the nineteenth, as compared with Italy in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries-it does (48) Polybius lays it down that every government resembles a living body, in passing successively through the three natural stages of growth, vigour, and decay: παντὸς καὶ σώματος καὶ πολιτείας καὶ πράξεως ἐστί τις αὔξησις κατὰ φύσιν, μετὰ δὲ ταύτην ἀκμὴ, κἄπειτα φθίσις—vi. 52, § 4. Florus, in the introduction to his History, adapts the same idea to the Roman history, distributing it into four periods, corresponding with the infancy, youth, manhood, and old age of a man. 'Si quis ergo populum Romanum quasi hominem consideret, totamque ejus ætatem percenseat, ut cœperit, utque adoleverit, ut quasi ad quendam juventæ florem pervenerit, ut postea velut consenuerit, quatuor gradus processusque ejus inveniet.'-i. 1, 4. Lord Bacon says that in the youth of a state, arms do flourish; in the middle age of a state, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a state, mechanical arts and merchandize.'— Essay on the Vicissitude of Things. On a souvent (says M. C. Comte) comparé un peuple à un individu; on a parlé, en conséquence, de son enfance, de sa jeunesse, de sa maturité, de sa vieillesse, et même de sa taille, et l'on a gravement raisonné sur ces mots comme s'ils représentaient quelque chose.'-Traité de Législation, liv. i. ch. 12. Sulpicius, in a letter addressed to Cicero, inverts this analogy, and derives a topic of consolation for man on account of his mortality, from the spectacle of ruined and decayed cities. After beholding the fallen state of Egina, Megara, Athens, and Corinth, he says: Copi egomet mecum sic cogitare-Hem! nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrûm interiit aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, quum uno loco tot oppidûm cadavera projecta jaceant.'-Epist. ad Div. iv. 5. Tasso has expressed the same sentiment in some celebrated verses. 'Giace l'alta Cartago, e appena i segni O nostra mente cupida e superba.' Gier. Lib. cant. xv. st. 20. not necessarily lose its civilization. A political community is renewed by the perpetual succession of its members-new births, immigrations, and new adoptions of citizens, keep the political body in a state of continuous youth. No such process as this takes place in an individual man. If he loses a limb, it is not replaced by a fresh growth. The effects of disease are but partially repaired-all the bodily and mental functions are gradually enfeebled, as life is prolonged, till at last decay inevitably ends in death; whereas a community might, consistently with the laws of human nature, have a duration co-extensive with that of mankind. The supposed analogy between the existence of a political community and the life of a man seems to have contributed to the formation of the belief in a liability to corruption, inherent in every society. It was a favourite doctrine among some writers of the last century,(") that every civilized community is fated to reach a period of corruption, when its healthy and natural action ceases, and it undergoes some great deterioration. The notion of an inevitable stage of corruption in a nation was, indeed, partly suggested by the commonplaces condemnatory of luxury, derived both from the classical and ecclesiastical writers ;(50) and by the more modern eulogies of savage life. So far, however, as it was founded on the inevitable periods of decay in animal and vegetable life, the comparison was delusive; for the two relations which are brought together do not correspond. The death of individuals may, indeed, be considered a necessary condition for the progress of the society, into which they enter as temporary elements. (1) It is by the (49) See Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. iii. c. 16; and the passage of De Lolme, cited above, vol. i. p. 430, note 120. (50) Concerning luxury, see Spinoza, Tract. Pol. c. 10. § 4; Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, part v. sect. 3. The political and moral evils resulting from wealth, luxury, the precious metals, and commerce, are perpetually insisted on, in every variety of form, by the Greek and Roman writers. (51) See Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. iv. p. 635. substitution of new intelligences, and of natures not hardened to old customs, for minds whose thoughts and habits have learnt to move uniformly in the same groove, that progressive changes in human affairs are effected. The decay and death of the individual, therefore, tends not only to prevent the deterioration of the society, but to promote its improvement. The best analogy with the growth, maturity, and decay of the human body to be found in the continuous efforts of the successive generations of men, is afforded by the productions of literature and the fine arts. There is not unfrequently a progress from a rude to a polished style of art or composition, as from the early Greek sculptors to Phidias and Lysippus; from the early Florentine painters to Raphael and Correggio; from Thespis to Eschylus; from Ennius to Virgil: and, again, there is a decline from the simplicity and vigour of refinement to feebleness and affectation or exaggeration, as in the transition from Phidias to the later Roman sculpture, from Raphael to Carlo Dolce, from Eschylus to Seneca, from Virgil to Silius and Statius. Productions of the latter sort are sometimes characterized as belonging to a period of debased and corrupt taste. We hear of the golden, the silver, and the iron ages of Latinity; and an Italian purist rejects all words which are not found in writers as old as the sixteenth century. But as we have already remarked, the law of progress for the fine arts is different from the law of progress for those things (such as government and the useful arts) by which civilization is principally characterized. § 14 Of the three conceptions of human society-1, that it has, on the whole, degenerated from a primitive type of civilization; 2, that it revolves in certain cyclical periods, and after a while returns to the point from which it started; and, 3, that it is on the whole progressive (5)—the last has prevailed from the time when political philosophy, founded upon experience and historical records, began, and is now more than ever firmly established in (52) On these theories of a course of history, see Zacharia Vom Staate, vol. ii. p. 231. |