INTRODUCTION.
By a natural movement, in not one of its great elements has civilization gone eastward an inch since authentic history began. To demonstrate this simple and comprehensive fact is the motive of the following work, and all the great leading events of time are the means employed. Berkeley has suggested a grand outline in his significant stanza, but neither he nor any other author has hitherto attempted to define the acts, and portray the connected scenes, which constitute the one great drama of human progress.
Artistic beauty, martial force, scientific invention, and universal amelioration, have thus far illustrated the great progressional law of successive predominance, and these, we believe, will ultimately be consummated in the supreme sway of perfect civilization. We are led to this view by taking a catholic survey of every nation that has risen above the historical horizon; in which course we observe that all are alike the subjects of Providence, each in its time and place being furnished with a part to act, and a destiny to fulfill. Considered in this light, it may be reverently said that human history is a sacred drama, of which God is the poet, each transitional age an act, humanity the hero, and the discriminating annalist a prophetical interpreter.
But this work is not so much the defense of a theory as it is the display of facts, and the deduction of a general principle consequent thereupon. The travels of men, and the trade-currents of God, move spontaneously and perpetually toward the West. The opposite direction is always "down East," while all healthful expansion and improvement is "out West." The great eastern turnpike, canal, or railway, was never built, nor has a great eastern ship yet been launched on the deep. If the unnatural name has of late been given to a colossal craft, the misnomer is indicated by the fact, that her first trip is appointed to be a western one, and to terminate in our most eastern harbor, where the most stupendous development of western commerce just begins. All great enterprises by land and by sea have ever commenced in the East, and augmented both their efficiency and worth through a continuous unfolding toward the setting sun. The latest race is evermore the best, the last half of each great age is most prolific in progressive elements, and the west end of every great town throughout Europe and America is the growing end.
An introduction ought to stimulate rational curiosity, while it justifies the labors of the author, by furnishing his reader with a succinct programme of the conditions of the subject. We consider the age of Pericles to have terminated four centuries before, and that of Augustus five centuries after, the birth of Christ. The age of Leo X. began in the fifth century, with the fall of the Western Empire, and ended in the sixteenth, soon after the final downfall of the East. The seventeenth century was the great era of colonial empire, and then began the age of Washington. It is not man but God who has thrown these clear lines of demarcation over the entire mass of humanity, as innumerable dates, names, and events, alluded to in the following work will show. Copious references to authorities are purposely omitted, as we wish to render the pages as compact as possible with unbroken thought, but the facts themselves can easily be verified by the enlightened reader, or confuted if they are incorrect.
The service we herein attempt is to portray the relations of the present to the past and future, by tracing all the mightiest elements of our civilization to their respective sources, and by indicating the antecedents of those national heroes whose names shine upon the forehead of our age, and whose accumulated productions constitute the grandest inheritance of the remotest posterity. The mighty princes of literature of all climes, "who still rule our spirits from their urns," are summoned into stately procession, followed by the great masters of art, science, philosophy, and religion, each one bearing his own distinct physiognomy, and taking precedence in historical order. It is in this natural course that we would mold numerous and diversified materials into one homogeneous whole. The work is an abbreviated nomenclature of celebrated personages and events, a bold sketch of the great historical ages, not divided according to arbitrary chronological dates, or a formal geographical plan, but embracing all authentic periods in their indissoluble continuity of development, illustrated by the multifarious monuments which it has successively produced and passed. The philosophy of history resides not in isolated events and detached facts, but flows without interruption down the lapse of ages, the accompaniment of human destiny, and the life of ennobling actions; at once penetrating all incidents, and perpetuating all progress.
In the present undertaking, the author proposes in general terms to remind the reader of the various masterpieces which the past has bequeathed, rather than minutely to describe their authors, or criticise their merits. It is not our object to pronounce a judgment upon the characters and achievements of the great actors on the stage we survey, but simply to point out the manifest unity and advancement of the great drama as it proceeds. All minute details are omitted, in order to present as distinctly as possible the main outlines. As we contemplate the vast patrimony of knowledge, whence it came, and whither it leads, we watch the twilight on eastern hills as it brightens into midday, and then goes flooding over the broad expanse of the West. The consecutive series of historical events, though they transpire wide apart, and extend through a long lapse of ages, are never absolutely separated, but in the presence of the great Father are intimately joined in a sublime association, and mutually co-operate for the highest good of the greatest number. Different currents may seem to flow from the most diverse sources, and in opposite directions, but they are all tributaries to one centralizing channel, wherein flows forward forever the accumulating aggregate of human fortunes, under the divine control. A papal decree was once obtained condemning Galileo's doctrine touching the revolution of the earth; but that did not arrest pre-ordained planetary motion, nor prevent all sublunary beings from turning with it. Fortunately the tide of improvement has already rolled onward so far, and with such increased might, that Oxford is just as impotent to stay the ameliorating progress of mankind as was the Vatican, and both must advance with a diviner momentum, or be outstripped by a younger competitor in the heavenly course.
Without an intelligent faith in the divine purpose to incite and control perpetual progress toward the perfection of mankind, history is an insoluble enigma, a huge pile of detached fragments, and the great drama of humanity must forever remain devoid of all proper results. But even Aristotle expressed a worthier view, in saying that every end is great; it is so, because it forms the beginning of something greater. In nature, nothing actually perishes. Death is birth, and the dissolution of every organization is but the development and visible advancement of a fresher type of being. Naturally every substance is conservative of all the vitality it can possibly sustain, and when any given form apparently perishes, it is but to reveal a still higher life that lay concealed behind it, awaiting the moment of its appointed succession to power. Thus decay and renewal constitute a perpetual struggle, identical life rising through multifarious death toward the supreme in freedom and power. In proportion to the graduated scale of existence, lesser or greater, lower or higher, this law applies with more palpable justness, and is best exemplified in the unpausing progress which humanity makes in its predetermined career.
In tracing the evolution of those laws which rule in the various realms of simultaneous growth, we see that, while all are connected, and always act upon each other, some one of them, for the time being, must be preponderant, in order to impart an impulse to the rest, though, in its appointed time, another may be called to succeed, and receive superior expansion. It is that which develops the most advanced nation of a given era, and constitutes the moving centre of progressive civilization. It is the connecting bond and quickening impulse of those heroes who can marshal motives as well as armies, and make the grandeur of their own nationality the introduction and nutriment of a grander nation to come. The vanguard of the human race, invested with and impelled by this indomitable energy, moves in the appointed orbit, losing neither momentum nor effulgence as it advances, but rather increasing both. If we inquire as to the area and agency of the chief progression in the domain of human history, it will be found that Japhet has been the constant leader, Europe the intermediate track, and America the manifest goal. From all the premises furnished by experience, and the fullest assurance of faith, we must infer that this continent, ruled by the Republic upon its centre, is destined to garner the selected seed from antecedent harvests, that it may sow world-wide the germs of ultimate and universal worth.
Every great epoch has its master impulse, which acts as the precursor of a yet greater one to succeed it. A multitude of hearts may throb with ardent impatience, and myriads of hands may be ready to act, but not one profitable pulsation is there, nor an effective achievement, save as the actuating soul of the age shall animate and direct. All great revolutions in the intellectual world are marked by successive steps of generalization and transitions into wider realms through more expanded truths. We advance from the obscure to the obvious, from single facts to homogeneous combinations, and from particular doctrines to an all-comprehensive system. Nothing that does not relate to the perpetual progress of the great drama of divine Providence, and illustrate it, is admitted within our plan. With the whole field of human history before us, we are first to mark the most prominent features, and then trace whatever is subordinate and auxiliary. Four mighty landmarks rise most prominently to the view, around which are concentrated all the beneficent inventions and renowned names, universally admired by the civilized world. But, though supreme, these are not separate from inferior agents. True, the chief glory of an age, or people, seems to be the work of a few leading minds, while all others are transient actors on the stage. But each epoch, and all connected therewith, is a unit, indissolubly joined to its successors, in the formation of which it has contributed all the primary elements. Every subsequent act is the legitimate evolution of its predecessor, and from prelude to sequel, there is but one symmetrical development of an infinite plan. There may be deep and dark eddies in the stream, and even long reaches, wherein the current seems to assume a retrograde course, nevertheless its progress is not for a moment arrested, nor does it ever cease from innumerable tributaries evermore to augment its force. The spring-head we may not discern, but the main channel can be clearly traced through every clime, without meeting with whirlpools completely stationary, or depths too stagnant for some lofty use.
Veritable history is but an exponent of Providence, a vivid commentary on the one great purpose of the divine mind in the work of redemption, and should be written, as it is realized, with this intent. This is the Ariadne clew which alone can guide us through the otherwise inextricable labyrinth. We need, if possible, to reproduce, in subdued outline, the comprehensive political and ecclesiastical drama which the Revelator witnessed, as in a moving panorama, reaching from the beginning of sublunary scenes to their end. Such would be the portraiture of great men, great revolutions, and great results, illuminated by the one glorious purpose of the great God. This is signalized not only in always providing and fitting instruments for each emergency that may arise, but in subordinating all agents, and the causes which exercise their worth, to the perfection of humanity, by means of salutary discipline. When the ancient muses inspired Herodotus to write, and the genius of the nation prompted him to recite before assembled Greece, it was the first epical announcement of that divine poetry which forever celebrates the destinies of our race. An immensity of facts has since been added, and innumerable scenes have further evolved the purposes of the Supreme to such an extent, that the utmost comprehensiveness of dramatic delineation is requisite to give an adequate idea of the ever enlarging orbits of development, through which humanity has already passed, together with the legitimate unfoldings which a yet sublimer future will present. This highest ideal is beyond the reach of epical representation, and is of all unities the grandest since it considers the whole human race as one, like an individual soul, having the Infinite as the beginning and end of its finite existence.
We are probably in near neighborhood to inventions and improvements soon to eclipse all foregone wonders. The greatest proficient in letters, art, or science, is merely a flugelman in the army of knowledge, and if called to proclaim the miracle of to-day, doubtless he will be further summoned to announce the reward of nocturnal marchings, by the news of a greater miracle, to-morrow. Every year finds us a new stadium in advance; but it is only at great culminating eras that civilization seems to become aware of the actual speed of its reformatory motion. Victory always remains with the new spirit, and freedom, like truth, never can become old; they are in God, and thereby the final battle and widest conquest must eventually be secured. Not one great campaign was ever lost to humanity, nor ever will be. Every historical nation bears in its bosom the germs of more prolific and ennobling fruits, which their successors will employ to subdue and adorn hardier and richer fields. The scenery changes with each act performed, but the plot goes steadily forward. Providence is making the tour of the world, and every new phase of civilization is an additional proof of a divinely identical plan. As the age to come shall lapse continuously upon the tombs of empires and generations of mankind, we believe that this era will not descend undistinguished among the centuries past. The present march of the human mind, and the exalted ends it has in view, are so remarkable, that the period of our existence will ever be distinguished in the esteem of those who will come after us. From the past and the present a glorious future must succeed. We may most reasonably hope that the age now transpiring, the age we have seen born, and which will see us buried, will transmit to our children and their remotest posterity, increasing virtues, and perpetually lessened wrongs.
Such, in fine, is the profound and joyous conviction of the author, and to elucidate which has been consecrated a considerable portion of what leisure he has been able to command during the past seven years. Herein will not be found one local allusion, or envenomed word, designed to wound any sect or section. But, with one absorbing purpose, he has pressed steadily forward, laying all available resources under contribution, to show how each advancing epoch recasts the history of the past, and foretokens the future, in contemplating it from its own point of view. Let us fondly hope that, on the side of the globe opposite to the first Ararat, shall a second be reached by the Ark of conservative civilization, whereon human reason and divine righteousness will repose in the sublimest earthly union, and thence send down a perfected race to propagate their virtues, and redeem mankind.
Elm.
New York, July 4th, 1856.
New York, July 4th, 1856.