I will add nothing, nor will I undertake to treat the question itself; I content myself with bringing it forward. It will be met at the end of the history of civilisation. When the history of civilisation is run through, when there is nothing more to say concerning actual life, we are irresistibly driven to ask ourselves whether all is exhausted, whether we have reached the end? This, then, is the last and highest problem to which the history of civilisation can conduct us. It is sufficient for me to have indicated its position and importance.
From all that I have said, it is clear that the history of civilisation may be treated of after two modes, drained at two sources, considered under two different aspects. The historian may place himself in the depths of the human mind for a given period, a series of ages, and amongst a certain people; he may study, describe, relate all the events, transformations, and revolutions which are accomplished in the internal man; and when he has reached the end, he will have a history of civilisation amongst the people, and for the period he chose. He may proceed in a different manner. Instead of penetrating the inward man, he may place himself in the midst of the worldly spectacle; instead of describing the vicissitudes in the ideas and sentiments of the individual being, he may describe external facts, the events and fluctuations of the social state. These two portions, these two histories, of civilisation are closely united to each other; each is the reflection and image of the other. Nevertheless, they may be separated, and perhaps they ought to be so, at least in the beginning, in order that both the one and the other may be treated of in detail, and with perspicuity. For my own part, I do not propose to investigate the history of civilisation in the inward workings of the human mind; it is only with the history of the external events of the visible and social world that I shall occupy myself. I had a desire to unfold the fact of civilisation, such as I conceive it, in all its complexity and extent, and to lay down all those great questions which may spring from it. But at present I restrict myself, and narrow my field of inquiry; it is only the history of the social state that I purpose entering upon.
We shall begin by searching out all the elements of European civilisation in its cradle, at the fall of the Roman empire; we will study with attention society, such as it was, in the midst of those famous ruins. We will endeavour, not indeed to resuscitate, but to rear its elements side by side; and when we have them placed, we will strive to make them move, and to follow them in their developments, through the fifteen centuries that have elapsed since that epoch.
When we have advanced some way into this study, I believe we shall very shortly feel convinced that civilisation is very youthful, and that a great deal is wanting before the world can measure its career. Human thought is most assuredly very far from being at this day all that it may become, and we are very far from embracing the whole future of humanity. Let each individual search his own mind, let him interrogate himself as to the greatest possible good of which he can form a conception or a hope, and then compare his ideas with what actually exists at this moment in the world; he will be convinced that society and civilisation are very young, and that in spite of all the advance they have made, they have incomparably more to make. But this conclusion will not lessen the pleasure we shall experience in the contemplation of our actual condition. When our attention is awakened to the great critical junctures in the history of civilisation in Europe during fifteen centuries, we shall see how laborious, stormy, and harsh the condition of mankind has been, even to our own time, not only outwardly, and in the social state, but also inwardly, in the mental existence. For all those ages, the human mind has had to suffer as much as the human species. We shall see that, for the first time perhaps in modern times, the human mind has arrived at a state, certainly very imperfect, but in which some peace and harmony reign. It is the same with society; it has evidently made immense strides: the condition of men is easy and just when compared with what it previously was. We may almost apply to ourselves, when thinking of our ancestors, the verses of Lucretius:
Suave mari magno, turbantibus æquora ventis, E terrâ magnum alterius spectare laborem. [Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: We can look calmly from the land on the perils of another tossed on the ocean by turbulent winds.]
We may even say of ourselves, without too much pride, as Sthenelaus in Homer:
[Footnote 3]