It is evident to us that if the Britonsconstituteda supreme power, when freed from the Roman yoke, it was only because they had possessed it before they became subject to that yoke. It is, therefore, safe to conclude that there was a supreme monarch in Britain and in Gaul as well as in Ireland; and since the Britons, after having lost for several centuries their autonomy of government, thought of reestablishing this supreme authority as soon as they were free to do so, it is clear that they attached a real importance to it, and that it entered as an essential element into the social fabric.
But what in reality was the authority of the Ard-Righ in Ireland, of the Penteyrn in Britain, of the supreme chief in Gaul, whose name, as usual, is not mentioned by Caesar?
First, it is to be remarked that a certain extent of territory was always under his immediate authority. Then, as far as we can gather from history, there was a reciprocity of obligations between the high power and the subordinate kings or chieftains, the former granting subsidies to the latter, who in turn paid tribute to support the munificence or military power of the former.
We know from the Irish annals that the dignity of Ard-Righ was always sustained by alliances with some of the provincial kings, to secure the submission of others, and we have a hint of the same nature in the passage, already quoted, from Caesar, as also taking place in Gaul.
We know also from the "Book of Rights" that the tributes and stipends consisted of bondsmen, silver shields, embroidered cloaks, cattle, weapons, corn, victuals, or any other contribution.
The Ard-Righ, moreover, convened theFeis, or general assembly of the nation, every third year; first at Tara, and after Tara was left to go to ruin in consequence of the curse of St. Ruadhan in the sixth century, wherever the supreme monarch established his residence.
The order of succession to the supreme power was the weakest point of the Irish constitution, and became the cause of by far the greatest portion of the nation's calamities. Theoretically the eldest son—some say the eldest relative—of the monarch succeeded him, when he had no blemish constituting a radical defect: the supreme power, however, alternating in two families. To secure the succession, the heir-apparent was always declared during the life of the supreme king; but this constitutional arrangement caused, perhaps, more crimes and wars than any other social institution among the Celts. The truth is that, after the heir-apparent, sustained by some provincial king, supplanted the reigning monarch, one of the provincial chieftains claimed the crown and succeeded to it by violence.
Yet the general rule that the monarch was to belong to the race of Miledh was adhered to almost without exception. One hundred and eighteen sovereigns, according to the moat accredited annals, governed the whole island from the Milesian conquest to St. Patrick in 432. Of these, sixty were of the family of Heremon, settled in the northern part of the island; twenty-nine of the posterity of Heber, settled in the south; twenty-four of that of Ir; three issued from Lugaid, the son of Ith. All these were of the race of Miledh; one only was afirbolg, or plebeian, and one a woman.
It is certainly very remarkable that for so long a time—nearly two thousand years, according to the best chronologists—Ireland was ruled by princes of the same family. The fact is unparalleled in history, and shows that the people were firmly attached to their constitution, such as it was. It extorted the admiration of Sir John Davies, the attorney-general of James I, and later of Lord Coke.
The functions of the provincial kings of Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, were in their several districts the same as those which the Ard-Righ exercised over the whole country. They also had their feuds and alliances with the inferior chieftains, and in peaceful times there was also a reciprocity of obligations between them. Presents were given by the superiors, tributes by the inferiors; deliberations in assembly, mutual agreement for public defence, wars against a common enemy, produced among them traditional rules which were generally followed, or occasional dissensions.
Sometimes a province had two kings, chiefly Munster, which was often divided into north and south. Each king had his heir-apparent, the same as the monarch. Indeed, every hereditary office had, besides its actual holder, its Tanist, with right of succession. Hence causes of division and feuds were needlessly multiplied; yet all the Celtic tribes adhered tenaciously to all those institutions which appeared rooted in their very nature, and which contributed to foster the traditional spirit among them.
For these various offices and their inherent rights were all derived from the universally prevailing family or clannish disposition. Genealogies and traditions ruled the whole, and gave, as we have seen, to their learned men a most important part and function in the social state; and thus what the Greek and Latin authors, Julius Caesar principally, have told us of the Celtic Druids, is literally true of the ollamhs in their various degrees.
But the clannish spirit chiefly showed itself in the authority and rights of every chieftain in his own territory. He was truly the patriarch of all under him, acknowledged as he was to be the head of the family, elected by all to that office at the death of his predecessor, after due consultation with the files and shanachies, to whom were intrusted the guardianship of the laws which governed the clan, and the preservation of the rights of all according to the strict order of their genealogies and the traditional rules to be observed.
The power of the chieftain was immense, although limited on every side by laws and customs. It was based on the deep affection of relationship which is so ardent in the Celtic nature. For all the clansmen were related by blood to the head of the tribe, and each one took a personal pride in the success of his undertakings. No feudal lord could ever expect from his vassals the like self-devotion; for, in feudalism, the sense of honor, in clanship, family affection, was the chief moving power.
In clanship the type was not an army, as in feudalism, but a family. Such a system, doubtless, gave rise to many inconveniences. "The breaking up of all general authority," says the Very Rev. Dean Butler (Introduction to Clyn's "Annals"), "and the multiplication of petty independent principalities, was an abuseincidenton feudalism; it wasinherentin the very essence of the patriarchal or family system. It began, as feudalism ended, with small independent societies, each with its own separate centre of attraction, each clustering round the lord or the chief, and each rather repelling than attracting all similar societies. Yet it was not without its advantages. If feudalism gave more strength to attack an enemy, clanship secured more happiness at home. The first implied only equality for the few, serfdom or even slavery for the many; the other gave a feeling of equality to all."
It was, no doubt, this feeling of equality, joined to that of relationship, which not only secured more happiness for the Celt, but which so closely bound the nobility of the land to the inferior classes, and gave these latter so ardent an affection for their chieftains. Clanship, therefore, imparted a peculiar character to the whole race, and its effect was so lasting and seemingly ineradicable as to be seen in the nation to-day.
Wherever feudalism previously prevailed, we remark at this time a fearful hatred existing between the two classes of the same nation; and the great majority of modern revolutions had their origin in that terrible antagonism. The same never existed, and could not exist, in Celtic Countries; and if England, after a conflict of many centuries, had not finally succeeded in destroying or exiling the entire nobility of Ireland, we should, doubtless, see to this very day that tender attachment between high and low, rich and poor, which existed in the island in former ages.
This, therefore, not only imparted a peculiar character to the people, but also gave to each subordinate chieftain an immense power over his clan; and it is doubtful if the whole history of the country can afford a single example of the clansmen refusing obedience to their chief, unless in the case of great criminals placed by their atrocities under the ban of society in former times, and under the ban of the Church, since the establishment of the Christian religion among them.
The previous observations give us an insight into the state of the people in Celtic countries. Since, however, we know that slavery existed among them, we must consider a moment what kind of slavery it was, and how soon it disappeared without passing, as in the rest of Europe, through the ordeal of serfdom.
At the outset, we cannot, as some have done, call slaves the conquered races and poor Milesians, who, according to the ancient annals of Ireland, rose in insurrection and established a king of their own during what is supposed to be the first century of the Christian era. Theattacotts, as they were called, were not slaves, but poor agriculturists obliged to pay heavy rents: their very name in the Celtic language means "rent-paying tribes or people." Their oppression never reached the degree of suffering under which the Irish small farmers of our days are groaning. For, according to history, they could in three years prepare from their surplus productions a great feast, to which the monarch and all his chieftains, with their retinue, were invited, to be treacherously assassinated at the end of the banquet. The great plain of Magh Cro, now Moy Cru, near Knockma, in the county of Galway, was required for such a monster feast; profusion of meats, delicacies, and drinks was, of course, a necessity for the entertainment of such a number of high-born and athletic guests, and the feast lasted nine days. Who can suppose that in our times the free cottiers of a whole province in Ireland, after supporting their families and paying their rent, could spare even in three years the money and means requisite to meet the demands of such an occasion? But the simple enunciation of the fact proves at least that the attacotts were no slaves, but at most merely an inferior caste, deprived of many civil rights, and compelled to pay taxes on land, contrary to the universal custom of Celtic countries.
Caesar, it is true, pretends that real slavery existed among the Celts in Gaul. But a close examination of that short passage in his "Commentaries," upon which this opinion is based, will prove to us that the slavery he mentions was a very different thing from that existing among all other nations of antiquity.
"All over Gaul," he says, "there are two classes of men who enjoy all the honors and social standing in the state—the Druids and the knights. The plebeians are looked upon almost as slaves, having no share in public affairs. Many among them, loaded with debt, heavily taxed, or oppressed by the higher class, give themselves in servitude to the nobility, and then,in hos eadem omnia sunt jura quoe dominis in servos, the nobles lord it over them as, with us, masters over their slaves."
It is clear from this very passage that among the Celts no such servile class existed as among the Romans and other nations of antiquity. The plebeians, as Caesar calls them, that is to say, the simple clansmen, held no office in the state, were not summoned to the councils of the nation, and, on that account, were nobodies in the opinion of the writer. But the very name he gives them -plebs- shows that they were no more real slaves than the Roman plebs. They exercised their functions in the state by the elections, and Caesar did not know they could reach public office by application to study, and by beingordainedto the rank of file, or shanachy, or brehon, in Ireland, at least: and this gave them a direct share in public affairs.
He adds that debt, taxation, and oppression, obliged a great many to give themselves in servitude, and that then they were among the Celts what slaves were among the Romans.
This assertion of Caesar requires some examination. That there were slaves among the Gaels, and particularly in Ireland, we know from several passages of old writers preserved in the various annals of the country. St. Patrick himself was a slave there in his youth, and we learn from his history and other sources how slaves were generally procured, namely, by piratical expeditions to the coast of Britain or Gaul. The Irishcurraghs, in pagan times, started from the eastern or southern shores of the island, and, landing on the continent or on some British isle, they captured women, children, and even men, when the crew of the craft was strong enough to overcome them; the captives were then taken to Ireland and sold there. They lost their rights, were reduced to the state of "chattels," and thus became real slaves. Among the presents made by a superior to an inferior chieftain are mentioned bondsmen and bondsmaids. We cannot be surprised at this, since the same thing took place among the most ancient patriarchal tribes of the East, and the Bible has made us all acquainted with the male and female servants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are also called bondsmen and bondswomen. Among the Celts, therefore, slaves were of two kinds: those stolen from foreign tribes, and those who had, as it were, sold themselves, in order to escape a heavier oppression: these latter are the ones mentioned by Caesar.
The number of the first class must always have been very small, at least in Ireland and Britain, since the piratical excursions of the Celtic tribes inhabiting those countries were almost invariably undertaken in curraghs, which could only bring a few of these unfortunate individuals from a foreign country.
As to the other class, whatever Caesar may say of their number in Gaul, making it composed of the greatest part of the plebeians or common clansmen, we have no doubt but that he was mistaken, and that the number of real slaves reduced to that state by their own act must have always been remarkably small.
How could we otherwise account for the numerous armies levied by the Gaulish chieftains against the power of Rome, or by the British and Irish lords in their continual internecine wars? The clansmen engaged in both cases were certainly freemen, fighting with the determination which freedom alone can give, and this consideration of itself suffices to show that the great mass of the Celtic tribes was never reduced to slavery or even to serfdom.
Moreover, the whole drift of the Irish annals goes to prove that slavery never included any perceptible class of the Celtic population; it always remained individual and domestic, never endangering the safety of the state, never tending to insurrection and civil disorder, never requiring the vigilance nor even the care of the masters and lords.
The story of Libran, recorded in the life of St. Columbkill, is so pertinent to our present purpose, and so well adapted to give us a true idea of what voluntary slavery was among the Celtic tribes, that we will give it entire in the words of Montalembert:
"It was one day announced to Columba in Iona that a stranger had just landed from Ireland, and Columba went to meet him in the house reserved for guests, to talk with him in private and question him as to his dwelliing-place, his family, and the cause of his journey. The stranger told him that he had undertaken this painful voyage in order, under the monastic habit and in exile, to expiate his sins. Columba, desirous of trying the reality of his repentance, drew a most repulsive picture of the hardships and difficult obligations of the new life. 'I am ready,' said the stranger, 'to submit to the most cruel and humiliating conditions that thou canst command me.' And, after having made confession, he swore, still upon his knees, to accomplish all the requirements of penitence. 'It is well,' said the abbot: 'now rise from thy knees, seat thyself, and listen. You must first do penance for seven years in the neighboring island of Tirce, after which I will see you again.' 'But,' said the penitent, still agitated by remorse, 'how can I expiate a perjury of which I have not yet spoken? Before I left my country I killed a poor man. I was about to suffer the punishment of death for that crime, and I was already in irons, when one of my relatives, who is very rich, delivered me by paying the composition demanded. I swore that I would serve him all my life; but, after some days of service, I abandoned him, and here I am notwithstanding my oath.' Upon this the saint added that he would only be admitted to the paschal communion after his seven years of penitence.
"When these were completed, Columba, after having given him the communion with his own hand, sent him back to Ireland to his patron, carrying a sword with an ivory handle for his ransom. The patron, however, moved by the entreaties of his wife, gave the penitent his pardon without ransom. 'Why should we accept the price sent us by the holy Columba? We are not worthy of it. The request of such an intercessor should be granted freely. His blessing will do more for us than any ransom.' And immediately he detached the girdle from his waist, which was the ordinary form in Ireland for the manumission of captives or slaves. Columba had, besides, ordered his penitent to remain with his old father and mother until he had rendered to them the last services. This accomplished, his brothers let him go, saying, 'Far be it from us to detain a man who has labored seven years for the salvation of his soul with the holy Columba!' He then returned to Iona, bringing with him the sword which was to have been his ransom. 'Henceforward thou shaft be called Libran, for thou art free and emancipated from all ties,' said Columba; and he immediately admitted him to take the monastic vows."
Servitude, therefore, continued in Ireland after the establishment of Christianity; but how different from the slavery of other European countries, which it took so many ages to destroy, and which had to pass through so many different stages! Although we cannot know precisely when servitude was completely abolished among the Celts, the total silence of the contemporary annals on the subject justifies the belief that the Danes, on their first landing, found no real slaves in the country; and, if the Danes themselves oppressed the people wherever they established their power, they could not make a social institution of slavery. It had never been more than a domestic arrangement; it could not become a state affair, as among the nations of antiquity.
In clannish tribes, therefore, and particularly among the Celts, the personal freedom of the lowest clansman was the rule, deprivation of individual liberty the exception. Hence the manners of the people were altogether free from the abject deportment of slaves and villeins in other nations—a cringing disposition of the lower class toward their superiors, which continues even to this day among the peasantry of Europe, and which patriarchal nations have never known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century, were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of the people, so different from that of the lower orders in feudal countries. They soon even came to like it; and the supercilious followers of Strongbow readily adopted the dress, the habits, the language, and the good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whom they found themselves settled.
And it is proper here to show what social dispositions and habits were the natural result of the clan system, so as to become characteristic of the race, and to endure forever, as long at least as the race itself. The artless family state of the sept naturally developed a peculiarly social feeling, much less complicated than in nations more artificially constituted, but of a much deeper and more lasting character. In the very nature of the mind of those tribes there must have been a great simplicity of ideas, and on that account an extraordinary tenacity of belief and will. There is no complication and systematic combination of political, moral, and social views, but a few axioms of life adhered to with a most admirable energy; and we therefore find a singleness of purpose, a unity of national and religious feeling, among all the individuals of the tribe.
As nothing is complicated and systematized among them, the political system must be extremely simple, and based entirely on the family. And family ideas being as absolute as they are simple, the political system also becomes absolute and lasting; without improving, it is true, but also without the constant changes which bring misery with revolution to thoughtful, reflective, and systematic nations. What a frightful amount of misfortunes has not logic, as it is called, brought upon the French! It was in the name of logical and metaphysical principles that the fabric of society was destroyed a hundred years ago, to make room for what was then called a more rationally-constituted edifice; but the new building is not yet finished, and God only knows when it will be!
The few axioms lying at the base of the Celtic mind with respect to government are much preferable, because much more conducive to stability, and consequently to peace and order, whatever may have been the local agitation and temporary feuds and divisions. Hence we see the permanence of the supreme authority resting in one family among the Celts through so many ages, in spite of continual wrangling for that supreme power. Hence the permanence of territorial limits in spite of lasting feuds, although territory was not invested in any particular inheriting family, but in a purely moral being called the clan or sept.
As for the moral and social feelings in those tribes, they are not drawn coldly from the mind, and sternly imposed by the external law, in the form of axioms and enactments, as was the case chiefly in Sparta, and as is still the case in the Chinese Empire to-day; but they gush forth impetuously from impulsive and loving hearts, and spread like living waters which no artificially-cut stones can bank and confine, but which must expand freely in the land they fertilize.
Deep affection, then, is with them at the root of all moral and social feelings; and as all those feelings, even the national and patriotic, are merged in real domestic sentiment, a great purity of morals must exist among them, nothing being so conducive thereto as family affections.
Above all, when those purely-natural dispositions are raised to the level of the supernatural ones by a divinely-inspired code, by the sublime elevation of Christian purity, then can there be found nothing on earth more lovely and admirable. Chastity is always attractive to a pure heart; patriarchal guilelessness becomes sacred even to the corrupt, if not altogether hardened, man.
Of course we do not pretend that this happy state of things is without its exceptions; that the light has no shadow, the beauty no occasional blemish. We speak of the generality, or at least of the majority, of cases; for perfection cannot belong to this world.
Yet mysticism is entirely absent from such a moral and religious state, on account, perhaps, of the paucity of ideas by which the heart is ruled, and perhaps also on account of the artless simplicity which characterizes every thing in primitively-constituted nations. And, wonderful to say, without any mysticism there is often among them a perfect holiness of life, adapting itself to all circumstances, climates, and associations. The same heart of a young maiden is capable of embracing a married life or of devoting itself to religious celibacy; and in either case the duties of each are performed with the most perfect simplicity and the highest sanctity. Hence, how often does a trifling circumstance
determine for her her whole subsequent life, and make her either the mother of a family or the devoted spouse of Christ! Yet, the final determination once taken, the whole after-life seems to have been predetermined from infancy as though no other course could have been possible.
There is no doubt that sensual corruption is particularly engendered by an artificial state of society, which necessarily fosters morbidity of imagination and nervous excitability. A primitive and patriarchal life, on the contrary, leads to moderation in all things, and repose of the senses.
Herein is found the explanation of the eagerness with which the Celts everywhere, but particularly in Ireland, as soon as Christianity was preached to them, rushed to a life of perfection and continence. St. Patrick himself expressed his surprise, and showed, by several words in his "Confessio," that he was scarcely prepared for it. "The sons of Irishmen," he says, "and the daughters of their chieftains, want to become monks and virgins of Christ." We know what a multitude of monasteries and nunneries sprang up all over the island in the very days of the first apostle and of his immediate successors. Montalembert remarks that, according to the most reliable and oldest documents, a religious house is scarcely mentioned which contained less than three thousand monks or nuns. It appeared to be a consecrated number; and this took place immediately after the conversion of the island to Christianity, while even still a great number were pagans.
"There was particularly," says St. Patrick, "one blessed Irish girl, gentle born, most beautiful, already of a marriageable age, whom I had baptized. After a few days she came back and told me that a messenger of God had appeared to her, advising her to become a virgin of Christ, and live united to God. Thanks be to the Almighty! Six days after, she obtained, with the greatest joy and avidity, what she wished. The same must be said of all the virgins of God; their parents—those remaining pagans, no doubt—instead of approving of it, persecute them, and load them with obloquy; yet their number increases constantly; and, indeed, of all those that have been thus born to Christ,I cannot give the number, besides those living in holy widowhood, and keeping continency in the midst of the world.
"But those girls chiefly suffer most who are bound to service; they are often subjected to terrors and threats—from pagan masters surely—yet they persevere. The Lord has given his holy grace of purity to those servant-girls; the more they are tempted against chastity, the more able they show themselves to keep it."
Does not this passage, written by St. Patrick, describe precisely what is now of every-day occurrence wherever the Irish emigrate? The Celts, therefore, were evidently at the time of their conversion what they are now; and it has been justly remarked that, of all nations whose records have been kept in the history of the Catholic Church, they have been the only ones whose chieftains, princes, even kings, have shown themselves almost as eager to become, not only Christians, but even monks and priests, as the last of their clansmen and vassals. Every where else the lower orders chiefly have furnished the first followers of Christ, the rich and the great being few at the beginning, and forming only the exception.
The evident consequence of this well-attested fact is that the pagan Celts, even of the highest rank, generally led pure lives, and admired chastity. But there is something more. Morality rests on the sense of duty; the deeper that sense is imprinted in the heart of man, the more man becomes truly moral and holy. It can be almost demonstrated that scarcely any thing gives more solidity to the sense of duty than a simple and patriarchal life. Their views of morals being no more complicated than their views of any thing else; being accustomed to reduce every thing of a spiritual, moral nature to a few feelings and axioms, as it were, but at the same time becoming strongly attached to them on account of the importance which every man naturally bestows on matters of that sort; what among other nations forms a complicated code of morality more or less pure, more or less corrupt, for the nations of which we speak becomes compressed, so to speak, in a nutshell, and, the essence remaining always at the bottom, the idea of duty grows paramount in their minds and hearts, and every thing they do is illumined by that light of the human conscience, which, after all, is for each one of us the voice of God. False issues do not distract their minds, and give a wrong bias to the conscience. Hence Celtic tribes, by their very nature, were strictly conscientious.
So preeminently was this the case with them that spiritual things in their eyes became, as they truly are, real and substantial. Hence their religion was not an exterior thing only. On the contrary, exterior rites were in their eyes only symbolical, and mere emblems of the reality which they covered.
It should, therefore, be no matter of surprise to us to find that for them religion has always been above all things; that they have always sacrificed to it whatever is dear to man on earth. They all seem to feel as instinctively and deeply as the thoroughly cultivated and superior mind of Thomas More did, that eternal things are infinitely superior to whatever is temporal, and that a wise man ought to give up every thing rather than be faithless to his religion.
From the previous remarks, we map conclude, with Mr. Matthew Arnold, who has applied his critical and appreciative mind to the study of the Celtic character, that "the Celtic genius has sentiment as its main basis, with love of beauty, charm, and spirituality for its excellence," but, he adds, "ineffectualness and self-will for its defects." On these last words we may be allowed to make a few concluding observations.
If by "ineffectualness" is understood that, owing to their impulsive nature, the Celts often attempted more than they could accomplish, and thus failed; or that on many occasions of less import they changed their mind, and, after a slight effort, did not persevere in an undertaking just begun, there is no doubt of the truth of the observation. But, if the celebrated writer meant to say that this defect of character always accompanied the Celts in whatever they attempted, and that thus they were constantly foiled and never successful in any thing; or, still worse, that, owing to want of perseverance and of energy, they too soon relaxed in their efforts, and that every enterprise and determination on their part became "ineffectual"—we so far disagree with him that the main object of the following pages will be to contradict these positions, and to show by the history of the race, in Ireland at least, that, owing precisely to their "self-will," they were neverultimately unsuccessfulin their aspirations; but that, on the contrary, they have always in the endeffectedwhat with their accustomed perseverance and self-will they have at all times stood for. At least this we hope will become evident, whenever they had a great object in view, and with respect to things to which they attached a real and paramount importance.
"The old prophecies are being fulfilled; Japhet takes possession of the tents of Sem."—(De Maistre,Lettre au Comte d'Avaray.)
The following considerations will at once demonstrate the importance and reality of the subject which we have undertaken to treat upon:
It was at the second birth of mankind, when the family of Noah, left alone after the flood, was to originate a new state of things, and in its posterity to take possession of all the continents and islands of the globe, that the prophecy alluded to at the head of this chapter was uttered, to be afterward recorded by Moses, and preserved by the Hebrews and the Christians till the end of time.
Never before has it been so near its accomplishment as we see it now; and the great Joseph de Maistre was the first to point this out distinctly. Yet he did not intend to say that it is only in our times that Europe has been placed by Providence at the head of human affairs; he only meant that what the prophet saw and announced six thousand years ago seems now to be on the point of complete realization.
It will be interesting to examine, first, in a general way, how the race of Japhet, to whom Europe was given as a dwelling place, gradually crept more and more into prominence after having at the outset been cast into the shade by the posterity of the two other sons of Noah.
The Asiatic and African races, the posterity of Sem and Cham, appear in our days destitute of all energy, and incapable not only of ruling over foreign races, but even of standing alone and escaping a foreign yoke. It has not been so from the beginning. There was a period of wonderful activity for them. Asia and Africa for many ages were in turn the respective centres of civilization and of human history; and the material relics of their former energy still astonish all European travellers who visit the Pyramids of Egypt, the obelisks and temples of Nubia and Ethiopia, the immense stone structures of Arabia, Petraea and Persia, as well as the stupendous pagodas of Hindostan. How, under a burning sun, men of those now-despised races could raise structures so mighty and so vast in number; how the ancestors of the now-wretched Copt, of the wandering Bedouin, of the effete Persian, of the dreamy Hindoo, could display such mental vigor and such physical endurance as the remains of their architectural skill and even of their literature plainly show, is a mystery which no one has hitherto attempted to solve. Nothing in modern Europe, where such activity now prevails, can compare with what the Eastern and Southern races accomplished thousands of years ago. Ethiopia, now buried in sand and in sleep, was, according to Heeren, the most reliable observer of antiquity in our days, a land of immense commercial enterprise, and wonderful architectural skill and energy. In all probability Egypt received her civilization from this country; and Homer sings of the renowned prosperity of the long-lived and happy Ethiopians. It is useless to repeat here what we have all learned in our youth of Babylon and Nineveh, in Mesopotamia; of Persepolis, in fertile and blooming Iran; of the now ruined mountain-cities of Idumaea and Northern Arabia; of Thebes and Memphis; of Thadmor, in Syria; of Balk and Samarcand, in Central Asia; of the wonderful cities on the banks of the Ganges and in the southern districts of the peninsula of Hindostan.
That the ancestors of the miserable men who continue to exist in all those countries were able to raise fabrics which time seems powerless to destroy, while their descendants can scarcely erect huts for their habitation, which are buried under the sand at the first breath of the storm, is inexplicable, especially when we take into consideration the principles of the modern doctrine of human progress and the indefinite perfectibility of man.
At the time when those Eastern and Southern nations flourished, the sons of Japhet had not yet taken a place in history. Silently and unnoticed they wandered from the cradle of mankind; and, if scripture had not recorded their names, we should be at a loss to-day to reach back to the origin of European nations. Yet were they destined, according to prophecy, to be the future rulers of the world; and their education for that high destiny was a rude and painful one, receiving as they did for their share of the globe its roughest portion: an uninterrupted forest covering all their domain from the central plateau which they had left to the shores of the northern and western ocean, their utmost limit. Many branches of that bold race—audax Japeti genus—fell into a state of barbarism, but a barbarism very different from that of the tribes of Oriental or Southern origin. With them degradation was not final, as it seems to have been with some branches at least of the other stems. They were always reclaimable, always apt to receive education, and, after having existed for centuries in an almost savage state, they were capable of once more attaining the highest civilization. This the Scandinavian and German tribes have satisfactorily demonstrated.
It may even be said that all the branches of the stock of Japhet first fell from their original elevation and passed through real barbarism, to rise again by their own efforts and occupy a prominent position on the stage of history; and this fact has, no doubt, given rise to the fable of the primitive savage state of all men.
That the theory is false is proved at once by the sudden emergence of all Eastern nations into splendor and strength without ever having had barbarous ancestors. But, when they fall, it seems to be forever; and it looks at least problematical whether Western intercourse, and even the intermixture of Western blood, can reinvigorate the apathetic races of Asia. As to their rising of their own accord and assuming once again the lead of the world, no one can for a moment give a second thought to the realization of such a dream.
But how and when did the races of Japhet appear first in history? How and when did the Eastern races begin to fall behind their younger brethren?
A great deal has been written, and with a vast amount of dogmatism, concerning the Pelasgians and their colonizations and conquests on the shore and over the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. But nothing can be proved with certainty in regard to their origin and manners, their rise and fall. In fact, European history begins with that of Greece; and the struggle between Hellas and Persia is at once the brilliant introduction of the sons of Japhet on the stage of the world—the Trojan War being more than half fabulous.
The campaigns of Alexander established the supremacy of the West; and from that epoch the Oriental races begin to fall into that profound slumber wherein they still lie buried, and which the brilliant activity of the Saracens and Moslems broke for a time—now, we must hope, passed away forever.
The downfall of the far Orient was not, however, contemporaneous with the supremacy of Greece over the East. The great peninsula of India was still to show for many ages an astonishing activity under the successive sway of the Hindoos, the Patans, the Moguls, and the Sikhs. China also was to continue for a long time an immense and prosperous empire; but the existence of both these countries was concentrated in themselves, so that the rest of the world felt no result from their internal agitations. Life was gradually ebbing away in the great Mongolian family, and the silent beatings of the pulse that indicated the slow freezing of their blood could neither be heard nor felt beyond their own territorial limits.
Nothing new in literature and the arts is visible among them after the appearance, on their western frontiers, of the sons of Japhet, led by the Macedonian hero. It now seems established that Sanscrit literature, the only, but really surprising proof of intellectual life in Hindostan, is anterior to that epoch.
As to China, the great discoveries which in the hands of the European races have led to such wonderful results, the mariner's compass, the printing-press, gunpowder, paper, bank-notes, remained for the Chinese mere toys or without further improvements after their first discovery. It is not known when those great inventions first appeared among them. They had been in operation for ages before Marco Polo saw them in use, and scarcely understood them himself. Europeans were at that time so little prepared for the reception of those material instruments of civilization, that the publication of his travels only produced incredulity with regard to those mighty engines of good or evil.
But those very proofs of Oriental ingenuity establish the fact of a point of suspension in mental activity among the nations which discovered them. Its exact date is unknown; but every thing tends to prove that it took place long ages ago, and nothing is so well calculated to bring home to our minds the great fact which we are now trying to establish as the simple mention of the two following phenomena in the life of the most remote Eastern nations:
The genius of the East was at one time able to produce literary works of a philosophical and poetical character unsurpassed by those of any other nation. The most learned men of modern times in Europe, when they are in the position to become practically acquainted with them, and peruse them in their original dialects, can scarcely find words to express their astonishment, intimately conversant as they are with the masterpieces of Greece and Rome and of the most polite Christian nations. They find in Sanscrit poems and religious books models of every description; but they chiefly find in them an abundance, a freshness, a mental energy, which fill them with wonder; yet all those high intellectual endowments have disappeared ages ago, no one knows how nor precisely when. It is clear that the nation which produced them has fallen into a kind of unconscious stupor, which has been its mental condition ever since, and which to-day raises puny Europe to the stature of a giant before the fallen colossus.
Again: many ages ago the Mongolian family in China invented many material processes which have been mainly the clause of the rise of Europe in our days. They were really the invention of the Chinese, who neither received them from nor communicated them to any other nation. Ages ago they became known to us accidentally through their instrumentality; but, as we were not at that time prepared for the adoption of such useful discoveries, their mention in a book then read all over Europe excited only ridicule and unbelief. As soon as the Western mind mastered them of itself, they became straightway of immense importance, and gave rise, we may say, to all that we call modern civilization. But in the hands of the Chinese they remained useless and unproductive, as they are to this day, although they may now see what we have done with them. Their mind, therefore, once active enough to invent mighty instruments of material progress, long ago became perfectly incapable of improving on its own invention, so that European vessels convey to their astonished sight what was originally theirs, but so improved and altered as to render the original utterly contemptible and ridiculous. And, what is stranger still, though they can compare their own rude implements with ours, and possess a most acute mind in what is materially useful, they cannot be brought to confess Western superiority. The advantage which they really possessed over us a thousand years ago is still a reality to their blind pride.
But it is time to return to the epoch when the race of Japhet began to put forth its power.
Roman intellectual and physical vigor was the first great force which gave Europe that preeminence she has never since lost; and there was a moment in history when it seemed likely that a nation, or a city rather, was on the point of realizing the prophetic promise made to the sons of Noah.
But an idolatrous nation could not receive that boon; and the Roman sway affected very slightly the African and Asiatic nations, whatever its pretensions may have been.
For, when Rome had subdued what she called Europe, Asia, and Africa —the whole globe—whenever she found that her empire did not reach the sea, she established there posts of armed men; colonies were sent out and legions distributed along the line; even in some places, as in Britain, walls were constructed, stretching across islands, if not along continents. Whatever country had the happiness of being included between those limits belonged to "the city and the world" -urbi et orbi; beyond was Cimmerian darkness in the North, or burning deserts in the South. Mankind had no right to exist outside of her sway; and, if some roaming barbarians strayed over the inhospitable confines, they could not complain at having their existence swept off from the field of history, so unworthy were they of the name of men. Science itself, the science of those times, had to admit such ideas and dictate them to polished writers. Hence, according to the greatest geographers, mankind could exist neither in tropical nor in arctic regions; and Strabo, dividing the globe into five zones, declared that only two of them were habitable.
We now know how false were those assertions, and indeed how circumscribed was the power of ancient Rome. She pretended to universal as well as to eternal dominion; but she deceived herself in both cases. Under her sway the races of Japhet were not "to dwell in the tents of Sem." She was not worthy of accomplishing the great prophecy which is now under our consideration.
It is, however, undoubtedly due to her that the children of Japhet became the dominant race of the globe, and the Eastern nations, once so active and so powerful, were overshadowed by her glory, and had already fallen into that slumber which seems eternal.
Egypt was reduced so low that a victorious Roman general had only to appear on her borders to insure immediate submission.
Syria and Mesopotamia were fast becoming the frightful deserts they are to-day. Persia dared not move in the awful presence of a few legions scattered along the Tigris; and, if, later on, the Parthian kings made a successful resistance against Rome, it was only owing to the abominable corruption of Roman society at the time; but, in fact, Iran had fallen to rise no more, save spasmodically under Mohammedan rule.
The fact is, that, in the subsequent flood of barbarians which for centuries overwhelmed and destroyed the whole of Europe, we behold, on all sides, streams of Northern European races, members of the same family of Japhet. It was the Goths that ruined Palestine even in the time of St. Jerome. If side by side with Northern nations the Huns appeared, no one knows precisely whence they came. Attila called himself King of the Scythians and the Goths, as well as grandson of Nimrod. He came with his mighty hosts from beyond the Danube; this is all that can be said with certainty of his origin.
The East, therefore, was already dead, and could furnish no powerful foe against that Rome which it detested. It is even in this Oriental supineness that we can find a reason for the duration of the inglorious empire of Constantinople. Rome and the West, though far more vigorous, were overwhelmed by barbarians of the same original stock sent by Providence to "renew its youth like that of the eagle." Constantinople and the East continued for a thousand years longer to drag out their feeble existence, because the far Orient could not send a few of its tribes to touch their walls and cause them to crumble into dust. It is even remarkable that the armies of Mohammed and his successors, in the flush of their new fanaticism, did not dare for a long time to attack the race of Japhet settled on the Bosporus. From their native Arabia they easily overran Egypt and Northern Africa, Syria and Palestine, Mesopotamia and Persia. But Asia Minor and Thrace remained for centuries proof against their fury, and, whenever their fleets appeared in the Bosporus, they were easily defeated by the unworthy successors of Constantine and Theodosius. This fact, which has not been sufficiently noticed, shows conclusively that the energy imparted by Mohammedanism to Oriental nations would have lasted but a short time, and encountered in the West a successful resistance, had not the Turks appeared on the scene, destroyed the Saracen dynasties, and, by infusing the blood of Central Asia into the veins of Eastern and Southern fanatics, prolonged for so many ages the sway of the Crescent over a large portion of the globe.
This was the turning-point in human affairs between the East and the West. We do not write history, and cannot, consequently, enter into details. It is enough to say that a new element, strengthened by a long struggle with Moslemism, was to give to the West a lasting preponderance which ancient Rome could not possess, and whose developments we see in our days. This new element was the Christian religion, solidly established on the ruins of idolatry and heresy; far more solidly established, consequently, than under the Christian emperors of Rome, while paganism still existed in the capital itself.
The Christian religion, which was to make one society of all the children of Adam; which, at its birth, took the name of universal or catholic (whereas previously all religions had been merely national, and therefore very limited in their effects upon mankind at large); which alone was destined to establish and maintain, through all ages, spite of innumerable obstacles, a real universal sway over all nations and tribes—the Christian religion alone could give one race preponderance over others until all should become, as it were, merged intoone.
At first it seemed that Providence destined that high calling for the Semitic branch of the human family. The Hebrew people, trained by God himself, through so many ages, for the highest purposes, finally gave birth to the great Leader who, by redeeming all men, was to gather them all into one family. This Leader, our divine Lord, himself a Hebrew, chose twelve men of the same nation to be the founders of the great edifice. We know how, the divine plan was frustrated by the stubbornness of the Jews, whorejected the corner-stone of the building, to be themselves dashed against its walls and destroyed. The sons of Japhet were substituted for the sons of Sem, Europe for Asia, Rome for Jerusalem; and the real commencement of the lasting preponderance of the West dates from the establishment of the Christian Church in Rome.
See how, from Christianity, the Caucasian race, as we call it, came to be the rulers of the world. A mighty revolution, wherein all the branches of that great race become intermingled and confused, sweeps over the Roman Empire. Every thing seems destroyed by the onset of the barbarians, in order that they, by receiving the only true religion which they found without seeking among those whom they conquered, might become worthy of fulfilling the designs of Providence. All the barriers are overthrown that one institution, called Christendom, may take form and harmony. There are to be no more Romans, nor Gauls, nor Iberians, nor Germans, nor Scandinavians—only Christians. It is a renewed and reinvigorated race of Japhet, imbued with true doctrine, clothed with solid virtues, animated with an overwhelming energy. It is a colossal statue, moulded by popes, chiselled by bishops, set on its feet by Christian emperors and kings, chiefly by Charlemagne, Alfred, Louis IX, and Otho. Is there not perfect unity between those great men divided by such intervals of space and time? Is not their work a universal republic, whose foundations they laid with their own hands?
The rest of the world, still prostrate at the feet of foolish idols, or carried away by human errors and delusions, sinks deeper and deeper into apathy and corruption, while Europe is reserved for mighty purposes in centuries to come. A stream is gathering in the West, which is destined to sweep down and bear away all obstacles, and to cover every continent with its regenerating waters.
That stream is modern European history. It has been recorded in thousands of volumes, many of which, however, are totally unreliable fables of those mighty events. Those only have had the key to its right interpretation who have followed the Christian light given from above, as a star, to guide the wonderful giant in his course. The chief among them were: of old, Augustine, the author of the "City of God;" Orosius, the first to condense the annals of the world into the formula, "divina providentia regitur mundus et homo;" Otho of Freysinguen, in his work "De mutatione rerum;" and the author of "Gesta Dei per Francos;" in modern times, Bossuet and his followers.
The destruction of idolatry was of such vital importance in the regeneration of the world that it sufficed as a dogma to imbue a great branch of the Semitic family with a strong life for several centuries. Moslemism has no other truth to support it than the assertion of God's unity; but, by waging war against the Trinity and, consequently, against the very foundation of Christian belief, it became, for a long time, the greatest obstacle to the dissemination of truth. It prevented the early triumph of the Caucasian race, and galvanized, for a time, the nations of the East and South into a false life.
The ravages of the Tartar hordes under Genghis Khan and his successors were in no sense life, but only a fitful madness.
The European stream was thus impeded in its flood by the new activity of Arabia and Turkomania. It was a struggle in which victory, for a long time, hung in the balance: it required many crusades of the whole of Western Europe; the long heroism of the Spanish and Portuguese nations; the incessant attack and defence of the Templars and the Knights of Malta over the whole surface of the Mediterranean Sea, to secure the preponderance of the West. It was finally decided at Lepanto. Since that great day, Mohammedanism has gradually declined, and there now seems no insurmountable obstacle to the free flowing of the European stream.
This stream, however, is not homogeneous: far from it. Had the Christian element always remained alone in it, or at least supreme, long ere this the victory would have been secure forever, and the Catholic missions alone would have fulfilled the old prophecies and given to the sons of Japhet possession of the tents of Sem—a glorious work so well begun in the East, in India and Japan; in the West, in the whole of America!
But, unfortunately, the policy of the papacy, which was also that of Charlemagne, and of other great Christian sovereigns, was not continued. The Norman feudalism of England and Northern France; the Caesarism of Germany and the Capetian kings; the heresies brought from the East by the Crusaders; the paganism and neo-Platonism of the revival of learning; above all, the fearful upheaval of the whole of Europe by the Protestant schism and heresy, troubled the purity of that great Japhetic stream, and has retarded to our days its momentous and overwhelming impetuosity.
Wonderful, indeed, that in the whole of Europe one small island alone was forever stubbornly opposed to all these aberrations, which has stood her ground firmly, and, we may now say, successfully. The reader already knows that the demonstration of this stupendous fact is the object of the present volume.
Having stood aloof so long from all those wanderings from the right path, she has scarcely appeared in the field of European history save as the victim of Scandinavia and of England. But there is a time in the series of ages for the appearance of all those called by Providence to enact a part. What is a myriad of years for man is not a moment for God; and it would seem that we had reached at last the epoch wherein Ireland is to be rewarded for her steadfastness and fidelity.
The impetus now imparted to European power becomes each day more clearly defined, and, to judge by recent appearances, Irishmen are about to play no inglorious part in it. The power of expansion, so characteristic of them from the beginning, has of late years assumed gigantic proportions. The very hatred of their enemies, the measures adopted by their oppressors to annihilate them, have only served to give them a larger field of operations and a much stronger force. It is not without purpose that God has spread them in such numbers over so many different islands and continents. It is theirs to give to the spread of Japhetism among the sons of Sem its right direction and results. The other races of Western Europe would, had they been left to themselves alone, have converted that great event into a curse for mankind, and perhaps the forerunner of the last calamities; but the Irish, having kept themselves pure, are the true instruments in the hands of God for righting what is wrong and purifying what is corrupt.
Had Europe remained in its entirety as steadfast to the true Christian spirit as the small island which dots the sea on its western border, what an incalculable happiness it would have proved to the whole globe, resting as it does to-day under the lead of the race of Japhet !
But where now are the pure waters which should vivify and fertilize it? Innumerable elements are floating in their midst which can but destroy life and spread barrenness everywhere.
Let us see what Europeans believe; what are the motives which actuate them; what they propose to themselves in disseminating their influence and establishing their dominion; what the real, openly-avowed purposes of the leaders are in the vast scheme which embraces the whole earth; what becomes of foreign races as soon as they come in contact with them.
The bare idea causes the blood of the Christian to curdle in his veins, and he thanks God that his life shall not be prolonged to witness the successful termination of the vast conspiracy against God and humanity.
For, in our days, spite of so many deviations in the course of the great European stream, it is truly a matter of wonder what power it has obtained over the globe in its mastery, its control, its unification. What, then, would have been the result had its course remained constantly under Christian guidance!
It is only a short time since the whole earth has become known to us; and we may say that, for Europe, it has been enough only to know it in order to become at once the mistress of it; such power has the Christian religion given her! The first circumnavigation of the globe under Magellan took place but yesterday, and to-day European ships cover the oceans and seas of the world, bearing in every sail the breath and the spirit of Japhetism. The stubborn ice-fields of the pole can scarcely retard their course, and hardy navigators and adventurous travellers jeopardize their lives in the pursuit of merely theoretical notions, void almost of any practical utility.
The most remote and, up to recently, inaccessible parts of the earth are as open to us, owing to steam, as were the countries bordering on the Mediterranean to the ancients. The Argonautic expedition along the southern coast of the Black Sea was in its day an heroic undertaking. The Phoenician colonies established in Africa and Spain by a race trying for the first time in the history of man to launch their ships on the ocean in order to trade with Northern tribes as far as Ireland and the Baltic, though never losing sight of the coast; the attempts of the Carthaginians to circumnavigate Africa; the three years' voyages of the ships of Solomon in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, were one and all far more hazardous undertakings than the long voyages of our steamships across the Indian Ocean to Australia, or around Cape Horn to California and the South Sea Islands, through the Southern and Northern Pacifics.
From all large seaboard cities in any part of the globe, lines of steamers now bear men to every point of the compass, so that the very boards at the entrances of offices, to be found everywhere for the accommodation of travellers, are as indices of works on universal geography.
And the European, still unsatisfied with all he has achieved in speed and comfort, looks to more rapid and easier modes of conveyance. Scientific men have been for many years engaged in experiments by means of which they hope to replace the ocean by the atmosphere as a public highway for nations; and the currents of air rushing in every direction with the velocity of the most rapid winds may yet be used by our children instead of rivers, thenceforth deserted, and of ocean-streams at last left empty and waste as before the voyages of Columbus and De Gama.
All this constitutes a positive and stern fact staring us in the face, and giving to the Caucasian race a power of which our ancestors would never have dreamed. And if all this is to be the only result of man's activity—the attainment of merely worldly purposes—God, whose world this is, may look down on it from heaven as on the work of Titans preparing to attack his rights, and He will know how to turn all these mighty efforts of the sons of Japhet to his own holy designs. He may use a small branch of that great race, preserved purposely from the beginning unsullied by mere thrift, and prepared for his work by long persecution, a consideration which we shall examine later on.
Meanwhile the great mass of the European family is allowed to go on in its wonderful undertaking; and we turn to it yet a short while.
As if to favor still more directly this work of the unification of the globe, Providence has placed at the disposal of the prime movers in the enterprise pecuniary means which no one could have foreseen a few years ago.
In 1846, on a small branch of one of the great rivers of California, a colonist discovers gold carried as dust with the sand, and soon a great part of the country is found to be immensely rich in the precious metal. That first discovery is followed by others equally important, and after a few years gold is found in abundance on both sides of a long range of the Rocky Mountains; again in the north, nearly as high up as the arctic circle. North America, in fact, is found to be a vast gold deposit. Australia soon follows, and that new continent, whose exploration has scarcely begun, is said to be dotted all over by large oases of auriferous rock and gravel. In due time the same news comes from South Africa, where it has been lately reported that diamonds, in addition to gold, enrich the explorer and the workman.
It is needless to speak of mines of silver and mercury after gold and diamonds; but the result is that the European race is straightway provided with an enormous wealth commensurate with the immense commercial and manufacturing enterprises required for the establishment of its supremacy all over the globe.
There is work, therefore, for all the ships afloat; others and larger ones have to be constructed; and modern engineering skill places on the bosom of the deep sea vessels which few, indeed, of the greatest rivers can accommodate in their channels and bays.
All these means of dominion and dissemination once procured, the great work clearly assigned to the race of Japhet may proceed.
Intercourse with the most savage and uncivilized tribes is eagerly cultivated even at the risk of life. New avenues to trade are opened up in places where men, still living in the most primitive state, have few if any wants; and it is considered as part of the keen merchant's skill to fill the minds of these uncouth and unsophisticated barbarians with the desire of every possible luxury. Have we not lately heard that the savages of the Feejee Islands, who were a few years ago cannibals, have now a king seeking the protection of England, if not the annexation of his kingdom to the British empire?
Yes, the material civilization of Europe, the new discoveries of steam and magnetism, the untiring energy of men aiming at universal dominion, give to the Caucasian race such a superiority over the rest of mankind that the time seems to be fast approaching when the manners, the dress, the look even of Europeans, will supersede all other types, and spread everywhere the dead level of our habits.
This fact has already been realized in America, North and South. Geographers may give lengthened descriptions of the original tribes which still possess a shadow of existence; foreign readers may perhaps imagine that the continent is still in the quiet possession of rude and uncivilized races roaming at will over its surface, and allowing some Europeans to occupy certain cities and harbors for the purposes of trade and barter. We know that nothing could be more erroneous. The Europeans are the real possessors, north and south; the Indians are permitted to exist on a few spots contracting year by year into narrower limits. The northern and larger half of the continent is chiefly the dwelling-place of the most active branch of the bold race of Japhet. The first of the iron lines which are to connect its Atlantic and Pacific coasts has recently been laid. Cities spring up all along its track: the harbors of California, Oregon, and Alaska, will soon swarm much more than now with hardy navigators ready to europeanize the various groups of islands scattered over the Pacific. Already in the Sandwich and Tahiti groups the number of Europeans is greatly in excess of that of the natives. Those natives who, in the Philippine Islands, have been preserved by the Catholic Church, will too soon disappear from the surface of the largest ocean of the globe.
Then Eastern Asia will be attacked much more seriously than ever before. Since its discovery, Europeans could only reach it through the long distances which divide Western Europe from China and Japan. But within a short time numerous lines of steamships, starting from San Francisco, Portland, Honolulu, and many other harbors yet nameless, will land travellers in Yokohama, Hakodadi, Yeddo, Shanghai, Canton, and other emporiums of Asia.
Nor will the Americans of the United States be alone in the race. Several governments are preparing to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, or Tehuantepec, as has already been done with that of Suez; and soon ships starting from Western Europe will, with the aid of steam, traverse the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans successively as two large lakes to land their passengers and cargoes on the frontiers of China and India.
The Japanese, those Englishmen of the East, are ready to adopt European inventions. They are indeed already expert in many of them, and seem on the alert to conform to European manners. It is said that the nation is divided into two parties on that very question of conformity; before long they will all be of one mind. What an impulse will thus be given to the europeanization of China and Tartary!
In Hindostan, England has fairly begun the work; but the climate of the peninsula offering an obstacle to the introduction of a large number of men of the Caucasian race, it will be more probably from the foot of the Himalaya Mountains that the spread of the race will commence. Already the English and the Russians are concentrating their forces on the Upper Indus. The question merely is, Which nation will be the first to inoculate the dreamy sons of Sem with the spirit and blood of Japhet? It seems that Central Asia will form the rallying-ground for the last efforts of the Titans to unify their power, as it was thence that the power of God first dispersed them.
A glance at the rest of the world as witnessing the same astonishing spectacle, and we pass on. Australia is clearly destined to be entirely European; the number of natives, already insignificant compared to that of the colonists, will soon disappear utterly. Turkey, the Caucasus, Bokhara, are rapidly taking a new shape and adopting Western manners.
The African triangle offers the greatest resistance, owing to its deserts, its terrible climate, and the savage or childish disposition of its inhabitants. Yet the attempt to europeanize it is at this moment in earnest action at its southernmost cape, all along its northern line skirting the Mediterranean, in Egypt chiefly, and also through the Erythrean Gulf in the east; finally, on many points of its western shore, which, strange to say, lags behind, although it formed the first point of discovery by the Portuguese.
To condense all we have just said to a few lines: it looks as though all races of men, except the Caucasian, were undergoing a rapid process of unification or disappearance.
In America certainly the phenomenon is most striking.
In Asia all the native races seem palsied and unable to hold together in the presence of the Russians and the English.
In Africa, Mohammedanism still preserves to the natives a certain activity of life, but even that is fast on the wane.
Finally, in Australia and the Pacific Ocean the disappearance of the natives is still more striking and more sudden in its action than even in America.
This state of things did not exist two hundred years ago; and when the Crusades began the reverse was the case.
We cannot believe that this immense, universal fact is merely an exterior one resulting from new appliances, new comforts, new outward habits; what is called material civilization. We cannot believe that it is merely the dress, houses, culinary regime, the popular customs of those numerous foreign tribes or nations which are undergoing such a wonderful change. This outward phenomenon supposes asubstratum, an interior reality of ideas and principles worthy our chief attention as the real cause of all those exterior changes; a cause, nevertheless, which is scarcely thought of in the public estimate of this mighty revolution.
It is the mind of Europe: it is the belief or want of belief, the religious or irreligious views, the grasping ambition, the headlong desire of an impossible or unholy happiness, the reckless sway of unbridled passions, which try to spread themselves among all nations, and bring them all up, or rather down, to the level of intoxicated, tottering, maddened Europe.
If the monstrous scheme succeeds, there will be no more prayer in the villages of the devout Maronites, no more submission to God in the mountains of Armenia, no more simplicity of faith among the shepherds of Chaldea, no more purity of life among the wandering children of Asiatic deserts.
Side by side with truth and virtue many errors and monstrosities will doubtless disappear, but not to be replaced with what is much better.
The muezzin of the mosques will no longer raise his voice from the minarets at noon and nightfall; the simple Lama will no longer believe in the successive incarnations of Buddha; no longer will the superstitious Hindoo cast himself beneath the car of Juggernaut; many another such absurdity and crime will, let us hope, disappear forever. But with what benefit to mankind? After all, is not superstition even better for men than total unbelief? And, when the whole world is reduced to the state of Europe, when what we daily witness there shall be reproduced in all continents and islands, will men really be more virtuous and happy?
We must not think, however, that there is nothing truly good in the stupendous transformation which we have endeavored to sketch. If it really be the accomplishment of the great prophecy mentioned by us at the beginning of this chapter, it is a noble and a glorious event. God will know how to turn it to good account, and it is for us to hail its coming with thankfulness.
There is no doubt that the actual superiority of the race of Japhet, by force of which this wonderful revolution is being accomplished, is the result of Christianity, that is, of Catholicity. It is because Europe, or the agglomeration of the various branches of the race of Japhet, was for fifteen hundred years overshadowed by the true temple of God, his glorious and infallible Church; it is because the education of Europeans is mainly due to the true messengers of God, the Popes and the bishops; it is because the mind of Europe was really formed by the great Catholic thinkers, nurtured in the monasteries and convents of the Church; it is, finally, because Europeans are truly the sons of martyrs and crusaders, that on them devolves the great mission of regenerating and blending into one the whole world.
But, unfortunately, the work is spoiled by adjuncts in the movement which have grown up in the centuries preceding us. In fact, the whole European movement has been thrown on a wrong track, which we have already pointed out as mere material civilization.
Still, in spite of all the dross, there is a great deal of pure metal in the Japhetic movement. Underlying it all runs the doctrine that all men are sprung from the same father, and that all have had the same Redeemer; that, consequently, all are brethren, and that there should be no place among them for castes and classes, as of superior and inferior beings; that the God the Christians adore is alone omnipotent; that idolatry of all kinds ought to disappear, and that ultimately there should be but one flock and one shepherd.
These are saving truths, still held to in the main by the race of Japhet, in spite of some harsh and opposing false assertions, truths which the Catholic Church alone teaches in their purity, and which are yet destined, we hope, to make one of all mankind.
But her claims are yet far from being acknowledged by the leaders in the movement. And who are those leaders? A question all-important.
England is certainly the first and foremost. Endowed with all the characteristics of the Scandinavian race, which we shall touch upon after, deeply infused with the blood of the Danes and Northmen, she has all the indomitable energy, all the systematic grasp of mind and sternness of purpose joined to the wise spirit of compromise and conservatism of the men of the far North; she, of all nations, has inherited their great power of expansion at sea, possessing all the roving propensities of the old Vikings, and the spirit of trade, enterprise, and colonization, of those old Phoenicians of the arctic circle.