7.
But I have here been directing your attention to Christianity with no other view than to illustrate, by the contrast, the condition of the Mahometan Turks. Their religion is not far from embodying the very dream of the Judaizing zealots of the Apostolic age. On the one hand, there is in it the profession of a universal empire, and an empire by conquest; nay, military success seems to be considered the special note of its divine origin. On the other hand, I believe it is a received notion with them that their religion is not even intended for the north of the earth, for some reasons connected with its ceremonial; nor is there in it any public recognition, as in intercessory prayer, of the duty of converting infidels. Certainly, the idea of Mahometan missions and missionaries, unless an army in the field may be considered to be such, is never suggested to us by Eastern historian or traveller, as entering into their religious system. Though the Caliphate, then, may be transferred from Saracen to Turk, Mahometanism is essentially a consecration of the principle of nationalism; and thereby is as congenial to the barbarian as Christianity is congenial to man civilized. The less a man knows, the more conceited he is of his proficiency; and, the more barbarous is a nation, the more imposing and peremptory are its claims. Such was the spirit of the religion of the Tartars, whatever was the nature of its tenets in detail. It deified the Tartar race; Zingis Khan was "the son of God, mild and venerable;" and "God was great and exalted over all, and immortal, but Zingis Khan was sole lord upon the earth."[85] Such, too, is the strength of the Greek schism, which there only flourishes where it can fasten on barbarism, and extol the prerogatives of an elect nation. The Czar is the divinely-appointed source of religious power; his country is "Holy Russia;" and the high office committed to him and to it is to extend what it considers the orthodox faith. The Osmanlis are not behind Tartar or Russ in pretending to a divine mission; the Sultan, in his treaties with Christian Powers, calls himself "Refuge of Sovereigns, Distributor of Crowns to the Kings of the earth, Master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and shadow of God upon earth."
We might smile at such titles, were they not claimed in good earnest, and professed in order to be used. It is said to be the popular belief among the Turks, that the monarchs of Europe are, as this imperial style declares, the feudatories of the Sultan. We should smile, too, at the very opposite titles which they apply to Europeans, did they not here, too, mean what they say, and strengthen and propagate their own scorn and hatred of us by using them. "The Mussulmans, courteous and humane in their intercourse with each other," says Thornton, "sternly refuse to unbelievers the salutation of peace." Not that they necessarily insult the Christian, he adds, by this refusal; nay, he even insists that polished Turks are able to practise condescension; and then, as an illustration of their courtesy, he tells us that "Mr. Eton, pleasantly and accurately enough, compared the general behaviour of a Turk to a Christian with that of a German baron to his vassal." However, he allows that at least "the common people, more bigoted to their dogmas, express more bluntly their sense of superiority over the Christians." "Their usual salutation addressed to Christians," says Volney, "is 'good morning;' but it is well if it be not accompanied with a Djaour, Kafer, or Kelb, that is, impious, infidel, dog, expressions to which Christians are familiarized." Sir C. Fellows is an earnest witness for their amiableness; but he does not conceal that the children "hoot after a European, and call him Frank dog, and even strike him;" and on one occasion a woman caught up a child and ran off from him, crying out against the Ghiaour; which gives him an opportunity of telling us that the word "Ghiaour" means a man without a soul, without a God. A writer in a popular Review, who seems to have been in the East, tells us that "their hatred and contempt of the Ghiaour and Frangi is as burning as ever; perhaps even more so, because they are forced to implore his aid. The Eastern seeks Christian aid in the same spirit and with the same disgust as he would eat swine's flesh, were it the only means of securing him from starvation."[86] Such conduct is indeed only consistent with their faith, and the untenableness of that faith is not my present question; here I do but ask, are these barbarians likely to think themselves inferior in any respect to men without souls? are they likely to receive civilization from the nations of the West, whom, according to the well-known story, they definitively divide into the hog and the dog?
I have not time for more than an allusion to what is the complement of this arrogance, and is a most pregnant subject of thought, whenever the fortunes of the Ottomans are contemplated; I mean the despair which takes its place in their minds, consistently with the barbarian temperament, upon the occurrence of any considerable reverses. A passage from Mr. Thornton just now quoted refers to this characteristic. The overthrow at Lepanto, though they rallied from their consternation for a while, was a far more serious and permanent misfortune in its moral than in its material consequences. And, on any such national calamity, the fatalism of their creed, to which I have already referred, consecrates and fortifies their despair.
I have been proving a point, which most persons would grant me, in thus insisting on the essential barbarism of the Turks; but I have thought it worth while to insist on it under the feeling, that to prove it is at the same time to describe it, and many persons will vaguely grant that they are barbarous without having any clear idea what barbarism means. With this view I draw out my formal conclusion:—If civilization be the ascendancy of mind over passion and imagination; if it manifests itself in consistency of habit and action, and is characterised by a continual progress or development of the principles on which it rests; and if, on the other hand, the Turks alternate between sloth and energy, self-confidence and despair,—if they have two contrary characters within them, and pass from one to the other rapidly, and when they are the one, are as if they could not be the other;—if they think themselves, notwithstanding, to be the first nation upon earth, while at the end of many centuries they are just what they were at the beginning;—if they are so ignorant as not to know their ignorance, and so far from making progress that they have not even started, and so far from seeking instruction that they think no one fit to teach them;—there is surely not much hazard in concluding, that, apart from the consideration of any supernatural intervention, barbarians they have lived, and barbarians they will die.
LECTURE IX.
The Future of the Ottomans.
Scientific anticipations are commonly either truisms or failures; failures, if, as is usually the case, they are made upon insufficient data; and truisms, if they succeed, for conclusions, being always contained in their premisses, never can be discoveries. Yet, as mixed mathematics correct, without superseding, the pure science, so I do not see why I may not allowably take a sort of pure philosophical view of the Turks and their position, though it be but abstract and theoretical, and require correction when confronted by the event. There is a use in investigating what ought to be, under given suppositions and conditions, even though speculation and fact do not happen to keep pace together.
As to myself, having laid down my premisses, as drawn from historical considerations, I must needs go on, whether I will or no, to the conjectures to which they lead; and that shall be my business in this concluding discussion. My line of argument has been as follows:—First, I stated some peculiarities of civilized and of barbarian communities; I said that it is a general truth that civilized states are destroyed from within, and barbarian states from without; that the very causes, which lead to the greatness of civilized communities, at length by continuing become their ruin, whereas the causes of barbarian greatness uphold that greatness, as long as they continue, and by ceasing to act, not by continuing, lead the way to its overthrow. Thus the intellect of Athens first was its making and then its unmaking; while the warlike prowess of the Spartans maintained their pre-eminence, till it succumbed to the antagonist prowess of Thebes.