It is natural for the traveller to wish that he could behold Egypt in its old world order and glory; but he must console himself with the reflection that what perished was what deserved to perish—what had become narrow and false; and that what was good, true, and wise, including the lessons Egypt’s history teaches, survived the crash. Of all that we are the inheritors.
The fortunes and the future of the Christian idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind, which gave the new doctrine so much of its power to overthrow the wisdom of old Egypt, interests and concerns us all. From the days of its first triumphs down to our own day it has been actively at work in Europe. Through all these centuries it has been gaining strength. The first logical deduction from it which, like its parent, becomes a sentiment as well as an idea, is that of universal equality, for if all are brothers, then none is greater or less than another. The flower with which this offshoot blossoms is that of humanity. Under the old exclusive systems, which placed impassable barriers between peoples, cities, and tribes; and then between the classes of the same community; and had therefore, said to human hearts, ‘So far may you go, and no further; beyond this you need not—you ought not—to feel pity; beyond this hatred and repulsion, the sword, the torch, the chain are only to be thought of;’ the idea of humanity had been impossible: but when all men are recognized as in essentials equally men, that which makes them men assumes the definite form of this idea. ‘Honour all men’—that is, do all in your power to elevate every one you may come in contact with, and nothing that has a tendency to degrade any human being, whatever may be his complexion, blood, caste, or position—was, we know, a very early injunction.
The greatest outward and visible achievement of the idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind was the abolition of slavery and serfdom. This was effected very slowly. We are, however, rather surprised that so Herculean a labour should ever have been achieved by it at all. When we consider the inveteracy and the universality of the institution; that it was the very foundation on which society was, almost everywhere, built; that it was everywhere the interest of the governing part of the community, that is, of those who had power in their hands, to maintain it; that, in the early days of the new idea, it never soared so high as the thought of so great an achievement; and yet find, notwithstanding, that the old institution has fallen everywhere; that no combination of circumstances has anywhere been able to secure it; we begin to understand the irresistible force of the idea. This was the greatest of all political and social revolutions ever effected in this world.
The manifestations of the sentiment we are now thinking of have been very various, in conformity with the circumstances of the times, and the condition of those in whom it was at work. Some centuries ago it came to the surface in Jacqueries and Anabaptist vagaries. Now for some three generations it has been seen in volcanic operation in French outbreaks and revolutions. It is the soul of American democracy. It is at this moment working, like leaven in a lump of dough, in the hearts and minds of all Christian communities. There is no man in this country but feels its disintegrating, and reconstructing force. Every village school that is opened, every invention and discovery that is made, every book, every newspaper that is printed, every sermon that is preached, aids in propagating it. Its continued growth and spread gradually deprive governing classes of heart, thus betraying them from within, and of a logically defensive position in the forum of what has now come to be recognized as public opinion. It is at this day the greatest power among men. The future, whatever it is to be, must be largely shaped by it.
Here the study of the wisdom of old Egypt teaches us much. One most useful lesson is that stability in human societies can be attained; but that, as the constitution and sentiments of European societies are now very different from the state of things to which the wisdom of Egypt was applied, we must give to our efforts a form and character that will be suitable to our altered circumstances. The method they adopted was that of eliminating the elements of political and social change, by arranging society in the iron frame of caste, and by petrifying all knowledge in the form of immutable doctrine. We cannot do this, and it would not be desirable for us to do it, if we could. The obvious advantages of the Egyptian method were that, under the then existing circumstances, it secured order and quiet; and that it assigned to every man his work, and taught him how to do it. Its disadvantages were that ultimately it repressed all higher moral progress, denied all new truths, and consecrated what had become falsehood and injustice. It was also worked, though with a great immediate gain of power, from thorough organization, yet with a great waste of the highest form of power, for it altogether overlooked natural aptitudes, and, quite irrespectively of them, decided for every man what he was to be, and what he was to do. We cannot suppose, on the one hand, that there are no other methods of securing social order and stability than these; nor, on the other hand, that American democracy and Chinese mandarinism have exhausted all alternatives now possible. This, however, is a problem we shall have to consider for ourselves. Here it will be enough for us to see that, even if it were within our power to attain to stability by the Egyptian application of the Egyptian method, the result would still be subject to the limitation of the rise of new ideas, and even of the propagation, more widely throughout the community, of existing ideas. These are absolutely irresistible. There is nothing under heaven, especially in these days of rapid and universal interchange and propagation of thought, which can arrest their progress. Their elements pervade the moral atmosphere, which acts on our moral being, just as the air, we cannot but breathe, does on our bodily constitution.
We may also learn from this history that progress, about which there has been so much debate—some glorying in it, some denying it,—is an actual positive historic fact. What we have been reviewing enables us, furthermore, to see precisely in what it consists. It does not consist in the abundance of the things we possess, nor in mastery over nature. We may continuously be overcoming more and more of the hindrances nature has placed in our path; we may be compelling her to do more and more of our bidding; we may be extorting from her more and more of her varied and wondrous treasures; but all this, in itself, possesses no intrinsic value. It is valuable only as a means to something else. The old Egypt of the Pharaohs might, conceivably, have possessed railways, power-looms, electric telegraphs, and yet the old Egyptian might have been, and might have continued to be for four thousand years longer, very much what he was in the days of Sethos and Rameses. The modern Egyptian possesses all these things, and the printing-press besides, and yet is inferior, under the same sky, and on the same ground, to his predecessors of those old times. The end and purpose of material aids, and of material well-being, are to strengthen, and to develop, that which is highest, and best, and supreme in man—that which makes him man. Otherwise it is only pampering, and rendering life easy to, so many more animals. The difference would be little whether this were done for so many such men, or for so many crocodiles and bulls. That which is supreme in man—which makes a man a man—is his intellectual and moral being. If this has been strengthened, enlarged, enriched, progress has been made; he has been raised to a higher level; his horizon has been extended; he has been endued with new power. History and observation show that without some amount of material advancement, intellectual and moral advancement is not possible, and that all material gains may be turned to account in this way. This is their proper place—that of means, and not of ends. They are ever placing larger and larger proportions of mankind in the position in which intellectual and moral advancement becomes possible to them. That, then, to which they contribute, and which they make possible, is their true use and purpose. Whoever makes them for himself the end, dethrones that within himself, the supremacy of which alone can make him a true man. Every one who has done anything towards enriching, and purifying, and strengthening the intellect, or the heart of man, or towards extending to an increased proportion of the community the cultivation and development of moral and intellectual power, has contributed towards human progress.
The greatest advance that has been made in the historic period was the implanting in the minds of men the idea, and in their hearts the sentiment, of the brotherhood of mankind. The idea and sentiment of responsibility dates back beyond the ken of history. Our observation, however, of what is passing in rude and simple communities, where social arrangements and forces are still in an almost embryonic condition, leads us to suppose that it is an instinct developed by the working, the necessities, and the life of society. To our own times belongs the scientific presentment of the idea of the cosmos, which, though a construction of the intellect, affects us also morally. Who can believe that even the oldest of these ideas is bearing all the fruit of which it is capable, and—that it will have no account to give of even better fruit in the future than it has ever produced in the past? How wide then is the field, in the most advanced communities, for moral and intellectual, the only truly human, progress! How impossible is it to foresee any termination of this progress!