History of Civilisation in Europe
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French historian and statesman, was born of Huguenot parents at Nimes on October 4, 1787. The liberal opinions of his family did not save his father from the guillotine in 1794, and the mother fled to Geneva, where Guizot was educated. He went to Paris in the later days of the Empire, and engaged himself at once in literature and politics. His lectures on the History of Civilisation delivered in 1828, 1829, and 1830, during his professorship at the University of Paris, revealed him as a historian with a rare capacity for mastering the broad essential truths of history, co-ordinating them, and expounding them with vigour and impressiveness. His first series of lectures was on "The History of Civilisation in Europe," a masterly abstract of a colossal subject; the second on "The History of Civilisation in France." From 1830 to 1848 Guizot occupied high offices of State, ultimately becoming prime minister; in 1848, like his master Louis Philippe, he had to fly the country. He died on September 12, 1874.
I.--The Nature of Civilisation
The subject I propose to consider is the civilisation of Europe--its origins, its progress, its aims, its character. The fact of civilisation belongs to what is called the philosophic portion of history; it is a vague, obscure, complex fact, very difficult, I admit, to explain and describe, but none the less requiring explanation and description. It is, indeed, the greatest historical fact, to which all others contribute; it is a kind of ocean which makes the wealth of a people, and in the bosom of which all the elements of the people's life, all the forces of its existence, are joined in unity.
What, then, is civilisation--this grave, far-reaching precious reality that seems the expression of the entire life of a people? It seems to me that the first and fundamental fact conveyed by the word civilisation is the fact of progress, of development. But what is this progress? What is this development? Here is the greatest difficulty of all.
The etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer. It tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to men. But is this all? Have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of the word? France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was acknowledged to be the most civilised country in Europe; yet in respect of purely civil progress France was then greatly inferior to some other European countries, Holland and England, for example. Another development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life, of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas.
These two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the development of individual activity--are intimately related to each other. Their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the great social advances have profited the individual mind.
So much for civilisation in general. It is now necessary to point out the essential difference between modern European and other civilisations. The characteristic of other civilisations has been unity; they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. In Egypt and India, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the Greek and Phoenician republics, the democratic principle. The civilisation of modern Europe, on the contrary, is diverse, confused, stormy; all the forms and principles of social organisation theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, co-exist in it; there are infinite gradations of liberty, wealth, influence. All the various forces are in a state of constant struggle; yet all of them have a certain family resemblance, as it were, that we cannot but recognise.
These diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise with the rest. The outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the European over the other civilisations. European civilisation, if I may say so, has entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of God.