Europe had her dark ages when there was a night with “darkness visible,” and there was an earlier period in the history of each nation when Man was not less savage than now in the very heart of Africa; but the European has emerged, and at last stands in a world of light. Take any of the nations whose development belongs to modern times, and the original degradation can be exhibited in authentic colors. There is England, whose present civilization is in many respects so finished; but when the conquering Cæsar, only fifty-five years before the birth of Christ, landed on this unknown island, her people were painted savages, with a cruel religion, and a conjugal system which was an incestuous concubinage.[151] His authentic report places this condition beyond question; and thus knowing her original degradation and her present transformation after eighteen centuries, we have the terms for a question in the Rule of Three. Given the original degradation and present transformation of England, how long will it take for the degradation of other lands to experience a similar transformation? Add also present agencies of civilization, to which England was for centuries a stranger.
This instance is so important as to justify details. When Britain was first revealed to the commercial enterprise of Tyre, her people, according to Macaulay, “were little superior to the natives of the Sandwich Islands.”[152] The historian must mean, when those islands were first discovered by Captain Cook. Prichard, our best authority, supposes them “nearly on a level with the New-Zealanders or Tahitians of the present day, or perhaps not very superior to the Australians,”[153] which is very low indeed. There was but little change, if any, when they became known to the Romans. They are pictured as large and tall, excelling the Gauls in stature, but less robust, and, according to the geographer Strabo, with crooked legs and unshapely figures.[154] Northward were the Caledonians,—also Britons,—tattooing their bodies, dwelling in tents, savage in manners, and with a moral degradation kindred to that of the Southern Britons.[155] Across the Channel were the Irish, whose reported condition was even more terrible.[156] According to Cæsar, most in the interior of Britain never sowed corn, but lived on milk and flesh, and were clad in skins; but he notes that all colored their bodies with a cerulean dye, “making them more horrid to the sight in battle”; and he then relates, that societies of ten or twelve, brothers and brothers, parents and children, had wives in common.[157] Their religious observances were such as became this savage life. Here was the sanctuary of the Druids, whose absolute and peculiar power was sustained by inhuman rites. On rude, but terrible altars, in the gloom of the forest, human victims were sacrificed,—while from the blood, as it coursed under the knife of the priest, there was a divination of future events.[158] There was no industry, and no production, except slaves too illiterate for the Roman market. Imagination pictured strange things. One province was reported where “the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live.”[159] In the polite circles of the Empire the whole region excited a fearful horror, which has been aptly likened to that of the early Ionians for “the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Læstrygonian cannibals.”[160] The historian records with a sigh, that “no magnificent remains of Latian porches and aqueducts are to be found” here,—that “no writer of British birth is reckoned among the masters of Latian poetry and eloquence.”[161]
And this was England at the beginning. Long afterwards, when centuries had intervened, the savage was improved into the barbarian. But from one authentic instance learn the rest. The trade in slaves was active, and English peddlers bought up children throughout the country, while the people, greedy of the price, sold their own relations, sometimes their own offspring.[162] In similar barbarism, all Jews and their gains were the absolute property of the king; and this law, beginning with Edward the Confessor, was enforced under successive monarchs, one of them making a mortgage of all Jews to his brother as security for a debt.[163] Nothing worse is now said of Africa.
Progress was slow. When in 1435 the Italian Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius the Second, visited this island, it was to his eyes most forlorn. Houses in cities were in large part built without lime. Cottages had no other door than a bull-hide. Food was coarse,—sometimes, in place of bread, the bark of trees; and white bread was such a rarity among the people as to be a curiosity.[164] When afterwards, under Henry the Eighth, civilization had begun, the condition of the people was deplorable. There was no such thing among them as comfort, while plague and sweating-sickness prevailed. The learned and ingenious Erasmus, who was an honored guest in England at this time, refers much to the filthiness of the houses. The floors he describes as commonly of clay strewn with rushes, in the renewal of which those at the bottom sometimes remained undisturbed for twenty years, retaining filth unmentionable,—“sputa, vomitus, mictum canum et hominum, projectam cervisiam et piscium reliquias, aliasque sordes non nominandas.”[165] I quote the words of this eminent observer. The traveller from the interior of Africa would hardly make a worse report.
Such was England. But this story of savagery and barbarism is not peculiar to that country. I might take other countries, one by one, and exhibit the original degradation and the present elevation. I might take France. I content myself with one instance only. An authentic incident of French history, recorded by a contemporary witness, and associated with famous names in the last century, shows the little recognition at that time of a common humanity. And this story concerns a lady, remarkable among her sex for various talent, and especially as a mathematician, and the French translator of Newton,—Madame Duchâtelet. This great lady, the friend of Voltaire, found no difficulty in undressing before the men-servants of her household, not considering it well-proved that such persons were of the Human Family. This curious revelation of manners, which arrested the attention of De Tocqueville in his remarkable studies on the origin of the French Revolution,[166] if reported from Africa, would be recognized as marking a most perverse barbarism.
These are illustrations only, which might be multiplied and extended indefinitely, but they are sufficient. Here, within a limited sphere, obvious to all, is the operation of that law which governs Universal Man. Progress here prefigures progress everywhere; nay, progress here is the first stage in the world’s progress. Nobody doubts the progress of England; nobody doubts the progress of France; nobody doubts the progress of the European Family, wherever distributed, in all quarters of the globe. But must not the same law under which these have been elevated exert its equal influence on the whole Family of Man? Is it not with people as with individuals? Some arrive early, others tardily. Who has not observed, that, independently of original endowment, the progress of the individual depends upon the influences about him? Surrounded by opportunity and trained with care, he grows into the type of Civilized Man; but, on the other hand, shut out from opportunity and neglected by the world, he remains stationary, always a man, entitled from his manhood to Equal Rights, but an example of inferiority, if not of degradation. Unquestionably it is the same with a people. Here, again, opportunity and a training hand are needed.
To the inquiry, How is this destiny to be accomplished? I answer, Simply by recognizing the law of Unity, and acting accordingly. The law is plain; obey it. Let each people obey the law at home; its extension abroad will follow. The standard at home will become the standard everywhere. The harmony at home will become the harmony of mankind. Drive Caste from this Republic, and it will be, like Cain, “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.”