NeurdeinTHE STONE AGE: HUNTERS RETURNING FROM THE CHASEFrom the painting by Ferdinand CormonLARGER IMAGE
Neurdein
THE STONE AGE: HUNTERS RETURNING FROM THE CHASE
From the painting by Ferdinand Cormon
LARGER IMAGE
Need of Care in History
The other danger is that of sacrificing brightness and charm of presentation. When an effort is made to avoid generalisations, and to squeeze into the narrative as many facts as the space will admit, thenarrative is apt to become dry, because compression involves the curtailment of the personal and dramatic element. These are the rocks between which every historian has to steer. If he has ample space, he does well to prefer the course of giving all the salient facts and leaving the reader to generalise for himself. If, however, his space is limited, as must needs be the lot of those who write a universal history, the impossibility of going into minute detail makes generalisations inevitable, for it is through them that the result and significance of a multitude of minor facts must be conveyed in a condensed form.
New Minds and New Facts
All the greater, therefore, becomes the need for care and sobriety in the forming and setting forth every summarising statement and general conclusion or judgment. Probably the soundest guiding principle and best safeguard against error is to be found in shunning all preconceived hypotheses which seek to explain history by one set of causes, or to read it in the light of one idea. The habit of magnifying a single factor, such as the social factor, or the economic, or the religious, has been a fertile source of weakness in historical writing, because it has made the presentation of events one-sided, destroying that balance and proportion which it is the highest merit of any historian to have attained. Theory and generalisation are the life-blood of history. They make it intelligible. They give it unity. They convey to us the instruction which it always contains, together with so much of practical guidance in the management of communities as history is capable of rendering. But they need to be applied with reserve, and not only with an impartial mind, but after a painstaking examination of all the facts—whether or no they seem to make for the particular theory stated—and of all the theories which any competent predecessor has propounded.
For the historian, though he must keep himself from falling under the dominion of any one doctrine by which it is sought to connect and explain phenomena, must welcome all the light which any such doctrine can throw upon facts. Even if such a doctrine be imperfect, even if it be tainted by error, it may serve to indicate relations between facts, or to indicate the true importance of facts, which previous writers had failed to observe, or had passed too lightly over. It is thus that history always needs to be re-written. History is a progressive science, not merely because new facts are constantly being discovered, not merely because the changes in the world give to old facts a new significance, but also because every truly penetrating and original mind sees in the old facts something which had not been seen before.
A universal history is fitted to correct such defects as may be incident to that extreme specialism in historical writing which is now in fashion. The broad and concise treatment which a history of all times and peoples must adopt naturally leads to efforts to characterise the dominant features and tendency of an epoch or a movement, whether social, economic, or political.
The Side Streams of History
Yet even here there is a danger to be guarded against. No epoch, no movement, is so simple as it looks at first sight, or as one would gather from even the most honest contemporary writer. There is always an eddy at the side of the stream; and the stream itself is the resultant of a number of rivulets with different sources, whose waters, if the metaphor may be extended, are of different tints. Let any man study minutely a given epoch, such as that of the Reformation in Germany, or that of the Revolutionary War in America, and he will be surprised to find how much more complex were the forces at work than he had at first supposed, and on how much smaller a number of persons than he had fancied the principal forces did in fact directly operate. Or let any one—for this is perhaps the best, if the most difficult, method of getting at the roots of this complexity—study thoroughly and dispassionately the phenomena of his own time. Let him observe how many movements go on simultaneously, sometimes accelerating, sometimes retarding, one another, and mark how, the more fully he understands this complex interlacing, so much the less confident do his predictions of the future become. He will then realise how hard it is to find simple explanations and to deliver exact statements regarding critical epochs in the past.
MercierTHE FIRST INDUSTRIES: POTTERYFrom the painting by Ferdinand CormonLARGER IMAGE
Mercier
THE FIRST INDUSTRIES: POTTERY
From the painting by Ferdinand Cormon
LARGER IMAGE
MercierTHE FIRST INDUSTRIES: THE FORGEFrom the painting by Ferdinand CormonLARGER IMAGE
Mercier
THE FIRST INDUSTRIES: THE FORGE
From the painting by Ferdinand Cormon
LARGER IMAGE
The Main Stream of History
Nevertheless, the task of summarising and explaining is one to which the writer of a History of the World must address himself. If he has the disadvantage of limited space, he has the advantage of being able to assume the reader’s knowledge of what has gone before, and to invite the reader’s attention to what will come after. Thus he stands in a better position than does the writer who deals with one country or one epoch only for making each part of history illustrate other parts, for showing how similar social tendencies, similar proclivities of human nature, work similarly under varying conditions and are followed by similar, though never identical, results. He is able to bring out the essential unity of history, expunging from the reader’s mind the conventional and often misleading distinctions that are commonly drawn between the ancient, the mediæval, and the modern time. He can bring the contemporaneous course of events in different countries into a fruitful relation. And in the case of the present work, which dwells more especially on the geographical side of history, he can illustrate from each country in succession the influence of physical environment on the formation of races and the progress of nations, the principles which determine the action of such environment being everywhere similar, though the forms which that action takes are infinitely various.
Is there, it may be asked, any central thread in following which the unity of history most plainly appears? Is there any process in tracing which we can feel that we are floating down the main stream of the world’s onward movement? If there be such a process, its study ought to help us to realise the unity of history by connecting the development of the numerous branches of the human family.
One such process has already been adverted to and illustrated. It is the gradual and constant increase in man’s power over Nature, whereby he is emancipated more and more from the conditions she imposes on his life, yet is brought into an always closer touch with her by the discovery of new methods of using her gifts. Two other such processes may be briefly examined. One goes on in the sphere of time, and consists in the accumulation from age to age of the strength, the knowledge, and the culture of mankind as a whole. The other goes on in space as well as in time, and may be described as the contraction of the world, relatively to man.
The Great Increase of Population
The accumulation of physical strength is most apparent in the increase of the human race. We have no trustworthy data for determining the population, even of any one civilised country, more than a century and a half ago; much less can we conjecture that of any country in primitive or prehistoric times. It is clear, however, that in prehistoric times—say, six or seven thousand years ago, there were very few men on the earth’s surface. The scarcity of food alone would be sufficient to prove that; and, indeed, all our data go to show it. Fifty years ago the world’s population used to be roughly conjectured at from seven to nine hundred millions, two-thirds of them in China and India. It is now estimated at over fifteen hundred millions. That of Europe alone must have tripled within a century, and can hardly be less than four hundred millions. That of North America may have scarcely exceeded four or five millions in the time of Christopher Columbus, or at the date of the first English settlements, though we have only the scantiest data for a guess. It may now be 130,000,000, for there are over a hundred millions in the United States alone, about fifteen in Mexico, and eight in Canada, besides the inhabitants of Central America.
The Prolific Power of White PeoplePhysical & Intellectual Power
The increase has been most swift in the civilised countries, such as Britain, Germany, Russia, and the United States; but it has gone on in India also since India came under British rule (famines notwithstanding), and in the regions recently colonised by Europeans, such as Australia, Siberia, and Argentina, the disappearance of aborigines being far more than compensated for by the prolific power of the white immigrants. Some regions, such as Asia Minor and parts of North Africa, are more thinly peopled now than they were under the Roman Empire, and both China and Peru may have no larger population than they had five, or ten, or fifteen centuries ago. But taking the world at large, the increase is enormous, and will apparently continue. Even after the vacant cultivable spaces which remain in the two Americas,Northern Asia, and Australasia have been filled, the discovery of new modes of enlarging the annually available stock of food may maintain the increase. It is most conspicuous among the European races, and is, of course, due to the greater production in some regions of food, and in others of commodities wherewith food can be purchased. It means an immense addition to the physical force of mankind in the aggregate, and to the possibilities of intellectual force also—a point to be considered later. And, of course, it also means an immense and growing preponderance of the civilised white nations, which are now probably one half of mankind, and may, in another century, when they have risen from about five hundred to, possibly, one thousand or fifteen hundred millions, be nearly two-thirds.
Modern Man Stronger than his Ancestors
As respects the strength of the average individual man, the inquiry is less simple. Palæolithic man and neolithic man were apparently (though here and there may have been exceptions) comparatively feeble creatures, as are the relics of the most backward tribes known to us, such as the Veddas of Ceylon, the Bushmen, the Fuegians. Some savages, as, for instance, the Patagonians, are men of great stature, and some of the North American Indians possess amazing powers of endurance. The Greeks of the fifth centuryB.C., and the Teutons of the time of Julius Cæsar, had reached a high physical development. Pheidippides is said to have traversed one hundred and fifty miles on foot in forty-eight hours. But if we think of single feats of strength, feats have been performed in our own day—such as Captain Webb’s swimming across the Straits of Dover—equal to anything recorded from ancient or mediæval times. To swim across the much narrower Hellespont was then deemed a surprising exploit. Nor do we know of any race more to be commended for physical power and vigour of constitution than the American backwoodsmen of Kentucky or Oregon to-day. The swords used by the knights of the fifteenth century have usually handles too small for many a modern English or German hand to grasp.
America’s Mingled Races
Isolated feats do not prove very much, but there is good reason to believe that the average European is as strong as ever he was, and probably more healthy, at least if longevity is a test of health. One may fairly conclude that with better and more abundant food, the average of stature and strength has improved over the world at large, so that in this respect also the force of mankind as a whole has advanced. Whether this advance will continue is more doubtful. In modern industrial communities the law of the survival of the fittest may turn out to be reversed, for it is the poorer and lower sections of the population that marry at an early age, and have the largest families, while prudential considerations keep down the birth-rate among the upper middle-class. In Transylvania, for instance, the Saxons are dying out, because very few children are born to each pair, while the less educated and cultured Rumans increase fast. In North America, the Old New England stock of comparatively pure British blood has begun to be swamped by the offspring of the recent immigrants, mostly Irish or French Canadians; and although the sons of New England, who have gone West, continue to be prolific, it is probable that the phenomena of New England will recur in the Mississippi Valley, and that the newcomers from Europe who form the less cultivated strata of the population—Irish, Germans, Italians, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Rumans—will contribute an increasing proportion of the inhabitants. Some of these, and especially the Irish and the Germans and the Scandinavians, are among the best elements in the American population, and have produced men of the highest distinction. But the average level among them of versatile aptitude and of intellectual culture is slightly below that of the native Americans.
Now, the poorer sections are in most countries, though of course not always to the same extent, somewhat inferior in physical as well as in mental quality, and more prone to suffer from that greatest hindrance to physical improvement, the abuse of alcoholic drinks.
We come next to another form of the increase of human resources, the accumulation of knowledge, and of what may be called intellectual culture and capacity, for it is convenient to distinguish these two latter from knowledge.
PIONEERS OF MODERN CIVILISATIONThe discovery of precious metals is a great factor in progress. Seekers after gold are chief among the pioneers who help to carry civilisation into new lands.
PIONEERS OF MODERN CIVILISATION
The discovery of precious metals is a great factor in progress. Seekers after gold are chief among the pioneers who help to carry civilisation into new lands.
Inventions Mean Progress
In knowledge there has been an advance, not merely a tolerably steadyand constant advance, but one which has gone on with a sort of geometrical progression, moving the faster the nearer we come to our own time. Whatever may have befallen in the prehistoric darkness, history knows of only one notable arrest or setback in the onward march—that which marks the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries of the Christian era. Even this set-back was practically confined to Southern and Western Europe, and affected only certain departments of knowledge. It did not, save, perhaps, as regards a few artistic processes, extinguish that extremely important part of the previously accumulated resources of mankind which consisted in the knowledge of inventions. It is in respect of inventions, especially mechanical and physical or chemical inventions, that the accumulation of knowledge has been most noteworthy and most easy to appreciate.
A history of inventions is a history of the progress of mankind, of a progress to which every race may have contributed in primitive times, though all the later contributions have come from a few of the most civilised. Every great invention marks one onward step, as one may see by enumerating a few, such as the use of fire, cooking, metal working, the domestication of wild animals, the tillage of the ground, the use of plough and mattock and harrow and fan, the discovery of plants or trees useful for food or for medicine, the cart, the wheel, the water-mill (overshot, undershot, and turbine), the windmill, the distaff (followed long, long after by the spinning-wheel), the loom, dyestuffs, the needle, the potter’s wheel, the hydraulic press, the axe-handle, the spear, the bow, the shield, the war-chariot, the sling, the cross-bow, the boat, the paddle, the oar, the helm, the sail, the mariner’s compass, the clock, picture-writing, the alphabet, parchment, paper,printing, photography, the sliding keel, the sounding-lead, the log, the brick, mortar, the column, the arch, the dome, till we come down to explosives, the microscope, the cantilever, and the Röntgen rays.
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF A NEW CITYMany flourishing cities in South Africa, Australia, and America have grown up around the sites where the first gold-seekers pegged out their claims in unexploited territories and began digging for the precious metal.
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF A NEW CITY
Many flourishing cities in South Africa, Australia, and America have grown up around the sites where the first gold-seekers pegged out their claims in unexploited territories and began digging for the precious metal.
The history of the successive discovery, commixture, and applications of the metals, from copper and bronze down to manganese, platinum, and aluminium, or of the successive discovery and utilisation of sources of power—the natural sources, such as water and wind, the artificially procured, such as steam, gas, and electricity—or of the production and manufacture of materials available for clothing, wool, hair, linen, silk, cotton, would show how every step becomes the basis for another step, and how inventions in one department suggest or facilitate inventions in another. Recent discoveries in surgery and medicine, such as the use of antiseptics, tend to improve health and to prolong life; and in doing so, they increase the chances of further discoveries being made.
The Prolonging of Life
Who can tell what the world may have lost by the early death of many a man of genius? One peculiar line of discovery which at first seemed to have nothing to do with practice has proved to be of signal service; the working out of mathematical methods of calculation by means of which the mechanical and physical sciences have in recent times made a progress in their practical application undreamt of by those who laid the foundations of geometry and algebra many centuries ago. It may, indeed, be said that all the sciences need one another, and that none has been without its utilities for practice, since even that which deals with the heavenly bodies has been used for the computation of time, was used by the agriculturist before he had any calendars to guide him, and has been of supreme value to the navigator. It has also been suggested that an observation of sun spots may enable the advent of specially hot seasons, involving droughts, to be predicted.
Another kind of knowledge also grows by the joint efforts of many peoples, that which records the condition of men in the past and the present, including history, economics, statistics, and the other so-called social sciences. This kind also is useful for practice, and has led toimprovements by which nearly all nations have profited, such as an undebased currency, banking and insurance, better systems of taxation, corporations, and joint stock companies. With this we may couple the invention of improved political institutions.
The accumulation of knowledge, especially of scientific knowledge applied to the exploitation of the resources of Nature, means the accumulation of wealth—that is to say, of all the things which men need or use. The total wealth of the world must have at least quadrupled or quintupled within the last hundred years. Nearly all of it is in the hands or under the control of the civilised nations of European stock, among whom the United States stands foremost, both in rate of economic growth and in the absolute quantity of values possessed.
Knowledge Means Wealth
Two further observations belong to this part of the subject. One is that this stock of useful knowledge, the accumulation of which is the central fact of the material progress as well as of the intellectual history of mankind, now belongs to (practically) all races and states alike. Some, as we shall note presently, are more able to use it than others, but all have access to it. This is a new fact. It is true that most races have contributed something to the common stock; and that even among the civilised peoples, no one or two or three (except possibly the Greeks as respects ancient times) can claim to have contributed much more than the others. But in earlier ages there were peoples or groups of peoples who were for a time the sole possessors of inventions which gave them great advantages, especially for war. Superior weapons as well as superior drill enabled Alexander the Great, and afterward the Romans, to conquer most of the civilised world. Horses and firearms, with courage and discipline, enabled two Spanish adventurers to seize two ancient American empires with very scanty forces, as they enabled a handful of Dutch Boers to overcome the hosts of Mosilikatze and Dingaan. So there were formerly industrial arts known to or practised by a few peoples only. But now all inventions, even those relating to war, are available even to the more backward races, if they can learn how to use them or can hire white men to do so for them. The facilities of communication are so great, the means of publicity so abundant, that everything becomes speedily known everywhere.
Inventions are now Universal
The other observation is that there is now no risk that any valuable piece of knowledge will be lost. Every public event that happens, as well as every fact of scientific consequence, is put on record, and that not on a single stone or in a few manuscripts, but in books, of which so many copies exist that even the perishable nature of the material will not involve the loss of the contents, since, if these contents are valuable, they will be transferred to and issued in other books, and soad infinitum. Thus every process of manufacture is known to so many persons that while it continues to be serviceable it is sure to be familiar and transmitted from generation to generation by practice as well as by description. We must imagine a world totally different from the world we know in order to imagine the possibility of any diminution, indeed of any discontinuance of the increase, of this stock of knowledge which the world has been acquiring, and which is not only knowledge but potential wealth.
When one passes from knowledge considered as a body of facts ascertained and available for use to the thing we call intellectual aptitude or culture—namely, the power of turning knowledge to account and of producing results in spheres other than material—and when we inquire whether mankind has made a parallel advance in this direction, it becomes necessary to distinguish three different kinds of intellectual capacity.
The first may be called the power of using scientific methods for investigating phenomena, whether physical or social.
No Decrease of Knowledge is now Likely
The second is the power of speculation, applied to matters which have not hitherto been found capable of examination by the methods of science, whether observational, experimental, or mathematical. The third is the power of intellectual creation, whether literary or artistic.
The methods of scientific inquiry may almost be classed with the ascertained facts of science or with inventions, as being parts of the stock of accumulated knowledge built up by the labour ofmany generations. They are known to everybody who cares to study them, and can be learnt and applied by everybody who will give due diligence. Just as every man can be taught to fire a gun, or steer a ship, or write a letter, though guns, helms, and letters are the result of discoveries made by exceptionally gifted men, so every graduate in science of a university can use the methods of induction, can observe and experiment with a correctness which a few centuries ago even the most vigorous minds could scarcely have reached.
Original Thinkers are still Rare
Because the methods have been so fully explained and illustrated as to have grown familiar, a vast host of investigators, very few of whom possess scientific genius, are at work to-day extending our scientific knowledge. So the methods of historical criticism—so the methods of using statistics—are to-day profitably applied by many men with no such original gift as would have made them competent critics or statisticians had not the paths been cut by a few great men and trodden since by hundreds of feet. All that is needed is imitation—intelligent and careful imitation. Nevertheless, there remains this sharp contrast between knowledge of the facts of applied science and knowledge of the methods, that whereas there is no radical difference between the ability of one man and that of another to use a mechanical invention, such as a steam plough or an electric motor-car, there is all the difference in the world between the power of one intellect and another to use a method for the purposes of fresh discovery. Knowledge fossilised in a concrete invention or even in a mathematical formula is a sort of tool ready to every hand. But a method, though serviceable to everybody, becomes eminently fruitful only when wielded by the same kind of original genius as that which made discoveries by the less perfect methods of older days. This is apparent even in inquiries which seem to reside chiefly in collection and computation. Everybody tries nowadays to use statistics. Many people do use them profitably. But the people who by means of statistics can throw really fresh and brilliant light on a problem are as few as ever they were.
Advantage of Modern over Old Thinkers
When we turn to the exercise of speculative thought on subjects not amenable to strictly scientific—that is to say, to exact—methods, the gain which has come to mankind by the labour of past ages is of a different order. Metaphysics, ethics, and theology, to take the most obvious examples, are all of them the richer for the thoughts of philosophers in the past. A number of distinctions have been drawn, and a number of classifications made, a number of confusions, often verbal, have been cleared up, a number of fallacies detected, a number of technical terms invented, whereby the modern speculator enjoys a great advantage over his predecessor. His mind has been clarified, and many new aspects of the old problems have been presented, so that he is better able to see all round the old problems.
The Living Thought of Past Ages
None of the great thinkers, from Pythagoras down to Hegel, has left metaphysics where he found it. Yet none can be said to have built on the foundations of his predecessors in the same way as the mathematicians and physicists and chemists have added to the edifice they found. What the philosophers have done is to accumulate materials for the study of man’s faculties and modes of thinking, and of his ideas regarding his relations to the universe, while also indicating various methods by which the study may be pursued. Each great product of speculative thought is itself a part of these materials, and for that reason never becomes obsolete, as the treatises of the old physicists and chemists have mostly become. Aristotle, for instance, has left us books on natural history, on metaphysics and ethics, and on politics. Those on natural history are mere curiosities, and no modern biologist or zoologist needs them. Those on metaphysics and ethics still deserve the attention of the student of philosophy, though he may in a certain sense be said to have got beyond them. The treatise on politics still keeps its place beside Montesquieu, Burke, and Tocqueville. Or, to take a thinker who like Aristotle seems very far removed from us, though fifteen hundred years later in date, St. Thomas of Aquinum discusses questions from many of which the modern world has moved away, and discusses them by methods which many do not now use, starting from premises which many do not accept. But he marks a remarkable stage in the history of humanthought, and as a part of that history, and as an example of extraordinary dialectical ingenuity and subtlety, he remains an object of interest to those least in agreement with his conclusions.
Every Great Thinker Affects Others
Every great thinker affects other thinkers, and propagates the impulse he has received, though perhaps in a quite different direction. The teaching of Socrates was the starting point for nearly all the subsequent schools of Greek philosophy. Hume became the point of departure for Kant, who desired to lay a deeper foundation for philosophy than that which Hume seemed to have overturned. All these great ones have not only enriched us, but are still capable of stimulating us. But they have not improved our capacity for original thinking. The accumulation of scientific knowledge has, as already observed, put all mankind in a better position for solving further physical problems and establishing a more complete dominion over Nature. The accumulation of philosophic thought has had no similar effect. In the former case each man stands, so to speak, on the shoulders of his predecessors. In the latter he stands on his own feet. The value of future contributions to philosophy will depend on the original power of the minds that make them, and only to a small extent (except by way of stimulus) on what such minds may have drawn from those into whose labours they have entered.
Ebb-Tides of Intellectual Culture
When we come to the products of literary and artistic capacity, we find an even vaster accumulation of intellectual treasure available for enjoyment, but a still more marked absence of connection between the amount of treasures possessed and the power of adding fresh treasures to them. Since writing came into use, and, indeed, even in the days when memory alone preserved lays and tales, every age and many races have contributed to the stock. There have been ebbs and flows both in quantity and quality. The centuries betweenA.D.600 andA.D.1100 have left us very little of high merit in literature, though something in architecture; and the best of that little in literature did not come from the seats of Roman civilisation in Italy, France, Spain, and the East Roman Empire.
Some periods have seen an eclipse of poetry, others an eclipse of art or a sterility in music. Literature and the arts have not always flourished together, and musical genius in particular seems to have little to do with the contemporaneous development of other forms of intellectual power. The quantity of production bears no relation to the quality, not even an inverse relation; for the pessimistic notion that the larger the output the smaller is the part which possesses brilliant excellence, has not been proved. Still less does the amount of good work produced in any given area depend upon the number of persons living in that area. Florence, betweenA.D.1250 andA.D.1500 gave birth to more men of first-rate poetical and artistic genius than London has produced since 1250; yet Florence had in those two and a half centuries a population of probably only from forty to sixty thousand. And Florence herself has sinceA.D.1500 given birth to scarcely any distinguished poets or artists, though her population has been larger than it was in the fifteenth century.
MansellTHE MIND OF THE ANCIENT WORLDAristotle (B.C. 384–322) whose influence is greater in some lines than that of St. Thomas of Aquinum, who represents mediæval thought, 1500 years later.
Mansell
THE MIND OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Aristotle (B.C. 384–322) whose influence is greater in some lines than that of St. Thomas of Aquinum, who represents mediæval thought, 1500 years later.
The increase in the world’s stock of intellectual wealth is one of the most remarkable facts in history, for it represents a constant increase in the means of enjoyment. Such losses as there have been nearly all occurred during the Dark Ages; but there is now little riskthat anything of high literary or musical value will perish, though, of course, works of art, and especially buildings and carvings, suffer or vanish.
The increase does not, however, tend to any strengthening of the creative faculty. There is a greater abundance of models of excellence, models of which form the taste, afford a stimulus to sensitive minds, and establish a sort of technique with well-known rules. The principles of criticism are more fully investigated. The power of analysis grows, and the appreciation both of literature and of art is more widely diffused. Their influence on the whole community becomes greater, but the creative imagination which is needed for the production of original work becomes no more abundant and no more powerful. It may, indeed, be urged, though our data are probably insufficient for a final judgment, that the finer qualities of poetry and of pictorial and plastic art tend rather to decline under the more analytic habit of mind which belongs to the modern world. Simplicity, freshness, spontaneity come less naturally to those who have fallen under the pervasive influence of this habit.
MansellTHE MIND OF THE MEDIÆVAL WORLDSt. Thomas of Aquinum, 1500 years later than Aristotle, represents mediæval thought. St. Thomas, however, influences the life and thought of many thousands to-day.
Mansell
THE MIND OF THE MEDIÆVAL WORLD
St. Thomas of Aquinum, 1500 years later than Aristotle, represents mediæval thought. St. Thomas, however, influences the life and thought of many thousands to-day.
Effect of Thought on Mankind
There remains one other way in which the incessant play of thought may be said to have increased or improved the resources of mankind. Certain principles or ideas belonging to the moral and social sphere—to the moral sphere by their origin, to the social sphere by their results—make their way to a more or less general acceptance, and exert a potent influence upon human life and action. They are absent in the earliest communities of which we know, or are present only in germ. They emerge, sometimes in the form of customs gradually built up in one or more peoples, sometimes in the utterances of one gifted mind. Sometimes they spread impalpably; sometimes they become matter for controversy, and are made the battle-cries of parties. Sometimes they end by being universally received, though not necessarily put into practice. Sometimes, on the other hand, they continue to be rejected in one country, or by one set of persons in a country, as vehemently as they are asserted by another. As instances of these principles or ideas or doctrines, whatever one is to call them, the following may be taken: The condemnation of piracy, of slavery, and of treaty-breaking, of outrages on the bodies of dead enemies, of cruelty to the lower animals, of the slaughter of prisoners in cold blood, of polygamy, of torture to witnesses or criminals; the recognition of the duty of citizens to obey the laws, and of the moral responsibility of rulers for the exercise of their power, of the right of each man to hold his own religious opinion and to worship accordingly, of the civil (though not necessarily of the political) equality of all citizens; the disapproval of intoxication, the value set upon female chastity, the acceptance of the social and civil (to which some would add the political) equality of women.
Men who Contributed to ProgressSlavery was Destroyed by Sentiment
All these dogmas or ideas or opinions—some have become dogmas in all civilised peoples, others are rather to be described as opinions whose truth or worth is denied or only partially admitted—are the slow product of many generations. Most of them are due to what we may call the intelligence and sentiment of mankind at large, rather than to their advocacy by any prominent individual thinkers. The teachings of such thinkers have, of course, done much to advance them. Everybody would name Socrates and Confucius as among the men who have contributed to their progress; some would add such names as those of Mohammed andSt. Francis of Assisi. Christianity has, of course, made the largest contributions. How much is due to moral feeling, how much to a sense of common utility, cannot be exactly estimated. Economic reasonings and practical experience would have probably in the long run destroyed slavery, but it was sentiment that did in fact destroy it in the civilised States where it had longest survived.
How much these doctrines, even in the partial and imperfect application which most of them have secured, have done for humanity may be perceived by anyone who will imagine what the world would be if they were unknown. They form one of the most substantial additions made to what may be called the intellectual and moral capital with which man has to work this planet and improve his own life upon it. And the most interesting and significant crises in history are those which have turned upon the recognition or application of principles of this kind. The Reformation of the sixteenth century, the French Revolution, the War of Secession in the United States, are familiar modern examples.
Intellect Mightier than Population
Putting all these forms of human achievement together—the extension of the scientific knowledge of Nature with consequent mastery over her, the scientific knowledge of social phenomena in the past and the present, the records of philosophic speculation, the mass of literary and artistic products, the establishment, however partial and imperfect, of regulative moral and political principles—it will be seen that the accumulation of this vast stock of intellectual wealth has been an even more important factor than the increase of population in giving man strength and dignity over against Nature, and in opening up to him an endless variety of modes of enjoying life—that is to say, of making it yield to him the most which its shortness and his own physical infirmities permit. The process by which this accumulation has been carried along is the central thread of history. The main aim of a history of the world must be to show what and how each race or people has contributed to the general stock. To this aim political history, ecclesiastical history, economic history, the history of philosophy, and the history of science, are each of them subordinate, though it is only through them that the process can be explained.
In these last few pages intellectual progress has been considered apart from the area in which it has gone on, and apart from the conditions imposed on it by the natural features of that area. A few words are, however, needed regarding its relation to the surface of the earth. The movement of civilisation must be considered from the side of space as well as from that of time.
Contraction of the World
Space is a material element in the inquiry because it has divided the families of mankind from one another. Some families, such as the Chinese and the Peruvians, have developed independently, some, such as the South and West European peoples, in connection with, or perhaps in dependence on, the development of other races or peoples. Hence that which each achieved was in some cases achieved for itself only, in other cases for its neighbours as well. The contributions made by different races have—at any rate during the last four thousand years, and probably in earlier days also—been very unequal; yet none can have failed to contribute something if only by way of influencing the others. Inequality in progress would seem to have become more marked in the later than in the earlier periods. Indeed, some races, such as those of Australia, appear during many centuries, possibly owing to their isolation, to have made no progress at all. They may even have receded.
When we regard the evolution and development of man from the side of his relations to space, three facts stand out—the contraction of the world, the overflow of the more advanced races, and the consequent diffusion all over the world of what is called civilisation.
By the contraction of the world, I mean the greater swiftness, ease, and safety with which men can pass from one part of it to another, or communicate with one another across great intervening spaces. This has the effect of making the world smaller for most practical purposes, while the absolute distance in latitude and longitude remains the same. The progress of discovery is worth tracing, for it shows how much larger the small earth, which was known to the early nations, must have seemed to them than the whole earth, which we know, seems to us.
Genius of Two Cities, Header
THE ARTISTIC GENIUS OF TWO CITIESA COMPARISON OF THE NATIVE POETS & ARTISTS OF FLORENCE & LONDON“The quantity of production,” says Mr. Bryce, “bears no relation to the quality. Still less does the amount of good work produced in any given area depend upon the number of persons living in that area. Florence between A.D. 1250 and A.D. 1500 gave birth to more men of first-rate poetical and artistic genius than London has produced since 1250; yet Florence had in those two and a half centuries a population of probably only from forty to sixty thousand. And Florence herself has since A.D. 1500 given birth to scarcely any distinguished poets or artists, though her population has been larger than it was in the fifteenth century.”THE GENIUS OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF FLORENCE, 1250 TO 1500, FAR EXCEEDED THAT OF LONDON FROM 1250 TO THE PRESENT DAYPoets and Artists Born in Florence from 1250–1500Alberti, Leon Battista, 1404–1472, architect, painterAlbertinelli, Mariotto, 1474–1515, painterAndrea del Sarto, 1487–1531, painterAngelico da Fiesole, Fra Giovanni, 1387–1455, painterBotticelli, Alessandro, 1447–1510, painterCavalcanti, Guido, 1255–1300, poet, philosopherCimabue, Giovanni, 1240–1302, painterCredi, Lorenzo di, 1459–1537, painterDante, Alighieri, 1265–1321, poetDonatello, 1386–1466, sculptor and painterGhiberti, Lorenzo, 1378–1455, sculptorGhirlandajo, Domenico, 1449–1494, painterGozzoli, Benozzo, 1420–1498, painterLeonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, painter, sculptorLippi, Fra Filippo, 1412–1469, painterLippi, Filippino, 1459–1504, painterLorenzo, Don, 1370–1425, painterMedici, Lorenzo de, 1448–1492, poetOrcagnia, Andrea di Cione, 1329–1368? sculptor, painterPerugino, Vannucci Pietro, 1446–1524, painterPesellino, Francesco di, 1422–1457, painterPesello, Giuliano, 1367–1446, painter, sculptorPollajuolo, Antonio, 1429–1498, sculptor, painterPollajuolo, Piero, 1443–1496, sculptor, painterRobbia, Andrea della, 1437–1528, sculptorRobbia, Luca della, 1399–1482, sculptorRossi, Giovanni Battista de, 1494–1541, sculptor, painterRuccellai, Giovanni, 1475–1525, poetSpinello, Aretino, 1334–1410, painterUcello, Paolo, 1397–1475, painterVerocchio, Andrea, 1435–1488, sculptor, painterTHE LAST FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF FLORENTINE CULTURE HAVE BEEN LESS PRODUCTIVE THAN THE PRECEDING TWO AND A HALF CENTURIESPoets and Artists Born in Florence since 1500Allori, Christofano, 1577–1621, painterBronzino, Angelo, 1502–1572, painterCellini, Benvenuto, 1500–1571, sculptorCigoli, Luigi Cardi da, 1559–1613, painterCortona, Pietro da, 1596–1669, architect, painterDolci, Carlo, 1616–1686, painterDoni, Antonio Francesco, 1513–1574, authorFurini, Francesco, 1604–1646, painterLigozzi, Jacobino, 1543–1627, painterPoccetti, Bernardino, 1542–1612, painterSalviati, Francesco, 1510–1563, painterSan Giovanni, Giovanni da, 1599–1636, painterSanti di Tito, 1538–1603, painterTacco, Pietro, 1580–1640, sculptorVenusti, Marcello, 1515–1579, painterThe Only Great Poet Born in London from 1250–1500Chaucer, Geoffrey, 1328–1400Poets and Artists Born in London since 1500Blake, William, 1757–1827, poet and painterBrowning, Robert, 1812–1889, poetByron, Geo. Gordon Noel, Lord, 1788–1824, poetDefoe, Daniel, 1659–1731, authorFord, Edward Onslow, 1852–1901, sculptorGilbert, Alfred, R.A., 1854– —, sculptorGray, Thomas, 1716–1771, poetHogarth, William, 1697–1764, painterHood, Thomas, 1799–1845, poetHunt, William Holman, 1827–1910, painterJonson, Ben, 1573–1637, poet and dramatistKeats, John, 1795–1821, poetLamb, Charles, 1775–1834, essayistLinnell, John, 1792–1882, painterLucas, John Seymour, 1849– —, painterMilton, John, 1608–1674, poetMorland, George, 1763–1804, painterPope, Alexander, 1688–1744, poetRichmond, Sir William Blake, 1843– —, painterRossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828–1882, poet, painterRuskin, John, 1819–1900, author and art criticSpenser, Edmund, 1552–1599, poetStothard, Thomas, 1755–1834, painter, illustratorSwinburne, Algernon, 1837–1909, poetWalker, Frederick, 1840–1875, painterWatts, George F., 1817–1904, painter, sculptor
THE ARTISTIC GENIUS OF TWO CITIES
A COMPARISON OF THE NATIVE POETS & ARTISTS OF FLORENCE & LONDON
“The quantity of production,” says Mr. Bryce, “bears no relation to the quality. Still less does the amount of good work produced in any given area depend upon the number of persons living in that area. Florence between A.D. 1250 and A.D. 1500 gave birth to more men of first-rate poetical and artistic genius than London has produced since 1250; yet Florence had in those two and a half centuries a population of probably only from forty to sixty thousand. And Florence herself has since A.D. 1500 given birth to scarcely any distinguished poets or artists, though her population has been larger than it was in the fifteenth century.”
THE GENIUS OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF FLORENCE, 1250 TO 1500, FAR EXCEEDED THAT OF LONDON FROM 1250 TO THE PRESENT DAY
Poets and Artists Born in Florence from 1250–1500
THE LAST FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF FLORENTINE CULTURE HAVE BEEN LESS PRODUCTIVE THAN THE PRECEDING TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES
Poets and Artists Born in Florence since 1500
The Only Great Poet Born in London from 1250–1500
Poets and Artists Born in London since 1500