Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

But in another class of persons the will has learned to direct itself by a moral law toward a fixed aim. The man in the boat is now steering by a compass, and ceases to be the sport of current and gale. The will reacts upon organization, and directs circumstance. The man has learned how to master his own nature, and how to arrange external conditions. We can predict with certainty that under no possible influences will this class yield to some forms of evil.

There is also in each community a third class, who are struggling, but not emancipated. They are partly free, but not wholly so. From this class come the slight variations of the average, now a little better, now a little worse.

Applying this view of the freedom of the will to history, we see that the problem is far more complicated than Mr. Buckle admits. Man's freedom, with him, is an element not to be taken into consideration, because it does not exist. But the truth is, that human freedom is not only a factor, but a variable factor, the value of which changes with every variety of human condition. In the savage condition it obeys organization and circumstances, and has little effect on social condition. But as civilization advances, the power of freedom to react on organization and circumstance increases, varying however again, according to the force and inspiration of the ideas by which it is guided. And of all these ideas, precisely those which Mr. Buckle underrates, namely, moral and religious ideas, are those which most completely emancipate the will from circumstances, and vitalize it with an all-conquering force.

To see this, take two extreme cases,—that of an African Hottentot, and that of Joan of Arc. Free will in the African is powerless; he remains the helpless child of his situation. But the Maid of Arc, though utterly destitute of Mr. Buckle's "Intellectual Truths" (being unable to read or write, and having received no instruction save religious ideas), and wanting in the "Skepticism" which he thinks so essential to all historic progress, yet develops a power of will which reacts upon circumstances so as to turn into another channel the current of French history. All bonds of situation and circumstance are swept asunder by the power of a will set free by mighty religious convictions. The element of freedom, therefore, is one not to be neglected by an historian, except to his own loss.

The law of averages applies only to undeveloped men, or to the undeveloped sides of human nature, where the element of freedom has not come in play. When the human race shall have made such progress that it shall contain a city inhabited by a million persons all equal to the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John in spiritual development, it will not be found that a certain regular number kill their wives every year, or that from two hundred and thirteen to two hundred and forty annually commit suicide. Nor will this escape from the averages be owing to an increased acquaintance with physical laws so much as to a higher moral development. We shall return to this point, however, when we examine more fully Buckle's doctrine in regard to the small influence of religion on civilization.

II. Mr. Buckle's View of Organization.—Mr. Buckle sets aside entirely the whole great fact of organization, upon which the science of ethnology is based. Perhaps the narrowness of his mind shows more conspicuously in this than elsewhere. He attributes no influence to race in civilization. While so many eminent writers at the present day say, with Mr. Knox, that "Race is everything," Mr. Buckle quietly rejoins that Race is nothing. "Original distinctions of race," he says, "are altogether hypothetical." "We have no decisive ground for saying that the moral and intellectual faculties in man are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous country." (Vol. I. p. 127, Am. ed.) "We often hear of hereditary talents, hereditary vices, and hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically examine the evidence will find that we have no proof of their existence." He doubts the existence of hereditary insanity, or a hereditary tendency to suicide, or even to disease. (Vol. I. p. 128, note.) He does not believe in any progress of natural capacity in man, but only of opportunity, "that is, an improvement in the circumstances under which that capacity after birth comes into play." "Here then is the gist of the whole matter. The progress is one, not of internal power, but of external advantage." He goes on to say, in so many words, that the only difference between a barbarian child and a civilized child is in the pressure of surrounding circumstances. In support of these opinions he quotes Locke and Turgot.

It is difficult to understand how an intelligent and well-informed man, an immense reader and active thinker, can have lived in the midst of the nineteenth century and retain these views. For students at every extreme of thought have equally recognized the force of organization, the constancy of race, the permanent varieties existing in the human family, the steady ruling of the laws of descent. If there is any one part of the science of anthropology in which the nineteenth century has reversed the judgment of the eighteenth,—and that equally among men of science, poets, materialists, idealists, anatomists, philologists,—it is just here. To find so intelligent a man reproducing the last century in the midst of the present is a little extraordinary.

Perhaps there could not be found four great thinkers more different in their tendencies of thought and range of study than Goethe, Spurzheim, Dr. Prichard, and Max Müller; yet these four, each by his own method of observation, have shown with conclusive force the law of variety and of permanence in organization. Goethe asserts that every individual man carries from his birth to his grave an unalterable speciality of being,—that he is, down to the smallest fibre of his character, one and the same man; and that the whole mighty power of circumstance, modifying everything, cannot abolish anything,—that organization and circumstance hold on together with an equally permanent influence in every human life. Gall and Spurzheim teach that every fibre of the brain has its original quality and force, and that such qualities and forces are transmitted by obscure but certain laws of descent. Prichard, with immense learning, describes race after race, giving the types of each human family in its physiology. And, finally, the great science of comparative philology, worked out by such thinkers and students as Bopp, Latham, Humboldt, Bunsen, Max Müller, and a host of others, has proved the permanence of human varieties by ample glossological evidence. Thus the modern science of ethnology has arisen, on the basis of physiology, philology, and ethology, and is perhaps the chief discovery of the age. Yet Mr. Buckle quietly ignores the whole of it, and continues, with Locke, to regard every human mind as a piece of white paper, to be written on by external events,—a piece of soft putty, to be moulded by circumstances.

The facts on which the science of ethnology rests are so numerous and so striking, that the only difficulty in selecting an illustration is from the quantity and richness of material. But we may take two instances,—that of the Teutons and Kelts, to show the permanence of differences under the same circumstances, and that of the Jews, the Arabs, and the Gypsies, to show the continuity of identity under different circumstances. For if it can be made evident that different races of men preserve different characters, though living for long periods under similar circumstances, and that the same race preserves the same character, though living for long periods under different circumstances, the proof is conclusive that character is not derived from circumstances only. We shall not indeed go to the extreme of such ethnologists as Knox, Nott, or Gliddon, and say that "Race is everything, and circumstances nothing," but we shall see that Mr. Buckle is mistaken in saying that "Circumstances are everything, and race nothing."

The differences of character between the German and Keltic varieties of the human race are marked, but not extreme. They both belong to the same great Indo-European or Aryan family. They both originated in Asia, and the German emigration seems to have followed immediately after that of the Kelts. Yet when described by Cæsar, Tacitus, and Strabo, they differed from each other exactly as they differ now. They have lived for some two thousand years in the same climate, under similar political and social institutions, and yet they have preserved their original diversity.