History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

[1163] ‘The Duke of Dorset, the English ambassador, writing to Mr. Pitt from Paris, July 9th, 1789, said, “Mr. Jefferson, the American minister at this court, has been a great deal consulted by the principal leaders of the tiers état; and I have great reason to think that it was owing to his advice that order called itself L'Assemblée Nationale.”’ Tomline's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 266.

CHAPTER VIII.

OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE SPANISH INTELLECT FROM THE FIFTH TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

In the preceding chapters, I have endeavoured to establish four leading propositions, which, according to my view, are to be deemed the basis of the history of civilization. They are: 1st, That the progress of mankind depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are investigated, and on the extent to which a knowledge of those laws is diffused. 2nd, That before such investigation can begin, a spirit of scepticism must arise, which, at first aiding the investigation, is afterwards aided by it. 3rd, That the discoveries thus made, increase the influence of intellectual truths, and diminish, relatively not absolutely, the influence of moral truths; moral truths being more stationary than intellectual truths, and receiving fewer additions. 4th, That the great enemy of this movement, and therefore the great enemy of civilization, is the protective spirit; by which I mean the notion that society cannot prosper, unless the affairs of life are watched over and protected at nearly every turn by the state and the church; the state teaching men what they are to do, and the church teaching them what they are to believe. Such are the propositions which I hold to be the most essential for a right understanding of history, and which I have defended in the only two ways any proposition can be defended; namely, inductively and deductively. The inductive defence comprises a collection of historical and scientific facts, which suggest and authorize the conclusions drawn from them; while the deductive defence consists of a verification of those conclusions, by showing how they explain the history of different countries and their various fortunes. To the former, or inductive method of defence, I am at present unable to add anything new; but the deductive defence I hope to strengthen considerably, and by the aid of the following chapters, confirm not only the four cardinal propositions just stated, but also several minor propositions, which, though strictly speaking flowing from them, will require separate verification. According to the plan already sketched, the remaining part of the introduction will contain an examination of the history of Spain, of Scotland, of Germany, and of the United States of America, with the object of elucidating principles on which the history of England supplies inadequate information. And as Spain is the country where what I conceive to be the fundamental conditions of national improvement have been most flagrantly violated, so also shall we find that it is the country where the penalty paid for the violation has been most heavy, and where, therefore, it is most instructive to ascertain how the prevalence of certain opinions causes the decay of the people among whom they predominate.

We have seen that the old tropical civilizations were accompanied by remarkable features which I have termed Aspects of Nature, and which, by inflaming the imagination, encouraged superstition, and prevented men from daring to analyze such threatening physical phenomena; in other words, prevented the creation of the physical sciences. Now, it is an interesting fact that, in these respects, no European country is so analogous to the tropics as Spain. No other part of Europe is so clearly designated by nature as the seat and refuge of superstition. Recurring to what has been already proved,[1164] it will be remembered that among the most important physical causes of superstition are famines, epidemics, earthquakes, and that general unhealthiness of climate, which, by shortening the average duration of life, increases the frequency and earnestness with which supernatural aid is invoked. These peculiarities, taken together, are more prominent in Spain than anywhere else in Europe; it will therefore be useful to give such a summary of them as will exhibit the mischievous effects they have produced in shaping the national character.

If we except the northern extremity of Spain, we may say that the two principal characteristics of the climate are heat and dryness, both of which are favoured by the extreme difficulty which nature has interposed in regard to irrigation. For, the rivers which intersect the land, run mostly in beds too deep to be made available for watering the soil, which consequently is, and always has been, remarkably arid.[1165] Owing to this, and to the infrequency of rain, there is no European country as richly endowed in other respects, where droughts and therefore famines have been so frequent and serious.[1166] At the same time the vicissitudes of climate, particularly in the central parts, make Spain habitually unhealthy; and this general tendency being strengthened in the middle ages by the constant occurrence of famine, caused the ravages of pestilence to be unusually fatal.[1167] When we moreover add that in the Peninsula, including Portugal, earthquakes have been extremely disastrous,[1168] and have excited all those superstitious feelings which they naturally provoke, we may form some idea of the insecurity of life, and of the ease with which an artful and ambitious priesthood could turn such insecurity into an engine for the advancement of their own power.[1169]

Another feature of this singular country is the prevalence of a pastoral life, mainly caused by the difficulty of establishing regular habits of agricultural industry. In most parts of Spain, the climate renders it impossible for the labourer to work the whole of the day;[1170] and this forced interruption encourages among the people an irregularity and instability of purpose, which makes them choose the wandering avocations of a shepherd, rather than the more fixed pursuits of agriculture.[1171] And during the long and arduous war which they waged against their Mohammedan invaders, they were subject to such incessant surprises and forays on the part of the enemy, as to make it advisable that their means of subsistence should be easily removed; hence they preferred the produce of their flocks to that of their lands, and were shepherds instead of agriculturists, simply because by that means they would suffer less in case of an unfavourable issue. Even after the capture of Toledo, late in the eleventh century, the inhabitants of the frontier in Estramadura, La Mancha, and New Castile, were almost entirely herdsmen, and their cattle were pastured not in private meadows but in the open fields.[1172] All this increased the uncertainty of life, and strengthened that love of adventure, and that spirit of romance, which, at a later period, gave a tone to the popular literature. Under such circumstances, everything grew precarious, restless, and unsettled; thought and inquiry were impossible; doubt was unknown; and the way was prepared for those superstitious habits, and for that deep-rooted and tenacious belief, which have always formed a principal feature in the history of the Spanish nation.

To what extent these circumstances would, if they stood by themselves, have affected the ultimate destiny of Spain, is a question hardly possible to answer; but there can be no doubt that their effects must always have been important, though, from the paucity of evidence, we are unable to measure them with precision. In regard, however, to the actual result, this point is of little moment, because a long chain of other and still more influential events became interwoven with those just mentioned, and, tending in precisely the same direction, produced a combination which nothing could resist, and from which we may trace with unerring certainty the steps by which the nation subsequently declined. The history of the causes of the degradation of Spain will indeed become too clear to be mistaken, if studied in reference to those general principles which I have enunciated, and which will themselves be confirmed by the light they throw on this instructive though melancholy subject.