7.
I feel I owe you, Gentlemen, an apology for the time I have consumed in an abstract discussion; it is drawing to an end, but it still requires the notice of two questions, on which, however, I have not much to say, even if I would. First, can a civilized state become barbarian in course of years? and secondly, can a barbarian state ever become civilized?
As to the former of these questions, considering the human race did start with society, and did not start with barbarism, and barbarism exists, we might be inclined at first sight to answer it in the affirmative; again, since Christianity implies civilization, and is the recovery of the whole race of Adam, we might answer the second in the affirmative also; but such resolutions of the inquiry are scarcely to the point. Doubtless the human race may degenerate, doubtless it may make progress; doubtless men, viewed as individuals or as members of races or tribes, or as inhabitants of certain countries, may change their state from better to worse, or from worse to better: this, however, is not the question; but whether a given state, which has a certain political unity, can change the principle of that unity, and, without breaking up into its component parts, become barbarian instead of civilized, and civilized instead of barbarian.
(1.) Now as to the latter of these questions, it still must be answered in the affirmative under circumstances: that is, all civilized states have started with barbarism, and have gradually in the course of ages developed into civilization, unless there be any political community in the world, as China has by some been considered, representative of Noe; and unless we consider the case of colonies, as Constantinople or Venice, fairly to form an exception. But the question is very much altered, when we contemplate a change in one or two generations from barbarism to civilization. The substitution of one form of political life for another, when it occurs, is the sort of process by which fossils take the place of animal substances, or strata are formed, or carbon is crystallized, or boys grow into men. Christianity itself has never, I think, suddenly civilized a race; national habits and opinions cannot be cast off at will without miracle. Hence the extreme jealousy and irritation of the members of a state with innovators, who would tamper with what the Greeks called νὁμιμα, or constitutional and vital usages. Hence the fury of Pentheus against the Mænades, and of the Scythians against their King Scylas, and the agitation created at Athens by the destruction of the Mercuries. Hence the obstinacy of the Roman statesmen of old, and of the British constituency now, against the Catholic Church; and the feeling is so far justified, that projected innovations often turn out, if not simply nugatory, nothing short of destructive; and though there is a great notion just now that the British Constitution admits of being fitted upon every people under heaven, from the Blacks to the Italians, I do not know what has occurred to give plausibility to the anticipation. England herself once attempted the costume of republicanism, but she found that monarchy was part of her political essence.
(2.) Still less can the possibility be admitted of a civilized polity really relapsing into barbarism; though a state of things may be superinduced, which in many of its features may be thought to resemble it. In truth, I have not yet traced out the ultimate result of those internal revolutions which I have assigned as the incidental but certain evils, in the long run, attendant on civilization. That result is various: sometimes the over-civilized and degenerate people is swept from the face of the earth, as the Roman populations in Africa by the Vandals; sometimes it is reduced to servitude, as the Egyptians by the Ptolemies, or the Greeks by the Turks; sometimes it is absorbed or included in new political combinations, as the northern Italians by the Lombards and Franks; sometimes it remains unmolested on its own territory, and lives by the momentum, or the repute, or the habit, or the tradition of its former civilization. This last of course is the only case which bears upon the question I am considering; and I grant that a state of things does then ensue, which in some of its phenomena is like barbarism; China is an example in point. No one can deny its civilization; its diligent care of the soil, its cultivation of silk and of the tea-tree, its populousness, its canals, its literature, its court ceremonial, its refinement of manners, its power of persevering so loyally in its old institutions through so many ages, abundantly vindicate it from the reproach of barbarism. But at the same time there are tokens of degeneracy, which are all the stronger for being also tokens, still more striking than those I have hitherto mentioned, of its high civilization in times past. It has had for ages the knowledge of the more recent discoveries and institutions of the West, which have done so much for Europe, yet it has been unable to use them, the magnetic needle, gunpowder, and printing. The littleness of the national character, its self-conceit, and its formality, are further instances of an effete civilization. They remind the observer vividly of the picture which history presents to us of the Byzantine Court before the taking of Constantinople; or, again, of that material retention of Christian doctrine (to use the theological word), of which Protestantism in its more orthodox exhibitions, and still more, of which the Greek schism affords the specimen. Either a state of deadness and mechanical action, or a restless ebb and flow of opinion and sentiment, is the symptom of that intellectual exhaustion and decrepitude, whether in politics or religion, which, if old age be a second childhood, may in some sense be called barbarism, and of which, at present, we are respectively reminded in China on the one hand, and in some southern states of Europe on the other.
These are the principles, whatever modifications they may require, which, however rudely adumbrated, I trust will suffice to enable me to contemplate the future of the Ottoman Empire.
LECTURE VIII.
The Past and Present of the Ottomans.
Whatever objections in detail may stand against the account I have been giving of barbarism and civilization—and I trust there are none which do not admit of removal—so far, I think, is clear, that, if my account be only in the main correct, the Turkish power certainly is not a civilized, and is a barbarous power. The barbarian lives without principle and without aim; he does but reflect the successive outward circumstances in which he finds himself, and he varies with them. He changes suddenly, when their change is sudden, and is as unlike what he was just before, as one fortune or external condition is unlike another. He moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he remains in sloth and inactivity. He lives, and he dies, and he has done nothing, but leaves the world as he found it. And what the individual is, such is his whole generation; and as that generation, such is the generation before and after. No generation can say what it has been doing; it has not made the state of things better or worse; for retrogression there is hardly room; for progress, no sort of material. Now I shall show that these characteristics of the barbarian are rudimental points, as I may call them, in the picture of the Turks, as drawn by those who have studied them. I shall principally avail myself of the information supplied by Mr. Thornton and M. Volney, men of name and ability, and for various reasons preferable as authorities to writers of the present day.