[Sidenote: The virtues of the primitive races.]
[Sidenote: Decline of civilization in the ancient races.]
The question here may arise why the Greeks and Romans themselves arose from a state of barbarism to the degree of culture which has given them immortality? Why did they not remain barbarians, like the natives of Central Africa? But they belonged to a peculiar race—that great Caucasian race which, in all of its ramifications, showed superior excellences, and which, in the earliest times, seems to have cherished ideas and virtues which probably were learned from a primitive revelation. The Romans, in the early ages of the republic, were superior to their descendants in the time of the emperors in all those qualities which give true dignity to character. I doubt if there was ever any great improvement among the Romans in a moral point of view. They acquired arts as they declined in virtue. If strictly scrutinized I believe it would appear that the Roman character was nobler six hundred years before Christ than in the second century of our era. It was the magnificent material on which civilizing influences had to work that accounts for Roman greatness, in the same sense that there was a dignity in the patriarchal period of Jewish history not to be found under the reigns of the kings. The same may be said of the Greeks. The Homeric poems show a natural beauty and simplicity more attractive than the rationalistic character of the Athenians in the time of Socrates. There was a progress in arts which was not to be seen in common life. And this is true also of the Persians. They were really a greater people under Cyrus than when they reigned in Babylon. There are no records of the Indo-Germanic races which do not indicate a certain greatness of character in the earliest periods. The Germanic tribes were barbarians, but in piety, in friendship, in hospitality, in sagacity, in severe morality, in the high estimation in which women were held, in the very magnificence of superstitions, we see the traits of a noble national character. It would be difficult to show absolute degradation at any time among these people. How they came to have these grand traits in their primeval forests it is difficult to show. Certainly they were never such a people as the Africans or the Malay races, or even the Slavonic tribes. These natural elements of character extorted the admiration of Tacitus, even as the Orientals won the respect of Herodotus. It is more easy to conceive why such a people as the Greeks and Romans were, in their primitive simplicity, when they were brave, trusting, affectionate, enterprising, should make progress in arts and sciences, than why they should have degenerated after a high civilization had been reached. They made the arts and sciences. The arts and sciences did not make them. They were great before civilization, as technically understood, was born. Why they were so superior to other races we cannot tell. They were either made so, or else they must have received a revelation from above, or learned some of the great truths which by God were taught to the patriarchs. Possibly the wisdom they very early evinced had come down from father to son from the remotest antiquity. The divine savor may have leavened the whole race before history was written. With their uncorrupted and primitive habits, they had a moral force which enabled them to make great improvements. Without this force they never would have reached so high a culture. And when the moral force was spent, the civilization they created also passed away from them to other uncorrupted races. The Greeks learned from Egyptians, as Romans learned from Greeks. Civilization only reached a limited state among the Egyptians. It never advanced for three thousand years. Greek culture retrograded after the age of Pericles. There were but few works of genius produced at Rome after the Antonines. The age of Augustus saw a higher triumph of art than the age of Cato, yet the moral greatness of the Romans was more marked in the time of Cato than in that of Augustus. If moral elevation kept pace with art, why the memorable decline in morals when the genius of the Romans soared to its utmost height? The virtues of society were a soil on which art prospered, and art continued to be developed long after real vigor had fled, but only reached a certain limit, and declined when life was gone. In other words, the force of character, which the early Romans evinced, gave an immense impulse to civilization, whose fruits appeared after the glory of character was gone; but, having no soil, the tree of knowledge at last withered away. If the old civilization had a life of itself, it would have saved the race. But as it was purely man's creation, his work, it had no inherent vitality or power to save him. The people were great before the fruits of their culture appeared. They were great in consequence of living virtues, not legacies of genius. They ran the usual course of the ancient nations. The sterling virtues of primitive times produced prosperity and material greatness. Material greatness gave patronage to art and science. Art and science did not corrupt the people until they had also become corrupted. But prosperity produced idleness, pride, and sensuality, by which science, art, and literature became tainted. The corruption spread. Society was undermined, and the arts fell with the people, except such as ministered to a corrupt taste, like demoralizing pictures and inflammatory music. Why did not the arts maintain the severity of the Grecian models? Why did philosophy degenerate to Epicureanism? Why did poetry condescend to such trivial subjects as hunting and fishing? Why did, the light of truth become dim? Why were the great principles of beauty lost sight of? Why the discrepancy between the laws and the execution of them? Why was every triumph of genius perverted? It was because men, in their wickedness, were indifferent to truth and virtue. Good men had made good laws; bad men perverted them. A corrupted civilization hastened, rather than retarded the downward course, and civilization must needs become corrupt when men became so. We cannot see any progress in peoples without moral forces, and these do not originate in man. They may be retained a long time among a people; they are not natural to them. They are given to them; they are given originally by God. They are the fruit of his revelations. Neither in the wilderness nor in the crowded city are they naturally produced. A perfect state of nature, without light from Heaven, is extreme rudeness, poverty, ignorance, and superstition, where brutal passions are dominant and triumphant. The vices of savages are as fatal as the vices of cities. They equally destroy society. Place man anywhere on the earth, or under any circumstances, without religious life, and moral degradation follows. Whence comes religious life? Where did Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, those eastern herdsmen and shepherds, get their moral wisdom? Surely it was inherited from earlier patriarchs, taught them by their fathers, or given directly from God himself.
[Sidenote: Virtues of primitive life.]
The most that can be said of a primitive state of society is that it is favorable for the retention of religious and moral truth, more so than populous cities, since it has fewer temptations to excite the passions. But a savage in any country will remain a savage, unless he is elevated and taught through influences independent of himself. Hottentots make no progress. Greeks made progress, since they had moral wisdom communicated to them by their ancestors: the divine light struggled with human propensities. When outward circumstances were favorable the virtues were retained; they were not born, and these were the stimulus to all improvement; and when they were lost, all improvement that is real vanished away. Civilization is the fruit of man's genius, when man is virtuous. But it does not renovate races. It is only religion coming from God which can do this.
It would be an interesting inquiry how far the religion of the old Greeks and Romans was pure—how far it was uncontaminated by superstitions. I think it would be found on inquiry, if we had the means of definite knowledge, that all that was elevating to the character had descended from a remote antiquity, and that the superstitions with which it was blended were more recent inventions. The ancestors of the Greeks were probably more truly religious than the Greeks themselves. And as new revelations were not made by God, the primitive revelations were obscured by increasing darkness, until superstition formed the predominant element.
[Sidenote: Christianity the only conservative power.]
Hence the revelations of God can only be preserved in a written form, without change or comment. Christianity is perpetuated by the Bible. So long as the Bible exists Christianity will have converts, and will be able to struggle successfully with human degeneracy. The revelations originally made to the eastern nations became traditions. The standard was not preserved in a written form to which the people had access.
[Sidenote: Primitive life favors virtue.]
[Sidenote: Evils of prosperity.]