History of Human Society

by Frank W. Blackmar

The religion of Oriental nations was non-progressive in its nature. It had a tendency to repress freedom of thought and freedom of action. Connected as it was with the binding influence of caste, man could not free himself from the dictates of religion. The awful sublimity of nature found its counterpart in the terrors of religion; and that religion attempted to answer all the questions that might arise concerning external nature. It rested upon the basis of authority built through ages of tradition, and through a continuous domineering priest-craft. The human mind struggling within its own narrow bounds could not overcome the stultifying and sterilizing influence of such a religion. The lower forms of religion were "of the earth, earthy." The higher forms consisted of such abstract conceptions concerning the creation of the earth, and the manipulation of all the forces of nature and the control of all the powers of man, as to be entirely non-progressive. There could be no independent scientific investigation. There could be no rational development of the mind. The religion of the Orient brought gloom to the masses and cut off hope forever. The people became subject to the grinding forces of fate. How, then, could there be intellectual development based upon freedom of action? How could there be any higher life of the soul, any moral culture, any great advancement in the arts and sciences, or any popular expression regarding war and government?

Social Organization Was Incomplete.—All social organization tended toward the common centre, the king, and there was very little local organization except as it was necessary to bring the people under control of official rule. There were apparently very few voluntary associations. Among the nobility, the priests, and ladies of rank, we find frequently elaborate costumes of dress, manifold ornaments, necklaces, rings, and earrings; but whatever went to the rich seemed to be a deprivation of the poor. Indeed, when we consider that it cost only a few shillings at most to rear a child to the age of twenty-one years in Egypt, we can imagine how meagre and stinted that life must have been. The poorer classes of people dressed in a very simple style, wearing a single linen shirt and over it a woollen mantle; while among the very poor much less was worn.

However, it seems that there was time for some of the population to engage in sports such as laying snares for birds, angling for fish, popular hunts, wrestling, playing checkers, chess, and ball, and it appears that many of these people were gifted in these sports. Just what classes of people engaged in this leisure is difficult to determine. Especially in the case of Egypt, most of the people were condemned to hard and toilsome labor. Probably the nobility and people of wealth were the only classes who had time for sports. The great temples and palaces were built with solid masonry of stone and brick, but the dwelling-houses were constructed in a light, graceful style, surrounded with long galleries and terraces common at this period of development in Oriental civilization. The gardening was symmetrical and accurate, the walks led in well-defined lines and were carefully conventional. The rooms of the houses, too, were well arranged and tastefully decorated, and members of the household distributed in its generous apartments, each individual finding his special place for position and service.

For the comparatively small number of prosperous and influential people, life was refined and luxurious so far as the inventions and conveniences for comfort would permit. They had well-constructed and well-appointed houses, and, judging from the relics discovered in tombs and from the records and inscriptions, people wore richly decorated clothing and lovely jewels. They had numerous feasts with music and dancing and servants to wait upon them in every phase of life. It is related, too, that excursions were common in summer on the great rivers. But even though there was a life of ease among the wealthy, they were without many comforts known to modern times. They had cotton and woollen fabrics for clothing, but no silk. They had dentists and doctors in those days, and teeth were filled with gold as in modern times. Their articles of food consisted of meat and vegetables, but there were no hens and no eggs. They used the camel in Mesopotamia and walked mostly in Egypt, or went by boat on the river. However, when we consider the change of ancient Babylon to Nineveh, and the Egyptian civilization of old Thebes to that which developed later, there is evidence of progress. The religious life lost a good many of its crudities, abolished human sacrifice, and developed a refined mysticism which was more elevating than the crude nature-worship.

The rule of caste which settled down over the community in this early period relegated every individual to his particular place. From this place there could be no escape. The common laborers moving the great blocks of stone to build the mighty pyramids of the valley of the Nile could be nothing but common laborers. And their sons and their daughters for generation after generation must keep the same sphere of life. And though the warriors fared much better, they, too, were confined to their own group. The shepherd class must remain a shepherd class forever; they could never rise superior to their own surroundings. So, too, in Babylon and India. There was, indeed, a slight variation from the caste system in Egypt and in Babylon, but in India it settled down from the earliest times, and the people and their customs were crystallized; they were bound by the chain of fate in the caste system forever. We shall see, then, that the relation of the population to the soil and the binding influences of early custom tended to develop despotism in Oriental civilization.

The result of all this was that there was no freedom or liberty of the individual anywhere. With caste and despotism and degradation men moved forward in political and religious life as on a plane which inclined so slightly that, except as we look over its surface through the passing centuries, little change can be observed. The king was a god; the government possessed supernatural power; its authority was not to be questioned. The rule of the army was final. The cruelty of kings and the oppression of government were customary, and thus crushed and oppressed, the ordinary individual had no opportunity to arise and walk in the dignity of his manhood. The government, if traced to its source at all, was of divine origin, and though those who ruled might stop to consider for an instant their own despotic actions, and in special cases yield in clemency to their subjects, from the subject's standpoint there could be nothing but to yield to the despotism of kings and the unrelenting rule of government.

We shall find, then, that with all of the efforts put forth the greater part was wasted. Millions of people were born, lived, and died, leaving scarcely a mark of their existence. No wonder that, as the great kings of Egypt saw the wasting elements of time, the waste of labor in its dreary rounds, having employed the millions in building the mighty temples dedicated to the worship of the gods; or having built great canals and aqueducts to develop irrigation that greater food supply might be assured, thus observing the majesty of their condition in relation to other human beings, they should have employed these millions of serfs in building their own tombs and monuments to remain the only lasting vestige of the civilization long since passed away. Everywhere in the Oriental civilization, then, are lack of freedom and the appearance of despotism. Everywhere is evidence of waste of individual life. No deep conception can be found in either the philosophy or the practice of the Egyptians or the Babylonians of the real object of human life. And yet the few meagre products of art and of learning handed down to European civilization from these Oriental countries must have had a vast influence in laying the foundations of modern civilized life.

Economic Influences.—In the first place, the warm climate of these countries required but little clothing; for a few cents a year a person could be clothed sufficiently to protect himself from the climate and to observe the rules of modesty so far as they existed in those times. In the second place, in hot climates less food is required than in cold. In cold countries people need a large quantity of heavy, oily foods, while in hot climates they need a lighter food and, indeed, less of it. Thus we have in these fertile valleys of the Orient the conditions which supply sustenance for millions at a very small amount of exertion or labor. Now, it is a well-established fact that cheap food among classes of people who have not developed a high state of civilization favors a rapid increase of population. The records show in Babylon and Egypt, as well as in Palestine, that the population multiplied at a very rapid rate. And this principle is enhanced by the fact that in tropical climates, where less pressure of want and cold is brought to bear, the conditions for successful propagation of the human race are present. And this is one reason why the earliest civilizations have always been found in tropical climates, and it was not until man had more vigor of constitution and higher development of physical and mental powers that he could undertake the mastery of himself and nature under less favorable circumstances.

The result was that human life became cheap. The great mass of men became so abundant as to press upon the food supply to its utmost limit. And they who had the control of this food supply controlled the bodies and souls of the great poverty-stricken mass who toiled for daily bread. Here we find the picture of abject slavery of the masses. The rulers, through the government, strengthened by the priests, who held over the masses of the lower people in superstitious awe the tenets of their faith, forced them into subjection. There was no value placed upon a human life; why, then, should there be upon the masses of individuals?

We shall find, too, as the result of all this, that the civilization became more or less stationary. True, there must have been a slow development of religious ideas, a slow development of art, a slow development of government, and yet when the type was once set there was but little change from century to century in the relation of human beings to one another, and their relation to the products of nature. When we consider the accomplishments of these people we must not forget the length of time it took to produce them. Reckon back from the present time 6,000 years, and then consider what has been accomplished in America in the last century. Think back 2,000 years, and see what had been accomplished in Rome from the year of the founding of the imperial city until the Caesars lived in their mighty palaces, a period of seven and a half centuries. Observe, too, what was accomplished in Greece from the time of Homer until the time of Aristotle, a period of about six and a half centuries; then observe the length of time it took to develop the Egyptian civilization, and we shall see its slow progress. It is also to be observed that the Egyptian civilization had reached its culmination when Greece began, and had begun its slow decline. After considering this we shall understand that the civilization of Egypt finally became stationary, conventionalized, non-progressive; that it was only a question of time when other nations should rule the land of the Pharaohs, and that sands should drift where once were populous cities, covering the relics of this ancient civilization far beneath the surface.