According to the description of Cæsar[30] and Tacitus[31] the German tribes differed essentially from the Gauls or Kelts in the following particulars. The Germans loved freedom, and were all free. The Kelts did not care for freedom. The meanest German was free. But all the inferior people among the Kelts were virtually slaves. The Germans had no priests, and did not care for sacrifices. The Kelts had a powerful priesthood and imposing religious rites. The Germans were remarkable for their blue eyes, light hair, and large limbs. The Kelts were dark-complexioned. The Gauls were more quick, but less persevering, than the Germans. Ready to attack, they were soon discouraged. Tacitus, describing the Germans, says: "They are a pure, unmixed, and independent race; there is a family likeness through the nation, the same form and features, stern blue eyes, ruddy hair; a strong sense of honor; reverence for women; religious, but without a ritual; superstitiously believing in supernatural signs and portents, but not in a priesthood; not living in cities, but in scattered homes; respecting marriage; the children brought up in the dirt, among the cattle; hospitable, frank, and generous; fond of drinking beer, and eating preparations of milk."
The German and Keltic races, thus distinguished in the days of Cæsar, are equally distinct to-day. Catholicism, the religion of a priesthood, a ritual, and authority, prevails among the Kelts; Protestantism among the Germans. Ireland, being mainly Keltic, is Catholic, though a part of a Protestant nation. France, being mainly Keltic, is also Catholic, in spite of all its illumination, its science, and its knowledge of "intellectual laws." But as France contains a large infusion of German (Frankish) blood, it is the most Protestant of Catholic nations; while Scotland, containing the largest infusion of Keltic blood, is the most priest-ridden of Protestant nations. This last fact, which Mr. Buckle asserts, and spends half a volume in trying to account for, is explained at once by ethnology. Wherever the Germans go to-day, they remain the same people they were in the days of Tacitus; they carry the same blue eyes and light hair, the same love of freedom and hatred of slavery, the same tendencies to individualism in thought and life, the same tendency to superstitious belief in supernatural events, even when without belief in any religion or church; and even the same love for beer, and "lac concretum," now called "schmeercase" in our Western settlements. The Kelt, also, everywhere continues the same. He loves equality more than freedom. He is a democrat, but not an abolitionist. Very social, clannish, with more wit than logic, very sensitive to praise, brave, but not determined, needing a leader, he carries the spirit of the Catholic Church into Protestantism, and the spirit of despotism into free institutions. And that physical, no less than mental qualities, continue under all climates and institutions is illustrated by the blue eyes and light hair which the traveller meets among the Genoese and Florentines, reminding him of their Lombard ancestors; while their superior tendencies to freedom in church and state suggest the same origin.
Nineteen hundred years have passed since Julius Cæsar pointed out these diversities of character then existing between the Germans and Kelts. Since then they have passed from barbarism to civilization. Instead of living in forests, as hunters and herdsmen, they have built cities, engaged in commerce, manufactures, and agriculture. They have been converted to Christianity, have conquered the Roman empire, engaged in crusades, fought in a hundred different wars, developed literatures, arts, and sciences, changed and changed again their forms of government, have been organized by Feudalism, by Despotism, by Democracy, have gone through the Protestant reformation, have emigrated to all countries and climates; and yet, at the end of this long period, the German everywhere remains a German, and the Kelt a Kelt. The descriptions of Tacitus and Cæsar still describe them accurately. And yet Mr. Buckle undertakes to write a history of civilization without taking the element of race into account.
Perhaps, however, the power of this element of race is illustrated still more strikingly in the case of the wandering and dispersed families, who, having ceased to be a nation, continue in their dispersions to manifest the permanent type of their original and ineffaceable organization. Wherever the Jew goes, he remains a Jew. In all climates, under all governments, speaking all languages, his physical and mental features continue the same. This amazing fact has been held by many theologians to be a standing miracle of Divine Providence. But Providence works by law, and through second causes, and uses in this instance the laws of a specially stubborn organization and the force of a tenacious and persistent blood to accomplish its ends. The same kind of blood in the kindred Semitic family of Arabs produces a like result, though to a less striking degree. The Bedouins wander for thousands of miles away from their peninsula, but always continue Arabs in appearance and character. The light, sinewy body and brilliant dark eye, the abstemious habit and roaming tendency, mark the Arab in Hindostan or Barbary. It is a thousand years since these nomad tribes left their native home, but they continue the same people on the Persian Gulf or amid the deserts of Sahara.
The case of the Gypsies, however, may be still more striking, because these seem, in their wanderings over the earth, to have gradually divested themselves of every other common attribute except that of race. Unlike the Jews and Arabs, they not only adopt the language, but also the religion, of the country where they happen to be. Yet they always remain unfused and unassimilated.
The Gypsies first appeared in Europe in 1417, in Moldavia, and thence spread into Transylvania and Hungary.[32] They afterward passed into all the countries of Europe, where their number, at the present time, is supposed to reach 700,000 or 800,000. Everywhere they adopt the common form of worship, but are without any real faith. Partially civilized in some countries, they always retain their own language beside that of the people among whom they live. This language, being evidently derived from the Sanskrit, settles the question of their origin. It is common to all their branches through the world; as are also the sweet voice of their maidens, and their habits of horse-dealing, fortune-telling, and petty larceny. Without the bond of religion, history, government, literature, or mutual knowledge and intercourse, they still remain one and the same people in all their dispersions. What gives this unity and permanence, if not race? Yet race, to Mr. Buckle, means nothing.
III. Mr. Buckle's Theory concerning Skepticism.—One of the laws of history which Mr. Buckle considers himself to have established, if not discovered, is that a spirit of skepticism precedes necessarily the progress of knowledge, and therefore of civilization. By skepticism he means a doubt of the truth of received opinions. He asserts that "a spirit of doubt" is the necessary antecedent to "the love of inquiry." (Vol. I. p. 242, Am. ed.) "Doubt must intervene before investigation can begin. Here, then, we have the act of doubting as the originator, or at all events the necessary antecedent, of all progress."
If this were so, progress would be impossible. For the great groundwork of knowledge for each generation must be laid in the minds of children; and children learn, not by doubting, but by believing. Children are actuated at the same time by an insatiable curiosity and an unquestioning faith. They ask the reason of everything, and they accept every reason which is given them. If they stopped to question and to doubt, they would learn very little. But by not doubting at all, while they are made to believe some errors, they acquire an immense amount of information. Kind Mother Nature understands the process of learning and the principle of progress much better than Mr. Buckle, and fortunately supplies every new generation of children with an ardent desire for knowledge, and a disposition to believe everything they hear.
Perhaps, however, Mr. Buckle refers to men rather than children. He may not insist on children's stopping to question everything they hear before they believe. But in men perhaps this spirit is essential to progress. What great skeptics, then, have been also great discoverers? Which was the greatest discoverer, Leibnitz or Bayle, Sir Isaac Newton or Voltaire? A faith amounting nearly to credulity is almost essential to discovery,—a faith which foresees what it cannot prove, which follows suggestions and hints, and so traces the faintest impressions left by the flying footsteps of truth. The attitude of the intellect in all discovery is not that of doubt, but of faith. The discoverer always appears to critical and skeptical men as a visionary.
"To skepticism," says Mr. Buckle, "we owe the spirit of inquiry, which, during the last two centuries, has gradually encroached on every possible subject, and reformed every department of practical and speculative knowledge." But this is plainly what logicians call a ὕστερον πρότερον {hysteron proteron}, or what common people call "putting the cart before the horse." It is not skepticism which produces the spirit of inquiry, but the spirit of inquiry which produces skepticism. It was not a doubt concerning the Mosaic cosmogony which led to the study of geology; the study of geology led to the doubt of the cosmogony. Skepticism concerning the authority of the Church did not lead to the discovery of the Copernican system; the discovery of the Copernican system led to doubts concerning the authority of the Church which denied it. People do not begin by doubting, but by seeking. The love of knowledge leads them to inquire, and inquiry shows to them new truths. The new truths, being found to be opposed to received opinions, cause a doubt concerning those opinions to arise in the mind. Skepticism, therefore, may easily follow, but does not precede inquiry.