Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

The great thing is to stir up mind. Great events and favouring circumstances do this naturally, by self-acting and irresistible means; and literature is one of the spontaneous fruits of the stirring of mind they give rise to. And the work does not stop there; for literature re-acts on the mental activity which produced it. It stimulates to still greater exertions; and, what is more, it guides to right, and useful, and fruitful conclusions. Perhaps it is hopeless to attempt to get literature to do its work, when the conditions which are requisite for producing a literature are absent, but the attempt might be made. There is nothing else to do now.

This process is seen clearly enough in history. Look at Athens. Its greatness produced its literature; and its literature supported and advanced its greatness. Public life, of course, at Athens was such that many things there gave increased power to literature; and some in a way acted as substitutes for it. The public assemblies, the administration of justice, the schools of philosophy, the theatres, were to the Athenians, to a great extent, what books and newspapers are to us. They were a machinery by which the thought and knowledge of those who, more or less to the purpose, could think, and who had knowledge, were brought into contact with the minds of all; so that all were put in the way of thinking, and of attaining knowledge for themselves; and were obliged, to some extent, to do it: and thus the thought and the knowledge of the best men became the thought and the knowledge of all, or were, at least, submitted to the attention of all. And so knowledge went on increasing, and thought went on achieving fresh conquests, and Greece became the Holy Land of mind.

Every one can see how large a share in producing the mental activity of the Americans must be assigned to books and newspapers. Facts, and men’s thoughts about these facts, are each day laid before the minds of a greater proportion of the population in the United States than elsewhere. Take away this apparatus for awakening and guiding thought, and their wonderful mental activity would disappear. As it is, all the counteracting influences of the rough and hard life most of them have to live cannot repress it. Suppose as large a proportion of our own population could read, and that they were treated in the same way—that is to say, that an equal amount of seed was deposited in their minds, and an equal amount of light, air, and warmth poured in—then I doubt not but that we should see, down even to the lower strata of society, an equal amount of mental activity.

This is a wide and fruitful subject. It is by the aid of this Egyptian discovery of letters, and of letters only, no one other thing beneath the sun being, without it, of any use in this matter, that the better thought, which is the thought of a few, sometimes originally of a single mind only, gains the upper hand of the inferior thought, which is the thought of the many; that error, which naturally commends itself to the ignorant, is slowly and painfully demonstrated to be error; and that many forms of injustice, notwithstanding their hoar antiquity, the memory of man never having run to the contrary, are shown at last to be inhumanities. It is by their aid, and their aid only, that an inch of good ground gained to-day, is not lost to-morrow, but kept for ever; that hints are treasured up till what they hinted at is discovered; that what has been observed by one man is set alongside of what has been observed by another, till at last the fruitful conclusion grows out of the connected view; that the experience of individuals, and of generations, is stored up for those who are to come after; that the spark kindled in a single mind becomes a common light. All this must be despaired of without printed records, statements, and discussions, without books, without newspapers; and the more largely these means for arriving at, and conveying knowledge are used, the greater is the effect of them. If the effect is so much when the seed is sown in ten thousand minds, it will be proportionately greater when it is sown in ten millions.

Nothing else has done in this matter for any people, and nothing else will do for the Egyptians and Syrians. Their circumstances, over which we appear to have no control, may make the effort barren; but there is nothing else we can do for them. It is ‘the one way of salvation’ for the state in which they now are. Nothing else can bring them to see except printed discussion, in which what is gained is retained, and what is discredited dies away, that for one disease the dung of a black dog is not a sovereign remedy, nor for another the dung of a white cow; and that the only preservative against the Evil Eye is the security good laws, well administered, give to person and property.

As to ourselves, had it not been for the assistance we received from letters we should still have here the Druid, or some one or other of his congeners, offering human holocausts to the accompaniment of the approving shouts of frantic multitudes; and we should still be, at this day, as far from the ideas of liberty of thought, and of humanity, as Galgacus was from the conception of the steam-engine, or of the electric telegraph.

The restorative, I have been prescribing, is one which must be designedly, and, when designedly, can never be very widely, applied. Another, however, there is, which will come spontaneously, and have a very diffusive effect. Its germs are now quickening in the womb of time. It is that of the outflow of western capital to the East, accompanied by those to whom it will belong, or who will be needed for the superintendence and direction of its employment. There is plenty the West wants which the East can supply: cotton, silk, wool, hides, wheat, maize, beans, peas, dried fruits, oil, &c. And, in return, the East will take iron, copper, gold, silver, clothing, pottery, &c. The only point that is uncertain is that of time. The trade of the East has once already been taken possession of by Europe. Two thousand years ago it was everywhere in the hands of the Greeks. The same kind of thing will be seen again. But this time the invasion will consist of Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians; amongst whom the irrepressible Greek will reappear. But the future trade between the East and the West will differ widely from the old in the amount of commodities to be produced, and moved, and exchanged. That will be such as modern capital only could deal with, and railways and steamboats transport. Of the dawning of the day for the expansion of this commerce to its natural dimensions I think there are some indications even now. The railway is beginning to penetrate into the East. It will, before long, be seen that much we are in want of can be produced there, at a profit, by the employment of our capital, its employment being superintended by Europeans. Security to person and property will accompany the employment of capital. And then the civilization of the East will be rehabilitated, with a life and activity it never had in the glorious days of old. The rule then was that some one district was to conquer, devastate, and plunder all the rest; so that, at one time, only one locality, almost only one city, could be great and prosperous. Looking back over the past we are misled by observing the traces only of what was mighty and magnificent; for wretchedness, degradation, and suffering leave no monuments. The prosperity, however, that is coming will be diffusive, and universal; for it will be supported not by arms, loot, and extortion, but by capital, peace, knowledge, and industry.

CHAPTER XLV.
ACHMED TRIED IN THE BALANCE WITH HODGE.

A man’s a man for a’ that.—Burns.