u .1 0\s- -^|T31. "CIVILiZSTION: Vestiges of, or, the Etiology of. History, religious, esthetical, political,- and iph'ilosophical. N. Y., 1851. Cr. 830, cloth $1.20 Gtettell Hmvmitg ptatg THE GIFT OF HEBER CUSHING PETERS CLASS OF 1892 (KSl&SLJLLL » \\V| 1^2- ' ' , 5226 The date shows when this volume was taken. To renew this book copy the call No. and give to ". the librarian. ' HOME USE RULES. All Books subject to Recall. Books not used for instruction or research are returnable within. 4 weeks.. . ' Volumes of periodi- cals and of pamphlets are held in the library as much as possible. For special purposes they are given out for a limited time. • . Borrowers should not use their library privileges for the bene- fit of other pere bns. Books not needed during recess periods should be returned to the library, or arrange- ments inade for their return during borrow- er's absence, if wanted. Books needed by more than one .person are held on the reserve list. Books of , special value and gift books, when the giver wishes it, are not allowed to circulate). Readers are asked to report all cases of books marked or muti- lated. Do not deface books by marks and writing. Cornell University Library D 16.9.018 Vestiges of civilization or The aetiol tig. I 3 1924 027 971 138 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027971138 YESTIGES j CIVILIZATION THE JTIOLOGY OF HISTORY, RELIGIOUS, ^ESTHETICAL, POLITICAL, AND PHILOSOPHICAL. Toute la suite dea hommes pendant le cours de taut de stecles doit etre con- aideree comme un meme homme qui subaiste toujours et qui apprend continuel- lement. Pascal. (* l Humanity is but a man who lives perpetually and learns continually .") KEW-YORK : H. BAILLIERE, 290 BROADWAY. LONDON : 219 REGENT STREET. PARIS: J. B. BAILLIERE, RUE HAUTEFEUILLE. 1851. si- Fvtbwbb'o Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eiirht hun- dred and fifty-one, by Robert H. Shannon, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United Stales for the Southern District of New-York. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. '81- Theories— the more general, the more intelligible popularly ; reason of the contrary prejudice;; its remedy, . . . . .9 2. Necessity of a theory of History; default of, exemplified in Macaulav, Prescott, Niebuhr, . . . . . . .11 3. Principle of, indicated in early Greek literature ; applied to graduate the present state of historical composition, determines it to be written in America, biographically, in Britain, empirically, in Germany scholastically, in France, philosophically ; nowhere scientifically, . 15 4. Consequences of lacking this scientific theory, . . . .23 5. Advantages to accrue from establishing it, . . . .25 6. In what manner the present work undertakes to supply it, - .27 7. Character and scope of the task as embracing the theory of Civilization, 30 GENERAL DIVISION. 8. Civilization divided into three Parts or Cycles, named Mythological, Metaphysical, Scientific ; then preceded by a prefatory Part in exposi- tion of the theory, . . . . . , .33 PART I. Mechanism of Civilization. CHAPTER I. ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 9. Current theories of Mental philosophy untenable, . . .35 10. Fallacy of the Metaphysical Schools; illustrated in the Monkish Liturgies, 37 11. Phrenological systems, their defects and excesses, . . .38 12. Perception analyzed and illustrated, . . . , .41 13. Is the sole faculty of Mind; the other "powers," its progressive modes, 42 14. This established deductively; confirmed from a noted error of Gall; also other historical facts, . . . . . .43 15. These mental modes or Processes reducible to nine, and resolvable into three generic Series or triads, of which the successive development constitutes the Cycles of Civilization ; confirmed by certain unex- plained structures in the brain, and thus suggesting some new views of Phrenology, ........ 51 16. This theory confirmed Mathematically, from Plato's doctrine of the tri- angle ; Morally, by the stages of individual growth, namely, infancy, adolescence, maturity ; Physiologically, by the three centres of vital organism, the stomach, heart and brain ; Historically, by the tradi- tional attribution of the mental functions to each of these organs; Theologically, by the trinities of all duly developed religions, . 54 17. These three series of perceptive Processes result from three progressive types of conception, which are Life, Will, Reason, . . .64 18. Diflnition of Conception, and the other terms of the mental analysis, . 65 1 IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. PAGS, § 19. Relations the sole objects of Perception, . . . • -66 2b. The repugnant theories of Fitche and Shelling to the contrary both absurd ; refutation also of Berkley and Hume; confirmed by the va- garies of Leibnitz, Malbranche, &c. . *'&• 21. The positive or scientific conception of the Universe, . . .71 22. Chronological order of its creation, and interdependence of its organic laws, ..... . . . • 72 S3. These arrangements the necessary results of motion operating upon matter, through space and time, and in the three mathematical forms of Number, Extension, Figure, . . . . . .87 24. The. phenomena of Life and Thought no real exceptions, . ■ 97 25. True principle of a natural Classification of the Sciences ; cause of pre- vious failures; new construction of Aristotle's Categories; examina- tion of the objections and the substitutes of Mr. Mill, . . .98 26. Comparison of the mental and mundane scales in the specific series, . 102 27. Same correlation tested in the terms of the generic series, . . 107 28. Summary results of the Chapter, ..... 109 CHAPTER III. ANALYSIS OF METHOD. 29. Definition of Method; confirmed etymologically ; value of this evidence, 111 30. Induction the sole methtod; misapprehension of it by Bacon . . ib. 31. Three Cycles or systems of Induction, the Logical, the Analytic, the Synthetic, * ...... 112 32. Three specific forms of each cycle or kind ; determined deductively, . 116 33. The nine species verified historically; errors of Mr. Mill and others, 119 34. Like verification of the three systems; Condillac's theory and its critics, 126 35. True- theory or fundamental law of Induction ; verified in the Rational stage; refutation of the opposite systems of Mill and Whewell, . 132 36. Induction in its Vital and Volitional Cycles ; unfolds the same series, . 138 37. Procedure in the former by DiYinification ; why the first Cycle is named Mythological, . . . . . . . .140 38. Procedure on the Will-principle by Revelation ; why the second Cycle is termed Metaphysical, * . . . . . . ib. 39. How man himself could in both have been the type of conception, ac- cording to the axiom of proceeding from the known to the unknown ; misapprehension of this rule by British writers, . . . 145 40. Explanation of the correlative terms simple and complex, general and special, abstract and concrete, &c, ..... 149 41. The successive failures of previous systems of Method all incidental to the law of progression, . . .... 154 GENERAL RECAPITULATION. -12. Human error symbolized in original sin ; harmony of the three ana- lytic scales of Mind, Matter, and Method exhibited in a diagram, . 160 43. Successive origin and order of dignity among arts and institutions, . 164 44. Identification of the nine organical laws of nature in the specific series of nine sciences, ........ 169 45. Astronomy and Geology both generic sciences ; embracing respectively the Mathematical and Physical triads, ..... 171 *1G. Sociology, or the science of society, the third genus ; and as the last, embracing the whole evolution, ...... 173 47. Conclusion, that Society is a natural body or being, the highest of ac- tual organizations, and to be superadded to all the extant maps of nature, even that of Comte, ...... 179 CONTENTS. ANALYSIS OF MOTIVE. PAGE. § 48. There are fundamentally but two motives, pleasure and pain, . . 187 49. Socially termed good and evil ; their nature polaric, in both cases, . l&S 50. Their historical recognition, in the heaven and hell of the theologians, ib, 51. Chief conflicting arguments answered, . . . . .189 PART II. . Mtiology of History. INTRODUCTORY. 52. Chronological determination of the three Cycles on the map of history, 190 53. Order and incidents of their geographical evolution, . . . 191 54. Succession and synchronism of the corresponding generic methods ex- hibited in a diagram, . . . . . . .193 55. Two additional tests of the investigation, . . . . .195 MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. DIVISION. 56. The three axioms submitted by the-theory to be tested by history; their embodiment in the general forms of Arts, Institutions and Sciences, . 197 CHAPTER I. Philosophy of the Fine Arts. St. Definition, division and classification of, . . . , .197 58. Comparison of the aggregate results with the theory and application of the latter to the several Arts in detail, ..... 200 LANGUAGE. 59. The Verb the sole element of Speech ; confirmed by analysis of the common division, ........ 208 60. Grammatical forms of all idioms, and their true principle of classification, 205 61. Natural formation of languages explained and exemplified, . .211 62. Proceeds upon three sorts of verbal vocables, Denominatives, Determi- natives, Conjunctives, ....... 214 63. The processes of affixation the result of polarity in Language, . .216 64. Tested in the ancient classic, and the American Indian, idioms, . 217 65. Objections to the new theory of language anticipated, . . .218 66. It solves not only the regularities, but even reputed eccentricities, of all languages ; instanced in the Sanscrit family, the Chinese, &c. .219 67. Ludicrous errors of American and other philologers on the3e subjects; philosophy of the ignorance, ...... 222 MUSIC. 68. Origin, primitive grade of, and formation, on the ground of speech, . 224 69. Comparison of the results with the theoretical testa, . . .226 POETRY. 70. Definition and general division of, according to the theory, Into Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic, ....... 227 71. The Epic subdivided into Mythologic, Heroic, and Social, . . 229 72. Rationale of the division, . . . . . . .230 73. The Mythologic epic traced historically in its three progressive stages, 231 74. The Heroic epic verified similarly ; the three formations identified in the typic result of the Iliad; also in Ossian, &c, . . .234 75. Social epic; its theme Woman; begins with satirizing her ; why, . 239 76. Elements of, traced in the Hesiodic poems, the Jewish Scriptures ; its complete type in the Odyssey, . . . . . .240 CONTENTS. § 77. Difference ofepochand diversity of authorship of the two Homeric epics, 244 78. Artificial or imitated epics, ancient and modern, . • • 246 79. The Lyric form ; its three stages exemplified historically, . . £5" 80. The theory verified also in the modifications of metre, . . . SM 81. The Drama, definition of; origin and.elements in ancient Greece, . ^>t> 82. Nature of the " Chorus ;" infant drama of the Mexicans and Hindoos, iSl 83. Historical analysis of, in Greece; jEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, 258 GLYPHIC. 84. Its province and three progressive forms determined, . . . 261 85. Explains the Egyptian Hieroglyphics, and all graphical systems, . ibj 86. Rationale of thephonetical alphabet; the vowel-pointing of the Hebrew, M 87. Colouring an accessory of ; the origin of painting ; Hindoo example, . 25b PLASTIC. 88. Pottery, the primary form of; then Casting; early proficiency of both, 16. 89. Typography the third form; conformity to the general law of progression 270 PAINTING. 90. Historic subsequence of, and origin as a distinct art, . . • 272 SCULPTURE. 91. New division of, and generic character ; established historically, . 273 92. That Masonry is a fine art proved in the history of the arch, . . 274 ARCHITECTURE. 93. Its primitive erections, successively tombs, temples, palaces, . . 275 94. Tumular formation of, first rock-cut and ending in necropoli ; why, . 276 95. Next stage Mounded, ends in the pyramid; why, . . . ib. 96. Third stage Sepulchral, and ends in the labyrinth ; 277 97. All illustrated in the architecture of Egypt^India, China, Etruria, &c, 279 98. Classification of the Obelisk ; of the round towers of Ireland, &c, . 281 99. Transition from the tomb to the temple, thence to the "temple-palace f the styles of architecture, . . . . . . . 282 100. General character of in the first Cycle; styles conformable to the theory, 284 MEDICINE. 101. Origin of, and progressive stages— Surgery, Pharmacy, Hygienic, . 285 102. Ancient and modern schools of ; place of Homoeopathy; all conforma- ble to the theory, ........ 286 GOVERNMENT. 103. Same progression in curing the body politic; Punishment, Employ- ment, Education, ........ 288 104. WAR, progressive principles of— Number, Evolution, Expedition, . 289 CHAPTER II. Philosophy of Human Institutions. 105. Society, distinction of from the P?-a!-social ages, . . . 291 106. These ages divided into the Frugivorous, the Hunter and the Shepherd, ib. 107. The Agricultural state characterized ; the foundation of Society proper, 294 108. Progressive division of all governments into Patriarchal, Monarchical, Republican, . . . . . . . .296 109. Principle of, in the Physical Cycle ; Democracy, no governmental form, 297 110. Stages of Patriarchy, tribes, castes ; illustrated in India, Egypt, Peru, 299 111. Supersession of the Military by the Priestly castes ; consequence of the destruction of the latter in Greece, . . . . 301 112. Organization of Society upon space ; result the City; constitution of in antiquity, ......... 302 113. The final development of in the Patriarchal republic; diagram of the whole evolution, ........ 304 114. European fossils of this primitive form the Popes and Patriarchs of the Catholic Church, ........ 307 115. Conformity of the whole to the three tests of the theory, . . 308 CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER III. Philosophy of the Heathen Religions. PAGE. g 116. Definition of religions in general: principles of, Force, Fraud, Duty, . 310 117. Ministers of; their origin, and relations to society, , . . 311 118. Division of Religion into Divinities, Rites, Doctrines, . . .312 DIVINITIES. 119. General distinction of, into Good and Evil illustrated, . . . ib, 120. The Evil earliest ; first instance Night ; this, the Inorganic formation, 313 121. Common subdivision of both classes into Inorganic, Organic, Social, . 315 122. Fetichistic worship; diviniflcation of their food by savages ; the Cath- olic eucharist, ........ 317 123. The first or Sabeistic worship in its gods of Goodness, . . .319 124. Why man divinifies himself the last of all objects, . . . ib. 125. Origin and nature of Polytheism or hero-worship, . . . 321 126. Receptacles of the deified Spirit : first Inorganic, such as tombs, stars, 323 127. Next, Organic, vegetables and animals ; the latest mythology of Egypt, 324 128. Why its civilization here failed ; cause of the riddle of the Sphinx, . 325 129. This resolved in Greek statuary, which supplied the final class of en- velopes for the gods, ....... 327 RITES. 130. Progressive division of, into Sacrifice, Ceremony, Prayer, . . 328 131. Curious exemplifications of their conformity to the theory, . . 329 DOCTRINES. 132. Turn all upon a future life; notion of, necessary in mental infancy, . 331 133. After existence come the considerations of form and place; the Forms, 333 134. Historically illustrated in the usages of all primitive nations, . . 336 135. Gradual abstraction of the "spirit" from the buried body exemplified, 337 136. Death considered by savages an absence ; hence it has no proper name in their idioms, . . . * ... 338 137. Successive efforts to preserve the body ; Inhumation, Embalming, In- cremation, . . . . » . . . , .341 138. Origin, explanation and illustration of the Metempsychosis, . . 342 139. Places of the soul, Tartarus, Elysium, Purgatory, progressively, . 345 140. Their regular apposition in nigh and low localities along the earth, . ib. 141. Their uniform direction to the "West" explained, . . , 347 142. The future state of the first Cycle not one of " reward and punish- ment ;" error of Warburton's Divine Legation explained, . . 348 143. That the Hebrews belonged to this barbarous period proved from various criteria, . . . . . . . 350 144. Concluding reflections, ....... 353 CHAPTER IV. SYSTEMS. Philosophy of the Ancient Schools of Speculation. 145. The Greet sects of the physical epoch, Ionic, Eleatic, Italic, . . 353 146. Character and position of Pythagoras and Socrates as introducing the Ethical series of sects, . . . . . . ' .355 147. Division of these, the Academic, Epicurean and Stoic systems as types, 358 148. How each of these sects explained the existence of Evil, . . ib. 149. The Grseco-Roman expectation of a messiah in Esculapius, . . 360 150. Historical career of the Jews ; their prophesies of a messiah brought to Rome, ......... 362 151. Solution of the problem of Evil by the Mosaic cosmogeny, . . 363 SCIENCES. 152. The three Mathematical forms ; alone attained in this Cycle, . . 366 1* VH1 CONTENTS. PART III. METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. INTRODUCTORY. PAGE. $ 153. Readjustment of heads of inyestigation ; commences with Systems, . 367 154. The Christian system contrasted with the Heathen ; consonance of the contrast with the theory, ...••■■ J 1 ^- 155. Comparison in the results of method ; also, of conceptual views, . 3/0 156. General comparison, ....■■• 3' 1 CHAPTER I. Philosophy of the Christian Religions. 157. Peculiarities of the Mosaic monotheism as distinguished from that of Greece, &c, ....••■■ 3?3 15S. Application of the theory to Christianity confined to the head of Doc- trines, . . . . . • • • 375 159. Revival of the Greek schools in the three great heresies of the Church, 376 160. ManichEeism ; its Christian form the Divine and the Human will, . 379 161. Import of the attack of Pelagianism upon Original sin, . . . 380 162. Position of Pelagius; dilemma or double-edge of his doctrine, . 381 163. Position of Augustine; absurd consequences of the doctrine of Grace, 382 164. Succeeding modifications of both the Heretical and Orthodox sides, . 384 165. Occasion of Interpretation ; its three principles ; first result in " Dog- matical" theology, ........ 385 166. Rationale of the second or " Moral" formation, .... 386 167. Rise and reason of the third formation named the " Scholastic," . 387 168. Character and cause of the Protestant Reformation, . . . 388 169. Calvinism the most correct logical exhibition of the Christian system, 390 170. Triumph of the heretical principle of Human -will over the Divine, . 392 171. The Catholic Church, and the secret of her perpetuity, . . .393 172. Her "ambiguous middle" between heresy and orthodoxy, . . 395 173. How maintained, by a partition of the clergy into Secular and Regular, 396 174. Representative of the two instruments of Progress — Abuse and Disorder, 398 175. The Regular or "Casuistic" side effectually heretical; not so in theory, 401 176. This proved, in its final development the Jesuits, . . . 402 177. Their worst " maxims" conformable to the Christian hypothesis of duty, 403 178. Does the end justify the means ? the question debated between a Jesuit and Jansenist, ........ 405 179. Decided in favor of the Jesuit, by the true theory of Christianity, . 408 - 180. Theological position of the Port-Royalists defined, . . . 409 181. Progressive spirit and results of Jesuitism — Religion of the Future, . 410 182. Synthetic formation of Christianity ; Socinianism ; Rationalism, . 412 183. Romanism the opposite alternative of the Protestant sects ; andPusey- ism a half-way house on the passage. Conclusion, . . . 414 ERRATA. In note, p. 78, towards the end of first paragraph, for lt inquiries" read inquirers. In p. 115, about the middle, the phrase "I repeat" should succeed "still," and tl a" be or. In p. 205, about a third from the top, the word "co-operation" should be plural. In p. 251, 10th line from the bottom, for "those" read of. In p. 339, 5th line from bottom, for " lament of Kenach" read or keenach. TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE :— You are said, by panegyrists (including yourselves), to be a " reflect- ing" people. Even detractors allow you to be a calculating one. That you are, at all events, a reading people may certainly be pretended, without incurring the least suspicion of either bias. I am, however, content to reckon but upon the qualities admitted on all hands, in ad- dressing the following pages to your common sense, for your common service. At the same time, I shall be gratified, nor of course at all surprised, to find you vindicate an equal title to the foremost and prin- cipal attribute. But you must be indulgent to a natural weakness, should I judge, in this particular, by that everlasting test of the scrib- bling generation, who measure the capacity of the public but by its special reception of their own wares. Respecting the real claims of mine, perhaps a. word of explanation may be pardonable in publishing anonymously. Not, however, to point out by name, like the labels of a Dutch picture, the merits which, if any there be, you are hoped to find upon perusal. The more hum- ble as well as honest purpose is to spare the trouble of perusal to any amongst you who may look for merits to which the work makes no pretension. It makes no pretension, then, I frankly declare, to be a picture-book in letter-press ; it was designed for people past their mental childhood. It contains not, I think, a single munehausen story or " thrilling" description ; though many things far more fitting to excite emotion, nay astonishment, in those who feel with any class of nerves below the scarf-skin. It is not written in the style called ''ra- pid ;" which it deems but piebald declamation, the clonic spasms of a sick, not the tonic vigor of a sound, intellect. Nor is it a book of mere statistics, though founded solely upon facts. Its doctrines are not decanted from the British periodicals ; nor even backed with the ponderosity of erudite quotation. Indeed, there are not perhaps half a dozen references in the volume ; an abstinence possibly due, how- ever, not more to virtue than to necessity, the whole library of the writer, at the place of composition, consisting of a few miscellaneous notes and no very gnat-straining memory. In fine, from cover to X DEDICATION. eover, your name is not once mentioned as the most free and enlight- ened and accomplished nation of the earth ; though the work, I think, would do more than most that has been written to inform you pre- cisely as to what and where you really are, and do it in a way to spare you the blush of modesty or any other. Such among you as lead for those things should, therefore, turn at once elsewhere ; they are to be found, as the lawyers phrase it, in all the books. The sort of book I offer you is a comprehensive compend, at once of original principles, original discussion, and original explanation. Nor, for all this (I must go on to own it, at the risk of damaging the publisher), do I pretend to have obtained its doetrines in any one of the mesmerio states. Indeed they will rather be found to savour of a very unspirit- ual vigilance. So that, in method as well as matter, they are things a good deal rarer than the literary comfitures enumerated. And they are also, I think, more suitable to your higher wants and better tastes. Allow me to justify the apparent presumption of this opinion by a few reflections. Suppose a people (whether real or hypothetical, does not matter) which , still comparatively young in the career of nationality, should moreover have commenced it under the following peculiar circum- stances : That the population consisted wholly, by direct immigration or proximate descent, of the physically laboring, and therefore men- tally undeveloped, classes. That the soil had also to be reclaimed from the wilderness. That the scientific processes, no less necessary to the situation, than impossible to the origination of the colonists themselves, could be derived from the mother countries, where many ages of elaboration had prepared the national intellect for the flower and fruit of taste and thought. And that, enriched by the joint agencies of uni- versal industry, boundless physical resources and the energetic ap> propriation of the mechanical products of foreign mind, the nation supposed should be pushed precociously from the useful to the orna- mental ; where imitation, having lost the guidance of practical neces- sity, and with it the minor faculty of special adaptation, would expend its burgess opulence in affectation of arts and letters, with a discern- ment as proverbial as the profusion. Now the consequence of this unfortunate or perhaps fortunate knot of influences it were not hard to predict from pure deduction. In the mental character of such a community will meet the seemingly oppo- site extremes, of self-opinionativeness and credulity — both, for want of breadth and depth. Its literary essays will scarce rise to any of the elevated walks of thought; they will be parasitical, plagiaristic, per- DEDICATION. XI sonal in matter, and in manner vague and vapid and verbose : for the national intelleot (its presumption notwithstanding) will be trite, timor- ous, time-serving — an empty head being as unable to stand upright as an empty bag, save by inflation. As to the knowledge of such a people it will be an odd but quite natural jumble of the most hard-headed prac- ticalism with the most soft-headed mysticism. For want of the princi - pies of method, as well as the processes of discovery — of which there was occasion to import but the productive results — it will be open to the coarsest quackeries, political, philosophical, literary,and the rest, if only the imposture be duly baited with the mystic name of science, and submitted to the infallible intelligence of the Chosen people in ques- tion. In short, this people, misconceiving the mechanical implements of its rapid prosperity, borrowed gradually and imperceptibly, to be the products of its own invention, will be led to push its " enterprise" into the field of letters and philosophy. Every man of them, with the art of reading, will think he holds thereby the key to the nBst recondite of the scientific contents of books ; and if his written lucubrations have ever stared him in the village newspaper, he doubts not his ability to manufacture the books themselves — if not also in fact the sciences to boot. Not original books, indeed ± not your theoretical reveries. He is too " practical" a jnan himself, and his estimate of the public in- telligence too patriotic, for that. His insolently humble object is but to shorten still the road of learning, all royal or republican as it ran, one would think, already. Might we not, in.this slight fancy sketch, after the manner of Lava- ter, consider, with profit, certain points of resemblance to ourselves ? It is not that we borrow both our arts and our amusements, if only we borrowed them, as we did our institutions, with discernment and dar- ing. It is through borrowing, more or less, that nations have come to civilize each other. But there is a difference between borrowing and imitating. And it is no less than that between a loan and a theft. The former naturally tends to the interest of both the parties ; the latter, to the real detriment of thief as well as victim. The image may appear ungracious. But it will be pardoned, for the faithful brevity with which it paints the situation, at least in policy if not mo- rality, of this country towards British literature. Nor is this all, though bad enough. It were bad enough to be bare imitators, hollow echoes, of even the best models. But it seems a perversity quite peculiar to leave the selection of this mental nutri- ment to men whose previous course of reading scarce ever passes the range of a type-stiek, and whose notions of literature, even as a thing XU DEDICATION. of traffic, are of a like catoh-penny compass. The agents, however, are naturally of the same block as the contraband ; like publisher, no less than " like priest, &o." But the people tolerate the depravations of the piratical of either calling, only for want of that well-principled and thorough training in their legitimate guides, which alone does all that men themselves can do to give independence to intellect, and thus originality to literature and dignity to nations. For this, however, even the highest education were insufficient ; there must, also, be high inducements to mantain its impulse in after life. For, so long as money makes the man and meanness makes the money, the easier route of degradation will be preferred, and the American Youth would drop the college culture which obtained them but contempt, take the counter or the bar-room as the road to Congress or to consideration, and with some scheme of peddling patronage tack their talents^ well as conscience to the draggling train of some wrig- gling demagogue of the day. This might make them " smart" men ; a thing in which we abound already, and which, moreover, is but the meagre crop of a shallow soil ; whereas the products of towering thought demand the deeper loam of labor. But to give men forti- tude to mature the discipline of the college in the closet, in opposition to the rushing current of universal example, they should be shown that there was no blunder in expecting to " go a head," while appearing to sit stock-still to the five senses of the bustling vulgar. This, ac- cordingly , it is one of the first duties of a popular government to give ; and of the press, in case of omission, to inculcate. And the press, who should be the torch-bearers to light us out of darkness, are they, for the most part, not mere beacons, divulging to others that we are in it ? In fact, taken with the demagogues they echo, they should perhaps rank with the piratical publishers, as an obsta- cle to the mental advancement of the country. For flattery is scarce less baneful to multitudes than to monarchs, whose dynasties, in a few generations, we see it besot into downright idiocy. Instead of ever suggesting what you are not, and have not done, but ought to be and do ; they are constantly telling you that your perfection is already un- rivalled in both respects. There is no shading in their platitudes ; they leave no perspective for your progression. It is not thus that men or nations are stimulated to great things. It was not so that the first of generals, one who could marshal motives as he did armies, made still grander the grandest nation of the earth. Never, even beneath the me- morable " sun of Austerlitz," did he praise those prodigies of valour without reserve. — Soldiers, you have done well : you have captured so DEDICATION. XU1 many thousand prisoners, taken so many stands of colors, so many pieces of cannon ; you have beaten an enemy two or three times your number ; you have scattered to the winds the coalitions of kings ; you have subjugated Europe from Madrid to Moscow ; and this while poorly elad and ill-provisioned. But, soldiers, there are still greater things for you to do ; you have not yet equalled the armies of Csesar and Alexander. Here — in this double suggestion, of something greater to be always done, and that the like has been done by others — we recognize the genius born to move men to great achievements. And especially would these stimulants befit the American people, who have at least one originality, and one well worth a dozen others ; I mean docility. Like Ajax, they want but light to brave the very immor- tals of European genius ; and to seek it, they need but to know that they do want it. Practically, the London fair will do something to this end . The following pages may have the effect, upon the broader ground of principle, not perhaps to supply this light, but to show at least its ab- sence ; to open you a double vista, along the transverse track of time, through the mountain piles of merchandise that shut in your horizon ; to perforate the locust-cloud of noisome politicians that hides the sun of your true greatness in the firmament of the future. So much for the special traits for which the book has been ad- dressed you formally. As to the motives of the writer's frankness, I submit they should less be questioned than had he chanted you as " great, glorious and free" at every page. He in truth is one who would have you free not only politically but also mentally 5 great not merely materially but morally, magnanimously ; glorious in something of that which has made sacred to all posterity the petty canton of craggy Attica ; while the treasures of Babylon, the commerce of Carthage and the conquests of Rome are long forgotten or detested : one in fine, who would have you the august model, not the adroit monkey, of the na- tions ; and this not more for your own, than the general sake of hu- manity. And it would be precisely for this reason (if self-respect did not also forbid it) that he does not flatter you, in even that immemorial license-to-lie, a dedication. He, however, pays you a higher compli- ment than dedication has ever paid, that of trusting you can hear and profit by unpalatable truths, told as well of the patron himself as the subject. THE AUTHOR. Go, little book from this my solitude, I cast thee on the waters ; go thy way, And if, as I believe, thy vein be good, The world will find thee ... [at no distant day.] Southey. VESTIGES OE CIVILIZATION: OR THE JETIOLOGY OF HISTORY, EELIGIOUS, AESTHETIC, POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL.. intkoductiok Explanatory of the Object and Character of the Worli. § 1. Let it be repeated incessantly r Society, the human intellect, is entering, and for the first time, upon the Ages of Science. It is an advent to be hailed with joy, but to be met with preparation. It brings to man the saving truth and the resting term from those blind disorders which have hitherto beset his social and his mental career; but the boon is offered him on condition that he shall be, this time, his own redeemer. In proclaiming the new era, then, it should be expounded intelligently; not echoed mechanically, as by a parrot or newspaper. But the best mode of bringing its import to popular recognition, no less than to philosophical comprehension, must be by recurring to principles. For the first princi- ples of all real science are among the tritest common- places of the general understanding. And the more fun- damental the science itself, and consequently its elements, the more simple, intelligible, and even impressive will 2 10 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. prove this method. But the object here proposed relates to the elementary laws of that universal science of hu- manity, called Civilization, and from which all the special sciences, as well as arts and institutions, have successively and subordtnately emanated. The doctrines, therefore, of the social should, like those of the solar system, be but so much the more accessible, for the very reason of gene- rality. Nor is it, in fact, this quality, as is vulgarly repeated that has caused the popular prejudice against theory. It- is not that sound theories can be too general for plain minds. For what is it that has enslaved this class of minds, throughout the past, to the vicious and wild hypotheses of superstition and metaphysics 1 What is it that makes it nearly impossible (as courts of justice and philosophers know) to get illiterate persons to narrate even the simplest of facts without obtruding a theory in almost every phrase ? Why, nothing but the popular necessity for generalization, simplicity, system. The defect, then, on the contrary, is, that the theories propounded hitherto have mostly been too special, too narrow, and thus too numerous. Add to which the consequence that they were commonly conflict- ing, and therefore manifestly erroneous in part, if not in whole. In short, the people have been asked to study the tree of knowledge through the branches, where the seeming severalty, multitude, and confusion of the sources combine to distract, if not dismay, even the most disci- plined of intellects ; they were rarely carried back to even the secondary principles of consurgence, of classification, in the main limbs ; but never, hitherto, to the supreme simplification in the trunk. And then when, tossed about and nonplussed upon this sea of superficialities, they turned, in disgust, from the prostituted name of theory, the pedants and half-philosophers gave currency to the natural prejudice, that the thing is wholly beyond the reach of the popular apprehension. Whereas, if their really preposterous order had been inverted ; if the people had been taught to begin with nature herself at the root, or rather with the seed (for it is in this sense of re-production that the tree is truly known by its fruit ; it can merely be recognized by it in the sense of a product) ; had this been done, I say, and the subject presented 'them by the sub- INTRODUCTION. 1 1 stantial and familiar end, little more would be really requisite to derive pleasure and even profit from a correct exposition of the highest principles of science, than that grade of sense which is, so to say, the touch of the intel- lect, and which is designated by the name of "common," from its assumed universality. To the facility of comprehension, this course would add, moreover, the certainty of producing practical con- viction. For, besides conciliating and co-ordinating the several systems and suggestions relative to all that is sound in the actual aggregate of our knowledge, it would serve, at the same time, to account for the erroneous as well as the true, and thus secure, in the surest manner, their rejection or reception. I conclude, therefore, that a the- ory, thus comprising all principles and comprised in all experience, may be made evident and irresistible to the plainest understanding. And it is, accordingly, by means of this plain, although peculiar procedure, that I dare hope, in this little work, to give the largest generality of readers a conception, clear and consecutive, of both the natural laws of civilization and the essential conditions of science. My direct survey will, on this occasion, be confined to history proper, that is to say, the past and present state of mankind. But the reader, left aloft upon this vantage- ground of all ages, and with the telescope of theory, face to face with the approaching future, will he resist the invita- tion to look over and prophesy ? And will not his authority be the same experience, only infinitely more complete, which grounds the daily previsions of practical life, and which, when perfect, gives infallibility to the predictions of all science 1 For by no different mode of assurance does the hypothesis of gravitation compel the assent and expecta- tions of the civilized world, respecting the invisibly remote and indefinitely future. And Revelation itself, in fine, which, like the fabled bird of paradise, has been thought to never light upon the profane earth of experi- ence, does it not rest its new prophecies upon a like appeal to the old 1 Showing that precedent is a valid warrant in the judgment of the Divinity and the surest passport of his promises to the popular acceptance. § 2. Not are the evidence and efficiency of such a 12 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. theory more undeniable than the urgency of reducing it to application. I pass over the crying necessity of a prin- ciple of classification among even those subjects advanced already, more or less imperfectly, to the state of science. Let us consider but the most imperfect and most import- ant of all, the subjects of Man and of Society, as they continue to be conceived by the current writers of history. For is not historical composition, at the present day more than ever, a jumble of opinions without consistency, facts without cohesion, traditions without vitality,, in short, of examples without instruction 1 No regular principle of order in graduating the events; no rational scale of appreciation in judging the actors. Take, for instance, one of the latest and most lauded essays in this line, the pictorial history of England in letter-press, by Macaulay. You find it pronounce at every page, for instance, upon Roundhead or Cavalier, upon Quaker or King of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, according to the flippant morality and factitious science of a Downing-street politi- cal economist of the nineteenth. So of course with even the foremost of our own imitative historians. Mr. Pres- cott, in the introduction to his chronicle of Peru (a work composed throughout with the philosophy of a fairy tale), descants upon the civilization of that semi-savage people as having been consummate in particular respects ; while in other things he leaves it to wallow in the lowest condi- tion of barbarism. He did not perceive that he was im- puting to nature a combination quite as monstrous as that which Horace imagined in satire to caricature the extrava- gance of fiction, "et humano capiti cervicem jungens fiquinam." And if no equally broad absurdity, in social statics too, be found to stain the polished pages of Macaulay, it is perhaps only because his subject was, intrinsically, far less simple than the isolate and infant empire of the Incas. -For the mongrel complication of every thing English would dissemble as well as occasion this default of phi- losophy. In fact, instead of striving against the aggra- vated difficulty, the " canny Scot" would seem to have set himself to turn it to account. As if with an eye to the puerile, misnamed the popular, taste of the day, his com- bination rarely rises above the rudimentary sta°-e of INTRODUCTION. 13 grouping,'and even his groupings are equally destitute of logical graduation. He gives you a gallery of portraits, quite after the manner of Sir Peter Lely's of several of the same personages, and strung together by little else than the volume that contained them; even as the colored characters, by the wall or the chamber. In his history, as a whole, there is perhaps less of even picture in the sense of composition, and certainly less of progression in the sense of development, than there is of both in the Rake's Progress of Hogarth. It may be, however, that the English are still, like other people, to be lured to read by pictures and symbols. The purpose was not to censure either the author or the object. I only specify his work, as bein°- the latest in time, and among the highest in reputation of our literature, to illustrate the actual crudeness of the pre- vailing conceptions concerning the science of Society, the philosophy of history. But to give pertinence to the instance, it was requisite to show that the absence of such philosophy is the cardinal defect in this otherwise saga- cious critic and elegant rhetorician. It is, in truth, that all-pervading "something-somewhere-wanting" which has been felt by every sensible reader of his book, and which his numerous reviewers have been beating the air so vaguely, in the purblind endeavor to point out. This latter failure is a farther evidence of the scientific immaturity in question. The critics fumbled, because still less informed, as might well have been expected, thai) Macaulay himself In short, then, our whole historical and political literature, whether British or American, betrays the same blind side. But there is a circumstance more conclusive still, as well as concise, upon this point, than the direct examination of the most eminent of speci- mens : I mean the fact that both those countries find their ideal of a philosophical historian in the doubtless admira- ble, but merely critical, Niebuhr. Not, of course, that the true historian ought not to be a critic ; but that he ought to be something much more and much higher. And I must be pardoned the presumption of finding this high deficiency, not perhaps of philosophizing but of philoso- phy, of science, in even this reputed reformer bf History. For example, he talks (1) of certain " dull falsifiers (1) Vol. I. chap. Romulus and Nuraa, note 46. Eng. Trans 2* .14 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. being not more offensive than the men who helped them- selves out with a pneumatology such as we find traces of in Dionysius ; where instead of Mars Gradivus, whose per- sonality they were ashamed to admit, some demon ' whose existence is generally believed,' is said to have been the father of Ilia's children. Men could reconcile themselves (adds Niebuhr, contemptuously) to this belief in goblins, or at least to professing it, and thus affected a compromise and an alliance with bigotry." Here, it seems to me, is a piece of social philosophy, which in depth, consistency, every thing but its honest spirit, might have proceeded from the shallowest ape of Voltarian irreligion. It betrays, in almost every syllable, an utter irrecognition of both the progressive march of the human mind collectively, and the corresponding modification of conception in public writers according to their different positions down the line of evolution. The expressions : "helping themselves out with pneumatology" — " being ashamed to admit the per- sonality," &c, commit the coarse yet common oversight already remarked in the less exaggerated instance of Macaulay : for they involve the psychological anachronism of imputing the rationalistic sentiments of the nineteenth century to Dionysius and other historians of polytheistic antiquity. Moreover, the writer had evidently no notion that the pneumatology he denounces, with its goblins, fairies, angels, &c, constitutes a transition stage, quite normal and necessary, between the mythological hypothe- sis of personified causation and the modern theory of sci- entific laws. But mark, above all, the inconsistent uncha- ritableness of charging those writers, of two thousand years ago, with " hypocrisy," because forsooth they cred- ited the pious story of Ilia's children. The denuncia- tion of " hypocrisy," and "alliance with bigotry," I ad- mire. But did Niebuhr know of no story of equal, perhaps greater absurdity, which was credited, if not by himself, at least by multitudes of the learned in even his own " enlightened age 1" Did he forget, in particular, — and here without the poor excuse of a prudent hypocrisy — did he forget a certain being no less fantastic than the lover of Ilift, and supposed in fact to perform the same officious services, whose "existence was generally be- lieved" throughout entire Europe up to the last century, INTRODUCTION. 15 and is believed to this day perhaps in the country of Nie- buhr : I mean the notably gallant goblin called the Incu- bus? And if he could not, as a man of reflection, have forgotten that the errors alluded to have been credited by the multitude, if not the learned, of modern times, what are we to think of the inference which imputes hypocrisy to ancient authors in assenting passively to the like illu- sions at that day ? We must think that it confesses, by necessary implication, both an ignorance of the great fact, that the anilities of the people in a particular age, must have been the creed of so-called philosophers in a pre- vious, and a consequent absence of the fundamental requisite in a truly philosophical historian. § 3. And as with the English and Germans in this department, so with all the literate countries. With each, however, in a very different degree. This gradation of immaturity might be characterized as follows, respecting the four nations in which both the present argument and readers are chiefly interested. Regretting the " bad emi- nence," I must begin the order -with our own country, and say : That history is still written in America j/iographi- cally ; in Britain, empirically ; in Germany , scholastically ; in France alone, philosophically. But nowhere as yet is it written scientifically. I am, for the present, quite prepared to hear this peremptory judgment pronounced presumptuous, in both its absolute and comparative determinations. But the reader so demurring will be pleased to await the sequel for the sole apology I have to offer — the proof. And this apology, I once for all declare, must apply to all omissions to drape my strictures, national or personal, with those knightly courtesies of the quill, which are denied to me by (among other things) the extreme limits of these pages, together with the extreme extent of the survey assigned them. At the same time, a short statement, necessary here to explain the terms, will also indicate pro- visionally the principle of the above scale. History is observed to proceed upon three descriptions of subjects successively, namely, Individuals, Events, In- stitutions. Primitively it is a romance of heroes ; then, a record of battles ; after, a register of usages. A like pro- gression is operated laterally, so to say, in each of these 16 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. divisions, which expand, the first, from the personage to the tribe, and then the dynasty ; the second, from the battle to the campaign, and then the war ; the last, from the city to the state, and after, the empire. The order of this double progression — which will be remarked to be from the physical object to the mechanical effect, and thence to the habitual relation, as centres of grouping — is a neces- sary result of the structure of the human mind, as will be demonstrated, with the rest of the statement, hereafter. It is enough, for the present, to know that the facts are invariably conformable, in the historical literature of every people possessing any thing of the kind ; from ancient Greece, for example, down to actual America. The sovereign example of Greece it will not be diffi- cult to verify, in spite of the imperfect record of her early bibliography. During the two primordial stages, of heroes and battles, it is clear the poets were the only historians ; of whom Homer is an instance or an epitome. The regis- tration of usages would pass from the verse of Hesiod to the nascent prose of the " logographs," or writers of tra- ditions, asjthe historians were styled, accordingly, down to the times of Herodotus. This was also the general nature of the Pontifical annals of ancient Rome, and the ecclesi- astical history of modern Rome commences with the same forms, in the legends and chronicles of the monks. The next advance the Greeks named " origines," because this class of productions related to the foundation of families, cities, nations. From the origin, to which natural curi- osity is the first attracted, the Greek intellect is next found grappling with the actual of the same subjects; whence the special designations of Argolica, Boeotica, Egyptiaca, meaning the things of Argos, &c. ; exactly as res gestce was long the only name for history with the Romans too : a sure sign that the conception of the subject by both these nations lacked then the unity which necessitates a proper appellation. This was the chronicle proper, of which Froissart is a modern sample ; for it turned chiefly upon things that pass in time : whereas the preceding anti- quarian class conceived them in place, in locality. Now it was the combination of both these bases of comprehen- sion that so significantly won Herodotus the title of" father of history." And yet the theme of Herodotus still was a INTRODUCTION. 17 particular war, the Persian. The loose generality, geo- graphical and chronological, of the work, is but the episodic concatenation of the epical artist, not the logical co-ordi- nation of the historian. The latter quality had its first commencement a little later in Thucydides; who, to sup- ply the power of combination by the expedient of com- pactness, is found on the one hand, to contract the range of his predecessor to a single country, and on the other to choose the action not of a single campaign, like Herodotus, but the successive actions of a protracted war. This dawn- ing of philosophy in the composition of history, is also visible in another expedient of the same writer ; for he was the first, I think, to attempt the analysis and portrai- ture of character. In this respect Thucydides might be considered the ancient analogue of Macaulay in England and Lamartine in the Girondins. But it was not till much later, and after the fall of the Greek republics, that this national nucleus in the individual was extended to a gene- ral history of Greek institutions, or even events. It never reached the wider combination of foreign countries. To this day it has nowhere reached to the amplitude of the, species. Not that there have not long been compilations called universal histories. But such jumbles are scarce more the result of philosophical comprehension than the equally " universal" cosmogonies or genetical fables, which the Greeks too, like all other barbarians, begun early with imagining, much after the fashion of Moses — the inspira- tion of course excepted. Such was the regular march of historical composition in Greece, where its origin had been most indigenous and its evolution least disturbed. The gradation has been also repeated in the subsequent nations of Europe, despite the temptation of ancient models and the introduction of other doctrines. It is that the human mind, like the body, in order to reach a certain goal, must pass inevitably through all the intermediate stages ; the transit may be more or less rapid according to the mode of conveyance — that is to say the choice of methods, which are the vehicles of the intellect : but though the distance may be thus abridged, even to illusory disappearance, not a point of the space can be ever annihilated or traversed out of the natural series. If now this uniform and necessary series of his- 18 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. torical composition be applied lo the actual state of the subject in the four countries compared, there will be no difficulty in admitting, or at least in understanding, the characteristics ascribed to them respectively. What is that state 1 "With respect to this country the case is too familiar to need discussion. Do not our libraries labour loathingly, groan patriotically, with pretended histories, not only of the several States of the Union, and the previous colonies individually, but almost of every township and village of each 1 "While on the other hand, we are still in most things, save the easy attribute of the name, without a general history of our juvenile nationhood. In foreign history, which appertains to a still wider range of development, scarce any thing has been even attempted. I recollect but Mr. Prescott's conquest of Mexico and Peru, and reign of Ferdinand and Isabella : and both those subjects, it is curious to note, belong to the alleged grade of historical infancy — the events of a battle, and the biography of indi- viduals. So also with our domestic histories of the adja- cent, the more general scope ; the actors and events of the Revolution form the main staple, and the works are but collections of battles and biographies. In fact biography constitutes our national distinction, our specialite. As in the infancy of other countries the historical art began with heroes, so we too have perhaps several lives of each of the "heroes" of the Revolution. And this may be proper or pious enough. But there is scarce a pettifogger who rants an " argument," in common law heroics, before two benches and a Ward-Justice, or a sentimental lady who metalli- fies sighs in a magazine, with whose interesting lives and faces, in fair but fallacious profile, some officious speculator in human folly is not found to favour our reading public. Does a merchant's clerk emerge to fortune, per- haps by accident, perhaps embezzlement, we are af- flicted with his " Life" under pretext of his " enterprise." Things in short are going to the pass that every hostler and chambermaid will, as well as our Assemblymen and Mem- bers of Congress, avail themselves of the biographical da- guerreotype of the press. It has been long remarked that America was the paradise of portrait-painters. And now that the daguerreotype has vulgarized the expedient of INTRODUCTION. 19 colour, it is the same national trait that turns the crowd into a new channel, the biographic, for the more diffusive dis- tinction of publication. But it was never explained, that this propensity is not peculiar to the American character, but is common to all nations at a similar stage of development ; for all begin in all the arts, including painting and history, with subjects of pictorial interest and individual simplicity. The exaggeration of the foible here is caused alone by three circumstances : — That our national existence com- menced when the arts in question could be borrowed from communities more advanced ; That our institutions are democratic, which tends to universalize the natural strug- gle to extricate one's head above the suffocating multi- tude ; and finally, The commercial spirit, which speculates upon reputation and isfain to take notoriety for its symbol or substitute. This is the triad of peculiarities which, superinduced upon our mental nonage, keeps the concep- tion of Historical writing down to the primary form of biography, and degrades our biographical essays, it must be added, into puffing. Hence our place on the historical scale seems well described as the Biographical. The next grade is the Empirical, which I have said to be the place of the English. British historians have long outgrown the puerile personality of the preceding stage. The biographical department has retired into the sphere of public life ; it is now reserved for men who have influenced conspicuously the government or the glory of the country. The essays in history proper offer also con- siderable advancement, in the generalization not only of Events, but even of Institutions : they treat of an adminis- tration, a revolution, a dynasty, a constitution. But these several actions or organs of the political body are rarely as yet conceived in more comprehensive aggregates, and are never co-ordinated upon systematic principles. Even Hume, who alone has attempted a general history of the Island (the others being doubtless copies, at least in the conception) ; even Hume, the philosopher, betrays in the most signal manner this empirical condition of the national mind. For he commenced, it is known, the composition as well as publication of his history quite epically, though accidentally so, in the middle, and with the Stuart dy- nasty. He began it, then, with no general unity of prin- 20 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. ciple or plan. Not merely this, but the original theme belonged, we see, to the Biographical period ; embracing, however, its ultimate extension to a royal line : while Mr. Prescott took an individual, or, to be strictly just, a mar- ried pair. Nor was this fundamental defect at all supplied by Hume's philosophy; which, though penetrating, was of the same piecemeal and fragmentary character — merely negative and critical, not constructive, not scientific. But nothing of even this kind in any other British historian — with the grand exception of G-ibbon, who, however, was a Frenchman, in all but the mere vocabulary. The others would seem to lack either the comprehen- sion or the docility to even appropriate the disjecta mem- bra of a borrowed philosophy : an expedient of which Mr. Bancroft is said to present a tolerable example. As to tracing systematically the universal laws of nature in the varieties and vicissitudes of society, the idea never found a lodgment in the head of a genuine Anglo-Saxon; with whom the ultimate principles of political science are Magna Charta and the Common law, and the sole canon for interpreting them "sound English common sense." The place of the Germans is kindred in order but opposite in extreme, and results from a social process which will be familiar to us in the sequel, and which for the present I may call the reactionary oscillation of the human mind. But the opposition, it is worth noting, is duly pointed more precisely towards the American off- shoot, than to the British branch of the Teutonic family. And it is this kinship in contrariety that inspires the predi- lection, deemed so preposterous, of our statistically prac- tical people for the cloudiest of modern metaphysicians : while the Germans will swing, in turn, into the most plod- ding of pragmatists. The three nations represent the stages of historical transition from the theological to the philosophical form of conception. But be the explanation what it may, the German intellect or imagination embraces all the topics of the specified progression together, persons, events, institutions, and these, of all places and times. It conceives history nationally, generally, universally. But the principles (when there are any) of expounding, and the method of arranging, the materials, are not always deduced from scientific or otherwise solid inductions of INTRODUCTION. 21 feet. Still less does the German ever construct, like the Englishman, upon the petty precedents of a sure, indeed, if short-sighted, practicalism. He usually moves in the mid-air of some half-mythical, half-metaphysical hypothesis. Or if he lights upon the earth, it is to burrow into it mole- like, not much minding by what method or to what end. The proof of this, because the consequence, is seen in that vague confusion and sterile copiousnesswhich are observed to characterize the writings, especially historical, of the Germans. For want of arrangement, of selection, in short of science, they only fluctuate, as explained, between the kindred, though contrasted, vices of a puerile minuteness and a mystical universality. This, it is true, has obtained, in countries correspondingly backward, the double credit of profundity and research. But the thing is grossly illusory. Accordingly, much of the research is now daily discarded as rubbish. Much, too, of the profundity will disappear with the progress of light ; for it has in large part its origin where Voltaire placed the learning of the priesthood — in the ignorance of their admirers. This dark profundity has, accordingly, been always seen through by the French, and is aptly ridiculed in the anecdote they tell of the Ger- man professor, who introduced a course of astronomy with an analysis of the alphabet : for were not letters the ele- mentary constituents of words, and words the medium through which the lectures must be delivered ! Buffon defined genius to consist in patience; it is the genius, at all events, of the Germans. — Nor do these strictures imply disparagement, as they certainly design no censure. This speculative euphuism is quite normal in the case. With 1 intellect undeveloped by one-half the civilized experience of the Gallic French j with imagination consequently un- disciplined to the pfoc*essess and the precision of science, these promising schoolboys of the new era dissert luxuri- antly upon all subjects, learnedly upon all occasions. They are a modernized transformation of those doctors of the middle ages who professed to dispute indifferently de omni seibUi. But history affords the amplest field for extrava- gance in this tendency. It was in this respect alone that the German historians were designated by th« term Scho-' lastic The historical writers of France were distinguished as 3 22 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Philosophical. Not because they talk of natural laws of organization in society, and of progression in humanity. The Germans likewise talk, and even theorize, in a like strain. Nay, the English themselves are come to recog- nize, at least in the abstract, the possibility of a natural science of society, and one more perfect, they concede already, than their own notable "perfection of reason." And as for us Americans, if you judge by terminologies, would we not pass for a nation of philosophers ? It is not, therefore, the employment of scientific terms that assures the pre-eminence of the French. It is their conception, at once more sound and systematic, of the things, as evinced alike in the artistical composition of their books, the methodical prosecution of their inquiries, and the posi- tive and precise spirit of even their most transcendental speculations. These are qualities not so easily plagiarized as a nomenclature. But as only the latter is introduced by foreign writers or reformers, their less sophisticated readers, especially in this country, perceiving nothing but the barren formula or the bare name, are apt to stigma- tize, not merely the importer, as what he commonly is, a mountebank, but also the French fabricator as consequent- ly something worse. Yet the parties differ widely as do the author who executes, and the speculator who trafficks in, a work of exquisite art. To the one, it is nothing more than a piece of material merchandise, good to gratify one's vanity or to cover his nakedness : . to the other it is the symbol of a scientific triumph in the combinations of tissue and theharmony of coloring. And thus the French, who are the great artists of the age in social theories, are imagined by those who view them but through the magic lantern of quackery, to present some strange mixture of the vision- ary and the wicked : even as the populace of the dark ages, on seeing the figures of the mathematicians, were similarly, certain of their intercourse with the devil. To the intelligent, however, the agitation is but a sure sign that the French mind is now mature for the regular con- sideration of this most complex of subjects philosophically. Of which, in fine, I could not add perhaps a more preg- nant or pertinent proof than that the word historical is not used in French, as in our own and other idioms, to denote INTRODUCTION. 23 a mere matter of record ; but is now become significant of matter of fact, in contradistinction to matter of fable. Still, philosophy, at least in the usual acceptation, is not science. It is only the genus of which science is the most perfect species. We may predicate of every science that it is a philosophy, as we may (to borrow a trite ex- ample) of every man, that he is an animal ; but we could no more justly say of what have been hitherto called phi- losophies, that they are all sciences, than we could of all animals, that they are men, According to this distinction, the science of social history would imply the philosophy of civilization. But the latter may exist without the former, and must precede it. It is in fact the lofty ground" upon which French historians are now entering. For even of these, I recollect but one who, as yet, has ap- proached the subject in its completely abstract character and name ; and his performances are naturally but the fragmentary specimens, which we just saw constitute the weak commencements in the wider ranges of the his- torical art. I allude to M. Guizot's books on French and European civilization. I was warranted, then, in affirming that history is written nowhere in the spirit or the method of science; Also, that its actual condition in the leading countries of the age, is still remote from this destination, in the inverse order of the gradation described. Having planted these posts of distance (for they are not offered as the proper principles of classification, which will be found elsewhere) — having opened these gleams of historical perspective in passing vindication of an unpalatable truth, they will also serve, provisionally, to give the reader a clearer insight into the full enormity of the general practice of our lite- rature. § 4. For what, in sum, is this practice] Is it not chargeable with treating biography, morals, history, socie- ty, civilization, even science itself, without the semblance of a fixed standard, whereby to judge the principles, the actions, the events, the characters, the objects, the ages, the institutions considered 1 Does it not, on the contrary, vary its test, and with an aggravating unconsciousness, according to the locality, to the epoch, to the sect, to the sentiments or even the idiosyncracies of the several 24 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. writers ? The student of inert and objective minerals is still in quest of such a type, as the grand prerequisite of his par- ticular science. But our writers upon active, organical, in- tellectual and social man, do not even know their ignorance of this first condition of all science ; a condition, too, the more indispensable as the subject matter is more complex, and the progress of civilization the more advanced. During the earlier stages of society, this ignorance, then necessary, is provided for, as usual, in the order of nature. There is little to be written, and fewer still to write ; and the rude chronicler merely registers the impressions on his five senses, or recites, if he go beyond his immediate country or contemporaries, but things recorded in the same simple and sympathetic situation. But no differences, no disorder, where there are as yet no doctrines, or none but imagination to which nothing is then a " stumbling- block." Afterwards, however, as illusion gives way be- fore opinion, the disorder proceeds developing itself by a twofold progression — the multiplication of materials and the diversification of minds. Arrived at present (as we shall after see) at the critical period of excess, the gross result imposes upon historians the task of pronouncing, at every sentence, upon the accumulations of ages and nations. And for this what is their present criterion % Why, only the correlatively chaotic rule, of tracing back empirically each fragment of the vast detritus to its native place among a thousand systems ; or, on the other hand, the process, which is the usual one, as just remarked, of making the par- ticular writer a universal law of the entire past. A pretty dilemma truly for our historical adjudications, which re- duces them to alternate between the impossible and the absurd ! So that if the reader but consider the situation well, he will ask himself, not why history is so often wrong in its decisions, but how it can possibly be ever right, even by chance. He will hesitate to trust it for so much as the raw representation of facts — the infant provinee of the chronicler, and to which, it is worth observing, certain critics of the present day would have the range of history again degraded, in the ignorant hope of rescuing it from the monstrous condition in question. And the distrust would be entirely philosophical. For facts stand in need of theory to interpret and thus exhibit them aright, no less INTRODUCTION. 23 than theory does of facts, in turn, for its ulterior verifica- tion. In conclusion, the principle, or rather absence of all principle upon which historical composition still proceeds is, we see, far more preposterous than if the materials were jumbled together in the double disregard of geogra- phy and chronology. These primitive bases of arrangement have indeed been termed tne eyes of history ; although they would, I think, be better called its legs, and so were preceded by genealogy as the go-cart of its infancy. But admitting them to the rank of eyes, they would at best be but the physical organs. Whereas, that which gave them value, the perceiving power itself, sits sequestered in the intellect behind them. Now this is the visual faculty of history which is overlooked, and which consists in a scien- tific theory evolved by suitable methods. For what histo- rian, whether of an individual, an epoch, a nation or a race, has hitherto begun with providing this equitable standard of estimation ; with pre-adjusting this indispensa- ble point of view ; with couching these real eyes of all rational philosophy, physical and moral as well as social 1 I confess I do not know of one. § 5. From the mischiefs of wanting, let us now glance to the advantages of establishing, this great intellectual requisite. The direct and principal consequence of a theory of civilization would be to furnish to history a general scale of classification. This in turn would oblige and would enable the writers to begin by assigning the place, as the subject may be, of the proposed people in the general progression of society : or of the particular epoch, in the development of the nation ; or even of the individual in the civilization of his class and his country. The result of this would be to define, methodize, and abridge incalculably the author's task. Under its guid- ance there would be no fear that even a German pro- fessor would mix the letters of the alphabet with the laws of the stars. It would proportionably render competent the general reader too, both to comprehend the subject and criticise the execution. It would instruct us to judge of men, as antiquarians do of monuments, in the spirit of their situation and season ; not as we now do universally, h. flagrant violation of the first rule both of interpretation, 3* 26 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. and equity. By this means, moreover, the exemplary characters of the past might be rescued alike from the obloquy and the adoration of ignorance, and turned pro- fitably to the edification of public conduct or the illustra- tion of human nature. This nature itself it would excul- pate from the inexplicable depravity of having hitherto, the world over, forsaken, with eyes open, or rather by deliberate preference, the paths of righteousness and reason, for the mire of vice and the mazes of error. It would vindicate, in fine, the Creator of that nature from having imposed, or at least admitted, so diabolical a desti- nation. ' It seems needless to note the importance of such a scale of appreciation in the practical sphere of legislation, through all its tributary functions. But what it would effect for social science, may be exemplified with brevity in the subjects of botany or comparative anatomy. In the latter, it is well known, that a Cuvier may now determine, from a single joint, tooth, or other fragment of an animal, whose species had never entered human eye or imagina- tion, not only its general configuration, size, family, and gra.de in the series of organic being ; but also its physio- logical constitution, its manners, its food, its climatic habitation, whether in the geography or the chronology of the globe. Even so would equal knowledge (a thing, I doubt not, eventually attainable) of the analogous laws of symmetry and synergy in the social system, enable the historian to tell — not only from any simple art or institution, usage or general opinion of an extant community, but perhaps by inspection of a disinterred utensil or sculptured column of some unrecorded Nine- veh, — would enable, I say, to tell the entire social constitu- tion and intellectual condition of the corresponding peo- ple. All which would be implied in the short and simple formula — of fixing the place on the scale of civilization. But to construct this scientific scale — of which the theorem had long since been attempted by Vico, and quite recently established by Comte, who is the greater Newton, succeeding the great Kepler, of social and universal science ; to verify the abstract theory by a general induc- tion of human history, and verified, to apply it to the ex- planation of civilization (even as La Place explained the INTRODUCTION. 27 physical counterpart by the law of gravitation) — this double task appears to be the grand achievement which time has kept in store for the positvie method of Francis Bacon and the mental manhood of the Nineteenth cen- tury. § 6. That the author of this little volume makes no pre- tensions to a feat of such magnitude may be well believed, if but from the enormity of the contrast with his book. ■ Rome, indeed, has been somewhat similarly surveyed in her rise and decline, within a compass considerably still more lim- ited. But the aggregate history of even the Roman people ' was no more than a morning's entry in the journal of travel- ling Humanity. And then the writer, in that instance, was Montesquieu. In truth, I have not ventured voluntarily in this pitiful bark, upon an ocean worse than shoreless, chart- less and unexplored ; an ocean agitated by conflicting cur-i rents of a thousand traditions ; bestrewn with the submerg- ed sandbanks of innumerable systems ; above all infested, on the one hand, by the harpy prejudices of popular ignor- ance, and on the other, by the pirate pretensions of sancti- fied authority. I have been led into the slight excursion half unconsciously ; and have been conveyed into the open waters, with scarce an effort of my own, by the strong current of a tributary stream. But dropping metaphor, a short account of both the occasion and the route, while ex- cusing, I trust, the temerity of the undertaking, will also best extenuate the natural imperfections, and delineate the special character of the performance. The editor of a quarterly journal did me the honor of inviting an article in explanation of the mental charac- ter of Pascal — that prodigy and enigma, as he has been termed, of the species. Conformably to the theory above referred to, and long employed upon other projects, I sought a clue to the proposed problem in two principal sources ; — first, in the contemporary civilization of the country; and then, for the residual conditions of the solu- tion, I took the extreme, because antagonistic, phases of the epoch, as contrasted in the spirit of the Jesuits and Janse- nists, and thus concurring to elucidate the anomalies of Pascal. But to determine, or even to designate the psy- chological character of the age, it was necessary to assign 28 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. its place in the evolution of the species ; for I know of no other criterion, real or even revealed. And again, how was this evolution itself to be graduated, without ascer- taining first its laws both of order and progression ? In this way (through the interconnection to be met among all things on descending into the roots) was I carried back- wards, step after step, to the few and fundamental ele- ments, not merely of the question immediately to be solved, but of all others, I dare affirm, within the sphere of the human intellect. This done, the analytic proceedure of exploration was reversed into the synthetic order of exposition. The re- sult presented what seemed a satisfactory, almost a self- evident solution of Pascal — even in that most repugnant combination of superstition and science, which has made his name at once the scandal and the glory of philosophy. Another conclusion, and of vastly greater moment, was the establishment of the general principle, that every in- dividual, in proportion to his mental eminence, is an epi- tome of the age and a monogram of the species. The truth of this abstract deduction was practically realized, in finding it explain, as it proceeds, the principal aspects and revolutions of opinion and institution as recorded in his- tory. Among others were evolved, as most pertinent to the purpose, the successive forms of heathen mythology, and the various schools of ancient philosophy ; then under a succeeding phase of the same principles, the several sects of the Christian Church, and leading systems of modern inquiry along to the goal of the seventeenth cen- tury. Thus prepared, the thought occurred that the thing was capable of expansion into something like the former of the alleged requisites of our age, namely, a verification of the social theory by a general induction of History. In pursuance of this higher design I began the attempt anew, with prefixing a systematic exposition of principles. But on proceeding to the application upon a far more ex- tended scale, I found no place for a single sentence of the original sketch, with the exception of a page or two at the end of the volume. This I mention, to invoke indulgence to a production printed as it was first written, and first written (I almost blush to own it) within the space of two months. INTRODUCTION. 29 I might even add the dog-days wereincluded;(l) if only by way of accommodating the critics (should they honour (pe) with a clue to any thing cynical they may find in the work. The same gentlemen, it is possible, will avail them- selves of another avowal, declared in the dedication, con- cerning my want of books, and deem the circumstance a safe occasion to display their erudition. Not that the essay has not imperfections within the range of their un- prompted powers : had it been convenient to write it over, the matter would have probably gained, the manner un- doubtedly ; so that, as it is, there remains in both, no doubt, abundant flaws for the censors in view, who, like other vermin, have a natural predilection for the smaller chinks and crevices, as favoring the exertion of their little all of force. But be it so, they can only leave me gainer by any serious attempts of the kind ; for they must serve to expose either my ignorance or their own. If mine, I shall be obliged to them for a lesson ; if haply their own, why, then for an ovation. But the meed of triumph, or the monition of failure, is with a different class of critics ; and above all with a public intelligent, and independent, and placed in no professional dilemma of being either critical or nothing. With these, I doubt not the puerile tensilry of literary legerdemain — that surest mark of a bastard literature and a barren ■ public intellect — will scarce be missed, amid the serious interest of an unprecedented exposition, professing to trace consecutively the footprints of the Human Mind, from the infancy of society up to its present point of civilitude, and to indicate its necessary direction and destination. Those who can the best appreciate the various exigencies of such a task, will be sure to treat this sketch with greatest leniency. Their candid and intelligent criticism is, however, the sole favour I would ask or desire, and as a favour it would be taken, I beg to say, in all sincerity. (1) The work was written in July and August of the year bsfore last. The delay of publication, though not of my choosing, has left an opportunity of verifying the chief historical representations. Also, of restating the preliminary portion, containing the theory. But the application I must leave unmodified in either statement or style ; and moreover, now disturbed, no doubt, in many details of adjustment by this enlargement of the original scale. SO VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. For I am quite sensible the thing at present is a mere anti-type or skeleton. But I also think the skeleton to possess a setting. of frame and a vigour of ligament, whicl^ with a more detailed adjustment of the minor tissues of the theory, and a new terminology to suit and set off the entire system, might be made to wield the flesh and fat of many a portly and pedantic folio. And it is to test the truth of this conviction, that I preferably leave the book in this honest undress for the inspection of the public.(l) But enough of the execution and the author. I con- clude with a more particular description of the subject. § 7. The metaphor of footprints, just employed, ex- plains the choice of the title vestiges; a name, moreover, applied already in quite a similar sense to a clever book upon the processes of the physical creation. But civiliza- tion, as I conceive it, is likewise a creation. It is the moral counterpart of the grand geological operation, to which the term is specifically appropriated. The latter is the natural history of our planet ; the former, the natural history of our species. The one event progresses by a trans- formation in the parts of matter ; the other, by a variation in the views of men. The progression has been traced in the one through a stratification of earths ; it may be traced in the other through a stratification of opinions. In short, the things are not only analogous, but reciprocally depend- ant. The uncouth and half-formed animals of the earlier deposits are, to the physical conditions of the primeval globe, exactly what the comparatively cultivated earth of the present day is to the semi-rational creatures that are found accordingly to inhabit it. And the joint tendency of this twofold progress, geological and social, is, I may (1) My mind in this respect is expressed exactly in the following reflection of Nicole, himself the most polished writer of the polished Port Royalists : — " It were much to be desired that books should be re- garded in the first edition as no more than half-formed sketches, which the authors submit to the judgment of the intelligent publio, and which afterwards, upon the various suggestions that might thus be received from different critics, they should elaborate all anew, in order to give them the degree of perfection to which the writers may be capable of carrying them." This was said, no doubt, in days when books were read and written by the intelligent alone, and read by these not as a novel or a newspaper. But it must be owned — que nous avons changes tout cela. INTRODUCTION. 3 1 add, to turn gradually the natal opposition (to be after- wards explained) between Nature and Man, into that in- tellectual harmony of the latter with the former, the realization of which in practice and the recognition in prin- ciple, have always described the limits of civilized en- closure, between the cultured Eden of art and truth and the cursed wilderness of vice and error. Such, at all events, will be my meaning of the term Civi- lization, as enlarged to a strictly philosophical import. The name, however, — even though titular — is of little account, provided the reader bear in mind that the subject of these pages embraces and applies to all the arts and institutions, the truths and the errors, in one word, to all that is, or rather is deemed to be, non-physical, in the collec- tive career of mankind. We are, in fine, to sketch a me- moir of the great being called Humanity ; the veritable Leviathan which was conceived, but for abortion, by the foremost English thinker of the seventeenth century: although a French contemporary had characterized it, in the immortal terms of our motto, as " living and learning indefinitely." GENERAL DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. § 8. Of Civilization, as thus defined, the total evolu- tion presents three different phases, proceeds upon three distinct bases, is performed in three principal cycles, progressively. It operates, in the first, upon the physical world of Nature j next, upon the moral world of Man ; finally, upon the logical world of Relation — the relations subsisting really between those two collective substances. The condition of reality is essential to be noted. For relations are, of necessity, the spring of action in all the periods, nothing else being ever accessible to the human understanding. But these relations, as conceived in the first and second cycles, are respectively imaginary and imperfect ; and it is even through numberless ages of such illusions and such errors, that the human intellect has been educated to perceive the true, that is, the scientific. It should also be explained, that the term cycle is not taken here in the literal sense of meaning a period return- ing into itself. This would obviously be incompatible with the continuity of progression, of which the three sec tions are represented as the successive results. To follow nature, it is therefore necessary that the movement of revolution be not only reconciled with, but made subser- vient to, the movement of progression. Not the circle, then, but the cycloid gives the precise image of the accep- tation. Adopting the term, in this sense, as a generic title for 4 34 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. all three of the divisions, the distinctive epithets (of which the technical import appears more fully in the proper place) will be the words Mythological, Metaphysical, and Scientific. For description's sake, the Cycles will be also referred to occasionally by certain other series of corresponding terms ; such as, respectively, the Physi- cal, the Ethical, the Philosophical ; or the Objective, the Subjective, and the Systematic. This arrangement, I may be allowed to say, has some- thing still more to recommend it than being thus sponta- neously natural and methodically convenient. It is in fact a compound and necessary result, in the first place, of the logical Organization of the mind conceiving; secondly, of the cosmical Order among the things to be conceived; thirdly, of the consequent Modes of the conception. In more familiar terms, it flows, conjointly, from the Consti- tution of the human intellect, the Composition of the external world, and the natural Position of the one towards the other. The explanation of these three funda- mental factors of the problem will therefore demand a preliminary department of the work ; and together with one to each of the three cyclical divisions, will make, in all, the four Parts into which it is accordingly distributed. PART I. MECHANISM OF CIVILIZATION. CHAPTEE I. Logical and Chronological Analysis of the Human Mmd. § 9. I pray the reader of sense and taste not to take alarm at this ominous caption. There is no design to drug him with infinitesimal analyses, after the nearly defunct fashion of Scotch metaphysics. I shall not allow myself to fritter down the substantial unity of the mind into a multitude of elements ca)\ed faculties ; but which are truly nothing more than the various modes of a single power placed in certain diversities of condition and cir- cumstance. Take, for instance, one or two of the most specious, the "faculties" of imagination and of judgment. Imagination is but perception applied to things absent or unreal. But the mental act is no less the same because of the unreality of the object; nor is the sensorial impres- sion the less real because received from memory at second hand. As well should the eye by which a friend is per- ceived in person and in portrait be accounted a different organ. Thus identical with perception, in both the nature of the mental energy and the reality of the exciting im- pression — that is to say, in all that can be possibly thought to constitute a " faculty" — the alleged difference of im- agination, is extruded into the object. But even here 36 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. also there is really none. For the real presence or even existence of the object, in turn, is no more necessary to perception than it is allowable in imagination. Witness the visionary perceptions of dreaming or delirium. The contrary opinion is the extraneous result of association, propense in all things to concrete, so to speak, the invisible action with the tangible recipient, and especially where the occurrence of the latter is as here the common case. Were delirium the normal state, the prejudice had been the other way, and perception proper been what we now name imagination. No more therefore does the difference between these operations lie in the object, for this may be ideal in the former as well as in the latter. In what then does it consist 1 In the circumstance that imagination has a consciousness of the unreality. But this consciousness is itself a perception. So that imagination is, I repeat, but perception applied ; and I now add, applied to its own past operations. These names then both refer to one and the same faculty : even as a farmer is not a different per- son, or his bodily force a different faculty, when he gathers his harvest from the bosom of nature and when after- wards he draws it from the storehouse for use. But as imagination is thus perception introverted, and co-ordinating, however crudely, the record of memory ; so Memory itself, I may note in passing, is still the same perception, pursuing the simple lines of association. The identity of Judgment is equally evident. As memory is the perception of past impressions in lines ; and imagination the perception of the like impressions in groups, that is to say images ; so Judgment is the percep- tion of past impressions in series, that is to say, of ab- stract relations ; or more properly, it is the re-application of such relations to facts. What evinces quite conclusively this essential unity of all three, and moreover suggests the occasion of their diversity, is this : They come predomi- nantly into action at successive stages of development both in individual and national life. Occurring out of this order, both of season and subordination, or rather seem- ing to so occur, they are remarked, even popularly, to be incompatible with one another : a large memory is said to be exclusive of a lively imagination, and both to be alike ominous of a weak judgment. Galen ascribed the pro- ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 3 *l verbial stupidity of the ass to the peculiar tenacity of its memory ; and the witty countrymen of the erudite Jesuit Hardouin have avenged, in an epitaph or rather epigram upon his tomb (1), a like inversion of the successive order of predominance among these faculties. Within this order, on the other hand, they presuppose each other pro- gressively — the perception of exterior objects necessarily preceding that of their mnemonical impressions, and the consideration of these impressions in the casual and still half-sensuous combination of images, being an equally indispensable preparative to the comprehension of their natural laws. Now here is a set of characteristics any one of which, not to say the whole, I might challenge those concerned in the prevailing doctrines to reconcile with the hypothesis of a multitude of mental faculties, all equally elementary and mutually independent. Whereas, to' one who can discern, amid all this play of powers, but a single substantive faculty under several modifications, the de- scriptions will appear to fit the explanation I contend for, as if they had been actually drawn from a set theory to that effect, instead of from the observation and instinct of nature. The " powers" exemplified are, therefore, but complications of the same faculty, to wit, a reflected, an imaged, an applied Perception. Still more easily might I go on to resolve into the same element the residue of these pretended principles, active, passive, and neuter. But such minuteness is the less necessary that our exposition of the true theory will dispose by implication of the entire catalogue of Dr. Reid. Meanwhile the conviction will be more complete, r if to this exposure of the error, I annex a. brief account of its origin and occasion. § 10. In fact this mischievous morseling of the human mind proceeds from the vulgar illusion, that wherever there is an objective name there must be a substantive existence. This error will be seen in the sequel to have occasioned the most eccentric, or rather the most shock- (1) Hie jacet vir beatas memorial, expectans judicium. The felicity lies, it will be remarked, in the Latin ambiguity of each of the terms italicized; which may signify either a "man of blessed memory" (of holy life) " awaiting the last judgment," or a man possessing a retentive memory, but wanting the power of judgment. 4* 38 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. ing of the modes of heathen worship. Even in our own divine religion, the monks of the middle ages are known to have drawn largely upon the terminology of the pagan liturgy, and transformed into so many Saints, historical and holy, not merely substantives, but even adjectives and sighing interjections, through their fortunate ignorance of the Latin language. This insatiable urgency to multiply, in the case of theology, the means of intercourse between Providence and piety, would, in the succeeding ages of metaphysics, produce a similar expedient to explain the analogously mysterious intercourse between matter and mind. This taking of words for things was, accordingly, the general error of all Greek speculation even in the department of physics. It arrived in the darker district of mental and moral inquiry, towards the close of the last century, in Britain ; when it was represented by a dynasty of minute philosophers, who finding the words memory, imagination, reason, conscience, and a score or two of other variations in use, proceeded — with an ignorance of the laws of general language quite analogous to that of their clerical predecessors in respect of the Latin vocabu- lary — to metamorphose them into a crowd of entities called "faculties," and then protected this metaphysical thimble-rig by an electioneering appeal to the principle of " common sense," and the philosophy of " facts !" The whole very much as the personal symbolism of the good monks has been also consecrated to ignorance, by the equally logical arguments, of unbroken tradition and an infallible Church. Hobbes used to say that words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools. It seems, however, they may pass for specie upon philosophers too. But to be just to Hobbes, he never said that all philosophers are wise men, or that most of those so called have not been fools. § 11. The same general objection would apply to the still later and now the prevailing system of " mental phi- losophy" named phrenology. This, in fact, is but a trans- formation of the " entities" into " organs." It is another remarkable coincidence with the verbal illusion, that as the latter was seen to reign in the physical metaphysics of the Greeks long anterior to its appearance in the mental meta- ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 39 physics of the moderns ; so the organic diversity attributed to the brain had been in some shape a medical doctrine in the Roman School of Galen, before its revival as a mental theory by Gall in our own day. Phrenology is, then, an advance upon its more frivolous predecessor, however erroneous or imperfect itself. It has brought the error from out the impalpable region of revery. and placed it on the terra firma of positive philosophy, where it may be better combatted with popular evidence. Such are the historical import and real value of cranioscopy. And in this light it should be regarded as an importan auxiliary, a leading pioneer to the science of Mind. But in no light, as that science itself. Still less can it even pretend to be the science of Society ; for it terminates in the destinies of the individual. Conceive an Indian, fresh from the forest, to be introduced into a large corn-mill at work. He sees a vast conglomeration of machinery disposed into several masses, and without visible interconnection. Approaching nearer, he discerns in each a new complication of arrange- ments, the mutual dependence of which he is unable to trace beyond the portions in immediate contact. He next ascends from loft to loft where the insulation seems still more complete, the diversity more multiplex. What at last would be his general impression ? Most probably, that he sees before him a multitude of strange animals — or (remarking the mill-pond in the rear) perhaps a beaver- dam of manitoos — all occupied in doing something, and each, the savage would be sure to suppose, on its own account alone. But what is this something ? Composing his astonished attention to the single inqui- ry, he observes to issue from one department of the machinery, the product called grist, from another bran, from a third brown sharps, on a lower story, the fairer and softer substance of flour, &c. These products, all, he re- gards as co-ordinate in the design of the operation, or rather as the proper business of the respective and independent operators. For such parts of the works as exhibit no direct result of their movements, he finds a ready expla- nation in the mysteries of his own ignorance. The pit- wheel, for example, with its dismal position and primal power, will surely be the abode of the master manitoo, 40 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the Great Spirit; and the shaft, immovable and upright amid the turmoil of the scene, will encase the soul of some erect and impassive chieftain of his tribe. These animals or divinities of the savage are the " faculties," or intellectual powers of the metaphysician ; while this child of nature is the prototype of that manipu- lator of bumps who dubs himself "practical phrenologist." With the exception, however, that the latter transfers the part of children to those who believe in, and pay for, his quackeries. Let, on the other hand, a skilful mechanic be brought to take a survey, without previous experience, of the same spectacle. He recognizes the whole fabric as form- ing but a single system, a single instrument, a single organism, only composed of a congeries of parts more or less close and co-operative. The action of such an instru- ment must, he comprehends, be collectively one, and ad- dressed to one ultimate effect. The varieties of produc- tion he discerns to be, all, but either incidents to the main operation or stages of its progression. The sole appurte- nant of the system which he can consider at all extraneous, will be the propelling power. About this, supposing it steam, the mechanic would probably hesitate. He tran- scended the savage in conceiving the unity of the ma- chinery in space ; but he may fail himself, in turn, to fol- low it backward into time. If native of a country where mills are worked by streams, he will think there runs be- neath a hidden current ; or he will look aloft for sails, if such be the usage of his nation ; or he may assume a pro- portionate combination of muscular force, if we may sup- pose him from a rude region where the quairn alone is known. But when shown his mistake, and that the motive power is heat, he will deem the whole contrivance a new kind of mill ; as he would equally rank the others as each an independent instrument, or different faculty, for grinding corn. And this conception he might vindicate by reference to language, which offers the distinct names of hand-mill, wind-mill, water-mill ; thus evincing that these various structures are really different kinds of mill, according to the consent and common sense of mankind. These divers sorts of mill are the several " organs" of the cranioscopist ; and our practical mechanic an analogi- ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 41 cal sample of the more comprehensive teachers of phre- nology. But the defects of his practicalism would be corrected by the philosopher ; who not only sees that the mass of machinery before him is a single organ, but moreover that it is a cumulation of all the preceding modes of mill. He names it, then, a corn-mi\], which applies accordingly to all alike. The diversities of appellation he readily ex- plains by referring to the obvious fact, that the rude inventors of language were belter fitted to be impressed by the organic modifications of the material causes, particu- larly when presented them at long intervals in space and time, than with the generic end and abstract notion of the constant function. This fundamental purpose and even its immediate apparatus he shows to have, in fact, remained the same in all the stages, namely, the trituration of corn between two stones. The accident of the moving force alone has changed essentially, having passed from the arm of the savage to that of the steam-engine. This passage the inductive philosopher will trace, with the progress of civilization, through the three elements, successively, of water, wind, and fire. And these, too, in fine he may show to be complications of one another, and to consist, throughout, in the same agency of a continuous and elas- tic force, in three progressive grades of rarefaction. Even so would the real science of the mind, like that of the mill, teach us to find in the several compartments of the brain but the synergical portions of a single com- plex organ ; performing an ultimately simple though in- cidentally varied function ; but performing it upon differ- ent principles, actuated by different views, according to the grade of development of the individual, the age or the race. This sole function is, again, perception. But what the impelling principles we shall presently investi- gate. § 12. Meanwhile this perception itself demands de- composition in turn. The term, as usually accepted, im- plies a cooperation of the senses with the intelligence. But, as intimated in the penultimate section, the acts im- plied are quite distinct. They are even independent. The mental part of perception may be operated, as in dreaming, without a corresponding action of the sensuous organs j 42 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. and the latter are known, on the other hand, even to dictate movements of the body in sleep, without the concurrence or cognizance of the intellect. The former and purely percep- tive act has, in popular language, no proper appellation, un- less it be the word thought in its most general sense ; but is called partitively the feeling faculty, the imagining faculty, the judging faculty, &c. ; even as the act or instrument of grinding corn had been named hand-mill, water-mill, wind- mill, &c, but never corw-mill until it came into the hands of science ; and for the same reason in both the cases, namely the generic unity of the function. The merely mechanical operation of sense is the province of sensation. Still there lurks in even sensation a species of perception — the " ultima species " — to wit, perception of impression present; as memory and the others cited, are, we said, per- ception of impression past ; and as reasoning and other processes are, we shall see, perceptions of impressions to come. And this rudimentary stage is also furnished, quite accordingly, with the special name of feeling or consciousness. Beyond this, I apprehend no merely men- tal analysis will ever penetrate. But the subject matter of Sensation — whether in the exterior form of Impression or in the internal one called Emotion — belongs appropriately to the sphere of physi- ology. It is simply the ground, the substrate upon which the operations of intellect proceed, and is thus completely extrinsic to their essence. § 13. There remains, then, to compose this essence, but the merely mental part of perception ; and to this I assert the common privilege of restricting the name, having complied, I trust, with the conditions of definition and ex- planation. Perception, therefore, in this sense, of sole intellectual faculty, is, so to speak, the monad of Mind, and conse- quently the common denominator of civilization. Like its physical co-efficient, Impression, it is one essentially throughout, in the complex form, of a theory as in the simple meaning of a term ; it is always perception, and perception always of relation. How a theory may be the direct object of an act of perception will be understood if we remember, that the Omniscience of the Creator is supposed to so perceive the whole system of the Universe, ANALYSIS OP TIIE HUMAN MIND. 43 that is, to apprehend it at a glance. But of all knowledge however limited, if only thorough, that is scientific, such is also the aim and the effect. The sole difference in point of principle is perhaps this : that boundless intelligence would probably perceive the world of matter and of mind to be both evolved from a single ultimate element ; whereas human nature, by its constitution, has been sent upon this scene, under the " Caudine fork" above encoun- tered by our analysis, and human knowledge thus confined within the dualism there disclosed — of intellect and ob- ject, Perception and Relation. But onward and out- ward, that is to say, throughout the human range of Per- ception, the difference is all of modification, of degree. § 14. The conclusion thus reached inductively may be confirmed by deduction. For this gradation of percep- tion, from sensation up to science, is the joint effect, and so a proof, of the mind's simplicity, as just described, put in conflict with the complexity of natural relations. This complexity, which belongs, in fact, to the succeeding chapter, it is not necessary here to discuss. Tt will suffice to distinguish that the relations bear a twofold aspect, namely, absolute and relative, cosmical and personal, as they are or appear in Nature, and as they are or appear in Knowledge. But it is with the latter and accidental aspect that the present purpose is alone concerned, and with that as merely subsidiary to the proposed explica- tion. To the same end it may be well to add, that the joint effect to be characterized was not more necessarily a gradation in fact than it was a complication in form. For the mind, as it cannot change directly the constitution of nature to suit the singleness and simplicity of its own ca- pacity, is forced to operate indirectly, by taking the alter- native of Mahomet and putting itself va motion, in modifi- cation. And as the Prophet gained the mountain, we may presume, like mere mortals, by a complication of physical processes in his own body, together with the fric- tion and support of the earth ; so Perception is gradually elevated to wider ranges of comprehension by training its logical processes, from their feeble origin in the soil of sense, up the trellis, so to speak, of natural relations ; in literal language, by simply reduplicating its own action 44 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. progressively. "We are briefly to trace the course and test the results of this procedure. A general and necessary consequence of the unity of faculty would he this: that all relations must present themselves at first as merely subjective, that is to say, as if they centred in the percipient as sole term ; and must pass, by the progress of knowledge, through the several successive phases called qualities, objects, relations proper, laws. In fact, Perception, in its infant essays, the relation being presented endwise, could receive but a dim, indefi- nite impression ; even as a physical line, placed in a like position in the axis of the eye, is found to dwindle to the semblance of a point upon its surface. Such, accordingly, is the exact character of the primary process of mind, above distinguished as consciousness, but more commonly named sensation. So long and far as succeeding sensa- tions were all different from each other, the effect would continue the same, the perceptions must be mere con- sciousness; there being no objective connection between the crowd of mental points whereby the intellect might be awakened from its optical illusion. But as soon as the like relation, the like impression, should recur elsewhere, the situation would thenceforth be changed ; the indentity, or the resemblance, which is a mode of identity, would he led, by the local variance, to recall the former sensation, and thus reveal the interjacent relation of place. This re- perception of sensations under the category of space is the second stage of the process, and the pretended faculty termed memory (1). The progressive effect of memory was to break the illusion of mere sensation, by separating the subjective term from the objective : the exhibition of the same impression as occurring at distant intervals im- plied, of course, its absence from the mind in the mean time, and thus excluded the previous prejudice of its per- sonal inherence. But where, then, did the mysterious visitor reside? Inevitably in something without. And this something Perception was enabled gradually to assign, by only shifting its point of view, from like sensation to sensation, along the double plain of memory, through space and time ; for by this alternation of position it re- (1) Hence the leading importance of the relatione of place in the schemes of artificial memory. ANALYSIS OP THE HUMAN MIND. 45 ceived the bearings of the several impressions, which, viewed obliquely, were seen to open from passive feelings into active qualities, and to recede into exterior centres of inhesion, thence called substances. The perception of these constantly recurring impressions or qualities, under real or fancied forms, over physical nature and mythical history, is the process which we quite accordingly denominate imagination. In a word, memory gives sides to sensation, and imagination adjusts them into figures. And this com- pound process, led by resemblance, that is say formal unity, went on to unify, to simplify these particular group- ings, by embracing them within this trigonometrical expe- dient of Perception, by aggregating them upon the sides of this triangular nucleus of human Knowledge, upon the distant, the past, the present or personal ; until all things seemed consolidated in the supreme image called the cosmos. 2. But this imaginative and infant structure came in time to crumble at the base. The disparates of sensation, which we saw originally left out of account, and which were afterwards included, as well as similar diversities of object, amid the loose texture of resemblances or arche- types, became more manifest and multiplied with the pro- gress of experience. Perception, to compose the discord, must therefore turn to review its work, and recur for a new clue to the percipient himself. This self-direction of the faculty, from the sphere of Resemblance to the sphere of Difference, and from the plain of Space into that of Time, is the process which popular language has picturesquely named reflection. Then, the result of reflection is atten- tion to the differing attributes ; and to apprehend them in this separate state, is the mode of Perception named ab- straction. But as all things are both similar and different in some particular, the latter principle must, of course, conduct to ultimate unity, like the former ; its advance upon it would be this: that, while assimilation proceeded to unity, along the surface of external qualities, discrimi- nation must take the internal and occult route of causa- tion. And the reason of this step is clear ; for resemblance, being in its nature positive, appeared to be plain of itself, or accounted for by the constancy of combination called its form; whereas difference, being privative, provoked 5 46 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the notion of an agent, and so gave origin to curiosity, and occasion to inquiry. Add to which the concurrent cir- cumstance that the elements found refractory were natu- rally the phenomena of motion or change. And thus the result was the resolution of the previousworld of images into the more fundamental, but still fictitious scheme of entities supposed to generate them. Perception, in this metaphysical marshalling of abstracted relations, is accord- ingly the process termed generalization — a term preserv- ing (like most others, if we only know how to read the record) the true historical conception of the thing. 3. Again, these genera or causes, to be serviceable to comprehension, must be fitted on to the now chaotic reali- ties around ; the resolution must be followed by recompo- sition. This final revolution has, like each of the preced- ing, commenced with attaching particular unities to more general. The distinction is, that while the objects attached were, in the former period, both similar, and in the second, both different exclusively ; the present mode of general- ization must be a compound of the two ; must connect similar things with different, reconcile essence with ap- pearance, harmonize order with progression, unite state with change. This is accomplished by the happy artifice, or to speak more truly, the hard necessity, of dropping gradually the plural element of" essential forms" and " effi- cient causes," to attend but to the single notion of inter- eonsequent facts or effects, under 'their double but con- cordant evolution in Space and Time. This grand effort of Perception is the so-called faculty of reason. The operation, as just described, will be best recognized in the syllogism, which seeks accordingly to ford the gulf be- tween resemblance and difference by the interposition, the evolution of what is called the " middle term." And here, again, as throughout its whole history, the imbecility of the human intellect is found to turn, in the hands of na- ture, to the account of its real advancement : for while relation, in the stage of images, seemed to rest upon one term, and in the epoch of causation upon two; the inser- tion here of a mediate resting-point results in offering to perception the duplication or continuation of the line of constant Uniformity, which is the element and gives the idea of a natural law. Perception .in the act of applying ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 47 these uniformities to phenomena, is the familiar process of comparison. The recognition, in fine, of the several classes or indefinite lines of relation, as derivable de- ductively from a fundamental law and conformable to the order and operation of nature, is that culminat- ing complication of the perceptive faculty termed me- thod. For by this the obstruction or illusion is eliminated completely; the mind is brought about to the central point of view from which all parts of the group of objects or grade of relations — including, of course, as participator, the percipient himself — are equally made objective and evident at once. Thus, for instance, in the mathematical class of relations, after grouping up- wards for countless ages, from step to step of the preced- ing progression, the human mind attained at last, in the intellect of Isaac Newton, this central position in the sun, from which his Perception saw and solved the mechanism of our Universe. (1) The course, spontaneous and necessary, of this psycholo- gical deduction, has thus led us, step by step, to the follow- ing familiar vestiges ; which it may be well to juxtapose under the three divisions of the whole development. Per- ception, then, passes progressively, and in consequence of the constant effort to simplify the phenomenal world into- harmony with its own unity, through, 1st (series), Sensation : Memory : Imagination : 2d " Reflection : Abstraction : Generalization : 3d " Reasoning: Comparison: Method. The consecutiveness and characterization, general and special, of these several terms, might have been traced with more precision, if greater nicety were necessary, or there was not danger of being thought inconsistent, by a certain class of readers, who mistake all logical refine- ment for the metaphysics I had just repugned. But our (1) The intuition was hardly consummated in the mind of Newton himself, whom the occult causes of the previous epoch had still ad- hered to in the shape of an " ether," and distracted from the steady contemplation of the bare phenomena. Not, however, that there may not bo, and is not, quite probably, a higher form of atmospheric attenuation than ours. But that was effectually nothing to the purpose of Newton — except to elude a Cartesian fallacy which he could not answer, and for the same reason. 48 VESTI&ES OF CIVILIZATION. purpose was, beside, content with ascertaining on the most summary scale, their respective functions, their number and succession ; and a glance along the diagram must now satisfy in these particulars. It will be hard, for example, to designate a process or " power" of mind, not included, at least as circumstance or application of one of these. For instance, trill is but the entity supposed to operate Reflection ; reason, a like fantastic symbol of the process of that name ; judgment, but Abstraction re-conereted to an individual object ; and so, with many others, as may be tested without great sagacity. And, moreover, it is to be observed, in reference to the completeness of the enume- ration, that the sole psychological phenomena with which I am here concerned, are the purely mental ; these being the leading, if not only, elements of the movement of civi- lization. As to the order, it maybe tested by suppressing any of the mediate stages, and trying to show how the human intellect could have overpassed the gulf. Each term will, in fact, be found to presuppose the preceding, and be itself included in each and all the following. Of this I will cite a single, but very signal illustration. It is known that Gall assigned, in the earlier of his cra- nioscopical maps, a separate organ to the so-called faculty of memory. But he afterwards remarked himself, as he might have read in all medical writers, that in cases of inflammation or lesion of the brain, the power of remem- brance, is never, or but rarely, lost entire ; the suspension being limited variously, now to proper names, now to substantives, again to abstract ideas, sometimes to figures, and occasionally to sciences. Now if the record of memory could be obliterated thus piecemeal, according as this or that of the other supposed organs was impair- ed, it was clear the power could not keep its place in an individual organ. And what then ? The alternative was in the teeth of the theory of Gall. He, however, quieted the aberration after the manner of the ancient astrono- mers, by attaching an epi-organ to each of the other bumps, a sort of mnemonical knapsack, containing its men- tal ammunition, and which naturally became powerless when the bearer should be stricken down. But as the epi- cycles disappeared as soon as the motion of their princi- pals was found to be not simple but composite ; so the ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 49 present theory of the human intellect explains the partial destruction of memory, by showing this function to be compounded with each and all the superior Processes, or more properly the latter to be complications of Memory, but appropriated to these progressively larger views of the external world, which occasioned the modifications and evolved the development. Thus, for example, must a suspension of the process of Imagination produce the specific oblivion of names substantive; of Abstraction, that of general terms ; of Reasoning, that of the inferential results of the process, &c. ; and this while Memory proper remained quite unimpaired in its primary domain of Sen- sation. On the other hand, this fundamental link may itself be struck away, and yet the rest of the severed chain continue temporarily operative, in virtue of its points of attachment to the trellis above alluded to ; whence the several component Processes draw still that secondary sustenance, which leaves Perception in the integral state, to attend in person (so to speak) the particular stage, and be upheld by the co-operation, latent but living, of all the others (as far of course as developed) along the intellec- tual column. In fact the failure of memory in this last and lowest stage, is the true cause, or rather the definition of one of the most marked of the modes of insanity. Nor is this efficacy of the new principle confined to Memory alone, but tends, of course,. to each of the other Processes in due order ; which had doubtless all been observed by Gall and his fellow-physicians to be alike partitive, were it not for the double obstacle, that in ascending the percep- tional scale, there was offered by each term at once a progressive diminution of the residual range of variation, and a proportionate increase of abstractness in the cor- responding grade of phenomena ; whereas, per contra, the observation was rendered also doubly obvious by the- fundamental position and distributive province which' makes memory what Lord Bacon would style, the sylva of the mind. In fine, the law, if followed up, would be found, I think, to furnish both a collective refutation of the various theories of mental pathology, and an explanation complete and consistent of all the facts of the subject, 1 so fax as the meagre mysticism of the current speculations nave allowed them, to be recorded with scientific fidelity. 5* SO VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. But as applications scarce less interesting beset my pen at almost every page, I must on this occasion, resolutely reserve my narrow space for the general explication of society. To so great an end, it will be proper to leave this intellectual law, of a progressive development from unity as unquestionable as possible, even in advance of its historical verification in the sequel For this reason, although the foregoing proofs seem to reach mathematical conclusiveness, I shall add a few coincidences for curiosity if not confirmation. Reverting to the diagram it will, in the first place, be observed that the gradation there assigned presents ano- ther profound correspondence with the commonly recog- nized scale of all animal intelligence. The brute creation are, in common with the infancy of men and of nations, con- fined within the range of the first Series ; Reflection being usually regarded as the differentia of the human species. Along the second and middle division, lie at present, at various intervals, the most civilized communities of the race. I do not forget that man has arrogated the initial Process of the third Series as a universal criterion of his kind. But although, looking to capability, men in gene- ral may be called " rational," they can as yet scarce claim the character of reasoning creatures ; unless, indeed, we reverse the test, and take for a ruling principle the rare exceptions. For hitherto the vast multitude have, it must be owned, been defined more fitly either as " featherless bipeds," or " animals that cook their food," or " creatures that make bargains," the latter being, we see, the very man of our enlightened nineteenth century. As to the final stage of Method I have no hesitation in affirming that the books themselves upon the subject, not to mention their general readers, do not, up to this day, employ consistently the mere term, or seem to understand the thing as it has been above distinguished from some or all of the antecedent grades of thought. But to pass a moment to lighter and less invidious illustrations; could the reader have well imagined, in our nine Processes of Perception, the nine Priestesses of Apollo, the daughters, he knows, of memory, sensation being no doubt, the sire, as well as the divinity they served, the god of Knowledge ? Or the nine Parts of Speech, as they are termed by the gramma- ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 51 rians ? Yet these and a thousand other facts, symbolical and literal, are rudimentary manifestations of the nine modes of perception. But the most convincing case of all, perhaps, is the circumstance that popular language should have thus distinguished and denominated these elementary forms of thought, in precise though sponta- neous, accord with our deduction. Both a priori and historically, the conclusion is, there- fore, clear, that the so-called mental faculties are merely Processes of Perception, complications of the sole faculty or function we name mind; just as the organs of the phrenologists are but mere material parts, and even the so-called convolutions, which are really organic and per- haps correlative, but certain dispositions of one and the same nervous tissue, in its physical instrument, the brain. § 15. But as the brain, in the human subject, is found divided into three compartments, proceeding serially from one another, and connecting all with the spinal trunk ; so does our aggregate of functional processes exhibit three cycles or series, progressive in march, and revolutionary in movement ; each series being appropriated to a spe- culative circuit (so to speak) of nature, but moving, respectively, upon Images, Essences, Effects ; or in more learned phrase, upon phenomena, noumena, and the re- lations between them (which, however, Kant, as a mere metaphysician, duly failed to recognize) : or in more solid and scientific language, upon the Statics, the Dynamics, and the science of the system. Might it be that those three progressive triads of Perception give the explana- tion so long sought by anatomists, of the three successive lobes of the brain, and which the phrenologists, led in this case by the manifest analogy, for once appropriated cor- rectly, though quite empirically ; f6r their three regions of the Sensuous appetites, Moral sentiments, and Intellectual faculties, are characterized exactly in the leading terms of my three series, namely, Sensation, Reflection, Reason- ing 1 Might it be that the three membranes which en- velope the whole mass, relate in origin, if not end, to its three successive formations 1 Would not such a notion seem countenanced by the well-known fact, that the skull itself exhibits three distinct and dissimilar layers of bone ; even as the scales of the crocodile, the shell of the crusta- 62 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. cean, nay, the interior of the tree, are seen to register in their laminations successive epochs of enlargement. (1) The convolutions also, — which are not coilings, be it marked, but platings, that is triangular (§ 16) indentations, and which are found in each of the three lobes, but of diminishing depth — 'might they too not, as above suggest- ed, be the real organs of the mental Processes ; especially since, in avowed ratio to the manifestations of intelligence, they recede both in number and calibre, down the scale of animal life, until in the lower vertebrates they disappear entirely, at least from human ken 1 Is there absurdity in conceiving that the trigonometrical surveys by which alone we saw Perception could compass the notion of Relation, might be somehow executed, through the contraposition of the two sides of the nervous convolutes ; which, conjoin- ing in an inclosed angle, may be the organic data for infer- ring, as in geometry, the opposite, the objective line ? On such supposition the line of relation having to pass, we saw, through all the Processes, both cyclical and secondary, to be elongated into a natural law, this last perception would require a convolute pervading the entire brain, both the lobular departments, and the special con- volutions. Accordingly we find the whole divided, and to a depth proportioned to the supreme effort, by a longi- tudinal cleft, into the two counterparts termed hemis- pheres. May not the corresponding and continuous sides of this so called scythe-formed furrow, be the means of generalizing the special Processes of the constituent parts, into the indefinite uniformity of relation named a law ? And is not the affirmative supported by the cardinal fact, that the laws of nature being more or less general in pro- portion to the phenomena to which they respectively re- late, proceed from the more or less posterior lines of the cerebral mass — from the physical, the moral, or the intel- lectual — and Perception had thus to traverse, as it were, a lesser section of the route 1 Could relation general or individual be ever apprehended objectively, without this duplicate apparatus to perceive its terms or abutments both at once, and the tranverse line itself, has it not been organ- (1) Why not (a fortiori even) the integuments of the brain be of such significance, seeing that those of the body generally are now made by the first naturalists the criteria of animal classification 1 ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 53 ized materially in the mode of connection between the two hemispheres at the base of the brain — which is not, it is well known, by a continuous and homogeneous mass, but by a series of " commissures" or linear channels of com- munication ? May not this have given instinctive origin to the popular metaphor of mental obliquity ; which would thus be but a literal expression of the deviations from exact symmetry found occasionally in the hemispheres of the brain ? Is there a process above mere sensation — even memory, judgment, or other mode of comparison — possible in the entire absence of this second brain, with its attendant set of sensuous organs 1 Does not its pres- ence cease accordingly at the exact point in the chain of being where the act of choosing is observed to exist no longer or to be necessary % In the organs of motion, where the duplexity is much more general, the arrange- ment is seen to be mechanically indispensable in practice ; is there any reason (other than the difference of palpability between the processes) for not deeming it equally neces- sary in the instrument of perception ; of which the office is to guide that practice among broader relational combi- nations 1 And if all or some of these conjectures are in any degree founded, do they not furnish a solution to that other standing problem, respecting this cyclical dual- ism of the higher animal creation 1 For anatomists, phrenologists, and other mongers in " final causes" can devise, I believe, to this day, no other use for the second system than to serve as a prudent reserve against accident to its fellow ; as they see nothing in the convolutions, but the "convenience of packing!" I leave both explana- tions to those who have passed the puerile prejudice of travestying, into the peddling and purblind projects of man, the grand economy or operations of nature. Of one thing alone I am confident— that these operations are the true interpreters of the various organic structures through which they are performed ; for the function produces or at least promotes the organ, the organ only practices the function. But the foregoing instance of the axiom is sub- mitted as a mere conjecture. My acquaintance is not familiar with the minuter anatomy of the brain, the con- stant number, the figure, the relative bearings of the con- volutions ; and I have no present means of information, 54 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. authoritative or experimental. Under these circumstances I have here hazarded the suggestions at all, upon a prin- ciple which shall govern me throughout these pages, namely, that no doctrine shall be censured (as cranios- copy had been above), without indicating some of the grounds of condemnation. If, however, they should prove in this case valid, it would add a new demonstration to the preceding exposition of the mind. But the exposition, be they valid or not, keeps its more direct and essential basis upon the functional anatomy of Perception, and appeals for its triple triad of Processes, under a single triad of Prin- ciples, to the infinitely more various tests of historical con- firmation. Well, these three series of Perception, or cir- cuits of speculation, or Principles of Conception (as I will presently explain them), present already the three Cycles of human civilization, and accordingly the three divisions of this essay. As, however, this grand law is thus the foundation of the whole work, I cannot proceed without submitting it to a cursory confrontation with some of the broadest and best- known facts, drawn from the most divergent departments of experience, opinion and science. For if it can be shaken in a single essential, I would myself be the first to renounce, as no better than its predecessors, the entire superstructure, and take refuge in one or other of its two alternatives aid antecedents, the skepticism of intellectual chaos, or the mental opiate of theology. § 16. To begin with science, and in its utmost extent of mathematical necessity, we know the triangle, which is the physical image of each of our triads of Perception, is accordingly the most simple and primordial of all figures ; and also that, as was shown concerning the primary mental Processes, it consequently involves-the elements, includes the evidence of all : in other words, that all are but compli- cations of the triangle. Thus the circle, styled the most perfect, is but the triangle revolved upon its apex. The cube, an alternate juxtaposition of triangles. But as this is the figure requisite to the complete measurement of all bodies, so is it in fact the simplest expression of the supreme triad of Perception ; for of this we have seen the three Series to be progressive schemes for (so to say) measuring nature ; the first taking her in surface, the ANALYSIS OP THE HUMAN MIND. 55 second in section, the third alone in solid or plan, which is thus the consummation called science. The same une- quivocal testimony is borne practically by the curious fact, that Plato could conceive his deity — who was the ideal of supreme Mind — capable of bringing creation out of chaos but by such a series of triangles. And very probably Moses too, would have revealed us the same process, had he been as good a mathematician as Plato. These " three magnitudes" of matter belong more properly, then, to thought. They are the fabled footstool through which the intellect derives its general inspiration, as was sym- bolized in the oracular "tripod" of the Greek god of phi- losophy. I pass, however, for more familiar if not more intel- ligible examples, into the domain of popular cognizance, individual and historical. 1. It is then of common observation and easy discern- ment, that the mental history, like the bodily growth of every duly matured man, exhibits three different states of existence progressively. The earliest and infant state is marked by the attributes of Animal life : the predomi- nance of the self-preservative appetites ; the absence of all the mental powers, save sensation, memory and im- agination ; the presence of none of the sentiments called moral, except fear. And this exception is a striking con- firmation of the rule ; for fear is the sole instinct of an ab- stract, a negative nature indispensable, from the first, to the fundamental end of self-preservation. The next stage, or adolescence, installs the conditions of Moral life, namely, the passions, which result from the resistance offered the appetites by external circumstances ; then the will, developed by reflection upon man's experi- ence of the ability to overcome that resistance by the in- terposition of means. This pretended faculty of the will, though. like the rest but a mere effect, is still imagined commonly to be an independent cause, and in that quality to give morality to human action. Hence the designation of this second epoch as moral. The third and final is characterized -by the prevalence of Reason. It is the mature age of the understanding, when the blind desires and the visionary designs that re- spectively disorder the two preceding periods, come to 56 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. subside (of course proportionably to the perfection at- tained) into obedience to an authority effectually opera- tive and external. For religion and the moral sense — the guides of infancy and adolescence — are really subjective, and accordingly shift with the vicissitudes of their age, whereas man has never yet been able to nullify the au- thority or deprecate the penalty of a single natural law. But it is the prerogative of reason to see, and to submit to, this inexorable and truly providential rule. Religion, Morality, Natural law — here, again, is an- other and a more familiar phase of our three successive Se- ries of Perception ; including, of course, the respective sub- Processes, from sensation to imagination, from reflection to generalization, from reasoning to science. The specific identity 'will hereafter be found to be self-evident, when centemplated on the enlarged scale of a nation or a race. 2. Meanwhile the individual offers other confirmations of both the succession and number of the principal stages. Respecting the number, he adds, for instance, to the third or Rational stage, even in the highest degree as yet attained, no fourth form of development. No doubt, even this degree is little more than a mere commencement of the illimitable career of Science. But the object of sci- ence being essentially homogeneous — namely, the aggre- gate of real relations between Nature and Humanity — it seems to follow that no farther instrument than Reasoning can be requisite, and consequently that this inaugurates the final epoch of Civilization. It may be said indeed that a lobe additional to the system of the brain might evolve a new order of scientific relations. But the double an- swer is, that the organ is a consequence of the function; and, again, that were it otherwise, no such addition could be well expected to multiply the number of real or sensi- ble relations ; for the previous organic divisions revealed no new orders ofrelation, any more than did the discovery of the microscope or telescope ; they merely superadded new aspects of the old impressions ; these views becom- ing progressively less imperfect and illusory, until they open, with the third stage, into the complete and the true. In other words, the progression is not in the num- ber of the objects, but in the perfection of the optics ; it is from seeing the same things singly and as through a ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 57 glass, to seeing them openly and face to face. And this perfection finds its consummation in the scope af percep- tion termed science. Still I do not mean to say, that the decay of the individual — although seemingly repeated in the historic fate of nations — is to be dreaded as a type of the ultimate destiny of our species. I here confine (myself to an inference of the mental finality of the third term, from the uniform and immediate succession of decay. And then the order of this decay bears a testimony still more posi- tive to the fact of the antecedent progression ; for it recedes by an exactly inverted gradation, that is to say, in the mental sphere, from reason to morals, and from morals to the "second childhood" of superstition; and, in the physical system, from the nervous activity of the intellec- tual lobes of the brain to the muscular, connected princi- pally with the moral division, and from this to the vital or vegetative energy, dependent on the posterior region. 3. Not having been willing to place scientific reliance Upon the testimony of phrenology, I am tempted to con- firm it, at the suggestion of the last allusion, by at once a similarly organic and still more fundamental proof of the threefold principle of mental manifestation. It is no less than the existence, integral and apart, of three corres- ponding organs in the human body, acknowledged to be the three great centres of its complicate vitality. I mean the stomach, the heart, and the brain. For they are not only situated separately one from the other, but may exist independently in this order. Such at least is, I be- lieve, the opinion of the best physiologists, from Haller ■downwards. In fact, the every-day occurrence of dream- less sleep, is it not a temporary death of the brain ; while the other two organs operate with their usual or with aug- mented force % So in the next stage, we know a paralysis of the heart does not necessarily suspend the action of the stomach ; nor does it always prove fatal to life ; which of course must find refuge meanwhile in this fundamental fortress. Now these several organs, unlike the bumps of the cranioscopists, are anatomically known to relate to our three Series of mental functions. Coincident, we •see, in point of number, in progress. of position, in order of decline, and in dependence of existence in the ascend- ing line, the correlation is still more clear in their intimate 6 58 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. dependence when taken in the descending order. For as the Rational series of Processes were seen to result from the Reflex or moral, and the latter to have proceeded from the sensuous reign of the appetites ; so the stomach, heart, and brain, are superposed, as it were, upon one an- other, if not mechanically at least functionally, in their sea- sons of relative predominance in the individual, as, also, in the succession of their organic evolutions. For, instead of going into discussions perhaps too curious to be thought serious, it will suffice to refer to the animal kingdom at large — of which the human body is known to contain a complete epitome or complication — and where whole spe- cies may be found with only the lowest of the organs in question ; others confined to the second in addition ; others still possessing all three, and moreover presenting the brain in all its stages of formation. 4. But if from tracing an organic evidence of our men- tal law of progression from the individual man into the lower animals, we turn upwards to society, the vestiges are much more legible. This in fact was demonstrably neces- sary ; for a system composed like society of homogeneous and aliquot parts, must have proportionably reproduced the functional features of the elements. As, however, history is the proper field of our formal verification, the preparatory exposition must be kept to a case or two, in confirmation of the last extreme example. The successive emergence and ascendant of the or- gans alluded to would be best evinced historically by the fact, if such there be, of a general attribution of the intel- lectual powers to one or other of the inferior systems. But is it that mankind have ever placed the mind in the heart or the stomach 1 Why, it is only recently, speaking com- paratively, that they have restored it to the head. For nu- merous ages of the most civilized nations, it had been tra- velling upward through the spinal marrow ; where it was deemd to lodge at a day so late and in a brain so great as those of Descartes. A greater still, and perhaps the most vigorous that has ever adorned and enlightened the spe- cies, had^ lived and labored in calm unconsciousness (like all superior energies) of its own severe and life-long opera- tions. But even Aristotle could not far transcend, and more especially in a point of consciousness, the general ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 50 opinion of his age. While for the opposite cause there is not a poetaster of the present day who is not tormented (if you take his rhyme for it) with throbbings of the brain ; having learned the use, perhaps the existence, of that or- gan from the phrenologists — themselves a product of its nascent predominance with the general exercise of rea- son and advent of science. In fact the very name of this- latest tribe of mental explorers is an attestation that the Greek abode of the intellect was long the heart. This was also deemed its organ by the ancient Egyptians.. Accordingly this primeval people shifted downwards, ia due order, the Moral attributes to the ground-floor of thc- stomach ; for such was the meaning of their sacrificing, hi the process of embalming, to Typhon or the evil principle,, the contents of the abdomen as having caused the immoral actions of the deceased. And this allocation may claim, the authority of a thousand passages of the Jewish Bible- It will not of course be understood by the turn of expres- sion, that the intellectual principle dislodged the moral from the heart : for it is the latter that, on the contrary,, must, in the order of development, have detruded the intel- lect both from the heart at a later epoch, and previously from the stomach, where the infant action of both had been originally merged in turn, by the supreme vortex of vegetative life. And such a reference of the mind, also,. to the dim centre of sensational activity, would be found,. I doubt not, to have prevailed among the Egyptians at a still earlier period, as among every other people in a strictly primitive state, could their feelings be possibly recorded in history, or even accurately reported by them- selves. In fact Ellis, in his Polynesian Researches, makes- mention of this odd notion as still current among some. of the rudest communities of the South Sea savages. But what need of going so far into the darkly past or distant,, when we have the expert and European testimony of a> medical school of the seventeenth century 1 For who has not heard of the " archaeus" or astral man of Van Hel- mont, and the " rational soul" of Stahl, which had their seat in the stomach 1 And the probative force of these specu- lative instances will be seen more fully in the sequel, when the authors are found completing a medical reformation, and thus conducted (by Reflection) to the lowest Ibunda- 60 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. tion of the ancient doctrines, not merely in the barbarian, but down to the savage, belief. No doubt the supposed analogy of the actions of the stomach to certain contempo- rary revelations of chemistry might be urged as the direct instigator of the particular individuals. But the effects will be found concomitant in the order of nature, and the progress of knowledge. In fine, if we now retrace the upward order of the de- velopment, there must have been a period at which the three Series of Perception were imagined to be distri- buted among the three centres of the body, before the procession of the two lower tenants had been put in mo- tion towards the brain. Accordingly, this naive notion found its fit exponent in Plato, whom Aristotle did not credit enough to notice in this particular. The doctrine is, indeed, ascribed to the much more ancient Timaeus; but I should think upon no better ground than that the Locrian sage is the chief personage of, and gives the title to, the dialogue in which the tenet is expounded. It runs, however, to the effect, that each human individual, is endowed with three " souls," to wit, the vegetative, the animal, and the rational ; and that they reside respectively in the stomach, heart, and head. Plato being the oracle of medieval, as of modern ignorance, the illusion was transmitted downwards to the seventeenth, or eight- eenth century ; when the most philosophic of physiologists, Barthez, does still little more than modify it, in his three • dynamisms" of perception, as well as of power. Soon, after, however, this perceptive tri-unity of the mind was found by Gall to have arrived altogether in the brain ; but even here is deemed, as usual, to occupy separate quar- ters, and situated exactly in the onward line of march. In addition to the direct object of verifying inductively the reality and nature of the law in question, the foregoing sketch presents a slight sample of the mode of operation by which it is destined to explain the history of human opinion and institution. The reader may prepare himself, by this simple and signal instance, to mark the grand pro- cessional progress of the three Series of Perception) revolving each upon a like succession of its three sub- ordinate Processes ; the terms defiling from mere Sensation, one by one, to their full expansion, and then ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 61 resolved, in the inverse order, into the stage of Method at the other end ; this double manoeuvre, moreover, executed upon each ascending complication that graduates the phenomenal scale of the universe, and thus drawn out into the enormous succession of such processions which constitute the career of civilization ; the whole operation, while embracing the human species within its circumfer- ence, yet having its seminal segment, so to say, in each of the individuals, described, as in the case adduced, by the imaginary passage of the mental energy from the stomach to the forepart of the brain. 5. If facts so universal, resting upon inferences so necessary, and recognized by documents so various, could need the sanction of authority, I might cumulate the proof with the testimony of theology. But, although even divine evidence could add nothing to demonstration, I may be pardoned the precaution of insisting a little longer, to conciliate all consciences and to convince all eapacities. For the lowest are well satisfied, the Deity himself assures us that mankind have been made after the image- of the Creator. But this image is also known to combine,, in a unity of essence, a trinity of persons, that is to say of characters, of mental attributes. In fact these characters' are quite identiaal in nature as well as number with the Principles of human Perception ; they are only of course- infinitely more perfect in degree. The analogy was- urged expressly, and perhaps incautiously, by the earlier Fathers, in illustration of the mystery of three persons in one. Augustine, in particular, argues repeatedly that the Trinity is imaged in the three principal " faculties" of the human mind, which he states, with a remarkable confor- mity to the above views, to be " Memory, Intellect, and Will." With those in fact, the correspondence of the divine- faculties is evident. For are the latter not revealed to- us as respectively representing : first, the Spirit, that is to- say the inspiration of Life (adopting Sensation as the stricter type of the primary Series), or inspiration of know- ledge, if we take Memory, with St. Augustine, who might be led into this slight inaccuracy by the Platonic tenet of reminiscence, and also by the mythological parentage of the Muses (§ 14) ; secondly, the Providence, that is to say,, 6* 62 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Design or Will ; and, thirdly, the Mediator, that is to say, Intellect or Reason, above explained to he the attribute which interposes media for the execution of the projects of will. This order of succession is, however, I grant, at variance with the Augustinian statement of the mental analogues or prototypes ; where the will, which is the symbolic principle of our middle Series of Perception, usurps the third and final station of the intellect or logos. But this is an intervertion incidental to the epoch, and of which we shall hereafter see the characteristic signifi- cance. Nor is this all. Not only does the order of suc- cession, but also the idea of progression, present a much more serious discrepancy with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity ; according to which the divine persons take the nearly inverse arrangement of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or in the terms of our exegesis, Will, Reason, Sensation ; and, moreover, so far fi-om derivation, are deemed co-ordinate and co-eternal. To the latter point, I answer, that the infallible Church is herself divided, the Greek moiety in fact maintaining a procession of the third Person. And as to the other two, the original prevalence of the notion is confessed in the very terms of father and son. This philological indication is confirmed by the well known frequency of heresies upon this subject in the primitive Chttrch. Some of these, in fact, contended for the second stage of the pro- cession; thus substantially coinciding with the law of mental progression, as exhibited in the several triads of Perception. None, however, have attempted to rectify the inversion of order by restoring the Holy Ghost to the first place. But this was doubtless because the chrono- logical conception had been doubly barred, at once by the family nomenclature, and by the social convention which conceives dignity as descending in the order of enumeration ; whereas the law of progression is, on the contrary, like the law of heaven itself, where the last is ranked the highest and the first is rated lowest. And if we now consider, that, in spite of the interpolations of Platonism and the mystifications indigenous to all theo- logy, the psychology of the Christian Trinity has been so tolerably interpreted — at a time too when the human faculties, thus impersonated, had been regarded, as they ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 63 are generally even to this day, as being all co-ordinate and congenital — we must recognize that characteristic of a fundamental law of nature which empowers it to force a passage through the incrustations of individual ignorance, and to find expression, through the collective instincts of an age, in advance of its systematic opinion. In fine, the revealed conformity of the trinitarian " likeness" to the threefold and progressive Principle of Perception, is not only evident from the foregoing discussions, and infallible from the declaration of the Creator himself, but is also necessary from the nature of the process of crea- tion. For this demands first (what is premordially a syno- nym with Sensation or life) a Force to act; secondly, a Will to intend ; thirdly, a Reason to execute— the power, the plan, the application of the one to the other. Accord- ingly, it will in due season appear, that this is the histori- cal order as well as progressive character of the three persons of the Trinity ; who should consequently be ranged : the Holy Ghost, the Father, the Son ; that is to say, the infant or theological conception of the three pro- gressive Series or Cycles of Perception. Meanwhile I may add the testimony of a thinking theologian, who, being himself a great creator, knew best the requisites of such a task. I mean the poet Dante, in that terrible in- scription which will probably outlast the infernal gates that bear it : — "ITecemi la divina^o testate, La somma sapienzia, e 'I primo amove. (1) 6. But perhaps it may be denied me, in a scientific argument; to take advantage of the disclosures of Revela- tion. In that case, I could appeal to the thousand trini- ties of heathenism, in ancient Greece, in Egypt, Pheni- cia, Persia, India, and even Mexico, Tlascala, Peru ; in short, in every nation of the world under the primitive Cycle of civilization. And as these have all been either anterior or alien to the true one, their underived and inde- pendent concurrence with our law of mind could have possi- bly no other source than the three Processes of the primary (1) I am made by power divine, Consummate wisdom, and primeval love. 64 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Series — 'sensation, memory, and imagination — obliged, by the conceptive exigencies, to be afterwards _ explained, to unify, in the- shape of gods, their successive notions of Nature. At least the sole alternative would be now a desperate resort. For it offers but the hard dilemma of either pretending, with the Catholics, that the heathen trinities too are revelations, only forged by the devil to forestall or frustrate the genuine article ; or of allowing their pagan promulgators a high place among the Jewish Prophets — indeed above Moses himself, who foretold noth- ing of this saving mystery. § 17. In conclusion, then, the human mind, from its lowest condition to the highest capacity, consists of a sin- gle faculty under nine forms of operation. The entire train of perceptive stages, though regularly progressive, is found to constitute three capital diversities, demarkated by the circumstance of systematizing the phenomenal world upon so many different principles of uniformity. These princi- ples, which I shall designate, from the radical term of each Series, by the names of Life, Will, and Reason, may, therefore^ be inventoried among the simple furniture of the mind. Not, however, that they should pass for " facul- ties" any more than the elementary Processes; both alike are results, and differ but as the integer from its compo- nent fractions. Still the name is of little consequence, if the things themselves be well remembered, both in their proper characters and purposed application. In the former aspect, they seem to be sufficiently explained and established. In the other, it may be useful to image them additionally, as stations from which successively the mind varies its point of view. Pegs, from which, progressively, it weaves the web of its generalizations. Posts, to which it attaches itself in extricating humanity from that isolate and animal selfishness by which primitive mankind are rooted almost as locally as is the vegetable to a spot of earth. Pulleys, by which to wheel them round to that central point of science, whence all things, including man himself, are open to direct perception, as component and concordant parts of a single whole. Types, in fine, through which he seeks to divine the nature of the strange phenomena that suround him, some to crush and some comfort. Or to speak without further metaphor, ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND. 65 they are the three models of resemblance, whereby man must conceive, progressively, the collective appearances of Nature. § 18. The word Conception, which by anticipation was already predicated of these types or principles, remains (alone, perhaps, of the so-called faculties) to be defined. Applied to the primary Series, which we saw result in the formation of images, the act of intellection from the relative completeness of the impression, received its spe- cific title of perception. At the analogous stage of the succeeding Series, where the relations came to present a second term, in the shape of a theory, a generating essence, the combined perception got the equally significant name of conception. Now, this being the exact relation between the faculty of Perception and each of the three Principles explained, conception is the proper term to describe them all in common. They will, therefore, be denominated Conceptual Principles of the mind, and distinguished by' the epithets Vital, Volitional, and Rational. These three Principles of Conception, with their three subordi- nate triads of Processes, and the sole Faculty of Percep- tion, of which they are all but complications — such is, T think, a complete analysis of the Mechanism of the Hu- man Mind, both individual and collective ; and which accordingly, should serve to explain not only all that it has hitherto operated, but to outline what it may ever attain in its present sphere or constitution. It is first, however, to undergo an additional ordeal, and one incalculably more severe than the foregoing multiform inductions. For if correct, it must find an exact counter- part, both of principle and progression, in .the web of ob- stacle and arrangement, above alleged to have developed it. I mean the complexity of the great co-factor of our social theorem — the External World. 66 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. CHAPTER n. Logical and Chronological Constitution of Nat%ure. § 19. Relations, the sole object of Perception, of con- sciousness, were distinguished in the preceding chapter (§ 14), as presenting two orders of consideration ; the one, in which the relations are subjective, personal, partial, and compose the progressive history of knowledge; the other, in which they are objective, absolute, immutable, and con- stitute the organism (perhaps also the history) of nature : the one, in which they are perceived, progressively, under the shape of sensations, substances, relations ; the other, in which they may be perceived, uniformly, in their indefinite amplitude of laws. The former aspect has, though inci- dentally yet sufficiently for the present purpose, been con- sidered in analyzing the correlative Processes of the mind. We are now to sketch the latter by a similarly succinct analysis. § 20. But ere proceeding it may first be well to cau- tion the inadvertent reader, that I do not purpose in thus employing the terms objective and absolute, to descant upon the nature of things in themselves. The opposite reveries of Fitche and Shelling are, in fact, cut off at the root by the fundamental and self-evident position of this discussion, namely, that nothing can be known of any thing save in relation to the mind. I say this is self-evident ; for is it not an absurdity, a contradiction in the very terms, to sup- pose a knowledge, real or otherwise, that did not pass through the act of knowing? Why Revelations them- selves, with the Omnipotent at their disposal, never ima- gined the possibility of eliminating this condition; their communications, on the contrary, bear the most naively close relation to the state of the knowing faculty in those who receive them. Moreover, this faculty itself is, reci- procally, but a relation. And this circumstance — abundantly established in the foregoing pages — would alone necessi- tate that things external could be known only relationally, even whether they were really constituted so or not. For ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 67 if not, they could apparently be no more accessible by Perception, than odours by the eyes, or colours by the fin- gers ; they would be in the predicament of what are termed incommensurable quantities, of which the nature is to exclude one another. But although the relative character of Perception im- plies the relational constitution of phenomena, it would not perhaps equally evince the reality of their subjects. For it might be objected, and has been argued, that the visible universe may be nothing but a phantasm, which passes in the magic lantern of the mind itself. Such was the deduction of Berkley from the skepticism of Hume. It was also by a quite kindred conjunction of these two ex- tremes, which always beget the one the other in the land of dreams, that the Ego and the Absolute of the German visionaries above named, pretend to start from the nega- tion (or rather in this instance an imaginary exclusion), the former of matter, and the other of both matter and mind, in order to prove how well they could fathom the nature of " things in themselves," by re-creating them literally, like the God of Moses, out of nothing. No doubt, to sound philosophy as well as to plain sense, such attempts must be fitly imaged by the squirrel in a revolving cage, or better still the serpent that devoured itself by the tail. Yet neither of these adverse systems, any more than Berkleyanism, has — notwithstanding their incongruity with each other and with common sense — been logically confuted, I believe, to this hour. "Why % Because their respective ages and subse- quent critics agree implicitly with the authors in conceiv- ing the human mind as an entity ; that is to say, a point which by an imaginary fluxion, may be supposed to gene- rate at its wild will, what lines and figures you may please, yet remain itself meanwhile without direction or dimensions. The metaphysicians having been allowed this convenient premiss as a fact, which the mathematicians assume only hypothetically, we may conceive both their notorious fer- tility in system-making, and the real impossibility of ever refuting their speculations to parties moving in the ideal plane of the same negative principle. It would be like argu- ing that a geometrical figure was false in itself, or more or less true than are an infinite multitude of others ; whereas they were all alike supposed, however variously systema- 68 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. tized, upon an ultimate imaginary postulate. But when we come to the age of knowing that mind is nothing more than Perception, and perception but a relation, a function, a line ; there is offered a real foothold for evidence and in- ference. And the most immediate inference — so imme- diate, indeed, as to be almost an identical proposition — is this ; that relation implies something to relate to, function something to be operated by, perception something to perceive, mind what we call matter. So that it seems we have not only equal, but the individually same evidence for the real existence of the latter, that we boast for that of the former, of those two co-efficients of cognos-i cence. (1) Nor is this all ; though it seems quite sufficient for the refutation of Berkley — a task esteemed the " asses' bridge" of the metaphysical epoch. The same inference is still corroborated in a vastly accelerated ratio, by the progression now disclosed among the nine Processes of Perception. For even supposing the mind an entity, what is there that can be alleged to have directed, or at all determined it in such a system of expedients, so admirably superposed, as it were, one upon another, to surmount a series of difficulties that had no real existence ? While the modes of mind were considered as isolate, to explain one was to explain all, or rather all seemed alike inexpli- cable, as was shown in fact by Hume, and as is indeed the nature of all elementary individuality : but link them in re- lation, and let the relation be progressive, and the progres- sion be complication, and there is a threefold necessity for an exterior and continuous cause. It was probably a vague sentiment of this cause, that led the comprehensive mind of Leibnitz to the celebrated hypothesis of the Pre- established Harmony. Recognizing as the sole alterna- tive to the absurdity just suggested, the real existence of a certain order in the material world, but being still unable to conceive how matter could act directly upon his mental entity, Leibnitz imagined the Creator to have instituted, in the beginning, a preconcert of occurrence (1.) The case of dreams, visions, "&c, above alluded to, makes no exception ; perception, then too, presupposes something real, namely, a particular state of the mental organ ; and this relates to a still ante- rior and more external impression. ANALYSIS OP COSMICAL NATURE. 69 between the two series of manifestations. This truly German solution was exemplified by two clocks, which should be set to, and would keep, of course, without con- nection, the same time ; but the author failed or forgot to show how the analogue of mind could have operated at all without an organism of matter. To escape, among, other flaws, this crude assumption of the question, Mal- branche could only substitute the divine workman for the work, and instead of the mental clock, suppose a perpe- tual conduit, or as the term was the Occasional Causes, of all perception in God himself — that last and bountiful refuge of all impotence and nonsense. Such were the puerile efforts of some of the mightiest of intellects to ex- plain the correlation of perceptive action and order, on the assumption that mind and matter were, one or both of them, repugnant entities. But pioneered by their inevita- ble errors, we can now confine ourselves to the facts ; and these refuse to teach , us more about the so-called sub- stances of mind or matter, than is disclosed by the vast aggregate of perceptions named experience. Besides their direct import, however, these perceptions being all relations, authorize, or rather oblige us, to infer the reality of both the terms ; though what may be their other condi- tions, or even the mediate principle of their ultimate mani- festations — the fundamentum relationis, to use a scholas- tic expression — even this, and a fortiori whatever may lie beyond, being essentially presupposed by the act itself of Knowing, it is a patent absurdity to even attempt to pene- trate. Turning therefore from this blank wall to survey the contents of the grand inclosure, it may be oberved, that the mass of perceptions, whether individual or collec- tive, lie attached to the outer term in certain lines of uni- formity, while at the mental end they fluctuate in opening angles of inclination. Here then is the great confirmation of the real existence of the external world. For we see that it is the ruling, the resisting term of the relation ; that this assurance goes on multiplying in accelerated proportion to the extension of known relations or the detection of new, and that the progress in these directions is always an exact measure of the mental power of individuals, nations, or the species. So that the internal world could be much more plausibly resolved into a mere result. Be 7 10 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. that however as it may, whether in the complication of organ directly, or ulteriorly in the gradation of obstacle, the development of mind is the demonstration of matter. But the occasion of these remarks had less to do with the real than with the relational existence of the universe. Or rather, the purpose merely was to precaution against mistaking the term objective and the like in the current transcendental sense. They can mean in these pages but (to recur to the same metaphor) the complete rectangu- larly of position towards the mind which enables it to see relations in their full prolongation of laws, and laws again interwoven into the collective absoluteness of sci- ence. The correlative terms subjective, &c, will equally import relation, but in the previous and preparatory stages of Perception. At the same time, this incidental expo- sure of an effete doctrine, though doubtless now unneces- sary, was not without its use. For a system, however monstrous, while thought to challenge refutation, is liable, as experience proves, to be revived from time to time ; and is meanwhile a standing disgrace to the pretensions of philosophy, which affects to repudiate, without being able to refute it. On the too natural ground of Augus- tine's faith in another doctrine, people cling to it for the very reason that it is impossible and absurd. Nor is the mania to be cured, it is only aggravated, by vituperation. The patient is, even no more than the hapless inmate of an asylum, to be contradicted as to the reality or impor- tance of his phantasy ; he must be gradually lured around to the humiliating swamp of his own ignorance, whence arose the misty grandeur of the illusion. In other words you must not argue but explain. And as soon as philoso- phers have themselves philosophy enough to apply this treatment to popular prejudices, there will then be hope of rescuing the mass of mankind from the impostures of all sorts which they breed, as carrion does maggots, to feed upon their own substance. But these reflections, suggested by the central source of the mischief, it becomes me less to inculcate by precept than example. In at- tempting to do so slightly in reference to the mystic ne- gation of matter, the explanation has served, moreover, to affirm that phenomena exist, not only really and relation, ally, but also in a certain regular order. The question is- ANALYSIS OF OOSMIOAL NATURE. * 71 then, to ascertain and to characterize them in this sole as- pect with which history, or science, or humanity can be concerned. § 21. Thistaskis much abridged by the progress already made. Besides the fundamental fact that the universe is, to man, but a vast tissue or network of relations, we are also warranted in now concluding, from the sole simple- ness of the mind, that not a thread of this logical texture could have ever been traced out, in original absence of the following conditions : That there was some one relation supremely simple in itself, and at the same time sufficiently comprehensive to embrace, and connected in such a way as to control, the whole web ; and secondly, that the same qualities should hold proportionally of each other relation with respect to that succeeding it, along to the end. Without the former of these arrangements, Perception would find it impossible to gather from the chaos of phe- nomena any one of the laws of nature ; and without the lat- ter, which only repeats the same condition on a narrower scale, it would be equally impossible to distinguish any two apart. For did any two, or all of them apply alike to all phenomena, we may be sure that, even if the com- pound were not inaccessible to the human mind, there could be no notion of distinct laws, to the extent of such conjunction ; in fact it was their graduated inequalities of concurrence that taught to separate them analytically in the points of amalgamation. But as they are actually known to be individual, and thought to be innumerable, the inference is necessary that they observe the grada- tion required, and that its nature is a progressive compli- cation of unity. The conclusion might be confirmed, we see, by the quite analogous law of mind, if it was not de- sirable to have each of the subjects, so far as they can be severed, to stand or fall by its own evidence alone. In proceeding to sketch the scale of the cosmical com- plications, I wish the reader could divest himself of the distracting prepossessions, arising, among other sources, from a plurality of senses, and would conceive this web- work of natural laws to be tangible but to experience, the sense of touch, as it may be termed, of the intellect. Then to figure to himself experience as merely tracing on the table of memory (by the so-called " laws of association"), 72 ' VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the progress of Perception through the dark chaos of phe- nomena ; and Perception conducted, on the one hand, by the exclusiveness of its own simplicity of structure and the instinct of a necessary conformity with the medium where- in it operates, and on the other by both the relative regu- larity of form and frequency of occurrence among the aggregate of impressions. From this ideal, but only sci- entific point of view, it will not be difficult to designate at once the positive order and historical evolution of the fundamental laws of our system. It is but little more than to determine, from grade to grade of the scale, what is the relation or attribute which may be predicated truly of the largest remaining diversity of phenomena. § 22. 1. The first example of this summary rule, and thus the fundamental law of science, is evidently the relation of Number. It applies not only to all objects, but also to all ideas, and even to all imaginations, in all places and all times. It begins to press itself upon Per- ception with the first sensations of conscious infancy. Of all phenomena, there is no other either accessible at all through each of the several senses, or determinable exactly by any ; but every sense that can discriminate, can ipso facto number. Number in short is even co-extensive with the universal substrate of existence ; from which, in accord with a preceding remark, it is consequently found insepa- rable, if indeed the things are not much the same, as ety- mology would seem to indicate. (1) Next in order, and of course importance, is the relation of Magnitude. This attribute, though greatly more restricted in extension, that is to say, less common among the aggregate of phenomena, still presents with the law of number a larger concurrence than does any other. It is manifestly predicable of all ma- terial objects, and even reigns in the " inane realms" of space and time. Nay, curious to note, it is made to follow its predecessors even into the domain of ideas — which are known to be sometimes measured .by the degress of com- parison : this, however, by grammatical licence or under mask of a metaphor. Now an intimacy thus, at all events, as general as the real world, between these primary rela- tions, of number and measure, might be thought to have (1] Ex-sto, to stand out from, to individuate. ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 73 prepared the mind to pass at once and without difficulty to discern the latter law, allowing it ever so heterogene- ous. But were it really so in any degree, there is no ex- tent of association, that, if our principles be sound, could fit perception to bridge the gulf. It was but by following, for countless ages, the modifications of its own identity, that it came spontaneously to generalize the law of number ; even so was it but by a farther modification of this new unity that it could ever have found its way to the law of mag- nitude. It was done in fact by observing that magnitudes are all made up of a number of parts ; which is to say, that this relation is a complication of the previous. The stage succeeding was attained by a similar transition, from the body of the magnitude to its bounding extremities. This surface of cessation (so to call it) left the relation, of Figure. Accordingly figure is in turn a complication of magnitude ; each figure being, in fact, resolvable into any number of magnitudes, while no magnitude can have more than a single figure. This law is also quite con- formable to the test of limitation — being excluded from at least the two pervading magnitudes of space and time, of which the peripheries still remain to be attained or imag- ined. It is only by a fiction that, like its predecessor, it is sometimes pressed into the abstract combinations of intel- lect ; or rather it is through the medium of the semi-mate- rial creation called language. Here, however, it is worth remarking, it keeps the same ratio to the component law ; for as this law of measure is the real prototype of the simple simile called a " trope," so the composite notion gives its nature as well as- name to the complication. of tropes styled a " figure;" I believe this is the first time that these famous " tools" of the rhetorician have re- ceived a rational, though incidental explanation : but abundantly more of such things as we proceed. Percep- tion had now attained the co-ordination- of all phenomena considered individually and at rest. But this was, even to mere sense, a small proportion to the vast aggregate, of which the most part seemed more or less regularly and constantly in motion. Now, how was motion, the wild embodiment of variation itself, to be viewed as one, or re- duced to the uniformity of law? The task was manifestly much more arduous than either of the previous stages. I 9 74 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. and must accordingly have taken ages additional for its accomplishment. Not, however, that the passage to the new relation was more abrupt ; motion still was but a complication, a modification of the same bodies already numbered, measured, figured. But the obstacle lay in the circumstance, that Perception had to retrace its steps from one to another of these antecedent relations, pro- fessedly to find a cause for this froward order of phenom- ena, but providentially to meet a passage from the plane of space into that of time. Except this circuit, the transi- tion was proportionably easy, or we may be sure it had never been effected. It must have occurred in this obvious wa y- ' . ... The phenomena of motion would early distinguish themselves into occasional and perpetual. Of the latter, some of the most conspicuous were also seen to be peri- odical, to circulate at regular intervals of time in the same courses. Such were primarily the returns, diurnal and annual, of the sun, and monthly of the moon ; and later the revolutions of the planets. Now, the image of a circular motion was a next-door-neighbor, as it were, to figure ; especially in that spherical consummation of the law which is technically known as the tri-section of the Cone. And so, in fact, it was by application of one of these conic figures, the ellipse, that the real motions of the planets have been definitely perceived. Nor need human- ity wait to unify this class of motions, though on ruder models, for the advent of Kepler, or even of Archimedes and Apollonius ; otherwise these great embodiments of its own proficiency had never been. It saw, no doubt, from early infancy, that a string of wampum stretched be- tween two savages, of whom the one should move around, while the other remained stationary, produced a complete image of the sort of motions in question ; a figure that became identical by simply imagining the string prolonged and fastened to the sun or other subject of the pheno- mena. (1) The passage was besides prepared by the faet (1) It seems, however, this profound conception is not yet attained by certain American antiquaries, who, to say nothing of Iheir mytho- logy, infer a geometry not less than Plato's (and consequently the civilization of Greece) from the circular earth-mounds of the Missis- sippi. And our sole American Institute for the encouragement of sci- ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 75 that the relation of figure had been really traced itself, and even its two predecessors, through, a process of mo- tion : motion in the ' succession of sensations in the mind remembering, or of positions in the hand describing, or of places in the spectator circumambulating the larger bodies to collect the entire outline from their several sides. With this long experience of the practical evolution of figure in space, the conception would be quite spontaneously ex- tended to the ground of time — where, however, it must commence, of course, with the elementary shape, the cir- cle. But this figure proving inadequate to unify, to am- plify, to express exactly the motions of the planets, the eccentricities must, by a like necessity, be referred to other circles ; which would thus for ages be superadded as the perturbations should present themselves, until at last this agglomeration bred the same confusion in the heavenly motions from which the intellect had fled bewil- dered in the terrestrial. Here, then, and through the very efforts made by man to oppose the result, was broken down the old distinction between motions perpetual and occasional ; or " natural and violent," as they were cha- racterized by Aristotle. This hypothesis of violence — which could never have arisen with reference to a motion supposed to return, like eternity, iiito itself; this accident, I say, of violence had thenceforth crossed the barrier, and opened a route to causation along to the confines of the fixed stars. Nor was this indispensable equalization the only gain of the human intellect from the epicyclical labors so often ridiculed with kindred ignorance. For there alone it found the facts of motion in that state of virtual abstraction from matter, which it was utterly incapable of then producing itself, and hy means of which it was trained and strengthened for the complex exploration become now necessary by the failure of its go-cart of ence parades in a costly folio such discreditable crudities ! And our discriminating government rewards the authors with " foreign mis- sions" — selected, moreover, with a shrewd view to the proseeulion of the same " mare's-nest !" We are, however, entitled to plead, as im- plying no great advance in us, the wonder of older countries at the astronomical proficiency supposed to be involved in the rude calendars constructed by barbarian nations, and which belong to the same epoch and operation described in the text. ?6 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. figure. Motion, then, was so far but a mere modification j in fact, a translation of figure on the plane of time. 2. The expedient next in the inverse or analytic order for the simplification of its phenomena was measure. To this end, as in the case of the violent class of motions, it was requisite to return to the earth ; for the unit or prin- ciple of this quantitative motion could, as usual, be sup- plied but by reflection upon man's own consciousness, the only type of his scientific nonage for the interpretation of the universe. Here, accordingly, Perception observed that opposite motions might not only produce the contrary phenomena of rest, but also retain thereafter the same activity as before. That, for example, when the two hands are pressed with violence together, so as to balance each other's effort, there is a sense of the same exertion and followed by the same exhaustion, as if the effort was expended in producing motion in external bodies. Might not this, then, be the internal condition of the so-called inertia, throughout all nature 1 Such a surmise was pre- pared, moreover, by the fact, that the visible motions had hitherto been attributed to a ruder transcript from the same consciousness, to a faculty in man himself to originate the like by will. But reflection showed, that will could not originate the pressure in a state (for instance) of paralysis, or maintain it in extreme fatigue. There was something, then, in motion, both the latent and the visible, more efficient than the thing called will, and which, of course, became the new cause. And in this way was aroused from its seeming slumber of eternity the latent motion of pressure and equilibrium, and sent forth to ex- plain anew the mechanism of entire nature, under the unified conception or symbol termed Force. It was first established experimentally in the three axioms called laws of motion. But as Perception had, no longer, faith enough to take trinity for unity, it launched in quest of the latter again into the abstract stars, and discovered the law of universal gravitation. Now, what is the import of this law ? The reduction of the material universe, conceived in actual or virtual motion, to the fundamental relation of number. It will be remembered we saw this relation pos- sess the peculiar generality of controlling and connecting both the planes of space and time. It was therefore the ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 77 very outlet, the narrow strait by which the human intel- lect was destined to pass (if I may so express it) from the Atlantic of the mathematical, into the great Pacific ocean of the physical sciences. And yet this vast promontory of Motion, which it had been coasting along in vain for ages, and of which it tasked this long deduction to barely indi- cate the outline, was nothing more than the mere turning of an angle of vision within itself; the passage from ob- serving the material world in position, to inspecting it in composition; from perceiving the uniformities among bodies as they are, to surveying the series of operations which keep and left them in that state. But of these operations the relation of motion, not only in the quanti- tative, but even in the numerical extension, gave, of course, but a very general, the most general, account. It ex- plained but theTuder and most fundamental aggregations and changes. Nor could it be expected to do more, by any refinement upon its terms ; such, for instance, as ascertaining that the molecular particles of matter are actually all equal in weight. A detail, however, which, on being recently presented as the result of chemical experi- ment, has been received with the parade of a mysterious discovery, in a country where the same thing had been as- sented to for a century back in the scientific terms of the mechanical theorem. Besides this form, named grav- itation, however, which could thus explain but the amass- ment or collegation of the particles of matter together, the law of motion had, we have seen, in process of its ab- stract generalization, familiarized itself to Perception under two other combinations : these would thereby be re- sorted to to verify the residual phenomena concerning the specific constitution of bodies. — The first in order was rel- ative quantity, that is to say, the various proportions in which the elementary ingredients must have entered (or been moved) into the composition. This complication or species of latent motion or change is commonly called the attraction of Affinity ; it implies, also, of course, the negative complement of Repulsion, as mechanical attrac- tion does inertia. — Then follows the still more limited and latent relation of figured change. This as yet is only rec- ognized in the more conspicuous of its manifestations known as the process of crystallization. It is also a mere 78 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. complication of the preceding stage ; as figure in the plane of space appeared a composite of quantity. Only the latent motion is here the attraction named magnetism; which has, however, like the simple forms, its two opposite manifestations. For this is the true and simple explana- tiuo of polarity ; which might therefore be defined affinity (that is to say, modified or elective motion) with a figured or lateral direction.(l) From this definition it would, (1) Of the many somewhat novel views which I have adventured in the text, perhaps the last I should at the time have thought of claiming as original, is the polarity of all crystals, and their consequent emission of some description of fluid or force. The polarity, at least, I had supposed a common doctrine throughout the scientific world of Europe, and so evolved it without special comment, as a fact already familiar, only ranged, I knew, in no series of natural laws. X was much surprised, therefore, while these pages were passing through the press, on being shown, by the publishers, a work just issued (in trans- lation) in London ; and which has, it seems, within a year or two, promulgated the doctrine in question as a new discovery to astonished and still incredulous Europe. And I was equally delighted, on seeing the author's ability, to find between the rest of his investigations, as far as they go, and the corresponding indications of the present theory, a coincidence quite as striking as truth itself could perhaps occasion in a region wholly new between independent inquiries, and of whom the one proceeds by pure but positive deduction, the other by as pure and as positive experimentation. This auth or (of whom it is scarce creditable to own I had not heard before, though somewhat celebrated as a fellow -laborer of Liebig) is Charles Von Riechenbach. He is an Austrian Baron, who has con- verted his feudal castle into a philosophical laboratory, and who appears as worthy to do its honors, in this truly noble transformation, as any other living philosopher of Europe. We talk here, as in England, flip- pantly about Austrian '' barbarism." But the barbarism that produced Riechenbach, and Gall, and even Mesmer, is perhaps to be envied by the " civilization'' of other countries. For solidity joined to compre- hensiveness of view, for system and circumspection in conducting the inquiry, together with clearness and conciseness in stating the results, the production alluded to would do honor to Paris itself, and presents I think the finest specimen extant of inductive investigation. As to the discoveries it announces, I do not wonder that they as- tonish. The author speaks of a critic who calls the book an " absurd romance." A romance it truly is, but of the kind which Aristotle main- tained to have more truth in it than history ; the dim half-light which heralds the history of the scientific ages. Not that the contents are dim as facts ; they are clear and conclusive as day. But the author lacked » theory to bring out their full significance. Thus he is at a loss to determine the relation of his chief discovery of crystalline po- larity, or, as he terms it, the " odic force," to magnetism. He set- ANALYSIS OP COSMICA1 UATUKE. 79 for instance, follow that a general conformity of stratifica- tion in the internal structure of the earth should give a main direction to its magnetic poles, which however would Vary more or "less for different points upon the surface ; and also that any dislocation, latent or explosive, of this structure, such as are known to be constantly taking place, should farther complicate these variations in the same place at different times : but this is the dark problem of the dipping and variation of the needle. In fine, the three stages of the gradation, taken in their negative and most characteristic aspect, may be summed up in the fol- lowing well known facts :— That the interference of two bodies in motion may produce rest ; of two emissions of sound, silence; of two rays of light, darkness. And I can- ties in this conclusion, " that the force of the magnet is not, as has been hitherto assumed, single in its nature, but of two kinds, since to the older known one is now added a new unknown one, dis- tinctly different from the former — that of the crystal. It may be found divested of the other property of the magnet, and in nature is displayed in a separate condition by the crystals." {Physico-Physio- logical Researches on the Dynamics of Magnetism, Electricity, &c, in their relations to vital force, p. 68.1 But magnets, on the other hand, are never found without the Odic force ; and electricity appears also to stand in what is really a like relation of ascending inclusion to both, but which only seems to aggravate the puzzle of Riechenbach. Now this series is, the reader sees, a precise and peremptory con- sequence of the principles applied in the text, and which class, in fact, these three polarities, crystalline, magnetic, and electric, as progressive complications of the same force ; this force moreover being, at a lower stage, the simple motion of gravitation. The theory would, in turn, receive a thousand confirmations, scarce less marked than that referred to, from the labours of this author, had I space to avail myself of his respected authority. I can cite, however, but another instance in a different line. The Baron, or rather the philosopher, has established the fact, that the polarity of his Odic force is " negative" in the fixed stars and the sun, whereas it is " positive" in the moon and the planets. From this opposition between the luminous and the light-receiving among the heavenly bodies, the author draws the following obvious conclu- sion ; or rather he merely suggests it with his usual and perhaps ex- cessive caution : — " Perhaps we shall one day succeed, if not in decid- ing, yet in raising a probability, that a comet which only sends us polarized light [like the moon and planets] is actually a reflecting and not an illuminating body," [the latter being the prevailing notion of astronomers, p. 245J. I beg the reader to compare this inference with the account of comets a page or two onward ; and of the heavenly bod- ies generally in the note subjoined thereto. 80 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. not forbear adding, that it seems to argue no high condi- tion of the general philosophy of science to find these evi- dent modifications of the same natural law remain, not only unconnected, but the latter and less familiar of them objects of puerile wonder to the learned themselves. But it is in great part a consequence of the undue impor- tance which has been attached to certain methods, or of the mole-eyed and mousing habits that have been engen- dered by this mis-estimate, as will be-farther noted in the proper place. For the present we resume the clue al- ready become so complicated, and proceed into the still darker realms of organization and of life. 3. As the transition from the mathematical series of relations to the physical was illustrated by the familiar im- age of " rounding the cape" of motion, the outlet from the latter and so called inorganic world might be named the " north-west passage" to the regions of life. In fact, the philosophic passage is deemed so vastly the more difficult that it is generally despaired of, or positively denied. Assured, however, by the strong concurrence and the uni-. form course of the most various analogies of nature, I can- not hesitate, in the face of any weight of mere opinion, to believe that here too there is no real discontinuity. I even think that the difficulty, though apparently somewhat greater from the more advanced complication of the sub- ject, must yet be similar in nature to the revolutionary procedure, to which we just have seen reduce itself the long-pretended hiatus between the so called primary and secondary qualities of matter. What then was itthat took place here 1 Simply a retroversion of the mathematical series of laws, from the consideration of objects exteriorly and at rest, to the re-examination of them in motion and composition. And as this purpose could be really exe- cuted but through the virtual analysis of their formation, which lies unfolded in its various stages along the plains of both space and time, the course of nature, thus sponta- neously followed by Perception, must have been, as it were, a turning of the previous model inside out. Now, according to the law of progression, which has been de- scribed as a rolling forward of the same process or series of processes upon its extreme terms as an axis — the ensuing form of transition, and at which we are now ar- ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 81 rived, should be found to consist in turning its predecessor outside in. And the new order would, of course, com- mence with the final term of the series, which falls, we see, at this turn, upon the relation of figure. BuHhis utmost stage of exterior or " inorganic" composition, as exempli- fied extremely in the class of bodies termed crystals, and generalized in the miscalled chemical law of isomorph- ism, would evidently pass, by the operation indicated, into a collection of cells. Here, accordingly, do we find the process slidden over with scarce an effort to the iden- tical cellular formation or tissue, which is known to intro- duce, and must consequently underlie, the entire " or- ganic" system of nature. In fact, this cellular composition as presented in the. lowest vegetables, is but a simple complication of the crystalline figure ; the conversion of its sides from the state of bounding a solid corpuscle to that of inclosing a similar cavity. But the ultimate con- sequences of this slight change are among the most marvel- lous feats of nature, quite as wonderful perhaps as the difference between matter and mind. In the first place the opposite siJes of the introverted figure must retain their polaric relations unimpaired, if they be not intensified. From this it would immediately follow that the process of composition must go on henceforth, not as in the mathe- matical mode, by mutual concretion, nor as in the physical, by accretion or extra-susception ; but by an attraction of excretion upon both those products as a base, and which is technically termed intus-susception. And,, hence again, the possibility of accreting by the negative poles, of throwing off from the system of cells into free space, both the inassimulative or foreign particles of the fresh in- gredients, and the deteriorated parts of the old. But such an outlet was manifestly impossible where the process of composition went on from the circumference of the body towards the centre. Whereas, by reversing its direction from the centre towards the circumference, as we see it in the centrifugal radiations of the fungi, the operation of what I am obliged to term figured or polaric motion has opened itself the new career named organization or life. So profoundly just is the late definition of this phenomenon by Blainville, as a process of continual decomposition and recomposition. Yet just, I take the liberty of adding, in a 8 82 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. general sense ; at least if we be not careful to transpose the order of modification and take the former as restric- tive of the latter term. For the part of " recomposition" lingers still, with regard to the lower vegetables, the algae, lichens, &c, in the stage of general absorption. ~ And that this is semi-crystalline is demonstrated e converso by the " arborescences" of the latter process (as in the frost- work on a window), into the exact forms of these primitive plants : a reciprocity, by the way, which affords another confirmation — a proof not the less positive for being a little poetic — of the graduated transition J have been endeavor- ing to trace. The result of the effort is, then, that the chain of natural development reappears without a flaw, but much more flexible, in the cellular tissue ; which itself is known to be the rudimental form of organization, that is to say, the figured complication of polaric composition. Next iu order recurred the quantitative, or propor- tional term of the same series. Of this the effect must be to draw out, as it were, the rude aggregation of the cellular tissue, to turn it, by the conflict between the crossing strains, into a main diagonal, and finally twist it into spirally parallel rows ; an arrangement quite producible by the constant ten- dency of the several figures to adj ust themselves in obedience to their main polaric affinities, and thus promotive, at once, of the force and the flexibility of the texture. And such, in fact, is the complication which is held to characterize the maturer of the two divisions of the vegetable kingdom. It is the organization termed " vascular" — from the new dis- position of the cells into vessels able to contain durably for suitable elaboration, and convey capillarily through the lon- gitudinalperforations of their party- walls, the liquid so indis- pensable to all the grades of composition. It is also called "endogenous," from another consequence of the same change, namely, that the recomposition is brought to pass along the centre of the plant, and through the double set of absorbent vessels at its two extremities ; even as the other division is termed " exogenous," from its exterior and opposite line of growth. Their linear recomposi- tion is distributed in its parallel layers by the affinities of .quantity, by the relation of parts to their whole. There remains in this ascending order of the series but the law of number ; which accordingly should close the vegeta- ANALYSIS OS" COSMICAL NATURE. 83 ble form of organization. But where do we find this numerical composition of plants 1 Very obviously and duly, in all those higher species called trees. : For a tree is but an assemblage of individual vegetables, which would perish for the most part annually in an isolated state. Such is actually the case in the simply cellular and primitive orders. But, by the arrangement just described, of the cellular tissue into vascular tubes, the organism both acquires consistency to maintain its integrity after death, and opens channels of communication between the vital virtue persisting in the root and the seminal germ de- posited in the buds. The new beings are thus enabled to flourish upon the summit of the old ; and the latter is in a sort, reanimated by the double current of vitality, and rein- forced by the downward growth of the colony above, which shoots around it an annual swathing of cognate tissue into the earth, to serve in turn this double office for succeeding generations. In fact this is the " exogenous" recomposi- tion first alluded to, and which thus results from the de- scending growth of a circle of individuals inserted about the vertex of one of their own kind, and obliged in this way to encase it with their radicating development in travelling along its sides to the common mother earth. And so the vegetable family proceeds in its composition by the simple superposition of numbers, of individuals. But what then ? Why, no doubt, that the same triad of mathematical forms, including of course, their successive concretions as described,' should again, on reaching the fundamental relation of Number, be reverted, as in the passage from astronomical to physical motion, into a new order of organic complication. Such a prolongation of the system is recognized in fact in animal life. But the passage by transition being disputed here, as usual, I will try to briefly designate the more tangible of the shadings. On the one hand we have seen the main march of the most complex classes of vegetables towards a progressive individualization and condensation of the organism : the coarser results are familiar in the various modes of grafting, which already prove a high degree of vital di- visibility. The progression was again compounded of a series of co-operative efforts between the two constituent eysteins of this sort of plants, to the end of liberating their 84 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. respective processes of nutrition and motion, from their local and external dependence. This tendency we also marked in the soaring ramifications ; which remove the living vegetables from accident and earth, and raise them into brighter atmosphere, and freer agitation. Bui fur- ther, this change of place which is still mechanical and momentary, acquires permanence through the capability of artificial transplantation, and even progression through the spontaneous propagation by layers — a phenomenon amounting to a " short circulation" of the nutritive system, and constituting the first step in organic locomotion. Still the object of this dawning spontaniety is merely nutriment ; it does not involve the other element of the great law of preservation, it does not offer to shrink from danger or damage. Something of this kind is however presented in the famous Sensitive plant. Here the movement is doubtless slow, and merely retractile or one-sided ; it is like the simple refraction of polarity, in the more imper- fect and liquid crystals. But as the refraction is found double in the highest mineral complications, so the vege- table becomes vibratile in the ulterior species called oscil- latory. The plant, at this stage, would seem to wait hut mere detachment from its earthy moorings in order to fill up the complementary section of the oscillation, and es- tablish the circuit of self motion, as of digestion. Nor are there wanting still minuter gradations towards this su- preme term. But if, to the. foregoing indications of a cul- minating convergence to specific individuality in the two component systems, be added the general concurrent ten- dency to minimise the mass, it will be sufficiently clear that the progression must come to close in a molecular unit combining both the organic elements, a membraneous cell, encasing a vitalized fibre. Such in fact is the exact character of the higher kinds of vegetable seed', and the reason why this part should be the best criterion of the plant. But it is also very nearly the definition of an animalcule — of which the name we see announces the transition just accomplished. Not, however, that I think these creatures at all vegetable productions ; although mostly found in waters charged with vegetable infusions, it proves no doubt an affinity of nutrition, not generation. But the latter is not necessary to the argument. Myprin- ANALYSIS OF OOSMXCAI, NATURE. 85 ciple, on the contrary, confines generation within each species, the intermediate process of so called creation being the transition which I purposed to trace. So that the point is fully made out if the present interval be no wider than any found to separate two vegetable species. But we see it, in fact, reduced to what may be termed the an- gular inversion, which is now known to be incidental to ' each new revolution of our threefold series of formative relations. It was little more than a transposition of the two vegetable tissues, seeing the zoophyte presents the fibre as inclosing the cell. And it is the exposure on all sides of the more elaborated and polarized tissue which diffused that property of negative repulsion over the whole sur- face of the body, which, under the name of contractility, is made the character of animal life. We have seen, how- ever, that it is only peculiar to it in the consummation of a long progression towards establishing an omni-lateral po- larity within the system. This graduation would be con- firmed perhaps still more strikingly from another source, were not the evidence unnecessary, and the subject too recondite not to need a length of explanation impossible in this place. I allude to the three modes of procreation,. namely, scission, gemmation, and oviparition, which were developed progressively in the vegetable kingdom, and duly pass in order into the animal series. Having thus effected the composition of organized' molecules, of animated atoms, the energy called nature^ went on to recompose this chaos in the third and final order of yet recognized complications. Number, which we- saw the last method of the preceding series, must, conse* quently, be the leading one in this, and accordingly we find this numerical stage of vital complication attain gradually its full development in the second or polypus species of< infusoria ; creatures, on this account a standing wonder- alike to multitude and philosopher. The thing, however, had, we see, its prototype in every ligneous shrub and tree ;: saving always the characteristic inversion of type, and- a correlatively higher grade of composition. For, in the vegetable, the individuals adhere to • the stock on the outside ; whereas, in the polypi, on the contrary, they are inclosed by the common substance. And this admir- able consequence, of our alternating series, which seems. 8* 86 vestiges or CIVILIZATION. to most writers, an uncouth, or, at least, inexplicable contrivance, results again in enabling the envelopes them- selves to be strung together, until they multiply into a marine mountain or continent. I need not pursue the remaining forms, of measure and figure, in the other two families of invertebrate animals : they are recognized in the very names of articulate and radiated : nor the higher compli- cation of the aggregate series in three great divisions' of the vertebrate section. Here the continuation is long ad- mitted on all hands ; and its general principle and subor- dinate forms, seem now sufficiently illustrated to trust the rest to every diligent reader. I hasten then to close this quite disproportionate disquisition, with the suggestion, that as the scale of the investigation might, on the one hand, be subdivided, far more minutely than I have been able here to attempt, — might be dropped, in fact, to the extent of indicating the gradation of natural species — so, on the other, it may be generalized to the conveniently summary terms of the three integral systems of organic nature. These, it is familiarly known, are the Vital or vascular, and the Intellectual or nervous, which respectively pre- dominate towards the extremities of the series ; and the Volitional or fibrous, which braces both into one, in the name of Motion, the great agent of the whole evolution : so that even in the highest region of creation, there will be thus no difficulty in still discovering our three mathematical forms of progressive complication, and in their correlative order of specialty and eminence. For example, in the lowest,, and nutritive department, we find Number pre- dominate, in the simple accumulation of cells in the vege- table ; Quantity, in the extended surface of the intestinal canal, in the animal ; Figure, in the construction of the stomach. Or in the nervous system, at the other end, the triple relation is no less manifest, in the multiplex distri- bution of the ganglia, the consolidated elongation of the spinal chord, and the spherical figure of the brain. But this last organ, in its ultimate development, its anterior lobes in the human species, being held to constitute the utmost verge of created things, we seem to have completed the proposed survey of the phenominal world, at least ac- cording to the most scientific accounts of its limits These limits I accept for the present, and proceed to extricate the ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 8? results of our analytic measurement from the explanatory details of the operation. § 23. Motion, then, proceeding on the basis of matter (whether in character of its inherent quality or as divine law of the Creator), has produced, in the performance of this great cosmical drama, the three progressive acts with their respective triads of scenes, which we saw divide and develope themselves in this order : 1st (Division) Number : Quantity : Figure ; 2d " Force : Mixture : Structure 5 3d " Growth : Life : Mind. These popular terms are far from exhibiting with all pos- sible precision, either the series or the significance of the nine relations designed. Butfrom a dozen others, of common use or abuse in the books, I take the best that now occur, without resort to reformation ; a convenience which for the present I throughout deny myself in the matter of language, however liberal of innovation in almost every thing else. And this I except, not only for the general reason that I would rather make, use of words to pass new ideas for old, than old ones for new ; but especially, that to a work appealing wholly to facts and history, the language of common experience must be the most trustworthy of witnesses. To supply, however, as far as may be, this privation of a neology undoubtedly become necessary from the point of view in question, I must be suffered to recur to some additional explanation. The proposition is, and the proof so far evinces, that these several categories of phenomena are but the single law of motion, only reduplicated progressively from member to member of each of the particular series, and from series to series of the general division. The identity is quite obscure, however, in the fundamental series ; for the reason before suggested, that the motion is there subjective, or takes place in the percipient himself. But the motions of the mind and senses, in taking cogni- zance of the external world as constituted in a given time and space, must, from the necessity of proceeding from the simple to the complex, reflect exactly the creative movements which brought it to that state. It is the same 88 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATIOK. as if this last procedure were panoramically to pass by, while Perception held a fixed point of contemplation. The difference is only that between a sun-dial and a clock : in the former the index is stationary, and merely registers the sun's motions ; in the latter it is made to move over, in order to measure a prescribed record ; but the result ia effectually the same in both the processes, and the artificial movement a true expression of the natural. Even so the mental motions, by which the uniformities termed mathematical are traced amid the actual constitution of nature, do but represent the fundamental operations of her previous course, and in their original characters, suc- cession, and complication. What other, in fact, than num- ber, quantity, figure, can be imagined, the successively primordial states of matter ? Could even the creator of the theologians, who " made all things out of nothing," produce any thing not subject ipso facto to the first relation, or move it into quantity, except by aggregating individuals, or give it the quality of figure but by an ulterior disposi- tion of quantities 1 If necessity may be predicated of any. thing mathematical, it is safe to say that the existence and succession of these conditions, be the intervals but a moment or a myriad of ages, was absolutely indispensable by al- mighty power itself; for the thing would be a contradiction, which is repugnant to the power supposed. Accordingly, after five-and-twenty centuries of speculation, the analysis of Dalton and the imagination of Democritus, concur to in- dicate the stage of number as the primary state of matter. But is matter no where open to present and positive ob- servation in one or both of the subsequent conditions ? Is not this the true predicament of the bodies known as comets? and which should thus be defined a veritable concours of atoms, advanced from the " fortuitous" con- dition of mere number into the loose and lengthened tex- ture distinctive of the passage to Quantity ; and with already a vague nucleus of Figure at the head, proceeding to com- plicate or convolve the whole mass into a planet. I do not remember a case of the many outstanding anomalies, where the facts are quite reliable,(l) which this definition may (1) In addition to the more obvious, considered in the text, I have since collected the following from Humboldt (Kosmos) ; who though the oi acle of scientific pragmatists, is obliged to recite them as still insoluble. ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 89 not include. Thus, while noting in the solar revolution of these bodies the numerical attraction of gravity, it ex- First, the fact of certain comets having several tails, in one case as many as six ; — a complex and most curious example of the longitu- dinal or lamellated formation of our second stage, remaining also in the " rings" of Saturn, and possibly in the " belts" of Jupiter. Then the direction of the tail, which is thought to be uniformly away from the sun. This fact (if such it be) would of course follow from the free fluxion of the atomic elongation into the line of greatest attraction, that to wit, of the conjunction of the nucleus and the sun or when they " pull together." Or it might be determined mediately by the inchoate polarity of the former body, which would itself be kept, through the opposite pole, in a constant position towards the central force. And either, or at all events, both these quite concurrent expla- nations would farther comport with an observation of a seemingly opposite import, and which reports a comet of two tails, having one di- rectly towards the sun. For the well-known wavy motions of these unwieldy appendages (communicated by the efforts of the spherical nucleus to rotate) might be taken advantage of, by perturbation from some planetary body, so far as to deflect from the line alluded to the external lamination, and even in extraordinary cases throw it over to the other side. Would not this occurrence seem to have been seized, as it were, in transitu, in the reported case of another of those " mys- terious" appearances, wherein the tails, or layers of tail, were seen at right angles to each other ? Still, notwithstanding these singular con- formities to the theory, I should not have introduced these observations by way of proof. Besides the meagerness of the actual materials and the extreme delicacy of the process, there is large extrinsic ground, I think, to doubt their entire accuracy. One good reason is, that some or other of the instances mentioned are utterly subversive of the two positive hypotheses which have governed successively the course of cometic investigation. Thus the notion that the tail is formed by a circumambient rush of solar light, is clearly whisked aside by the in- stance of introversion. That of the lateral or rectangular position, on the other hand, is no less fatal to the second supposition, which seems to think the tail to be an effluence of polarity. It was perhaps under this impression that the German astronomer Bessel, supposed he wit- nessed a tail in the very process of formation. This is the only state- ment I find to militate with my conjecture. But the discoverer was probably thinking at the moment of the " northern lights," the sup- posed polaric emanations of the earth. It is at least singular that so signal a circumstance should have been seen but by one individual in the case of a comet, which (being Halley's) was scrutinizingly watched by all the astronomers of Europe. I have never seen the report of Bessel, nor any other account of the subject. But I venture to affirm, that neither he nor any other man has ever observed the formation or disappearance of the tail of a comet, unless it should be upon one or other of the three following occasions : the relative position of the ob- server, the accidental perturbation of the tail, or its final retraction (as 90 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. hibits, in the quantitative, the cause of their oblong form. This I believe is at present referred to the resistance of an ethereal atmosphere, an entity imagined chiefly for this purpose. The hypothesis seems, however, at once gratui- tous and absurd ; the former, because the existence of any such substance is unknown ; and absurd, because however real, the subtle particles of the alleged atmosphere could scarcely press against a texture seen to be pervious to the stars beyond, and confessed by those who assume it, not to offer the least obstruction to the solid masses of the planets or the densest bodies of our earth. The latter part of the objection applies to another explanation, which attributes this caudal appendage to the impact of the sun's rays. But the assumption of either cause seems, after all, we see superfluous. For the tail of the comet is a natural product of the same universal law, in its operation upon the atomic particles of matter, which gave, when come long later to work upon organic elements, a like outline to the nervous tissue of the vertebral column, and to the vascular texture of the tree. And we may hope that the day cannot be dis- tant when the tadpole shape, already recognized as belong- ing to all animal embria, at the one extremity of the scale, and at the other those primordial formations called comets, will be understood to belong both actually and inevitably to the same model. Again, to this elongation is commonly attributed the ahsence of rotation in, those rudimental plan- ets. But. the true cause is the other absence of a completed polaric organization, of which the spherical figure is in this instance a concomitant, not the cause. A more real effect of the oblong shape of these cometary bodies is their peculiar eccentricity of orbit. It is the longitudinal im- pulsion of Quantity called momentum, as yet predominant over the numerical attraction of gravity, until the latter he in Enke's comet) into the nucleus. The last of Humboldt's difficul- ties and the most mysterious, it seems, of all is, that these puzzling appendages exhibit a motion of oscillation. And in fact this seems ut- terly adverse to all the theories hitherto broached, whether solar, ethe- real, or polaric. It is on the contrary, a necessary consequence of the explanation now suggested, which requires the longitudinal direction, in its struggle of ages to reach the ellipse, to work itself through the two complementary and previous sections of the cone. ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 91 reinforced by the polarity of figure, which proportionably bends the course into an ellipse, and then a circle. It represents in short the original tangential or primal mo- tion, in its stages of transition towards the planetary shapes and orbits. And this tendency again explains a darker problem still, namely, the anticipation by particular comets of their periodic times of return ; this being plainly pro- duced by the contraction of the long diameter of their cycle, and no doubt accompanied by a proportional en- largement of the nucleus. In fine, the sequel of the same great law, will account conclusively for the observed fact, that the orbits of all the planets, our earth itself included, are steadily progressing towards the circular form. Does it not also indicate, at the other extremity of the scale, the quite spontaneous origin of that centrifugal impulsion the preternatural account of which continues to this day the flagrant blemish or blind side of the Newtonian hypo- thesis ? (1) But I am again sliding from examples into applications. To return, then, I meant to explain that the three relations named mathematical, are really conversant, like all the rest, about phenomena of motion — of motion, by the ideas of mind, in the logical order of conception ; of motion by the atoms of matter, in the chronological order of creation. This, however, being understood, we may continue, with the common opinion, to speak of them as relations of Position. (1) This indeed would be removed in part by the grand specula- tion of La Place. But although, if true, that admirable system might explain sufficiently naturally the collocation and courses of the planets, it seems far less satisfactory as to the process of their alleged forma- tion from the annular detachments of a solar atmosphere. Besides it seems to leave the comets at large. Both these fatal objections the present theory would quite avoid ; while, moreover, characterizing the primordially atomic state, which La Place does but vaguely describe as nebular. It also avoids his postulate of an original vortex ; for the determination, or at least the unity, of which I do not remember a "sufficient reason" in any of the second-band representations of the system. But I will not presume to criticise the most accomplished of astronomers, without having myself consulted the original. This, however, I have no present means of doing. Meanwhile, to remedy the wretched want, I have looked into a late publication, professing to give a set account of the nebular theory. But Professor Nichols makes a pitiful exhibition of La Place. Nor does the scientific dignity of the general subject seem to fare a great deal better, amid his scan- dalous hash of pedantry, poetry, and piety. 92 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. The identity of the general agent is much less dubious in the next department, though here its action, for the most part, be equally unobservable. Its operations are recognized in the three physical relations named pressure, cohesion, and polarity. These are also, but respectively, the former modes of complication, as repeated in an inverse order (§ 22), on the basis of the collective result. This result, we know, was figure, in its primary constitution of a mere quantified conglomerate of cells, such as, doubt- less, the nucleus of comets, the aerolites of our own atmos- phere, and the lower or metallic strata of the earth. But as the two preceding stages, atomic and elective, are thus enfolded, and as it were imprisoned in the convolutions of figure, which consist in turning motion against itself, — ^-it is clear the latter must next proceed in the direction of the antagonism. Also that the procedure, though a composi- tion of motion, is effectually a decomposition of matter ; and further, that the latter result is brought about by the concur- rent action, of attraction which we saw the general type of motion in the former epoch, and repulsion, which is its character in the present. Another consequence is that both these forces act no longer upon atoms, but now upon figured masses, whether largest bodies or mere molecules : a fact explanatory of the elasticity observed in crystalline substances. Accordingly, this mutual repulsion by fig- ure is pressure, which results in either equilibrium or expulsion. In the latter case, which is the line of progress, the structure is dislocated and the confined motion of affinity set free for new cohesions. Again, this negative or elec- tive repulsion of cohesion joined, as usual in the third form, to the opposite repulsion of the first, is, we see, the exact description of polarity. This, then, must have been a period of disruption and disorder. And accordingly it has left many a trace upon the face of our own planet, in whose interior the work of transmutation as yet goes fiercely on. The effect is still more legible, because later, in the moon, a body which seems a representative of the second act of the creation, as the comet appeared to exem- plify the first. (1) A graduation of our terrestrial satellite (1) Of course the theory, which I feared at present to do more than mutter in the text, implies the moon to have been itself befort ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 93 which would admirably account for its alleged destitution of atmosphere and organic existences. These formations in fact commenced with the next creation of our planet, and constitute the third series of a comet ; which brought within the earth's control, after having gain- ed the spheroidal shape, would be fitted, by the consequent capacity of rotation, to elude, between the two forces, the dominant grasp of the sun, and would thus transfer its focus of revolution. For example, were Eufco's comet, which now approximates the condition of form, and the elongation of whose orbit also is retracted deeply within our system, to pass within a certain distance of Venus or Mercury, it would be made (as may be yet its fate) to whirl off upon this new focus: and the body itself, thus farther rounded from the actual elipsoidal figure and rectified from its eccentricity into the common planetary plane, take ever after the situation of a satellite to such planet. I need not say the consequence embraces the satellites in general, and not only these but also the primaries in turn. But leaving the reader to decide the coincidence, or competition of this view, with the only really phi- losophical theory of astronomical phenomena, I cannot, even in a note, omit to palliate the novelty, by applying it, not to any thing already deemed explained, but to the principal facts which it seems the various hypotheses have all abandoned in despair. Reverting to the order of our remarks as of our knowledge, it is a fact of this description, that the relative density of the moon is found to interrupt, in this respect, an almost regular series, and by a differ- ence so enormous as nearly one-half. This is commonly deemed ac- counted for when the exception is named a satellite — as if the some- what aldermanic principle that density implies dignity, did not find a pretty flagrant contradiction in the sun himself. Now this seeming anomaly would be turned into harmony as above. So also would another fact respecting the same body, namely, the absence of an atmosphere or at least of any liquid formation, and consequently of the organic life to which it is the necessary transition. These several peculiarities I think to be utterly inconceivable, upon any supposition which looked in any shape to a coeval connection between the moon and the earth ; while all are natural and necessary in the theory now suggested. It is another and still profouuder of this puzzling class of facts which the pious conceit of our vulgar astronomers is wont to term " mysteries," that the period of rotation coincides exactly with that of revolution in this and in all the other satellites. Here no se- rious explanation is so much as attempted. Yet is not the conformity a calculable result of the conflict of forces above alluded to ; a mathe- matical compromise, through the intervention of a planet, between the previous and direct allegiance of the comet to the sun and the condi- tion, on the other hand, that it shall continue, in its future course, to re- volve the same as if it made an aggregate part of the primary? For this virtual unity is no figurative, but is the literal state of all the satel- lites ; which might well be said to be astricta glebte towards the lord paramount of Motion. And such a result is further corroborated 94 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. motional complications. As the action of the former was by attraction and repulsion, and their effects a composition and decomposition, respectively ; so the closing term of the generic, like that of the subordinate series, must com- %y two collateral trains of consequences, which are found equally (transformed into facts : the one is, that the solidified comets must settle ■chiefly about the remoter planets, and this, from a concurrence of obvious causes, such as distance, which by enfeebling the rival attrac- tion of the sun, augments their form, in this vast proportion, beyond the inner planets mass for mass ; then their actual and enormous excess •of magnitude ; and above all, perhaps, their advanced position which ^sweeping at various intervals around the frontier regions of the sys- tem, would enable them, as the condensing comet drew slowly inwards its long ellipse, to anticipate the interception at the very point of the aphelion. In exact accordance we find the satellites increase in num- ber from Jupiter outwards ; and what is additionally confirmative, not so much on the principle of magnitude as of relative exteriority and distance. But the profoundest confirmation of all is, that they retain in the same proportion, their original or cometary deviations from the zodiac, until in Uranus the moons revolve in all directions indiscrimi- nately. It would be curious indeed to know liow the exfoliation of a Formative Ring could result in such an order as this stumbling-block of astronomers ! But how natural a consequence from the extreme debili- tation and more recent application of the equatorial polarity (if these terms be a blunder the ignorance is not mine), I say the equatorial or electric polarity, with which the planetary masses had through a pre- vious eternity been embelted by the sun, and broken gradually, through organization, into the main direction of his whirling orb ; as also had the satellites, in the joint ratio of their ages and proximity, until our own (to continue the metaphor) has been reined so closely into con- formity as to enable it to keep exceptionally its parasitic place! This exception brings us aptly to the other class of consequences, and of which the existence of the rule is thus already an attestation. In fact our principle seemed to say that the number of satellites should decrease inwardly, and generally disappear within a certain line of solar energy : and such is accordingly the familiar fact. Nor is the ■earth's instance a deviation, when we first compare its single moon with tthe four attending the nearest satellited planet, and then its place at but a single interval within the line alluded to; while on the other hand lit is still the third from the sun, and moreover quite the largest of all the ■lesser planets. Is there nothing in this nice coincidence with a double series of phenomena, of which the one is by correlation a negative •check upon the other, and all are confessed inexplicable upon every ex- ■tant hypothesis ? But how would our theory explain the Asteroids, which form another ■cardinal '* mystery 1" It says that comets, on approaching the condi- ition of form above described, would thus concentralize their orbits ■with those of the general system ; that this was possible but by instal- lation as either planets or satellites; that the latter form being imprac- ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 95 bine both the pairs of properties in one and the same system. This system consists of figure compounded first by figure, then drawn out or stratified by quantitative affinity, the final complication being again numerical composition. Im short it is the solidified and many-sided, or rather mul- tiplex, form wjiich yields the corpuscular element of or- ganic being. Proceeding, then, upon this basis — which may be termed the morphological, as its periodic prede- cessors were named molecular and atomic, — the present ticable within a certain line, the former must take place of course, out- side it ; and that consequently a large collection of those later forma- tions of matter would be found to coast at quarantine, so to speaks along the frontier of inhibition. And it farther follows that such bodies, notwithstanding their state of planets, would in their orbits oft- en exhibit a remaining eccentricity, indicative of the oblique path by which they reached the disputed territory, and escaped the serfdom of so many of their fellows that entered edgwise or elsewhere the system. How far these deductions correspond to the asteroids of observation, the reader will find it easy to determine. In fine, the whole might be compared to the late European" balance of power," in which the outer provinces of the Roman Empire act as rival centres of subordination, retained, however, in their ancient orbits by the subtle influence of su- perstition ; and the inner, like the lesser planets in closer vicinage to the sun, continue isolate and enslaved to the so called throne of the Cajsars ; while the neutral ground, left independent but insignificant between both tyrannies, is the region of the obscure asteroids, whnh might thus themselves be called the Swiss Cantons of the celestial system. And the planets, how came they from comets? But I must here close, or give this note the relative prominence of a lady's postcripU Besides the planets are explicitly included in the foregoing. For the- present, however, the theory is-offered as no more than a conjecture. And a wild one it may be called by certain pretenders to philosophy t . who take their own pedantic barrenness for scientific sobriety, and are of that class of minds that would have seen in Kepler, had he stopt at the 19th guess, but the ravings of a scholastic or a lunatic. And yet s the twentieth, which made him immortal, must have seemed the least likely of all ; and so was born of the long elimination of his errors. In science in fact, no less than religion, the formal letter killeth and the spirit alone giveth life. By its indulgence however, in this particular,. I was chiefly anxious to suggest the truth, that our astronomy has still' to undergo a fundamental reformation — one by which, I venture to say, that even the great law of gravitation may sink in turn to the second place, into which the laws of Kepler had been retruded by the discovery of Newton. 1 beg leave to add, however, that the direction is not thought likely to be quite the same with that of the theory just promulgated from the Christian centre of infallibility. 96 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. cycle of motion, beginning necessarily with Number, pro- 'luced the class of phenomena thence denominated trans- formation. This fluctuation of forms, more familiarly lermed Growth, is effected by the complication of po- larity called electricity. This electrical polarity, result- ing from a superposition of magnets, has at once the lateral and a vertical direction ; the latter being of course the leading one, as is witnessed in the station of plants, which is always upright to the plane, not of the soil but the horizon. What this electric or organic mode of mo- "ion may become, in the remaining complications of Life ;ind Intelligence, I must postpone for the former reason, if uo other, to pursue. The conception grows here too strange and too obnoxious to the deepest prejudices, to ex- pect a careful or a candid consideration of the meaning,- in our utter absence not only of space to enforce, but of the very language to express, it. Hitherto the popular termi- nology seemed sufficient for the main purpose of historical confirmation ; for the descriptions, if somewhat novel, were so far verified by principles which had been recognized, under other titles, however isolately or imperfectly. With respect to even the terms in question, the reader is now aware that they are but progressive compositions of their accumulated predecessors, by means respectively of the relations of quantity and figure. The effect may be, in the first case, to insulate the organism, which in the vegetable holds by one of its main poles to the earth ; and thus to com- plicate transformation by transplacement or locomotion ; and, in the figured stage, to superadd the insulation of the ner- vous system and set Perception, which had been also rooted by mere sensation to the plane of time, free to flash along the past and future as memory or imagination. In fact this final modification of electrical motion, this circular or self- controlling and intellectual polarity, is recognized in all that is not due to ignorance or imposture in the pheno- mena called Animal Magnetism. For the cures, convul- sions, clairvoyance, &c, of this still quack-ridden district of nature, would, none the less be real facts, though all resolved into imagination : that is to say, the imagination either of the patient alone, made to react upon his own system by premonition of the change to ensue, and producing a concentrated direction and consequent disturbance of the ANALYSIS OP COSMICAL NATURE. 9*7 magnetic circulation; or, also, the more powerful imagina- tion of the magnetizer, directed actively to the same end, and put, as the phrase is, in communication with the for- mer when thus passively disposed, and pointed, as it were, to receive the discharge. § 24. But be the mode of action in this or the other stages what it will, the foregoing hasty characterization of the effects, the phenomena, seems abundant to elucidate the essential elements of the analysis, namely, a unity of agency, and a uniformity of progression. The scientific results of these joint principles will be identified in the proper place, and will prove to be quite conformable, as far as they are yet known. I may here remark, concern- ing the residue, including the relations named, Life and Intelligence, that they too, are in their own nature, as much a matter of computation, as the properties of a crys- tal or the powers of a machine. The difference is merely a question of purview in the Perception, of time in the progress, of mankind. And there is no one error perhaps by which both these tendencies are so liable to be arrested as the narrow practice, which still prevails among even the most forward representatives of science, of cutting up the works of nature into absolute divisions, said to be acces- sible, some to different sorts of certitude, and some to> none. It is grown a vulgar reproach to Aristotle that his theory of " violent motions" delayed for two thousand years the cultivation of mechanics. Yet, in face of this flippant criticism and even of the warning example which' it denounces, the same empirical illusion is repeated by- the critics themselves, in the quite analogous exclusion of,, for instance, the " moral motions," from the possible ap- plication of mathematical rules. Accordingly both these motions, the " voluntary" as well as the " violent," or rather their fancied exemption from the universal domin- ion named, will no doubt be laughed at in the same cate- gory, by no distant posterity. This analysis I pretend to be not only correct, but also- complete, as a chart of all the recognized existences of na- ture. There is not, I think, a single phenomenon, from' the most material of facts to the wildest of fancies, from the fall of a stone or the floating of a nebula to the vision of a maniac or a prophet, that is not comprised in one or other 9* 98 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. these three summary divisions, and specified in the sub- ordinate partition. For manifestly there is nothing which can be known or even imagined of things, save either . As they are in relation to each other or themselves in space ; As they become in relation to each other or themselves in time ; As they succeed in relation to each other in time and space. Phenomena Of co existence simply; Of co-occurrence successively; Of co-operation indefinitely. Relations Of composition directly; Of decomposition indirectly ; Of recomposition and decomposition conjointly and continually. Laws : Of organ or state ; Of function or change ; Of state and change harmonically, of function and organ progressively. Motion complicating Matter under the successive condi- tions Of atoms, by gravity ; Of molecules, by affinity ; Of corpuscles, by polarity. And these three orders of complications, laws, relations or phenomena, are not only each of them subdivisionally, but all of them collectively, both characterized and com- prehended by the three mathematical formulas, of number, quantity, and figure. § 25. In view, then, of this grand logical harmony and completeness, it seems unnecessary to task our ^pace with historical confirmation, at least in advance of the general verification. Otherwise I might refer, for instance, to the now acknowledged tendency of the mathematical sciences to prove a universal method ; a great fact, of which the foregoing principles involve the rigorous demonstration. But these principles involve another fact no less extensive or important ; they indicate the universal basis of a classi- ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 99 fication truly natural, and applicable alike to all sciences, all arts, and all objects. True, it is but indicated ; nor have I intended more, in either this or the other branches of the exposition. My first desire is to be quite assured how far I may, or not, be right, before laboring perhaps to impose upon others and even upon myself, by the illu- sion of either critical contrast of symmetrical develop- ment. And the present sketch, I beg to repeat, is kept up in general to the bare requisites of this self-sustaining and self-denying purpose. At the same time it may be claimed, with respect to the point before us, that the greater explicitness, made indispensable by both the na- ture and novelty of most of the views, must leave the reader himself prepared to test the application suggested. He will above all discern in the peremptory graduation of our progressive series and the compound evolution of the progression, together with the endless diversity of their proportional combinations, at least a clue to the true defi- nition of a natural species ; a prerequisite, the want of which is well known to be the great defect in the various special classifications, for instance, of botany and zoology. As to the general or encyclopedic attempts, they have been for the most part quite preposterous, from the gene- ological tree of Porphyry to the schemes of Bacon and Dalembre, and along to the more elaborate plans of Ben- tham and Ampere. Among much pedantry and some -pue- rility the last of these writers alone presents a fair approach to the natural distribution. The rest conceive the tree of knowledge as if it grew by the branches, not the roots : for they plant it in the air of Mind, instead of tracing it in the soil of nature. "Whereas the order above delineated evinces the very contrary, and exhibits quite spontaneously the evolution of Perception as the final term of its nine stages of creation. It is therefore no very signal attestation of exact truth, perhaps, to have supplied a reason for the instinctive re- jection, owe after another, of these several systems. As a short instance, I prefer to mention the earliest essay of them all, and which is rejected with most vehemence, but as I think with least reason ; I allude to the ten catego- ries of Aristotle. For this famous summary of all ex- istences is substantially coincident with our novenary par- 100 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. tition of phenomenal nature. Even the slight discrepancy in number is but an oversight of repetition, in ranking Relation as a special category, whereas it is the generic character of all. For all are necessarily Ilgoe t» with re- gard to mind if not to matter. In the remaining nine, however, the coincidence is but substantial : the arrange- ment is inexact and the- designations not duly explicit, the latter being moreover mystified or mutilated in translation. For example, the last in order, usually rendered in Latin Habitus, had been travestied, throughout the middle ages, to mean the habit or garb of the object. The true im- port is now evident, even in the transition of the term habit to denote the instinctively recurring affections or pro- pensities of the human mind ; and these we found in fact to be the final order of substantive relations. Equally proper and profound was the Aristotelian position of Ex- istence at the head of the catalogue. For this is the cor- rect translation, in the sense of Number, of individuation j not " substance," as it is commonly rendered, which is a real synonym with matter, and thus excluded as the un- known substrate of all phenomena. Then follow Quan- tity and Quality ; the One exact to the very name, and the other agreeing With Jigure, the type and fountain of most qualities. Relation being removed as superfluous, the en- suing category is Action, which fits precisely our co-ordi- nate term force. Nor does Passion, in the generic sense of receptivity or rather susception, bear a less remarkable correspondence to affinity. But here, on entering upon the region of organic complication, the author becomes still more vague in his designations. The parallels to our polarity, growth and life respectively are termed Place, Time, and Situation. Yet even in these the correspon- dence may be easily deciphered. For instance, polarity — or to give it the more familiar and narrow name of mine- ralogy — is known to be pre-eminently a science of location; and that growth takes place in time is a vulgar truism. But besides the direct analogy, there is also a metaphori- cal : it was natural the author of the Categories, restrict- ing himself to popular nomenclature (as I have ventured to do myself but with greatly improved materials) should generalize the kinds of phenomena implying an expanse of space or time by a synecdoche of the containers for ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 101 the contained. And as to Situation, it refers, no doubt, by a like principle of pre-eminence, to the more complex groupings of animal organisms : for these are the natural objects in which system is the most prominent, and situation is the most prominent attribute of system. The closing category, named Habit, has already been adjusted. The correspondence, I therefore repeat, is substantially exact, at once in number, order and import, and the fact is not more curious than corroborative. Nor would it be less the latter though it were certain that the author's notions did not go to the full extent of the foregoing interpreta- tion. On the contrary, it would only speak the force of nature and of truth, which is still a better test than the words of even Aristotle. It is clear in fact that he saw nothing of their logical progression,' and only meant an enumeration of independent classes. But it is not the authority of this philosopher that I covet in behalf of the theory ; although there is, I own, no human suffrage of which I should be prouder in any subject above the men- tal horizon of his age. It is that of experience brought to testify through the philological basis of his profound analysis. In this his habitual procedure Aristotle was the first, and for his epoch remains the strictest of positive phi- losophers. Yet the trait is scouted by English writers, who will swear by the same rule if only you call it Baconian or . inductive ; as well as by their Germanized or Platonized opposites. Mr. Whewell, among the latter, speaks core- temptuously of the Stageryte as authenticating his main positions with the pftrase " we say," " we say." He does not distinguish that in treating the subjective phenomena of Mind (and Aristotle does not use it in his works of Natural History), the formula is a mere equivalent to the inductive " sesame" — it is the fact. The inferential ulti- matum of Mr. W. himself, is, I conceive, I conceive. "What then is the difference ? That Aristotle appeals to the com- mon experience of ages and nations as registered in gene- ral language. And the Cambridge Doctor sets up the conceptive capacity of a clergyman as the model of all truth and the measure of all creation. (1) (1) I find in a philosopher of opposite principles and at least equal ability, a similar strain of remark upon the categories of Aristotle. Mr. 102 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. § 26. Of the foregoing short survey, conducted on a different principle, I have still to add a confirmation the most conclusive perhaps of all. At the close of the last chapter it was avowed that if the mind's development he Mill, in his compilation on Logic, pronounces the enumeration to be both " redundant and defective. Some objects are omitted, and others repeated several times under different heads. * * That for in- stance could not be a very comprehensive view of the nature of Rela- tion which could exclude action, passivity and local situatim from that category. The same observation applies to the categories of Quando (or position in time,) and Ubi (or position in space) ; while the distinc- tion between the latter and Situs is merely Verbal. The incongruity of erecting into a summum genus the class which forms the tenth category is manifest." {System of Logic, ch. 3. § 1st). Now to me it is much more manifest that the author's conception of habituss&von still of the scholastic and traditional travestie, as in fact hebe'rayselsewhere, for example in his doctrine of "Kinds," a lingering remnant of the mystic " substances" of the old logic. He probably understood it (for he does not declare his meaning) in the physical sense of possession. He surely could have had no notion (nor do I know of any writer who has) of the supreme comprehensiveness assigned the term in the text, and which all unconsciously has made the E^cix (the tenth cate- gory) with its equivalents, the radical or " auxiliary" instrument of universal conjugation, in all languages arrived at a certain stage of development. The strictures on the other categories seem equally un- fortunate. The sole " redundancy" of Aristotle, as elucidated in the text, consists in ranking the supreme genus of relation as a species. To this, however, Mr. Mill takes no objection ; his complaint is, on the contrary, that the confusion is not " worse confounded" by huo% dling several others under the same superfluous head. The criticism then recoils upon the maker with compound interest For if Aristotle confounds the genus with the species in a single instance, Mr. Mill would confound the species with the genus, in five or six. The latter error implies, however, a proportionate advance in the extension of the true fundamental character of Relation. The product of twenty- three centuries of additional experience. But the list of Aristotle is charged to be also " defective." And this, if founded, would constitute a still more serious derogation, both from the scientific credit of that- classification in itself and the evidential value for which I cite it in the text. But the imputation is no less, or rather it is more, unfounded than that of redundancy. The alleged omissions Mr. Mill proceeds to state in the same passage ; " On the other hand the enumeration takes no notice of any thing besides sub- stances and attributes. In what category are we to place sensations, or any other feelings or states of mind ; as hope, joy, fear ; sound, smell, taste ; pain, pleasure ; thought, judgment, conception and the like ? Probably all these would have been placed by the Aristotelian school in the categories of actio and passio ; and the relation of such of them as are active to their objects and of such as are passive to their ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL KATURB. 103 in fact a result, as explained, of the constitution of external nature, it would follow that the latter must exhibit a grad- uation in strict conformity with the assigned Principles and Processes of the former. "We are now prepared to causes, would rightly be so placed ; but the things themselves, the feelings or states of mind wrongly. Feelings or states of consciousness are assuredly to be accounted among realities, but they cannot be reckoned either among substances or attributes." Here is a distinc- tion which I must be permitted to call extraordinary, at least in a thinker of the unmystical maturity of Mr. Mill. Feelings, emotions, thoughts not to be reckoned among attributes ! What then is the de- finition of this generic term ? Does it not, in any other than some pedantically technic sense, comprise every thing that may be supposed to inhere in or be attributable to a substance 1 And are not the mental phenomena in question even pre-eminently in this predicament? Mr. M. is forced to confess it, as far as their relations are rendered pal- pable by the juxtaposition of an exterior object or cause. But if these objective relations be attributes, why not the subjective relation as well, which every feeling bears essentially, or rather is, to the feeling substance ! And as to the tertium quid which Mr. Mill calls the " things themselves," it is a category which should be left to pass away with the schoolmen. So thai if this be the only blank in the scheme of Aristotle — namely, that he recognizes no real existences "besides substances and attributes" — the omission seems but another in- dication of that profound genius, which, by a peculiarly strict adherence to nature and experience, was enabled to forestall typically, as it were, the developments of latest ages; as witness the numerical complete- ness of the Categories. But complete, in fine, or not, I must admit that its concurrence with the present humble essay is, in this particu- lar, entire. Nay, I have ventured to go farther, and merge even these two divisions in the single positive formula of Relation. Were this note not already long, it might be also useful for other ends, to compare the results to which the contrary principle has conducted Mr. Mill, and to which Mr. Mill, among the highest English authorities in matters of Logic, may have conducted many readers and even writers. Briefly, however, here is the substitute, for what he calls (we have, seen how warrantably) the " abortive" classification of Aristotle. — " 1st. Feelings, or States of Consciousness. 2d. The Minds which experience those feelings. 3d. The Bodies or external objects which excite them, &c. 4th, and last. The Successions and Co-existences, the likenesses and unlikenesses between feelings or States of conscious- ness." (Ibid. ch. 3. § 15). Now-this is a project veritably both redun- dant and defective, and moreover incongruous and obscure. It is re- dundant, with a vengeance, inasmuch as the three first categories are positively reducible to one ; or, more properly speaking, two of them are not categories at all: the Mind experiencing and the Body excit- ing are but abutments to the relation called feeling, and being thus es- sentially inseparable, could not be classified distinctly, and being ab- solutely unknowable, should not be classified at all. To the very re- 104 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. put these two branches of the theory ,to this trying test, which, if successful, must render each of them a demon- stration of the other. Passing over, as already obvious, the numerical coin- cidence between Perception with its three principles and nine processes of intellection, and Motion with its three epochs, and nine orders of relation, my few re- marks will direct attention to deeper features of the com- parison. To give the issue its fair advantage, however, it is proper first to remind the reader, that the Gosmical verse of this crude separation of unity, the fourth category is incon- gruous iu putting opposite things together ; for what can be more directly so than Likeness and Unlikeness, trie latter being moreover a non-existence? The defectiveness is now too ludicrously palpable to require proof. In short the thing is no Classification, no Characteri- zation at all. And this comes of Mr. Mill's addition of "existences in themselves" to the list of Aristotle, which are designated all rela- tionally. Accordingly where these " substantial" feelings glide afterwards into facts, on translating the pretended Categories into Predicables, the catalogue runs clearly and consistently enough as follows: " Existence, Co-existence, Sequence, Causation, Resemblance." The redundancy indeed returns, and at the two extremities. Of Existence, I repeat, we can know nothing that is not included in Co-existence; and resemblance is the predicative form of Relation, and so is common to all phenomena, nor proper to any category. There remain, then, Co- existence, Sequence or order in time (as the author otherwise express- es it) and Causation. Now here are the three generic orders of my series, and which were named, I think, more systematicelly, Co-existence, Co-occurrence, Co-operation. And the Aristotelian Categories are, no doubt, susceptible of a like division. Here, then, is a very curious and suggestive slate of facts. We see two attempts at a logical analysis of phenomenal Nature ; one the earliest and the other the latest on record, and spanning with their in- terval the scientific history of the race. The former reigning for twenty centuries as the decalogue of philosophy, but treated by the latter as too absurd to merit refutation ; and yet both but kin divisions, alike imperfect, of the same aggregates — the older more specific, more precise but unconnected, the other general to the excess of confounding things distinct and comprising things impertinent, but evidently groping for the triple division of highest kinds which should link the crowd of the categories to the unit of classification; and finally both concurring, the one with the Specific, and the other with the Generic, series of my scheme. A scheme excluding, by the combination of both, the special defects of each, and moreover graduating and rationalizing their mere enumerations, upon a principle no less neglected by the modern than by the ancient authors, the great law of universal progression. ANALYSIS Off COSMICAL NATURE. 105 analysis being of course presented in the stage of sci- ence, its correspondence to the Mental should be sought especially in the third Series, where alone Perception gains the age of Reason and the apprehension of natural Law. But as the operations of the sole faculty had been the same in the two anterior, and merely differed in pro- ceeding upon Quality and Relation, we might expect the mental scheme to fit its mundane counterpart throughout, only more or less remotely or representatively. It is only requisite to superadd to the degree of conformity in this respect, an allowance a fortiori for the difference between the full grown man and the youth or child in whom the adage says he is enfolded. Or perhaps the thing will be countervailed in evidence, by the greater simplicity of the primary terms. However, our diagram of the mental developments ex- hibits, in the infant Series, the three Processes of Sensation, Memory, Imagination ; and the table of natural laws pre- sents, in its first and fundamental order, the three relations of Number, Quantity, and Figure. Is there not already, between these two series, a conformity of character which nothing but the most essential correlation could explain ? By referring to the cursory description of both the sides (§§ 14 and 22), sketched entirely irrespectively of each other, it will be found, on the one hand, that Perception is said to proceed in the stage of Sensation, by a mere succession of points, or the relation of individuation, of Number; in Memory, by association, by cohesion, by Quantity ; in Imagination, by grouping, by form, by Fig- ure : and, on the other hand, that such were exactly the creatieve models of Motion. Thus far the fitness, term to term, must have impressed itself spontaneously upon even the least attentive of the readers. But if less obvious, it is only because it is more complex, in the second Series, where Reflection, Abstraction, Generalization may be seen to tally, perhaps more remarkably, with Force, Affinity, and Polarity — (the two latter being the modes of Motion proper to Mixture and Structure). So true is this of the foremost analogues that the natural law of force remained' unknown to the human race up to the last or previous century, when it was first perceived, as shown above, by a ripened effort of reflection. A pretty good proof of close 10 106 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. connection between the mental process and the natural law. In fact, as Force-^-or to speak more properly, more positively pressure — was described to be Motion opposed to, and arresting itself; so Reflection is but Perception self-confrdnted and self-controlled. Both the agents hav- ing thus turned the epochal angle of the series, their co- incidence became clearer in Attraction and Affinity, which are processes, almost identical, of separation and selection. Nor does Generalization fail of an equal correspondence to Polarity : the former is a re-concretion of the quality abstracted to the like quality in other objects, with a rejec- tion of the unlike, and ending therefore in the establish- ment of two opposite principles ; the latter, the crys- tallization of kindred molecules, and finding a similar consummation in two opposite poles. I forbear to pursue the comparison into the third and still more complex Series, not having space for explanation or palliation. Moreover, it seems superfluous, since this, in both progres- sions, was seen to be a like compound of the two preced- ing Series, and that the sums of equal things will be ■conceded to be equal. To this safe conclusion I will therefore add but the simple indication — That Reasoning, in the sense of syllogism, is a due superposition of Num- ber upon generalization, a development of properties from a principle ; while Growth is a like superposition of Num- ber upon polarity, a development of particles from the great magnet of the earth. That Comparison on the con- trary, being a superposition of Affinities, is an envelopment •of objects in a cycle or classification ; even as (animal) Life, which was seen to be a superposition by assimulations, is the envelopment of polarities into a circuit. That Method, being a superposition by Figure upon natural law, is a envelopment (if I may use the termyof the various ob- jects and tlieir relations as appertaining to a triangular mclosure while the science is particular, but expanding, with the consolidation of special sciences, into a sphere ; and that intellect or Perception is a like convelopment or ■convolution of the principles and propensities of the indi- vidual percipient, his conflicting polarities, both circular and tangential, into the spherical battery called the brain. (1) (1) I freely own that, touching these extreme terms of the com- (plication in Life and Mind, or rather the precise combinations of po« ANAlYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 107 Or, to designate the operations in the aspect of mere facts, we may say that Reasoning is a continuous transforma- tion of syllogisms, Comparison a continuous transformation of classes, Method a continuous transformation of arts ; and on the other hand that Growth is a constant transfor- mation of parts, Life a like transformation of positions, and Perception a still more rapid transformation of points of view. § 27. Nor is this nice conformity — numerical, charac- teristical, in short causal — between the aggregate powers, of Perception and the aggregate products of Motion, be- tween the scale of knowledge and the scale of nature,, more exact in the specific than in the generic terms of the division. For the three Series of the Mental diagram: were seen to proceed respectively upon Resemblance, Difference, and composition of both into Uniformity ; . and' the three epochs of the Cosmical, to consist in the like order, of Composition, Decomposition, and Recompositibn. But the most singular conjuncture of all, perhaps, is the presence of Perception at once at the head of the former scale in the capacity of general agent, and at the end of' the latter in the character of general result. This indeed' is implied in the universally received doctrine, that man is the highest and latest production of nature ; but its fullest consequences are little understood. And whoever fathoms them, will do more perhaps to solve that problem of prob- lems, the mode of intercourse between matter and mind, than has been accomplished by all the prophets and philoso- phers of the earth. For the present occasion, however, we are only concerned with the following corollaries : That Perception is still but Motion continuing its complications, from the sphere of physical creation into that of mental' conception^ and is thus the hinge or articulation, as it were, by which the scheme of the latter Processes is turned backwards, and adjusted, point by point, to the- cosmical programme. That, in consequence of this in-t verse order (itself a result of the natural tendency to Iarities that should produce them, my meaning is at present very far from clear, even to myself. And yet I know that I. have a meaning ; that it is logically involved in my statement ; and is such as (perhaps within half a century) will set the name of some distinct enunciator; side by side with, if not superior to, that of Newton. 108 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. establish the supreme electrical circuit we call knowledge), the most simple of the Mental processes, must find itself in extreme contrast with the most complex of the physical relations. That to the effort to surmount this obstacle, and the inducement to evade it presented by the lesser diffi- culty of the simpler grades, is due eventually the develop- ment, step by step, of the other Processes, until the last of them or Method had seized the primal law of Number. That this goal was however reached but through two abor- tive surveys, made successively of the whole ground by the two preceding Series, — the foremost of these triad Pro- cesses conducted by Imagination and moving, upon Resem- blance, in the upward order of the scale of nature ; the other, re-descending, upon the negative resemblance of excluding Differences, and under the like guidance of its leading term which is Generalization ; and both circuits, with that of Method, going, we see, to constitute a queer analogy to the contrasted combination of three different conduc- tors, by means of which a galvanic circuit produces, in a lifeless body, the mechanical operations of the nervous system. That, in fine, whatever be the ultimate cause, this grand development of Perception, in its reactive prog- ress of ages and races over nature, must be conceived in its collective results as a sort of counter but concordant creation, of which the organism is what I call Society and the results Civilization. It will moreover be remembered that these several conclusions, with a multitude of others which it is needless to anticipate, have already been established upon other and independent grounds. Here then is a complication of concurrences so vast and various that the thing may look not unlike the cunning of a system-maker. System in fact it has, and in the most complete and curious degree. But it is the system that subsists between the sides and angles of a triangle. Nor is it confined to the coincidence of number and correlation of character between the di- visions, both principal and subordinate, of the two dia- grams. Their joint correspondence to history is still more signally elucidated in the position of contrariety from which the mind is, we see, constrained to commence its exploration. For the fact, that if we except some eight or ten centuries, and as many communities in each century, ANALYSIS OF COSMICAL NATURE. 109 and about as many individuals in each community, the species through myriads of ages and nations have passed away without the comprehension of a single law of na- ture — this monstrous fact, I say, were inconceivable upon any other ground than the pyschological necessity now explained, the birth-place of Perception at the complex end of the natural scale, combined with a structural simpli- city obliging it to seek the other. This unknown, it was no marvel that so preposterous a destiny should have been ascribed to the eating of an apple ; for when no probable reason can be assigned, the least significant is the most credible. Nor was the necessity a curse, as might be thought, but on the contrary a blessing. "Without it sci- ence had been impossible. The laws of nature, being a progressive development from unity, are all at the same time similar and different, and Perception can proceed upon only one of these relations after the other, upon the privative by means of the positive. It must therefore make two contrary surveys of the phenomenal world ;. illusory indeed in the objects, but important in their re- sults, as the latter leave the requisite material for the sci- entific solution of the problem of nature, which is, I repeat,, unity in diversity. And here, again, is another testimony to the threefold division which I have adopted in the- general distribution of this essay. But I must now pass to another department, where I also hope to exemplify- how far the cunning of sophistical genius may be sur- passed in its contrivances by even the humblest inquirer,, who, having been fortunate enough to fall upon the foot- steps of nature, is only honest enough to pursue them in; spirit and in truth. § 28. By this sovereign clue in fact, I am next con- ducted to the remaining aspect of the analysis. In the former chapter we discussed the phenomena of what may be called the mental side of the subject, and found' them all resolvable into the single and sole faculty of Perception, as developed through two divergent but concurrent se- ries of progression ; the one proceeding in this amplifi- cation of purview by extension, the other by comprehen- sion ; the former series consisting of three stages, termed Principles of Conception, from their successive modes of apprehending the aggregate phenomena of nature, as 10* 110 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Qualities, Relations, Laws ; the second consisting of nine Processes or powers of intuition, resulting, through a cross-division of each of the generic terms, from so many grades of complication in the composition of nature. Thus far, however, the existence of the development itself, as well as the accuracy of its two gradations, had been established but inferentially ; they rested upon the same evidence as does the Newtonian astronomy ; they accounted for all the facts of mind by a rigorous induction. But as the simple essence or effect called Mind could not have wrought its own development, there lurked an as- sumption that the proximate cause of this progressive evolution would be found in the other factor of the pro- blem. This . implication has been fully justified, as we have seen, in the present chapter, by a resolution of the external world into the sole agency of Motion, disposing matter under three progressive combinations of attributes, and composing each upon three subordinate but similar forms of existences ; — both resulting in what shall be hence- forth called, respectively, the three Predicables and the nine Categories of our division of Nature. And as this intricate and exact concordance removes the remnant of hypothesis, and raises the analysis of mind to the conclusiveness of demonstration ; so this analysis must react upon its cosmical counterpart with an equal though opposite force as well of evidence as intuition. But as all re- action presupposes an external resistance ; as mind appear- ed to be but Motion in its highest organic form, turned backward to contemplate its own preceding complications j and as these besides can be perceived directly by the cor- responding Processes, but gradually and by the interposi- tion of media ; from these accumulated considerations, it is clear that we have yet to explain a third and most important aspect of the subject. There must in fact have been a series of artificial resistances, not only to produce the reaction, but to perpetuate it progressively, and pro- mote Perception in the practical application of its several Processes to the appropriate position of contemplation.- This system of graduated media, whereby the unity of the human Mind is enabled to compass the multiplicity of na- ture, is called Method — of which we have thus not only circumscribed the fluctuating province, but also delineated, by implication, down to Its minutest divisions. ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. HI CHAPTER HI. Logical and Chronological Analysis of Method. § 29. Method, as the name imports (1), is the means of placing the perceiving mind upon the path, or to speak more justly, upon the track, of creative nature. And as the object has been seen to consist of a certain succession of stages, and the agent, in surmounting each, to undergo a corresponding modification, it follows that there must be also a suitable variety of methods ; and moreover, that holding thus the chain of inquiry by both the ends, we may ascertain the intermediate links with an assurance almost infallible. Still I shall not, even here, decline the test of general language, although to adopt it may lay open to cavil the novel doctrines of the deduction. My first pre- tension is, in all things, to account for that which is, as the warrant for proceeding to say what should or what shall be j for the one is a principal part of, as well as preface to, the others. But names, I repeat, are perfect indications of existence : not in what they denote, which being conven- tional is always mutable, and often imaginary, but in what they imply, which, being a fact, remains unchanged. And this fact, which is what the mathematicians call the " function" of the term, its mode of psychological forma- tion, is invariably involved in the etymology. So has it proved already, in the present subject, with the generic name. And the special denominations will, I doubt not, here as hitherto, contribute their historic testimony to the demonstrations of the theory. § 30. To proceed, however, with these ; we have the single faculty of Perception, under three general and nine subordinate modifications of power, pursuing (as it were) the single relation of Motion through a similarly double series of ascending complications. The route, therefore, or method, must also have been one essentially, under a a correspending diversity of progressive combinations. Accordingly we find the fundamental form in the pro- (1) Mcra-oios, super mam. 112 VESTIBES OP drVILIZATIOS. cess named Induction. This technical character, as well as the general object just assigned to the operation of Method, are exactly expressed in the term ; which signi- fies etymologically (1) the art of leading the human mind through the labyrinthian complications of nature. This happy aptness of denomination may seem incredible or accidental to those who hold, after Lord Bacon, that the ancients knew nothing of induction. But the truth is, that this great man committed the very common mistake of converting the genus into a species. He confined the name induction to that second cycle of the operation which is occupied with the simplification, the generaliza- tion of Differences, and coincides with the region of phys- ical inquiry. And in fixing its denotation here, he has entailed upon English philosophy an amount of confusion which perhaps half outweighs his immense services in other particulars. Such is, for example, the jumble, throughout his logical writings, of this superfaetation of a specific induction with the methods proper to the epoch, namely, analysis and experiment. And I know not of a single production, from his day to the present in British literature, wherein those processes are consistently defined among themselves, and are not moreover put at variance with some or other of their sister species. But instead of irksome, because too easy criticism, let us turn to our double clue, and mark what order it will unfold in this perverse and disgraceful chaos. § 31. Continuing, then, the analogy along this general principle of all method,, it should in the next place be found to offer in the aggregate of its evolution, like mind and motion, three principal divisions. Induction, in this sum- mary and successive distribution, might be described as the procedure by means of which Perception, in conse- quence of its own simplicity or oneness, is obliged to take in gradually, to unravel occasionally, and to coil up syste- matically upon the tablet of memory, the complex tissue of universal relations or laws according to which objects and their operations appear to co-exist or supplant each other in the general system of nature. And these depart- ments of the instrument may be also doubly determined (1) Eis-ayuyri. A conducting through. ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 1 13 by the correspondence, on the one hand, of the three bases of the agent, namely Resemblance, Difference, and Uniformity (§ 14), and on the other, the three progressive modifications of the object, which are Quality, Relation, and Law. Accordingly, the first and fundamental task of" taking in" infers in fact, by mere qualities, and on the basis of their resemblance. On the latter, because the notion least divergent from identity, from unity, from harmony with the mind's calibre. By qualities, because the simplest or sensuous objects of perception. But the resemblance here is of the coarsest kind, the inference spontaneous, and the media, the method of course suitably material : all three, however, progressing abreast along the coetaneous mental Processes of Sensation, Memory, Imagination. The earli- est artificial materials of method are words. The appel- lative, at first proper to a particular sensation, is extended to another, which impresses with the like quality ; and so on, upon each additional recurrence of the like impression, until the term becomes common, that is, becomes a name. Again, naming, which is thus the second or mnemonical stage of inference, is farther modified by imagination into a structure called a sentence ; and which, as usual, is composed of the three elements of the series ; to wit, the copula, which marks the subjective inference by mere sensation ; the subject, which serves to aggregate exteriorly by recollection ; the predicate, which, around the com- pound of these rude inductions called an object, goes on inferring other qualities and objects by grouping. And hence the primitive amalgamation of the three terms, in all idioms. At this primitive stage of Induclion, there- fore, the general method is language ; and specifically, nomenclature, terminology, and syntax. It is the induc- tion of the infant, the savage, and the poet. But besides the qualities thus unified, whether in ob- jects or images, by language, there are others, which from the first are found rebellious to this rude procedure. Such were all phenomena visibly active, and either of occa- sional occurrence or irregular manifestation. These could not be fixed in images — they could be simplified only by referring them (i. e. inferring objectively) to the objtetsin which they appeared to originate, and which were thus 114 Vestiges of civilization. conceived to generate them (parent-wise) progressively. Hence the famous family of species, differentia, and pro- pria : terms which intimate, every one of them, that the track of Resemblance has been abandoned, and the mind is on its negative circuit of Difference. No longer are things regarded the same because of a common name ; but now because of a common nature or origin. And this figurative paternity has received the various designations of divinity, entity, universal, or cause, according to the successive prevalence of the correlative mental Processes, which are, it will be remembered, Reflection, Abstraction and Generalization. The obvious relation of cause and effect between these two series will be explained in its place. Meanwhile, the notion, and perhaps, the name, of Relation itself in general, assigned as another character of the second epoch of Induction, is accordingly derived from the same conception of kindred. The linear nature of the idea supplies an intellectual transum, which serves to bridge, as it were, the mystic gulf of physical dissimi- litude, between antecedent and consequent, between cause and effect. For the even route of resemblance it yields a seasonable substitute, on which Perception goes on inferring athwart the barriers of Difference. Thus this happy conjunction of opposites is a virtual resemblance still ; and the metaphysical progeny of method finds an admirable description, in the well-known lines of Ovid, concerning I forget whom. * * * * facies non omnibus una, Nee diversa tamen ; qualem decet esse sororum. The mode of inference, however, though no longer quite instinctive, though passed from grouping and groping to the linear extension of species, is still but superficial and indirect. As the inference by Qualities would be strictly termed Reference, in the etymological sense of vehicle to the infant intelligence, so this inference by Relations might more properly be termed reference. As yet Induction does not, like the Christian apostles, go forth to " bring in" new phenomena. And when any such present themselves they are either viewed as already catalogued to a certain divinity, entity, type, &c, or reject- ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 115 ed as appertaining to some other branch of the fantastic family. In either of the cases they are admitted, not in- ferred. The ceremony is a recognition, not an introduc- tion. The process is not as formerly a. " taking in," but an " unravelling." Of Induction, during this second epoch, the general method is metaphysics, duly formed by mere negation upon its physical predecessor of words. The special forms may be called divination, revelation, hypothesis. It is the induction of the priest, the poli- tician, and the metaphysician. As with Quality before, so Relation now in turn un- dergoes a transformation with the dawning manhood of the mind. The hypothetical procreation by deity, essence, or cause, is perceived to be all illusory, and the real phe- nomena to be nothing more than indefinitely succeeding effects with the relations of their succession. These uni- versal relations, resting alone upon positive facts, give the true conception of a scientific or a natural law. But as facts cannot be connected by the direct resemblance of image, nor even by the kin resemblance of cause, the resemblance now appropriate is that of joint action and result : for resemblance, though much more abstract and complicate, there must be still a Perception, I repeat, had never classed so far as the rudest savage counts. We know in fact it was this very obstacle, of abstract com- plexity in the scientific relation of phenomena, that drove the mind into the circuit of a thousand ages just delineated ; where it was prepared for this final feat not only by exer- cise of its own faculty, but also by familiarizing itself with the two elements apart» namely the element of physical likeness in passing from images to essence, and that of symbolical likeness in descending from essences to effects. And thus is it now enabled to consolidate them both, in the usual scientific concept of a triangle, by draw- ing the base line of relation from effects to effects, in real conformity to the action and the order of nature. Here accordingly Induction too assumes the proper character of wiference. From being passive or precarious, it becomes aggressive and systematical. It unifies, not by resem- blance of nature or of name, but by the figured resem- blance of reason termed uniformity. This principle, like its two predecessors, has also three progressive stages to 113 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. suit the corresponding series of the Processes of Percep tion, consisting of Reason, Comparison, Method ; an< these three kinds of uniformity are no other than ou; three Predicables (§ 23), of Co-existence, Co-occurrence and Co-operation. So that this historical exposition of th( modifications of Induction so far tallies, at all points anc periods, with its double co efficients, along the progressive powers of the agent and complications of the object. It has now conveyed the principle to its scientific basis ; such, foi instance, as it reached among the Greeks in mathematics; and in physics among the moderns at the epoch of Bacon ; and at last, in the third Predicable, or what is called the social sciences, in the universal theory expounded in these pages. The general method of this final epoch is effectu- ally mathematics, in the latitude above assigned to the progressive aggregate of its three relations, of having ac- tually furnished the models of all the combinations in nature, and consequently holding the clue to their method- ical conception. This then is the induction of the man of the world and the philosopher ; for the science of the one is but the cautious experience of the other extended and " coiled up" into a system. § 32. The term method, however, is usually limited to investigations of the last order, because there alone it be- comes positive and productive. It was, also, on this solid basis, of universal relations or laws, that I conducted ex- clusively the foregoing analysis, of cosmical nature. For both these reasons, I have reserved to this most important of the three departments an exposition of the nine specific' subdivisions of Induction, which should answer (if I am right) to the nine categories of complication. Here the details may" be doubly tested, on the one side by the scale of obstacles in the composition of nature, and on the other by the actual results in the more recent history of method. Of both criteria, I was obliged, in the two preceding periods, to contract the latter, for brevity's sake, to the three generic forms, and for truth's sake, to omit the for- mer entirely as illusory ; although there must have been, in both, the same specific subdivision, not only of methods but of knowledges : as witness the two familiar examples already mentioned, the nine Parts of Speech, which are the infant modes of Induction by words, and the nine Muses, ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 117 which is a specimen of classification by gods. To draw both the terras out were to hold up to human vanity a history of the feebleness and fatuity of our species worth, undoubt- edly, all the moralizings of all its preachers. But it here suffices to have indicated their unrecognized existence and necessary amenability to the theory. And it does so the more entirely that, in the application to which we now proceed, the third division of Induction must, according to the law of progression, reproduce under modified forms the methods of language and metaphysics, to prepare its final or scientific basis ; for even here it must proceed from quality, through relation, up to law. Accordingly, we can already recognize the several characteristics in the three generic departments of positive Induction, named significantly, Logic, Analysis, and Synthesis. Let Induction be now traced through these three cycli- cal phases in its specific application to the nine Categories of phenomena (§23), and as directed by the nine Processes of Perception (§14). Induction, then, directed by Sensation upon Number, would necessarily be a simple enumeration of like in- stances. Directed by Memory upon Quantity, the process would be analogy, or inference from association, by exam- ples. Induction, by Imagination applied to relations of Figure, would be a compound of the two preceding modes reversed ; it would be an inference of particular cases from fbrmulized analogies or axioms ; it would be the method so notorious in the " figures" of the syllogism. And as the three forms would thus exhaust the three com- bining resources proper to language — the first combining by attributes or description, the second by names or defi- nitions, and the third, as we see, by propositions — they would constitute together the province appropriate to Logic, or the method of reasoning by the media of words. Induction must therefore next proceed to reason by things. Not, however, the things or objects which are themselves to be ascertained, as the distinction is absurdly Taunted by the pragmatical cant of our day ; but ob- jects whose mathematical properties the previous induc- tions have made familiar, and taught to fashion for the purposes of darker investigation. Resorting, then, to these new means, the second series of mental Processes, 11 118 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. directed to their respective Categories, would assume the following forms. Reflection having come to address itself to the laws of force or latent action, must proceed by ob- servation, in the philosophical sense of this term ; that is to say, by actively remarking or searching for the same phenomenon as placed in different circumstances by nature herself. But Abstraction, which inducts the elements of physical Mixture, cannot wait to find them accessible spontaneously; it must make them so by force, of which it has just obtained the secret ; it must employ instruments to take them actually or virtually asunder ; and so this spe- cies of Induction might be termed instrumentation. From the elements thus attained, Generalization, studying Struc- ture, seeks to recompose or generate (for this is the origi- nal import) the structural relations to be " unravelled." This systematic trial to reproduce the forms of nature would properly be Induction by experimentation. It is needless to add a word to show this second triad of methods to be collectively and characteristically Analytic. Induction passes finally to the field of organical science. In the hands of Reason it is applied to the phenomena of Growth, that is to say, progressive transformation ; and having mastered, in the preceding period, the various modes of structure, with their elements and laws of for- mation individually, it could put a number of those forms together by a series of inferences, so as to reproduce and thus resolve the fluctuations of the living object; this in- duction from a juxtaposition of principles to particulars, would, from its reputed inversion, be naturally named VEduction. Next, of course, the inference is from a jux- taposition of individuals to a serial unification of princi- ples ; Induction, at this task which is the object of Com- parison and of which the subject is_animal Life, would be the very modern method named Classification. As to the supreme mental Process or power of Perception which I have termed Method, its application of Induction, that is to say of itself, to the final Category of Intellect, pre- sents a curiously conformable combination. Method here an fact must do no less, we see, than place Perception in a position where it can see the mode and laws of its own ac- tion : and this returning of Motion, like the symbolic ser- pent, into itself, were evidently the completion of the circle ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 119 of human knowledge ; leaving, afterwards, an easy though perhaps endless synthesis to revolve it into the sphere of cosmical nature. From this point we are apparently as yet remote both in mind and method. But the latter, we know already, must in this case be, as usual, a compound of the two former procedures of its triad ; a resolution therefore of all existences into a juxtaposition of laws. In- duction here would have a better title, as well in sense as in etymology, than its present narrow subject, to the learned' name of taxonomy. In fine, the act of " coiling up" or putting together, which we saw constitute, individually and! collectively, the three terms of this series, evinces its gen- eric character as synthetic. Nor does the character here- embrace these special forms themselves alone ; but also,. through them, the two preceding aggregates. For such.. I repeat, is the law of our universal principle, which con- ceives the methods, as well as the minds and the bodies, of mankind to be pre-eminently matters of growth, and there- fore to contain in the earliest germ a complete outline of the- organism, which merely expands itself by repetition of the same processes progressively. To sum up, then, we find the universal method of In- duction, in leading the human mind throughout the laby- rinth of nature, would accomplish the whole route by three- systematic surveys, with just as many similar and subordi- nate stages to each, which are severally signalized in the- following table : Logical (System) Enumeration : Analogy : Syllogism ; Analytic " Observation : Instrumentation : Experimentation f. Synthetic " Deduction : Classification : Taxonomy. § 33. And such as must have a priori, been the resufe of the theory, such do we here again find to be the fami- liar facts. There is scarce a term of this long catalogue,, either general or special, that is not found to figure freely in every school-book on the subject. They are even un- derstood, with few exceptions, as now explained ; under- stood more or less imperfectly and taken individually. But as to the marshalling of their concurrent orders of general progression, of mutual interdependence and spe- cific appropriateness, both to epoch and object — in all this. 120 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. they continue to fluctuate like the jarring atoms of Ep: curus. Some are absolutely rejected, upon the ignorai assumption that they first originated in nothing but erroi or can now operate but mischief. Others are amalgams ted two or more into one ; most are interverted indiscrim; nately ; all in short are tumbled into most varieties of dii location. To support this strong assertion I need but cit a single case, such as Mr. Mill's System of Logic. Thi treatise is one of the most recent and elaborate on the sue ject of method ; it is professedly a compilation of th ripest doctrines both native and foreign, and by a write who is eminently capable of delivering his own opinioni and digesting those of others, with clearness and effee He uses, and discusses perhaps all the terms of the abov diagram, and professes to harmonize them into a systen Yet a slight perusal of his book, in the point of view sug gested, will prove him subject to a large proportion c the reprehension thus adventured. And what makes th charge more weighty, the confusion more monstrous, i that the latter does not apply alone to the co-ordinat terms of each division, but jumbles genera with species and even dwarfs the fundamental principle of Inductioi itself, into competition with syllogism and copartnershi] with experiment. Under these circumstances (nay, weri they much more trustworthy), a deduction strictly ne cessary, and verified historically, would surely be suffi cient warrant for the classification here submitted — thi first, I believe, that has been offered in this most import ant subject. For explanation' sake, however, it may b requisite to add a running remark upon the serial orde: and nomenclature ; commencing with the sub-species an< closing with the general type. 1. The first or Numerical species, named with liters appropriateness, was necessarily the earliest mode of sci entific induction. The fact is testified by Bacon, who however, denounces the process as not appertaining ti induction at all, and this while he was the first I think, ti denominate it so significantly. For the ancients them selves have left no specific appellation, and for the gooi reason, of their menial position in these early stages o the development, when the special forms diverge toi slightly to be distinguished from the type. An oppositi ANAlYSIS OF UNIVERSAl METHOD. 121 and later consequence of this optical illusion is the appro- priation of the generic name to that particular form of the process or principle which first emerges into palpable dis- tinctness : such, for instance, as the term perception, which we saw attached to the act of this faculty, that first takes cognizance of phenomena in their substantial objectivity ; and also motion, which, though the thing be essentially common to all the sciences, is applied peculiarly, if not even exclusively, to the subject of mechanics, because here en- countered in more conspicuous or rather in coarser man- ifestation. So precisely with the correlative procedure of Induction. When it passes from the logical media of language to the more active investigation of nature by implements, the operation, become in this stage more obvious and emphatic, is made to arrogate the general title and to exclude its predecessors. Such in fact is the illusion to which Bacon, or rather Bacon's followers have attached the loudest, but least enduring part of his great fame. But, all in preconizing, with the usual enthusiasm of half-knowledge, this experimental phase of Induction as the sole method of all science, it was not possible to deny that there had existed, long previously, such things as- mathematical sciences, and which could no longer be de- cried, like the syllogism, by arguing from their abuse- How then was the inconsistency to be appeased ? Only, of course, by imagining the laws of number, quantity, and figure, to have been acquired without the intervention of any method at all. In an age a little darker, they could 1 be brought direct from heaven. But this royal road hav- ing become too familiar in these simpler walks of nature,, the next expedient was, as usual, to make them innate to- the human mind. Mathematics, then, alone were neces- sary results of the thinking faculty, were truths of intuition;, were forms of conception, were conclusions from hypoth- esis, &c, &c. And why ] 'Because they could not have- been results of Induction 1 And why not ? Because In- duction in the proper sense was unknown to the ancients, who yet established them ! No doubt, this puerile sophis- try was also much dissembled by the concurrence of the positive action of the same illusion as above indicated ; I mean the merging of the primary class of species in the type, and of which the total negation of them is the natural 11* 122 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION". reaction. But, with this extenuation or aggravation (if the reader chooses) the foregoing argument embodies the sense, that is to say, the nonsense, or at least the narrow sense, of all the exclusive or extravagant laudations of " induction" which continue to this day to deluge British and even French philosophy — a sort of quackery not more enlightened, while a good deal less acute, we see, than the " scholastic jargon" which it denounced and displaced. And so rooted is this " idol of the tribe" in the English mind, that even the author of the logical treatise alluded to, who lays claim and is perhaps entitled to the poor pre- eminence of first reducing the Flying Island of mathemat- ical laws to the solid domain of Induction, yet understands the historic nature of this procedure so imperfectly as not only to reject as spurious the process in question, of Enu- meration, but also. Analogy, and description which is a joint application of both. That is to say, he repudiates'the very forms of the universal method which were specifi- cally, nay exclusively appropriate to the subject; and moreover, with the contradiction of being unable to deny them the character of method still. Surely Bacon himself must have seen more justly than this : for in condemning Enumeration, he takes care to guard the term, and no doubt emphatically, with the qualification of " simple ;" as if the process was conceded to be valid in its proper place, but became futile on applying it to more complex subjects — which was just the case. He even superadds the still explanatory condition : Ubi non sunt instantia contra- dictoria. I wonder where Mr. Mill, who knew the prin- ciples of mathematics to be pure generalizations by Induc- tion, could have looked for the possibility of a contradictory instance, in the law of Number or even of Quantity, to give legitimacy to these results. The general application of most of the preceding will enable us to be much briefer with the rest of this series, and especially with the two complementary terms of the present system, to wit, Analogy and Syllogism. The former is the method proper to algebra, which infers no longer, by mere existences, but by equations, by analogies : an infal- lible disproof, by the by, of the prevailing notion that this science is more of modern creation than its mathematical, fellows, save in mere nomenclature. Its relative maturity ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 123 among the Hindoos, who were much inferior to the Greeks in geometry, is one of many confirmations of fact. However, this latter science, as far as quantitative or " ana- lytic," proceeds also by the method of analogy ; which is here called " parity of reasoning," meaning parity of re- lation. In fine, the primitive place assigned it is evinced in the very abuse by which Analogy, like Enumeration, had been extended beyond its sphere. In the complex subject of jurisprudence, where however the facts became early positive, it is the sole mode of reasoning among all barbarous nations. Thus the Bible represents even the in- spired judges of Israel as adjudicating but by reference to the case of the son of Sirac, &c. ; in short as uniformly giv- ing you a prophet for a principle. The Koran, the Shaster, the Vedas do all likewise. And the English common law, for all reason and science, cites a dictum of Coke or a dubitation of Eldon. So well has Paley characterized this infant system, though quite unconsciously, in curtly calling it a " competition of analogies." As to Syllogism, its serial position and singular history are now plain. It followed, of course, the two processes which were to furnish its two premises. Combining their opposite properties of diversity and unity, it as naturally cast them both in the shade, and had the distinction of composing, in the culminant hands of Aristotle, the me- thodical system of the first Cycle of speculation. Rever- sing, also, their respective methods, of inferring upon particulars (these being now embraced in universals, which had thus become the basis), the syllogistic stage of Induction was in direct and double conflict — both as to the instru- ments, and order, of inference — with the succeeding prov- ince of Physics. Hence the memorable warfare upon this symbol of the Logical method by the modern founders of the Analytic. 2. The subdivisions of the latter system are better known, with one exception. The general part of instru- mentation in this department of Induction has not, I think, before been deemed a method. Yet its claim appears un- doubted, both in essence and extent. If the end of all method be to place Perception in that ideal position where nature may be seen as she really is, surely this title can- Hot be denied to the microscope and telescope. Such as 124 vestiges of civilization. these, however, are but the transitive appendages to Ob- servation, and by which it passes into the region proper of Instrumentation. As the Mind was brought by Syllogism to the detection of incongruous errors, and by Observation to the discernment of unknown objects, so by themethod of instruments we are often made acquainted with hitherto unimagined agencies or principles. Thus our knowledge, such as it yet is, of the very existence of motion in the two higher complications termed polarity and electricity, has been acquired almost exclusively through the galvanic battery and electric machine. But it is quite needless to argue the inductive importance of the philosophical labor- atory which, as I think, is rather over than underrated in the present day. And its methodic character has been, no doubt, not overlooked but only confounded with its two coadjutors in this peculiarly chaotic period of Induction. Of these the remaining, named Experiment, was slight- ly rectified above. It was shown by no means to consist, as the current opinion supposes, in resolving objects into their elements, which is rather the office of Instrumenta- tion. The end is, on the contrary, by putting these ele- ments together to try to reproduce the actual forms or functions of nature. And this definition is alone conform- able to the universal order of progression. For if the three periods into which this order is seen to divide itself concurrently, in our separate analysis of matter and mind as well as method, have been well described, in the latter character, as so many aggregate efforts, under successive views, to put together, to unify the diversity of nature ; then it follows that the closing process of each division must be synthetic. The fact accordingly was plain in the instance of Syllogism, which proceeded upon co-existences and by rules. It was disguised, by the less exclusive part of mind or language, in Experimentation, which proceeds upon conjoined occurrences and by results. But it was necessarily as appropriate to the constructions of time as its ancient analogue had been to those of space. A truth attested also by the duly gentle transition whereby expe- riment must pass Perception into a province specially Synthetic. But where, however, the constructive process differs still from the preceding, stages merely in summing ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 125 up the results not, like those, of the several systems, but of all the three systems collectively. 3. This is also the compound character of the two an- terior processes, which by combining, each the two cor- responding species of the former triads, produce the effect of a synthesis, and so an elongation of Experiment. Thus Deduction, which follows in order the analylic period, was found to be a juxtaposition of two or more of the resulting elements, an induction none the less simple because the particulars here are principles : but as these units are ef- fectual aggregates, the operation, in another aspect, is manifestly a putting together, a synthesis. The fact is still more clear in Classification, which represents the two Lo- gical species ; and whose synthetic effect as well as ele- mental affinity are conspicuous in its obvious character of a colligation by nomenclature. Of Taxonomy, which is the final and doubly synthetic term, we just remarked that it comprised not only immediately the two premises of its particular department, but representatively the entire series of the nine methods. And to complete this magic of progression, — which mightlook like a play of fancy, were the proof not reproduced until the propositions seem half identical — the climax I say is, that this all involving act of synthesis is, at the same time, the same single and simple Induction which we saw start at the other end upon the basis of dim sensation. The difference is, that it now operates upon the proximate elements of science, the universal sequences and synergies of nature. And this position it at length attains through the successive media of the preceding systems, which result in leaving the phenomenal world disposed, by Qualities, into groups, and by Relations, into series ; and thus precisely in that juxtaposition which best exhibits to Perception the abstract tissue that interweaves them, termed natural Laws. So that there is at least a rigorous etymological propriety to atone for the sole neology which 1 have had to allow my- self, but with much reluctance ; for I hate the mingled crudity, constraint and conceit which too often belong to a new word or a new coat or a new country. Perhaps, however, we might substitute the term Science in a special sense. But another reason for the less regretting the necessity 126 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. just occurs, in a suggestion of equal pertinence and im- portance. It is that vofiog the second element of taxonomy, and meaning law, together with loyog, importing theory or principle, and ygacpo, to group or describe, is seen to de- signate in inverse order, the threefold form of conceptual progress, in all the systematic divisions of nature. In several the applications exist in fact already ; though in many cases incorrect and in none, I think, complete ; no doubt, because either the subject has not yet attained the phase of science, or that the primary pair of suffixes have suffered degradation from being pre-occupied by the in- fant vagaries of imagination and hypothesis. Thus as- tronomy denotes the knowledge of the laws of the solar system. But to designate the theory we say " physical" astronomy, by a superfaetation at once empirical and pre- posterous ; but who, in presence of its antecedents, would dare employ the word astrology ? And even the previous term sstrography, to which no such objection lies, is still precluded by the crude phrase of a " catalogizing of the stars." Of this procedure it is worth remarking that its principal feature, the aggregates called constellations, preserve the truest because the simplest relic of the reign of induction by Imagination, which was shown to be a grouping and naming after animal or other images. All three terminations are, however, becoming more regular according as we advance along the scale of science ; and must end with being completely systematized. But the point to our immediate purpose is, that the present theory has first supplied the rationale of their instinctive rise, in the three gradations of all knowledge, and the representa- tion of their distinctive office, in the three departments of all method. To the latter then, as the next stage, I now as- cend to take a single glance at the historical mutualities of confirmation and correction. § 34. The first that offers is the well-known priority of the Logical system of methods. These are the only modes of Induction attained technically by the ancients, or practised even by the modern world, with the few excep- tions of men of science. This was explained not only by the relative simplicity of the natural uniformities they apply to, but also by the nature, half spontaneous, half spiritual, of the verbal media which we find, accordingly, still attest- ANALYSIS OP UNIVERSAL METHOD. 127 ed by their very names. For not merely does the generic term mean the science of reasoning by means of words, but the element Loyog is reproduced, we have seen, in two out of three of the specific processes, and is doubt- less absent in the first only by the customary omission to nominate the positive degree. This primary form, which from the modern purview has been named Enumeration, would originally have been designated a.logism; and on this tacit basis it is, accordingly, that the two successors erect their affixes (of arca-logism and swrc-logism), which are so admirably expressive of the corresponding complica- tions (§33. 1). To such quite infallible confirmations both as to character and integrity, I need but add the curious tes- timony of a modern error of much notoriety : I mean the maxim of Condillac, which placed all method in a well- framed language. This celebrated doctrine we may now perceive to be less an error than an exaggeration, allow- ing the author's theory of method and even that of his latest critics. For if Logic be indeed synonymous with the sum total of the reasoning process, then the dogma of Condillac was substantially correct : for the Logical sys- tem does consist in a well constituted language. And so this shrewd butnot profound philosopher would have mere- ly erred in the application; as he seems to have thought his perfect expression would in all the sciences be alike reducible to the simplicity of the symbols of algebra. But this oversight of the scientific gradation of complexity, to which the utmost perfection of language must conform in precise proportion, was an error of philosophy not of method. Had he been aware of a progressional series as laid down in the preceding chapter, he would doubtless have stipulated for a special symbol to each of the terms; and with this qualification of mere degree, the position had been quite tenable. He could then have shown why the perfection in question prevailed as yet in only a par- ticular department, which was necessarily the simple extre- mity of the scale; and why this department, consisting of three complications, employs in fact but as many symbols, whether in the literal character of algebra or the linear one of geometry. He might even have clearly pointed for a ru- dimental realization, no less exactly corresponding to the whole nine terms of the scale, in the curious fact so often 128 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. encountered on the path of this exposition, I mean the elements of general syntax called the Nine Parts of Speech. And it is not very creditable to writers acquaint- ed with even the little that has been learned of the true philosophy of language since the day of Condillac, or with the special history of its progress in the department of mathematics, from the clumsy system of the ingenious Greeks, down to the actual simplification scarce older than two centuries ; it is, I say, not creditable, or at least con- sistent, to reject this consequent definition of method, while they too admit the part of Logic, that is of language, to be the whole process. But in truth the taking of this part, a one-third and primitive part, for the whole, was the sole, but no doubt coarse error of Condillac ; and this, I repeat, is shared, though for the most part less systemati- cally, by all his successors, his censors included, and not excepting Mr. Mill. Of the many resulting rectifications I have now to in- dicate but one : It is the theoretical necessity of restricting the name of Logic, and its pretensions to the first of the three cycles of Induction. This should also be followed out practically by separate treatises upon each of the three systems, and adapted to ascending orders of education. Logic proper would hold the position which both the history of method and the instinct of mankind have con- curred, we see, in assigning it, as alone suited to the rea- soning infancy of the individual as of the species ; and the other systems would follow successively either according to a classification of studies in the same collegiate institu- tion, or to a gradation of such institutions in the state ; or they might be destined, the last especially, for that ulterior self-education which is not only an essential supplement to all that colleges can do at best, but which, as colleges are now conducted, must begin its Augean task with removing their sterile rubbish and rectifying their distortions. Of these desolating consequences, a principal part is due to the wretched superfaetation of the modern developments of method upon the integrity of the ancient and still the school systems of logic ; and this by persons, at least in this country, who know little more of either than the barren technicalities or even the bare terms. Medlies so mon- strously puerile and preposterous that, for the purpose of ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 129 making a reasoner I would almost as soon recommend the habitual reading of the Bible — of course I mean, for the said impious purpose. 2. To speak of confusion and quackery in method is to suggest the second group, which I have called and already characterized as the Analytic. The propriety of this designation would historically be better attested by the absence than the prevalence of such a system in anti- quity ; for, according to the theory, it could not have been known, in its most distinctive feature of mechanical instru- mentation. It was not until "Words had failed that neces- sity could teach Induction, as it did the old man in the fable, to try the virtue of stones. It is with man's lan- guage as with his limbs which he continues to employ exclusively, until they utterly fail to feed his merest ani- mal wants from the spontaneous products of nature, his own species included ; the alternative of starvation can alone prompt him to the slow contrivance of implements with which to wrest subsistence from her bosom by force. But as ihe wants of the intellect are much later and less urgent than those of the stomach ; so ancient philosophy did not live to learn the suitable methodic media of the mechanical section of science. In short, it died of this very want of the proper analytic instruments, as an Indian tribe dies of the want of the agricultural. Still it might have penetrated, in its long struggle with the old tools, the general nature of the new requisite, and thus describe it well by name. And accordingly we find the great man, in whom declined the glories of ancient intellect, and who left his parting light along the hill-tops of all the sci- ences, foreshadow this physical organon in the term se- cond Analytics. Yet the distinction indicated by Aris- totle and now so palpable in itself, remains unmade by the latest writers, upon method. On the contrary, as before the Logical, so the Analytic department, in turn, is held by an opposite sect of philosophers to be the whole Induc- tive process. Unable, for reasons explained, to extend their frontier upwards, they decry, as barren, the district of "syllogism," and turn their encroachments downwards into the terra incognita of the succeeding and Synthetic region. This is because their proper province is almost equally ill known to them; as shown in fact in speaking of 12 130 vestiges or civitrzATioH'i its specific divisions. They do not discern that these are, in their merely mental aspect, the identical three elements of the syllogistic system, only operating as the result of imperative experience, with other implements more con- natural with the new field. As if to aggravate this coarse immersement of the mental undercurrent in the mechanism which merely opens it a way, they superadd the inconsistency of not distinguishing the material media as the proper subject, or even a part, of the methodic operation. And hence again the inability to bound or graduate the real province of their vaguely styled experimental methods ; the extravagance which, indulging the vulgar rule of estimation, measures the virtue, by the violence, of the effort. The Chemists, to whom in particular, belong the process I have named instrumentation, think to storm all the fortresses of truth by fire and force. This however is but a modification of the very illusion which they too scoff at in their early predecessors, the alchemists. It is to suppose that nature is to be delivered habitually by the Ceesarian operation, — which, though it may occasionally save a great man, surmount a great impediment, could bring, in general, but mutilation and disaster. So far, indeed, fi-om the reality is any such necessity, that there are few, perhaps, among the physical results of violent instrumentation, which even already may not be seen to have been accessible spontaneously ; the sole advantage being the great one doubtless of saving time and labour. This in truth would seem to be the province of all method whatever. For Induction does not give Perception any absolute accession of power ; it only conducts it through a succession of obstacles to progressive " vantage grounds" of view, until it leaves it ultimately in that focal distance •of the phenomenal universe, which consummates the intu- ition I call universal science. Again, this scientific vision were in whole or part im- possible, unless so far as the rays of nature had converged in the percipient ; as the tissue of her operations had ter- minated all its threads, and deposited so many clues, in the human organism. This organism is then pre-emi- nently an instrument of method. And as the former pre- judice evinced how little even those who vaunt its virtues 4he loudest often know of the true nature of the Analytic ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 131 system, so their conception of its resources may be seen not to be more accurate, from the quite consequent con- tempt which they are known to entertain for experimen- tation by so called mesmerism or magnetism. No doubt this form of Instrumentation is as yet in that mystic in- fancy through which chemistry itself and all other sciences have had to pass. But it is destined to open a world which the chemists could never penetrate. As we saw mechani- cal instrumentation to be requisite to Physical analysis, and symbolical or verbal to the Logical; so the nervous system,, wrought to higher exquisiteness by joint nature and habit, or even to morbid exaltation by design or by disease, the- nervous system, in the human subject, must hold the key to the great obstacles that beset the so-called organic divi- sion of our scale. I say by disease ; for as the so-called disorders in the inorganic globe afford a spontaneous and perhaps complete decomposition of the corresponding, complications, so pathology should supply the natural analysis of physiology. I also specify the human subject, not only as objectively the most perfect, but that this alone controls the power of descriptive communication. So that there is quite as much sense as satire in the remark of a soured bachelor to whom I mentioned this redeeming des- tiny of " animal magnetism." The reply was, that there- was then a prospect that " sentimental" ladies might be made of service to the promotion of science, and even be- come of higher value than Tabbits and frogs ; but to make them methods he thought should pose the pretensions of mesmerism itself. Yet to methods all such media should rightly be referred; but the methods of the Analytic order. For, even unto the more refined experimentation just allu- ded to,, the result is always nothing but the surmounting of obstruction — the obstruction being in this case the com- mon horizon of the senses which are set, as it were, to see but the coarser side of nature — and thus opening the way for the " coiling" process of Induction. 3. This, which in its full generality I term the Syn- thetic system, is somewhat less distorted than the last de- partment. By some writers, however, especially British, it is still absurdly held at loggerheads with the Analytic coadjutor just distinguished. By others it is excluded from its summum genus of Induction, and by others, still 132 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. confounded with Deduction, its own sub-species. But the rectification of all such must now be tolerably easy after this detailed and double series of explanations. I will sum up, then, this generic head in a familiar image of the three departments ; of which the first, or Logic, might be considered the surveyor, who describes the new territory by measurement and mapping; the second, or Analysis, would then be the pioneer who fells the trees, eradicates the stumps, removes the stones or other obstruction to cul- tivation ; the last or Synthesis is the skilful agriculturist, who applies himself to putting together the parts and pro- perties of the soil and combining them with the varying conditions of atmosphere, season, climate, so as to reach the result of production, which was the end and aim of the whole procedure. Or otherwise to circumscribe their several provinces in one word ; they might be said, the first to be expressive, the second explorative, the third explicative. And this explanation implies induction not alone of the actualities, but also of the capabilities of na- ture. § 35. But what,- in fine, does our account of Induction proper receive from history in confirmation, and return in correction ? Under the former head there is the para- mount attestation of etymology, which here denotes the precise process that had already been demanded by the double exigence of our expositions both of agent and ob- ject. Then the circumstance, that the process so named has been recognized by its Greek inventors, as the earliest of artificial methods, and had long been practised syste- matically before the institution of even the Syllogism; that it was received, after ages of darkness, with the advent of science in the section of physics, but confounded with its physical office termed Analysis ; and finally that it is now intruded, as conceived in either of those simpler phases, into the proper domain of Synthesis, the constitution of the sciences. Nothing can be better proof of its fundamental generality than these vicissitudes of obscurity and vaga- ries of usurpation. But, moreover, the fact itself is at last dawning into doctrine. That Induction is the universal type of the reasoning process, or rather of all method, is a distinctive position of the treatise before referred to, of Mr. Mill ; indeed the only innovation which he makes ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 133 upon his predecessors. This, however (if it really be one), seems better offered than maintained, and yet more plausibly maintained than completely understood. In proof I need but mention the fact or two above discussed, namely, his utter non-recognition of the progressive nature of Induction, and the consequent rejection of those rudi- mental forms which refused to square with this miscon- ception of the process j while at the same time not dis- allowing them to be other and subsidiary methods. The Deductive species, also,— which was too ripe to be thus got rid of, as it lies we see, towards the other extremity of the scale — this writer (if I remember well, for I have not his book at hand), makes expressly heterogeneous and co-ordinate to his sole type. Such is a slight specimen of the confusion and inconsistencies which leave this other- wise able book without real " system," not to say science ; and which are all dispelled by the recognition, in the sub- ject of method too, of an order of progressive development such as sketched in the foregoing diagram, and previously demonstrated to be the common law of created nature. Nor is it only in the classification, which indeed he utterly, we see, ignores, but also in the source of inference, which is the burthen of his reputed reform, that this fore- most of British thinkers in the philosophy of Induction will be found I fear in fundamental error. His theory is thaJ inductive inference derives its law " from particulars."' And this he labours to establish not upon its own positive merits, but by placing it in competition with the counter doctrine in vogue, which says that inference on the con- trary, is always "from generals," or as his adversary Mr. Whewell has the expression, " from conceptions."' Now I would first remark that the assumed contrariety is- quite illusory. The term particulars is here purely and even progressively relative ; it applies no less to facts m the stage of Relation and even of Law, than in the most elementary forms of Quality. Thus we have seen, in the leading species of each our three Systems of method, that Deduction proceeds to unify upon particular laws, and Observation upon particular relations — sometimes also- called empirical laws ; just the same as Enumeration did upon the simplest impressions of sense. Besides, we know, from its very nature (ch. 1st), that Perception can 12* 134 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. never be led from any " conception" however " general" to any fact however particular but by viewing the former for the instant as a mere unit ; as in short a co-term of the resemblance over which it passes to the new case. From this it seems the so called generals may all become par- ticulars by a simple reversal of the point of view, and that they actually must do so in the order of induction. Con- sequently the theories cited, are, under a nominal opposi- tion, effectually identical within certain limits of oscillation ; and so to this extent are both to be rated as equally right or equally wrong. I am compelled to think the latter the true alternative. We naturally do not " always infer from particulars" or from " generals ;" we never infer from either at all. How, in fact, could unity, in any number, under any name, he supposed to yield us the natural law of a new and different phenomenon which, by the hypothesis, we not merely do not know the former to contain in essence, but see posi- tively to exclude in appearance % Or why should not the latter, give the law as well to the former, "particular]" The more an answer to this is meditated the clearer will it be found that the pretended axiom of Mr. Mill is no less absurd, as a rule of inference, than even the Carte- sian archetypes of his opponent. And it is somewhat sin- gular that a writer who, in the same pages, had resolved the syllogism into a special modification of Induction, should not have been jogged by such collisions as, for in- stance, the following : If Induction in general be an infer- ence " from particulars," how comes it that the syllogism refuses, by all the rules, to conclude from a particular major premiss ; and this even though such premiss might include a myriad of individuals 1 Either then the al- leged species excludes its genus, which were absurd, or the genus is ill-conceived, which is consequently neces- sary. And even the nature of the defect might have moreover been suggested by the inferential exigence of the syllogism. For why does this require the expression to be universal 1 Because expression is the subject matter of the Logical phase of Induction, and that unity, collec- tive or simple, whether in the form of a proposition, a principle, or a law, is indispensable to Perception as a basis of inference. This basis may be named a particular ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 135 or a general at pleasure ; it is only essential to distinguish that we infer upon it, not from or by it. And this distinc- tion, small in words, but involving the matter of many a folio, seems to me to describe exactly whatever is not physiological, that is to say, instinctive in the operation. Of this it is no bad test that the demarkation imparts some sense at once to both the contending theories before us. Thus in beginning with particulars Mr. Mill took the right end. For as, though generals become, all, particulars, yet all particulars cannot be generals, the simple objects of Enumeration at least being excluded, it follows that the particulars must of the two, be the more generic, that is, the leading and the formative element. On the other hand, their indispensable consolidation from step to step finds a. vague echo in Mr. Whewell's imaginary " necessity for conceptions." Nor is it only in the properly mental part of the inferential process that both these writers be- tray, unconciously and diversely, this dim concurrence" ; they also point to the true principle, which lies behind the veil of instinct. This the latter was right enough in refer- ring to the mind's structure : but he makes the mode of operation a sort of shedding of conceptions, somewhat after the Epicurean explanation of vision. Mr. Mill ad- mits it true, that as a matter of fact we never do pass a third " particular" without invoking a conception ; but where it comes from this more solid thinker very evidently did not see, and had the prudence, however compromis- ing to his theory, not to say. And I too, though from other motives, should perhaps have imitated this example, were the explanation not already quite prepared to my hand. It was encountered in fact at numerous points of the preceding exposition : in the combination of the mental Processes by threes individually and again of these three triads collectively; in the complication of the nine Cate- gories of motion, in the same manner; in the three progres- sive stages of their mutual action and reaction, named Quality, Relation, Law- — and of which the first we saw (§ 14) requires three instances to constitute the second, this at least as many to pass into the third, and law itself de- mands, in turn, the same minimum of complication to become the positive and proximate basis of science. For 136 VESTIGES Of CIVILIZATION. I trust it need scarce be added that even the three pri- mary or mathematical laws, though ordinarily considered as forming so many distinct sciences, yet could neither of them ever constitute a science by itself, and is only so con- ceived as being a special aspect of their common group. Thus Number, with even Quantity superadded, would be still a chaos, and the Deity himself must, it seems, call in the law of figure to evoke a state of order from the abyss. And so, a fortiori, of the more dependent laws, whose in- terlacements go on progressing in the two succeeding triads. What then is this mystic formula which pervades, we see, and governs all the conceptions of Mind and all the compositions of Motion ? In the latter field I continued to note it by the gen- eral term of polarity, which had been first given and so kept proper, to the middle series of the scale. In the former I was content to establish the analogous state of facts, without alluding, save for description' sake, to a premature explanation. But when the operations of Perception came, quite spontaneously, to attach them- selves (§ 23) to the organic extremity of the material se- ries of Motion and in quality of a pure prolongation of its progress, of course the so named polaric principle passed ipso facto to the mental scale, by the double right of a priori reasoning and analytical applicability. In truth the latter is completely uniform, and not difficult to dis- cern. The primal law by which the parts of matter have been aggregated, progressively, first by atoms and at all points about a central point of gravitation; next in definite, but separate lines about a linear axis as in crystals ; far- ther on, about the end of a vertical stem in a horizontal plane and by conterminous angles as in the fungi, and even with proper modifications, in the ray-fishes of tbe animal world ; these rudimental forms are, I say, precisely analo- gous to the aggregations of mental impressions by the three Processes of our first Series. And the identity is not less clear in the two succeeding departments, which are hut corresponding complications of this primitive type series, in both the direct order of Motion and the reactive order of Mind. Induction, too, which is the mode of di- recting this reciprocal procedure, presents of course the same plan in the three aggregations of the Syllogistic sys- ANALTSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 137 tem, and their scientific expression in the three mathemat- ical laws ; and pursues its progress until the circuit of the reaction be completed, and universal science becomes elec- trical sense. And so I may perhaps venture, in conclu- sion, to submit, whether the mental monitor that gives the mathematician, after a few steps of his simple inductions, the general law of an indefinite series; that gives to many of the lower animals the stranger guidance, termed in- stinct, unto processes of constant symmetry and places before unknown ; that guides quite similarly the human animal along to the confines of erring volition, and there abandons him free to fluctuate amid an ocean of " con- ceptions" which successively rise or vanish -with each third resemblance in a new line — whether, I say, this agency be not described in the following calculable formula : In- stinct = the nervous energy with a unilateral polarity such as the fibrous or muscular system exhibits in the vegetable ; Volition = the nervous energy, set free from the earth of instinct, and endowed with the loco-motion of a circular polarity, around a moveable axis, in all planes ; Induction or Reason = this nervous polarity brought into conformity enough with nature to allow the progressive accretion of truth and excretion of error to take place freely at all its opposite poles, and in this way working itself finally into scientific hafmony with the main magnetic meridian of the universe; Relation, Law, Science, or in a single word " conception" = the subjective sentiment of these objec- tire operations. This however, if the reader chooses, may pass for no- thing but illustration ; although, for my part, I am well convinced of its intrinsic capability to account for every ar- ticle of the foregoing theory of Method, and to expose alike the opposite errors of Mr. Mill and Mr. Whewell, the in- duction " from particulars" and the " explication of con- ceptions ;" nay, to do so no less completely than the law of gravitation itself explained the coarser but quite conforma- ble mechanism of the solar system, and exploded on the one hand the epicycles of the astronomers and on the other the particular agents of the theologians. But I abstain- for other reasons, in addition to want of space. The pre- sent chapter has been protracted beyond the strict exigen- cies of my plan, in consideration of the practical import? 13"8 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. ance of the subject and the pressing necessity for a funda- mental reform. The main road, at least, to such a reform I venture to flatter myself with having indicated. This effect, whatever it be, I therefore ought not to imperil by a line of proof which, however corroborative to persons capable of reasoning, might give a handle to the heavy ridicule by which the creatures of routine writhe reluc- tant against reform in all subjects whatever, but beyond all in the extremely abstract and verbal formulas of methodo- logy, the latest covert of scholastical conceit. Who does not know that to a reader of this stamp my whole histori- cal confirmation would pass for nonsense as soon as he fell upon the word polarity in this connection 1 A term and in truth a thing which have been hitherto rather foreign to the views and the vocabulary of Logicians. To all such gnarl-headed pedants and cross-grained critics without polarity, I therefore protest I only mean their more fami- liar acquaintance, a mere figure of speech. I now pass to the remaining requisites of the analysis in this department. § 36. These are only two, and may be now dispatch- ed in few words. In accordance with general usage, I have hitherto considered method as commencing with the last of the three forms of Conception (§18), with the third or Rational Series of the Mental Processes. Desirous to exhibit, once for all, a subject so mutilated and misappre- hended in the systematic integrity of its purely scientific sphere, I have taken up the process where it enters, really or professedly, upon positive phenomena and their three- fold uniformities. But before reaching this point of view it must have passed, as accordingly outlined (§31), through the two anterior phases termed Vital and Volitional. Now, the largest part incomparably of human action and specu- lation being the product, to this hour, of these preparatory principles, it is indispensable to the strictest trial of our his- torical explication that the scale should be slidden back- wards over both those primitive periods. As I said, how- ever, we are allowed to be concise, by a concurrence of circumstances. The specifications of gradation respect- ing Quality, Relation, Law, are in large part precluded by the necessary fact, that only the first could have possi- bly been conceived in the Vital, and the first and second in the Volitional, ages of Induction. Hence of course a ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 139 curtailment also of the Generic Systems to the same ex- tent; the Logical (in its merely syntactic stage) being alone developed in the first, and the Analytic in addition, in the second of these epochs-; whereas the Rational age of Induction unfolds all three, as above described. But, more- ever, the description referred to does in all its detail of species, but reproduce an exact image of the same triad of co-operations, which, enveloping themselves retrogres- sively through the several Series and Systems, vanish ulti- mately into coincidence with the three Conceptual cycles. And consequently the preceding exposition of the third and ripest will apply alike, upon occasion, to the subdi- visions of the other two. It is only, therefore, these fun- damental forms themselves — (by the way a supreme triad which again, we see, bears profound testimony in this last analysis of Method as in those of Matter and of Mind, to the truth of the threefold division of the present theory and treatise) — it is only these I say, that now re- main to be explained or characterized. But this I also find to be in some degree anticipated, at the close of the first chapter and the commencement of the present. In the former place the three Cycles, regarded in their mental aspect, are referred respectively to the three principles of Life, Volition, and Reason. In the order of Method they were described, as proceeding, correspon- dently, upon Words, upon Causes, and upon Effects. Of these the generic threefold forms were also designated on that occasion, and were named as follows, in the two first types, which alone are now to be considered. In the former they are : Names, or words connecting distinct sensations with the same substance; Terms, or words con- necting distinct substances with the same attribute ; and Sentences, or words connecting both attributes and sub- stances into aggregates about a centre imagined to be their source: In the article of Causation (resulting spon- taneously, we see, from the notion of source), the connective forms are Divinities, or personified vitalities supposed to produce the changes of the verbally-grouped pheno- mena; Entities, or occult forces in the objects them- selves which resist the gods by the recurrences of change ; and Universals, which further unify the several entities and divinities into a series of powers or forms, submitted 140 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. finally to a sovereign type. Such, then, are the facts, as established indirectly, of the long succession of expedients, or as Kant would call them noumena, by which Perception has essayed, in the two cycles of illusion, to simplify the phenomena of nature. So that there seems wanting but the seal of the rationale. § 37. And even this is already prepared in the well-es- tablished axiom, that man can reason, or even imagine, but from the known to the unknown. But man himself ap- peared the least unknown of all phenomena at first. Such self-knowledge would, of course, amount to little more than the simple notion, of possessing a latent power to effect motion in himself and other things. Between this dim consciousness of vital force, however, and its external manifestations he felt perhaps the first germ of relation ; he thereby found a rule, wherewith he proceeded, right inductively, to the primary interpretation of nature. All objects exhibiting changes, whether of position or form, were inevitably indued with the only known force of life ; at first individually, gradually by groups. And this rude aggregation found an obvious and natural medium, in the common contact of all the contents with the earth, for that primeval generalization of the diversities of mo- tion, called characteristically the " anima mundi" or life of the world. The part of language in denoting these mystic sources of operation had long after got the name of Mythology ; which, etymologically and therefore origi- nally meant the " art and mystery" of Words. And hence the method-derived designation of the first Cycle. § 38. But early in this rude procedure the human mind, however crude or uncritical, would become sensi- ble that names could combine but motions of a certain kind, namely, either the perpetual, or periodical, or uni- form though occasional ; such as those of rivers, the sea- sons, the sun, moon, planets, &c. Accordingly these have been the earliest objects of religious veneration, because they were the easiest media of infant generalization — things which have always stood to each other in the rela- tion of cause and effect. But the vast majority of visible motions, both physical and organic, appearing, in time, to be eccentric to such forces as the above, and irregularly variable in respect to the same circumstances, it was re- ANALYSIS OF UKIVEESAL MKTHOD. 141 quisite to simplify by analysis ; it was necessary to find an agent that could be conceived to effect those changes, in even their wildest diversity, without being contradic- tory to itself. And for this new type there was,, of course, the same necessity that instinct should recur to conscious- ness. Here it found, in feet, now prepared for it, the ignis fatuus called the Will. The former rule respected motion in its bare concrete manifestation without attend- ing to quality or condition, and the vital force, which was the only known originator of such changes, would be thus considered, at the most with modifications of mere quan- tity, as affording a satisfactory explanation. But when the actions came to be viewed in respnet to order and appli- cation it was found, by reflection, that there was also a force of this kind in man himself, whereby he prosecuted what he called a plan or design. This development consisted in the sentiment of a second relation, superadded to that between the external motion and the vital force, and through which the latter was now perceived to be directed and controlled. And in this way was completed the elec- tric circuit of vital reaction which constitutes what in man is deemed the "freedom " of the Will. Now this pliant notion of a free will was just the thing to remove all diffi- culties. So far from being embarrassed by the most law- less eccentricity, irregularity was its very element, as it had been its occasion. For this imaginary freedom was a negation of all order, upon which alone, indeed, as a positive basis, it was capable of being conceived ; even as the same dependence was before remarked, in both the analysis of mind and method, under the equivalent desig- nations of resemblance and difference. With this second agency the work of unification proceeded anew ; begin- ning, of course, with the outstanding anomalies to the former force, but ending necessarily with subjecting all things to a sole sovereign will. From the nature of this moral force, then, it is plain it could not be attached, like its physical predecessor, to verbal symbols ; it could re- side only in a race of spiritual, that is to say, negative per- sons, in whom the operative wills would be supposed to inhere, and who presided over the objects and produced the phenomena. These objective reflections of man's own personality would therefore pass through the pro- 13 142 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. gressive generalization just describee] : and hence in fact the host of independent divinities which are known to throng the heaven of early heathen theology, and which later are transmuted into angels, &c, by the mono-theism that surmounts and thus supplants them. And as they suc- ceeded to the names, of course, as well as functions of the former forces, it was but normal that heathen theology should inherit the title of " mythology " — a most signifi- cant confirmation of this deduction. Again as motions, changes, events would fix attention in rude ages only for their influence, real or imagined, upon the welfare or misery of man, the presiding powers would be correspondingly divided into demons good and evil, and ultimately unified, of course, into a Good Princi- ple, and Evil Principle, or as our idiom has abridged the phrase, the God and the Devil. When the hurtful effects predominated, as in the wretched condition of the savage, the evil class of divinities would be venerated through fear, and their supposed wrath be appeased by offerings and sacrifices ; they would also be thus bribed to execute man's malice against his fellows, an object always next in inter- est to averting malice from himself. But as agriculture and society gained upon the forest and the tent, the good principle was thought to have triumphed over the devil and all his angels ; and man, who in his veriest visions is a sycophant of power, transferred his principal allegiance to the rising sun of the new era. The benefits of social life being perceived to be artificial, and thus the results of pre-arrangements of volition, the gods supposed to bestow them were worshipped, on the other hand, through hope, and endowed, as their leading attribute, with a beneficent Providence. The first desire was, then, to know what the patron divinity had provided ; and hence the arts which compose the first method of theological inquiry, and which I comprise under the general name of Divination. But according as the interpreters, or their betters the events, showed the provision to be adverse, or insufficient, re- course would be had to deities more powerful as well as propitious. This would end, as before shown, in estab- lishing one as the sole sovereign ; who, taught by the fate of his predecessors in wrecking their credit against the laws of nature, would take care to promulgate a code of ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 143 laws of his own fabric, a declaration or Testament of Di- vine Will. This is the second and more strictly theological method, and to which I retain the current name of Reve- lation. Notwithstanding the precaution alluded to, of standing aloof firom the course of realities (of which, by the way, the independence is now conceded for the first time, in the very fact of calling the claim to supersede them a " a power of miracles,"). — in spite of this, I say, the prophets, who conveyed the revelations, would, through the natural as well as inspired enthusiasm of their promises- and the carnal conceptions of their believers, be lead inevi- tably to embroil the matter anew : and then the recourse would be to the institution of priests and prayers to keep the- Deity to his written word, or make him better than his- essential will. In order to which it would finally become plain that the free expansion of his beneficence must be adjourned to a spiritual future, and so his " kingdom" would be gradually withdrawn from this wicked world. In proportion to this retreat of ages along the gradations- of the phenomenal scale, the divinities are replaced by entities or essences ; that is, perhaps, volitions abstracted from personality, subposed in objects themselves, to ac- count for their dark resistance. Hence the name of Hy- pothesis appropriated to the third method, though in ac- cord with the general law, it includes as well, we see, the two preceding ; all three going upon assumption of cer- tain immaterial media, behind and beyond the sensible- world itself, from which Induction wields the universe- with the magic lever of prediction, that is, tries its " 'pren- tice hand " at analytical exploration. And hence our corresponding Cycle takes the epithet of .Metaphysical. § 38. It is, I may add, the neutral ground so rescued inch after inch by the facts of inflexible constancy from the hypothesis of arbitrary causation, that soon solidifies into the basis of relations among effects, upon which com- menced our special survey of Method in its Rational phase, and which characterizes as Scientific the final cycle of civilization. So that here again we find the theory as round and regular as usual. And all this, I repeat, by a route not only psychologically necessary, but perfectly inductive in the procedure. For it is a corollary of the Mind's sim- 144 VESTIGES OF CIVJLIZATIOK. plicity that it must always reason or infer consequently, how much soever the premises be incoherent or illusory. It is only the vulgar who wonder at this seeming logical acuteness in a child or a savage or even a maniac ; for the intelligent wonder would have been that it were ever known to happen otherwise. Yet it seemed, in England, not many years ago, to amount to a discovery, when the Advocate, Erskine, argued oracularly that the power of logical illation was not necessarily destroyed or even im- paired by insanity ; but that the derangement affected the premises alone. An observation certainly creditable to the maker in the circumstances ; not forgetting among the latter the proverbial fealty of his countrymen, which of course, adjured him to the philosophical gospel of Scotch metaphysics. Be that as it naay,_ it is now demonstrated that the mental infancy of the race and even its illusory insanity have reasoned righi\y from what theyknew — even as the needle is always true to its principle of polarity, amid a multitude of variations in traversing the globe — and that the result was inevitably such as just delineated. As this conclusion will be tested practically in the histor- ical survey of heathenism, I will here advert to but one co- incidence, already encountered on our way ; I mean the transition of the terra mythology from the etymological to its actual import. I am not aware that this has hitherto re- ceived a rational explanation. And that the present may claim the title is confirmed by its capability of explaining, in turn, some of the most curious of problems. For instance, that of Vico respecting the origin of language, which he sup- posed was derived from the nomenclature of the heathen gods. Perceiving these to be abundantly numerous (the Moman quota being according to Varro as high as thirty thousand), and unable to see beyond them into primeval antiquity, he very naturally mistook the derivative for the primitive use of words. Have we not witnessed (§ 10), that, even in the full light of the historical era, both the Christian monks and the Scotch metaphysicians have done essentially the same or worse ? In fine, the fact of the first metamorphosis might appeal to no less an authority than that of the inspired prophet of Patmos himself; and thus would teach the theologians, who think him some- what of a rhapsodist, to see the profound although literal ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD, 145 truth (in this case, profound because literal) which lies be- fore their dull eyes in the well-known exordium of his gospel. For we see how true it is to the very letter, that : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was G-od." Here are the beginning, the middle, and the end of our alleged transition ! It is but candid, however, to own that St. John is said to have dealt freely in the cabalistic phraseology of the East, where the transformation had been transmitted through the hu- man channels of tradition. § 39. I can still imagine the occurrence of an honest ob- jection to the foregoing principle, and which I am bound,, of course, if possible to remove. It would be now ad- mitted that the mythological and metaphysical ages must have proceeded, like the scientific, from the known to the unknown. But how, it may be asked, could man have been the first criterion of conception, if the knowledge of him has been rightly classed as the consummation of science 1 The answer was partly indicated in the ante- penultimate section, when explaining that the self-know- ledge in question implies no more than the dim sentiment,, at first of a simple force to produce motion or change ex- ternally, and later, of a second force, supposed to operate internally and control the rest or action of the former. Now this was, in both instances, a thing of mere consciousness ; in the first, a grade of knowledge probably common to most animals, which also doubtless imagine life in every unfa- miliar motion. Moreover, these primary notions of physi- cal and moral force are not only instinctive but individual,, and thus effectually fall under the simplest or numerical grade of conception. Whereas, the knowledge of man; which science contemplates, involves a survey of entire nature. This broad distinction would probably suffice for the present occasion. But the error to which it refers is- too pervasive and perverse not to warrant a more explicit exposure. The elements of this, too, lie prepared (alone, I believe), in the foregoing pages. I refer to the principle of division observed in the first and second chapters, the opposition' between the order of Knowledge and the order of Na- ture. Also to the real occasion of this universally perplex- ing contrast (§ 27), in the starting point of the knowing: 13* HI VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. agent at the nether extremity of the natural scale. From this it seemed to follow necessarily that human Knowledge must make two circuits— upon Resemblance and upon Difference-?-before falling into the order of creation, which alone is the plane of Science, In terms of our general analogy, or may we not call it explanation, that Perception as a prolongation of the progress of Mo- tion, must be repelled by the like polarities of the conti- guous end at instinct, and of course attracted concurrently towards the opposite and unlike extremity ; that the whole cycle of this double tendency must consist of two depart- ments, divided by the line of maximum divergency, where the physiological polarity must pass from positive to nega- tive, the Inductive polarity from resemblance to difference, the Conceptual polarity from physical force c Life to spiritual force or Will; that, in fine, Perception is thus brought round into the main meridian of the Universe at Vispositive pole — which leads to science — by the formation, through countless centuries, of the grand " conductor" we name knowledge, and of which the molecules are human minds and the mechanism is Society. It is visible therefore, how man, although the most complex of natural objects, not only could, but should inevitably be the first thing " known" to himself, but known according to the infant calibre of his purely simple Perception. That is to say, he would progressively recognize in his own body the primary qualities of unity, bulk, shape and self-motion, and with them must attribute the- associate consciousness of vitality to all bodies, however inanimate, that should ex- hibit latent motion ; and in the second period, the pheno- mena of latent motion or invisible force would prompt him similarly to reflect upon himself for a second type, and to give the corresponding objeots into the guidance of a Soul or Will, which, accordingly, down to Newton, held the prime place of gravitation. 1 am aware that I have said or shown all this substan- tially over and over. But I only fear it will not be too much for the profound ignorance on the subject which not only pervades the whole literature, even scientific, of our language, and produces the chaos above exposed in the region of method, but perverts, almost to preposterousness, the logical views of our first philosophers. I will close, in ANALYSIS OF UKIV£USAL METHOD. 147 proof, with a single example, which is also relevant to the general principle. One of the most reputed of the philo- sophers alluded to, and author of our sole treatise on the subject of Inductive Science, cites, I recollect, from Aris- totle for comment the following axiom : " We must always proceed from the known to the unknown ; we must pro- ceed therefore from universal to particular." The first of these propositions Mr. Whewell of course admits. But of the second he ridicules the inference, and reverses the order. Now in both I think he does ignorantly— if I may allow myself an uncourteouspropriety of expression towards one who is, himself, no very 1 ceremonious censor. The " Universals" of Aristotle are in reality the relations which I have deemed the most'simple or general ; that is, in fact, all relations, with respect to those below them, as far as common characteristically to any one of our nine cate- gories : this striking correspondence was pointed out above in comparing the categories of Aristotle. But that this order of simplicity is also the order of knowledge has been just illustrate I in the last paragraph, and was formally es- tablished in the second chapter. There it appeared that Number is the simplest of all relations, and individuality now seems necessarily to be the earliest of all notions. It is true that, in the former case, the relation is considered objectively and in the utmost extension of law, while in the latter it lurks in the. dim subjectivity of mere quality. But this is no difference to the purpose. It is no difference of opposition, but, on the contrary, of degree, or rather it is a difference of mere time ; for the quality is the germ- point which is to traverse the line of law, and effectively to generate it to human cognoscence. And this, it were ab- surd to think, it ever could have done, unless placed by nature upon the all-connecting track of number. And so of the other relations successively. The inference of Aristotle, from the Known to the universal, is, therefore, not only just in fact, but almost identical in affirmation, and his order of procedure is of course a necessary corollary. Another deep concurrence for our theory to be proud of, in a question at least of Logical method. The error of Mr. Whewell is multiplex : First, in sup- posing the words " particular" and " universal" to relate to stages of progression in our knowledge of the same 148 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. law, instead of stages of subordination among the various laws of the universe ; that is, the Savage arithmetic of three he would call a " particular" in Number, although what the precise amount which should go to make the " uni- versal" he is doubtless a mathematician too well read to be able to say : Secondly, in not discerning that his misappli- cation of the terms is actually coincident with the order he contradicts ; for, if perception does proceed, an account of its primal position ,from the" "particular" end of the scale of nature, it is equally necessitated, by its intrinsic simplicity, to proceed upon the most " universal" or simple of her laws : Finally, in implying, absurdly, that the law is less a " universal" for being primarily " known" under the aspect of mere Quality — which were to say that the direc- tion of education or inquiry, things essentially accidental to each individual, may not only override the general order of nature but authorize as many criteria of method and of science ! And this, I affirm, is no error of inference, but a dogmatic theory, the doctrine of "private judgment" and "conscience," in methodology. Nor is the monstrosity peculiar, as ought well indeed to be supposed, to our sole Historian and Philosopher of In- ductive science. It is common, as far as I know, to every writer of his country; as may be judged of from the fact that it constitutes the very fallacy upon which the opposite extremes of English opinion as to the principle of Induc- tion were seen to run into each other, and out of reason, at the same time. In short this artificial strife of individualism against nature is the rule of method and education through- out entire Anglo-Saxondom: which may possibly be the rea- son why " scholars and gentlemen" are so plentiful, while thinkers and men are rather rare. To this wretched med- ley Mr. Whewell merely adds the inconsistency, of run- ning a tilt against the Stageryte in championship of " par- ticulars," while he was seen above, on the other hand, op- posed to Mr. Mill, in quality of Platonic plenipotentiary of the antagonistical " conceptions." I should explain, how- ever, that if British philosophers remain deeper than their French neighbors in this transitive chaos between effete and infant epochs of Knowledge, it seems in great part due to the reverence, more repectable than rational, for the log- ical authority of Bacon ; which chains them to the Analytic, ANALYSTS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 149 or as they call it experimental, grades of Induction — methods only fitted for dispersion not combination, for exploration not construction, in short at best for burrowing not for building. § 40. There are also some other terms which it will be both essential to our future course and confirmative of the past to snatch, in passing, from the confusion. What writer of newspaper paragraphs does not keep at his fin- gers' ends the epithets simple and complex, general and special, concrete and abstract 1 And yet what reader of English philosophy may pretend to possess in his head a clear conception of their distinctions or definitions ? For myself, I own I have learned this (as well as most else of the little I know) for the first time in the process of pen- ning the present pages. And the reader, not before more fortunate, who has read them with some attention, will now need, I trust, no lengthy explanation. 1. If contemplated objectively or in their positive, their real relations, all the phenomena of nature are, as proved in the preceding chapter, found to class themselves into an order of diminishing simplicity. A class, a relation is accounted more or less simple, according as applicable to a larger or lesser diversity of subjects. For instance, all things imaginable, mental as well as material, are amenable to the relation of Number ; whereas, Figure is already restricted to the sphere of the corporeal. Number is therefore said to be the more simple of the two relations (as it is indeed the most so of all whatever). Figure, for the contrary reason, is called the more complex. And so correlatively throughout the higher complications. 2. Viewing the same phenomena subjectively, or in reference to the mind conceiving them, they also fall into an order of diminishing generality. We call more or less general such as include fewer or more elements, whether in the stage of quality, of relation, or of law. Thus the law of number containing but one, is, therefore, the most general of all phenomena. Sensation holds the same rank in the re-active order of intellection. Like number, it is a simple succession of points. But it is the generator of all the lines of mind, as the former is of the lines of mo- tion. It is consequently the most general of the Processes of Perception; is absolutely common, indeed, to all ani- 150 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. mals whatever. Memory, which associates with it the relation of place, and Imagination, which conjoins time, are progressively less common in nature or rather its ani- mal department, and so are said to be less general and more special, in proportion. 3. There is yet a third recognition of this natural series. It turns, harmoniously, on the intermediate order between the extreme subjective and objective, and denotes phenomena as passing progressively (through our now familiar stages of Quality, Relation, and Law), from the apparent state of individual affections of matter, to the real state of universal operations of motion. Surveyed in this march of method along the natural scale, they are called, correlatively, less concrete and more abstract. Thus number, which is absolutely inseparable from all matter, is consequently the most concrete, as well as sim- ple, of all laws. Sensation, which holds the same priority in the section of animal matter, is also the most concrete as well as general of mental laws. The notions of Quantity, on the one hand, and Memory, on the other, make already a first step in Abstraction ; they can be separated men- tally, the one from substance, the other from sense. Fig- ure and Imagination offer obviously a further step in sep- arability, as well as specialty and complication. It is not, however, till the next stage, which begins the second series, that Abstraction obtains the preponderance in com- plete extrication. This it does, we know, in the invisible power or Process of Reflection, through the invisible me- dium or Method of Observation, applied to the invisible motion of pressure or Force. And the step is equally gradual; the inclination of a poised balance; a distinction of the Different, a negation of the Material. Accordingly it gives its name to the middle Process of this Series, and its opprobrium to the Cycle of Metaphysics ; for with the aid of" the just preceding and plastic hand of Imagina- tion, Reflection throws out a shadowy, or spiritual counter- part of the real world, which it peoples with " gorgons hydras, and chimeras dire," as well in the logical as the theological order. It must not, however, be thought, be- cause of its signal prominence in this second epoch, that abstraction is not progressive, like specialty and complex- ity, to the end of the scale. Such seeming eminence ANALYSIS OP UNIVERSAL METHOD. 151 is like so many others, a mere illusion of non-development. It is that the mass of mankind, in even the most enlight- ened nations, have as yet attained no farther than the grade of abstractions described. But the fact that these are now distinguished and stigmatized as " Metaphysical," speaks a growing feeling of other abstractions, which may be rational and real. Such are, in fact, the laws of the three succeeding categories, Perception being the most abstract and so the least concrete of the entire scale. Concrete, General, Simple ; Abstract, Special, Complex, these three pairs of corresponding and correla tive terms have, then, been appropriated, by the sure instinct of popular language, to the respective series, as now assign- ed, of Method, Mind, and Matter. And what a testimony to the reality of these three grand factors in nature, as well as to the fidelity of the foregoing delineation ! While the latter more than repays the superfluous confirmation, by the light of order and intelligibility which it reflects upon the confusion, that makes, at present, those unhappy epithets a sort of servants of all work. This confusion it is now nee iless to specify. I do not speak of the common interchange of the co-ordinate terms, such as Concrete for Simple, or Special for Complex, &c. This is a natural and no very injurious consequence of the intimate conformity between the three aspects of the same phenomena. But it is quite otherwise when the conformity is broken into opposi- tion. Nothing more common, for instance, than to speak of Simple, as opposed to General, relations ; and of Con- crete, as something different from either. Also, on the other hand, the words Abstract and Complex are rarely, I think, employed in a line. But worse than dislocating the co- ordination, the correlation is itself reversed. This cli- max of the perversity seems most conspicuous in the term Abstract, which is almost universally made a syno- nym with General, instead of Special; and Concrete is simi- larly brought into cross connection with Complex. Thus our school books and philosophers speak habitually of mathematics as not only abstract, but the most abstract of sciences. Whereas we see they are on the contrary the most concrete. I wonder it can be overlooked that Number and Quantity, being manifestly the first notions conceived by children and savages, they could scarcely be the most 152 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. abstract, and not the most concrete, of relations. So that the keen wit of the English poet would seem to have been better informed, some two centuries ago, when he men- tions, among the scholastic exploits of Hudibras, that he " could abstract numbers out of matter." I quit the wretched chaos with a still more fundamental sample. 4. According as the sciences become, as they do su- premely towards the end of the scale, at once most Com- plex in the phenomena, and so most Special in their as- pects, and consequently most Abstract in their methods, the operation of Synthesis, which puts the finishing hand to all science, becomes progressively conspicuous in the results. The destined results, it is well known, are to give abstract or ideal unity ,to the multifarious elements explored preparatively by Analysis. Now as the multi- tude augments, the putting together grows more striking, the universalizing process more magical, as it were, in its simplification. But from simplification to simplicity there is but a paronymous fallacy. And hence the confusion of the " Universal" with the Simple and " first-known." This, I am persuaded (through but a priori) could have been in Aristotle nothing more than a mere verbal misapplication; for the import of Universal, as now explained, is of recent development, and it is certain he used the term in the sense of Simple and General. But in Mr. Whewell who, with his age's knowledge of the higher complexities of method, only reverses and realizes the mere misnomer he fails to detect, by transferring the notion of General to the side of Universal — in Mr. W. I say, the transgression is nothing less than the gross confusion of the two extremi- ties of the conceptual or methodical scale. So far in fact, are these terms from being in any sense synonymous, that they are logical as well as chronological opposites of each other. Universality commences where Generality ends. The latter is objective and real even in the subjective state of Quality; the former subjective and ideal even in the objective state of Law. The one is in nature ; the other is in man. Hence we say, of the natural laws, includ- ing of course the mental Processes, that they are relatively more or less General ; but it can no more be said that they are more or less Universal than each other, than it could, of circles or squares, that they are more or less round or ANALYSIS OS UNIVERSAL METHOD. 153 angular. In fact the categories of our scale are all equally Universal, the law of Life, no doubt, as strictly as that of Number ; while they are each, we have seen, unequally simple, that is General. Finally, the terms look to con- trary goals, the former implying a tendency from the parts to the whole, the latter from the whole to the parts. It is once more, we see, the opposite poles of an Inductive magnetism; the one positive, indefinite, Concretive or Generative; the other negative, determinate, Abstractive, and Uniformative ; the former ever tending, by the intro- duction of foreign matter, to the alteration and destruction of the system ; the latter labouring to conserve it, by assim- ilation and excretion. And such is the exact picture not only of method in all its forms, but of man himself in all bis functions, vital, moral, and intellectual ; of his individ- ual history from infancy to dissolution, of his national his- tory from barbarism to civilization, of his logical history from sensation up to science ; in one word, of his entire social, as well as of his solar, system. But to keep to our humbler instance of this universal antagonism, it is pro- foundly preserved, as usual, in the etymology : for the term General ^as so often exemplified) importing primitively procreation, implies procession of the parts from a whole ; and Universal {versus unum) declares no less expressly a procession of the whole from its parts. Nor need the reader be reminded of the singular confirmation contribut- ed by the former root to our explanation ©f Life and Will, as the great generators, the parent types, of successive epochs of conception. Nor of the parting flash of light which both the terms, in their polar .contrast, fling con- temptuously upon the conflict between the leading theories of -Induction:: a conflict which consists, we have seen, in setting at intestine war the complementary halves -of the process, and under pretext, or (to hint no question of the candour of the authors) is the firm faith, that each half was the whole thing. Il -remains to note the result, with respect to Univer- sal, that this expression also is supplied with a correlative ; and which may now be rationally recognized in the trite term " particular." The latter is, of course, opposed to Spe- cial, Sec., in the same manner as the two principals. Fi- nally, there are two other pairs which just appeal to me for 14 154 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. entrance, and will significantly take the opposite sides. I mean Collective and Individual, which indicate, respective- ly, a sectional view, as it were, of Universal and Particular. The second pair is Common and Proper, of which the concurrence with General and Special, is equally close and characteristic : for phenomena are in all grades ac- counted more or less General not only in proportion as, but for the reason that, they are more or less Common (§ 22) ; though it would scarce be grammar, not to say philosophy, to go on with the current confusion, and call them more or less Collective or Universal. § 39. Having written with entire freedom (a block- head might style it flippancy, not distinguishing one who censures by rational conclusion from those who do so by personal conceit), having written, I say, thus freely of my superiors, in all ages, exposing their illusions, explaining their errors, in short, proposing a fundamental revolution of all their labours, I feel unable to dismiss the subject, without offering them, dead or living, the sole apology not disrespectful to those who labour for truth alone. It is to show summarily why they have not, why they could not have, done better, and to own that if the present effort -should prove warranted in its pretensions, it will be mainly from the writer's position upon the shoulders of his pre- decessors, where he could profit at the same time by their -successes and their failures ; but partly also (he may pre- sume, since there are others on the same vantage ground) from, the happy accident of his theoretical point of view. The obstacle alluded to had been recognized by the .great Bacon, where he speaks of Truth as the daughter ■of Time. But the meaning thus expressed, because ap- prehended, but poetically, has now received its philoso- phical explanation. The growth (as it would be termed imore strictly still than the birth) of truth is, we see, an aggregate effect of the three factors of all knowledge ; a necessary consequence of the progressive complexity in nature, the proportional complication of mind, and the primordial juxtaposition of the two series at hostile ends, which addsthe preliminary task of a twofold adjustment, to the positive operations of method. To the length and :sloath of this march of ages, or rather of nations, of civili- zations, is besides to be superadded the intricacy of the ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 155 procedure. For example, method, with its three forms, unfolding themselves successively, at first into a single tri- nary system ; after, in the same order into so many sepa- rate systems, in each of which the other two forms are- made to play the part of satellites, and all ultimately merg- ing into the central unity of Induction. When the like- phenomena have only recently, and still imperfectly, been comprehended in the material masses and magnificent motions of the heavenly bodies, where the former have all co-existed, and the latter been repeating themselves since the earliest of human observers ; is it improbable- that a set of abstractions, of imperceptibly gradual! emergence, scarce visible in their full meridian to a doz- en intellects in an age, and some of them only now breaking upon the horizon — is it wonderful, I say, that the state of opinion upon this subject should be still in the stage of eccentrics and epicycles ? But the methods have another perplexity more misleading than all the rest ; it is that, though so harmonious as to be complementary of each other collectively, they must appear to be independ- ent of, and even contrary to, each other successively. We are next to note that these three contrivances for simplifying the system of nature into proportion with Per- ception, or complicating Perception into proportion with the scheme of nature, must trail, their length, in the manner explained, over each of the three divisions, and even of the nine sub-divisions of the scientific scale : that is, must all take part successively in each integral science. The con- sequence is, that the different methods might be occupied) simultaneously upon two or even three different depart- ments of phenomena. Thus to one, the Synthetic princi- ple, in its primary stage of Syllogism, might be contributing the deductive consummation ; while analysis, in the shape- of Analogy, had invaded the adjacent district, and was- there subverting the reign of the gods by the metaphysi- cal archetypes reflected from geometry ; and simple induc- tion, as Enumeration, had passed still farther on, and was. laying its logical outline of nomenclature. And the same, of course, in case of the three Systems. Conceive, more- over, this state of things as expanded to its vast dimensions in the proportions of nature and the progression of man- kind. Here the several methods, not only Systematic but I5C VESTIGES OF CmLIZATTOir. even Specific, must each appear to whole generations of contemporary men and books, not as partial, or peculiar, or merely preferable in a given subject, but as absolutely exclusive as well as universal. Thus the Syllogism, seen to answer in the mathematical division, would then he deemed the very sesame of the cave of science. Sup- planted, however, by Analysis, in the region of physics, the votaries of the "New Organ" would be all for expert-' ment, and this be now the philosopher's stone whereby all- ignorance and error were to be magically transmuted into truth and knowledge. "White the novitiates of experience, seeing it really to be subversive of the effete anilities of mythology and metaphysics, would rush forward to the ulti- mate or social ranges of complexity proclaiming what they should naturally $34, '2 ) be led to style the "inductive" method, as the veritable Ephesian goddess of all philoso- phy. And this fanaticism would prevail proportionately down to the minutest divisions of the scale. Nor is this methodic monomania a mere deduction a priori. It is besides but a literal abstract of the most enlightened pages that the history of speculation has yet to boast. It is the true occasion, not alone of the mutual conflicts and criminations above exposed among the various methods themselves, but also of those illusory misextensions of them all, in turn, which are rightly hut vainly repeated to have retarded, over and over, the scien- tific progress of the human mind. Thus the Schoolmen, who (of course, obliged, in the early infancy of modern' inquiry, to recommence with the Logical stage of method) were made familiar through Aristotle with the theory of the Syllogism, and through Euclid and others with its effi- ciency in mathematics, persisted for eenturies in the per- verse effort to extend it to the Physical world, and even to- the moral or rather the Social, in advance of the Analytic. So analysis, having passed meanwhile to the former of these departments under guise, as before intimated, of cer- tain essences or types, encountered here a more than ordi- nary degree of impediment : entities were a sufficient sol- vent for the compositions of Imagination ; but the secrets-- to be now explored were the motions and mixtures- of natural bodies. Induction had, in consequence, to- resort to Are and force, in the mechanical charasteii, ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 157 * which I name Instrumentation. It was by this event, and for these causes, that quite early in the sixteenth century we have seen the Syllogism superseded by the alembic. Then in turn, will the alchemist have nothing short of a universal solvent; the physician, an elixir of life; the phi- losopher, in fine, the very secret of vitality itself — which he had seized, it seemed, so consummately, in the person of Paracelsus, as to fabricate a fellow-philosopher, body and soul. But these first enthusiasts of Analysis went the way of their predecessors. Not, however, any more than the Schoolmen as is vulgarly repeated, without having left a treasure to their successors. Only it was the inheritance of the old man's heirs in the fable ; who likewise dug for gold with might and main, but were rewarded with that alone which gives to gold its factitious value. Over the soil of chemistry, thus broken up by the animal instinct of avarice, Induction brought down its primary process of Enumeration, to designate by Naming an empirical outline' of the subject. The analytic practice of elementalizing became now more systematic ; and its sovereign efficacy is still sworn by, with a faith perhaps less ardent, but quite- as absolute as at the dawn of the illusion. In fine, it is the recognition of the Analytic group of methods as appropri- ate to the general department of natural history, that con- tinues to illustrate the epoch and the Organon of Baeom But who would suppose that this great intellect, while de- nouncing the Organon of Aristotle, should have been pro- moting, by his magniloquent prophesyings, the like abuses- of his own? nay, should actually have been practising (as- it were not difficult to prove) a very large degree of the- man-making mania of Paracelsus ! And harder still ought it be to suppose — if the facts did not spare the trouble — how the generality of British philosophers, to say nothing of their literary echoes, go on, to cant about the all-suffici- ency of Experimental Induction ; in face, for instance, of the scientific triumphs of their own countryman Newton,. as well as the equal or perhaps greater triumphs, because- in walks progressively more complex, of the Logical con- stitution of chemistry, as just alluded to, by Lavoisier, and by Linnaeus, Cuvier and others, of the higher, " Classifi- catory" Sciences. Triumphs all achieved by means, it is un necessary to add, of this reprobated process of Synthesis. 14» lo% Vestiges ds civiLrZATid'H. While the so-called Baconian method has never constituted 7 a single science, and Bacon himself has never discovered a single natural law-— although both have, as was-their mission, prepared the mode and the materials. Again, the same round of illusion in the last and or- ganic department. In fact the error rather thickens, with the growing complication. Thus the method of experi- ment, deemed as " universal" as the famous solvent, is transferred, as Syllogism had been before it, quite crude 1 to the next division, and the cry resounds, in our own days, of " experience" " facts," nothing but facts. Meanwhile the process thus invoked, under misconception of its real character, goes on to pile up facts upon facts, but pene- trates, as is its destiny, to the more important and funda 1 - mental ; when, behold ! it is denounced as disorganizing, destructive, &c, and the most faithful of its propagators held up to public odium as " socialists," " infidels," in short agents of the devil, neither more nor less than their pre- decessors aforesaid the alchemists, who were damned for necromancers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The only difference is, that the modern Hades is the howl of the multitude ; a thing; however, quite as pitiless as the Chris- tian hell or the Carthaginian Moloch. But then, synthesis, which' is organizing, constructive, must, you say, be accept- able. By no means. Those who do not know what they want are not to be caught by dilemmas, and ignorance, like angels, can "'face about" upon a needle-point. Ac- cordingly should some thinker who had meditated, a whole lifetime, the grand and graduated uniformity of the pro- cedure of nature, amid the miserable and mole-eyed va- garies of man — should any such, I say, propose synthesis as the sole and seasonable method of both arresting the dis- order and repairing the devastation, he would only be sub- limely pitied by your man of " facts" and " common sense" as a visionary, or its synonym, a theorist. And so the " co- medy of errors" is maintained consistently to the end. Yet the end is here, as in all comedies, for the best For what signify his petty errors except to petty man himself? What is their influence on the great design, or rather direction, of Nature 1 That of the displacement of a crystalline corpuscle, upon the magnetic polarity of the globe. That of the flutter of a mote, upon the flood of ANALYSIS OF OTlVERSAL METHOD. 153 sttnlight wherein it floats. And this is well; for what would otherwise have become of nature, and of his fellow men 1 Nor is it more wonderful than regretable that, in spite of the preceding catalogue of convicted and accumu- lated absurdities, the human mind should have revolved on, in the same vortex, from age to age. To most men, of all ages, the same as to the primitive savage, their own hill-inclosed horizon transcends the universe beside. All things are measured with relation to this little scene, of which Self is, of course, the centre and the soul : — self, at first, in the isolation of the savage or the miser ; after widening to inclose a country, in the patriotism of the statesman ; then his ovm, enlightened age, in the pride of the philosopher ; but self throughout insidiously, insepara- bly, inevitably. Of this real Lilliput the present state is exaggerated by ignorance, and the future emblazoned by imagination. But the Past, as it cannot return, is long neglected as a large lumber-room where all things are thrown together in a heap. There remains, indeed, a rude inventory, preserved on the fly-leaves of the family Bible, and freshly catalogued from time to time, according to the purview of the day ; and these are styled respectively its history and its philosophy. But they convey scarce so good a conception of the real import of the contents as would be received concerning the archaiology of Europe from a modern guide-book. Before men will learn to spell the past, it must be charactered and syllabled and drawn out for them upon the ample page of time : and then the eye must be removed' from its present position at the page's edge, where it only sees a dark unmeaning mass, and lifted to front the surface at the proper focal distance, free more- over to move itself, or to shift the record panoramically. In a word, History must be readjusted to the perspective of Nature. This is the problem of which I have attempted, in the foregoing chapters, to unfold the principles, and determine the essential conditions. It may now be convenient to re- capitulate the general result. 160 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. EECAPITULATION. § 40. By nature, Man is horn in apparent contrast to the external world ; while he is constituted, in reality a fractional portion of the system. This antagonism of primordial position between his eye and his organization involves the everlasting puzzle of his intellect. Around its axis have revolved, accordingly, at various angles of obliquity, all the systems whether of religion, morality, or metaphysics, which have deluded, but also developed, the human species. In truth this original ignorance is the veritable Original Sin : it revives, we see, quite naturally, in every descendant of Adam, and is to be purged, more or less imperfectly, by the baptism of education. An explanation which proves its merits by giving meaning to a miracle, and vindicating divine justice from the blas- phemies of theology. The consequence of this natal position is doubtless error and illusion. But if it makes illusion necessary, it makes progression possible, and it is therefore a pre- rogative, not a punishment. Mind is not developed by what it finds, but by what it seeks ; and error being a negation, a non-perception of the real, leaves it there- fore the proper scope for this speculative exercise. Be- sides, the acquisition of truth is by elimination of error, even as the statuary must hew his Venus from a block of stone. This mental agitation, this magnetic oscillation, this moral gravitation towards a main and mysterious axis, is the force which tends unceasingly to aggregate into conformity — conformity, at the same time, of conduct and conception — the individual with the community, the nation with the age, the age with the species, and the species with the universe. The attainment of this harmony is Happiness, is physical and mental health. The pursuit of it is Philosophy. The perception of it is Science. The progression (if you will, the purgatory) through which the blissful goal is gained, is the process termed Civilization : that is (as I conceive it), the education of Humanity. It was proposed to analyze the Means and the Methods of this procedure. AJTALTSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. ISI § 41. The means were found to consist in the organiza- tion of the Human Mind, and in the constitution of the External World ; by whose mutual action and reaction is effected the evolution, and will be attained the destina- tion, just described. Of the Intellect the analysis resulted in a single Fa- culty, developing itself progressively under nine forms or Processes ; these being equally divided into three succes- sive Series ; distinguished, in turn, by the relative pre- valence in the body corporal, and thus the social, of the- three constituent systems, vital, active and intellectual. Of the Universe, too, the analysis resulted in a single law, reproducing itself under nine progressive complica- tions or Categories ; these combined by threes successively in so many Predicables or epochs of creation, and termina- ting undistinguishably in the origin of the Mental Series. Of this curious but really necessary correspondence of the two factors, the operation which passed between, them could scarce have failed to bear the exact impress. And', accordingly, the analysis of Method exhibited also a single process, undergoing the same progression of novenary complications, and trinary combinations into successive systems. The whole is brought together succinctly before the reader's eye in the annexed paradigm- fcf s s K o Hi M ^ W H # o 09 .- Ill 8 11 s •1 a 5- 3 5 a en O 0. E O O or Methodi s w to | is d e c "■£• § 1 a ■S £ f- s « n fts o .2 6. in Jin § g ^ fin Q &> s I i 2 SasoEssse & o £ (5 O E- < ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 163 Such is our analytical chart of the whole phenomenal or positive Universe, as it would be traced in its progres- sive formation by the pure intelligence above supposed (§ 21) ; which, placed beyond the prepossessions of human ignorance and self-importance, could see the series of mo- tion proper turn off to form that of mind, and here again to end in method which supplied at last the third requisite — the conductor of the circuit, whereby motion is brought around to that contemplation of its own wonders, which the sons of men give the name of science to, and theologians make the beatific occupation of the Divinity. This, as well as the subordinate conformities of the scheme, far more variously and profoundly symmetrical than the most regu- lar of crystalline structures, bear the irresistible stamp of nature and truth, and leave it needless to add a word in either argument or explanation. There remains, then, but to return these analytical results into the synthetic ; to re- construct these organic jbrms which produced the func- tions named civilization, and which we shall be then prepar- ed to compare with the actual record of them in History. § 42. The forms, it is clear, in the first place, should bear a definite analogy to the several divisions of the preceding diagram. For as this describes Perception in its progres- sive efforts, through Induction, to combine the diversities of nature for the purpose of apprehension ; so the present purpose, keeping still to the same principles and opera- tions, merely shifts us to the point of view of application. The latter, also, should therefore present a fundamental unity of object, under a generic modification into three great orders of contrivances, each description being sub- divisible into three specific forms ; and the same proce- dure would, of course, repeat itself indefinitely but uni- formly in this as in each of the analytic aspects. But this correspondence in distribution should hold in character and complication. Contrivance must, like con- ception, commence with factsin the simplest form, that is to say, with Qualities or properties ; it will therefore first be art. The second establishment must be made upon the lines of Relation, that is to say, the fixation of rules called institution. The third foundation we know is Law ; which, by combining the points and lines, the arts and institutions of the two anterior stages, produces what is termed a sys- 1'64 VBSTISES OF CIVIUZATiOis. tern, be it natural or factitious. The conceptual princi- ples of the agent contriving should consummate the designa- tion. Those are Sensational, Volitional, Rational, or ap- pealing, to feeling, to will, and to reason. To Arts, In- stitutions, Systems, they therefore assign respectively the epithets of 2Esthetical, Political, and Scientific. This definition, however, it must be noted, restricts the forms to their latest development. But in this it sets them duly on the positive footing of the analytic scale, neglect- ing their previous stages as essentially included. And to this footing, as far the fairest for all the purposes of exam- ple, and moreover far more ample than there is adequate space to discuss, I shall therefore limit a more specific enumeration. Nor will this be made here in form, for the reason just alluded to. The present design is not to pa- rade classifications ^ the desire is to establish the theory whereby that greatest want of the day and age may he afterwards supplied with due authority. But such of the minuter modifications in question as can be cited to bear this testimony, will best be adjusted to their generic forms on the same occasions. Until then we shall therefore ad- journ the heads of Art and Institution ; with the addition of a general indication, which while it reaches farther back than the analogical determinations above applied, yet con- firms them exactly, though drawn, itself, from an opposite source. § 43. This supreme source or motive of all human contrivances is Happiness, so justly though poetically ■called " our being's end and aim." The real end of even simply knowing, as well as of acting, is self-gratification. But the means of gratification will take shape from the desires j and the desires from the development of the species or indi- vidual. The latter, we have seen (§ 16), relate succes- sively to the Appetites, of which the symbol is Life and . the sanction Force 4 to the Passions, of which the symbol is Will and the sanction Legislation ; to the mental powers or Processes, of which the symbol is Reason and the sanc- tion is Science. The first is a struggle of man with nature by Force ; the second, a struggle of man with man by Fraud ; the third, a mutual emulation of man and nature by Faculty. It was this strife, in fact, that accomplished the progressive transformation. The first scene left the ANALtSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 1G5 appetites transformed into Passions ; the second, left the Passions transformed into Rights ; the third scene (which is now in action) will leave the metamorphosed appetites called rights, transformed in turn and definitely into Duties. Now the march of the means to gratify being necessarily correlative, it must be easy, through the foregoing accu- mulated criteria, to determine the course and character of the corresponding Contrivances. For example, the range from appetites to passions could devise but Arts, that is to say, expedients personal and occasional like the cravings. That from passions along to rights would be the ground of Institutions — that is to say, expedients permanent and placed externally to man himself, to bar him from grati- fying his passions, from seeking his happiness, by causing unhappiness to his fellows. And finally, the passage from rights to the last extreme of duties would give gradual growth to Systems or sciences — that is, expedients founded equally in nature and in man ; therefore flexible like the arts and fixed like the institutions ; combining also their opposite properties, of positive and negative, productive and protective, and contrived to render each man happy through the happiness of all. From this new deduction, then, — through every line of which we see reflected the general theory — results again the same division, of arts, institutions, systems. And the correlative objects to be gratified, namely passions, rights, duties, tally also with the terms iEsthetical, Political, and Scientific, the last being the same as Dutiful to nature. But even anterior to these riper stages the gradation is no less evident. The cycle of force must begin with the Arts thence named Mechanical ; that of fraud with the Institutions termed Religious ; the ages of reason with the Systems called Educational. These complementary desig- nations might be specified still farther. For instance, the arts, into first the Predatory artifices of the hunter of beasts, which result in the hunting of men ; then the Mili- tary arts of the hunters of men, which result, through compulsion or conquest, in the cultivation of the soil ; thence the Agricultural arts, which through the founda- tion of society, shape in turn the progression into that semi-artistic stage of development, where it tapers off from the Mechanical, into the .^Esthetic series, like the 15 166 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. parent efflorescence of the gross Appetites into the grand Passions. Religion, in the stage of institution, presents a like variety : it is first a worship of the elements referred to the stars, or Sabeism ; next, a worship of the pro- perties of the. earth, or Fetichism ; later a worship of the dead benefactors of society, or Polytheism; which, ending of course in monotheism or the generalization of the social Will, passes away under the transitional ambiguity of rationalism. In the remaining division, of Educational systems, I cannot appeal to history for the specific forms, as I am not aware that education has yet attained to the stage of Systems, but lingers in Institution, if not mostly in, even Art. This remark will remind the reader that each description of Contrivances may pass through the three forms in succession. For example, the mechanical arts are already in large part advanced to science, to which they passed of course through the stage of Institution termed Castes; and religion on the other hand, before growing into this caste state, must have been practised in the state of art, and even of artifice. And such in fact was its rudimentary stage of jugglery, sorcery, &c, where St mingles or anastomoses with the Medical art. This famous but hitherto inexplicable kinship of crafts suggests another and more fundamental distinction. It is that ! both Arts and Institutions are, like the happiness they seek, to be divided into those that pursue pleasure and those that remove pain. To the latter of the classes be- long the art of the priest as long as physical suffering is thought the work of the demons. But when these are imagined to pass into the airy region of moral infliction, and after them their redoubtable adversary, then the Medical art is separated from and left behind by the Reli- gious ; very much as the Mechanical remain the useful Tesidium, while the volatile JEsthetics play above them in a state of vapour. But for detailed explanation, see the sequel at large. These general hints are here thrown out for the sole convenience of any curious reader who may wish, for his own instruction or the purposes of criticism, to follow up the classification systematically. And to fa- vour farther a design so laudable, I must furnish him in .conclusion, with a universal test of the gradation. This in fact is already supplied both by reiterated ex- ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 167 ample in the analytic classifications of the preceding chap- ters, and in fine by precept in a late section (39), where it has been formally established, that things the most General, Concrete and Simple to conception are the most fundamen- tal in science, as well as the most common in nature. NoW 1 the principle holds alike of the Synthetic or practical order.. To agriculture, among the useful arts, those several epi- thets will all apply, if not indeed in the highest degree, at least in a higher than to manufacture ; and to this depart- ment again, in a higher than to commerce. Such is also- the rationale of comparative dignity and remuneration, fromi the lowest trades or pursuits of life to the highest. And' this application of the rule I am glad of an occasion to> impress, both upon a day of social transformation, when the- principle is much disputed, and upon a country where it is- more mischievously distorted than elsewhere, owing to the- absence of those natural counterweights that should regu- late the transition. The criterion-may then be described,- in the most palpable or concrete form, as progressing from the rudely muscular, through the artistical, along- to the. pragmatical or moral, and thence through the as- cending series of the intellectual powers. So says the universal order of nature, and the uniform instincts of mankind. But it is a mistake, it is a " monopoly," say some half- witted philanthropists. As men are all equal, so should! also be all callings ; and so ought therefore, their com- pensations, cry consistently the Communists. The usual reply to this is by sapping the grotesque sorites, and show- ing that these motley reformers make no account of the- capacities — which is doubtless to omit the part of Hamlet with a vengeance. Still I do not think the argument suf- ficient. For it might be rejoined and has been ; we grant you your author can produce a book ; but this day-labourer is more capable of producing a dinner; pray which is the- more necessary and consequently the more useful ; and if dignity be distributed by the exact inverse of this order, who can deny that the societies doing so need fundamental reconstruction ? Now the answer should distinguish ; it should concede that indeed the labourer would be more " necessary" and even " useful," than a poet or painter m the ruder stages of society. Just as a hunter or a warrior 1 168 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. would in turn, be more useful than a tiller of the land or tailor, in an Indian village. Or as a money-broker or hotel- keeper is actually a person of more consequence, than a statesman or a philosopher, in New- York. But the reason is, that these sorts of utility are better adapted to the seve- ral communities. The savage is fully gratified with his blanket or skin; the hind, with a bawdy ballad or a tra- velling panorama; and even the commercially civilized are much more intimately skilled in the quantity of dollars or the quality of dinners than in what they contemptuously call " abstractions," political or philosophical. The supe- riority here is real, then, and the exception only apparent, or of the sort which is said proverbially to prove the rule ; but it is relative to the community, and its condition of in- tellectual development. Whereas the utility which should determine the graduation of dignity is absolute, or only relative to the whole system of nature. In this system the retrogressively higher " necessity" of the ruder callings is progressively countervailed by the super-supply. Every man may be a day-labourer, as, may the ox and the ass. But how many mechanics and mo- ney-changers amalgamated together would supply the in- tegrity of a Cato or the genius of an Aristotle 1 "Would the world's subsequent forces, of mere muscle and money combined, be even equivalent, in shedding liberty and light upon posterity, to the life and death of the one, and to the writings of the other 1 Or rather, has not the tendency of the forces referred to been, to oppress and not to elevate ? Here then, as ever, the dignity is only proportioned to the utility. But this philo- sophical utility, in action or in thought, is of a grade too abstract, too complex for the comprehension of a Com- munist, who is by doctrine or perhaps development in that opposite extreme of mind where he dreams of building up the most intricate and aerial, so to speak, of structures, by strewing the stones, right democratically, along the surface of the surrounding plains. But though such visions beget folly and pretension in speculation, and violence and vulgarity in practice they cannot for any time prevent the common understanding from returning to the common order of nature. The in- horn rank of capacity is admitted always when under- ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 169 stood, and recurs even among hunters and hotel-keepers. It rules in the composition of the human body and intelli- gence, each articulation, each tissue, each atom, as well as idea, of which are kept harmoniously together by this grand subordination. It reigns, we have seen, in the se- veral aspects — material, mental and methodical — which make up the total course of creation. And finally it reg- ulates the counter aspect of civilization, throughout the three correlative stages of Arts, Institutions, Sciences. § 44. With this summary preparation the former two are here dismissed, to be resumed in ample detail in the ensuing investigation. But as the limits of the present design exclude the article of Sciences, belonging, as it mainly does, to an epoch but just commencing, it will be proper to state specifically the synthetic results in this final form, to be confronted with the foregoing, if not also with much that follows. And this is done by mere translation of our popular designations into the more specific and technical nomenclature. Turning then to the last diagram and the scientific series, we find the primitive section offer, successively :: Number, Quantity and Figure, which are equivalent to- Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry. In the second divi- sion : Force, Mixture, Structure, which tally equally with. Mechanics, Chemistry and Mineralogy. In the third :: Growth, Life and Intellection, where we recognize the- leading sciences called Botany, Biology, and what might perhaps be termed Ethology. The last, however, not in' the sense of its inventor, Mr. Mill, but, etymologically, to- denote the laws of moral propension and habitude, or Per- ception, while it is instinctive and confined to the Pro- cesses of our primary Series. To readers at all convers- ant with the history of modern science, the strict conform- ity of this succession will now be obvious at a glance. The novice, doubtless, will look distrustfully along this meagre catalogue, for the multitudinous olagies and ona- mies and ographies of his quack school books. He may be sure, however, they are*all enveloped in the nine packets aforesaid, that is, so far as not too impalpable or nonsensical for seizure, and with the slight exceptions or rather explanations, to be mentioned.. Of these the principal is the twofold division, above 15* 170 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATlOBf, denominated State and Change (§ 24), and which pervacfeg the entire series, though under different appellations. In the physical and middle department of the scale, where as usual the true character was first expanded into recogni- tion, the distinction is duly noted with etymological signi- ficance, by the familiar terms statics and dynamics. In the so called organic region, it takes the names of organ and function; although here, no doubt, the real identity re- mains no longer unapprehended. And at the other end, in mathematics, while not merely the identity, but the fact itself of the general division, is unrecognized, yet the distinction is recorded regularly, for instance, in such terms as numeral and symbolic Arithmetic, plain and ana- lytic Geometry, &c. Now, these two aspects of each of our categories are commonly rated as distinct sciences, and so the number is apparently doubled. Again, we know (§ 33), that each of these half sciences, as well as the whole, or more properly speaking, their subject pheno- mena, pass successively through three principal stages, which, by an orderly addition of the learned suffixes above named, appear to pass into the scientific muster- roll. Thus then are our nine sciences already chopped into fifty-four, and this without yet leaving the positive basis of reality. It is just as if nine persons should be distin- guished into bodies and souls, and then each section sub- partitioned into infancy, youth and manhood ; the total re- sult might suit the scale or the ostentation of a census, but the purposes of real science would send us back to the nine originals. Nay, worse still than this wretched dis- memberment — the confusion and curse of our day — is the rage of denomination, which is become its caricature. Scarce a step in empirical knowledge that is not dubbed with the name of science ; and even terms as empty as the heads that echo them make no small portion of the current cyclopedias. For this crude mistake is not confined, it seems, to theologians and metaphysieans r but may happen also to the metaphysical dabblers in science. I cannot, however, in* resolving this farrago into a few elements, be thought to narrow the extent of nature or overrate the completeness of science. The latter in the actual state as compared with its capa- bilities, I have repeatedly shown to resemble the " corn- ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 171 patches" of the wild Indianas, set in contrast with the garden culture of England or Belgium. But even here the difference was not effected by adding a foot to the original area; but by deepening and clearing and com- pounding the soil. So, too, of the extent of nature, which runs in the like direction, a direction of evolution where we clasp the rudiments from the beginning. And I must own that the commonplace rhapsodies — peculiar however to British philosophers—about the infinity, and anon the simplicity, of nature and of science, seem to me not only calculated to keep alive a dying mysticism in the minds at least of the popular readers, but also significant of pro- found ignorance in the authors themselves respecting that in which either the unity or the variety really lies. § 45. Be this, however, as it may, there still are scien- ces not named in our catalogue, and which very certain- ly do not belong to the spurious undergrowth just dispos- ed of. The reader looks for the great names of Astrono- my and Geology. Are these then excluded from the se- ries 1 and where without them is its completeness, or with themits consistency ? The dilemma is rather pressing. But unless the theory be capable not merely of escap- ing it by explanation, but of converting it into the usual triumph of unexpected harmony, I confess my confidence in theformer would be shaken even at this last hour. For it was in following faithfully its well-tried clue, in evolving the necessary not adjusting the actual, that the subjects in question have been omitted from the list of spe- cific sciences. But the analytic elements — material, mental, and me- thodical — of those sciences presented also, each and all, we saw, a Generic series ; and this consisted of three terms, subdivided each into as many categories, and standing to each other in the now familiar order, of successive origin and inclusion, which they transmitted, in turn, to the lower triads. Now these of course should have their analogues in the synthetic scale, and the identity would be detected by re- composing the specific elements. Is it possible that this, which is the next step in order, may result in the solution required ? In truth, the fact has been already intimated in relation to Astronomy, which I have somewhere called the pure embodiment of the three mathematical sciences. 172 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Its well-known subject matter is composed of number, quantity, figure, that is to say Motion dispersed, condens- ed, confronted ; or more familiarly, blank bodies as distri- buted in space, as exhibiting certain magnitudes or rather proportions of attractive force, and as possessing certain shapes, in joint consequence of which they coincide with an observed system of revolutions. Any thing more which is superadded concerning climate, soil, atmosphere, &c, is a superfaetation coarsely foreign to astronomy, and in fact but an analogical reflection from the physics of our own planet. Passing on then to this distinct division of the phenomenal scale, and putting together its three categories of pressure, mixture, structure; how, in the next place, does the compound tally with the province of Geology ? I dare challenge all the books on the subject in our lan- guage to furnish a definition at once so concise, complete, and characteristic. So far, therefore, nothing could, we see, be more felicitous. But where is the third term 1 For this there appears to be as yet no fixed name ; and doubtless because there is no definite conception of the thing. However, putting together our three remaining categories, namely, growth, life, and mind, it is not difficult to recognize in the synthetic result, the supreme organism called Society. For of what is Society constituted but of the vegetable, the animal, and the mental kingdorik com- bined 1 In fact, its unit, man, is composed of the alleged elements; and the sole difference is that in the latter case, they are gathered into a corpuscle, in the former diffused over a globe. They are not, however, for this, the less a unity ; any more than is the globe itself to which they ad- here. In this social unity they all play, in fact, an equally essential, though each a leading or progressively important, part. And this part is as universally in the strictest conformity to what I have so often described as the three mathematical forms of creation ; the vegetables in their fixed diffusion, corresponding to the Numerical ; the ani- mals in their loco-motional aggregations, to the Quantita- tive ; and the rational force in its reactive and combina- tive capacities, to the Figured or systematic formula. To limit society to man alone is therefore to pass the head for the' whole body. In the collective, as well as the personal instance, the one depends upon the other. Man ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 173 owes half his little civilization to the lower animals, and all animals their main subsistence to the vegetables. In fine, although the latter two may severally flourish, and have in fact so done for millions of ages* without society, yet society without them could never have had existence, and would now lose it 'within the space of a single moon. They are very decidedly then, its integral constituents. And we have found the complementary term of the series. For its science I shall adopt the recent name of Sociology. It may, however, be retorted that the vegetables stand in need of the soil, &c. ; and even the earth, in turn, in need of the sun and its system. Undoubtedly. But that is precisely what the theory demanded, in just reiterating the universal axiom that the posterior terms of a progressive series must always include the preceding. Thus does every new objection, as soon as it appears, turn out to be just the requisite awaited. § 46. There is, however, still another. It will be re- membered the law alluded also qualifies the mode of in- clusion ; it prescribes among other things, that every third term has, in consequence of being the rotatory axle of the evolution, the peculiarity of involving its pre- decessors under a generic denomination. Thus (to take the fresher instances) the third of the mathematical laws cannot be said to include the others in the special science of geometry — which, on the contrary, is an ideal abstrac- tion of figure from their society ; the inclusion takes effect and body but by passing upwards into Astronomy. So mineralogy " coils -up" chemistry and mechanics in no other wise than by resolving back its specific structures into the generic structure of Geology. And ethology or men- tal philosophy, or whatever else we choose to call it, em- braces botany and biology (pregnant themselves with the two anterior series) in only the aggregate expansion of So- ciology. It is clear, therefore, that this final science must include in turn its earlier fellows, in some still ulterior and more universal term. The question is as to whether our theory left this summum genus a supernumerary ] By no means ; but quite to the contrary. "We found the like in each of the analytic scales, where the three Predica- bles of matter were resolved into Relation, the three Princi- ples of mind into Perception, the three Systems of method 174 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. into Induction. Analogy then, if not identity, demands it in the Synthetic. What then can be this final formula ? No other than what this theory commenced with analyzing and establishing in the several elements, and then upon revers- ing the process into composition, has been led, we see, by a confluence of necessities, to re-produce — it is that science of Humanity to which I give the name of Civi- lization. The following table will sketch, though rudely, the whole Synthetic operation. I designed, for the reasons stated, to restrict it to the section of Sciences ; which alone I feel here prepared for presentation. I incline, however, upon second thought, to admit a skeleton of the rest — if only for symmetry, and to spare the reader the painful as- pect of incompleteness. But it may also aid in keeping so enormous a procession, in its general integrity, before the mind's eye. > CD a; h ». « ft a CM O V_ 21 S? 2P s * "Si s o f I— I N H O 21 Mi 176 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. It will be seen, I trust, without surprise that the course of ascension is here the opposite to that of the Analytical synopsis. They are, it is well known, the formal contra- ries of each other. I must own, however, there are a few terms in the sections of Arts and Institutions with which I am not, at this moment, myself, quite satisfied as to the series. But this, if not adjusted by the sequel of the pres- ent pages, must be left for some future occasion less dis- proportionate to the vast subject. I close, then, with a few reflections on the department of Systems. § 47. First : is the profound coincidence of the subject matter of the Generic Sciences with the description of the three Cycles of our general division 1 These were said (§ 8) to proceed : the first, upon the phenomena of external Nature — which is precisely the domain of Astronomy ; the second, upon Man, as sole explorer of internal Na- ture, his own of course, included — which is with equal truth the province of perfected Geology ; the third, upon both conjoined — which is the manifest sphere of Social Science. In fact this science remains impossible until both the constituent premises are sufficiently forward to dispel the prejudices that still conceal its very rudiments. Would you know why it is that, of all the sciences, Astronomy and Geology have alone given alarm to superstition ? The cause is told in words of light, by the progressional collocation, and the collective character, assigned those subjects in the above table. Astronomy some three cen- turies ago, and Geology two centuries later, have cut us loose, in fact, from the two principal of the theological moorings, which had chained us, the one, to a nook of space in the mud-hole of Erebus, and the other to a span of time in the Jewish annals of Eden ; and so swung free our fettered planet, or rather with it our creeping concep- tion, to range progressively through the two infinitudes of creation. And there is much to be still done, to the same purpose, even by the older and easier of these sciences. But it must be through a new conception of the subject. Astronomy contains the anterior complement to the form- ative series of Geology. We can scarce hope to pierce the earth below the organic epochs. But here precisely the line is continued in the tolerably ascertainable state ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 177 of the moon ; already referred to as perhaps exemplifying the mechanico-chemical formations. Of the preceding or mathematical stages, two at least are supplied by the comets. And even the " nebular" or Numerical or atomic state of fiery vapour, which is reasonably thought to still prevail throughout the central parts of our globe, may it not be studied, if no where else (1), in the flaming atmosphere of the sun, where the calorific matter would be forced above the surface (or evolved as the phrase is) by the vast pressure : a pressure so inconceivably enor- mous.as not to be imaginably diminishable by a weight equal to that of whole planets at. any other point of the system ; a pressure in fact, not merely within the compass of the sun itself, of all the parts of that solid universe towards the centre, but the pressure, superadded and similarly concentrated, of the incumbent mass of planetary worlds. But I only meant to indicate how the less explored walks of Astronomy are destined to conduct us through the dark- er avenues of Geology ; and thus to prepare the latter, in turn, to react, at the other extremity, upon the grand out- standing " mystery" of organic life. Of this also we are doubtless provided with the natural analysis, awaiting but a new Copernicus to conceive it. The feat will form the grand prologue to our third generic science. It will be the openingof the " last seal," and must make a revelation or a revolution unprecedented by its predecessors, in the modes of human conduct and conception. The result, we may be sure, will again restore primeval nature to the moral centre of the universe, as before to the material ; and send man himself, with his petty vanities of free volition and intellection (as formerly his petty planet with the sun and stars for its circling satellites) to wheel around her throne in lines as fatal as, and but more fickle than, the kindred clay upon which he treads. Thence will follow a completer notion of his cosmical position and natural duties ; which give, in turn, its positive basis to the general science I call Sociology. Both the generic position and exhaustive compass which, (1) May not certain phenomena of our own atmosphere contribute something to this end 1 And also the chaotic condition of meteorology itself, might it not be profited, for instance, by a classification of clouds, upon the basis of our mathematical formula! ? 16 178 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. in broad exception to the current arrangements, have been now assigned to those three departments of science are, then, attested by some of the most remarkable phenomena of its history. But something more curious still, though no more than duly consistent, is their nice agreement with the threefold form of our fundamental principle. For have we not the first or Numerical form in the individual objects of Astronomy; the Quantitative or elongated, in the stratifications of Geology ; and the third, or Figured stage, in the province of Sociology, which, by reaction (§ 26), rounds the whole into a system 1 And this mention of the last term recalls the crowning congruity of all, namely, that of the' supreme stages of Civilization. For the three types which have now been followed through the whole series of known creations ; which left their foot- steps, in Astronomy, from the nebular to the globular state ; in Geology, from pressure to polarity ; in the so called organic sciences, from the simple cells of the vege- table to the nervous circuits of the higher animals, and particularly in physical man, from the ganglia to the brains— these three modes, I say, of all existence and conditions of all progression are no less manifest in the social structures of Arts, Institutions, and Sciences; nay, these are in fact, respectively the ganglia, the spinal chord, and the cerebal convolutions of the Social body. (1) (1) In the work before referred to, of Baron Von Riechenbach, I observe in a note of the translator (Dr. Ashburner) the following state- ment, of the full import of which neither he nor the maker of the ex- periment seems to have had the least imagination, and which in fact is only to be comprehended from the theory in the text. " My friend Mr. Cross has devised a very pretty illustration of this fact, which at once exhibits the modifications effected by an obstruct- ing medium on light and the material nature of this imponderable. He takes three sufficiently strong cylinders of glass, properly capped with brass, and furnished with convenient stop-cocks. These are each first placed in relation with an air-pump. Then A is to be ex- hausted by the greatest power of the pump ; B to a degree sufficient to give one inch greater pressure of the barometric gauge : C to give two inches greater pressure than A and one inch greater than B. They are to be screwed one upon another, A being uppermost. An electric shock is to be passed through the whole, from A downwards, in the dark. A will appear filled with one uniform cylinder of purple flame ; B with parallel columns of a reddish purple flame ; and ithrough C will paBS a falling STAR." (p. 444). Whether for exact conformity of similitude and series, or the pecu- ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 17& § 47. But is it that Society has a nervous system, a thinking organ in the literal sense, and apart from that of the component individuals 1 I am forced to answer that the intimation was no poetic comparison, but a logical deduction from the entire tenor of the exposition. Yet this conclusion is at once so singular and so momentous in its full import, that I should probably have hesitated to draw it for myself, certainly to declare it to the public, at the instance of any weaker exigencies and assurances than the following. In the first place, amid the established urgency for the- reformation of the entire scale, the modes of classifying man in particular are quite disgraceful to the state of" Science. For to cut him up into two or three beings, animal, moral, rational, &e., is scholastic or mystical non- sense. So arbitrary a procedure would be hooted as absurd in the study of any other object in the universe - r for in all the study is mainly concerned with the condi- tions of integrity in which they have been presented by nature. The complexity of these conditions is not un- ravelled by coarse division ; which, in this case, would oblige to continue the partition of the human species into vegetable, chemical, mechanical, geometrical. The analy- sis results spontaneously from the eliminations of a proper scale, which reserves to each succeeding class but its differ- ential character. Now this is found in man to be the law, I name ethology, meaning the property of modifying the various instincts according to usage. By this he is clearly demarkated from the conterminous class of animals, and in the normal mode of graduation-^-hy a distinction of mere degree. But then there remained other gradations, su- perior to individual man, and apparently so diverse as to be commonly thought incongruous ; there were mental- processes, there were social institutions, there were scien- tific systems. How then were these residual grades to- be reduced within the scale, and still leave man his pre- scriptive position of pre-eminence 1 The difficulty had liarly refined consistency of the subject matter, perhaps entire nature could not furnish a more conclusive, more crucial, instance than is- revealed in this threefold result, of the creative law to which I have done such imperfect justice for the present. 180 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. but one alternative, either by multiplying the natures of the subject, or merging the degrees of the phenomena. The former is the general procedure just alluded to, and is chargeable, in addition to the classificatory uncouthness, with a twofold and manifest absurdity ; I mean the attri- bution, to the same species, of two or three orders of phe- nomena, which are reputed by such writers themselves to be heterogeneous if not incompatible, and the attribution of the phenomena in question to the particular species man, not one individual of which exhibits any of them naturally, nor one in ten thousand ever exhibits the whole at all. It was doubtless in shrinking from these montrosi- ties, on the one hand, and on the other, seeing the ne- cessity of some positive organism wherein the rational and social functions must take place, that the other horn of the dilemma, — the amalgamation of diversities, — has been incurred by even the foremost philosopher of our age. M. Comte, in fact, refers the moral and intellectual opera- tions to the category of mere natural or physical man, but under the designation of Social Physics. There is no man whose decision I would longer hesitate to call in question. To him is due, as I took the earliest occasion to acknowledge, the fundamental principle of this book, — although, beyond the grand idea (which has been ex- plained, as well as unfolded and applied after my own fashion), there is nothing else, it may be equally proper to declare, the responsibility of which I dare call upon the author to share, and still less, upon any other, among this living or the dead. But with all this prepossession, I was forced to doubt him in this arrangement. The doubt was in fact supported by the general condemnation of critics ; and finally, what I deemed more authoritative, by the dissatis- faction of the classifier himself, which has been intimated, as I understand, in some of his recent publications. From these various considerations, pointing concurrently and conclu- sively to the existence of some organic substance, of an order superior to individual man, I have been careful, it may be recollected, in leaving the latter at the head of the scale, not only to limit his properties to the mental Processes of the first stage, but to qualify his position by declaring it rela- tive to the recognized terms. I felt throughout there was still a term, the final term, unrecognized. And if I was ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 181 wrong, it must be owned that this publication has been planned, like so many of its predecessors, without a subject. For I proposed to sketch Humanity as an individual being, of which the organism was Society and the func- tioning Civilization. Judge then my delight to find our all-including social science, and even the Arts and Institu- ' tions which preceded and prepared it, detruded logically from the actual catalogue of positive existences, and left to roam, like the Platonic archetypes, in quest of concrete embodiment. As this in fact was a sort of remainder that could not have well subsisted, like the contingent ones of the feudal lawyers "in the clouds," the grand embodi- ment was now presented as spontaneously, inevitably. Of course it had never been absent save in the prejudices of men themselves ; nor present in their proper persons, save in a kindred illusion. Towards dispelling this double error of perspective and presumption, I beg to offer, in conclusion, the following plain suggestions. It is plain, then, that the Social system is a thing as positive, as real, and even as natural in the strictest sense as any one of its constituent elements. It is, too, as inti- mately and much more exquisitely organized. Not to men- tion here its finer tissues, are not individuals, classes, com- munities, — from city to city throughout the most extensive countries, and from country to country even across inter- vening oceans, — set in motion through the cold commercial' nerves of the telegraph, no whit less surely or sensitively than is the physical arm, by the application of fire to the- fingers, or than were the locomotive muscles by the panic terror of the ancient shepherds? Does not a Parisian. " emeute" send a convulsion throughout entire Europe as infallibly and almost as instantly as an inflammation of the brain does throughout the body natural ? A short cotton crop at our own South, or com crop at the West, excite a fever at Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, just as normally as the limbs experience a quite analogous fermentation from a derangement of the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal 1 But the component atoms of the social body are,, you say, so free, so far apart. Are they so far apart as the stars of yonder nebula, which, though separated by perhaps millions of times the span of our solar system,, 16* 182 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. you yet confuse into the consistence of a vapour ? Are they apparently so independent as the planet particles of the latter system, which, in spite of sense, you now admit to be bound together by the strictest unity ?, Are they so segregate and self-sufficient as the component elements of even our own globe, which you agree are all united in the single system of Geology 1 And how should it have been, otherwise in the subject of Sociology, with its immensely higher degrees of complication ? On the other hand, to the worms that find their prey in the human body, what a multitudinous and many-laned London must be the abdo- men of an alderman ; and the several systems of tissues, what a succession of worlds. And even the mote that be- gins to float in the rising tear-drop of a maiden's eye, no doubt beholds within its crystal concave a relative expanse of objects and distances, no less immeasurable, than the visible universe of man. So entirely are all the aggregates of nature a thing of relation, and most our human errors a consequence of position. It is then this position that interferes with the recogni- tion of our real condition as mere molecular elements of the social organism. The particles of all other bodies would doubtless see themselves in the same light, suppos- ing they had man's vision and" vanity. It is known as a matter of fact that all are equally porous in proportion to the size of their corpuscles ; that, for instance, Humanity is as much a unit, a solid, in comparison with the more complicated corpuscles which compose it, as these are, indi- vidually,in respectto their component atoms. It is moreover known that among the latter there is really never an ap- proach to contact; there is a loose fluxion and defluxion, a composition and decomposition, carried on within a certain periphery which we call the human figure. Now put men instead of molecules, and the definition applies as well to what we daily see take place in the larger system called Society, and what was sung, some thirty centuries since, respecting aggregate generations, by the Celtic and sub- lime melancholy of the Homeric bard. What, in fact, are new generations but those renovations of the body politic which are computed to take place, in the natural, in periods of about seven years 1 And the number of the former cycle, whenever determined accurately, will doubtless be ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 183 found a multiple of the latter. So purely, in fine, is the difference in question, a thing of vision of mere degree, we cannot doubt that, to the eye of a mite, the fluctuation of elements in the physical body would appear as free, as far apart, and I had almost said as self-directed, as do the movements of society to the eye of the philosopher. For we may test the thing with human vision in a community of ants or bees : regarded at a certain distance, they might seem a mass as fixed and solid as the particles of any por- tion of the human body; approach them nearer, and they open into busy but confused motion ; examine attentively, and you will discern the most orderly activity, rejecting, replacing, repairing, augmenting, — -just the same as, no doubt, the atoms of a healing sore or a digesting stomach. I am aware it is not so flattering to scientify men into atoms, as if, with others, I were to mystify them into angels. But I can only regret to find it impossible to humour them in this serious matter, consistly with their own interest and that of truth. The most absurd part of the illusion, however, is by no means this non-perception of the organic unity of Hu- manity ; it is the usurpation of the specific attributes of the whole, by each of the parts. It is again (to resume the analogy) as if the particles of the physical body were pretended each to possess the properties which result alone from the combination. It quite inverts the most extensive and important principle in nature, namely — that matter is but a sort of fulcrum, and Form, that is, figured Motion or more familiarly organization, is the great efficient force throughout the Universe. And hence the confusion above remarked, in attributing to individual man what is termed a moral and rational essence. "Whereas these are truly attributes developed by the higher being, towards which mankind as individuals hold the uniform relation of plat- form ; however eminently organized themselves in respect to the downward grades of the scale. The principle in this case is also plain from observation. It must be need- less now to argue that neither Reason nor even Reflection, nor consequently Speech, as distinguished from brute lan- guage, is possible to man as individual. This is implied in respect to language, the least equivocal of the three facul- ties, in the very epithet usually given it, of conventional. 184 VESTIGES or CIVILIZATION. It is also seen that savages speak little and reluctantly, and the more so as they remain the nearer to simple nature. Even the civilized will, it is said, by long solitude lose the faculty ; and it is certain the congenitally deaf can never gain it. Man is, therefore, born a talker or a thinker no more than he is born a tailor or theologian. He becomes the latter only by studying in a cloth-shop or a college. But so does he become the former but by being brought up in a society. Nor can the fallacy of final causes pre- tend these qualities to be at all necessary to the subsistence, preservation, or propagation of the species. On the con- trary, most of this seems to go on rather better, in men in- capable of reason or reflection ; as it also does in the lower animals, where instinct is found sufficient. Society, on the other hand, could not live an instant without one or both. Its mere existence implies an exercise of reflection ; for the selfish individualism of instinct tends to isolate ; whereas reflection begets sympathies, and sympathies association. It is Society then, that can, alone, be said to have been born wilh the attributes specified. I need not insist that it was also born a moralist and politician. From all this, therefore, I confess I find the conclusion irresistible, that there is a being of a new order to be placed at the head of the scale ; a being of which the con- stituent elements are the mass of human individuals, of which the distinguishing attributes are language, reflection, reason, and whose organic structure is composed of arts, institutions and sciences. There exists but a single object to which any of these characters belong by nature ; that object is the social system, and as I have universalized and personified it under the name of Humanity. Nor would this new species differ otherwise from the proxi- mate class of ethological man, than according to the gene- ral law of the natural series, that is to say, in being more special, more abstract, more complex. Indeed, its only (but an unessential) peculiarity in point of principle is the circumstance of being sole of its kind ; and thence, the ne- cessity of propagating by a succession of metamorphoses or a series of layers like the banyana. These are, in fact, the phenomena we call the decline, darkness, revival and migration of Civilization. So that, instead of being even new, except in the present conception of it, this species, ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSAL METHOD. 185 though the latest, is of great human antiquity. Is it not the phcenix of mythic history realized and recognized ? Crawling, primevally, for countless ages, is the forms of family, tribe, caste ; developed after, in the sword of the conqueror, the bible of the priest, and the code of the law- giver, to the gaudy expanse of an empire and the mobile unit of a nation, it was finally organized in the shape of city or republic, progressively by agriculture, by arts, by institutions. Through all these forms and at various intervals, as well of distance as of time, it expired and revived successively, from the scattered ashes of its own pyre, on the banks of the Granges, of the Nile, the Ilyssus, and the Tybur. Along the latter favorite river it has lin- gered down to modern ages, in the political song of Virgil and the eloquent wisdom of Cicero. It hovers, in our days, around the banks of the sunny Seine, on the eagle pinions of mental freedom and scientifical philosophy ; and hold- ing in its beak a scroll, -wherein the nations may read, on high, the worthy motto of the Gallic race, if not also of the French republic ; that noble three-worded device which at once scientifies to the philosopher, (1) and symbolizes to the people, the organic energies of the social system, the true trinity of the true God. A still grander resurrection perhaps awaits it, in future ages, in the more majestic val- ley of our own Mississippi; where, after moulting the generations of pedlers and politicians, and expanding into proportions befitting the father of flowing waters, it may soar to the visual amplitude of universal science, and so survive for evermore, in perennial vigor and virescence. Meanwhile we shall best contribute to so noble a consum- mation by dropping metaphor and resuming the subject in its literal aspect of mechanism — that more precise and fami- liar image by which the reader has been often aided in fol- lowing clearly the trackless mazes of the foregoing analysis, and which will also be found commodious in the ensuing application. (1) It is surely the very climax of singular confirmation to find ex- pressed and even arranged in these popular watehwords of the coming era, the social identity of our three mathematical formula}. But such is clearly the case. For Liberty imports the diffusive, the Numerical condition ; Equality, the distributive, the proportional, the Qantitative ; Fraternity, the associative, the organizing or Figured stage. 186 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. For the latter task we seem now prepared. Already the theory stands established upon such a volume and variety of evidence, and fortified by such a system — com- pact, complete and complicate — of accumulated demon- stration upon demonstration, as perhaps no theory, however true, has been ever tested by before. This superfluity appeared advisable on several accounts ; such as the mag- nitude of the subject, the novelty of the views, but above all the nature of a certain critical class of readers, who — to shirk a truth, which it is not pleasant to their prepos- sessions to be brought to know, or which may ask the effort of some consecutive attention to comprehend — .have a set of complacent and commonplace phrases, half concession and whole condemnation, by which they compound with the common decency of giving a reason for their rejection, and reconcile at once the exigencies of candour and con- ceit. But I trust the cant about "fanciful analogies," "plausible reasoning," "ingenious hypotheses," &c, &c, is what no serious reader of the foregoing pages will have the face to even mutter, — that is, indeed, if he have behind it a brain above a monkey's. Thus, provided, then, with a general map of all the regions and the routes of know- ledge ; with an exact plan or section of the organ, the en- gine of knowing ; and thirdly, with a complete syllabus of the modes of working and of steering it, is there no requisite as yet remaining to set the social car in motion 1 Yes, assuredly and obviously. For with only the grand compartments of the machinery thus far enumerated, with merely motion, mind and method brought together face to face, there could have been neither civilization, nor so- ciety, nor knowledge, nor even man in the world. This one thing wanting, then, is simply the propelling power called Motive. ANALYSIS OF MOTIVE. 187 CHAPTEK IV. Analysis of Motive. § 48. As the human mind was seen to have but two preliminary principles of intellection, in attaining the full perception of Science, so has it consequently but two similarly previous principles of estimation, in attaining to the true perception of Duty. They are, also, alike alter- nate and antagonistic in both the processes, and in both alike co-operative to one harmonious end. To take a homely but happy simile from the philosophic Hudibras, their competition is like the strife between the human legs in walking. Indeed they might be called the legs of our mammoth social body, by which are executed those loco- motions, mental and mora], named Progression. In the mental or speculative order, we found them to be Resemblance and Difference ; otherwise styled induc- tion and analysis, or in the phrase of Locke, who perhaps first discerned them, agreement and disagreement. In the moral and practical order, they are Desire of Pleasure and Aversion to Pain. Our deduction here is sustained, as usual, by the honest instinct of popular language. All objects known to excite the two sentiments in question are classed and called, respectively, " good " and " evil ;" and with these would be found synonymous, under various degrees of distinctness, all the adjectives of a " moral" im- port in all the idioms of the Earth. The indistinctness, too, is itself confirmatory, and was occasioned in this ob- vious way. At first the qualities of Pain and Pleasure were considered absolutely, and of course so called. But with their passage to the stage of Relation, through the pro- gress of man himself, they were viewed relatively to du- ration, to degree, to consequences, &c, and the predomi- nance of either in such respects would then determine the denomination. This procedure would be noted by a se- ries of modificative terms. But the fundamental qualities would still be called e^jl and good. These, accordingly, we have seen personified into the proper appellations of the two theological authors of all bounty and malignity. 1S8 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. § 49. Of this dualism and character of all motive there is still a more significant illustration. In the logical duality of Resemblance and Difference, we identified in the pre- ceding chapter, the same peculiar or polaric opposition of direction which had been traced up through all organized existence. To every reader, no doubt, on my mere mention of pleasure and pain as the sole motives, it has occurred, that here was the mental or moral polarity of man and of Society. Nowhere indeed is the principle more palpable. For where is the pole more plainly negative or repulsive than Pain 1 more positive and attractive than Pleasure ? So in the Social body, also; where, we found, the names to be Evil and Good. The modification then remarked in the formation of language, is an effect of the constant tendency of the former of these polarities towards con- formity with the latter or Social. The aggregate strife between them would furnish a fundamental explanation of most the disputed problems of ethics and politics ; the variations, dipping and disturbances of the moral needle, which are perfectly analogous to those of the geologi- cal. But this is not the present object. 1 was only to show that they have all proceeded from one or other of two motives, that these motives are Pain and Pleasure in reference to individuals, but when generalized in a socie- ty are called Evil and Grood, and that they are respec- tively the physical and the moral poles of the two ob- jects. § 60. How indeed can we question that they are not merely the supreme, but sole motives in the temporal or- der of things, when we find them to be so in even the spiritual 1 For through what other motives than hope and fear (the subjective aspects of polarity) are we appealed to by the divine author himself of our being and religion, who certainly should best know the composition of his crea- ture man ] Yet, knowing us, he does not trust to even the half-generous sentiment of our gratitude for his services in the past, all infinite as we profess to believe them. He knows that gratitude is still but selfishness in the attitude of a rower, who looks towards the past, but works towards the future. What fellow-mortal then can be conceived to inspire the motives called " generous ;" or can pretend that any such are really accessible to the breast of man, if ANALYSIS OP MOTIVE. 189 he who is the essence of all that is lovable, for its own sake and ours, has scarce affected to address himself to any impulse of the kind ; but has seen, it seems, the necessity of constraining us to love him by a double and most des- perate appeal to our selfishness. But what are these two incentives ] Why, precisely our two motives, of good and evil, or two poles of the moral world, or to speak in theo- logical style, the joys of Heaven and the torments of Hell. § 51. In short, this pretended unselfishness of motive is, to any mind of clear conception, what might be called in polite French a contresens. Or, in blunt English, it is a greater absurdity than the perpetual motion. When selfishness becomes duly enlightened, it must coincide in effect with all that is valuable or moral in self-devotion, patriotism and the rest. But even then it will be selfish- ness still ; the object or the view, not the motive will have shifted ; the position, not the property, of the poles will have changed. Meanwhile the fabulous disinterestedness of patriotism, love, friendship, &c, is but either the cant of the hypocrite or the creed of the dupe. In fact, persons of the former character would in general be found, I think, to have been the loudest champions of a " moral sense," in all its shadings. The most numerous advocates of this system of ethics, in its meridian of the last cen- tury, were Scotchmen ; a nation not proverbial for disin- terestedness or dupability. And as to the dupe, the only plea can be that he is not conscious of a selfish motive. But is his obtuseness to cancel the existence of the mo- tive which he fails to discern, and to convert, moreover, an immoral into a moral action ? If absence of consciousness be tantamount to absence of selfishness, then the animals who act from instinct must be the most " disinterested" of beings ; and the ass that serves its taskmaster be account- ed more unselfish — heroically, morally, spiritually, and the rest — than even a lover, a patriot, or a philanthropist. Proceed we, then, at last to put our equipped engine- ry in motion over the, human track of ages, and in the winding train of History. 11 PART II. . ETIOLOGY OF HISTORY. MTKODUCTORY. § 52. The incipient step in order is, to assign, on the page of the past, the three Cycles of our general division, Mythological, Metaphysical, and Scientific. In attempting this I do not affect a strict precision of demarkation which, had I the means to determine nicely, it would need a volume to elucidate. Moreover the object of this slight publication is not to give a set explanation of history. The purpose is to employ history — taken in its only undisputed character, that of a collection of facts — for the inductive verification of the foregoing theory. The latter, after receiving this utmost additional sanction of which any scientific truth is susceptible, will be the very organ required, wherewith to proceed with due authority to the ulterior task of interpretation. Not that our pre- liminaries of proof may not be expected to shed mean- while a profound light upon the principal questions still in darkness or dispute. Such a consequence is implied in fact in their efficacy as evidence ; and is my warrant for the title at the head of this page, which signifies, I may add, the doctrine of the causation of the past. I only wish it remembered that history is merely documentary, merely instrumental, in my plan, whatever may incidentally result from the performance. And this I premise, beside the con- jBTIOLOGT of history. 191' sideration of a definite outline, in order to prevent the pos- sible objection, that I do not account for this or that epoch, or event, or. institution. In the spirit of this distinction it also is that I feel at discretion to proceed with such of those historical documents as memory may supply ; which, for the rest, ought to be the principal, the most pregnant, or as Bacon would say the " prerogative," instances. But the same consideration of sufficiency or suitableness to the project, not only permits but prescribes that I should con- sult in the distribution of it, the point of view the most familiar to the general reader. I am willing therefore to include in the first or Mytho- logical Cycle, the aggregate career of humanity down to> the advent of the Christian religion. The predominance of the second or Metaphysical Cycle may be conceived as' terminating with the seventeenth century of our era. The' third or Scientific Cycle must by consequence be consi- dered as only commencing its visible emergence ; accord- ing to the statement, then a postulate, which introduced* my Introduction. § 53. This distribution, we are further to note, is irre- spective both of geography and chronology. It proceeds upon the principle of mental development in the species ; is graduated upon the main progression of Civilization. Ac- cordingly, most communities, not only of the present day but for indefinite ages to come, will find their place in the primitive section. So the second act of this great drama is still confined, almost exclusively, to the theatre or Europe and its colonies. While only the leading nations of the fprmer, and in these but a very limited number of individuals, have yet attained, at least systematically,. to.the- Scientific point of view. For the human intellect, as wilE be after evident, is scarce at present escaping, in even its: ripest representatives, from the second stage of develop- ment. While the leading minds in most communities, and 1 the multitude of course in all, lie strewn back along the penumbra of ontological adolescence, or enveloped in the " palpable obscure" of theological infancy. All this, moreover, at intervals which vary without limit, through not only the degrees of the three Conceptual Forms, but also through the divisions and subdivisions of the pheno- menal scale; and thus exhibiting a scene not unlike the* 192 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. ghosts on the Stygian lake, described as rari nanles in gurgite vasto, and who symbolized in fact this process of purgation. (§ 41.) Practically, then, the collective procession of our Cycles is not exhibited in an order distinctly successive in time or place. This can only happen in an individ- ual mind, or in the abstract individuality of the species. The real state of the operation with respect to a particular country or age, and thus to all ages and countries collec- tively, should therefore be conceived under the diagonal form of the following scheme. This were in fact the most philosophic mode of stating all classification, while the science is in a state of transition or incompleteness ; for the diagonal may be regarded as a proximate or average line of truth between the peremptory extremes of the vertical and horizontal. Even the mere analytic lists of our three elemental scales should be so drawn out when we would contemplate them in the real conditions of their develop- ment. But this being now the purpose in reference to the Cycles, the arrangement becomes indispensable to the comprehension of the series. It does so, indeed, in full proportion as the terms here are supremely multiplex and thus protend a larger margin, so to say, for overlapping each other synchronously. The synchonism of the evolu- tions in question, might then be figured in this manner : Mythological Cycle. .... . . 1 Mythological Cycle, Metaphysical Cycle. . • . 2 Mythological Cycle, Metaphysical Cycle, Scientific Cycle. . 3 Metaphysical Cycle, Scientific Cycle. . . 4 Scientific Cycle. . 5 This simple scheme, of five zones of coetaneous concep- tion, or as Kepler would have said (synonymously ?) the five regular Solids of man's universe, includes and delineates all the diversities of mental condition which maybe found at the same time among the different classes of the same nation or the different nations of the earth, and at succes- sive times in the same people or the whole race ; even as the five geographical zones of the physical globe com- prise of course, all its varieties of climate and produc- tion, and here too, it is curious to add, because of an obli- quity of revolution. Thus the first line and Cycle would ^ETIOLOGY OP HISTORY. 193 contain all savage and barbarous countries. The second would describe Europe at the Scholastic epoch of the middle ages. The third represents the extreme motliness of its general mind at the present moment, when meta- physic"hold; we see, the middle place of predominance. No community would as yet be found completely within the fourth zone, except it be France, which has nearly sloughed off even the popular superstition. As to the fifth, it is all in the grand future, and is the Paradise which the philosopher comes to prove, not prophesy, to man- kind. With those few explanatory precautions against misapprehension, we however now return to the simple series of these terms ; which may be still reproduced from the diagram by only reading the second and third as if they were shifted, either upwards into the horizontal line, or backwards into the vertical, at present occupied by the overlapping. § 54. There would remain a like notification respecting Motion and Method. But the order being in all correla- tive, I may refer to the Mental sample. As, however, the forms of Method must be the salient tests of our verification,, it may be proper to present them, in this unfamiliar though the natural order, to the eye as well as the intellect of the- reader. To economize space I resume the series in con- tinuation of the Cyclical diagram, and must also confine it to' the class of methods I have termed the Generic. Of these it will be remembered there are three to each Cycle, making nine in all. But the triad of the primary period,, namely, nomenclature, terminology, and syntax, are visibly to be regarded as the mere materials of method, not meth- ods themselves in any proper or practical, sense. It was accordingly in this way that the general term of mythology was transferred, as before remarked, to the initial method 1 of divinification. The remaining six, being thus provided; with the means of operation, are found to rise and to re- volve within all three of the Conceptual cycles, upon the- same principles of succession and synchronism, as follows ;: m Q O H 0) o Oh K B O O '% o eg 'g V ■ rH CI « a o 'I o eg '3 > | cJ o efi • r-H S 'So o 1-3 S3 ■s o r5 r2 tS > © .2 ° ■a -a >-> >-> CO 02 o o d pS 1 r£* r£* o3 eC cd a a a < < < 'So 'So o o J i-3 '(JO © ■5 o a, B I. * B O I* a (3 M o 50 O fi a o u Vbrb. Preposition ; Adverb ; "Conjunction — Have. § 61. But it may be still asked, whence the raw ma- terials, so to speak, in which those multiform modifica- tions received their audible and after visible embodiment ? I repeat from the Interjection alone ; as is demonstrated by its primal position in the series. This, indeed, is a complete reversal of the ordinary position. But that is not my fault. It is the fantasy of the philologers, who not un- derstanding these half-formed vocables, threw them down, in desperation, perhaps, to the bottom of their vacillating lists. Finding them duly unanalyzable (from the contrary ultimacy now assigned), and also expressive of mere bodiless emotions ; but forgetting that emotions or sen- sations are the roots of knowledge, and consequently 212 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. their signs the source of all naming, the grammarians imagined the Interjections to be something barren and beatific ; a . sort of Vestal virgins of Language, which were confined to the sighing solitude of the human heart alone, even as their Roman and Christian prototypes had been consecrated to heaven. The procession must have occurred in this wise. Indication, the end of all language, was first effected by gesture, the gesture of pointing in case of an object, of imitating when an action. This is the notable " language of Action ;" of which all primitive nations retain the his- torical tradition — though, strange to say, without remem- bering a trace of the language of Eden. Even in the most civilized communities it is repeated to this day, both instinctively and artificially, for explanation or for empha- sis. And if the word of Demosthenes be not taken for its efficacy, we may conceive its capabilities, from the deriva- tive art of pantomime. To the troglodyte, however, it could manifestly serve no further than the objects were active or present, and the indicator also visible or tangible. What then was to be done in case of darkness or of distance? Nature had, as usual, the expedient in preparation. Accompanying the indicative gestures, there had been from the beginning a certain suitably varied utterance of the voice, itself a synergic gesture of the internal organ of the tongue, and which, after long observation, under guidance of a com- mon sympathy, would from supplement, become substitute to the merely muscular signs. This is the spontaneous origin of the language of Speech, and which accordingly took its name of Verb, from the air-beating action of the vocal organ. This phonetic class of signs were the sort of vocables called interjections. Originally they were all significant and monosyllabic, for the utterances were impulsive, and the notions individual. The vocal composition com- menced with articulation, and articulation was initiated in this way. The interjections, like the gestures they had been suited to and supplanted, were of two kinds, accord- ing as they signified by suggestion or by imitation. Now the imitation by means of voice, was applied to objects emitting mythoiogicaJ. cycle. 213 sound, whether naturally or by voluntary provocation. And as many such sounds would be more or less com- plex, the effort to characterize them must exercise the vocal organs into the requisite flexibility to respond, by articulation, that is a jointing of the signs, to the nascent progress of the intellect in combining the things intended. But, meanwhile, it did much more. It is the process which supplied the substantive or primary stratum of Speech. This fact is strikingly recorded in its Greek title of onomatopeia, that is to say name-making by excellence, as if this had been the only method. And in truth a full third of the nomenclature of the great Indo-Germanic family of languages, is found traceable, at this day, to the devise of vocal imitation. The reader need not be cautioned against the absurdity of the rhetoricians, who lug this onomatopeia into the long catalogue of their " figures," not doubting that man had been an orator, not to say a talker, from the egg. But this vocal picturing, so to -call it, was a name- making, as the etymology strictly denotes. It represented the Verb in the statical aspect, and so producing the spe- cific forms which I class as the Denominative. But these appellatives by imitation, while mere substances were their object, must have also been inclusive, indeed, ex- pressive, of action. This duplexity is the happy hinge whereby was joined to die first formation the secondary layer of vocables, those of sympathy, of suggestion; and which, indicating subjectively, personally, oppositely, that is to say by limitation, by definition of external ob- jects, compose the pronominal class of particles I call ©eterminative. They also present the Verb in its more abstract, its dynamical phases, and thus furnished to Speech the other element of antagonism, which enabled it alternately to follow and to forward Thought, in its pro- gress of combination, of composition. 1. The Verbal composition, of course proceeding, like its mental counterpart, from Concrete to Abstract, must offer three successive methods. In the first, the in- terjectional elements would be jumbled into rude groups, without other rule than a due mixture of the two descrip- tions. The rest must be determined by the casual group- ing of the objects, in their casual relation to the particular 19 214 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. speaker, who was, of course, a principal part, and whose sole effort was to string together the several names of the more impressive, by the process of articulation which he had learned from onomatopeia, and so produce a like but complex vocal picture by Aggregation. Of this we have, as shown above, a full and familiar example in what have been termed by the very worthy but not very profound Dr. Du Ponceau, the " polysynthetic" idioms of the Ameri- can-Indian savages. Several of these, however, appear to have reached a coarse commencement of inflexion, the destined route to the second stage of composition. 2. Here the process was, pf course, by series, as in the former stage by groups. The catenation, the limitation, must be first applied to the end, or suffixed, as the phrase is, to the name to be modified; hence the moveable, tex- tile, and transitive composition styled conjugation, declen- sion, comparison, &c. But the terminations or suffixes being Determinative particles, the composition is thereby closed in this direction for the time, and must therefore resort to the other extremity, by the thence called mode of prefixes. And this expedient is rendered possible by the fortunate ambiguity pointed out in the Denominative or primary class of vocables, and by which, as soon as their elliptical and active signification is concluded or rendered static, so to speak, at the one end, the dynamical affinity is presently turned to the other side, to invite a new accre- tion of the pronominal definitives. Hence the formation called " inseparable" pronouns, participles, articles, and which had advanced to some extent in the American-In- dian languages, but is brought out more characteristically in the less barbarous Hebrew. It is in this way, too, that the article, supposed to be absent in both those instances, is concretely involved in the pronominal prefixes — thus adding a demonstration of the theory now submitted, which ranges the pronoun as progenitor of the whole line, and the article as its generalized expression. The pro- geniture and progression in a somewhat later stage are presented in, for instance, the Latin, where the pronoun had disengaged itself from the thraldom of prefixation, but still remained a substitute for the article. Such is also the grammatical condition of the Russian idiom ; which is ac- cordingly an exact analogue of that so-called classic Roman MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 215 tongue, so much magnified by pedants in us, but semi-bar- barian to the last, beneath the gloss of a foreign literature ; even as the people themselves who spoke it, and whose state of intellect it reflected, might in their notorious in- capacity for all invention, because for all abstraction, be called the concrete Saxons or Sarmatians of a/ncient civi- lization. But if the genesis be not clear in the comparison of dif- ferent languages, from the universal ignorance of this their law of classification, it may be traced even within the literary epoch of the same idiom, as in the rapidly pro- gressive dialect of the finely speculative Greek. Thus the Iliad, it is known was written or rhapsodized without the articles. These particles, several centuries later, make I think, their first appearance in Herodotus, because, among the earliest of the prose, that is to say, precise writers. Yet still it is only the neuter and indefinite article to ; and this, moreover, remained common to, or desig- nated also, the more abstract classes of pronouns named demonstrative and relative. It was only the logicians and metaphysicians of the philosophic schools that gave full de- velopment to this and the other articles. But why does the indefinite take this long precedence of the definite, rather than the reverse ; the neuter, rather than the masculine or feminine ? Il is a question of which all the " philoso- phies of language" in existence might be challenged to give a rational solution. This is now supplied sponta- neously in the above explanation of the Genders, which showed the neuter to correspond to the inert order of mere existence, the most concrete and therefore obvious, of all phenomena; while the masculine was the abstract generalization of physical action, and the feminine, of the chemical and vitalizing energies. And all this, it may be well to add, by no profound process of abstraction ; but simply through the sure direction of man's instincts or affinities statical, dynamical, and composite, with nature-. In fact the vocal signs by which these personal symbols are attributed, have long lost the semblance of abstract- ness which they thus derive from individuality — a cir- cumstance, by the way, explaining why the primary or indefinite article,, is formed in most languages from the numeral adjective of unity. They are only clarified from concreteness by ages of popular civilization, succeed- 216 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. ing the period of prefixation, to which it is time we had returned. In fine, then, among other things, it is now plain why no barbarous idiom has ever had the articles, any more than the auxiliaries, in distinct development : while we find, at the other extremity of the philological scale, the French employment of them so frequent as to seem somewhat fantastic to the coarser intellect of their Saxon neighbours. 3. Respecting the prefixes in general (from which the discourse has been tempted off to throw some light upon the wretched state of the portion called the articles,) they may go on to be repeated, after an alternation of suffixes, until the compound became too cumbersome for use. Take for instance, the formation of the term non-conform- ist. Supposing for the radical particle, the m, which makes it form, represents the suffix that first converted it into a substantive. To this succeeded the prefix con, which thus determined it into a verb, or in other words, gave it, from a statical, the dynamical direction. After which came the termination ist, denoting habitual existence, and so transmuting the compound back again into a noun. When finally the alternation is repeated at the other end by the superposition of the peremptorily determinative non. Accordingly the composition could proceed no further on this side, and had, moreover, from its length, become fit for nothing except theology. Now this example brings home to the se-nses the mode of failure and consequent fall of the secondary order of composition. To the serial succeeded, therefore, what may be called the circulating system. This third and only remaining of grammatical forma- tions is known as the collocation of words in the sen- tence ; that is to say a freedom from the former trammels in this respect. This freedom resulted, as usual, from the very pressure of the preceding process ; which stamped the dim primordial vocables with sides, gave direction to the Determinatives and dynamism to the Denomina- tives, brought out in both the relational, the verbal affinity of origin which disposes them for organical and independent coalition ; or (to slip the term which has along, no doubt, been present to the reader's mind), established the polarity of the nine elements of Speech. This gram- matical liberty may be witnessed in its utmost license MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 217 in the classic Latin, and as settling into order in the much maturer Greek. But being, of course, like the coetaneous political aspects of both these nations, a wild, directionless democracy, it could not last. Its decline, however, duly commences with the close of the present Cycle, and so must be postponed to wait its turn in the Ethical. § 64. Such, then, are the curious results of an applica- tion to the subject of Speech, of our universal theory of mental procedure from the Concrete to the Abstract, and by means of the three successive formulae named Mathe- matical. For these forms, as also shown in all the physi- cal creations of nature (ch. 2), are now manifestly identical, in character and succession, with the three formations Of the Verb, both in generation and composition : the De- nominative and Conglomerate with the isolate and the Numerical ; the Determinative and Catenary with the Cohesive and the Quantitative; the Conjunctive and the Circulative with the organical and Figured. Again, the first stage, represented, by the American-Indian idioms,, exhibits the interjectional or individual vocables, as yet without affinity, without character, without crystallization - r for language is a crystallization, like all other organisms^ Accordingly its second stage has the irregular accretion,, the indiscriminate affixation or infixation of the former, drawn out into the longitudinal arrangement, where the composition, we have seen, proceeds upon the strictest principles of polarity ; at first by " suffixes" alone, or the system called inflexion, which is the one-sided polarity of the crystal proper, and had been commencing in the savage languages referred to ; after in the line of " pre- fixes," which alone grammarians style composition, and which gives the process the double polarity of the vege- table ; and then, in fine, by the alternate application, above- exemplified, of attractive and repulsive particles,, until the growth in this case, too, is arrested by external circum- stances, or more commonly, by the very elements taken in for its increase. I can well conceive the sardonic and self-complacent smile of a professorial pedant on perus- ing this comparison. But to come to the level of his com- prehension, if he will turn to the dictionary and count the multitude of polysyllabic words which begin, that is, have 19* 218 VSSTIGBS OF CIVILIZATION. their latest prefix, in de, dis, di, in, im, ir, ne, non, and the various other modes of privation and negation, and give a more rational explanation of the enormous disproportion ; then the argument can, without concern, forego the luxury of affrighting him with so strange an innovation upon his grammatical routine. Meanwhile, however, I must pro- ceed to say, that as the second mode of composition cor- responds to the grade of polarity termed simple, so the circuitous or Voltaic, or, as I would distinguish it, electric presents the analogue of the Circulatory system of col- location. § 65. Such have been the original elements and the progressive formations (in proportion to development) of all the languages of the earth. And we have thus obtained,, by a simple application of the theory, this complete analysis and explanation of a system of facts, of which the bulk re- main a sort of mysteries to the herd of philologists. No doubt the exposition, which I have as usual been forced to condense, will appear meagre to such as may measure it by the habitual verbosity on this subject. How can prin- ciples be so plain and processes so almost childish about which libraries have been written, within even the last century. When not many months ago a " learned" Ger- man is heard to announce a six-volume project of his, on the conjugations (I think) of the Sanscrit or something of the kind, and, by way of earnest of his engagement, give an introductory quarto, of only eleven hundred pages (quite moderate for a German professor) ! — in view of this, I say, the literary vulgar will probably deem it a shallow presump- tion to attempt at all the general subject within the compass of a few paragraphs. Yet this will not deter me from saying that, if the principles applied be sound, there is more of the true philosophy of language to be learned in these few para- graphs than in all the extant tomes together, whether of grammar or philology. And why should the declaration be indecorous in me who claim no credit for this or other mere illustrations of my main position. No doribt the Pro- fessors, &c, referred to, would have done far better with my accidental means. Besides I may be permitted to add that my confidence is not predicated, in this or most other cases, upon the proofs I now adduce but still more upon MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 219 the belief that I am prepared at any moment to back them individually with a volume of examples. § 66. Nor is it only the regularities, the uniformities of Language that the theory unfolds thus neatly, but the so called anomalies as well. I invite the studious reader to take the crucial test of our Indian idioms, collect their pe- culiarities from amid the mass of decanted platitudes with which they are daily dished anew by our dabblers in phi- lology, and compare them with the grammatical series as above reformed and rationalized. Not one of them that he will not find it convert into a necessary conclusion ; not one, I aver, so far of course as well authenticated or ob- served. Let me instance one or two among the most fun- damental of these mysteries. One is the general fact that the savages in question em- ploy most or all their " parts of speech" as verbs, and even submit them, it is said, to conjugation. In this we now see there was no magic, but quite the reverse ; for such, it seems is their real nature, and must appear their leading charac- ter in proportion as they remain concrete or uncomplicate ; that is according as the speakers are deep within the primi- tive Cycle, when phenomena are apprehended all sensa- tionally — actual sensation in the percipient himself, impu- ted sensation in the objectsimpressing him — and so of course expressed or imaged by that operant mode of the verb, to which we ignorantly now appropriate the general title. This mental infancy is also the cause of the absence, throughout those idioms, of the third and most abstract se- ries of the nine forms, the preposition, adverb and con- junction. In fact the absence or undevelopment begins already with the article, the final form of the second se- ries and highest abstraction of the pronouns; and the pro- nouns themselves cannot as yet be conceived apart, but are concreted, as before remarked, to the vocables of the primitive class. Thus admirably does a whole platoon of these pretended eccentricities resolve itself, stage by stage, into the grandunity of our principle. There remains, how- ever, I must admit, a glaring discrepancy. The au- thorities (such as they are) seem to be uniform in reporting that the adjective, too, is wanting or at least is extremely rare ; while, on the other hand, the adverb is of particularly foeqtrent occurrence, and regularly conjugated like the par- 220 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATIOK. ticiple or so called verb. Now here, if the account be true, is an inversion of arrangement. The adjective, as per di- agram, holds the second place in the primary rank, and the adverb, the analogous position in the final ; it is the latter then that should be absent or rare, and the former that should be present and prominent. And such I take the liberty of thinking to be the case. The adjective, in the sensational, the active acceptation which precedes its sub- sidence into the elementary abstraction called quality, is naturally mistaken for the adverb, and the more easily as the idioms are ill-known and elliptical. In fact a rem- nant of this confusion lingers still in the most forward lan- guages ; I mean the application of comparison to certain adverbs. For all such are really adjectives with merely adverbial endings which are overstepped unconsciously in the comparison. In fine, modality being essentially abso- lute, no pure adverb can be graduated, any more than a preposition or conjunction. These are all three as I have ranged them, alike and alone, in the relational or abstract stage which the grammarians call indeclinable. And so the only fact which threatened our classification with a flaw, turns Out to be a crowning corroboration. Another of the standing wonders of our American-Indian languages relates to their mode of word-making, by what are termed particles of transition. By which is meant, I believe, an aggregation of monosyllabic vocable3, of which some come into the new term as representatives of entire words, and others from a fund appropriated to the purposes of composition. Nowhere are respectively the Denominatives and Determinatives of our two first orders, in living but somewhat forward operation ; and this facility or rather indifference for all modes of combination is the molecular fluctuation which we saw the character of infant Lan- guage. It was this fluid state of the particles, — a state which, in language as in nature, is the primary condition of organization, — which also led, no doubt, to the unanimous opinion of philologists, that those savage idioms are capa- ble of multiplying their vocabularies " to infinity." Con- sequently that they are much more copious than the culti- vated tongues ; a corrollary often declared, indeed, and sometimes emphasized with a shallow sneer at the oppo- site pretensions. But the inference is a gross illusion. It MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 221 is that of the uncalculating eye which takes the third of a number for the whole or treble, according as it moves in a miscellaneously jostling crowd, or in a compactly marshalled army. Though natural I call it gross, for none with a tinge of philosophy could admit the possibility of the pre- eminence in question. Writers of this sort are still in a state of head to credit, that in some unknown island the human inhabitants were found winged or web-footed. They are utterly ignorant of the philosophical anatomy of language, both in its statical and progressive complica- tions ; even as the so-called historians, allud'ed to in the introduction, were of the laws of civilization in quite analogous respects. Concerning the copiousness of the Indian idioms, the fact in fine must be that their vocabular elements fall far short, perhaps down to half, of those of the Chinese, which are said to number some four to five hundred. No doubt the possible combinations of even three hundred syllables would far exceed the rate of moveable composition in any living language, and even outnumber their actual vocabu- lary. But what are the combinations, fixed or flexible, of the latter language by means of syllables, compared with the combinations by words, that is to say the colloca- tions in the sentence ? The latter, supposing the vocabu- lary, like our own, to be some forty thousand, may produce a multitude of virtual terms, of sentences and their clauses, so inconceivably enormous that all the mathematicians and perhaps all the men of the human race, since it learned to reckon, would not suffice for the simple enumeration. But the composition of the savage is a physical juxtaposi- tion, appreciable by the mere material senses ; and philo- logists have these, if not often much beyond. The synthetic composition of the civilized language is overlooked be- cause it is abstract, organical. Hence the ludicrous error in question, and a thousand others from the same source. Such, for instance, is the "philanthropic" mania of our day, which sets the entified appetites called "rights," of the individual man, above the laws of the organism of which he forms but a passing atom. To these philosophers the man is unified by being encased in a continuous skin (no matter of course whether the same be fair or otherwise), and is equalized, by their animal sympathies with his welfare or his wants ; but the finer 222 VESTIGES OF crVIMZATIOTT. tissues and aspirations of the social system are still invisi- ble ; and being, at the same time, undeniable, irresistible in their effects, society seems a mere engine, accidental or artificial, serving only for the oppression of the lower strata of its own constituents ! Such would also be the philoso- phy of the foundation stones of the Parthenon. Mean- while the State I repeat, is really no less individual, and even animate, than any of its physical members. It is merely more porous, so to speak, more highly organized. Yet not more the former, than in strict proportion to the relative sizes of the two systems. In the social, however, the idea of unity, which I have ventured to propose, is quite excusably unrecognized, from this supreme abstract- ness of the organism. But there was, besides, another im- pediment no less peculiar and pertinacious, I mean the reluctance of human self-conceit; the individuals being, in this instance, not only parties in interest but also the judge. There is not, then, the same apology for the admirers of the Indian idioms. These, in fine, would be found in like keeping with their savage speakers, in all the rest ; instead of the excep- tional perfection, and metaphysical refinement so absurdly ascribed to the latter in the matter of language alone. I may add that the pre-eminence so long attributed to the classical dialects and recently imparted to the still more concrete Sanscrit, seems to rest upon the same ignorance, in due proportion. An ignorance, in the former case, per- petuated by the pedagogues, whose school-boy inculcations cling to most men in such matters ;. and in the latter, pro- pagated especially by the Germans,, perhaps from the more uncivilized sympathy of the national intellect, and corres- ponding similarity of idiom, with the secondary and meta- physical formations of speech. § 67. Perfection, refinement, copiousness — nonsense ! Reader, imagine, on the one hand, those misshapen mass- es of gristle and blubber and bone, of which the modern earth turns up the relics to the wonder of the multitude, and which, huddled together by nature in her earlier essays in animal structure, disappeared with the progressive changes of climate, soil, &c. Conceive on the other hand, man, with that fine flexibility of organization and resulting ver- satility to all vicissitude and circumstance which give su- Mytsological cycle. 223 premacy to the individual and promise perpetuity to the species. In these two terms, you will have the exact image, in extent as well as analogy, of the comparison be- tween the language of either the West or East Indian and that of the Parisian philosopher. To affect a preference for the former is, in principle, a declaration for the cycles and epicycles of Ptolemy, against the sublime simplifica- tions of Kepler and Newton. I dwell upon this illusion to spare me future repetition 5 for it recurs under every phase of our survey. Thus, because ages of common sense produce no epic.poems or new religions, it is conclud- ed that the old of each must have been the result of in- spiration. Because societies, still more than individuals, can know nothing of their early infancy, nor how they passed, through a thousand ages, to their social adolescence; as acute a man as Archbishop Whately continues to insist, that civilization must have been the primitive state. To Language too was given pre-eminently the like celestial origin ; and for no better reason than that communities at all capable of speculating had never witnessed it in process of primordial formation. And even the fact of childhood's learning to use the language of the parents — and this in fewer months perhaps than it would cost them years in later life— were this fact, I say, as unfamiliar as the child- hood of the race or a nation, there is no doubt that his mother tongue would be deemed a special gift of Provi- dence to each and every " articulately-speaking" individ- ual. Not only so, but now that the national infancies, also, begin to come down from the clouds, the philologists persist, we see, in hinting some mysterious causes — a previous civi- lization of the savage, a peculiar faculty of his race, a pre- posterous estimate of our civilization, &c. — to explain the same materially necessary symmetry which they can solve in the bee or beaver, by the simple dissyllable instinct. The thing reminds one of the grocer's wife, who having disbursed heavily and vainly to have her adult and par- venu daughters taught that climax of polite accomplish- ment, the art of babbling in broken French, was astonish- ed to hear that this mystic tongue was spoken in Paris by even the children. So pertinaciously prone is man, the half-civilized scarce less than the savage, to estimate all things by the $24 VJ6STI&ES 0* CIVILIZATION. actual condition of his own consciousness ! Whatever he feels it would be now impossible for himself to accom- plish is attributed to preternatural power or pre-emi- nent skill. While as yet he knows of external pheno- mena but their rude resemblance to his own actions, he endues, we have seen, the objects of nature with his ac- tive principle of life. When, in progress of after ages, he has come at length to learn the application of a series of means to the prosecution of a settled purpose, he thence- forth d etects design, not only in the savage of his own species, nor merely in the beaver and the bee, but even in the growth of the tree, in short in the structure of the universe. With however the distinction, so naively cha- racteristic, that for all the other agents he concludes a divine designer, in whose hands they are but so many machines ; while man alone is " free," or his own designer. But press him for his evidence, and he can never go farther back than his actual incapacity to conceive the ar- rangement otherwise- That is to say, he makes his own conception the criterion, the measure, nay the creator of his god, as Fitche declared the thing expressly. He! before whose miserable and mole-ejed vision the horizon of this conception has been fleeting at every step from the beginning, even as the horizon of geography before his physical migrations ; and who will end, no doubt, with seeing the former, as he now has done the other, vanish east into west and north into south, until he is equally brought to comprehend the self-sustaining globe of Know- ledge. (1) MUSK. § 68. Induced by the fundamental bearing, the educa- tional importance and the chaoticcondition of the subject, I have dwelt, I see, beyond my limits, upon the art of lan- (1) Je me garde de preter a Dieu aucune intention, was accord- ingly the axiom of the great naturalist St. Hilaire. It is the death knell of the reign of hypothesis and the motto of (he ages of science. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE, 225 gaage, or rather Speech. The others for the most part must be dispatched with greater brevity; some, indeed, I fear, with little more than a bare mention. The next of them in order was Music. This art, ac- cordingly, gave their generic name to the presiding god- desses of all the others. Its intimate kinship with memory, the second term of the mental series (as witness the con- trivances of mnemonical verses), is a farther sanction of the present allocation. In fact, its character of all but ultimate simplicity is obvious. Excepting speech, it is the earliest art in which childhood takes part or pleasure. In the childhood of nations too, it was by music that the savage is said to have always been soothed into society. The first preluding of a hand-organ in one of our streets brings all the servants and negroes within hearing to the doors and windows. The song and sentiments of a cow- herd, warbled as wildly by an artless woman, can inflame extravagance and even enthusiasm in a community of traders : a feat which perhaps parallels the ancient fable of Orpheus, who brought tears down the " iron cheeks" of Pluto. By the by, it is this extreme primitiveness, this merely sensuous simplicity, that makes music, alone of all the arts, so much the " rage" with our own people. I would rather, of course, have left the thing the opposite way, where the newspapers have settled it, as a mark of our superior civilization. But truth is inexorable to the im- pulses of personal vanity, even when, backed by " the majority," they wear the lion's skin of .patriotism. This error of placing Music unduly forward on the scale of progress is, however, confined to the popular class of writers. Most philosophers have conceived it to be ante- rior even to speech, and the original occasion of articula- ting : tongue-tied persons, they urge, are still observed to free the utterance by intonation z and, again, the earliest mode of literary composition was poetry. But the main position is a mistake on the other side. The arguments too are fallacious. The instinctive expedient of tuning the voice is but a help to articulation ; as such it doubtless had much to do with facilitating and even forming the pro- cess In the primitive man ; but as such, and by the very fact, it could not be that process itself, for which, moreover, we have above disclosed an origin much more natural, 20 226 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the imitative naming called onomatopeia. But vocal mu- sic is a mora refined and continuous articulation, and "con- sequently long . posterior to the verbal. As to poetic composition, it is clear the elements must have been still anterior, and these were also articulated words. Not merely was it so historically, but necessarily. Without words, in fine, the simplest melody were impossible to the primitive man. Without them no modern savage is ever known, I think, to hum a tune. He may merely whistle it, like certain birds ; of which, besides, the highest proficients do not pass the compass of a few notes, although they too may be taught to vary, to articulate their monotony, by imitating man, as man had been, by imitating nature. Mu- sic, then, in its primordial, its properly vocal, stage was em- broidered, so to speak, upon the semi-physical tissue of speech ; even as speech had crept along the still more con- crete ground of objects. And from the vocal, the instru- mental modes proceeded by the same progression. TJras the instrument was first abstracted from the person of the performer ; and even this step, but by an intermediate com- plication, in superposing an external and artificial organ upon the natural organ of.the voice. This genesis followed out through the history of musical instruments would yield a philosophical analysis of the art. But for such a task I .have neither space nor information. >§ 69. What is more to the present purpose is, to prove the (conformity of music to the three mathematical forms. But sthis alone of all the arts is already recognized, and indeed is rigorousiy.demonstrated, to rest on such a basis. This was the meaningof the mythic attributionto Pythagoras of the invention at onooofmusic and arithmetic. The import is that (both were reduced to system by the same principle ; a princi- sple being always indicated, in rude ages, through the medi- um of a personage. This principle was Number, the most ,-general of the laws of nature, and so the most simple and concrete. Consequently, also, the earliest both known sci- entifically and practised aesthetically. For speech is too palpably useful to be allowed the rank of a fine art ; at least until it blossoms, a good deal later, into rhetoric. So that Music might be slidden back a step to the head of the se- jies of Arts, and thus consort exactly with the traditional ^affinity. Its proper place and principle, however, are those MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 227 of Quantity, that is to' say admeasurement, not by numbers but by ratios. The Numerical form had place in the iso- late vocables of Speech ; which are drawn out, as it were, or lineated by the modulations of Music, and these in turn must, of course, receive the convolution into figure, from the following and final art of the primary triad. In conclusion, our remaining test, the Conceptual princi- ple of the physical Cycle, must equally be traceable in the primitive character of Music. But what could Force have had to do with this seemingly gentlest of the arts 1 With- out going into refinements, is it not visible in the well- known preference of all barbarous nations for the more obstreporous instruments ! ' Thus, of all European instru- ments, as well as of the native, the favorite one with the Hindoos is the big drum of their foreign plunderers. The Opera is in large part a Gothic offspring of this infant taste. Another sign of its less rude but not less real pre- valence is present, where you see dexterity of execution preferred to delicacy of expression. Hence the antics and grimmace, so disgusting to a person of taste, which are assumed in this country, by European performers of even the first class ; who, in fact confess (behind the curtain) that they do so upon system ; deeming it safer, in case of any thing below the clangor of a full choir, to trust to the eyes than to the ears, to the mechanical than to the musi- cal, the muscular than the mental, appreciation of the spec- tators. But I must quit the theme of Music, which has indeed been touched at all for little more than to merely desig- nate the line of filiation, and note the features of the second element which, by reaction upon speech, produced the latest and so the greatest of the three phonetic Arts. This, according to our tabulation, is the art of Poetry. POETRY. § 70. The synthetical, the composite, the figured char- acter of poetry is already declared, as usual, in the very name ; which signifies, the reader knows, a formation, a composition. 228 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION, The art, In its aspect of form, might in fact be defined, aai application to Speech, of the 1 laws of Number, Mea- sure, and of Figure above all. Here then we find evolved, on the very threshold of the examination, the three mathe- matical formulas, and in strictly express terms. Also, the cause why Poetry has been in fact, as above alleged, the earliest method of literary composition ; and not merely the literary, but of all mental composition whatever — which is the very circumstance, of course, that gained it the generical denomination. It is thus that imagination, the analogous Process on our mental scale, is deemed pre-emi- nently the faculty of creation ; because it was, and is, the first to construct into figures or images the materials sup- plied by sense and cemented, as it were, by memory. In fine, the definition is equally true to the parentage just as- signed the art. But these three sources, successive in time and pro- gressive in complication, must have also determined a general division of the subject. That is to say, Poetry must have turned principally, first upon its element of words, upon bare narrative ; after upon that of metres or music ; but later still upon figures or fiction. Quite ac- cordingly the art exhibits but three fundamental forms ; and their traditional appellations refer beside to the re- spective elements, with more, if possible, than the usual etymological felicity. The earliest stage is termed the Epic, meaning literally, verbal ; the second is the Lyric, so denominated, symbolically, from what no doubt was the primitive organ of instrumental music; the last is the Dramatic, importing expression by representation. For Expression, it will be remembered, is the generic char- acter of this primary tribe of arts : expression first of the exploits witnessed or supposed to be witnessed ; then, of sentiments and emotions inspired by what was said or seen ; expression, lastly, of the conception which should be form- ed of what was done, as interwoven with and reproduced by what was felt. In short, Expression objective, subject- ive, and composite or synthetic. The succession and its order, from the Concrete to the Abstract, are thus too manifest to need historical confir- mation in the main series. The trial may, therefore, pass to the generic members individually, where the same princr- MtTHOLOaiCAL CYCLE. 229 pies must, we know, have operated, even down to the lowest subdivisions. Besides, this plan of verification offers two collateral advantages — that of illustrating by implication the progressive march of the fundamental triad, and that of rescuing, by the direct result of an historical co-ordination, the largest range of out poetic varieties from the present chaotic condition. § 71. The Epopee, then, or the primitive cycle of Poetry, must involve, like infant history (of which it was in fact the predecessor), a complication of three specific stages ; it must have proceeded upou individuals, upon events, upon institutions or usages (§ 3), and of course in this the progressive order from the more simple to the more complex. But this order, it has been demonstrated over and over, implies that the first species related to persons, individually or genealogically ; the second to persons as connected by places ; the last to persons as connected by places and farther complicated by the element of time. So that if we know the three fundamental or personal forms, the problem is thenceforth resolved ; there will be need but to follow, by a route that. must be now familiar, the progressive evolution of those forms through space and time, in order to designate the special modes and ingredi- ent stages of the epic, and not only of the epic but the- whole poetic art. I am loath, however, to task the pop- ular reader with these endless cycles within cycles ; which are apt to produce by their number and vastness the ap- pearance of abstractness and complexity, though in reality they are the very simplest as well as sublimest of concep- tions. But my apology must be the constant effort to give, within the compass of a few pages, some decent degree of completeness to discussions almost infinite ; and for the art of doing so the only model I have ever met with is na- ture. Its application in the present instance will combine exigencies nearly opposite. For our historical verification will be carried back to the highest fountains and at the same time be abridged by a summary programme of the entire series, when we have established those seminal forms of the primordial or personal stage. These gradations of Individuality it is not difficult to- determine. They must relate to the dispensers, real or 20* 230 VESTIGES OF CfVILifcATftfff, imaginary, of man's happiness, that eternal object of al¥ poetry as well as prose. But the powers to influence this happiness were of three successive orders : the power to produce affliction, the power to protect against or repel it, and the power of mitigating by sharing it, or of soothing it by positive pleasure. The dispensers were, therefore, gods, heroes and women. These were then the objects of invocation or applause. They were consequently the themes of so many species of Epic, which might thence be termed the Mythologic, the Heroic, and the Romantic or Social. § 72. Nor is the anti-climax of this gradation at all so violent as might be thought. The descent in fact is quite equable and quite normal, from heaven to earth. And this, not merely because as heroes were accounted still to be demi-gods, so woman too is, by the universal suffrage of the poets, a semi-demi-divinity to every lovesick sonneteer. Nor yet is it, as a satyrist might argue from our principles, that whereas the gods at first were demons and the heroes a sort of guardian angels, and the third term of all our triads is a compound of the two preceding, why that no- thing could be more conclusive than woman's conformity in this case. No, the reason was something deeper or at least more serious than all this. The stages represent, in order, the savage, the barbarous, and the social state. Now the latter being, especially when young and simple, esteemed a blessing, and* woman being the obvious source of its perpetuation, the sex were naturally sung as the symbol of its immortality, by that unsophisti- cated popular instinct which, under the physical Cycle, felt the individual to move or live but in the unit of the State or race. Hence it also is that the deified regenera- tors of society, the messiahs of the oppressed multitude, have, in exception to the other gods, been always born of human mothers — in Hmdostan, in Persia, in Mexico, in Judea. The correspondence of the two previous forms, that is to say, of protective and of malignant powers, to the barbarian and the savage states is clear. In all- three it is most curiously as well as conclusively attested by the fact (which just occurs to me) that among the poems ascribed to Hesiod — and therefore of the age in question, — the most considerable are entitled : the " Theogeny," the sfrraoLoaicAL cycle. 2#J " Heroogeny," and the "Catalogue of Women or the mo- thers of the demigods !" Such being, therefore, primitively the reputed dispen- sers of happiness, and successively the themes of entreaty or of praise, we are now to test the Epic results — to wit, those sentiments embodied in words — by a brief refer- ence to the scanty records which those infant ages could have left to history. First, in order, of the general forms is the Mythologic. § 73. 1. Mythologic Epic. Applying, as usual, to the progressive constitution of the subject the axiom of our three mathematical formulas, it is now familiar that the Epic, or more properly its ingredients, must have com- menced in isolated and brief effusions tp the gods. The earliest poetry would then be hymns. Accordingly the hymns styled Orphic, &c. (no matter by whom composed) are undoubtedly the most ancient poems of Greece. This is moreover proved by internal evidence from their theo- logic character. With due traditional tenacity the recita- tion of these hymns went on to the last in the celebration of the Mysteries ; and with due conformity to our theory, they were dedicated quite Numerically, that is to say one to each of the multitudinous gods and goddesses ; and so recited in solemn sequence, making up indeed the whole ceremony ; or " the whole theology of idols," as it was de- nounced by a Father of the Church, with the very human unconsciousness that the litanies of his own creed are but decayed remnants of this ripened ritual of the pagan. In fact, it. was, also, with the primitive Christians, the whole or a principal part of the service, to go through the recita- tion of a like hymn to Christ : but here the form must have passed from the typic character of our present Cycle, and accordingly the Christian hymn was sung by strophe and anti-strophe, precisely as infant Greece sang the " song of the goat" to Bacchus. Reverting to earlier times, it is also known that the children of Egypt chanted " hymns" through the streets to the bull Apis. And amid the primeval forests of modern ages, the savage Hurons said, what Charlevoix calls, their prayers in song, in hymn. But without multiplying examples, it would, in short, be found the case with every barbarian people and epoch of 232 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the world. It is well worth adding that dancing, also, should have, been, in those days, a religious ceremony : for as the Hymn is, we see, the primitive poetry of the language of Speech, so Dancing is the poetry proper to the "language of action." (§61) Accordingly we all re- member the dancing before the Ark by the vinous and Venerable Noah. Also the later exhortation of the Psalm- ist " to praise the name of the Lord in the dance." 2. The last examples conduct us fitly to the ensuing stage of the primitive, epic ; which should, by theory, be a stringing together of the previous hymns into longer narra- tives. For to this secondary formation appertain charac- teristically all the more ancient portions of that crude mis- cellany the Hebrew Bible. Also the riper collections as- cribed to Trismagistus, the Egyptian Moses; for though these were partly medical and jurisprudential as well as theological, yet the latter was inevitably the real character of the whole, at a time when man was thought to do all things by the direct agency of the gods. It is thus the like compositions are conceived in Hindostan to this day ; where, I believe, they are also regarded, duly, as the ear- liest portions of the literature. It is needless to add the well-known fact, which is so ignorant an object of wonder, that the composition was in all these cases in verse. What is equally to our principles but a good deal less ob- served is this, that these epical materials of the secondary era consist for the most part of particular examples or events, not of individual divinities as in the hymnical epoch; and are connected by means of locality, rather than of genealogy, parentage being an earlier expedient for uni- fying severalty than topography. This drawing out of a crowd of gods into a series of actions aseribed to the prin- cipal, or what more strictly concerns us, the poetic reflec- tion of this progression, had advanced, in some things, in the cases mentioned, to even Usages or institutions. But it was rounded into system, it seems, in Hindostan alone. A striking confirmation truly, that the most primitive na- tion of the earth should present us with the purest speci- men of the Mythologic epic. 3. In fact this third and final formation of the primary mode of Epic could have scarce been reached in Egypt, and thus is not recorded. For, in the first place, the art of MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 233 writing had, both picture and symbolic, become by this time unintelligible to the people, and was therefore ut- terly unfit for a lengthy popular composition; and the "demotic" or Alphabetic system, on the other hand, was still imperfect and moreover appropriated by the traders — a crew no less unpoetical than the priests are unprogressive. But far beyond this material obstacle I regard the psychological one-, that their theology was still too personal, too concrete, too diverse ; wanted a unity, a principle of sufficient generality, not only to con- nect their national history along the ground of space, but besides to convolve it over the plane of time in a cycle of self- producing actions. For such a requisite implied the dawning consciousness of progression, of development which embodies itself in the notion of mutual conflict or antagonism. But nothing of this kind was distinctly felt by the Egyptian people, whose animal gods had been all local, or most of them sovereign in particular cities. Still less by the Jews, whose single deity was too manifestly no emanation of the national mind, and moreover labour- ed under the epical disqualification of omnipotence. Had the Hebrew nation been left to develope its own material Messiah, and the Egyptian multitude to rise above its gross fetichism and reach to even the priestly fables about Osiris and Typhon, I doubt not both these countries would have wrought their materials of the second formation into the personal unity of the mythological epic. In fact, they had, w« see, advanced, though in dim and different degrees, towards that abstract recognition of the two elements of hu- man happiness which had elsewhere attained the distinct dualism named the Two Principles, and which was precise- ly the grand condition required. But the strife of these two personified abstractions of Good and Evil had raged, with various fortune, from immemorial ages, in ancient India alone and its affiliated civilizations. For all these reasons (to- be proved at large under the proper head of Religion)' it is in Hindoo literature that the epic form should present this primitive completeness. Here moreover had the too subsid- iary arts of metre and of writing (which were respectively deficient in the other cases cited) attained, both — and I scarce need add, by correlation with the conception — to due development for artistic expression as well as po- 234 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. pular appreciation. Now, in perfect consonance with these various circumstances, positive and negative, the principal Indian poem, entitled the Ramayana and found- ed duly on the conflict of the Two principles of good and evil, the countless contests of Vishnu or the preserver, with Siva or the destroyer — this celebrated poem, I say, is perhaps the sole specimen, and is certainly the purest type, of the Mythological epic. §,74. 1. Heroic Epic. The species termed Heroic had of course a similar progression. It commenced, in fact, with the elemental, the atomic form named the ode. The ode is but the hymn or psalm in the secondary transfor- mation ; it celebrated not the gods proper, but heroes or social gods, and has a duly larger proportion of the musi- cal element. The transition is attested, as usual, in the etymology of the word, which still refers to the originally sacred signification ; precisely as the correlative votes, which meant at first a priest or prophet, came in later ages to designate a poet. As to historical testimony, I need but mention the effusions called ballads ; in which, ftom the earliest ages down to the present day, have been celebrated, in all countries, the popular heroes of all descrip- tions and degrees ; even horses, I may add, included (1) with more than the usual discrimination. 2. To this rudimental or Numerical formation of the Heroic epic should succeed, we know, an elongation, an ex- tension of composition. But this was impossible/while the subjects, as in the ode or ballad, had been confined to the personal attributes of the hero, which stuck about him, as it were, in isolated points. The theme, to be drawn out, must turn also upon Events ; upon the casual- ties that befell him in his progress through localities ; in a word, upon his heroic adventures. Quite accordingly, the poems of this secondary formation are as universal and familiar as the ballads. They were chanted through- out Europe during the second barbarism of the middle ages, under the well-known appellation of lays. The na- tional poem of Germany, entitled the Niebelungen, though very pardonably dignified by the Germans into an epic, is (1) See Pindar's Odes. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 23S a characteristic specimen of this description, and so retains, in fact, the title. It is an unjointed succession of diversi- fied stories or " adventures," as they are termed in express conformity to the requisites of the theory. A testimony, no less striking, to my general division of the epic is pre- sented by the next in magnitude of these Teutonic lays, and which bears the name of the " Helden Buch" or the Book of Heroes. To this rude epoch of the poetic art be- long also the Spanish poems of the Cid. But those of Ossian, where the parts or lays are distinguished by the name of Ahum,, are by far, I think, the highest of the class* and border, indeed, upon the sublime spirit though not the composition of the third formation. This consummation had reached perfection in Ancient Greece alone. But here, too, there must have been, of course, a middle or Lay transition, to elaborate, to elongate the epical materials, and pass the popular comprehension from the mere ode. And such in fact was the precise province of the " Rhapsodes ;" that is to say, etymologi- cally, ode-spinners, or persons who prolonged their poetic recitals to unusual lengths. These innovators had been thus distinguished, and no doubt; at first, contemptuously, from the " Aidoi," the primitive ode-singers, the inspired organs of the gods. Does not the Mediaeval analogue of the "rhapsody," the tej-m lay, imply a similar apposition to its clerical predecessors ? Assuredly these are curious coincidences -with the theory ; quite as close as if devised for the purpose. But the third and last of our mathema- tical forms is still awaiting a realization ; the elongation of the rhapsodies should be found convolved into Figure. This final requisite is quite accordingly fulfilled, as usual, to the very name, in the subsequent race of bards called the "cyclic poets ;" meaning those whose rhapsodies were put together so as to constitute a cycle.; todescribe a progres- sive action ; of which the cycle was, we know, the simplest notion, in epic poetry as well as astronomy. Now if to this series of confirmations, both formal and philological, we add the equally known tradition, that places Homer at the same time among the rhapsodists and the cyclic poets, nay back among- the hymn-makers; and at the other end makes him author of the model epic of the Iliad, that.is to say a mythical impersonation of the entire series— 'if all 236 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. this, I say, 'be well ■compared it will be hard to find, in his- tory, a consonance more characteristic with an abstract or scientific law. § 74. That such have been in fact, the career and com- position of the Iliad is manifest, beside tradition, from va- rious points of internal evidence. The seams of the lay or rhapsody stand often apart and sometimes ill sorted, betraying the patchwork, even through the varnish of its critical compilers. But the most conclusive and fundamen- tal indication to this effect has been overlooked, I believe, throughout the long controversy concerning the Homeric $>oems. I have repeatedly shown that all productions are in a general sense a growth-; the menta! no less than the physical, an epic 'quite the same as the human animal who comes to relish it, or the social animal of whose happy childhood it is the nursery emanation. But it was also shown by the foregoing induction, that the epic had its spe- cific source in the first stage in the hymn, and in the se- cond in the ode ; and further that the ode in turn had its seminal origin in the hymn. But the hymn we defined an invocation of the gods. Now here is the natural reason of the famous epical exordium which has been repeated in all later epics after the example of the Iliad, and (as usual with those who are content to .repeat) without very well knowing why. In the great original the invocation was but a remnant of the radical form, the germ still adhe- ring quite spontaneously at the root end, and duly shrunk- en to the disproportion of an acorn to its future oak. This phenomenon will recur in the analogous forms of other arts, where its certainty can be made palpable to the five senses. Meanwhile the classioal reader will be content with an- other distinction, which just occurs to memory, and must be the more decisive as made by the poem itself in question. In the opening invocation of the Iliad, as is known, the terms are : (Leide, deu. By the verb will here be recog- nized the " Aidoi" above mentioned as the chanters, primi- tively of hymns, derivatively of odes. So far then the con- firmation goes on, so to speak, crescendo ; the very expres- sion is significant of the historical ante-position. But there are invocations in other parts of the poem ; are they too, expressed in the same sanctified formula ? By no means. I remember on one occasion (perhaps that of introducing MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 237 the famous catalogue of the Greek Armada,) the words are : Eanets vxiv ftoi, Movant. Here the expression is widely different, but no less strikingly characteristic. The request is no longer to sing oracularly, but now to relate testimo- nially. And what marks more broadly the lapse of ages that must have passed between the two forms, is that the poet thinks it necessary in the latter to assign a reason for belief in the virtue of the invocation : Y&Q deal, elane of space. This was done by analyzing the said wood- cut into its individual symbols, thenceforth called types ; which were thus prepared for the moveable compositions, and what was quite excusably deemed the magical powers, of sytfiesis. How, by re-complicating these with space, the progression advanced to stereotyping, and this it is known, by the two coadjutors of casting and moulding ; or how the whole train has been wheeled by press power in- to the final plain of time — all this I must forbear to farther pursue. There are few pages in the history of art that need so large an amount of discussion ; not so much from the intrinsic difficulty, which is, we now see, not very great, as from the mass of mystical absurdity which lingers still about the whole subject. Such, for instance, is the notion that the Type stage of the art was invented by Faust per saltum, or what is much the same, I suppose, obtained from the devil. Also, that the wood or Block type had been peculiar to the Chinese. "Whereas, the truth is, as will one day be no doubt established, that this ruder stage prevailed, in some shape, in Europe too, and prepared the way for the riper process, by the most equable graduation. Nor amid all those vaunted " inventions" that are paraded to the present day — pretensions made sufficiently plausible by the peculiar progressibility derived by Printing, from its complex elements of Glyphic, Plastic and Painting — I say that never, among all these, has the human intellect in reality, either deviated from or overleaped, to the ex- tent of a hair's beadth, that universal order of procedure, 272 VESTrGES of civilization. both by nature and by man, from the concrete to the more abstract, and through the three mathematical laws. § 90. Painting. We are brought by the allusion to painting to add a passing word upon this final form; I mean final of the second department. Its principles have been explained by anticipation. Its erection into a dis- tinct art was the late result of a compromise between the extreme characters of its two sculptural predecessors; of an oscillation between the concavity of G-lyphic and the convexity of Plastic, and which must end spontaneously in giving to Painting the middle direction along the sur- face. Its prior condition we have seen to be parasitical, that of mere concrete attendant upon the other arts of Im- pression-: for even the master-pieces of Pharrasius and Praxiteles had probably been set off with colour ; which may also show how the art of colouring was trained to operate on its own account. In fine it had its origin in the excrementitious dust of the aforesaid Hindoo. And this inferential tardiness is quite conformable to history. Homer, who mentions most of the arts anterior on our scale, has not the slightest allusion to the art of painting. Nor has Moses, who significantly forbade but "graven images." It is true that this, according to the theory, would imply the staining of the glyphic. But what Moses, no doubt, inhibited was not the images so made ; but the Egyptian mode of making them, the pic- ture stage of the Hieroglyphics, which remained proper to the priestly caste ; of which the refugee leader of the Hebrew bondsmen, like all the regenerators of mankind, had a natural (though no doubt unreasonable) horror. The expression cited can therefore imply nothing con- cerning an art of painting, even in the subsidiary condition described. Its subsequent history would be found equally conformable to all our tests. But I find myself out of all measure upon this department of illustration. Were the proof of a theory the whole, as it is the principal, concern, I might have been content with a simple reference to facts. But a natural classification of the assthetical arts, for their own sake, was an object not to be disregarded incidentally. It is the preliminary step, and a step as yet to be made, towards a tolerable, not to say the true, apprehension of MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 273 either their conditions in the past or their capabilities in the future. Be that as it may, having followed hitherto, though contrary to my plan the analysis, or rationale of their spe- cific series, I must now abridge by mounting upwards to the two generic forms $ the arts that is of Sculpture and Architecture. SCULPTURE.- § 91. Nor upon Sculpture, which is the generic sum- mary of the three preceding arts, need I now do more than add some requisite explanations. Principal among these is a certain degree of peculiarity in the conception of its strict province, and so the meaning of the name. For it must have been already observed I do not employ the term in the vague latitude of the current acceptation ; which is made to fluctuate over two-thirds of the scale, from Gly- phic along to Statuary. Its position in my classification defines it to be the art of producing_/%we« by excavation, by hollowing out ; in distinction from Architecture and its subordinate arts, which are occupied with producimg_/2ww» by just the contrary procedure. In the light of this definition the history of Sculpture becomes comprehensible : its existence, in the sense ex- plained, in various countries of early antiquity, where Architecture proper, not to say Statuary, was still un- known ; its presence and profusion, in the forward state of ornament, on the rudest stages of the art of building, as in Egypt, Assyria, etc.; but^above all the conclusive fact of its having been the actual pioneer to this art, as witness the sculptured temples and tombs of the former country, and of all others, as will appear in the following section on the subject. Its conformity, on the other hand, to the law of pro- gression from concrete to abstract, and under the ma- thematical conditions, seems equally evident. To the inclusive application, reiterated in the specific series, it will suffice to add a single indication. It is obvious, then, that Sculpture begins its excavations, not only with indi- vidual figures, as before instanced, but (to go back to even 24 274 VESTIGES OF OIVIUZATIO S, the graving tool,) in the poitits of its punching. It extends into lines • as in the fluting of the Doric column— the ear- liest order, it is significant, of architecture ; hut still earlier is the intagliation which formed the ground of infant paint- ing. It winds into a figured surface, in fine, in the rock- cut tomb and shrine. Here the process turns inside out, as it were, to pass dnto the Architectural series. In the character of Carving it bulges into a partial solid, progressively from the lowest up to high relief. In the hands of Masonry, the carved materials are become arranged into lines, by whose inter- sections is produced a structural form. In Statuary the form is modulated in a monolithic solid ; commencing, of course, with inert objects and culminating in the human figure. Having thus allowed the indication to glide on to the end of the scale, I will stop, before passing to the 'Generic art of Architecture, to obviate a possible difficulty respecting one of its assigned species. § 92. It would probably be disputed that Masoniy either belongs at all to the assthetical arts, or at least that its proper place is in the last and highest division. Con- tinuing, however, the universal criterion — of mental devel- opment in the contrivance and organic economy in the process — the following instance should suffice to dispel all doubt. For no where is the slow progress, the melan- choly debility of the human intellect more manifest than in the primeval history of the Arch. It is well known that the boasted architecture and •civilization of Egypt had never attained to this seemingly simple, but truly admirable contrivance : there it was reached no nearer than the substitution of the lintel, by two long stones laid together in the middle. Egypt, be- ginning with the simplest of figures, the pyramid, in mat- ter, naturally ended with the same figure, the triangle, in space. The Etruscans or Pelasgi carried the sloping down into the jambs ; and then, through after ages, curved the latter upwards, until the pyramid passed at last into a cone ; the notable result and thus a proof of which is their characteristic dome. This, however, was but the arch by Sculpture; that is to say, wrought by cutting out the mason- ry to the requisite concavity. The arch proper or Architec- tural makes, I think, its first, and of course a dim, appear- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE- 275 ance with the later Romans. .So that the progressive modifications and combinations of the few lines that circum- scribe the entrance to man's dwelling, from the perforation up to the porch, have left in stone a shameful scale of his development. In short, the history of the arch is the history of the intellect in the primary or Mythological Cycle. But the arch belongs to Masonry, it will not be denied. And' to this might be still added — if all addition were not super- fluous — the mystical importance that has clung traditionally around this art, though long diverging into the different organizations called "freemasons." A phenomenon, of which this passing hint may supply the true solution, ARCHITECTURE. § 93. I now hasten to instance briefly, in the remaining. branch of the scale, composed, according to division, of the arts of Figuration. Having just glanced at these specific cally, they must be henceforth represented in the article of Architecture, as their genus and type. In Architecture, as I showed in Poetry and proved to be common to all the arts, the object had been progressive- ly divinities, heroes, women ; the last in this case being rep- resented by the family and thus its dwelling. In other words, all three were but the symbolized conceptions of man's own happiness, under the three progressive trans- formations of preternatural cause, providential character,, and political or social community. The erections to cor- respond would therefore be temples, tombs, palaces. But as the primary gods of the physical Cycle were the objects or elements of nature, these deaf and impersonal, beings could not be imagined to need houses. ' Witness' accordingly the fire- worshipping Earsees, who never built a temple to this day. It was only with the eppch of hero- worship, the apotheosis of the illustrious dead, thatahouse to harbour the divinity would become a distinct conception. Meanwhile the tomb of the chieftain would be the natural place of reverence, pending the process of his divinifica- tion by time. And thus the temple may be said to have grown out of the grave. 2Tff VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATIOH. § 94. The grave, then, the dwelling of the departed} would inevitably be modelled after the form of his living abode. And as the latter has been primordially either caves burrowed in the earth or the crevices of rocks, so the tombs should have been originally excavations. Such ac- cordingly do we find them more, especially- in Egypt,which presents, undoubtedly, the oldest indigenous civilization of the globe. It is well known that the ledges of rock which skirt the valley of the Nile are quite pigeon-holed with rock-cut tombs in the vicinity of the great oities, especial- ly the more aneient. So-too all over Syria,, and up to the " cave" of Machpelah, wherein we all know the Father of the Faithful himself has been entombed. In many places, Upper Egypt, Etruria, and Sicily, these necropoli or cities of the dead- are even arranged into streets, like those of the living. A truly striking instance, not merely of the imitation alleged, but also the uniform pro- cedure of the human mind ; which, instead of applying the model in its actual state to the individual tombs, is found to run on upon the original track, into the more complex conception of the-aggregate. § 95. But Egypt, in the means of possessing as well as- preserving these- primeval relics, was, as in many other things, peculiarly favored by nature. Most the other early settlements of Humanity in cities have chosen the wide alluvial plains of the great Asiatic rivers, where the nat- ural materials for the rock-excavations were too rare or remote. Add to this, that the most convenient would not have been employed 1 until societies had acquired the centralization and' power which attach them to an unpre- carious locality. Nor could the custom be continued by even nations thus enabled to practise it, if thrown anew upon the migratory life which was almost normal in these primitive communities. In those several predicaments another expedient must be sought. The simplest of course would be to recur to the original pattern in its actual state, to copy anew the living residence, but in its secondary and sti'uctural form. A chamber like that of the living, would then be erected for the long sleeper, and covered over with a mound of earth to protect, and perhaps hide, the reliGS, or rather tbe outfit buried with them, from future generations or hostile tribes. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 211 Thus the story that Semiramis interred bj> this /manner Iier royal consort, only using the palace itself to suit the rank of the deceased ; this tradition, I say, is but the rep- resentation of a universal, nay a necessary, fact ; though often flouted as a fable, through the same- illusions of mo- dern judgment which had begotten the' ancient folly. In the earlier or humbler stages the practice is attested a,t- this day, by the myriads of tumuli, which are found to be- strew the earth not only from India to Ireland, but also along the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi. In fact ' the series in the latter instance is the more consecutive if not also complete; presenting an ascension regularly gradual, from the scarce discernible mounds on the banks of Lake Erie, up to the mountain pyramids of Anahuac and Tolfeca. This however, I beg to remark, does not prove, after the usual argument, the red man to be of Celtic or Pelasgic origin : nor even that the continents had been originally one. It only proves that both the races belong to the same spe- cies, possess the same general organization ; of which it was a necessary consequence that the one, no less than the" other, should build tumuli for the dead as well as tents of wigwams for the living : build them at vast intervals, it may be, of time as well as space, yet at epochs not the less identi- cal in the calendar of civilization, at iso-mental stages of humanity. § 96. These tumular structures, along the old continent,- are supposed in fact to represent the passage of the greaj Pelasgic race ; whom this alone, were there not also many,, other corroborations, would evince to be the oldest thejO surviving upon the earth. They are, therefore, the besttypef of the. natural progression in this primary, this aesthetically raournful architecture. Wherever they obtained a p&rjna- nent and predominant foothold, as in Ionia, Elruria,,and Greece, the tumulus is found rising gradually into monu- mental magnificence. The mode of development wjate; of eourse no othet than that we saw, for example, in language, affixing the verbal particles one upon another to nj'ake up the third element of predication. It was done in' fact by the superposition above described, of the tumulus upon the tomb ; the latter being here too, it is worth noting, the rock excavation at first, and later the structural cell, only now multiplied into a more or less intricate tissue of apartments. 24* 278 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATI'OSr. This is the origin and nature of the Labyrinths of antiqui- ty ; which make the superaddition of cunning to force in the design of preserving the dead. The result of the whole was the third and final transformation of the grave, which I call the Monumental; as the preceding two may be termed the Turmilar and Sepulchral. The three J believe embrace and characterize all the' forms known to exiat. And all have in fact been classified by these very character- istics, but without, it seems, a glimpse of the rationale. To be quite satisfactory, however, it may be well to follow somewhat farther the development. In mounding the tomb, thus progressively enlarged, the earth could not be piled high without inconveniently widening the base ; nor kept up against the weather without some means of support. To remedy this double inconvenience the mound was tucked to a certain height, by a sloped groundwork of stone ; and then to ease the lateral pressure, as well as promote the great end of elevation, a shaft was inserted, first in the centre, and after repeated, in process of experi- ence, at each of the four corners. I say the corners, for the facing would, necessarily, be angular and of unbroken lines, no curved masonry being imaginable at the time. (1) Now let these five stays or, as they are technically termed, steles, be supposed to pass quite naturally from perishable wood (2) to durable stone, these pillars be hung with bells, and the whole roofed in by an umbrella; and we have the tope tombs of China as they exist to this day; Let the steles be elevated gradually, that is to say abstracted from the earth, until elongated into towers of some four hundred feet high, and we have restored, in the mind's eye, the celebrated tomb of Porsenna, in Etroria ; reck- oned in antiquity one of the " wonders of the world;"' Let the five towers, which have thus outgrown the original purpose, be next fasciculated into one, by simply filling in the facing produced upwards, of course, to a point, and we behold the primeval birth of the pagodas of India, (1) Thus the famous " round towers" of Ireland evince a concep- tual development beyond all the angular architecture of Egypt. The former is the fully figured stage, the latter but the finally linear. (2) Another enigma to our profound American archaeologists is the presence of the rotten remains of some wooden beams or poles found occasionally embedded in the earth-mounds of the West. The text supplies spontaneously the simple explanation. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 2?0 and the pyramids of Meroe. Let this tomb-temple of a provincial Ragis be duly proportioned to the magnify cence of a universal monarchy, and lo ! we have the great pyramids of Egypt; another of these world-wide wonders. A third has been already explained spontaneously in the last paragraph, I mean the Labyrinth of the same country. Thus might the tumular character of these oldest and quaintest architectural structures of the earth, if not already ascertained by inspection, be demonstrated a priori, and derived by lineal extraction, or progressive abstraction, from the sepulchral excavations of the sacred mountain hard by. The difference between the extremes was only proportional to that of the inmates ; between the soulless slaves of a theocratic despotism, and the monarch of a mighty empire, a demigod to boot, in fine a Pharoah, which announces, etymologically, the offspring of the sun. And had the builders of Porsenna's tomb been left to consolidate their federal cities, and the Hindoos their petty kingdoms, into monarchical unity, it is more than probable that Latium and India might boast their pyramids at this day ; as did Babylou and even Mexico under more or less analogous circumstances. § 97. But it may be still said, Egypt offers no speci- mens of the intermediate transitions 1 have traced. This cannot be well pretended : for there remain, I believe, some stele tombs acknowledged to- be coeval with, and probably anterior to, the pyramids. The most decisive proof, however, is the Obelisk; whose priority seems un- questioned, and of whose much debated origin the expla- nation is no other than this, that the obelisk is the mono- lithic medium between the carving, in form, and the indi- viduality, in position, of the four original steles, and their structural configuration into the four-sided pyramid. But were it otherwise, it would be easy to conceive how the mental procedure in this instance would be modified, as above explained, by certain local' peculiarities. In fact the rock-cut tombs of the Egyptians were already mounded, by the mountain from 1 which they are excavated. The stage oftumulus was supplied naturally, therefore; as far at least as requisite to this most stationary of nations. The moun- tain was thus the mammoth monument of the people. And it was a conception plain to the puerility of that time, 280 YfiSTIGBS 6F CIVILIZATiOH 1 . though profound to the philosopher of ours, that the owner of this whole people should engross a mountain-monument all to himself. It has accordingly been conjectured— I need hardly say by a Frenchman, whose name however I forget — that the Pyramids were imitated from the Sacred Mountain of Thebes. Of course he was pronounced a visionary by the heavy-headed antiquaries of the North. Yet it could not be denied that the sepulchral hill coincides exactly with one at least, and this the most eccentrically-shaped of those structures, the great pyramid of Saccarah. But to neutralize this extorted confession they set themselves to argue that this must have been the latest of the lot. The contrary, however, seems clear, not only from the awk- ward configuration, one of the sides being as much as twen- ty-five feet longer than another ; but. especially from the peculiarity of having its chambers all excavated, in the primitive fashion, from the living roek. For upon this as a basis, the tendency of later creations would be to the sym- metry of exterior and structural interior we accordingly wit- ness. Do we not again see an equally extravagant instance, the same puerility of taste, in the interior arrangement of another and kindred monument of the same people, I mean the great tumular mole of the Labyrinth ; which is said to have been divided into thirty-seven compartments to imitate the thirty-seven departments or nomes, as they were called, of Egypt ? And thus the tumular series, which overspread a hemisphere elsewhere,would have been evolved, the same, only on a narrower plan, along the banks of the Nile alone. It is this extreme contraction of the scale, viewed moreover through the foreshortening of so many ages, that occasions much of the general confu- sion and, I venture now to say, preposterous classification ef Egyptian architecture. However, the transition we may be sure was minutely gradual, in one or the other way. For to imagine, for instance, as is usual, the pyra- mids, though the simplest of structures, arrived at per saltum as they stand out amid the solitude of antiquity — this were a conception not a whit less absurd (which, how- ever, to the men in question, may not seem absurd at all) than to suppose it possible to Cheops himself to have in- vented the steam-engine or the printing-press. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 281 The tomb, then fortified into a mound' elevated into' a monument, abstracted 1 into a pyramid : or a pagoda, was the first and is the simplest architectural formation. The best of reasons is, that it requires neither conception in the builders nor cohesion in the materials. A child builds a- pyramid of sand. Even the singular structure of the white ants takes the pyramidal form. Is it not remarkable then, to see thus embody itself instinctively in stone the very triangle which has so often recurred as the ne- cessary foundation, or the frame of every science and of course every art, and which I have ventured thence to de- signate (§ 16) the triad of Thought 1 § 98. But these Sepulchres of the venerated in life would also become objects of reverence first, and after, places of worship. This development is accomplished in the pagoda so fully that the original destination is utterly forgotten. It is also traceable in the altars of the pyra- mids themselves. It is determinable still, from the in- ternal evidence of structure, in some of the larger tombs of ancient Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. But it is evinced conclusively in even the first stage, by the fact of placing offei'ings upon, and performing ceremonies at the tombs of the dead — a custom known to be common to all the primitive communities of the earth ; to the Indians of our own deserts and* day, as well as the ages of Homer, some @f whose sublimest strains are inspired in describing the sacred games at the sepulchres of Tytyus and Patroc- lus. Here is the passage to the joyous worship of early humanity, for which death has now no sting, and the grave is scarce a victory. Why I shall have subsequent occasion to particularize. Meanwhile the facts afford a new proof of the priority,, in thecareer of civilization, above accredited to the race called' Pelasgic ; and by which I understand those primeval and migratory representatives, of commerce in ancient Tyre, of the short or literal alphabet in Phenicia, of the Homeric poems in Ionia and the Ossianic in Ireland, of the plastic arts in Etruria, and over Europe and Asia generally of Tumular architecture. And the antiquity affirms in turn the purpose of the last characteristic to have been templar too, and explains moreover the absence-, thought so strange, of any edifices by this race, of a dis- tinctly religious destination. This step was probably first 282" VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. made in the rock-temples of Elephantino, Salsette and Ello- ra ; which are thus demonstrably posterior to the erection of pagodas. Hence it also is, that nothing of this kind is found in Egypt for some thousand years perhaps after the epoch of the pyramids, steles, and rock-cut tombs. And when the temples do appear, it is, characteristically, by shifting the locality higher up the Nile. Nubia, which exhibits the tomb in only the final development of the py- ramid, with a sanctuary, is the great scene of the earliest and excavated temples. Here is a cross proof of the suc- cession — at once by analogy and exclusion. The ration- ale seems this. With the moral development of mankind, and experience enough of society to feel how much the happiness of communities may be influenced by a con- queror, a king, a lawgiver, some traditional benefactor of this kind is divinified quite spontaneously into living and presiding personality. And- this of course suggested amo- dification of mansion ;• not only for' the residence of the god and his sacerdotal retinue, but also for the reception of the petitioners, that is to say, the bearers of presents. This distinct transformation of the tomb is the Temple, and constitutes our second architectural formation. § 99. The separation however, must, according to the law of progression, be at first incomplete. The connexion would linger still in the fundamental form, that of excava- tion. Accordingly most the Theban as well as Indian temples of the epoch in .question are found cut from the rock, either wholly or with the facing of a structural porch ; just as we saw the pyramid commence in the parapet of the mound ! To extricate itself into substantive existence the temple must adhere to the tumular pyramid, until it have somewhat to lean upon at the other side. Such is accordingly the exact character of the more modern pago- das ; where the pyramid is a mere appendage, surmounting the entrance, and its ancient sanctuary has retired gra- dually through a corridor or court, emerging at some dis- tance into what is now considered the temple. The other prop was supplied, as usual, by the third Elementary prin- ciple, the Palace. The private residence, even of the great, was hitherto a hovel comparatively. By this alliance with the temple, it gained' in dignity what it gave in support. The result was, the complex structures termed accordingly, MTTH0L0GICAL 'CYCLE. 283 -Temple-palaces, and which are known to have been the last development of Egyptian architecture. And it was the last stage of the art in Egypt, because it was the end of the Physical Cycle ; of which Egyptian civilization generally leaves the most complete and characteristic of records. § 100. I need not again remind the reader that it is the same psychological procedure, exhibited here in stone, which he has witnessed so often already; for example, in language, where the pronominal vocable was seen adher- ing to the substantive, and this compound again com- plicated by successive agglomeration ; until the analytic progress of modern languages had set the elements of predication free to signify severally the subject, the attri- bute and the copula. This analysis had commenced in ar- chitectural expression, too, with the accession of the philo- sophic Greeks to the throne of the Pharaohs. The temple had now become both structural and independent. But it was only to fall forward into the subsidiary rank of gal- lery, as at Athens, for the exhibition of painting and espe- cially statuary. This was a re-attachment of the tomb again to the temple. The latter was made a theatre for the inmates of the former ; no longer concretely, of the bo- dies in sarcophagi, but abstractly of the statues in niches. It probably modelled the dramatic theatre, which seems to have been the distinctive architectural expression of the Greeks. The re-union is more physical in the barba- rism of the middle ages, when it procured the repositories of the dead, the common appellation of churchyards. But there is still a more remarkable instance of this concrete tenacity. The inmates of the ancient tombs were placed by the Greeks, within their temples. The externals of the tomb, from steles up to pyramid, were piled upon the Chris- tian Church, and produced the spire and turrets of the mediaeval Cathedral. In fine, the mixture of tem- ple and palace — that early symbol of the " union of the church and state" — exhibits the same inverse pro- gression to decay. When kings were demigods, their abodes of course were " Temple-palaces." Now, how- ever, Victoria and even Nicholas are content with " Pa- lace-chapels." This architectural centaur of the infant imagination will be finally found to disappear with the po- 2S-1 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. litical analogue in our own republic. We are also prose- cuting, in common with other countries, the like divorce between the cemetery and the church-"-not deeming the sanctiftcation of the dead would compensate the infection of the living. But we remain, I think, behind most civi- lized communities in our predilection for that neo-barbaric superfaetation of the tomb upon the temple, which is dubbed the Gothic " order" of architecture. But I overstep the limits of both my space and present Cycle, solicitous to obviate the natural misgivings re- specting an exposition which thus, with the most symmetri- cal simplicity, at once evinces the errours of artists, re- solves the problems of ages, and above all explodes the traditional prejudices concerning the mystical " wisdom" of Egypt. I recapitulate then, and challenge refutation ■of the principle, that our law of progression, from the con- crete to the abstract, is traceable specifically in the histori- cal series of ancient architecture. That the monuments of Egypt belong to and complete the rude development of •the Physical Cycle. That their general character there- fore was statical Power ; and the artistic, or rather unar- tistic means of compassing this power, the three mathema- tical forms successively. That the application of Number produced the multiplication of heads, or limbs observed, also, in the Hindoo figures of their divinities, as well as in the " many-dugged" Diana of the Egyptians. That Mea- sure or magnitude was the highest conception of the latter people, in their every edifice from the pyramid to the palace, and even down to the sculptured ornaments, which are all calmly colossal. It is the germ of dynamic Figure or motion that we find budding in the seemingly queer attachment of wings to the heterogeneous symbol of this Power. A combination all the more characteristic, that these winged lions and bulls are shown by recent explorations to have been much more common, in the later civilization of Assyria and Persia. In fine, the cor- respondence is attested generally in what are called the orders of architecture. Of these, accounted to be five in number, we have excluded the Gothic as a barbarism; and the Composite is declared bastard by the very name. The pure and proper orders, then, are the Doric, the Ionic, the Corinthian. This is, too, MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 285 the series of their relative rise and, of course, ascend- ing complication ; the first and simplest being Egyptian, the second Ionian or Pelasgic, the third alone indigenously Greek. And they typify respectively our three -Cycles in the architectural art; even as the three mathematical methods do the correlative Divisions of science. MEDICINE. | 101. It was the same in fine with all arts whatsoever. Take any of the most divergent from those we have been considering, for example, the so called " learned" art of Medicine. Like all others, the healing art must have commenced with the individual, the obvious, the concrete in ailments ; it must have first been applied to local lesions, such as wounds, fractures, dislocations. Accordingly, its earliest appearance in history is under the character of Surgery. The testimony to this effect of Homer and others, respect- ing primitive antiquity, is signally corroborated by the relatively superior skill displayed by our American and all other savages in this therapeutic department. The obser- vation would have much modified the celebrated inference of Cuvier concerning the high civilization, nay science, of ancient Egypt. This great naturalist, it is known, on de- tecting a fracture properly set in the collar-bone of a mummy supposed as old as the pyramids, concluded the contemporary existence of a science of anatomy. He should have reflected that in the history of civilization a "' bone-setter" is an earlier calling than even a baker. The next and much a later stage of the medical art", is Pharmacy ; wherein the diseases are of a description less palpable and pressing, and the remedies are applied more- over internally. Here too, however, the applications were sufficiently manifest and simple, still, to have come into com- paratively early practice. -They might indeed have been learned, and probably sometimes were, from the yet ear T Her practice of certain of the lower animals ; who are led, of course by mere instinct, to the use of simples as evacu ants. The class of Alteratives were naturally and his- 25 286 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. torically of later development, as both administered inter- nally and operating imperceptibly. For this kind of reason it is that we find Medicine so long confounded, with jug- glery, sorcery and superstition. Last of all comes the conception of prevention, and the stage styled the Dietetic. There was here neither a remedy applied, nor yet a result produced, in the positive sense ; there was only a consequence or contingency pre- vented. But this was a conception completely abstract, and not merely abstract but also reflex. It was to be reached by the human intellect only through the progres- sive elimination of all the preceding stages of compli- cation. The discovery was, accordingly, reserved for Hippocrates, the Analogical (§ 32) father of medical in- vestigation. I may add, by way of general specimen, that the fun- damental principle of this dietetic system exhibits also quite characteristically our threefold method of Conception. It first appears in the theological shape of fasts, or abstinence from certain edibles, by the pretended injunction of the gods ; as in the institutes of Pythagoras, Moses, Bhudha, and all other primitive law-givers. "With the metaphysi- cal epoch of the mind it takes the character of an entity, and appears accordingly the latest of the four cardinal vir- tues of the pagans, under the appellation of Temperance. Finally, this medical precept, under the Rational concep- tion of the present age, is urged, we see, as a mere sana- tory and sociologic law of nature. § 102. The theory ran in parallel, however posterior lines. The medical systems of all antiquity are reducible, historically, to three broadly distinct and successive classes. The earliest was the Theological; where the healing func- tions were in the hands of the sacerdotal caste, as for in- stance, the priests of Egypt, the Brahmins of India, the ^Esclepiads of ancient Greece, and even the clergy of the middle ages. The second or metaphysical class was the thence called "Dogmatic" school; which taught occult causes, instead of divinities, to be the authors of dis- eases. Of this the founder is said to have been Hip- pocrates; which explains the historical tradition that he supplanted the priests of iEsculapius. The third and last development of the art, in the primitive Cycle, MYTHOLOGICAL CVCLE. -287 was denominated, no less significantly, the " Methodis- tic " school. I say the third ; for I regard the prece- ding school, named " Empirical," as a transition, in fact the metaphysical system of Hippocrates, arrived at its last extreme of negation. This seems evident from their rule of practice, which was, to proceed upon Jhcts alone, noth- ing but facts ; just the pretension, we see, of the so-called Baconian philosophers of the present day, who represent, in fact, the analogous epoch in natural science. (§ 3'4) An- other proof or at least a presumption is, that the sect arose among the Alexandrian grammarians ; who showed in all things but that barren caution of conscious impotence or sad experience, into which the intellect subsides from illu- sory cycles of speculation. But this is a subject on which I dare not go on to speak from memory, instead of book. I will therefore close with another general observation ; but one which contains, I think, the clue by which the classification might be continued throughout the medical schools of the two succeeding Cycles. With the three ancient classes in com- mon, the ground of theory was mainly method — which may explain why their ripest development took expressly the appellation ; they naturally began upon the surface, or with the Symptoms. In the second Cycle, the attention passes chiefly to the Remedies, their abstract qualities, their occult virtues, and various kinds. In the ultimate Cycle, it will turn principally on the mode of. operation ; that is to say the natural relation between the symptoms and the remedies. But here are manifestly our three pro- gressive bases of all induction ; Resemblance, Difference, and Uniformity. And so, of course, if we draw out the three systems of the ancient Cycle over the three Cycles of civilization. Thus the Theological school which, in that case, would be typical of the whole triad, like the old women and vulgar of all times, prescribed for like symp- toms the same remedies ; disregarding the specific nature of the medicine. The Metaphysical and more modern systems, of which Galen has been the oracle, professed to proceed upon the specific nature of remedies as well as diseases, and carried the opposition of doctrine to the characteristic extreme of erecting it into their celebrated maxim of contraria contrariis curantur. No less charac- 288 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. teristically, we have the reaction to this excess in the opposite system, styled Homoeopathy, in our own day. For the doctrine of Hahneman is mongrel ; that is to say, it is half metaphysical, by the mysticism of its infinitessimal doses j and half positive or scientific, by its systematical reliance, upon the whole aggregate of symptoms and the sole method of experience. And in the application of even the latter it is naturally narrow and rudimental ; of which the absoluteness of his maxim — similia similibus — may be taken as an infallible sign. Philosophically, how- ever, the Homoeopathic system seems to me the foremost in point of tendency. I should think it the modern analogue to the ancient Empirics, who formed, we said, the transi- tion to Methodism. Only the method now to come will be the synthesis of Science. But I beg pardon of the Faculty for presuming to meddle with their arcana ; and especially for adding, that until pathology shall have been conceived historically — as a subject of progression, like the body and the mind which it affects ; as undergoing a succession of forms according to the ages of society, as well as those of individuals ; and then the remedies be graduated upon the complication of both organisms ; until this be done, I dare predict that the scien- tific epoch just announced will continue to leave them . . . where they have been hitherto, as now explained. GOYEKNMENT. § 103. The progression was of course completely simi- lar, in the art of healing the body politic, that is to say, the physical body of Humanity, of Society. The remedies were first Penal ; the primitive legislation, a criminal code. See the Gothic codes of the middle ages, without excep- tion ; and the laws of all ages and communities in the barbarous state, up to the Ten Commandments and the Twelve Tables inclusive. This, we see, was quite con- sistent in the Cycle of Force. After came the therapeutic scheme of transportation by banishment, colonization, emigration, &c. ; which lingers still the leech and evacuants of our quacks political. This was equally characteristic of the Metaphysical epoch ; for MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 289 the reason of the change was to spare life, for the sake of the entity called soul or will. Before this was discovered there could have been no scruple in executing all culprits ; nay, there was a positive and pious motive, for they were generally handed over to the priests to be butchered in sacrifice to the gods ; and so with the most sweeping and legalized infanticide. But when it was revealed that these little ones brought with them into life a something anterior and superior to it ; at first a part, and after a pre- sent, of the divinity himself, and like him created from all eternity ; where was then the timorous barbarian to lay hands of 'violence on the possessor ! For the barbarian, while he braves any thing and all things m-'terial, from a fellow man to a monster or wind-mill, is like the child, a trembler at everything beyond; he is the hero of all sub- stances and the coward of all shadows. A trait of hu- manity which the great Cervantes has omitted to put to account : perhaps, because Cervantes was not educated a priest. Be this as it may, such is the primitive principle of the metaphysical or moral Cycle. And the services which it thus rendered, the social advancement which it wrought, ought to be remembered by unbelievers, whe- ther atheists or theists, in their blind invectives against its great natural representative, the Christian religion. The succeeding epoch of governmental Alteratives, brought the establishment of manufactories, &c, not only those within prisons, but also those without ; which form the natural transition to the Dietetic System. Of this system, which is, accordingly, the social problem of the present day, the principle (we now see) is as thus : Reason instead of Force; Duties instead op " Rights ;" Knowledge in- stead of Fraud ; Education instead of Superstition ; or to sum up all in a single term, Society instead or Man ; and the corresponding practice will be : absti- nence, FORBEARANCE, SELF-DENIAL, in the REGULATION both of Property and Population. WAR. § 104. Not even the wild and wanton art of "War could escape the order of our scale of progression. Here too, the 25* 290 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. earliest, because the simplest, consideration was number ; it congregated together the barbarous hordes of a Xerxes. Next in diminishing concreteness came the stratified or li- near arrangement - r it composed the Greek " phalanx ;" which operated still, however, with its notably elongated pikes, on the principle of Quantity, of impetus, of mere mass. The " legion" of the Roman army added the complication of motion ; it introduced a degree of internal organization by jointing the body into moveable " cohorts." Thus far went the mere mathematical development of the art, and consequently the proficiency under the Physical Cycle. Though restricted for the present to this period, I may go on to complete the example by remarking that, the army thus disposed into array, the art was prepared for the next accession, of Evolution and fortification. For what are these but a reduplicating the previous inter- nal organization, a complication of it upon the external and broader basis of space. But this was the principle proper to the Ethical Cycle, and those accordingly the great arts of the renowned strategists of Europe during the middle and subsequent ages. Finally, the Scientific Cycle is destined to superadd the still more complex and abstract element of Expedition. This advance is the result of the mental power of embracing all the prior complications of the subject so fully and familiar- ly, as to be capable of reconstituting and wielding them upon the new principlfe of time. War being the earliest of arts, it should also be among the first to manifest the new influence of these Cyclical revolutions. And when it is remembered that the advent in Europe of the last of these has been assigned to the date of the Eighteenth Cen- tury, we have, in conclusion, quite a pointed verification of the theory in the Greatness of Frederick and the Em- pire of Napoleon. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 291 CHAPTEE H. Philosophy of Human Institutions. SOCIETY. § 105. Our illustration m this department must be limit- ed to the two principal, and indeed all-comprising cases of Religion and Society. Although this may seem the order of their relative rise, yet it will be best to postpone the treatment of the religious institutions : for, by this arrangement, they will conveniently introduce us to the division of Systems, to which religion gives their essential character under ihe Metaphysical Cycle. In the subject of Society, then, I may begin by distin- guishing, that institutions (in the ordinary acceptation, as in the etymology of the term), are not understood to exist, until men have settled upon the soil, have attained to what Shakspeare terms a local habitation and a name. The ap- plication might, therefore, be content to commence also at the same advanced period, which is agreed to be the agri- cultural state. As, however, the theory asserts that the contrivances to obtain sustenance, which preceded and pro- gressively led to the institution of Society, must neces- sarily exhibit the universal triplicity of gradation, from the Concrete to the Abstract, I shall not shrink from sub- jecting it to the crucial test of these ^ne-social ages of Humanity. § 106. We have both observation and tradition to light us back in fact to two of these stages, denominated the Shepherd and the Hunter states. And that men did not commence with the latter is equally evident. They could nearly as soon have commenced with killing and eating each other. So far otherwise was their disposition, that man at first conceived no distinction between himself and the other animals, but felt that every thing exhibiting 292 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. life, had a common and equal title to the lifeless produc- tions of nature. (1) Hence their equal inclusion by Moses in the covenant of G-od with man. Even the earth he could not for a longtime have molested, by cutting for such productions into its soil. And this not only because the process implies the previous contrivance of an instrument, but principally perhaps, because the earth appeared to him, in virtue of this productive energy, to be an animal like himself, and (1) Among the many literal examples of even the most paradoxical views in the text which have been since encountered in the course of examination, the following is one which I cannot resist the temptation of quoting, though contrary to my resolution, against all addition for the present. It will serve to illustrate not only the point before us, but also a number of others, throughout the book. I add that the author was a German missionary among the Iudians for some thirty years. " I have often reflected, says Heckerwelder, on the curious con- nection which appears to subsist in the mind of an Indian, between man and the brute creation, and found much matter in it for curious observation. All beings endowed with the power of volition and self motion, they view in a manner as a great society, of which they (man- kind) are the head. They are in fact, according to their opinion, only the first among equals. Hence in their languages, those inflexions of the nouns, which we call genders, are not, as with us, descriptive of the masculine and feminine species, but of the animate and inanimate kinds. Indeed they go so far as to include trees and plants in the first of these descriptions. All animated nature is in their eyes, a great whole, from which they have not ventured to separate themselves. They do not exclude other animals from their world of spirits, &c. " A Delaware hunter once shot a huge bear and broke its back bone. The animal fell, and uttered a most plaintive groan. The hunter in- stead of giving him another shot, stood up close to him and addressed him in these words : ' Hark ye, bear, you are a coward and no war- rior as you pretend to be. Were you a warrior, you would show it by your firmness, and not cry and whimper like an old woman. You know, bear, that our tribes are at war with each other, and that yours was the aggressor. You have found Ihe Indians too powerful for you, and you have gone sneaking about in the woods, stealing their hogs. Had you conquered me, I would have borne it with courage, and died like a brave warrior ; but you, bear, sit here and cry, and disgrace your tribe by your cowardly conduct.' I was present, adds Hecker- welder, at the delivery of this curious invective. When the hunter dispatched the bear, I asked him how he thought that poor animal could understand what he said to it ? Oh, said he in answer the bear understood me well ; did you not observe how ashamed he looked while I was upraiding him ?" — Historical acct., p. 247. How many a civilized moralist, both preacher and philosopher, do we every day hear " upraiding" upon the identical principles of this unsophisticated savage. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 293 moreover awfully more powerful. There remained then to begin with but the fruits above the surface, and which asked no intermediate process either between the tree and the hand, or between the hand and the mouth. It was only when this Acorn supply of fruits fell short that resort was had to digging into the ground for roots. Accord- ingly, our North American Indians, though advanced into the hunter state and even to the cultivation of some patches of maize, are known to fall back, on occasions of scarcity, upon the two primordial resources described. We are told by recent travellers of a certain tribe named the Shashones, inhabiting at this moment the territory of Ore- gon, and numbering some ten thousand, who subsist ex- clusively upon roots and berries, and have thence received the designation of " root-diggers." The East-Indians, too, inhabiting the woods of the extreme peninsula, still fare, it seems, upon precisely the same articles. But there is a curious fact more simple and concrete still than either. Humboldt visited a community of savages on the banks of the Oronoco, who, when prevented by the rain-season from gathering insects, lizards and roots, fed upon a loamy description of earth. Nor is the instance at all singular. It is well known that the negroes imported into the American colonies from the coast of Guinea, had to be kept by punishment from -devouring a sort of clay which resembled that of their native soil. In short, the propen- sity is general among the inhabitants of the torrid zone, where the means of subsistence are spontaneously most abundant ; but also where men have remained (and no doubt, for this reason) the nearest to the infancy of the race. Nay, we need but look around us at the infancy of the individual ; who must exhibit, as I pretend, the same phenomena in miniature. We will not appeal to mothers in cities, where candies are more accessible than clay; but those in the country know the difficulty of keeping children from stuffing the mouth with this primitive species of comfit. But more pointedly and profoundly still, are not the mothers during pregnancy often affected with the mania of this vicious, or shall I say, natural appetite ? Is it that the foetus, * * * but to return to the application. The result is that we find not only a state of human exist- ence antecedent to the hunter ; but see it, moreover, sub- 294 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. divide itself into three successive stages, according to the uniform law of all progression. Now, it was after proceeding thus for ages in the pro- curement of food, from the less to the more organic in the objects, and the less to the more abstract in the means, that men were pressed by hunger, taught by example, often furnished at their own expense by the lower carnivorous animals, and trained by experience, to enter upon the hunter state. Here his resources of abstraction and art received a much more active development, in the processes not only of catching but also of cooking his prey. The next and consequent advance was the adoption of the shepherd state. With the multiplication of the hunters and the proportional insufficiency of the animals in their natural condition, the expedient would now suggest itself, of taming and breeding them. It would be first for the flesh. But after, by a farther abstraction, for the milk, butter, cheese, in countries blessed with the sheep and especially the cow. The absence of these two animals would, perhaps, suffice to explain- the observation of phi- losophers respecting the non-appearance of the shepherd state on this continent. But in fact the savages of the North had not attained the due development or they might have domesticated the buffalo of the prairie, as the Peruvians did the Lama. A-nd as to the latter, who, with the Mexicans, were found deep in the agricultural epoch, we know, I think, too little of their previous his- tory to pronounce. After all, the state in question may not be a necessary stage of the development ; but only a diversion occasioned by a peculiar constitution of the country. In regions destitute of either wood for game or soil for culture, such as the vast steppe deserts of Asia, we find this condition of prae-social or patriarchal humanity, prevail from the earliest ages without perceptible change to this hour. Be this, however, as it may, the continuous possession, with the provision and forecast implied in the process, presents, no less, the primary stage in social pro- perty and economics. § 107. It is succeeded by the Agricultural state ; which, also, consists mainly in the domestication and breeding of vegetables. This stage, it might be therefore supposed, should have preceded the previous ; seeing that the vege- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 295 table kingdom holds a lower, a simpler grade than does the animal in the scale of organization, and also that, as we have just established, it was the earlier to have been en- countered in the instinctive pursuit of food. But this supposition would overlook one or two of our fundamental axioms, as well as the concurrent testimony of all history. The axioms are : that in the acquisition of knowledge we proceed from the more to the less known, and in its applica- tion from the more to the less organic or abstract (§ 39}. Now man, we saw, was to himself the first and fundamental type, not only of explanation and expression, but likewise of art. Artificial production must, therefore, begin with the animal kingdom; with which the analogy, the sympathy was vastly more immediate, at once in the scale of being and in the manner of multiplication. Moreover the edu- cation of vegetables, though they be simpler in constitu- tion, is really the more complicate and difficult art ; for it involves the farther cultivation of the earth, with which the shepherd state is not essentially concerned. And that this is the order of progression is evinced positively by the familiar fact, that it is only in the present age that the art of culture begins to reach the so-called inorganic ele- ments of production, the chemical properties of soils. For any of these various reasons, then, the Agricultural state must be the latest of the pras-social ; and it accordingly involves or is the usual compound, the convolution of all three. (1) (1) If however there should be a reader who, in spite of demon- stration, would take the foregoing for a fancy sketch in either its divi- sions or development, I would invite him to ponder the following. He must not suppose I affront his doubtless mature understanding with a fable after the manner of jEsop. The story is a myth con- densing the pith of many ages of history, and this the history of the most primeval and indigenous people of the earth: — " Prithu, one of the earliest incarnations of Christnu (the Mediator of the Brahminie trinity) married Prithivi, the earth. This goddess, having thereto- fore refused to supply man with food, her beneficent consort now commenced compelling her by beating and cutting her flesh. The still rebellious wife assumed the shape of a cow, and ascended Mount Meru (The Hindoo Olympus), to lay her complaint before the gods. The case being heard on both sides, the decision was in favor of Pri- thu. The lady submitted though reluctantly to the last. And since that time, says the inspired Parana, mankind are permitted to beat and wound her with spades, ploughs, and harrows, until she yields 2196 Vestiges oj civilization. § 108. It was, also, duly the first stage of society. It was the first to fix in the earth that second abutment of the arch of correlation between the External world and Man, upon which must rest, as we have seen, every solid construction of the latter, not merely the social but even the scientific The migratory states were an aggregation, not association. Any semblance of the latter could be prac- tised only for the transient purpose of war. But this, though in fact the primary school of social disciplination, was, even temporarily, bat an association of individuals. Society is, on the contrary, an association of families, and for the purpose of preservation, not of destruction. Pro- perty then and Family are the abutments of the social arch : a truth which enables one to measure the deep per- versity of Communism. Proceed we now to trace, in the superincumbent structure, the usual threefold stage of progressive complication. It was assumed, in the Introduction, that historical composition proceeded upon three principles progress- ively, namely, genealogy, geography, chronology. But history is only the record or representation of Society. Accordingly, we after detected, under those empirical designations, the three fundamental methods of all con- struction, as of all conception, I mean the three mathema- tical relations or forms? for Number is even technically deemed a process of generation ; Extension a generation in space ; Figure, a generation of numbered extensions in time. The corresponding forms of government, as re- corded and denominated by history, are the Patriarchal, the Monarchical, and the Republican. Here, then, is a pretty complicated ordeal for our principles. For it must be remembered that the same series must (as just exemplified in the schools of Medi- cine) pass moreover through a multitude of intermediate grades, to reach the ultimate -coincidence of its- three them food." Thus far for the agricultural state. Is it not equally em- blematic of the stages assigned the Pro-social, that the three first of these avataras were successively into a fish, a tortoise (i. e. an amphib- ious and intermediate animal), and a hog, an animal ruinous to the roots upon which man subsisted, and accordingly sacrificed by the sav- ages of the Philippine Islands, too, to the sun 1 Comment could only cloud the pertinence of this quaint record. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 297 terms with the three Cycles. The more general unifor- mity will be better appreciated hereafter. Having to do at present with the primary Cycle, and thus the Patriar- chal type. I turn to the history of the latter, in the three- fold subdivision. It might be distinguished as the Cyclical series, and its general extension the Secular. § 109. Of the physical Cycle we are aware the Con- ceptual characteristic consists in imputing all causation to Life. The physical author of human life is, therefore, taken, quite spontaneously, for the fountain also of govern- mental authority. This is the general spirit of the epoch, in all three stages.^ The modifications arise from the usual • progression of abstraction, as to who this author may effect- ually be. At first it is, of course, the corporeal parent immediately. This is the origin of that paternal power so terrible in antiquity, when the father was authorized not merely to govern, but to dispose absolutely of, the person and property of his whole household ; but which we see reduced at the present day, by the gradual encroachment of the political, to a moderate chastisement of his minor or infant child. It also gave origin and name to the senatorial body, in the legislative order. Politically, however, there was no subordination among the several fathers as yet. Co-operate they might, indeed, and did, at least for military purposes. But there could be no compulsion to com- mence or to continue. The nation was a crowd of indi- viduals, of bare and barren elements. I shall term it the Democratic stage of the Patriarchal form of Society. For democracy is not a positive form of government ; it is the negation of all forms, the transition state of decom- position, — atomical, molecular and corpuscular, progress- ively (§ 24) — through which the governmental series must pass, from Cycle to Cycle. It may be witnessed, in the ear- liest form, among the Germans of the age of Agricola. It was just appearing in certain tribes of our North Ameri- can savages, for example the Five nations ; who are shown by even the familiar fact of their federation, to have been passing to the social, from the hunter, state. But, to mould into permanent association, for pacific purposes, this anarchical democracy, this negative equality, there evi- dently must be a principle, or rather a sentiment of sub- ordination. 26 298 VESTIGES OY CIVILIZATION. This also was supplied spontaneously by the mere pro- gress of population. The eldest born would not only suc- ceed to the father's presidency over the immediate house- hold ; he would generally be young enough to continue it over their offspring, in the second degree. Indeed he would naturally be deemed invested with the succession upon birth. Thus, in fact, among the South-Sea Island- ers, the possessions of the father, whether an estate or the throne, passed at once to the newborn heir. I need not trace how primogeniture, once rooted in the soil of proper- ty, would thus transform, in a few generations, the pater- nal power over the family, into the chieftaincy of the sept, the clan, the tribe, &c. ; as the same social combination has been named diversely in different tongues. This might be termed the Aristocratic stage of Patriarchy. This Aristocracy is the first organic form of government, and will consequently be the last, but upon a different principle. For ultimately it will be the aristocracy of Reason, of science. Here it is the paternal aristocracy of wisdom, of experience, of age — things always supposed to go together before instruction can come by art. In this form it has been exemplified in every nascent community, from the plains ofShinaar along to the Highlands of Scotland. Nor, it is plain, would the tendency be confined to the direct line. It would operate also collaterally ; first to confederate, and ultimately to commingle the gentilitial groups in a wider circle of unity. Naturally this consum- mation would be effected by intermarriage ; a due modifi- cation of the principle of generation. But it was frequently precipitated by conquest, by Force ; which also was the great criterion of right, in the Physical Cycle. The patri- arch or chief of a tribe, victorious in battle, would, from occasional leader, be raised into permanent ruler ; that is to say, depository of the public force, which is the exact ety- mology of the word king. His followers on the other hand, would appropriate the lands and even the persons of the vanquished, and constitute themselves into an aristocracy of force. And being thus enabled, by the labour of the subject tribes, to pursue exclusively, a career of conquest; their dominion would in time extend itself over the sur- rounding barbarians, into the still larger generalization of the social unity of the third grade. This, which constitutes the MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 209 main stage, may be called the Monarchical form of the pa- ternal principle of government. "We have still a Euro- pean, but much modified sample of this paternal despotism, in the empire of Russia. But the purest types have been the Turkish, Chinese and other oriental monarchies. Also, ■ on the new Continent, the Peruvian and Mexican empires. It is a curious confirmation that, even the civil code of the latter people, indited in picture, should consist, for the greater part, of the article dejure patrio. § 110. The sole tie, then, by which these rude masses were strung successively together, thus far, was, I repeat, the natural relation of Family. Nor did the principle lose its hold on reaching the point of culmination, but had, of course, a decline as slowly gradual as its rise. The de- clination was determined by the element of force ; which we just saw cross it in the usurpation of Conquest, and by which it was compelled, through the animal instinct of self defence, to resort to combinations more artificial, but still spontaneous. These expedients would be of two kinds, according to the two points of the social system, which were assailed by the disorganization of Force. For the military aristocracy of the ruling tribe, would tend to rebel against the monarch, whom they still conceived as but the depository and symbol of their power ; and the con- quered populations would, on the other hand, take such occasions to rise in arms against both the oppressors. To cure this double-issued eruption, was the political prob- lem of the epoch. And the paternal principle was, again, admirably successful for a season. Its method, however, was simple, because natural. Become too familiar as well as feeble in the original and earthly conception, it shifted its source into the skies. The transition was easy as obvious, from the father on earth to the father in heaven. Then the monarch was made the direct offspring of this all-powerful and heavenly parent, who at the coetaneous stage of nature-worship, was the sun. Hence, in fact, this divine paternity of the mythic ages of all nations. Hence, even within the historical period, the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Incas of Peru, the Mikados of Japan, the Rajpoots of the Hindoos, &c. ; for these royal appellations all import the descendant of heaven or of the sun. By this device the descent of power was virtually restored, 300 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. we see to the pristine basis, the relation of father to son. But what was more peculiarly to the purpose, the inheri- tance was now so constituted as to be transmissible indefi- nitely to this heaven-descended dynasty, without incurring the attenuation of succession, or the failure of heir. For it remained always immediate from the divine father, to the son of his special designation ! and the god-parent was of course immortal in vigour, as well as vitality. Then, the same awful authority that protected the mon- arch against the military class, was made, in turn, to pro- tect the latter from the subject populations ; who were en- joined by the general ordinances, styled revelations, to be resigned to their hereditary calling and condition. Here the principle of inheritance — or generation applied to property — is found extended from the throne to the trade. The governmental part of the arrangement, I shall call the Theocratical form of Patriarchy. The organic part, the institution of Castes ; which is thus the secondary social formation. Both the things, it is familiarly known, have existed and operated side by side, under all the primitive monarchies of the world, from primeval India and Egypt down to present China and Japan. It cannot be unobserved how true they are, respectively, to the two foremost—the numeral and stratified — of our three mathematical forms. But whose, it might be asked, was the cunning hand to conduct this scheme to execution. It could not be the monarch himself; still less would it be the military, whose power it was supplanting ; and least of all the servile, and then truly " swinish" multitude. The nature as well as adroitness of the thing announce the agency of the priest. Such were, in fact, the epoch and the occasion of his ad- vent to politics. The priest, at first and in the savage state, but a strolling juggler to the common people, is promot- ed later into the office of sacrifice and auspication for the military class. But when this barbarian aristocracy have established the monarchy in question, and after turn, as they will infallibly, to usurp or overthrow it ; then the clergy are called in, as the natural supporters of the des- potism ; elevated into a special and hereditary order ; and assigned of course the highest place in the classification of Castes. Indeed they thus become the despots themselves, and of all parties. For while wielding the thunder of hea- ven against the populace, and the more formidable thunder MYTHOLOGICAL CFCLE. 301 of the populace against the aristocratic class, we find them, by the same charter, interpreters at the other end, between the celestial parent and his royal offspring upon earth ; directing the latter in his whole conduct, declaring his fili- ation, and disposing in short electively of the throne. Here is a tissue which might well appear a satire upon Jesuit- ism, did it not constitute a strict analysis of many ages of the world's history. It is the same part that is now enact- ed by the Christian priesthood of modern Europe, where the despotism of the Ethical Cycle has succeeded to that of the Physical. A proof, by the way, that the Jesuits are of no particular creed, or country, or age ; but simply signify the sacerdotal craft amid the crisis of a tottering system. § 111. But at the epoch in question, as on the later occasions, all these clerical contrivances must have at last begun tagive way, before the incipient development of in- telligence and free will. The Family type as a bond of society, had been thus attenuated into a fiction. The thread of fiction was, moreover, exposed' to the pressure of a double strain ; which augmented, of course, in a com- pound ratio to the multiplication of the governed and the extension of the territory. In joint consequence of these fatal tendencies it came to be constantly snapping asunder. The frontier provinces were falling off at the traitorous touch of ambitious lieutenants ; even as we saw the comets had been diverted into satellites. (§ 23 note.)* More rarely some bolder adventurer was impiously successful in wresting the entire administration from the holy hands of the clergy. Such was the origin of the Ziagoon or acting emperor of Japan ; the real dominion of the " Son of Heaven" being for ages back recjuced to the palace community of his mis- tresses and priests. Occasionally, and where the military body was sufficiently powerful,, the ruptures would take the shape of an extermination of the clerical caste. Such was the massacre recorded historically under the heathen monarchy of Abyssinia. Such is also, I doubt not, the true explanation of the absence, deemed so enigmatical, of a sacerdotal order among the castes of ancient Athens and other Greek eities. The result accordingly, or rather a co-effect, of this early overthrow of the theocratic des- potism, is witnessed in the subsequent freedom, the philo- sophy, the civilization of that illustrious people, as com- 26* 302 VESTI&ES OF CIVILIZATKlir. pared with Egypt, for example, and India, where it was on the contrary, the military caste who were compelled to retire or succumb, and the priests were left predominant to stamp into the soul of the people that irretrievable deg- radation, alike of breast and brain, which, for twenty or thirty centuries back, has made the hordes of both" these nations the same besotted prey to every successive adven- turer, from Cyrus and Alexander down to the English and the 'Turks. And if it were objected, that the clerical catastrophe was not followed in Abyssinia with the like salutary consequences as in Greece, it would be sufficient to reply that the former shook off the heathen priesthood only to fall into the chains of the Christian. Be this as it may, the whole social body now hung together loosely, precariously; in days especially when there existed no standing armies at the disposal of the monarch to supply the absence of organization by physical as well as spiritual terror. Organization must then be provided, and on a different principle from genealogy. What must it have been ? § 112. Our theory answers Geography, that is to say space. Quite accordingly we meet at this point, with the tertiary formation of society, to wit, the classification by castes turned into the Figured system called the City. Here- tofore the population dwelt dispersed throughout the ter- ritory whether in the patriarchal grouping by tribes, or the professional series by trades ; a disposition which evidently favored the dissolution just delineated. The nature of the new arrangement was an instinctive effort to co-ordinate both, upon the material basis of the earth; to farther amalgamate these heterogeneous and refractory elements ; to collocate them within the precints of a compassable and walled space, so as to be under the eye, the influence and the arm of the monarch. But such a purpose would evidently be inapplicable to the entire population of a large empire. It would'accordingly, be thought sufficient to comprise the chiefs or leaders ; through whom the mul- titude, in the respective districts, may be kept to order and to tribute ; (a term by the way, whose etymology bears exact testimony to the theory)! These patrician chiefs, then with their crowds of slaves and quartiers of artisans, to- gether with the court and its similar retinues — such must MYTHOLOeiCAL CYCLE. 303 have been the social elements in the capital cities of the Physical Cycle. Now this theoretical deduction presents a precise state- ment of whatever is known historically concerning these primitive communities, their character, composition and foundation. Athens, for example, to which I have just alluded, is said to have been founded by Theseus, who or- ganized the pre-existing lay castes (the priestly order being somehow got rid of), with the subaltern tribes, into sys- tematic subordination ; and then collected the principal families, that is to say, induced them by special privilege?, to dwell within the walls of the city. Servius Tullius did much the same, we are told, for the city of Rome. This third of the elementary social combinations is the first, it will be seen, to bear a character decidedly political ; a fact transmitted in the ancient and mediaeval sense of the term city. I shall therefore name it the Political form of Patri- archy. It might be also illustrated, though at a ruder and earlier stage, in the cities of Babylon, Nineveh, Memphis, &c. And it would in tarn, explain quite obviously the most perplexing of the standing problems respecting those wonders of the modern as well as ancient world. For in- stance, the prodigious numbers of their population, in times and places with comparatively no manufactures or commerce. Also, the still more enormous ratio of the area which they enclosed, extending sometimes to a peri- phery of sixty miles or over. • Again, the precision with which they shaped the walls to some symmetrical or regu- lar figure ; so unlike the suburban and non-descript out- line of all those cities whose growth is gradual and the builders miscellaneous. And most remarkable of all, though perhaps implied in the latter trait, the tradition that these vast cities had been each the work of an indivi- dual monarch ; and in the case of Babylon, it was added, by a confirmatory exaggeration, that the thing had been accomplished in a single day. But all becomes substantially credible and consequent if we conceive them to be human sheepfolds ; of which the inmates were fed by serfs from the richest pastures of an extensive empire; of which the arrangements were constructed . along the surface of the earth, for want of political as well as architectural art to distribute them hierarchically ; and which were conceived 304 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. upon occasion of the crises above described, and executed, with the design of penning up the organs of insubordina- tion, by the more vigorous of those who now became, by a significant transition, to be styled no longer the fathers, but the shepherds of the people. (1) § 113. But all opposition to the course of nature is an ultimate promotion of her ends. So it proved in the case of the eity, the proximate germ of the State. The city was then, as it still continues, the foremost nursery of de- mocracy. It was thus, that Theseus (to pursue the con- formity of the same example in various of its aspects), it was so that Theseus was said to have founded the Athe- nian democracy. For this was the speedy result of his organization of the city, although really, as we have seen, upon an aristocratical basis. The like result is upon re- cord in the general expulsion of their kings by the several other cities of ancient Greece ; of the Tarquins by Rome, and of the royal power by the Phoenician cities of Car- thage, which were all, like the so-called democracies of Greece and even Rome, in reality patrician aristocracies. For these were the three sole nations who had attained in antiquity to this the political term of the Mythological Cycle. Then followed co-extensively the reign of Republics. But what were these republics 1 They were, as an advance upon the preceding forms, an attempt to organize society on the basis of time. For the means were a constitution, that is to say, fixed law ; and the essence of law is duration. But they also involved the principles of place and kindred at the same time; even as we have seen, in all things, from poetry down to pottery, the third and final stages of the cyclical development agglomerated, so to say, with the two anterior elements. Thus the republican constitution of Rome presents this threefold agglomeration. We see retained the family prin- ciple in that domestic despot, the " pater Romanus;" the determination by space, in the land or property distribu- tion of " classes" or " orders," which were the varied and vanishing form of the castes ; the determination by time, in the legal designation of " Roman citizen" or " city ;" (1) mi)iivts \a£v is the habitual epithet for monarch in Homer. Also in the Bible. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 305 which moves alike, we see, along the three lines of time, place, and generation ; that is to say, was independent of privilege, property and birth. The same mixture of course prevailed in the republican cities of Greece, though not in so well-tempered proportions. And it was this particular, no doubt, that gave its relative excellence and longer du- ration to the Roman organization. This organization, then, which forms the political transition to the ensuing Cycle, I shall call by a corresponding reversal of epithet, the Patriarchal or patrician republic. It was the republic of Family and Force. Even as our own republic will be found, at the analogous close of the Moral Cycle, to take the qualification of monarchical, as a republic of the se- cond order which grounds upon Property and Will. And I may add the republic of the third and final order — had we occasion to go so far — should be styled, in the sam» nomenclature, the republican republic, as designating that ultimate perfection of the social system in which Science would be the rule of action, and Intellect the right of go- vernment. The Family or tribe, the Caste or class, the City or republic, as severally the two extremes of the three epochal forms of government ; Patriarchs, Kings, Lawgivers, as the three correlative governors; Birth — Human, Divine, Civic, as the three corresponding qualifications — such are the direct deductions of our theory from the Patriarchal type ; and they appear to be also exact ^reductions from the political history of the primitive Cycle. The course and correlation of the whole it may be well to present in a diagram. The scheme will answer at the same time for the two succeeding Cycles ; which are but the usual reduplication of the same system of sub- series, only operated about different centres of develop- ment, as above explained. 306 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. ( Organizing society through the principle of) I Generation, {on the basis of) Objective Nature, (by the connectives of) I Kindred, Space, Time, ( producing the social groups of) I Family, Caste, City, (and the governmental types of) I Patriarchy, Monarchy, Republicanism. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 307 § 114. The historical analysis is doubtless, from the ne- cessary condensation, extremely meagre and inadequate to the vastness of the subject. But the social principles and forms of the Mythological Cycle are not the less ex- hibited, I think, correctly and completely in this synopsis. And the present purpose is to see how far the latter is conformable, or otherwise, to each and all of our three ax- ioms of verification. Respecting the first, or the procession from Concrete to Abstract, from the less to the' more complex, the con- sonance is clear, throughout every line of the diagram. Viewing it vertically, the order opens in Man himself, the known term ; thence extends itself into external Nature, the other factor of the social system ; and there convolves those two elements, under the names of Kindred and Space (i. e. land), with that of Time, which is to say, institution, a building upon the future; the infant institu- tion here having been Inheritance. And all this we see next reduplicated into the property line of the Family and the governmental line of the Patriarchy, progressively. Precisely the same congruity, if we view the order horizontally. The progressive complication is manifest in each series. Property complicates kindred; and in- heritance, in turn, property. Then the joint result of all three, the family (or " House " as was the term) is farther limited by the Caste condition; and this condition, again, complicated by the still more abstract rules, as its subjects were confined by the walls, of the City. Over the city, which I have shown to be the germ of the State, we find, in the next place, superposed the Patriarchate ; which being the monarchy proper of the Mythological Cycle, must end the upward progression. The two following forms in the diagram, named Monarchical and Republican, being destined, respectively, to rule the two succeeding Cycles, can therefore represent in this but the downward 'progress of decay ; the former dwindling into Tyranny, and this dissolving into Democracy, to re-enter into the combinations of the new epoch. In above exemplifying this genesis of the Patriarchal monarchy, an injustice has been committed which I hasten to repair. I there alluded to the Russian despot, as the sole European instance (with exception of the Turk) of 308 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. this theocratical dominion. And the assertion was correct, if we take the system in its age of vigour. But having just graduated its decay, I must add that there are two other samples, which, though deep in this sear condition, preserve the primitive identity purer, in despotism as in name. I mean the " Patriarch " of the eastern Church, and his titular synonym the " Pope " of Rome — both twin monarchs (the Arcadius and Honorius) of the spiritual empire. We find also here exemplified the as- signed stages of decay : that of tyranny has long dwindled, in even the stronger of the two fortresses, into almost the mere precincts of the Vatican ; and the democratic dissolu- tion follows after, in full ferment,with progressive pace, from the German monk to the Mormon prophet. But as all this belongs to the ensuing chapter, I omitted to give then- proper position to those two venerable remnants of the Patriarchal type of government ; not at all that they could escape me as now beneath consideration. Indeed the omission I rather suspect to have been a pious instinct to conceal the sores, that is to say, the solitude of the " City of God " on earth — made all but desolate by the double demon of mammon and mathematics. § 115. However, these mathematics, in their threefold formula of all existences, the social as well as the physical, is the second test to be applied. But in the horizontal series, of generation, space, time, we have already recog- nized repeatedly the respectively progressive principles of Number, Extension, and Figure ; that is to say, in the first, the individual tie of parentage; in the second, this tie of parentage elongated into property, rooted in the soil ; in the third, this rooted parentage converted, at the other end, into the ramified configurations of inheritance. The procession is duly still more marked in the second series of the diagram, wherein this family tree, or " House," forms the three Numeral units, of which the graduated elements, from primogeniture down to slavery, present the germs, after elongated into the stratifications by Caste, and in the third stage configured into the clas- sification of the City. For the " classes " of the ancient cities are no other than the previous Castes, with the name altered to suit the fading of the servitude into freedom. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 309 Like the preceding test, our mathematical forms are equally visible in the vertical order. The pointed kinship, the pullulations, of mere parentage cohere into lines in the Family ; and again are clustered into figure by the paramount unit of the Patriarchy. So Space (or land) is but property unified by primogeniture in the several fam- ilies ; Castes, an elongation, a perpetuation of the sorts of property which remain thereafter to the younger mem- bers and the menials of the social household, that is to say, the property of professions and trades ; Monarchy, a con- volution of the various castes or classes into the figured unit known, in modern Europe, as the feudal system. In the third, in fine, of the vertical series, the term Time rep- resents Inheritance individualized, that is to say, diffused equally among the family ; the City, the same equality elongated into institutions ; the Republic, the convolution of all the Cities or States of the earth in the great organic unity of Humanity. The test makes here, it will be said, a large stride into the future. But as the full development of the last and pre-eminently social series is beyond my plan, as be- longing to the Scientific Cycle; and also as I have little hope, at this advanced stage of my limits, to resume even the middle or Monarchical series in any detail ; for these reasons, I thought it best to let both the tests run on to the end, and prove, like the nail of the statuary, that there is nor flaw nor fibre throughout the polished outline of the grand explication. It is scarcely necessary to declare the concurrence of the third and remaining test, respecting the Conceptual prin- ciples severally proper to the three Cycles. As to the first of these epochs, now before us, we need but glance at the above diagram to see 2/i^e-imparting principle of pater- nity pervade the whole. The entity of Will, will be found equally pervasive in the ensuing epoch. And then the reader may see what else than Reason can well be monarch of the Cycle of science. 27 310 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. CHAPTEE HI. PMlosopTvy of the Heathen Religions. § 116. It is the nature of all institutions that, springing in man himself, they require a support and a sanction from some thing external to him. The reason of this is clear; they are in fact, as the term implies, an expedient devised provisionally, to the end of supplying the general igno- rance, while promoting the gradual establishment, of the scientific laws of harmony which subsist between Hu- manity and the mundane medium wherein it lives and moves. In the subject of Society, just considered, this support had been attained, we saw, by that local fixation of nomad man upon the earth, which is designated the ag- ricultural state. And as to the sanction, we also saw it ■drawn spontaneously from religion. Religion, on the other hand, being itself the supreme sanction, would need, of course, but the second requisite of support. This it seeks, at first, like the social institutions, in the material or real world, in a prolongation of life in the land. But this land of perpetual life is soon obliged to leave the earth, and recede into the spiritual, the im- aginary, the ideal. The ideal world in turn, commen- ced in the indefinite past ; it is the world of causes, or the demons that occasion men's sufferings. It is next swung forward into the indefinite future, where'it becomes the world of consequences, the scene where gods and angels are to recompense those sufferings which they had failed to forefend or cure upon the earth. And should this scene be ever permitted, by the weak suggestions of sense and selfishness, to gravitate into the intermediate and actual world of human affairs ; why then the dogmas of theolo- gy will be the rules of reason, the laws of science. Mean- while, this triple division of the objects of all religions concurs in point of epoch with our three successive MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 311 Cycles. The first division makes the religions of Life, of force ; the second, the religions of Will, of fraud (that is, of course, beneficent deception) ; the third, the religions of Reason, of duty. Or, otherwise, they are respectively the religions of Fear, of Hope, of Gratitude. With the last, which is all to come, my present purpose is not concerned ; and I dismiss it with the remark, that it is destined to bring religion to owe, like human institu-. tions, its highest sanction to the laws of nature. Of the two others, which lie afloat in the full freedom of the im- aginary, the first belongs in order to the Mythological ages of society. § 117. But although Religion, during the infancy and the adolescence of Humanity, be thus not an institution in the ordinary sense — be not a projection, a prolongation of the general instincts of Humanity to reach their satisfac- tion in the material and known world, but on the contrary leans, itself, for support upon the unknown ; yet the case is quite otherwise with its ministers. These in fact cannot live, like the creed they preach, upon prayer and promise. Nor yet, at the same time, do they attach themselves, like the founders of social institutions, to the rude practices of agriculture or the other useful atfs. It is a law of life that all animals, as they ascend in the scale of dignity, subsist on objects more finely elaborated, more highly organized. But Society we have seen to be the consum- mation of all organic nature. It is accordingly upon So- ciety alone that the holy men in question are found to feed, to fasten, to fatten. Prior to its full foundation, they had no instituted existence (what their antecedents really were I shall shun, if possible, to say). Upon it, as the basis, they erected the establishment termed anciently a Temple, and afterwards a Church. It was the unpropitious birth of those Siamese twins, called the Union of Church and State ; of which the real conditions, the vital ligament is thus per- ceived to be, a plain barter of celestial sanction for tempo- ral support. The mongrel combination we just saw typified architecturally, in the so called " temple-palaces" of ancient Egypt. In fine, throughout the long career of this political centaur (as I dared to call it), the priesthood have contrived, with some " ups and downs," to be the rider. Of late, however, they seem threatened with being 312 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. finally dismounted ; and the effort is to set the horse upon the man. But Humanity may smile securely at the early and obvious consequence. § 118. Returning to Religion itself, it presents through- out this whole progression the uniform triad of aspects or elements. It is concerned with Divinities, with Rites, and with Doctrines. For the human mind, as I have shown repeatedly, cannot escape, even in its wildest fictions, any more than the comet in its eccentricities, the three mathe- matical relations. Here, in fact, we find the means pro- posed by Religion for human Happiness, take at first the arbitrary and mere multitudinous shape of Number ; then, elongate or Extend the virtue, from the divine points into the lines of ceremony, the ligaments of the religious or- ganism ; and lastly, come to fold, to Figure both the fibres and the cells into a system, or as it is styled expressly, a " body" of theology. The prescribed order, too, of the procession is no less conformable ; and this, of course, whether viewed in the full expansion of the three Cycles, or on the minor scale of any one in particular. Thus, to take the ampler instance, the religions of the Heathen era abounded in divinities, but had no doctrines and but few rites ; in the second o»Christian epoch, the rites attained predominance, producing on the one hand a nucleus of doctrine (the Bible, Koran, &c), and on the other propor- tionally reducing the divinities, at first in point of rank, and at last in point of number. So, no doubt, in the coming era, the rites in turn will be merged in doctrines, a ten- dency far already on its way. And as to the divinities . . . ; but that the future must disclose. Enough for the day (that is, in this case, the Mythological Cycle) are the evils, in fact the devils, thereof DIVINITIES. § 119. It was shown that man must interpret always the phenomena of external nature in analogy to the principle of action, predominant in his present consciousness. Also that this principle, must have been, in the primary Cycle, the dim agency of animal life, in its manifestation of Force. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 313 Force would then be the prime attribute of deity in those early ages. It is accordingly the general character of the gods of Heathenism. But as the forces of nature must all affect men, in a twofold and opposite manner, must cause them either suf- fering or pleasure ; the corresponding divinities would be classified accordingly into two universal categories of evil and good. This grand bisection is attested in feet, by all history and tradition. In all mature mythologies there are " evil and good" genii, demons and angels ; the stars themselves are evil or good, malignant or benign. In short, all the world over, whatever gave man pain or plea- sure, before he learned the how, the means, of any effect, was forthwith necessarily deemed a devil or a god. Thus the Hindoos, up to this day, adore and sacrifice to their tools of trade, the farmer to his plough, the tailor to his needles, the barber to his razors ; the very manure-heap is made a god, as being instrumental in producing food. And had not even the civilized Romans a temple to Cloa- cina? Of these two classes, however, the Evil must, for rea- sons before explained (§ 48) have been the earlier in pos- session of the earth. The powers of G-ood, as long as spon- taneous, must have remained unrecognized ; they only came to be discerned when embodied artificially, as in the implements of use and industry just alluded to. But along this line the creation multiplied, repulsing gradually the powers of evil, until it reached that implement of im- plements, the social system ; where accordingly the leaders of the two embattled hosts are found to represent the equal strife, by open combat. To these few regulative remarks which serve, moreover, to show already the pervading pre- sence, in the sphere of Religion, of our second and third axioms (the forms of mathematics and principles of con- ception), I will add the remaining test, which though in- cluded in both the others, presents a scale of nicer scrutiny than either, and lies in indicating the progression from the least Abstract, up to the most. § 120. To inquire what was the earliest divinity of the primitive man, is therefore to consider what was the least abstract, or most general and obvious, as well as fear-in- spiring among natural phenomena. This, I conceive, was 27* 314 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. darkness or night. Its recurrence deprived the savage of the power to provide food, while it exposed him to be surprised by beasts of prey. It also afflicted his nudity with a sud- den cold in most climates. Above all, it struck his infant imagination with a terror which the intermittent reap- pearance would not suffer habit to compose, as seeming to destroy, to devour the objects and earth itself around him. Hence accordingly, the tradition of Greek and all Ori- ental theogenies, that " primeval night" was the mother of the gods. The same belief precisely prevails in the South Sea islands at this day. I am not aware that the like is re- ported of our own savages in express terms. But I detect it in one of the most remarkable of their traditions. This is, that their race originally came from the womb of the earth. Now here is the womb of night, with a very natural variation. And what puts the notion beyond accident is that, on the continent of ancient Europe, we find the Gauls giving to Caesar the same account of their ancestral origin, as taught them by their priests, the Druids. It may be worth adding, even for its own sake, that the sentiment in ques- tion is also witnessed in a less ambiguous department of experience. It caused the practice of computing time by nights, rather than days ; a fact either customary in the actual life, or commemorated in the language, of every peo- ple of the earth, without, I think, a single exception. Both principle and explanation are further still con- firmed by the kindred usage of counting the annual revolu- tion by winters. For the effects of this harsh season on the unprovided savage, were quite analogous to those at- tributed to the night. Even the day of dreary winter, not to mention its incidental prolongation of nocturnal darkness and danger, seemed but a clearer sort of night, compared with the gladness, the glare, the glory of summer. The usage accordingly continues a practice among the Amerir can Indians. But it has long passed, among the socialized Persians, into the theological story about the contests of Oromasdes and Ahriman, or the two principles, above re- ferred to, of Good and Evil ; -for these famous personages are proved by Dupuis to have been mythical representa- tions of the summer season of production, and the winter season of destruction and desolation. So, in fine, the old MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 315 Scandinavian goddess, Maryana, whose image was thrown in the river at the opening of spring, was the deity at once of winter, of darkness, and of death. And all this, I con- clude, because night and winter, the latter in a less degree, were the most concrete, simple, and general of the causes of man's early sufferings. A result quite concurrent with the rule so often repeated, that the events men usually date from, and first demonify, are their calamities. So true is it, as the Epicurians alleged, that Fear made the earliest gods. Only it should have been added, that the gods thus made, were all Evil ; and moreover that the evil did not all precede the G-ood, but only rela- tively to the same order of natural phenomena. In other words, these ancient philosophers very excusably over- looked, in theology, what their latest successors are still ig- norant of, in even the positive sphere of science, I mean a scale of progression in all creation, and consequently in all conception. Having thus established the general bi-parti- tion of the pantheon, and exemplified the felative order among the special sections of both divisions, I must hence- forth leave these two distinctions to be followed by the read- er, and abridge the illustration, without formal reference to quality , to the gross aggregates of these divinities, in their successive formations ; and to this succession in only the threefold Generic divisions of the cosmical scale, (ch. 2) of whose positive Laws, at the stage of Quality, these be- ings were all the alleged embodiments. § 121. The division was into Inorganic, Organic, and So- cial. Do the diviaities of the first Cycle, as known from his- tory or observation, conform both in character and series 1 In the first or Inorganic order we have just established the instance of Night ; a phenomenon at once the earliest incontestably of all divinities, and so effectually unorgan- ized as to be not even a body at all. And to this suc- ceeded winter, with its sundry afflictive forces ; all of which, when finally imputed to the heavenly bodies, to- wards the advent of the Agricultural state, compose the primary system of worship thence denominated Sabeism. For all the objects, or as they are vaguely called " Ele- ments," of this primeval system, belong evidently, at least, in relation to human perception, to the inorganic order of phenomena. 316 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Meanwhile the counter-formation of beneficent divini- ties would have long commenced, and necessarily in the organic department ; necessarily, this quality being essen- tial to human food, and the object of man's food, of his first good, being thus his gods. But though the objects be organized, themselves, they belonged virtually to the simpler category as long as the labour in procuring them was unorganized, unartificial. It was said above that such objects were deified, but in discerning their use as instru- ments, that is to say, as results of art. It should have been added, that accident has a similar effect. When benefits grow precarious, to find one we still call a " god-send." In fact with all men, whether savage or civilized, the limit of the unexpected is the real measure of their thankfulness. So that from the scarcity of the means of subsistence, de- scribed in the preceding chapter, as having driven men from one to the other of the three prae-social states, there should have arisen a corresponding batch of divinities. Let our principles be then submitted to this surely trying test. The food in the first of these states, was shown to be fruits, roots, and fish. The latter, no doubt, when casually cast upon the beach, and so a spontaneous production of the water, as the others were of the earth. Thus we are told, by Hereen, of some wretched savages on the Arabian Gulf, who, to this day subsist exclusively in this manner, and have never learned to use a net or any other fish- ing implement. Such would, therefore, be the good gods of the first or Inorganic dynasty. Quite accordingly, we find the acorn worship in the Druid sanctity of the oak ; the root gods, in the leek and onion worship of ancient Egypt, and at this day, the forest tribes of Hindostan, above referred to, pay divine honours to a large root which forms the staple of their food. In fine, our own North American savages offered sacrifices to the Indian corn. As to fish, it is found adored devoutly on the one hand, by the Mantans, the rudest tribes of savages along the sea- board of the South Pacific ; and, at the opposite side of the globe, who has not heard of the " fish-god" Dagon : — " Who had hia temple high, Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, And Acaron and Gaza's frontier bound." MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 3lT The critical reader will observe a discrepancy between the term " dreaded" and the alleged goodness of the gods in question. But he must remember that Milton was as pious or at least as poetical as he was learned, and shows the Chris- tian and Jewish horror of the gods of all other nations. Ac- cordingly, the tradition of the worshippers themselves is, that Dagon was wont to come forth from the Red Sea to supply food to their ancestors, and instruct them in the arts of civil life. I will only add the similar reminis- cence of the still older nations of Hindostan, symbolized in the first incarnation of the beneficent Vishnu into a fish. § 122. I now pass to the next formation, which com- mences with the Hunter state, and relates to the region of nature more distinctly Organic, both as to the constitution of the objects and the contrivance to procure them. Here the things to be feared or venerated were chiefly of the animal kind. And so in fact, in most tropical countries, the lion, tiger, crocodile, and above all the serpent have been erected into divinities ; that is to say the animals most irresistibly destructive, by force or by venom, to man himself or his means of subsistence. Among the good genii on the other hand, the American Indians revere the deer and the bear, their favorite articles of food. The bear, however, perhaps for the reason, besides its palata- ble flesh, that it first taught them, they say, to kill the deer, that is to say, was their inductor into the hunter state. A striking testimony to the timid bloodlessness above attri- buted to the primitive man (§ 106), and which is symbol- ized in short into a theological dogma by the myriad wor- shippers of Brahma. The next sub-stage of this Organic formation coin- cides with the shepherd state. This condition was defined to consist in the domestication and breeding of animals. We need no longer wonder, then, to find the ram, buck, goat, and bull remain prominent among the gods of the whole oriental world ; and, on the other hand, to find them absent throughout the occidental world, where, for want of due development or suitable animals or for geographical causes, the multitudinous nations appear to have known no shepherd state. For the former I refer to India, and espe- cially to Egypt, which offers a complete pantheon of the 818 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Mythological Cycle. In fact, the three animals enume- rated by a transmutation to be after explained, came at last to symbolize the supreme trinity of Egyptian-theology, namely, Jupiter Ammon, Kneph, and Osiris. I say the su- preme ; for it is known there were several subordinate ones, appropriate to particular districts, cities and even epochs. But that this was the highest Egyptian generalization of the tri-une principle is proved by these unquestionable facts : that the worship of those three deities alone was common throughout all Egypt ; that each predominated at successive eras of the aggregate civilization ; and, what is still more characteristic, that their respective origin is referred by tradition to the three progressive seats of that civilization, along the Nile — that of Kneph to Nubia, of Ammon to the Thebaid, and of Osiris to Lower Egypt. Of this view, which is widely at variance with the reigning confusion upon the subject, something farther may be said under the proper head of Doctrines. The purpose here was but to prove the literal worship of those three animal staples of the Shepherd state ; for otherwise we shall see they could not have been symbols of the hero-divinities of the succeeding and Social formation. Before quitting this second dynasty — whose collective worship I name Fetitchism — there is a general objection which it may be proper to obviate. The unthinking may scout the principle that even the rudest savage could have been so profanely stupid as to feed upon what he wor- shipped. But this would be to overlook that, in the most enlightened nations of our nineteenth century, the mother sect of Christianity does exactly the same thing literally, and all the affiliated denominations, by symbol. Nay they aggravate the oddity, if we consider it. For the savage only worships his god in consequence of having eaten him; the Christian or Catholic eats him in consequence of having worshipped ! Nay, the coincidence is a positive confirmation of my principle ; at least, if there be truth in the divine saying of the Gospel, that men must always, in matters of religion, be " like unto little children." And in fact, it needs no inspiration to see that, in other matters too, they are for the most part (the varnish and vices drawn aside) not so different as is commonly thought from the rude children of nature. MYTHOLOGICAL CTCLE. 319 § 123. The investigation is now arrived at the stage of Humanity named the Agricultural,and which was represent- ed as at once terminating the savage and initiating the Social epoch. Here the hopes and fears of man became attached to the soil. The earth was the universal feeder, breeder, mother of mankind. Heat and moisture, however, were 60on observed to be the prolific powers, and seen to come from above, even like the demons of hail and snow and thun- der. What other could be the source, the bestower of these genial blessings than these sublime bodies which soar or circulate, in that direction, at such seasons ; themselves serenely superior to mortal change or suffering, yet look- ing down upon man mysteriously, brightly, benignly ? The stars, and chiefly the planets, were, then, the next family of good divinities. This, indeed, was a transmuta- tion of their originally evil character. But this is just what the theory requires. It is the convolution now so familiar to us in the final term of the triad. It is in this case the very process, through ignorance of which the mythologists are led to fluctuate so variously in their ac- counts of Sabeism : some making it the earliest of all the forms of worship ; others making it the latest of the heathen religions ; and others still, or perhaps the same writers, representing it as both at once. The last opinion is the true one ; but in a widely different sense. It is not that the religion remains the same throughout. From the Elemental to the Astral stage it was but the substrate of the two Organic developments ; even as we saw Sensation the general substrate of Memory which retains, and of Imagination which systematizes, its results. To complete the system of our Divinities, however, there remained another step. With some experience in Agriculture, the rains and dews as well as heat would be dimly seen to be due to the sun alone. The sun was, then, the supreme deity; but in conjunction still with the Earth — this dual- ism, active and receptive, being seen to be essential in man himself (the eternal type in all things) for reproduction. Beyond this " marriage of the earth and sky" popular imagination could not go: it was, therefore, the arch which closed the theogony proper of the primary or phy- sical Cycle. § 124. To this rapid analysis of the general objects of 320 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Nature-worship, there still presents itself an apparent ex- ception ; and one to which the requisite answer will eco- nomically introduce us to the epoch of Man-worship or theism. It will be wondered how man should thus, for innu- merable ages, have been imagining all the objects of the physical world, inanimate as well as animate, to be divine except himself. Howinconsistent.it may be urged, with the conceit which leads him later to claim, on the contrary, that he alone is divine amid the same world. But this seeming contrariety is a real and deep consistency. It was demonstrated that the human mind, in the progress of con- ception, must proceed invariably from the known to the unknown — the same in the imagination of divinities as in the induction of sciences. Also that he was himself the early type of the Known. But while thus the principle of conception, he could not possibly become its object ; as the eye, which sees all beside, cannot naturally see itself. Besides he did not make divinities of what he knew or even thought he knew ; so far otherwise it is his growing knowledge that unmade them. He divinified, on the con- trary, the things he did not know, and precisely because he did not know them ; the objects of which he felt the influence without being able to perceive the cause. In di- rect proportion, therefore, to his ignorance, or rather to the divergence of the phenomena from the narrow range of his primitive consciousness, of his animal sympathies, must the process of divinification have commenced and progressed. And this is what has been just confirmed by our historical induction. So strictly is the principle true, indeed, that even among the lower animals, the creatures bordering in exter- nal resemblance upon man appear to have never received divine honours at all. For I question that the ape has been ever distinctly made a fetitche ; notwithstanding its enumeration in some of the Eastern mythologies, or rather the farragos so entitled, by their tenth-hand compilers. If at all, it must have happened either in the more divergent and monkey species, or upon a different principle, to be presently discussed. The Ourang or Chimpanzee could not possibly be so regarded. Men would find them too like themselves to be fit for any thing divine. In conclu- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 321 sion, then, it was not till man, by this progressive elimi- nation of all he holds in common with the lower grades of the' scale, came to consider his differential characteristic, that he could have dreamt of divinifying his own species. And he did so even then, because he became " a mystery to himself," The characteristic thus evolved was incom- prehensible, because peculiar. And because it seemed peculiar, it must be something mysterious, and appearing to be mysterious it was deemed, of course, divine. (1) It was, however, but the metaphysical principle of the new Cycle, the human Will. § 125. The development of the will was reciprocally cause and consequence of the social relations which we saw arise on the foundation of agriculture. These re- lations require the exercise of calculation and contrivance ; the application of means to an end — of which the con- scious capability is the entity we name Will. Of these things, experience would in time make manifest the bene- ficent effects. The food and shelter before precarious, according to season or accident, were now perceived to be much more permanent and plentiful. The power or protection against enemies, measured heretofore by brute force, was seen to be multiplied, as if miraculously, by so- cial arts and skill. In short what men had been used, for ages, to solicit, or to deprecate, from their good or evil genii in vain, was seen to be procured or prevented by the foresight, the contrivance, the providence or good will of Society. I say of society ; for a principle, thus supe- rior to divinities, could not, for ages yet, be attributed to despot-ridden individuals. The intellect was not suf- ficiently versed in expedients, the range of alternatives not sufficiently diversified, in a word the Will not suf- ficiently developed, for men to imagine it what they call " free." The proof is, that this chimera, though the pue- rile puzzle of all modern metaphysicians, has scarce been ever broached in the speculations of antiquity, even by the all-discussing philosophy of Greece. But what was not active enough in each to turn inward upon himself the reflection of men accustomed to look but (1) Omne ignotum pro mirifico, was the remark of one accustom- ed to look below the surface of his species 28 322 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. outward and through the eyes, was referred, dimly, to the external and collective body of the state. For the state was then regarded as a mass, not an association ; the citi- zen, a fragment, not an element. And hence in fact, the truism, so much repeated and little understood : that in the governments of antiquity, the society was every thing, the subject or citizen nothing. Hence, too, that hlind devo- tion to the prince or the republic, which was really another consequence of the same crassitude in the people; although the priests styled it piety, and the politicians patriotism, and the pedants of our own day repeat these interested platitudes, contrasting them with the degenerate insubordi- nation of modern times. For it is still in this theological or topsy-turvey fashion that history is written and men and ages are judged ! Not however, that such devotion was not, in my opin- ion, right in fact ; it is the doctrine now established, on the subject, in these pages. And the ancient fact bears a pro- found testimony to the truth of the new theory, according to the axiom that the primary form of all progressive in- stitutions must be that of their last perfection, but upon an opposite principle. And the reason of this rule is cogent, namely, that there is but a single form (our threefold ma- thematical formulae); which only repeats itself accumula- tively from first to last : so that science itself is no more than instinct enlarged and systematized. But while thus laudable in fact, the patriotism of the physical Cycle was, in motive, but an impotent divinification of Society. And as, through the popular necessity to personify and individ- ualize the uncomprehended operations of a complex sys- tem, the success of a battle or the salvation of a country is even still ascribed to the general or to the minister alone ; how much more necessarily would these extraordinary manifestations of social energy be embodied, by barbarous ages, in the individuals who conducted them, in the patri- arch, the king, or the lawgiver. Hence the order of divi- nities which I term human or Social. The deification, however, could not I think have taken place during life. The Roman emperors, though wielding the absolute power of a world, could extort but the hol- low title from even the populace of their slaves. Nor did the much more barbarous subjects of the Peruvian Inca MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 323 and his patriarchal compeers deem them more, we saw, than the sons of a god. The disqualification of the Ourang it seems could be obliterated by no achievements, as long as the actor remained visible in the common flesh of the vulgar multi- tude. For the ignorant of all ages judge of men but by externals : thus are they ruled by barbaric splendour, in the Oriental world ; and in the Western, if you would win them, there are only two things needful— a tailor for the body, and a theologian for the soul. Even this, however, can but lift one into a Gentleman and a Christian ; and the interval to godship remained considerable. So that with the ancient barbarians, to pass a mortal into a god, he must have first put off the whole •' coil," alike the natural and artificial, and be removed from physical con- tact in shape, in place, in time ; in something in short which shall at the same time mystify his humanity and magnify his merits to the crude imagination of the epoch. The same imagination will of course require that the new abode be both visible and venerable. The removal is accomplished by death, that coarse alembic of human greatness, which, like the multitude who speak its dictates, recognizes no other elements than the pure evil or the pure good which men have done. In the latter case the remain- ing exigence was to find the spirit of the departed Hero, thus defaecated of the man, an abode or shrine of the qual- ities specified, a concrete embodiment to satisfy the popu- lar sentiment, according as he retired and rose, from a spi- rit, into a tradition and then a myth. § 126. Now a full series of such receptacles, with just the requisite conditions, stood prepared in the preceding divinities, mechanical, vegetable, animal. For the corres- ponding objects of nature could no longer be deemed di- vine themselves. Brute force, we have seen, had ceased with the close of the Physical Cycle, to be a sufficient test of a god. The criterion now was providence or will. But as the will of the social benefactor had disappeared in the flesh, and the beneficial properties or singular powers of the animals or vegetables bejfore divinified remained, it was a perfectly natural conclusion, whether of the popu- lace themselves or the priests, that the old habitual gods were still the organ or abode through which now operated the powerful and providential will of their father Abraham, 324 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. or their patron St. Denis or their Lord Osiris. "What I have been tracing thus analytically may be summed up in a short statement, now a truism among philosophical mythologists, namely, that the Fetitchistic worship, from being literal in the Mythological Cycle, came, in the following or Meta- physical, to be symbolical. This new transformation must, of course, like the first creation, commence with the simplest terms of the series or the Inorganic. Of those receptacles of the deified spirit or symbolical objects of hero-worship, the first in order was therefore the grave, where the body had been reposited : for by this fact it was made sacred, and the qualification thus supplied which the organic objects had enjoyed from their preceding divinification. Or rather it was less the grave, than the tumulus which rose above it ; usually containing a furnished chamber to receive the de- parted as in life ; and presenting exteriorly an elevation sufficiently conspicuous to meet, habitually, the eye of the surrounding votaries. As the tribes consolidated into a nation, and the city widened into an empire, the tomb of the tutelary deity advanced in due proportion, to the im- posing altitude of the pyramid and the mystical intricacy of the labyrinth. The progression was above delineated, in the article on architecture. And this constant consist- ency of the theory, from points of view so heterogeneous, will not, I trust, escape the reader's attention and appre- ciation. § 127. To the inert receptacle of inorganic matter suc- ceeded the Organic and animate. The growing conscious- ness of volitional energy in the worshippers themselves would evidently demand this change in order to uphold the illusive analogy. Things perpetually motionless or moving but monotonously could not long continue to be thought in- formed with a power so active and wayward as will. The benevolent will in question, or malevolent as the case might be, was therefore transferred, insensibly, to the ob- jects next in order, both of mythological deification and of logical complexity. These it will be remembered were first vegetables, from grasses up to trees ; and then the va- rious animal species, in a like progression. For historical examples of all this I refer to any or all the books on the subject. I do not write to repeat others, in even the com- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 826 mon property of facts ; but to show, where others omit it, how their erudition may be understood. To this some- what rarer purpose I will then suggest another reason why the vegetable class of receptacles should precede the animal ; our great object being the illustration of the law and series of progression. The doubt, the infidelity that undivinified the monu- ment, arose not only from its immobility, but also its de- cay. Now in this respect especially, the plant allured, by a striking contrast, in its annual revirescence and resur- rection from transient death; while the animals, on the other hand, offered nothing of the kind. Here then was a signal ground of preference, of precedence. For what receptacle so suitable for the abode of an immortal spirit ? And how conclusive must not the analogy have appeared to these rude barbarians, when we find it insinuated by such writers as Butler, down almost to our own day, as an argument for the immortality of the soul ! But this would after be exchanged in turn for the more real advantage of locomotion in the animal ; which better imaged^the sponta- niety of the divine will within. Ancient Egypt may be referred to as the most notable scene, and a complete gal- lery, or rather green-house and menagerie of both de- scriptions. This singular and sand-insulated country — this great oasis in ethnography as well as geography — was left, alone perhaps of all the nations of history, undisturbed by foreign gods, to follow down' the Fetichistic system from the literal and physical, in its transition to the se- condary and symbolical, formation. That the latter, was the true character of the national worship at the decline of the empire, we have the positive assurance of the priests themselves, from Herodotus, Diodorus, and others. And to- this may now be added the foregoing explanatory demonstration. § 128. But, aside from this, the fact were proved by the mere event of the decline alluded to. The things were concomitant of effects of the same cause. The civilization of Egypt was exhausted ; she had no more receptacles or envelopes for her gods. Her fall had become inevitable, by the advent of the Metaphysical Cycle, though no Cam- byses or Alexander or Caesar had ever lived. Indeed all such are but the vultures that scent the carcass at a dis- 28* 326 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. tance. Why did not youthful Rome fall by the sack of Brennus or the slaughter of Hannibal 1 Why not, the little states of Greece, beneath the myriad hosts of Xerxes ? or modern France, by the power of the holy alliances ? Because these nations possessed at the time — or rather were possessed by — an idea, contained the germ of a civili- zation, had a principle of vigorous vitality in harmony with the coming epoch : and no nation, or even individual, possessed of such a spirit, has ever yet been crushed irretrievably. But Egypt, at the time in question, was in the opposite predicament ; as Rome and Greece became afterwards, in turn. Her thread of development was spent. She had groped for the laws of man's nature in the phenomena of the external world ; first in the princi- pal Objects progressively, and then in the principal Pro- perties of these objects. The conception of Relation, that is to say of law, she could not attain to without recommenc- ing the process of generalization on the opposite basis of Man himself. This she was able to. prosecute, so long as the type of the new era, the element of Will, could find analogous expression, or hypostatical embodiment, in the pre-established series of divinities. For so far did her procedure on the basis of physical nature involve the cor- responding attributes of man. But these being all eli- minated, by the processes just described, the differential character alone remained, with which she knew not what to do. And besides, consistency forbade her to go beyond that divine series — meaning by consistency the orthodoxy and conservatism of the priests. Egypt, therefore, fell I repeat, for want of a suitable habitation for the mystical reception of her Hero-divinities. Or to speak (as Homer has it) in the language of men, the mind, the contrivance, the aspirations of the nation were now developed to that measure of abstractness, when Imagination fails to find them symbols from among the creations of nature, and Intellect cannot yet fashion them by the creations of art. The latter attempt, however, was made by Egypt, before expiring ; and nothing could be more characteristic of the direction of the pressure, and also of the doctrine of the present theory. The result, before alluded to, was the . mere Numeral agglomeration of the heads, wings, &c, of various animals upon the human body, or the multiplica- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 82? tion of the limbs and other parts, such as the breasts in the Diana; then the Quantification into colossi of the natural figure, reposing in the infant stage of mere architectural appendage : the final or Figured term is presented in the Sphinx ; which is accordingly the monogram of Egypt's civilization, and that of ancient humanity generally, in stone. This renowned figure consists of the body of a lion with the head of a woman. It combines then the two most perfect emblems in nature, of animal force and of moral expression. It is Liberty evolving itself from Power. It is Cunning escaping from Force. It is the Metaphysi- cal Cycle emerging from out the Physical. It is, in short, Humanity extricating itself from Brutality, and silently beseeching time to be shown the road to Reason. This was the real riddle of the Egyptian Sphinx ; whatever may have been the conscious design of the authors, or the idle conjectures of subsequent speculation. § 129. The enigma found an CEdipus, in fact as well as fable, in Greece, who answered the entreaty by her arts and her philosophy. The embodiment of these Hero- gods, which Egypt had been coarsely imagining in a bull and a cow, and symbolizing by an owl or a lotus, was sup- plied in the Jupiter of Phidias and the Venus of Praxi- teles; in the awful or enchanting presence of which imagi- nation knelt again, and owned its utmost ideal of deity, in the active and passive attributes, there enthroned in the organic energy and natural compass of the human form. And here I may remark the theory has not only un- riddled even the Sphinx, but, in doing so, explained spon- taneously a fact to this day as enigmatical ; I mean the unri- valled pre-eminence of Grecian art. The reason is quite simple ; like all reasons when well understood. The arts, before and after, were respectively directed to the imita- tion of nature and- the expression of man. In Greece alone, the direct, urgent, and so to say utilitarian purpose was the creation of gods. With the enthusiasm, the inspi- ration of this supernatural aim, what wonder that the results have been almost prseter-human 1 It was a partial recurrence of the same situation, on the analogous declivi- ty of the succeeding Cycle, that gave the schools of paint- ing of the fifteenth century a similar pre-eminence. But we have here to do with Greek arts as supplying 328 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. a new order of idols, and thus enabling the human mind to proceed with its generalizations, until the rude analysis again end in a supreme unity of design. This curious march I have no space to follow farther ; and can merely add that it produced the divine dynasty I term Social ; that this consisted partly of the " polytheism" of classic antiquity, but partly also of the subsequent and consequent monotheisms ; and that such is my authority for compris- ing the whole system under the appellation of Theism, meaning worship of the attributes of Man, in distinction from Fetitchism and Sabeism, which constitute, in fact, analogous aspects of the worship of Nature. I add that hero-worship, in the Polytheistic and ascending and analytic phase, attained its unity in the to Sp, the one god, of Py- thagoras ; and probably earlier but also vaguer, in the " holy one" of the Jewish Bible ; the term holy importing precisely this collective individuality. Thus far for the divinities. Now a glance at the EITES. § 130. Upon this department, as also the subsequent article of Doctrines, we may now (and in fact must) be more concise ; having graduated, in analyzing the divini- ties to whom both topics of course related — their common scale of characterization as well as progression. Of Rites, too, therefore, the division would be threefold. And history tells us accordingly of Sacrifice, Ceremony, and Prayer, which comprise, I think, the entire ritual of all the religions of mankind. The correspondence to the divinities is equally con- clusive, in the points of succession and similitude. The material gifts of Sacrifice, the products of the earth, could alone be supposed to appease the primary gods of Evil and Force. In the next place Ceremonies, which were still a half-physical product of man's labour, were deemed sufficient for the beneficent and later genii ; for the absurd- ity of supposing that goodness need be bribed to its own gratification, could never enter the head of a savage : but if the good divinities require no sacrifices, their ministers MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 329 require support, and hence the logical confusion and the hlasphemous calumny, upon which it would be easy and instructive to expatiate. As to the appropriateness of the third remedy, or " Prayer and humiliation," we know it is just the thing for the despot-deity of Will. But again, these offerings must each be adapted, in their specific forms, to the several orders of Divinities. This it may be best to illustrate in the aspect of method ; which, like other principles of the theory, though pervad- ing every-page of the book, are too apt to be deemed de- faulting when not constantly kept in sight. The adapta- tion, in question, then must have proceeded, like all other conceptions, .upon the three inductive bases of Resem- blance, Difference, and composite Uniformity. An ex- ample or two of each. In fact, to the Inorganic or elemental gods the habitual offerings were altars, images, temples, etc.; to the Organic or animal and vegetable, the sacrifices were fruits and animals ; to the Social divi- nities, the victims were human. The first class are scarce recorded, save in the rude constructions of still savage countries ; the second is the double character of the earliest sacrifice in Jewish story ; finally, human sacrifices have been the constant attendant upon hero-worship, even down to its commencement in the agricultural condition of subsisting by industrial pursuits. For these pursuits revealed a new principle of value in man, which should enhance, of course, his propitiative virtue as a victim. The latter result will be confirmed, if the reader bear in mind that it was also the foundation of society that gave establishment to the priesthood ; who were, it is known, the professional executioners of those days, and who are, in all days, too full of the aflatus of divinity to have place for humanity in their hearts. § 131. I add a still more specific sample of the method of Resemblance, to assure the reader who must be left to verify, himself, the two correlative forms. We are told of tribes of savages along the western lakes, who used to fashion scraps of dough into the shape of \\tt\e fishes, and cast them into the water to propitiate the wary inmates. True, I have said that such as these, being good divinities, would be thought to ask no offerings : but mark the turn of the Indian's thought ; the notion was to win the real fishes 330 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. from committing the privative " evil" of omitting to come forth and be taken and eaten by the said Indians. I beg close attention to this concrete confusion of the two forms, both here and in all the other transitional stages of the appli- cation. But to the point before us I remember a still more singular instance ; and one besides which, goes quite back to the Inorganic class of divinities. Garcilasso de la Vega tells of a ^Peruvian population who paid worship to an emerald of extraordinary size. So far there was nothing, you will say, which would not be done any day by the civilized and profane population of Wall-street. But the historian goes on to add, that the savage votaries " were accustomed to make it sacrifices of the smaller and or- dinary emeralds ; the priests [of course] telling the people that these offerings of the smaller emeralds — which were the children of the great one — were the presents most agree- able to the goddess." Without deeming it necessary to suggest what after became of those precious victims, I will only invite reflection upon the notion of offspring, the sac- rifice of the child to the parent, which has played a curious but characteristic part in all the stages of Religion. It is the old principle of generation, with the modifica- tion, above remarked, of sacrificial enhancement. Thus from the numerous offspring of the emerald it passes up- ward to an only child ; and this a daughter, as in the sacri- fice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon ; then a son, as in the sacri- fice of Isaac by Abraham ; in which case it was added, by a refinement peculiarly Jewish, that the Father of the Faith- ful had at the time outlived the faculty of again becoming father in the flesh. What was there beyond this whereby men could hope to deprecate the evil passion of anger in their gods ? Evidently nothing in humanity or on earth ; and the sole remaining resort could have been the sacri- fice of a god. But this ultimatum of the progression in- volved these necessary consequences : that such sacrifice should be by a god (not of course, by men) ; to a god (not to men) ; and this god, the parent of the divine victim (not any co-equal divinity) ; and the victim offered for all mankind (not for a particular expedition, or family, or peo- ple) ; and in fine the offering made to appease the anger of the very god who was himself at once the maker and re- ceiver, and all on behalf of the human sinner who was the MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 331 object of the indignation I Here is an imbroglio which even a Rabbinical imagination could not pass beyond. It characterizes the theological culmination of the Meta- physical Cycle. Accordingly it had its analytic parallel at the summit of the previous Cycle, in the custom, gen- eral among the superior g^>ds, of intermarrying with their mothers and sisters. So that there is a logical necessity to excuse this heathen amalgamation, which gives to Chris- tian mythologists at once such exultation and scandal ; as if the example had not been set in the pious family of Adam. In fine, then, if it were true that Sacrifices had ceased with the advent of Christ, there would, we see, have been reason, as well as revelation, for the event. But I must here dismiss not only the methodic form of resemblance in Sacrifices, but also those of Difference and Uniformity en- tirely undiscussed. And not merely these, but the two complementary departments of Rites ; over which all three methodic forms have passed of course in like procession. My historical application of all this would make perhaps the most curious part of the volume. But I am drawing to a close, and there are several topics, still more urgent. I am henceforth, therefore, obliged, on this subject, to take a meagre abstract from the manuscript. And I cannot ex- cept the article where I regret the mutilation most, name- ly, the third and last of our general divisions, the most im- portant head of DOCTEINES. § 132. This article turns wholly on the spiritual land above alluded to, or a future state of human existence. It is commonly assumed that this notion of post mortem existence could only be derived through a revelation from heaven. The present theory teaches, on the contrary, that a revelation had been much more requisite to destroy (were this desirable) its innate germ in the living being. Man, we have seen, had to pass through a myriad of gen- erations before gaining an abstract conception of his own or any other existence. But before clearly conceiving this abstract existence, it was impossible that he should ima- 832 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. gine its absolute cessation. The negative always proceeds upon; and never precedes the positive. Now the positive in this instance was the personal existence here. And be- fore reaching the idea of its own future non-existence, it was necessary that the primitive mind should eliminate successively the entire series of physical phenomena ; ac- cording to the same logical law of procedure, from the Concrete to the Abstract, which we saw regulate the gen- eral progression not only of sciences and arts, but also the creation of Divinities, and the adaptation of their respec- tive Rites. The historical verification belongs to the subdivisions. Meanwhile I may note the fact, as indisputable as it seems conclusive, that skepticism is always found among philoso- phers ; never among savages, or the ignorant generally, who are all firm, because necessary, believers in immor- tality. I add the testimony to this eifect of an authority above suspicion of bias ; who, though a priest was yet a philosopher, because he was a Frenchman. Charlevoix says of the Canadian savages, among the most backward on the continent : " Le croyence le mieux etablis parmi nos Americans est celle de 1' immortalite de 1' ame." He at the same time adds : " they however do not conceive it to be purely spiritual, any more than their manitoos." Certainly not; very far from it. The opposite form of ex- pression would be nearer the fact, namely, that they do not conceive it to be purely materia 1 . And such would seem the real impression of the acute author himself, who elsewhere seeks to characterize the Indian's notion of the soul after death, by describing it " une image vivante " of the man. Nor, in fine, was it men alone, but also the brute animals and even vegetables, that were held, all over the continent, according to the same and other writ- ers, to have their manitoos and their future existence. So impossible is it found in fact, as our theory had just fore- shown it, to dissever the notion of life from some or other mode of matter, during the physical Cycle, when the things are in truth the same ! But how incalculably more inconceivable must be the abstraction of existence from the substrates first of place and then of time ; in other words, to suppose its annihilation. Yet it is this organic necessity, this intensely instinctive belief which our pie- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 333 thoric pedants, theological and other, continue to rant about as revealed from heaven, some twenty centuries since for the first time ! § 133. The primitive and universal belief in a post mortem existence established, the matter obviously branches off into two parallel lines of investigation. The one relates to the form of the existence ; the other to the place. Respecting the Form, the question was to imagine a new embodiment for the departed spirit. This was the very difficulty, as will have been remembered, which we saw present itself upon the deification of the dead benefactors of society. But it was shown, in that case, that those hero- divinities were re-embodied in certain physical ob- jects ; that this took place according to the progressive series of our general scale ; and that the special forms adopted were, successively: the grave signalized by a monument ; the local vegetables and then animals distin- guished for their useful properties, positive or preventive ; and finally the artificial expedient of statuary. Now this was a route as open to the humble as to the heroic spirit. It was supplied in fact to the latter by the same popular imagination, which would not be likely to neglect itself in the like extremity. Not merely so, but the provision must have been already long applied to the multitude, or it had never been extended to the benefac- tors they wished to worship. The sole difference could naturally be, that the latter would be allotted the most conspicuous receptacles in each kind ; thus retaining, of course, the relative rank in the region of spirits which they had held in the world of men. For in fact the one has been universally the model of the other. Thus, not only in the matter of condition but even habitation, we saw the earliest temples, the " houses " of the gods, to be cut from the living rock, in imitation of the cave houses which were the first dwellings of man. In explaining, therefore, and exemplifying the material envelopes of these deified mortals, during the aggregate course of the Mythological Cycle, I have already assigned the succession of forms, or as the Greeks named them " vehicles," which the human soul must have been thought to assume at the correspond- ing stages of mental development. And, moreover, the 29 334 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. one is as necessary a consequence as the other, of our fundamental law of procedure, from the Concrete to the Abstract. We are now to see what experience has to say upon the subject. Beginning with the lowest samples of humanity upon record, we find the belief prevail, in all times, that the " spirit" continues to abide with the natural body. The sentiment is amply evinced by the practice of all primitive communities, in depositing food or other necessaries in or upon the grave. Nor is this practice common alone to mere barbarian communities ; it is well known to have prevailed, though of course in a modified form, among the so called polished people of Greece and Rome ; nay, among the Christians themselves, during the earlier centuries of the Church. No more is it to be thought a religious ceremony; for the deposits are minutely adapted to the living condition of the inmate. The Hunter savages of this continent bring their cake of corn and piece of flesh, by daily supplies as they find it themselves, and therefore placed it, not within, but upon, the grave. The Shepherd Tartars thrust curds and cheese through a hole, left open for this purpose. The Agricultural Mexican and Peruvian placed once for all within it, a sack of maize with the requisite implements to ■cultivate it in paradise. The Artisan and metallurgic Etrurian expanded the sepulchre itself into a chamber ; which he furnished with these exquisite vases, chandeliers, &c, that attract the ghoul-like cupidity or curiosity of our ■own day, to those sacred recesses of the parent-adoring Pelasgi. Nor was such furniture confined to those articles which might be termed, of strict necessity; the one to hold the meat, the other the light, of the lonely tenant. In se- veral of the tombs have been also found a luxurious sup- ply of apparel, jewelry, with gold, and silver ornaments, and utensils of various other and now inexplicable design. In this class I may instance the famous " Galassi tomb" at Caere in Italy, first opened some years since, and whose contents, precious as well for workmanship as antiquity, leave the museum of (I think) the Vatican without a rival in this line. In fact this circumstance of sumptuousness seems to have misled opinion, for over two thousand years back, re- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 335 specting the proper destination of these monuments. For the Greek writers of the polytheistic epoch — when the pri- mary belief had been long forgotten and so these tumular vehicles occasionally ransacked — represent the mounds as " treasuries :" a name still retained, for example, by the tomb of Atreus in the vicinity of Athens, and repeated, I observe, by even Thirlwall, one of the least commonplace of our historians of Greece. «It may be indeed that, in more forward ages of civilization and robbery, the wealthy did sometimes secrete their treasures in somewhat similar re- positories. But if so, the expedient here was suggested, as always, by example. The tomb, it would be seen, had kept the like valuables for ages untouched ; and then its purpose was of course referred to the reigning motives of the day — according to the habitual philosophy of the igno- rant, who make their own country and creed and age, the key to. or criterion of all others. Now, however, that the human mind is enabled to survey from a point without, the entire series of this con- crete illusion, there is no difficulty in recognizing that these articles of luxury were simply meant to suit the rank, as the rations of food to satisfy the hunger, of the departed. Even some mental food was superadded by the still more forward Egyptians; who, besides inclosing a complete toilette in the (of course female) sarcophagus, enlivened the walls of the tomb with inscriptions and images — the mystic work of their sacred hieroglyphic — which they fancied must somehow harmonize with what Charlevoix's Indians, too, thought, the " imaged" existence of him who was to be spectator of the scene. By a higher abstraction, there is a custom in Siam and Japan, to this day, of burn- ing written papers with the dead, which are held to be restored to their pristine integrity, like the owner, in the future world. It is familiar to all that the ancient Gauls did the same : and when I remind the American reader that this simple people were also wont to even loan money upon a promise to pay in the same country and its spiritual currency, I presume there will remain no doubt respecting the imbecile sincerity of all these singular but really normal proceedings. I will merely add, then, that the amorous Hindoo expects the wife to follow the husband, even through the flames of the pyre, to be his carnal 335 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. comforter in the next world. For such is the plain origin of this oriental usage, which, like all the rest enumerated, is deemed ignorantly so enigmatical, and of which the principle is just the same that must, could the sentiment now subsist, make the viaticum of certain modern coun- tries be a bundle of newspapers and a box of segars. § 134. Nay, the sentiment really does remain, though under a duly modified shape. Of course I speak not of the belief in the soul's immortality, for which we have the infallible authority of revelation. But what else is it, if we analyze the motive, than the sentiment in ques- tion that prompts the planting or strewing of flowers upon the grave of the beloved? Wherever this is not the osten- tation of a false grief or a false taste; whereever the flowers are not designed, like the widow's weeds, for the eye of the living, the thing must necessarily have been dictated by the sympathetic assumption, that the present may give pleasure to the dead. The practice accordingly is now confined to the young and the female ; in whom the concrete and illusory prevail over the rational and the real. But there are two prejudices particularly wherein this barbarous belief of a continued connexion between the corpse and the spirit is sanctioned in the most forward societies ; I mean the religious sanctity still attached to the sepulchre ; and, stranger yet, the civil institution of inheri- tance. To the former is to be referred the mythological fable which made Elysium inaccessible by those whose bodies had been left uninterred; an exclusion duly per- petuated, by the Catholic church, in the penal denial of " christian burial." As to the principle of inheritance it was originally of the nature of a power of attorney, or rather an assignment in trust to the heirs, from the absent owner of the property. That the entombed body was deemed the earliest abode of the spirit, or more properly was the material image of what was long after called the soul, we have, therefore, a uniform testimony of fact, as well in the sym- bolical prejudices of the half civilized as in the substantial presents of the savage. Respecting the latter, which con- stituted the properly material " viaticum" of the Physical Cycle, it may be added that they are, as usual, found sym- bolized under the next period, in the extreme unction or MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 337 communion of the Catholics. I had forgotten to note upon the same head that, beside the seed-corn and implements of culture deposited, by the Peruvians, in the coffin or the grave, these children of the equator inserted, in the hand of the dead, a branch of one of their most luxuriant species of tree; which was expected, no doubt, to re-bloom, like the rest, in the new region, and make the bearer a refresh- ing and odorous shade. Such was also the origin, in simi- larly sunny Italy, of the famous " golden bough" of the Sibyl in Virgil : only here, with the advent of the symbolic Cycle, and the consequent oblivion of the primitive pur- pose, the branch of myrtle was transformed into the pre- cious material of gold and made a passport to the Infernal world. A world which was itself, it will be shown, but the grave, under the same symbolical transformation. § 135. As to the manner of this post mortem connexion of the soul with the body there appears to have been, indeed there could have been, no definite conception. I say there could not have been ; for the notion is negative and therefore undefinable. I remember, however, a curi- ous coincidence on this point. It is a well-known usage of our American Indians to pierce a hole in the head of the coffin, in order, say they, to allow egress and ingress to the "spirit." Among the Hindoo Indians, their anti- podes, there is a sect which continues, exceptionally, to bury, instead of burning, its dead. This they do, without a coffin and by placing the body upright in a pit, which is filled up tightly with salt to the crown of the head. The bare part is then perforated, and, by the singular process of breaking upon it a cocoa-nut ; the nut being held to contract, in this way, certain magical virtues. Of this cere- mony the Hindoos themselves can, it seems, give now no intelligible account; any more than do the European in- terpreters of their mythology. Its history is, however, evident to the attentive reader of the foregoing pages. Originally the body was buried in its living garb as well as posture, and packed in salt or other matter observed to preserve against decay. Then, to open the " spirit" an outlet, from the body itself, since there was no coffin, and of course, at the point nearest to the surface, the savage naturally employed the firm shell of the cocoa-nuts which strewed the sward about him, and which would be imag- 20* 338 VESTISES OF CIVILIZATION. ined, moreover, to give less pain than a stone. But in pro- cess of time the spirit was supposed to find immediate embodiment in our second series of vehicles, namely, vegetables and animals ; a creed, accordingly, well known to be the general one of the country. The primitive usage would, however, be still continued ; but, its real meaning being lost, the efficacy would pass, as usual, from the lite- ral object to the symbolized instrument. § 136. These characteristic facts not merely place be- yond all quibble the innate belief in a persistence of life after death ; they, at the same time, indicate the incipient step in the gradual separation or abstraction of the spirit from the corpse. For a temporary absence of the one from the other is here, we see, supposed. But how was this primary grade of Abstraction attained 1 For I am not at liberty to forget a fundamental article of the theory, which affirms that man can never, and least of all in his mental infancy, have devised a single expedient or imagined a chimera, of which the rudiment was not really furnished by his experience. The rule will hold in this case too. It was above in- timated that, life being the positive state, the necessary tendency of the concrete mind was to adhere to the belief of its survival. There, doubtless, is not an animal breath- ing that has not the same sentiment. The event of death would therefore appear but a mere modification, another sort, not a cessation, of existence. And this modification had its familiar pattern in the phenomenon of sleep, from which men were seen habitually to revive. It was obvious, then, and what is more it was strictly inductive, to consider death to be, like sleep, a mere suspension of muscular motion, a temporary absence of vital manifestation, from the body ; for soul and mechanical action we have seen to be synonymes in the Physical Cycle. This logical and affecting mistake is in fact repeated daily over the dead parent, in the childhood of the individual. The poets too have seized the principle ; and, in dramatizing the death of Abel, represent the first family as misapprehending the catastrophe for sleep. To the eye of a savage, in fact, the sole difference would be the circumstance of prolonga- tion. But this obstacle too would vanish before the com- bination of two particulars additional ; his familiar expe- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 339 rience of the long absence of friends or fellows on their bunting excursions, and the vivid image of them which lived meanwhile in his own concrete imagination, and made the subjective existence scarce separable from the objective. That this notion of absence is in fact the true explana- tion there remains the most curious as well as positive proof. And I cite it the readier that it furnishes, at the same time, a fiftieth exposure of the ludicrous conceptions current, concerning the sentiments of remote times. Not the least preposterous of these, assuredly, is that which attributes to politeness or humanity, the well-known omission by savages and barbarians to mention the fact of death in di- rect terms. The truth is that their idioms have no expres- sion of this import ; and this again, for the good reason, that their minds have not the idea. And they have not the idea, because this, as I contend, is a mere negation and to be gained in this case but by the analytical abstraction or elimination of all the modes of positive existence in the phenomenal universe. But of all these, the savage is ac- quainted with only two, namely, being present under a certain shape to his five senses, and ceasing permanently to be so present. The deceased, therefore, necessarily falls into the latter category and the condition is always named by some synomyme of absence. Witness this in the term just employed, and also the word departed, &c, in even our own cultivated tongue ; where, however, they have duly passed to that symbolic transformation, called metaphor, which led to the truly pedagogical discovery of the savage refinement aforesaid. Nor does the use of this primitive form, though without the faith, by the poets, prove any more than the true instinct of their art. By this was Vir- gil taught to copy the concrete energy of infant language, in ejaculating : Fuit Ilium, Troja fuit. But an instance more to our purpose has been still more finely rendered, from the " sublime old Erse" idiom, by Scott in the lament of Khenach (§ 79). over the dead body of Duncan. " He is gone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest ; Like a summer-dried fountain, When our need was the sorest." The words in italics imply now, of course, the death of 340 VESTIGES OS CIVILIZATION. the lamented ; but they still express, as they originally de- noted, nothing more than his local absence. And this primitive meaning is illustrated with a happy though cer- tainly accidental propriety, by the simile of the dried foun- tain to be replenished after a time. I have heard of a criticism on this passage which suggests the possibility that some learned professor may mistake its bearing upon the argument. It seems that one of our men of letters, or as we style them, " literary cha- racters," thought its grammar proved the Celtic Scott to have never attained, any more than Hume, to the perfec- tion of writing pure " Anglo-Saxon." For the poet's meaning, he thought from the context, was not that Duncan had ascended the mountain; but on the contrary, that he had gone off it, in fact died ; and the expression " gone on" it, must, therefore, be a Scotch solecism. Seriously, however, a solecism, it really is, but a sublime one, and be- comes plain and pure if we supply the ellipsis as* follows: "gone," (with respect to his clansmen, whose abode was), " on the mountain." The ellipsis indeed, involves a subse- quent analysis of the situation, and went for nothing in the concrete imagination of the barbarian. But the idiomatic beauty and energy of the expression are due precisely to this crude oversight of the speaker;, for in after ages he gets the credit of having purposely thus identified himself,, in local position as well as grief, with the mourning moun- taineers, and what was puerile imbecility is analyzed into profound art! This is the vaunted superiority of old idioms, old ballads, and old notions in general. And I do not fear to aflSrm that, to this metaphysical analysis and " allegorizing" exegesis of posterior ages, are due no small part of, for example, the sublimity of Homer, the divinity of the Bible, and (what will be deemed more impious still perhaps) the profundity of Shakspeare. So that the no- ble lines recited, besides illustrating our doctrine concern- ing the primitive conception of death, serve to reveal, among the rest, the deepest secret of the poetic art. For this art consists in the artlessness of seeing things with the eyes, and even saying them in the language, of the savage. In this way the imbecilities of infant intellect and idiom will, by mere virtue of the symbolic posfrian-of the meta- physical reader, pass for sublimities of imagery and thought. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 341 Add to this, that the literal sentiments of the savage will find a living echo beneath the crust of what is called civili- zation and education ; which as yet are hollow and facti- tious in the hard-headed herd of mankind. Such is the confluence of explanation which the theory may pour at pleasure, upon the point considered, from the most remote and various sources ; or the spontaneous fa- cility, with which it re-diffuses those streams of light, over the most opposite and accredited of errors. § 137. It is abundantly clear, then, that the primitive man has in fact regarded the buried body as the continued abode of the " spirit." Also, that he was enabled by ob- servation of sleep, &c, to conceive the latter as being separable for certain intervals of time. These periods might, upon the pretexts suggested, be extended indefi- nitely. But the separation eould be deemed neither final nor absolute so long as the natural tenement remained in a habitable condition. It could not be imagined, even when the body had, in process of time, been discovered to dilapidate ; for the negative notion of soul clung, of course, to the mere matter, after the form was gone. The consequence would only be a more strenuous effort to preserve the former, and a vague expectation that the lat- ter must be restored, after other obvious examples of re- generation. Meanwhile, however, it was felt necessary to lodge the " spirit" elsewhere. And here I cannot forbear signalizing the admirable providence of nature, the intri- cate yet simple economy of the great law of progression ; in which the new expedient is always in process of pre- paration long before the old is exhausted, and by which the intellect is passed from the one to the other, not ab- ruptly, but insensibly, nay with the persuasion that the change is merely partial and provisional — thus weaning the infant mind from its material attachment to habit, by a tesselated series of beneficent illusions. But before fol- lowing the soul into this secondary stage of its peregrina- tion, it will be proper to test historically the effort just alluded to for the protection, preservation, and regenera- tion of the body. I must, however, exclude for the present this long historical induction, and merely give the results, which are happily not unfamiliar. They are respectively 842 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Inhumation, Embalming, and Incremation. The first and second methods have been indicated incidentally. We saw the effort to protect, in putting the body in the earth, inclosing it in a coffin, surmounting it with a mound or mole, &c. ; then came the special effort to preserve it against internal foes, by packing it in sand, salt and other antiseptic or desiccatory material, after excluding the cen- tres of moisture, the bowels and the brain. And all this being, in course of ages, observed to fail in turn, resort was finally had to burning the corpse to its ultimate dust, beyond which it could not be pursued, it seemed, by the tooth of decay. This was expected to reproduce the body,' after a certain time, by regeneration. That such was the idea, I cite a palpable proof It is, that the Hin- doos, who have in general reached the stage of Incre- mation, are wont to moisten the ashes, left by the body, into a paste and shape it into a little figure of the original ; to which figure they make invocation and sacrifice on the spot as the regenerated form of the deceased. At a duly higher stage this seminal virtue was attached by the Chris- tians to the teeth, which Tertullian held to be made peren- nial by Providence in order to furnish the " seeds of the resurrection." Hence, also, the expedient of Cadmus, for restoring the lost race of mankind, &c. But the "spirit," thus retreating successively, from the whole body to the various parts, then to the ultimate par- ticles, and finally obliged to drop its hold upon that proverb of lubricity, the skin of the teeth (the enamel being in fact the antiseptic element) ; the spirit or life, I say, must find a vehicle elsewhere, in awaiting the period of resurrection. This, according to the theory, should have been the second department of natural bodies named the Organic series, and embracing vegetables and animals. Here is the rise and rationale of the mysterious Metemp- sychosis. However pressed for space, I must spare it some illustration. § 138. Reverting, as usual, tothefoot of the scale, we find the Canadian savages, according to Charlevoix, exhibit an inkling of the metempsychosis, but apply it as yet to children alone. How pregnant is this simple fact, in the light of our principle. The point, however, more imme- diately in question is the notion that must have evidently MYTHOLOGICAL CTCLE. 343 led them to the belief. This was the manifest unfitness of the infant body to serve the " spirit" in its new situation. A being so feeble and dependent in life, could not be sup- posed capable of subsisting apart from parental support. For the "land of souls" of the Indian was not yet the lux- urious paradise of the Mahomedan, or the lazy heaven of the monk; it was the hardworking heaven of the hunter. The infant corpse, then, appeared immediately in the same predicament of inaptitude, as the full grown body when, in process of time, it is found unfitted by decay. The con- sequence too is, of course, the same as that described in the latter case — the transmigration of the infant spirit into a more congruous abode ; into the gentle and domestic flow- er that sprung behind the wigwam, and sipped the dew and basked in the sun and re-bloomed with the season ; or some innocent and tender bird observed to haunt the sur- rounding trees and murmur all day long its song of sympa- thy with the bereaved mother. Quite accordingly, this rudimentary metempsychosis of the Canadian savage was, the author tells us, usually into " a turtle-dove." The principle is equally pointed in its higher Mexican development ; where the souls of soldiers who fell in battle, and of women who died in childbirth were alone held, after passing some time in the " house of the sun," to return to the earth and become precious stones, and birds of beautiful feather or song. In the first place this intermediate so- journ is signally characteristic. The prematurity of death in the two categories specified, was not at all so considera- ble as in the previous case of childhood. It was consist- ent then, to suppose them subject to a proportionate resi- dence in the ideal world ; which in this, as in all else, was but the counterpart of the real. But I was to remark that the reason of the new embodiment was still the same. The slain, in barbarian warfare, are apt to be mutilated, either on the field of battle or on the altar of hostile gods; and the Mexicans knew, without having probably read Plato or Homer, that all wounds or mutilations pursue the body into Elysium. As to the other class of bodies, they would plainly be not less disqualified for their principal, their conjugal destination. And if the coarser equity of the northern savage had been struck by neither of these violent deaths, it was partly because of the mature pro- 344 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. portion of life which they pre-suppose, and partly that death by battle was, with the people in question, quite as natural, because as usual, as death by age ; whereas the other description of casualty was a thing unknown, I believe, among the forest mothers. "With the advent of civil society, which renders wars more rare and wives more delicate, the Canadians too would learn to make provision for these lesser inequalities. In fine another step in the progressive application may be shown to lurk under the following singular usage. The Siamese who burn their dead (and conse- quently believe in transmigration), make exception of the bodies of all who come to a violent or otherwise pre- mature end. The reason they are said to assign is, that such persons must have been criminals in a previous state of existence, and are therefore cut short in this, by way of punishment. Without disputing that such is the doctrine at present of the Budhist priests, and of course the people of Siam, it will immediately appear to be but another in- stance of the " allegorizing" above characterized as a habi- tual misrepresentation of the literal epoch of the Cycle, as afterwards viewed from the symbolic side. The origi- nal, the instinctive motive of the exclusion alluded to, sim- ply was, that the bodies were deemed not fit for preserva- tion, for regeneration; either because of the imperfect de- velopment of infancy, or infirmity of disease, or the mutila- tions of violence. These are accordingly the cases, which suggested, as we have seen progressively, the first resort to the alternative supposition of the metempsychosis. But it is from being at first the rule, that they were turned into an exception, by the symbolical invertion of doctrine, which is now in order of explanation. This too, however, must be excluded. Though curi- ous as explaining the rise of the "metamorphosis" or third stage of the Metempsychosis, yet the latter seems sufficiently characterized as the "Vehicular" system of the Organic epoch, by these few critical explanations of its origin and seeming anomalies, and by adding that it ends in the Pagan and Catholic Purgatory. So that we are thus conducted, quite naturally be- cause historically, from the consideration of the soul's MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 345 supposed forms after death, to the other branch of the induction, which respected the Locality. § 139. The idea itself of aplace of purgation supposes the coexistence of two alternatives as extremes. There must have been a place where the obstinately impenitent, that is to say, the incorrigibly rebellious to political or priestly authority, were to be consigned to irretrievable torment. There must also have been a place of pleasure, for the reception, immediate or ultimate, of those good, orderly, ignorant souls who either sanctified themselves completely by servility in this life, or after by the expia- tory purifications of the metempsychosis, or the purchased prayers of the Church. Such, accordingly, has been the doctrine of all the mythologies of the earth ; for all have taught, more or less distinctly in proportion to develop- ment, the two localities which the Greeks denominated Tartarus and Elysium. And the notion will be found as spontaneous, as natural, as necessary as we have seen to be the intermediate hypothesis of Transmigration. In fact, the conception or rather instinct, is another co- rollary from the dualism of Motive ; the Good and Evil Prin ciples imply good and evil places. This instinct leads the savage, as Charlevoix relates of the Canadians, to suppose that, according to his condition here, he must be miserable or happy in a future state. But theugh the conditions be distinguished, there as yet was no separation of the respec- tive localities. There could have been no systematic one, without the distinct conception of providence, of destina- tion, of will; an idea utterly foreign to the earlier ages of the Mythological Cycle. The motive here is equalization as resulting from Resemblance ; not Difference to the end of vengeance or voluptuousness. The "land of souls" is, like the land of bodies, the common receptacle' of all; and the condition of each is colored, or brightly or darkly, as experience is projected on a ground of hope or of despair. But with the development of design came the division of locations ; and with its progress, the relative divergence of the three spiritual regions from the central depot or porch of entrance, which was the grave. § 140. It was a consequence of this terrestrial starting point, as well as a necessity of the law of progression, that the two extreme stations should, no less than the inter 30 346 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. mediate, be situated at first upon the earth. It is even by the concrete aid of its inequalities of hill and vale that the divergence has been prosecuted through space. The first stage of this apposition was between life above ground or " in the land," as the Jews expressed it, and the life of the grave. The next placed this barbarian hell and heaven, respectively, on the neighbouring mountain, and in the valley beneath it. The procession is well preserved in the Latin denomination of hell, which was anciently termed sepulchrum or the grave, and afterwards infernum or the below. The Jewish place of judgment (their necropolis) was the "valley" of Jehosaphat, and the place of Enoch's translation was the " mountain" of God. The Hindoos, and in short all the oriental nations, built their temples or erected their altars, upon elevated sites ; and the readers of the Bible know the phrase " high places" to have be- come a synonym for the stated seats of worship; so made, because held sanctified by either the prior resi- dence or also the present sojourn, of the gods. The more enlarged experience of the same Hindoos removed the palace of Indra and the paradise Swerga to the summit of the Himmalaya ; and this, as if after found not sufficiently inaccessible, is now aloofed or abstracted, under the name of Mount Meru, to the north pole. Further still, the semi- civilized Greeks of the Platonic age had extended, the Ar- cadian Olympus of Homer into the clouds, and buried Tartarus still deeper in a cavern of Baeotia. As the fact of this progression in respect of the latter locality was above attested by the Latin transition of the name ; so the the title of 'Olympus, the previous seat of paradise, passed in like manner, among the Greeks, to the firmament. Nay, do not the Christians, too, call their heaven the " New Jerusalem," by a like derivation from the Jerusalem of old and earth ; either because the latter was the Tumular abode of their God, or the literal heaven of their Hebrew ancestors in faith 1 Thus did the explorations of geography progressively eliminate these celebrated places from the face of the earth. This consummation was duly attained, we saw, with the end of the Physical Cycle ; which moves in all things, real or imaginary, upon material nature alone. The Greeks, having passed onward to the ascending side MYTHOLOGICAL OYOLE. 347 of the next Cycle, abstracted the one upwards into the air, and the other downwards into the earth. After came the Christians, who pushed these regions farther, the one to the " central fire," and the other to the " milky way" — where they still remain, I believe, according to the last charts of our theological topographers. § 141. The conformity to theory is perhaps still more striking, in the uniform direction assigned to this cfueer mi- gration. The Atalantis or "happy isles" of the Greeks — in their transition, no doubt, from Olympus to the air — were situated in the Western Ocean. The Egyptians styled their paradise the Land, and their god Osiris the Lord, of the "West.' 7 To the West lay likewise, the " land of spirits" of all our American savages. And so, in short, with every primitive population of the earth. Nor is this concurrence at all curious when we know the identity of the cause. It has been largely shown that men have always imagined the future world after their general experience of the present. But the circumstance in question was determined in the prae-social state ; when the more for- ward nations instanced were also forest hunters, with the " westering" sun for their guide and god by day, the dog for their guard by night, and the river for their impas- sable or most perilous obstacle. Accordingly the dog and river are equally uniform accompaniments. I need not mention the Styx and Cerberus of the classical as well as Egyptian and other mythologies ; and of which it 'would, I think, be difficult to assign a different origin. This is al- so the origin of the ocean river of Homer, beyond which lay the land of the Cimmerians or Shades. Virgil has been criticised upon the propriety of introducing the yell- ing of dogs (1) in his description of the infernal regions. It was not understood that, like a good poet, he did but copy the popular tradition concerning the spiritual world of the shepherd or the savage. And as the canine guardian came, in course of the progression so often traced, to be transformed at last, into the angelic ; so the obstacle of the river is found figured into the " bi-frost" or rainbow bridge of the Scandinavians, and farther still abstracted in the "Al (I) Canes ululantes per umbram. Another instance ia that of Charon (the first of coroners) and his canoe. 348 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Sirat" of the more civilized Moslem. Even the deviations of circumstance attest the general archetype. If the Hin- doo paradise be placed, as we have seen, exceptionally, to the north, it is that the mountain range, which was its ear- liest station, stands in this relation towards the Indian peninsula, and, being the loftiest on the globe, preserved the latest from intrusion, the sacred eyrie where imagina- tion had nursed the brood- of her infant visions. Thus far for the soul's places of eternal Pleasure or Pain. The remaining locality of Penance has been char- acterized already in finding the progression of the metemp- sychosis end in the notion of purgatory. Respecting all three, I perhaps owe an apology for advancing doetrines so novel, without supporting them with a larger show of illustration. My excuse is the already assigned necessity. There would probably be no room for demur could I re- tain what did accompany them, in a survey^of this "land of shades" as represented at progressive epochs, by Homer, by Virgil, and by Dante. The omission I regret pain- fully ; not, however, that I deem the discussion at all essen- tial to support the text ; but that it would shed I think, a flood of light upon a number of unsettled questions, which have for ages been the topics both of religious and critical controversy. And this forbids on the other hand, that I should dare to try abridgment. So I must conclude with reminding the reader, that the three localities thus estab- lished are the spirit residences of the third order or those appropriated to what I name the Social and Theistic forma- tion of" Religion ; as the three grades of the metempsy- chosis belong to the Fetitchistic, and the three Sepulchral expedients to the Sabeistic stages. "And then to add, that the three main stages present the usual strict conformity with the three mathematical modes of conception : the first or sepulchral attaching the " spirit" to individual points of the earth ; the second moving it along the lines or "the series of transmigration ; the third, surrounding it with the figured inclosures of Hell or Heaven or Purgatory — a triad, itself, again the result of the same inevitable law. § 142. It will be seen that in this survey of the reli- gions of the primitive Cycle, I have made little or no allusion to the principle of reward or punishment. The reason is, that according to the theory it could then have no recog- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 349 nized existence. The supposed sufferings and enjoyments of the Future State of this period, were, we saw, but mere instinctive reflections of the present, allotted by analogy or by contrariety ; they were never predicated upon the principle of Will, which is the only proper object of re- ward or punishment. Accordingly these considerations first appeared upon the scene with the advent of the Meta- physical Cycle. Yet these doctrines of a "future state," and a " future state of rewards and punishments," thus separate in origin by a multitude of ages, are almost universally confounded, or conjoined by a combination quite as monstrous as that of the Siamese twins. The former is tugged forward, its prior existence is denied, by those who see the compara- tive recency of the moral qualification, but who see no far- ther ; the better informed, on the other hand, who find the belief in a future state to have been coeval with man him- self, drag backwards the reward and punishment to the same primeval date. This twofold ambiguity was the false and flexile position upon which Warburton ven- tured to rest and risque the inspiration of Moses. His famous argument ran thus : " That the inculcating the doc- trine of a future state of rewards and punishments, is ne- cessary to the well-being of civil society." And this he supports by the assertion, that it was so " believed and taught by all mankind, especially the most wise and learned nations of antiquity." Now, in the first place, we have seen that it was never - dreamt of by one half of mankind ; and that it was be- lieved by the nations specified, not because of their half learning or wisdom, but simply as a concomitant develop- ment of their mental adolescence. The alleged proof, then, is utterly at variance in both the points, with the main proposition. As a fact, it is false ; as an argument, inconclusive. For, as to the necessity here pretended, it is no better at least in logic, than to argue that the feeding men with the breast or the bottle, or chastising them with the birch or the fool's-cap is necessary to their well-being and well-doing, because this may have been the case in their infancy and boyhood. The parity would be self- evident were it not that general language has as yet no names to denote the analogous stages of progression in the 30* 350 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. body social. And that the things themselves had no ex- istence in even the great intellect of Warburton, may well be excused when we consider the present notions on the subject. I merely say, however, that his inference is false in logic ; I do not adopt the profane retort of a wit of my acquaintance : That if " no civilized community of man- kind has been ever found without some superstition," it was simply because none has yet been civilized enough to have got rid of it. I confine myself to reminding the reader, that one who could see into the future a good deal farther than Warburton, even Aristotle himself, insisted in his day that the institution of slavery was equally " indis- pensable to the well-being of civil society." What are the present notions on the subject 1 What will be the notion upon many other subjects in two thousand years ? The minor proposition of this truncated syllogism as- serts the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punish- ments to have had no part in the dispensation of Moses. Very true, it had not. But beside the miraculous conclu- sion of Warburton, there is a natural explanation. It is, that the people fox whom Moses legislated were barba- rously deep within the Physical Cycle. In such a case the presence of the doctrine in question would be a much better proof than its absence of the " divine original" of the Legation ; for that would have been an exception in- deed to all other communities of early humanity. And so again, at the mere touch of the true theory of history, we see crumble the entire fabric of an intellectual structure, erected. to prop the heavens, with an energy and arrogance almost equal to the Titan enterprise of old to pull them down. § 143» It may, however, be properly respectful to the prepossessions of certain readers to justify more particularly the rejection of the ancient Hebrews into this primitive or barbarian category. To those who can reflect, the follow- ing facts will be decisive ; the sentiments of the merely pious I da not seek to disturb. The instances may be taken at random from every national aspect of the " chosen people." I have had occa- sion to allude already to the extreme poverty and rudeness of their idiom. In syntax, the pronouns and other parti- cles generally concreted to the noun or verb j no articles MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 351 proper ; no declensions ; conjugations also in the bud ; tenses only two, the past and the future ; moods just as few, the infinitive and imperative — the indicative itself remain- ing still, like the present tense, undeveloped from the ele- mentary form of the verb. In style, the comparisons, parables, &c, uniformly short, blunt, uncircumstantial, that is to say infantile ; prosopopoeias frequent ; in short, the whole context grotesquely figurative and indigently allu- sory. But to sum up all in a single and practical test, the Bible has been translated into the idioms of our American savages — a process evidently implying an analogous plane of conception. Quite consonant is the Jewish ignorance in the matter of science ; even back to its dawning embodiment of as- tronomy. The Bible, their sole production or their whole literature, and composed at progressive intervals by the " wisest" men of Israel, makes mention, I believe at all, of only three or four of the heavenly bodies. And of these we may infer how intelligent was the notion, from the memorable solstice produced by Joshua. Whereas the naked barbarians of our own continent had, several of them, invented elaborate calendars. I am aware that, in the face of this positive evidence, the contrary is pretended of the Patriarchs. But we all know the Patriarchs came out of the mire of the flood more learned, more every thing thaa are the philosophers of the nineteenth century. Another proof may be drawn from the 'poetry of the Hebrews. And this will be the more significant, that the art is not only among the earliest to be cultivated, but is brought to what is commonly regarded its perfection, within the Cycle of the barbarous epoch. Yet the Jews had not attained to the first condition of the art, which is measure. It is agreed, I believe, by all sober inquirers, that they had no metre, no rhythm, nothing in short to be called prosody. The utmost their most pious panegyrists can substantiate in this particular, is a sort of crude chime or parallelism between the member* of the sentence. Now, when we consider that before attaining to the mechanical principle of verse, this chime must be extended, by slowly progressive stages, next to the separate words, then to the several syllables, and finally to the vowel sounds, which the Hebrews moreover had not learned to note or distin- 352 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. guish ; if I say this backwardness be duly weighed — in a form of development too among the most primitive and precocious — there will be no possibility, I fear, of ranking the national mind above one of the lowest conditions of concreteness and materiality. Their imagery is as conclusive to the same effect as the art. And images are perhaps the best characters, the sig- nal colours, whereby to knowa nation or an individual intel- lectually. Those of the Jews, it will be recollected by the least observant reader of Holy "Writ, are drawn almost uniformly from the two sources of drunkenness and lust ; that is to say, the most beastial and barbarian of vices. I may have already referred to their coarse and constant use of the image of generation And, in a word;Priapus himself had his unclean origin in Judea. But it has ap- peared that the notion of ofispring is naturally man's earliest medium for the connexion or expression of two ideas in a series. This Jewish trait is then the exigence of an in- fant intellect and idiom. The same infantile simplicity acquits the holy writers of the infamies of language they are found unconsciously uttering. Such is also the expla- nation of those pictured atrocities that stain the walls of the primeval cave-temples of Elephantina and Salsette, and were paraded in the pious processions of various other barbarians. Or if, for our Jewish masters in morals, religion and the rest, there be any who will not accept this very innocent apology, I leave them to the sole alternative of excusing a book of inspiration, for indecencies which would be thought too disgusting, I presume, by a volup- tuary of any refinement, to insert in a book of obscenity. I conclude then that the sole superiority, (humanly speaking) of the Hebrews, over either the barbarians or sa- vages named, lay in eertain factitious forms derived from accidental circumstances. They had (unlike the Hurons, for example), a leader educated in, and emanating from, a comparatively civilized nation. This personage brought amongst them the utmost proficiency of Egypt in the learn- ing and arts of the Mythological Cycle ; and above all, the art of writing in the demotic, that is to say, popular or al- phabetic form. In theology too he might have imported a species of personal monotheism, then breaking upon the van of the Egyptian intellect. But this idea, whencesoever de- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 353 rived, was the pivot upon which the human mind was turned into the new order of the succeeding Cycle. And it was but natural that the glory or self-conceit of the putative offspring should be reflcted back, in colours extravagant in proportion as adventitious, upon the obscure and patriar- chal stock of Juda. § 144. I cannot close this long, yet too succinct, survey of the divinities, doctrines and rites of Heathenism without a parting (and also premonitory) word of explanation. If, in any part, I have seemed to write of these wretched errors of infant humanity, in a spirit of levity or even censure, it was not my meaning to condemn them unqualifiedly. In their origin and season the very worst of them were salutary. And this not only in comparison with having no religion at all ; but even relatively to the sublimest doctrines of re- velation or of reason. The wooden log of the Sandwich Islander did more to allure the man out of the brute, than could have been effected (whatever the missionaries may pretend to the contrary) by the philosophy of Socrates or the morality of Christ. It is not the existence then of these inevitable follies that I could have the ignorance to de- nounce. It is the noxious perpetuation of them, through a parasitical craft, who are sure to creep around and cover their gradual progress to decay, and prop the ruin until humanity be crushed by the sudden crash. Or rather it is that swinish torpidity of intellect, with which most men are seen in ages, so called, of science and inquiry, to sur- render not only reason but the first elements of common sense, to the traditional dictates of a farrago of nursery tales, imagined two or three thousand years ago, by a hand- ful of scrofulous barbarians, the refuse of the ancient and the ridicule of the modern world, and whose very coun- tenance is stamped, by nature, of that money-getting type which marks the passage of the idiot into the knave, and speaks an intellect that only ranges between the pimp and the pedler. But I beg the reader's pardon that I lose, for once, my self-control. I was just apologizing for the appearance of levity. But, on follies of this sort, where is the medium between irony and indignation ? As to the general execution, I will now pretend to little more than that, in spite of the mutilation, it opens through- out this wilderness the leading routes of order and explana- 354 VESTIGES OP CIVILIZATION. tion. And this I claim to havebeennow done for the first time. If this be doubted, the reader may look into the latest writers on the subject. He will find the most elaborate of them, Creuzer, throughout his ponderous folios, still wallowing in the chaos, with true German complacency. And even the philosophical Dupuis loses the methodic instinct of his na- tion, and huddles the savage fetitchism of the Esquimaux or the negro in the same category with what he dares to deem the like superstition of the Christians. But this would be to abandon a portion of human history — and a portion still the most extensive and perhaps instructive — to the puerile wonder of the half-learned at the profound vagaries of the ancients, and the lamentations of the wholly pious over the perversities of the devil. I trust I have shown at least that something better may be reasona- bly exacted from those who should resume the theme in future. CHAPTEE IV. SYSTEMS. Philosophy of the Ancient Schools of Speculation. § 145. Upon this the last head of the general division I can retain but the bare conclusions, the classificatory re- sults, which have been obtained through an extended his- torical analysis. The speculative systems of this Cycle have, in strict ac- cordance with the theory, sought to account for the origin of things ; and successively by the three principles of Di- vinity, Entity, Order. The first represents the " Cosmo- gonists" proper or theological, who explained the forma- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 355 tion of the world praeternaturally, by an agent external to it, and who form the natural sequel to the preceding arti- cle of Doctrines. The second principle, which explained the origin of the world by something within it, is repre- sented in the Greek school, named the "Ionic;" duly the oldest of the philosophic sects, and whose founder, Thales, is said to have supplanted the cosmogonists. But it has not been observed that in order to be fit to do so, the school must have been, what it was, we see, metaphysical. On the contrary, it has got the appellation of " physical;" a term anciently applied to distinguish it from the subse- quent ethical systems, but taken, preposterously, in its mo- dern sense, by all modern writers on the subject. The third or principle of order found its earliest organ in the "school ofElea," which is accordingly recorded as subsequent and antagonistic to the Ionic. The sequence and contrast were well described in a celebrated saying of the ancients them- selves : that " as Thales saw gods in all things (meaning doubtless the " entities," which could not yet be popular- ly distinguished from the reigning divinities), so Xeno- phanes (the founder of the "Eleatics") saw all things in God." The latter is we see precisely the synthetic con- verse of the former. Yet here, too, the very reverse, is the universal doctrine. The Eleatic school is described as metaphysical, analytic and atheistic. To the contrary in all three, it was physical, synthetic, and pantheistic. Xenophanes was the Spinoza of the Mythological Cycle. § 146. It was accordingly the pressure of his " Uni- versal Unity" that gave birth to the miscellaneous sects of the " Sophists," so admirably fitted to form the stratum of transition from the basis of Nature to the basis of Man. The earliest erection upon this conjoint ground was the school named the " Ionic ;" and whose specialty of origin is signally evinced in the tradition that it was the first to mingle politics with physics. But I will add a still nicer test. It is a first principle of our theory, that, with- out this combination of man with nature, the scientific conception of natural law was impossible, in even the sim- plest form. But this form, we know, is Number. Now.it is known almost popularly that this was the arche of Py- thagoras, the famous founder of the Italic sect, and whose colossal distinction with all posterity is also thus explained, 356 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. in his being the first to stride the gulf between the physical and moral Cycles. I wish there was room to show, how spontaneously the theory could go on to unriddle all the mysteries, as well of doctrine as character, of this singu- lar personage. For instance, among the former, one of the most impenetrably recondite is the " binary system of contraries." But it is plainly a dim perception, under the pri- mary or Logical aspect, of the law of intellectual Polarity first enunciated in this volume. So amongst at housand other things, with his systematization of the metempsychosis, a doctrine we just saw mark the same intermediary passage to the second Cycle. This tendency but just inchoative in the school of the showy Samian, must reflect, if I am right, a still more emphatic celebrity upon the culminant representative of the new epoch. Accordingly what reader has not been taught to venerate the sage, the sublime, the divine, the godlike Socrates : for all perhaps of these fervid epithets have been re-echoed by even pious Christians. But I believe no one hitherto has either heard or given a truly rational explanation of an estimate so anomalous and extravagant. I say extravagant ; for what so great had Socrates done, for the benefit of his country or kind ? His sole works were his words. And these were, in the most literal sense, the " winged words 1 ' of Homer ; for they were never committed to writing. Of their utility therefore, whatever it might have been in reality, posteri- ty could know nothing save through the medium of tradi- tion ; and this tradition for the most part transmitted through the dialetical exercitations, more or less Boswell- ized, of the fictitious dialogues of Plato. This then could be no adequate basis for the pre-eminence and the perpet- uation of his fame, even though his merits were well as- sured to have been all that his disciples pretended. To this natural predilection of a few, however, there is, more- over, to be opposed the general opinion of the fellow-citi- zens of Socrates, as represented but too faithfully and fatally by Aristophanes. I am aware that this is scouted as the judgment of the multitude. But it is not distin- guished that it was the aristocratic multitude of intellectual Athens. Besides, it is not considered that the condemna- tion in that case was the very thing which the parties MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 357 themselves, who have been always the foremost to de- nounce it, style the conservatism of intelligence and piety. For in truth Socrates was regarded by his townsmen gen- erally as a mischievous visionary ; very much as Fourier, for example, is in our own day contemplated, from a quite analogous point of view. But were the millennium of Socialism to obtain the control of civilization, think you not that Fourier would come to be hymned as" the most "godlike" of men] Even so precisely was Socrates; merely in virtue of being the herald of the Moral Cycle, and precursor of the Christian system. The anomaly then, as well as extravagance, of the praise bestowed by Christian ages upon this heathen philosopher are thus naturally explained by a sympathy of epoch. This we also saw to be the cause of the singular fame of Pythagoras ; which, however, notwithstanding the more positive merits of the political organizer of Magna Graecia, was duly inferior in duration, as I have shown the cause to have been in degree. We may now go on to under- stand why Cicero, the pagan moralist, has celebrated Socrates as the " first who brought philosophy from the stars (de ccelo)," that is to say, turned speculation from physical nature to Man. Why Dr. Johnson, the Christian moralist, re-echoes the eulogy, exaggerating it by a mistranslation of heaven for astronomy. Why Jean Jaques Rousseau, the deistical moralist, does not hesitate to run a parallel be- tween the sons of Sophroniscus and Mary.; and this not only in life, but especially in death. The latter point of comparison discovers Rousseau's usual profundity of in- stinct. For it was, in fact, the circumstance of Socrates' death that redounded chiefly to the subsequent popularity of his name. Under the Cycle of Force, a Curtius or a Codrus could die for the salvation of his country, and a Regulus for the superstition of his oath. Under the Cycle of Will the Christian martyrs made the like sacrifice for conscience ; but Socrates was shown to be the earliest syste- matic organ of the latter epoch ; indeed his celebrated guardian " demon" announced the birth of Conscience into the world. It is but consistent that he should have suffered for what is quite the same under another name, and been the first of men to die voluntarily for his opinion. I 31 358 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. may add, that to live and labor for it will constitute the heroism and even the holiness of the ages of Science. In venturing the foregoing remarks I had no disposi- tion to derogate from the just fame of one of the greatest and best of mankind. But my task of explanation does not allow me to conceal, how much the reputation of what men call greatness and goodness, and even the qualities themselves, depend upon the place of the individual in the development of the species. § 147. Be that, however, as it may, it is acknowledged that through Socrates, and then his synthetic successor and favorite pupil Plato, the Italic school, in the full maturity of its Attic transplantation, was represented by the Elder Academy. But to this succeeded, in analytic hostility, the Epicurean sect ; who were followed, it is known, in simi- lar order and opposition by the Stoic system. I now need scarce remark that this latter triad of sects is but a trans- formation of the former and physical schools upon the moral basis of man. But I have ventured to touch at all upon these high matters thus meagerly, and in a manner, I am aware quite open to misapprehension, only for the purpose of reaching, if possible, without absolute hiatus, the general result of this long elaboration : I mean, the resi- dual obstacle both to the harmony of science and the hap- piness of man, which has been left outstanding, quite spontaneously, by these progressive eliminations ; the nature of the spot into which ancient philosophy has ended with retruding the ever-springing and bitter fountain of human Evil. This spot was the human will in its meridian development, and was finally determined by the Stoics — who (as the philosophic poet sings ), " Binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will." I close then with a brief attempt to condense into closer , contrast the spirit of the three solutions which were offered, by the last three schools, respecting the problem upon which their systems had successively foundered. §, 148. Religion long divides the world of speculation with philosophy, as it does the world of action with politics. It begins with engrossing the lion's share in both depart- MYTHOLOGICAL OYCLB. 359 merits ; but recedes in both proportionably as philosophy advances. Thus in politics, we see the progression produce in our own day, for example, the divorce of Church and State. And, in the order of inquiry, it is evinced no less significantly in the concession comparatively recent, that the " Bible was not given by God to teach the principles of science." This is virtually interchanging the position of predominance which was occupied by reli- gion up to the period before us and later. Even the mediate or Metaphysical philosophy upon which the tran- sition is accomplished, had been hitherto but a species of religion. Or religion might, if we will, be said to be the philosophy of those ages — the ages of imagination, of in- fancy. With this theological philosophy, in its infant and adolescent stages, the philosophy of Experience may be conceived to remonstrate in this wise — perhaps typified in the story of Abel and Cain. "While you represented a blind Force to be the only rule of right and wrong, of good and evil, in the world, there was no objection to be made you, as necessity admits of none. When you after went on to attribute these vital interests of humanity to the caprices of invisible demons, angels, elements, &c, you were shielded here by nonsense, as in the former in- stance, by necessity. But now you are come to affirm that all things have been produced by an independent being, who is infinite in goodness as well as intelligence and power : yet evil, you must admit, exists in the world. What, then, I still repeat, is the cause 1" — Matter, responded the Platonists. Matter is co-eter- nal with the Deity, who has made the most of it for human happiness that its intrinsic malignity would allow. The residue must be got rid of by a process of purification ; by mortification of the body, by contemplation of the ideal, and thus approximating one's-self to the spiritual essence of the Divinity. — But this solution, which as above re- marked, was but a refinement of the metempsychosis into the terrestrial purgatory of the Pagans, could no longer pass upon an Athenian, as it still does upon the Hindoo, public. Even the Roman barbarians of the lower empire, while continuing the pagan practice, required this amiable institution to be transported, theoretically, at the same time beyond the grave and beneath the earth. 360 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. — No, replied the negative doctrine of the Epicureans ; it is not matter, it is Chance. Evil, moral and physical, is- a result of the fortuitous concourse, whether of the vari- ous particles of your body, or the local circumstances of your life. The former you cannot control. The latter you may manage to a certain degree by selecting the agreeable and shunning the eontrary. Keep yourself tranquil, then ; avoid perturbation ; gratify (but prudently) your natural desires ; indulge your genius ; in a word, enjoy your good fortune. — This doctrine may be all well in as far as it goes to- subvert the absurdity of purgation and Platonism, re- joined the Stoics. You reconcile indeed the Two Princi- ples with a vengeance. But it is precisely because your explanation of the difficulty is none at all ; it is in truth the negation of all explanation. Our attempt is this : The evil men complain of is attributable neither to matter nor to chance. It resides in the ignorance and the excesses of man himself, and results from the freedom of his Will. As to the objective occasions of it, they were all necessary — necessary architectonically — to the eduction of the greatest good, even as discord is an element of music. Only learm to know this divine disposition and to nerve your will into harmony with its universal system, and you will find evil, be it poverty, pain, or death itself, to have no reality in the order of Nature. § 149. This was the greatest as it was the latest concep- tion of the Greek mind. Of it died the Social or hero- worship of the first Cycle. And, with the exhaustion of this Idolatrous and final stage of Heathenism, expired in turn the civilization of Greece ; as the Egyptian did, we saw, upon failure of the second and Fetichistic. To re- vive, therefore, it must, as usual (§ 22), return to the earth, and reassume the infant form of theology. But this was manifestly impossible, amid the philosophical schools of Greece. And so, naturally pressing towards the point of least resistance, the popular sentiment would turn abroad for a more propitious, a ranker soil. This soil was duly ready in the contemporary capital of the world, which at the time was a lazaar-house of all miseries and a museum of all superstitions. Here there could have been no objection to the installation of a new MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 361 god ; it was only requisite that he should enter, upon equal footing with all the rest. This, however, could comport with neither the spirit of the epoch, nor the wants of the oppressed, nor the arbitrary and exclusive nature of the principle to be embodied. The god demanded by these joint exigencies must represent the Cycle of Will as either casting off, oreluding,the oppressions of the Cycle of Force; must be the god, therefore, not of a family, an aristocracy, or a nation, but of the enslaved multitudes of all mankind — whose sorrows and sufferings he must be supposed to have experienced, in order to feel their entire bitterness and mete them a full reward. This was the popular solution of the problem of Evil. But before attaining to such dis- tinctness, which must be the revelation of the god himself, it was requisite that the latter should be invented or iden- tified. Hence, accordingly, the groping of the public mind to this effect during the twilight of the great transi- tion which introduced the Christian era. This vague pre- sentiment found various vents, it is known, in the cele- brated verses of the Sibyls, the effusions of the poets, and was recorded by several historians. It is notorious that some of the Sibylline verses were so remarkable in this •respect as to be considered forgeries of later times to maintain the divinity of Christ. But though this maybe true in part, it but enforces the original fact ; as every counterfeit presupposes a reality. As to the poets, it is needless to mention the pointed allusions of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil. I shall only cite, as perhaps less familiar, a single passage from Ovid, who makes OchirrSe prophesy in the following singular terms. To preclude distrust, the semi-reverend Addison will be responsible for the translation. Once as the sacred infant she surveyed. The god was kindled in the raving maid; And thus she uttered her prophetie tale — " Hail, great physician of the world, all hail 5 " Hail mighty infant, who in years to come, " Shalt heal the nations and defraud the tomb : " Swift be thy growth, thy triumph unconfined! " Make kingdoms thicker and increase mankind " Thy daring art shall animate the dead, " And draw down thunder on thy guiltless head : " Then shalt thou die. But from the dark abode " Rise uf victorious and be twice a god." 31* 362 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. The reader will bear in mind that this was written some half a century before the birth of Christ. Had the poet been a Jew, however, I could not have alleged the prophesy, as it would in that case be exempt no doubt, from the laws and inferences as of reason. But coming from a very uncircumcised Gentile, and addressed to a similarly profane public, the circumstantiality and spirit of the description, combined, must be allowed to evince a state of general feeling the most strikingly conformable to that which has been just foreshadowed by thejheory. — We have the god in the state of infancy, and to be born of a virgin. He is to suffer innocent, and for his goodness to mankind ; to suffer even unto death. But he is to triumph over the grave, and be again the god he was before. For the imaginary personage of the poet was ^Esculapius, the god of medicine, under the Physical Cycle. It was but an- other instance, then, of the old affinity between religion and physic, that the moral iEsculapius too should be supposed to redeem through the healing art. On the whole, then, if this passage be considered with due reflection, and from the historical point of view in which it is presented by the foregoing remarks, it will be found difficult, I think, not to conceive the fabrication of a Messiah inevitable, had the true one not made his timely appearance. §. 150. But there was another circumstance of the age whereby such an issue might have been singularly favored. Among the miscellaneous adventurers, from all known na- tions, who were at that time floated into the colluvial city of Rome, was a race distinguished or rather stigmatized for eccentricities so peculiar as to have made it at once the enigma and the aversion of all the others. Originally a handful of nomad tribes, settling down into the agricultu- ral state, on a small and sterile district adjoining the Ara- bian desert ; in the next place, and more than once, car- ried off, as a boy does a bird's nest, in the baggage train of foreign conquerors returning home through its little ter- ritory, and by them retained for several generations in bondage ; afterwards running a career of internal anarchy and exterior obscurity, until brought at last into notice by the conquest of Rome, through whose fingers it had hith- erto slipped in grasping the empire of the world ; such was the humble history of the, singular race in question. MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. 363 Yet this pitiful people had retained not only the pretension, common to all barbarians, of being the most ancient or eminent of mankind ; the Jews had, moreover, the unex- ampled arrogance of assuming to be the sole depositories of civilization in its perfection, and of religion in its purity, in short to be the only sublunary concern of the only true God, True, they were not powerful now ; this could not well be dissembled by even Jewish imagination. But to compen- sate for the servile present, the dominion of the entire earth was owned by their patriarchal fathers in the unrecorded past, and was to be restored to the nation, as they were assured divinely through their prophets, by an avenging and conquering offspring of the royal house of David. Charged with this ideal embodiment of preternatural ven- geance and hope, it was that the wrecks of the Jewish tribes were brought at the period before us to Rome. They mingled, as they have ever after done, with the low- est populace of the city; who, predisposed by the fellow- feeling of enslavement and ignorance, would have been easily inoculated with the expectation of the Jews, even though the boon were now suggested for the first time. But when the Messiah appeared to be but a counterpart of their own long-expected JEsculapius, the concurrence would naturally kindle into the enthusiasm of certainty. § 151. Nor was this all. I have represented the problem of the age as involving not only the remedy, but also the cause, of moral Evil. To the latter effect, too, the same singular people supplied, accordingly, a solution no less seasonable than the preceding. It had nothing indeed of those elaborate speculations of the Greek systems, about elements, or ules, or atoms, or even ignorance. It was a story of the incondite style and structure of those of .ffisop, and thus adapted exactly to the mental infancy of the new era. (I should have excepted from the resemblance that the tale in this case was, of course, a fact.) It was said to ha ve been delivered by Moses, the inspired lawgiver of the Hebrews. God (so it ran), after creating the world out of nothing, formed among other things the two primordial parents of all mankind. He placed them in a pleasure- garden, which they with their posterity were to occupy indefinitely, exempt from death or even disease. This bliss was, however, suspended on the condition that they should 364 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. not eat of the fruit of a particular tree, planted temptingly before them. It was the tree, not of ignorance, as a pro- fane Stoic would have made it ; it was named " the tree of knowledge — that fatal upas of the priesthood. However, as might have been expected, the woman was tempted, by a certain serpent, to eat of the forbidden apples ; and, luring her consort into delicious complicity, thus brought death into the world and all our woes. Such was, in fact, the slim and unpretending expedient by which civilization was lifted out of the. dilemma, or as I have imaged it the dead lock, of the Stoic fatalism, and relaunched upon the stream of Christiani- ty. And assuredly the supernatural origin of the latter system could have no stronger proof than an efficiency so disproportional to the means, if the Mosaic theory had nothing more in it, than has ever yet, I believe, been pointed out, by either the piety of its friends or the pro- fanity of its foes. But it really possesses that which we saw wanting to all the Greek theories just surveyed ; or rather which, though present, the philosophic forwardness and aristo- cratic destination of these theories did not permit them to present in the infant form alone accessible to the enslaved multitude, the lowest stratum to be now regenerated. This happy peculiarity is nothing less than an affinity or rather identity, of principle with the Moral Cycle. The principle of this epoch is the Will. And the primary or theological method of applying it must, we also know, impersonate it into a sovereign and exclusive god. Let us now observe how far these exigences of the people and the age in question had been embodied in the story of Adam and Eve : — 1st. This memorable pair are said to to have brought Evil into the world by an act of disobedience, that is to say, resistance to Will. 2d. No reason for the prohibition is either vouchsafed or visible (for Satan's suggestion is of course a sham) ; a circumstance exhibiting the principle in greater purity and peremptoriness in proportion as the injunction would ap- pear tyrannical and trifling. No god of the Greek mono- theists could be imagined capable of imposing any such con- dition ; for they were abstractions, we have seen, of order, or intelligence, or reason. Whereas the god of the Jews and the early Christians, like the ignorant or anarchical in- MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE. S65 tellect of his worshippers, must be conceived a being of passionate and capricious will. In another aspect, 3d. While the cause of Evil, the vtf of Plato and Pythagoras, was matter y the ule of Moses was a moral essence named sin. And this sin, whether original or ad- ventitious, was transmissible; which was a kindred symboli- zation of the metempsychosis. 4th. We have seen the systems of all sects, under the Physical Cycle, subordinate man to the supremacy of nature; and I have shown that the Moral Cycle must do precisely the reverse. Quite accordingly we find the author of Genesis, for the first time perhaps in the history of speculation, representing the physical universe as made for the purposes alone of Man. I submit whether, if it had been the deliberate desigw to frame a system upon both the principle and point of view assigned the new epoch, it would be possible to concentrate its entire spirit more significantly within an equal compass, than has been done in this Mosaic story. Indeed intention the most ingenious could never have done the thing so well ; it could be only instinct, the collective instinct of an era. In fine, if this theory of Evil be thus explainable by natural laws, I may be challenged to prove it also in the aspect of method, as well as of principle. In Greece we saw the contemporary systems all resolve themselves int© three sects, at the same time mutually convicting and collec- tively co-operative ; and I have represented the fact to be universal. The Hebrew system, therefore, although rudi- mental in point of speculation, should have left some traces of a similar division. Accordingly I need but men- tion, first, the sect of the Sadducees, professing the primi- tive and literal materialism of the Physical Cycle. Then the Pharisees and Scribes, famous for innovating and in- terpreting, that is for analyzing, the Scriptures, and who gave to Christ the same cavilling trouble that the Sophists gave to Socrates. Finally, the Essenes, who were the last or the synthetic school, and from whom issued, quite char- acteristically, the divine author of the new Covenant. And so the reader sees "that the theory has kept its word with him to the last, even unto subjects where he scarce expected perhaps to find it realized. But Revela- tion, we should always remember, was designed to eu 3 00 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. lighten the ignorance, not to alter the laws, of the human mind. § 152. Sciences. But while the human mind was thus wandering chartless in the regions, of physics and ethics, it should have gained, the theory also teaches, a scien- tific foothold, in the simplest series of natural laws, termed the Mathematical. Now Pythagoras, whom we saw typify the transition basis of relation, (§ 145) is also notoriously the first to have theorized on the law of Number, which we know to be the simplest and so the first known of natural laws. It became, in course of a century or two after, systematized into the science of Arithmetic; which might thus be termed the Ararat of human Reason. About the latter date has been attained the next of the three relations, which is familiar to us as Quantity or extension ; as if the earth or the universe with which man had previously confounded himself, now rose upon his contemplation in more objective amplitude, as he receded up the opposite acclivity of the second Cycle. The relation of quantity reached its ab- stract generalization in Plato, and soon after, its methodi- zation in the well-known Elements of Euclid. The notion is, I am aware, that the science of geometry, as indeed all other arts and sciences, was filched by the Greeks from the Egyptians (with our pious ancestors, it used to be the Jews) ; but the repetition of such absurdities only proves the ignorance still prevalent respecting the precise and posi- tive character of science. The third and final relation is Fig- ure, in the sense explained in the second chapter of Part the First of this volume. Its aspect of motion closed in the trea- tise on Equilibrium of Archimedes. Finally, I have repre- sented astronomy as but an embodiment of those three rela- tions. It should therefore be posterior in its scientific inci- pience. And in fact it was about a century after that the illustrious Hipparchus commenced the positive investiga- tion of the heavenly bodies. I can give but this meagre abstract, from an ample dis- cussion of the subject. If for nothing else, it will serve to show, by its material contrast with the bulk of the volume, the real proportion of the part of Science to that of error and empiricism in the long epoch, here concluded, of the Mythological Cycle. PART III. METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. MTEODUCTOEY. § 153. In obedience to the progressional law of succes- sive predominance, the arrangement of our heads of in- duction into Arts, Institutions, Systems under the pre- ceding Cycle, must, in the present, be transposed into that of Systems, Institutions, Arts. This it will be remarked is a complete reversal of the order. But so is the new epoch an exact reversal of the old, according to'the fundamental principle of the theory. The theory, then, is affirmed, in turn, by the propriety of the inversion. For the latter is evidently consonant to familiar history ; which tells us, that for the first ages the Christian era presented, in institutions and arts, but disor- ganization and decay ; while it was productive of systems (such as they were) without number. It is needless to say, the earliest were, as usual, religions : another historic coincidence to be added to the tissue. So that by this well-tried fidelity to the order of nature, our induction may glide spontaneously from one to the other Cycle, and now proceeckwithout material break in its theological train. But it will be first convenient, by way at once of re- capitulation and introduction, to contrast summarily the two periods, and in this perhaps the most familiarly char- acteristic of their aspects. § 154. The chief features of distinction would all re- solve themselves fundamentally into the two sources which supply the main division of this work, namely opposition of Subject-matter, and inversion of Method. Heathenism, as we have seen, proceeded upon the positive basis of 368 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. physical Nature, and in the explorative order of Analysis. Christianity, as we shall see, upon the negative basis of spiritual Man, and in the dogmatic order of Synthesis. The former was the Natural History of religon. The lat- ter, its theoretical systematization. This deep and double difference — material and formal — would explain, I think, (among many other things long abandoned as insoluble) every distinguishing peculiarity that has been ever found, or even feigned, iu both or either of these two great orders of popular speculation. One of the most conclusive to the purpose and im- portant in itself would be the distinction, now so much agitated among the rationalists of Germany, between the principle of the Myth and the Legend. The precise defi- nitions of both are a direct deduction from the theory. But as I have backed it with a critical exposure of the errors both of Strauss and his opponents, on the subject, the whole must, together with other more elaborate examples, be omitted, to pass for the present, to less recondite criteria. Suppose, then, the contrast were to turn upon the moot point of toleration — a matter which has, from Tacitus down to Voltaire, been made so severe a reproach to the Christians. Why did the Heathen permit a rival god, while the Christian persecuted a dissenting brother? Our theory explains the contrariety, with the precision of a logical necessity. It was first and fundamentally, because the one was a religion of analysis; the other was a religion of synthesis. The former faith, pro- ceeding from particulars to generals, and so dispersed among a multitude of independent and ever varying powers, had scarce ever attained the consistency of even a national creed, and never asserted a general criterion of doctrine : heathenism never had a church as distinguish- able from the state. It had, therefore, neither the power nor the pretext to persecute, and consequently no occasion for, no idea of, toleration. Christianity, on the contrary, proceeded from a supreme principle, the logical legacy of its heathen predecessor. Upon this centralized and in- fallible authority of mono-theism or rather mono-thelism, it built synthetically a code of doctrine and instituted a church ; both, of course, absolutely universal, exclusive, and obligatory. There was here then a rule of orthodoxy METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 369 and a right of compulsion : there was, therefore, dissent and heresy, intolerance and persecution. The contrast will be farther illustrated in its conformi- ty to the theory, and, at the same time, shown not to owe its cause to any praeternatural pretensions of the later religion, if we compare it with the synchronous conditions of the state. Thus the savages, who in the infancy of the Mythological Cycle, have each his proper guardian god, im- agined and allowed to be independent of every other — even as men, in the analogous infancy of the Scientific Cycle, pretend to have each his own guiding " opinion" and be governed but by his own will — those savages, I say, were in like manner political masters each of himself; that is, they represent that primitive absence of all social authority which I have termed an elemental^ democracy. And even after authority had organized itself into the aristo- cratic form, the reigning deities then became, like the privileged of their worshippers, only the more tenacious of equality, the more liberal of hospitality as between the members of the local class, or the international classes of the general order. Hence the gods of foreign creeds were received without demur ; just as, even at this day, the nobility of Europe will recognize as upon equal foot- ing a brother of the blood baronial, whether from their own or a foreign state, and though a beggar or barbarian. While, on the other hand, the serfs in the same communi- ties are observed to assume towards each other nationally — as we also see the plebeian coteries of a democracy do socially — somewhat of the kitchen airs and exclusiveness of an upper servant towards his fellows. But Christianity was, spiritually, a universal serfdom ; that is to say a uni- versal despotism. This very natural account of the intolerance charged to Christianity would equally serve in turn to explain several other particulars, for which the system has been quite as ignorantly praised. For instance, it is passed into an historical truism that the Christian Church has been a democracy; which was for want of distinguishing between the anarchical equality of this political condition and the dead-level equality of serfdom which marks its next-door neighbour of despotism. Christianity is also usually cred- ited with the abolition of ancient slavery. The thing is 32 3 TO VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. not true in fact ; nor does it appear in modern times ; on the contrary, the most strict adherents of the Christian sys- tem, the Catholics, are seen to be the most favorably dis- posed of all our religious sects, to the institution of slavery, in this country. But were the pretension really founded, it would be equally true that the system substituted a slavery of a darker die. In the Physical Cycle, the body, the phys- ical man was enslaved ; in the Metaphysical or moral Cy- cle, it was the moral man, the mind. But neither the aboli- tion of the former slavery, nor even the production of the latter, is truly to be ascribed to Christianity ^ any more at least than the limb can be said to produce its secondary branches, which draw their vitality like itself, from the earth and atmosphere. And the same philosophy which teaches us to acquit both the Christian and Heathen religions alike of blame or praise in the causation of either slavery — the latter being in fact concomitant effects of the respective cy- clical evolutions — this larger philosophy, I say, would also forbid to pronounce slavery itself to have been an evil in either form, in its season. The motives of the human en- slavers were malignant, if you will. But perhaps those mo- tives were the means of nature in effecting a beneficent end. This end was to subdue in order to subordinate ; and sub- ordinate in order to civilize. But how else were the multi- tude to be subordinated than successively in this wise : in the first Cycle, through the body, by force, and to man ; in .the second, through the passions, by fraud, and to God ; both probations being progressively preparatory to the third and •final Cycle, which subordinates men to the laws of nature, through reason, and by science ? § 155. The various contrasts between Heathenism and Christianity, thus aptly explained by the theory in its as- pect of method, would (result no less precisely from the conceptual Principles of the same periods. Por example, in the Heathen Cycle the human will was held to be sub- ject, either inertly or irresistibly, to the physical forces of nature, or rather of its imaginary rulers : to punish non- belief would have been therefore deemed absurd. But when the moral era hoisted man himself into ideal supre- macy over the universe, and made the will be imagined free — not merely in the qualified 6ense of the Stoics, but as independent of all motive and uncontrollable by evi- dence — in this hypothesis, to punish a divinely inhibited METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. Sfl belief or disbelief must appear perfectly legitimate, and even beneficent according to the object. For if men might believe or not at pleasure, they might be made to believe as they ought; and persecution to this end became as meritorious as prayer. In fact the former was the more natural means in proportion to its plainer cogency ; and it is accordingly found inextinguishable wherever the Chris- tian priest has power. So that it seems what the other sects impute reproachfully to the Roman branch, or rather trunk, of the system, is the best proof of its superior or- thodoxy, and of their heresy or their weakness. When first dissevered from the Church, and still impressed with her organic sympathies, every fragment of the hydra shot forth the fanged head of persecution. And if they are now become really tolerant, it is because their faith, begin- ning in negation, is fast verging towards nonentity ; while the Christian germ ferments still vital in the bosom of the mother, perhaps awaiting the new spring of a European despotism. In fine, so necessarily consequent are religious intolerance, mental tyranny and physical persecution upon both the principle and point of view of the Christian hy- pothesis that, for my part, I must doubt either the sincerity or the intelligence of any Christian who would refuse even to roast a fellow-creature, at the expense of a few moments of bodily suffering, to save the soul of the victim himself, or those of others through his fate, from burning in hell to all eternity. § 156. Both the method and principle of the two Cycles respectively will be also perceived to have shaped the following collection of contrasts ; which for brevity I must throw together, rather miscellaneously, into a last paragraph. It is from its structure of synthesis that Christianity is a rule to be practised ; and Heathenism, for the contrary reason, was a problem to be divined. Admire the master of the universe, he is one and omnipresent, was the formula addressed to the initiated by the high- priest of the Greek mysteries : the exhortation of the Christian ritual is to adore him, and obey. Speculatively, the Heathen system was a cosmogeny, it sought the origin of the World ; the Christian was (so to speak) a homo- geny, it turned upon the origin of Man. The civilization of Heathenism was a mathematical civilization, it ran upon the more obvious relations of matter, and thus the 372 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. primary generalizations of the mind, upon number, figure, proportion ; Christianity, on the other hand, represents a moral civilization, and proceeded upon the more compli- cate phenomena of the heart and will. In point of internal economy the opposition is throughout the same. Heathenism offered sacrifices ; Christianity administered sacraments. The mysteries of the Heathen initiated into doctrines ; the Societies of the Christian novitiated into practices. The former system could content the infant curiosity of men with prophesies ; under the latter, even Jews had the in- credulity to ask for a sign. Hence the Heathen was a re- ligion founded upon oracles ; the Christian, a religion founded upon miracles. The former had diviners to fore- tell events by inspiration ; the latter had doctors to ex- pound decrees by authority. Philosophically, also, this contrast of view continues. Christianity was a IIhjtio ; Heathenism, a Tviaaia. The analytic spirit of the latter sysem was inquisitive throughout, from the pondering of the theosoph upon the egg of chaos, in quest of the origin of the universe, down to the prying of the augur into the pecking of a hungry chicken, for the result of a battle or the fortune of a journey r the dogmatic spirit of the other system was only inquisitorial ; knowing already whatever it was lawful to know respecting this world as well as the next, it consequently made faith and wcr7is the proper concern of the Christian, whether he petitioned his saint or paid his parson. Morally too, in fine, the same distinc- tions still. With the Heathen, prudence (meaning fore- knon ledge) was the mother of all the virtues; with Chris- tianity, it was oiedience, humility — humility, the heroic virtue of the imperious epoch of a God of will. Know, said Heathenism, in even the sublimest of its precepts — know thyself. Love, said Christianity, with an import duly deeper — love one another. And in this twofold tran- sition — from curiosity to conduct, and from the selfish to the social — we have perhaps the profoundest conformity of all ; a conformity not only of the religious systems thus compared with the principles assigned the two correspond- ing periods ; but also the higher conformity of those •periods themselves, in point of succession, with the order of cyclical progression laid down in the theory ; and of which, having now established the first and Physical divi- sion, I proceed to test, in turn, the second and Ethical, METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 873 CHAPTEE I. Philosophy of the Christian Religions. CHRISTIANITY. § 157. It is interesting to reflect that, several centuries before Christ, the Greek philosophers had, we see, attained to the pure monotheism which, perhaps later, was revealed from heaven to the people of Israel. Some of these hea- thens seem to have known, quite as well as Moses himself, that all things were made by one god, and a god of om- nipotent goodness. Like good logicians, therefore, but in- different prophets, they sought to silence the popular cla- mour for a semi-spiritual ^sculapius, by demonstrating, that there could be no objective or original evil in the world; that the affections we call maladies are but arbitrary crea- tions of either the fancy or the fault of man himself, who is constantly dislocating, or deluding himself, from his rela- tive position in a perfect but multiplex whole ; and that these maladies, such as they were, are consequently to be cured, not by the sacrificial proxy of a self-contradictory providence, but by men's own efforts to dispel their igno- rance and rectify their lives. But the Mosaic story, more in the spirit of its audience as well as inspiration, taught, on the contrary, that this great whole was made, not only by the goodness of God, but also for the sole purpose and pleasure of man. Now this new destination completely precluded, it is clear, the pagan apology for providence. Accordingly the Hebrew prophet supplied an exculpation quite his own. God in six days, he had told us, created all things, and pronounced emphatically, upon each day's work, that " he saw it was - good." No evil could therefore have possibly crept into the * composition. Whence then the too manifest existence of 32* 874 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. this leaven in the world 1 It was introduced, as already stated, mystically, metaphysically; by an act of disobe- dience, of wilfulness, on the part of our first parents, who entailed the misery thus incurred upon the rest of the race. This simple escape from the difficulty would never have been imagined by human philosophy, no doubt. For this hard-headed catechumen would probably have set it- self to question — as we shall afterwards see it did, in fact, and in the very bosom of the Church — how a Creator who was essentially and omnipotently good, should or could have given the human will this power of' originating evil 1 Or supposing the evil to have come from the "serpent," whether this would not be a mere shifting of the impious implica- tion ? For by another peculiarity of the Jewish system, more fully developed in the Christian, the tempter too was the work of the same supreme hand : and had only " fallen," it is to the theory to add, for a like rebellious act of will. Overlooking, however, these crude contradictions to the attributes of divine goodness and power ; conceding the commission or even the creation of evil by Adam, the same profane philosophy might farther proceed to ask — Whether it was consonant with even human equity to consign to eternal punishment, in the former case, the perpetrators themselves, for a first and seemingly slight and directly suggested offence ; and in the second supposition, not alone the peccant parties — in which there would be less to shock ; but also the unborn generations of their posterity, who had no imaginable part in, and could not possibly have helped, the transgression 1 It would, on the contrary, have found the thing at least intelligible, according to the heathen explanation of the Two principles; for when matter was held to be the cause of evil, or as in the symbolic stage of the the- ory, disease became synonymous with sin, the transmission of the latter infirmities, from parents to posterity, was a no- tion not only conceivable but probably correct. But no- thing of this dubitation was to be apprehended in ancient Judea ; nor has any indeed been exercised in more en- lightened places and times. But it was neither in semi-savage Judea, nor in self-confident Greece that the exact idea could take final form, which was to reconcile the offended majesty of an arbitrary divinity with the impotent despair of down-trod- METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. den mankind. It was only where the wickedness of tem- poral empire and the weakness of popular effort were both exhausted to the dregs. It was where the power and splendor of this world had been found to bring to the en- slaved multitude but physical suffering and mental debase- ment, crushing beneath the accumulated iniquities, of the Cycle of Force, the last of the common ties of expiring hu- manity — it was but under the melancholy inspiration of such a crisis as this that the Messiaship could be duly, de- finitively apprehended, both in its object of atonement and its form of sacrifice. A sacrifice no longer of fruits or brutes, as for a patriarch or a tribe ; nor yet of human victims, as for an aristocracy or an empire. It was now a sacrifice for the first time, at once of the divinity himself, made for a spiritual salvation, and this the salvation of the 'poor and unhappy multitude of the whole earth ; or more strictly of the Roman world, which, however, passed in those days for much the same. And amid this world it was, accordingly, that the amended covenant of God with man — the theological theory of the moral Cycle of Humani- ty — was promulgated to the nations, by the followers of the true Redeemer ; after he had, wisely, himself been born, and lived and died among a ruder people. § 158. It is neither essential to the purpose, nor com- patible with the limits, of this volume to follow down, in considering the religious systems of the present Cycle, the triple division — into doctrines, divinities, rites — which it was expedient, for explanatory as well as evidential ends, to apply to the less familiar and more multiplex superstitions of the preceding. For, in the first place, with respect to the Divinities, they are now, in theory at least, reduced to one. The reduction, it is true, is but in form or phrase- ology : in very fact, the gods of polytheism, both demon- ic and heroic, both evil and good, are reproduced in the angels, saints and devils of the Christian system. Even the Christian trinity is but a similar transmutation of the Heathen. But for this reason also, of substantial identity, as well as that of nominal unity, it will be needless to lead the reader by the hand, through the new pantheon. He is only to bear in mind that the personages are now marshall- ed, from the state of anarchical crowd in which we witnessed them originally, into a more or less regularly subordinated 876 VESTI&ES OF CIVILIZATION. array. — The same ground of exemption from the necessi- ty of special treatment applies, in general, to the category of Rites ; there is not, perhaps, so much as one in the Christian ceremonial, of which the Heathen did not offer the mythical prototype. I will therefore only repeat the same precautions to the reader. But with the article of Doctrines the case is evidently different. The personations and the practices which com- pose respectively the other heads, remain objectively the same facts however varied the point of view ; so that once made known, it cannot be necessary to repeat them. But the point of view, the doctrine is, on the contrary, the changeable element, and must consequently be re-exa- mined under each new variation. And this not only to the end of ascertaining its own actual state, but moreover as the ready key to the correlative deities and rites. For these sundry reasons, I feel at liberty to dispense our sur- vey of Christianity from much tedious, and possibly thank- less, exposition, and to confine it to the category of Doc- trines alone. § 159. Resuming the investigation, then, where the schools of Greek philosophy were found, all three, to fail in conducting the popular mind, from out the bondage of the empire of Force, into the promised land of the moral era, it is proper, first to ask : Did those Conceptual forms or methods, which (as I pretend) are but repeated in an inverse order, under each of the Cycles, and whatever the subject — did they terminate, in religion, with the Heathen speculations, and drop exhausted or superseded, as is com- monly supposed 1 This, in other words, were to ask, if the human intel- lect had not changed its essence, in merely shifting its ob- ject or rather angle of vision. On the contrary, we have seen it to be one of the most fundamental of its laws to turn for the explanation of every new idea, to the methods already established, and in the order of their antecedent prevalence. (§ 34) But historically as well as from the nature of the case, it is well known that the Christian doc- trine was originally delivered with less regard to system than to circumstances. The old theories were to be there-, fore invoked to rationalize the new teachings. And this not solely because of the logical necessity just referred to ; METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. Si 1 but besides, perbaps, as a piece of polemic tactics against the pagan adversary — even as prisoners, captured from the enemy, were set in front of a fresh attack. But in this process of systematizalion and fortification, the latest and ripest of the Greek philosophies would ne- cessarily take the lead. The precedence was, therefore due, not only by proximity of time but also affinity of me- thod, to the system of the Stoics. Here accordingly, is the obvious origin of the first great innovators of the Church, known as the formidable sect of the Gnostics. This su- perinduction of the Heathen element is also manifest in the very name. Of the Heathen religion in general, I remark- ed, it was a rvaoia, a knowing ; hence the denomination given, no doubt derisively, to those who brought its final development into contest or collision with the Christian principle of believing. Nor is this lineage of the Gnostic doctrine more strikingly evinced in its psychological neces- sity and significant name, than it also is in its own intrinsic nature. Its cardinal principle, it is well known, was the " Demiurge ;" that is to say, a subordinate, semi-human, and mechanical artisan of the world. But this was pre- cisely the Stoic archetype, which was above characterized as the earliest germ of the great scientific conception of organization. The infant idea was only personified, in due conformity to the new epoch, or, what comes to the same, in accommodation to the Christian embodiment of the Me- diator. But this idea was destined to fail in the effort of popu- lar adaptation, as being prematurely representative of the aspect of science : the repulsion of principle overmatched the attraction of method. It would then be naturally succeeded and supplanted by the system of Plato, which we have seen to be at the same time next in point of constitutive character, and more theologically cognate or congenial. Such was, according- ly, the rise, as the name itself attests, of the long rival and finally ruling sect of Neo-platonism. This school has in fact, given, in virtue of the twofold affinity noted, the larger part of its theory to Christianity ; as it also contributed to the championship of the early Church, more than one of her most able and authoritative Fathers. But while the Alexandrian Platonists lent the cast-off" court-dress of their 878 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Heathen theories to the poor and miserable and blind and naked, but vigorous, idea of the Galilean fishermen, they had to re-fashion it, it is worth remarking, to the Stoic style of deduction, in obedience to the synthetic exigencies of the era. This logical condition is disclosed characteristically in the fundamental tenet of " emanation ;" a notion well known to be common, under unessential modifications, to the Gnostic and the Neo-platonic patchworks. As to the third of the Heathen forms, the Atomic system of doubt and destruction, it could evidently have no place, in the first instance. It was doubly antagonistic, at once to the Christian principle of faith, and the Christian want of construction. The absence, accord- ingly, of any corresponding sect, in the earlier and unor- ganized condition of the Church, serves, again, like the omission of the bust of Brutus from the tyrant's pageant, to confirm our theory still more luminously than even the presence of the preceding. It was, of course, not until the theological system had received consistency and at- tained establishment, that the metaphysical solvent could re-enter upon its mission of negation. Accordingly, after making some rudimental ravages under the name of Arianism, and other anti-trinitarian dissenters, it is found, precisely with the definitive organization of the Church, or during the fourth and fifth centuries, to take its true character of will, in the so-called heresy of the illustrious Pelagius. Thus spontaneously, and with the utmost historical precision, do we find the ancient order of speculation link itself on to the new. The means are also seen to be the three universal ligamentary processes of method. In fine the Will-principle of the new epoch is likewise discern- ible, in all three results, of Gnosticism, Neo-platonism, and Pelagianism; though clearly developed, of course, in only the last, for the reason of maturity just indicated. I am now to show — but summarily and selecting the lead- ing examples — that not merely these, but all the other sects and systems of the Christian era would resolve them- selves, with the same facility as did the schools and doc- trines of Heathenism, into one or other of these successive methods — synthetic, analytic, and logical — as operating upon the Cyclical principle of the Will, and under the METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 379 dualistic antagonism of Motive. But before proceeding, it will be proper to sketch the complementary transition of this latter element of the theory from the ancient, into the actual, Cycle. _ § 160. Under the former period, we saw this fancied strife between the opposite attributes of Evil and Good pervade and divide the entire succession of divine dynas- ties and doctrines ; from its real root in the double senti- ment of pain and pleasure, of fear and appetence, along through demons and gods proper, through good and evil stars, through Tartarus and Elysium, through Fortune and Fate, etc.; until the generalization came to culmi- nate, in the theological order, with the ov and the vXtj of Plato. Now this general bi-partition should, according to the theory, be found, like the methodic doctrines, at work in turn upon the Christian idea. The characteristics of the result should be principally these : First it would not be a theory of causation, as exclusive of its heathen com- petitors ; it must be a system of classification comprising the essence of all three. It would thus appear to amalga- mate, for example, the eons of the Gnostics, the emana tion and modified metempsychosis of the New Platonists, and the Pelagian hostility to the doctrines of the Old Tes- tament. Its full development would consequently coincide with, in point of time, and produce in fact, the fourth or generic sect, as the ensuing stage of the progression. Again, this dual system could no longer be represented by the brute Matter and abstract Goodness of the Greek metaphysics. It would now adapt itself to the personal or Man basis of the new epoch ; and this by a succession of media. It was above illustrated, in distinguishing the legend and the myth, that the whole transition we are here detailing, like all others involving organical progression, took place, by a reciprocal overlapping of the Cycles, — the synthetic and moral period retro-acting with its form- alism upon the physical in proportion to its decline, and the latter, on the other hand, shooting forward its material- ism in an inverse and extenuated graduation. Here then is an inclined plane, no less commodious than if laid ex- pressly, for the pasBage of the Two Principles to their spiritual destination. S80 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. I can here retain but the final result of a long disqui- sition, in explanation of this progression through the prin- cipal heathen mythologies, and especially the Jewish sys- tem, where, from the importation of monotheism, the Two Principles are found amalgamated : a confusion which ac- counts spontaneously for the cruel and choleric character of the Good Principle, or god, of the Jews, as this character does, in turn, for the ascetic sects and eccentric self-inflictions of the early Christians. The result, however, is as the reader must have anticipated, the reappearance of the Two Prin- ciples, in the famous heresy of the Manicheans ; and ulteri- orly its resolution into the Will principle of the new epoch. The Divine Will then, on the one hand, and on the other the Human — which latter we found germinating in the apologue of the Pall — are the proper on and vie of the Ethical Cycle. This moral Manicheism I therefore now proceed to indicate, through the principal transforma- tions of its declining struggles. A struggle destined, we know, to terminate in the harmony of Man with Nature — the scientific manicheism of Reason and Laws. § 161. At the early stage before us, however, it was but just unfolding its characteristic of will. This new step would first be taken by the metaphysical principle, in its proper quality of aggressor, and by its proper method of analysis. The doctrine of Grace, as implying the abso- lute supremacy of the Divine Will, and representing the synthetic lineage of the ancient Essenes, would be there- fore undermined through the means of Original sin. For Original sin, as a consequence of disobedience, involved a rudimentary recognition of free will. But, freedom of the Human Will, in spite of all that has been quibbled to the contrary, is rigorously incompatible with the arbi- trary sovereignty of the Divine. This antagonism is con- fessed instinctively in the doctrine itself in question. For why the perpetual and apparently iniquitous transmission of Original Sin to the innocent posterity of the sole trans- gressors? Because it was felt that if the children of Adam were allowed to sin upon their own account, they must be also supposed to will, like the parents, independently ; consequently each to suffer or enjoy through his own de- cisions — which was a double derogation from the omnipo- tence of Jehovah. Whereas, in barring personal free METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 381 will by the entail of original sin, the repugnance between the beneficent power of God and the maleficent sponta- neousness of Man, was relegated to a single pair of man- kind and a single point of eternity, and thus the absurdity — which could not be entirely dispensed with — at least reduced to its minimum expression. It was the applica- tion to this divine drama of the same principle of credi- bility whereby the human allowed the ancient expedient of a miracle. And so, conversely, the want of analysis was here supplied not by a god ; it was, we see, a homo ex machina that resolved the knot of the Hebrew legend. Not, I repeat, that this seemingly profound though really puerile contrivance was either the invention of men or the inspiration of Moses ; but resulted, as before ex- plained, from the conjuncture of circumstances. To the pressure of the same natural cause, the same critical con- dition of the epoch, should be also ascribed the premature but implicit conception, the momentary gleam, of human freedom, in the " fall." When, therefore, the human Will attained that distinctness of development which we first saw reflected, theologically, in a Divine despotism of Will, and which should, at the same time, be represented by a metaphysical opposition ; with this event, I say (at which we are now arrived), the aggressive principle would se- lect, for the reasons just indicated, as its first instrument of attack, the tenet of Original sin. § 162. It would not yet, however, employ this doctrine to exhibit, as above, the contradiction between itself and the Divine will. This would be too bold and broad an onset for the age. The ground at first would be intrinsi- cal inconsistency. The analytic principle would argue in this manner : — If sin was originally committed by man, for the reason that the will of the individual was left " free,"how can we conceive it transmitted to others withoutthis essential of receptivity ? But if the original cause be supposed to pass to all, where is the need of a transmission to explain the actual and common infection, since each would thus origi- nate his own sins, occasion his own sufferings, spontane- ously. But if suffering and sin; why not repentance and regeneration? For the intrinsic efficacy which could produce the former consequence must necessarily be ade- 33 382 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. quate to both or to neither. If to neither, the Mosaic account of the fall is untenable — which would be the hor- rible heresy of rejecting in toto the Old Testament. And strong in this awful consequence, the metaphysical enemy would rest for the present, and would not dare, nay could not dream, to pass to the sequel of the dilemma. For this is a task reserved for the analytic process in the following and Scientific Cycle. The task will consist in evincing, that men themselves have been always the authors as well of their own redemption as their transgression, of their own good as their own evil ; that is to say, not indi- vidually, hut in the social aggregate of Humanity. An in- duction of fact which exactly tallies, we see, with the alternative consequence left above in abeyance. I do not seek to dissemble that this horn of the dilemma goes to dispose of the New Testament, much as the other did of the Old. But this is neither my fault nor my busi- ness. I am bound to take things as they turn up in obe- dience to my clue ; and have lost the faith, nay lost the fac- ulty, so common to most others, of imagining them as pi- ously or as pleasantly as I could wish. Sufficient, however, to the day is the evil thereof. And the evil at present in order would be the denial that the sin of Adam was trans- mitted — I mean, of course, in its moral character of a deed of will — to his whole posterity, to the effect of either damning their souls irretrievably or depriving their wills of all power of self-redemption. But this merciful doc- trine with all the preceding conditions, of time, of topic, of method, of principle, is 'found precisely realized in tho great heresy of Pelagius. Even in the circumstances of inconsistency, predicted by our deduction, this truly pious and morally estimable monk has duly stopt short. For he adverts to, at all, if I remember, he certainly insists upon, the modification of only the elder law and in a tenet then becoming too apparently absurd. But he designed nothing, he saw nothing, of the consequences of his principle such as they have been suggested above, and as they had long be- fore been penetrated by the logic of Pascal ; who did not scruple to affirm, that either Eve had, by eating an apple, doomed all mankind to eternal perdition or that Chris- tianity is no better than a fable. § 163. But the leading and progressive phase of Po- METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 383 lagianism would therefore come into direct collision with the doctrine of Grace. Accordingly, Augustine, the spe- cial Doctor of this opinion, is well known to have been the great adversary of the moral heresy of free will, as, also, of its semi-material predecessor of the Two Princi- ples. His extreme position of the " total depravity" of mankind is a remarkable recognition of this hostile relation, and of the vigour, or the. virulence, of the attack. His mode of defending it is equally characteristic. He does not join issue directly with the adversary ; this is never the method of theologians. It should be owned, however, in apology, that having no positive ground of fact, they are obliged to abut their reasonings upon the concessions of the opponent ; even like those birds of prey that fight in the air, and can therefore lacerate with any effect only by finding a fulcrum or point of support in the body of each other. In this way Augustine had, adroitly but quite naturally, availed himself of the second branch of the Pe- lagian dilemma. Assuming the absolute necessity and exclusive merits-of Christ's redemption, he argued, justly, backward to the Jewish consequences of the Fall. To the same purpose he maintained expressly : That the Hu- man will is subject necessarily and in all things to the Divine; that man can perform no good action of himself; that he is not " free" enough to ever resist the instigation to it by God. Of which latter it seems to be a fair conse- quence, and was in fact a conviction of this fervid Father, that we can also do nothing evil save at the instigation of the devil. But he shrunk from the ulterior and equally fair corollary, that man must be blameless in the latter predicament if he be meritless in the former, and that he is absolutely both, of course, if the principle of moral action be thus denied him, even to its negative semblance of the " libcrum veto." Yet this was the real import as well as the polemic attitude of the theological scheme of Augustine. But what is more to the present purpose, the system was a close de- duction from the orthodox conception of the Divine will. And hence the antagonism to the innovation of Pelagius, which affirmed, or at least implied what is called the free- dom of the Human will. The great multitude, however, still preferred to be redeemed and to be ruled, in their 384 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. celestial as well as earthly interests, by a benevolent des- potism. The republican principle of personal will was only heralded before its time by the Celtic individuality of the British monk. And so the latter, being the weaker party, was denounced for a heretic, and Augustine's mora] fatalism adopted by the Church, under the celebrated designation of "irresistible" grace. § 164. The strife, however, did not cease or repose, as the human mind did not cease to march, even in the mid- night of the dark ages. The free-will doctrine, or rather sentiment, was the animating principle of the several so-called heresies of succeeding times, known as Scotists, Semi-Pelagians, Albigenses, &c. ; until, in progress of de- velopment, it obtained a partial triumph, and thus assumed its proper title, in the protestant Reformation. The dog- matic and necessarian principle underwent, of course, on the other hand, a succession of'modifications to correspond : from Augustine's necessity of grace, which was properly theological ; and then Aquinas's necessity of nature, distin- guished by the name of "physical;" to Calvin's necessity of logic, which marks the true character of Predestination; for this doctrine is a strict deduction from the theory of the creation peculiar, as above noted, to Christianity. The destined prevalence of the negative assailant is, also, obvious to be traced in either series of this correla- tive transformation. On the side of Grace, for instance, or the Divine will, the ancient stringency relaxes gradually, until the principle at last seeks refuge in the subterfuge of compromise. We moreover find this extreme stage occur, quite duly, in the hands of the last defenders of the true dogmatic text and theory of Christianity ; I mean the illus- trious Society of Port Royal. For this body, abandoning or rather eluding the aspect of cause, which had been always the contested because the compulsory element, en- deavored to contract the conception of necessary Grace to the mere effect ; and therefore took for their device the famous epithet of " efficacious." And to crown the con- firmation, we find this last fortress of the Divine Will again assailed by the subtle foe, in the " sufficient" grace of the Jesuits. For this apothegm, no less celebrated among the sacred sophisms of theology, imported man's independent capability of good works, and consequently a METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 385 real freedom of will. So that the Jesuits appear to fall into the general category of heretics ! But more of this hereafter. Meanwhile, before we quit this meridian section of the Christian era, it may be well, if for no nicer verification of the theory, yet for the much needed guidance of the stu- dent of history — to identify also the principal media, and analyze, what may be called the action of the preceding progression, down to the catastrophe of the Reformation. § 165. The analytic principle of Free will, in assailing the synthetic despotism of Grace, directed, as we have seen, its earliest attacks against the theory ; and was put down under the name of heresy, by authority and brute force, the sole arguments appropriate to the cause. There- upon it turned its operations against the tangible text. Professing humbly, and proceeding insidiously, to accept the latter as the rule of duty, it began to urge, however, the necessity of interpretation. Nor was this to be now denied. However low, comparatively, the civilization of the middle ages, the Christian society had far outgrown, if not in intellect at least in area, the meagre and miscella- neous jumble of precepts and practices which suited the barbarians of Judea and the populace of Rome : for Christianity, it is her pride to own, proceeded, like human religions, from the ignorant multitude together with the softer sex. (1) So indispensable had, in fact, become, at the period before us, this exegetical means of enforcing the letter through the spirit, that the expedient has been sanctioned, if indeed the example was not set by Augus- tine himself, then the living oracle of the Church. But of all written law, the revealed no less than others, there are principally three modes of interpretation. They turn upon either the signification of the language, or the intention of the author, or the consistency of both the sources in themselves and with each other. This is too the logical, and therefore the natural, order of their suc- cession. Accordingly, we find historically, in their appli- cation to the Christian Scriptures, the first and verbal form occupy the primitive ages of the Church. The typical, (1) Doubtless, the reason why the prophets of all creeds bavo acreed in choosing for their favorite emblems the ass and the dove. 33* 386 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the allegorical, the anological schemes of exegesis, carried by Jerome and some earlier fathers to the verge, it was hinted, of heresy, belong all it will be perceived to this de- scription. The final result of the general process, in pruning, defining and disposing the scripture text, was the system of theology which attained its consummation in Augustine, and has been correctly characterized as the " dogmatical." § 166. This initial method of interpretation was purely grammatical. The second is properly ethical, as conver- sant about the principle of will. Its rise should therefore be synchronous with the doctrine of grace, which repre- sented the full development of the Divine will. Its origin is accordingly ascribed by many to Augustine, the assigned organ and best expression of this epoch. The practical occasion was evident, and twofold, namely, social and ethnographical :. the ethical rules of the half-communist society of. the primitive Christians were insufficient or un- suited to the feudal kingdoms of the Middle Ages ; and the multitude of these communities then composing the Christian empire, with their diversity of usages, languages, race and grade of civility, required a farther accommoda- tion of the theological code. But the letter was inflexible, and the meaning was fixed authoritatively by the fathers of the Church. The next resort, then, was to the will of the divine legislator. And the alternative was, as usual, obvious,, and the transition spontaneous. For where the law was found inadequate, or injurious, or absurd, accord- ing to the established interpretation which supposed it dic- tated by a god of passions, it would be felt impossible that such could have been the Divine intention, as applicable to present and particular circumstances. What then, is the intention or will of God in this respect, would be the gene- ral question of the new scheme of interpretation 1 And the key was, of course, the correlative condition of the will of man, his power of prosecuting a plan at the sac- rifice of passion. For I need not repeat that both the wills proceed throughout apace, and are in fact, at bottom but one and the same thing : The human will is the real object, the divine will is the reflected image ; the latter, therefore, rests upon and revolves with the former ; or to speak strictly, both conceptions reside alike in man him- METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 387 self, only the one in his imagination, the other in his expe- rience — sources which explain in fine the union of inverse prevalence with constant opposition between these Two Principles of the Christian Cycle. Experience, then, or the current sentiments, usages, opinions of the age and community are the real basis of this second order of interpretation. The developments would be consequently of an ethical or moral character; and the process would reach its height, of course, with the culmination of the theology of will. And history, precisely true, as usual, to the theory, presents a second system which flourished at the assigned period, in the school and writings of Aquinas, and which then re- ceived and still retains the designation of " Moral." § 167. The final form of exegesis, proceeding upon consistency, might be termed the logical, or more strictly the syllogistic. It was evolved by the analytical excesses of the moral method, in its tendency to transfer religion from the words of God to the works of man. Its object was to co-ordinate and conciliate the two systems, of which the former or dogmatical offered an array of major pre- mises, and the moral, a magazine of middle terms. The synthetic auxiliary of logic was, therefore, alone now requisite both to regulate men's actions here, and to rea- son out their road to paradise. This spontaneous mention of the reasoning process, in the due historical order of its succession, announces, by the way f the dawn of the great principle of the following Cycle. Meanwhile, as man does not produce with toil what he may steal with impunity, in- stead of inventing themselves the requisite instruments, the doctors of the new code would resort to the store- house of Aristotle. I need not indicate the historical re- sult, in the theological formation of the tertiary order, deposited between the twelfth and the end of the sixteenth century, and famous or infamous as the " Scholastic" system. This infamy really belonged, we see, to the theological subject matter, of which the casuistical extravagances were only brought into clearer relief by the synthetic simplifi- cations of the syllogism. It was a barbarian error of the last century to cast the odium upon the adjective process (as if it was not the same thing in the demonstrations of 388 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Euclid and in the dialectics of Scotus) ; and this while the loudest defamers of the " scholastic logic," for exam- ple, the English, continued to reverence the inanities them- selves which had thus disgraced reason by an unnatural alliance. These frivolous fruits of interpretation, then, with the abusive practices they naturally propagated, had come at last to be apprehended by even the superstitious multitude. Whereupon, feeling this broader foothold in popular support, the analytic principle would drop the mask of casuistry — under the friendly guise of which, like the hostile Greeks in the armour of the Trojans, it had be- trayed the government of the Divine Will into the hands of Human arbitrament — and would resume its native shape of heresy.and attitude of antagonism, charging the conse- quences of its own treacherous operations upon the Church. For such is the subtle policy, so to speak, T>f the great law of Human progress, as I shall presently have a fitter occa- sion to specify. For the moment, and not to interrupt the deduction, we may assume, that the casuistical spirit is identical with the heretical, and re-produces it by the uni- versal law of re-action. This spirit, therefore, in its Chris- tian symbolization of the Human will, in its analytic ten- dency to anarchy as to liberty, and finally in its two kin- dred yet contrary directions, should be found, if I reason rightly, to constitute the threefold character of the next theological revolution. § 168. But this occurs in the great event which has been called the Reformation, and which was termed much more truly a destruction. (1) That, in fact, the procedure was of this nature, is confessed unconsciously, as before re- marked, in the contradictory epithet of " Protestant." And the result is quite conformable, as witness the thousand sects who go on still, not only to sap the hostile fortress of the Church, but to subdivide infinitesimally the motley for- ces of their common camp. The identity of principle is no less manifest than that of method. In proof" it will be sufficient to cite the tenet of" private judgment," which is the fundamental axiom of all the Protestant denominations. (1) Logically at all events, whatever it may be theologically, the idea of Dryden is quite correct in his courtly compliment to the Epis- scopal Church : The least Reformed, because " reformed" the least. METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 389 For what, in truth, is private judgment, in most men, but private will ? What is it, in the most deliberating, but a spe- cial name for the active choice ; even as the same sentiment received, when passive, the appellation of " conscience." And so through other internal modes, according to pro- gress and point of view. Not only then, is this attribution of the self-determining faculty, an assertion of the salvatory efficacy of the Human will ; but also the complete individ- ualization of the one announces the highest external generalization of the other. Whence it follows that the revolt of Luther should represent the triumph of Pelagius. And intrinsic evidence might, in fact, be multiplied to cor- roborate this lineage. But it will be shorter to refer to the well-known historical fact, that the head of the Refor- mation is admitted, even by protestants, to have fallen, or rather risen, into semi-pelagianism. Nor is this a surer recognition of the principle than of the progress. For the semi is here applied on ground of quantity (so to say) not of quality, of obviousness, not of essence. This natural error of the age will be rectified by a slight analysis. Simple Pelagianism denied Original sin, in order to vindicate man's capacity of self-salvation. Semi-pelagi- anism, a good deal shrewder from the experience of ages, seeing that the Jewish institution could offer no real obsta- cle — countervailed as it was, moreover, by the Christian re- demption — took the course of accepting both the doctrines together, while asserting the same sufficiency of the Human will. It thus took note of the connexion overlooked, we saw (§ 157), by the elder heresy, and struck at both the dogmas at once. It was therefore a stride in advance, a double, not a " half" heresy. This stage of the innovation reached, at the moment of Luther's appearance, its- utter- most extension, in the person of Zuinglius. But Luther went a step farther, or we may be sure he had not won the chieftaincy, in the memorable competition of these two fathers of the Reformation. This higher refinement is found, accordingly, in his peculiar theory of " imputation :" which attenuated the whole paraphernalia of salvation, into simply believing that we are saved. For Belief is but another of what I have just ventured to denominate, the internal modes, or phases of the will ; and is the most ele- mentary of the forms given to that Proteus of the human 890 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. mind. In fine, therefore, Lutheranism is a semi-demi-pe- lagianism. It is this quintescence of human free-will that is named "justification by faith." What (I would probably here be asked), do you forget that Luther has, on the contrary repudiated, in the most positive terms, the existence of free-will ? I know ; but it is equally notorious that he has rejected many things by expression, which yet he retained in effect. And ha- ving proved this to be one of them, I might rest upon the fact, and leave the contradiction as it has been left by eve- ry writer before me, friend as well as foe, to be referred either to the eccentricities of the man or the inspirations of the devil. But having assumed to expound a theory which undertakes to account no less for the ravings of a madman than the reasonings of a philosopher, and even pretends to untangle the tricks of the devil himself, I, in particular, am not permitted this commodious solutio'n. Nor do I find it at all necessary. The ravings of Luther were the reasonings of nature and the results of the age, and must thus be easily resolvable into the pre-assigned charac- teristics. Of these the last, in fact, remains untested, and relates, it will be remembered, to a contrariety of direction, of doctrine, analogous to the two antagonistic principles of the epoch, which must meet in the personal organ whore- presents the aggressive element in its periods of crisis, called revolutions. Now here is a prognostic which, though takeu a priori and applicable to all the great reformers, in all subjects, would seem expressly prepared to fit, with the most curious felicity, the fundamental antinomianism of Luther. For this is well known to consist in the implica- tion, on the one hand, of Human freedom as at least a con- dition of salvation, and on the other, the assertion of a Di- vine despotism, so exclusive as to leave man's will no more to do, not only in his salvation, but even in his sin, than (to use the author's own expression) a stock or a stone. It is that the Will-principle of the Cycle had reached, in the de- structive form, its utmost tension, its extreme term in the time of Luther, and that the latter, as the organ and index of the turning-point, must at the next step, of course swing back towards the theistic fatalism which I have shown to be the true conception of the Christian system of theology. § 169. This strict conformity to the theory might be METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 391 traced, with like precision, throughout the subsequent his- tory of the Reformation, f have space, however, but for another and equally signal example. Luiheranism, in its posterior and necessarian aspect, could not, it is evident reach its full destination, in the person of the author, at the peril of making his inconsistency too coarse for even the vulgar, and thus impairing his authority with those best patrons of new religions. The tendency should therefore, gain its extreme verge in a different personage. And the new reformer should be different in qualities' as well as person. Placed remote from the free-will attachment which had embarrassed, after having nourished, his prede- cessor, he would be one endowed with a mind of much more logical compactness, employing the synthetic method to repair the ruins of the analytic, and deducing with dog- matic rigour, from the Christian notion of the deity, the most outrageous consequences which could compromise the entire system of theology. And to combine those quali- fications, especially in that age, I might almost add the per- sonage should be a Frenchman. The reader must per- ceive we have an & priori portrait of John Calvin ; with his logical eminence of intellect, his co-ordinate rank as a re- former, the constructive purpose of his " Institutes," and the candid conformity of his double dogma, of Predestina- tion and Election, to the Judseo-Christian amalgamation of the Evil with the Good Principle. That in fact, these Calvinistic tenets are a progressive sequel of the Lutheran tendency, is also clear from direct inspection. The "justification" doctrine of the former was the immature forerunner of the more logical notion of "election;" the difference being, that the one meant salvation in potency (while yet the author denied the Hu- man will the power of consummation), the other meant salvation in effect. We see the same superiority in the respective notions on the Eucharist; the Calvinists eluding the miracle of a Real, by a symbolic presence ; even as the Lutherans, by the famous occult syllables "in, sub, con," had before evaded the still more infantile conception of the Catholics. It was indeed the usual reaction of this extreme advance against the incipient section of the move- ment which entailed the long collision between these two divisions of the Reformation. 392 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. § l^O. Still farther, as a new centre of dogmatic resist- ance, it must, according to the same law, provoke a new at- tack from the adverse principle : an attack no longer armed with the moral poison of " free will " alone ; but already introducing the broadsword of reason, the civilized and appropriate weapon of the scientific Cycle. In precise conformity of time and character we have the sect and system of Arminianism. In fine, that Calvin spoke the last word of the Christian principle, as just implied, is evinced distinctly by his strict vindication of the absolute fatalism of the Divine Will ; for what remained for any re- ligion to do against this decree 1 Also by analogy : for as the physical fatalism of the Stoics announced the close of the former Cycle, while giving birth, by its iron pressure, to the subtle element of the Christian era, so the end of this, in turn, would be naturally heralded by the moral fatalism of Calvin, and the consequent emergence of Reason. But another analogy no less conclusive, and still more curious, to the same effect : I have frequently said or shown, in the course of this exposition, that all institutions of a tran- sitory or unscientific nature — all that are appropriate to our first and second Cycles — come to expire under a form similar to their original condition, and only reversed as if to expose their real inanity. Thus we saw democracy end in anarchy ; aristocracy in oligarchy ; monarchy in des- potism. In religion we have seen the Heathen begin with the Sabeistic conception of Deus est omnia, and end in the Stoicism of Omnia sunt Deus. So, then, should likewise the Christian systems, — as far, of course, as human. And in fact this system, which was based, we saw, on the Jew- ish tenet of Original sin, had reached in Calvin the oppo- site position of Original salvation ; the former being, also, deemed irremissible, as the latter was " inamissible," by the good or evil actions of mankind. With equal exactness we could explain the thousand shadings of the minor sects, which are merely the dying vibrations of the movement. But these details of the veri- fication I rather commit to the reader, and this not merely for want of space or as superfluous to the occasion, but also because in a community the most miscellaneously re- ligious of the earth, it may be well to leave each believer to trace down, by himself, both the Protestant genesis and METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 393 progressive grade of his particular denomination. With the theoretic part of the data he must, I trust, be now familiar. And then for the facts, the sects, he might rely upon the history (1) of Bossuet; fey whom all the leading branches are delineated with a native power, to which the proverbial hatred of his holy profession could add nor eloquence nor acumen. § 171. The mention of this great name conducts us nat- urally to the Church which he then avenged and still adorns with his genius. For what was the position of the Catholics, if the Calvinists had, as shown, become more orthodox, that is more faithful to the Christian principle of the Divine will? The difference was this : the Catholics represented the principle in a state of arbitrary despotism ; the Calvin- ists had come to give it an inflexible constitution, to make God, in the Gospel language, a law unto himself. It was constitutional monarchy duly grading the passage of abso- lutism to the republican sovereignty of Reason. The Catholics, therefore, occupied at that time, as always, a place somewhere intermediate the extremes of heretical oscillation. But it might well be called an " am- biguous middle," in tbe.phrase of the logicians. For what can possibly be more equivocal, more unseizable than the notion of a special and arbitrary providence ? Here, accord- ingly, lies the secret of the comparative perpetuity of the Church, and of her plausible pretensions to unity. Insti- tutions worn out in the order of nature expire, we see, like individuals, of a self-contradiction ; that is to say, by sinking into antagonism with the cause of their creation. But who could fix a contradiction upon the doctrines of an absolute will, of which the dictates were at once the sovereign rules of reason as well as of right, and yet inde- pendent all of each other, and each of itself, from instant to instant 2 Not a cabinet of philosophers, much less the fold of the Faithful. There is, in fact, no antinomy possible in the legislation of despotism. And, then, the Church was but the humble and infallible interpreter. So that the Canon law of Rome outstripped the Common law of Eng- land, in the " glory" of its uncertainty ; and was, no doubt, the perfection of religion, as its civil compeer was of reason, (1) Hisioire des Variations dee Egliset Protestantea. 34 394 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. only from a similar inaccessibility to argument. With, then, these two convenient postulates (equal to any in the Arabian Nights), I mean a capricious God and an infallible Church, we need not wonder that " Romanism" has maintained so long its constitution. Nor will "the gates of hell prevail against it" (the metaphor is Evangelical) until the " rock " upon which it really rests be shivered to the last fragment ; that is to say, until the popular intellect of the fag-ends of civilization has got sufficiently out of the gristle to be no longer capable of finding its own image in an irrational divinity. But to this vantage ground of principle, the Church has been obliged, moreover, to join the mundane and even the manceuvering coadjutor of policy. Although still con- vinced that the physical globe has not moved an inch since the creation, she became early sensible that the moral world was quite effectually in motion ; and that, in conse- quence, her relative position upon the pivot of orthodoxy, which had a. phase for every point of the theological com- pass while things stood still, was losing its bearings towards the progressing communities she sought to govern. The progress, the motion was the work of the devil, no doubt; but then it was not the less necessary to follow, in order to control, it. The question was, then, how to steer along an invisible and serpentine line, between the extreme borders of necessarian orthodoxy and of Pelagian heresy. The expedient hit upon was not unworthy of her sub- sequent character as politician. To prop her steps on either side, she gradually instituted two bodies; of which the right or orthodox crutch was termed the Secular clergy and the left or heretical was named the Regular. The former composed the canonical, the constitutional hierarchy, and were the sole legitimate interpreters of the " words," the Will, of God. The other consisted of that long line of motley associations known as monks, friars, &c, of the various orders and societies who passed for being merely self-constituted or semi-official, and were confined to the practical task of interpreting the " works," the Will, of Man. Thus it is, that while zealots and heretics are seen to topple towards either extreme, are exclusively for Faith, or exclusively for Works ; the Church has been enabled to keep her safe " ambiguous middle" by adopting both METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 395 these celebrated ingredients of salvation, and so reserving the ample scale of all their relative proportions, over which to range for the requisite mixture, according to the temper of the times. § 172. This sliding scale of orthodoxy began of course with Faith ; which, in fact, was held sufficient in the days of the earlier Gospels. The graduation, then, the inno- vation proceeded all on the ground of Works. A con- clusion strictly consonant to our explanation of the Chris- tian system, as operating through progressive encroachment of the imputed efficacy of the Human will, upon the origi- nal absoluteness of the Divine. For Free-will and Good works are, we know, synonymous terms. But the present affair is to show how the Church could have first entered upon this really heterodox ground, and after maintained herself, by the agencies indicated, in advancing along a way, which implied a commensurate retreat from the posi- tion of Faith. The task as to the earlier stage was without difficulty or danger; and this for several reasons no less curious than conclusive. In the first place, there was for some centuries, we saw, no distinct recognition of the subtle connexion between free will and good works, and so the latter were adopted as valid evidences of the faith, without suspicion of their real character of Greek gifts. Again, this oversight was the more natural, that the Church had, during the same period, been preoccupied with repelling the successive forms of pagan philosophy, and while thus prosecuting, itself, the part of analysis exteriorly, could give less attention, or even occasion, to the attacks of the foe within. It was only when from militant, in her own lan- guage, she became triumphant, that the Church would find her natural enemy emerge from the mask of works ; of which the practice was now consecrated irretrievably as meritorious. And here she would find herself lodged in a peremptory dilemma between consistency of pro- fession and compromise of principle. But in such cases the principle or theory is always sacrificed 5 for, being the course less obvious to the crowd, it is the less dangerous to the actors. This is the rule of choice which the poli- ticians call expediency, and which the Church in that capacity would naturally observe. In strict accordance, 396 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. Vfe find these various inferences — the hostile declaration of free-will by Pelagius, the doctrinal triumph of the Church by Augustine, the initial combat between the two principles of Human and Divine will, and the compromise of the latter in the Augustinian theology — we find, I say, all these concur with the utmost exactness, not only in the same age but even in the same individuals. But this con- cession to the enemy provoked as usual but new exactions. § 173. To meet these it was that the clergy termed " Regular" came into request. Intrenched, as above, with her standing forces, in the fortress of dogmatism, the Church commenced a line of outposts on the shifting soil of Interpretation, and manned them with a species of volunteer militia, who served as sentinels, scouts, skirmish- ers, and even spies. For who could scruple whether wile or valour obtained success in the cause of God, and against an enemy such as the devil, himself the father of wiles and lies ? These were the several associations known collectively as casuists;, but which were duly dis- tinguished according to the social exigencies that gave them successive origin. Thus in the infancy of the christian community, where the temporal relations of society had all relapsed into the sole concerns of the individual, the mode of Good Works would be self-mortification, and the heroes were accord- ingly martyrs and monks. But when the Church, having gained the ascendant, brought her theocratic system to bear upon the real and n.atural relations of mankind, it was soon felt that the Gospel injunction of quiting father, brother, wife, &c, would not do ; and so, to reconcile these " degenerate" affections of the human breast with the word of God, the former must be palliated with the appel- lation of Good Works, and the latter interpreted so as to embrace them in that title. Hence arose the communities called Friars, whose " province in fact comprised the do- mestic relations, and professed the dogmatic application of the theological system of Augustine — from whom the prin- cipal of these fraternities quite significantly takes its name. To this primary class of casuists proper, and which may be distinguished as the Dogmatic, succeeded, in pro- cess of time and progress of society, the Moral. Here the interpretation of the theocratic law had to be extended to METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 397 the civil or municipal relations; attended, of course, by a supplementary almanac of Good Works, at the peril of leaving the faithful to think, with the Semi-pelagians of those, times, that any could he performed without the divine sanction of the Church. The casuists of this class were the first to take the style of Orders ; they were also dis- tinguished theologically by the name of Thomists, after Aquinas, who was their oracle, as Augustine had been of the Friars, and Aristotle, I might add, became afterwards of the Doctors. The latter, by the by, are here omitted, not only because the title is individual and intellectual ; but also that the bearers originated, as before shown, on the synthetic and dogmatic side of the Church, not the pragmatical and analytic, which I describe. In this line, then, the following stage is much the most familiar to the general reader; not only because it is the latest in order of time, but also because the most comprehensive, as the last in development. In fact, although the Moral or ethical school of casuists had brought the thrones and territories of the earth under the dominion of the Holy See, there was another grade of relations more abstract and general than this simply theo- logical title. These were the relations between the sovereigns and their subjects. They were first pressed upon the care of the Church by the Protestant Reforma- tion. As long as kings had remained the liege servants of the humble Fisherman, and offered no disturbance to any of his various revenue nets, — to capitation, dispensation, or in- dulgence, &c., — so long they were left to govern their Chris- tian serfs as they pleased. But when the free-will spirit of innovation had reached at last the throne, and monarchs began to side with the popular revolt of the Reformation, there then became imperative anew species of policy and, of course, a class of agents to suit. This policy must be an extension of Causistry to public or political morals. And such is in fact the precise definition of the system called Jesuitism ; which originated duly at this critical period, and with that world-renowned body styled the Society of Jesus. I shall again have a word to say of the Jesuits and their doctrines. In reference to their final part in the pre- sent progression, I will only add that its whole, spirit, as indicated by our theory, is found embodied in one of the 34* 398 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. most characteristic of their maxims, namely : " to aW act all and repel none." This, in fact, is a pregnant summary of the aggregate procedure whereby it was sought to keep the will of Man in perpetual pupilage to the will of God (1), and the march of civilization within the go-eart of the Church. And the ultimate consequence of this fatal yet necessary policy is perhaps announced in the well-known preponderance of this body towards the side of Works : for as orthodoxy began, we saw, with placing man's salvation in the word of God, so theology should end with leaving him to find it in his own good works. And so, we see, that studied wiliness, for which Christian Rome and her casuist agents are long a by-word to the liberal world, may after all be but the provi- dential policy of nature — that policy to which men and their little schemes, we have seen repeatedly, are but straws upon the stream, good to indicate, but not to influence the current. It was promised, however, that the operation of this great truth would be more particu- larly exhibited in the present subject. And having now surveyed the Christian system in its principal forms, phases, and factions (with the exception of one or two to be after supplied), it seems the place to resolve the whole into the general order of civilization and our theo- retical laws of Humanity. Nor will this be for the sole sake of giving roundness to the exposition. It may also sug- gest a lesson more divinely inculcated by the founder, than faithfully observed by the followers, of Christianity. It will show that, true philosophy — the philosophy which Shaks- peare's instinct made to find " good in every thing" — the philosophy of which I try to sketch an outline in this volume, can be both more candid than the Heretics, and more charitable than the Church, in receiving these bitter combatants both alike into its paradise as co-equal bene- factors of mankind. § 174. Progress is the law, if not the life, of all sys- tems in the physical and ethical world. In the latter region (which bounds our province), it takes the name of reform. (1) Meaning, it must be remembered, the interested representation of the priesthood ; which is to say, again, the infant imagination of the people. METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 399 Reform, in all institutions, supposes two successive stages ; which, with the fixed state of the subject, before or after the change, present the three methodical forms, inductive, analytic, synthetic. Popularly the two former are called Abuse and Disorder ; of which the one is indispensable to teach the necessity of change, and the other incidental to its accomplishment. Both alike are the proper product of the innovating principle ; and the difference between them is, that, in the latter result, the innovation has broken forth in the physical structure of the institution, whereas, in the previous stage, it makes its silent and subterraneous way through the other and psychical factor, the public mind. It is owing in fact to these illusive peculiarities of the process that Abuse has been always charged to the side of establishment. But really, this side produces nothing, abusive or other- wise ; it makes no positive addition to the actual state of things ; its proper office — as the political designation well denotes — is, on the contrary, confined to conserving. So true indeed is this distinction that we find it underlie, by a profound mythical instinct, the Manichean division of the Two principles: for of these the Good was symbol- ized by the immutable and eternal stars ; while the created and changing world was the product of the Evil. It is thus, too, that in all religious, at least of the dogmatical sects, the priests have made Liberty a devil, and Despotism a deity. It is thus that, afterwards, the unchained people interchange the terms without confound- ing them, and make liberty a god, and despotism a demon. It is thus that, finally, the philosopher will ratify the same distinction, but with the imaginary antagonism then resolved into the natural harmony of order and progress, of organ and function. Clearly, then, the constitution of any and all systems, whether under the names of organization or order or god, is destined to be preventive, instead of productive, of change. That, however, the active element — named func- tion or reform or devil, in correlatively inverse succes- sion — should be able to cast the odium of its own product of ahuse, upon the " sleeping partner," who yielded but re- luctantly or unconsciously ; and that the latter should wield, in turn, the reproach of disorder with equal effect — this, 400 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. I repeat, is the subtle yet simple policy of Nature, and was indispensable to the advancement or the education of Hu- manity. For how else have social institutes subsisted or progressed, unless by frightening men alternately from one extremity towards the other, through reciprocal imputa- tions of corruption and anarchy ? This position could easily be illustrated in the three stages of social development, theological, metaphysical, scientific ; in the three engines of civilization, namely, re- ligions or divine laws, governments or human laws, sci- ences or natural laws ; and the correlative orders of in- structors ; to wit, priests, politicians, philosophers. But the several objects of the final class would find their place in the following Cycle : and moreover, it must be remarked that the representatives of the dualism will come, at this period — after a passing strife between men of facts and men of theory — to drop their ancient and ignorant recrim- inations of each other, on seeing their systematic unity of end and existence. Respecting the middle series the ope- ration will be exemplified quite spontaneously in the ensu- ing chapter on politics. Meanwhile it is but too familiar in the pitted factions called parties, which are always inter-relatively Radical or Conservative ; and of whose nature and number we have here the philosophic origin ; and also the explanation why no third party can endure. And quite conformable, not merely to the antagonism but to the epoch, is the character, moral and mental, of the politicians— a sort of crawling, cross-bred, crepuscular crea- tures, neither beast nor bird, neither priest nor philosopher, but a mulish and malicious mixture of both, deriving hypocrisy from the former and prefanity from the latter, and infesting accordingly the twilight ages that roll between those two characters, from the mid darkness to the broad daylight of the human mind. But our immediate concern is with the first of these stages ; and here the action and reaction named abuse and disorder take the special appellations of Superstition and Heresy. Now these two co-elements of religious reform are also disposed of already, in the preceding analysis of their principal attacks upon the orthodox or conservative prin- ciple of Christianity. To the former head belong the se- veral series of Casuists; whose overweening attachment METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 401 to forms and overstepping practice of interpretation are probably the traits alluded to, in the very term.. The word heresy refers, even in the common acceptation, to the cor- relative sects of the reaction, the disorder. It will be further observed that the words reaction and correlative concur to demonstrate the species of kindred which I have affirmed to exist between those two classes of theologians, regarded, hitherto as the most fundamentally antagonistic of all. For who had before imagined that,, for example, the Protestants and the Jesuits are effectually one and the same party, both in principle and destination, and only dif- fered: in the mode of operation. * For they were actuated alike by the metaphysical principle of Human free-will, as it assumed, in the casuists, the part of undermining from within, and in the heretics, that of battering from without, the old despotic fabric of Theology. § 175. This beneficent end is, then, not only the ex- planation but at the same time the apology, the eulogy, of both these parties. Nor has their common and orthodox victim merited less of mankind in its day. It only be- came oppressive in becoming unseasonable. In the infan- cy of the species, as still in that of the individual, the requisite is not activity but obedience, not liberty but des- potism. Within the family, this first condition of education is provided in the relative Force of the parent and Fear of the child. But where is it to be found in a community of barbarians ? Obviously it can only be, in their own vivid imagination; by aid of which the evils they familiarly experience are first impersonated into special demons, and after abstracted into a general devil, in descending from the more occasional to the more habitual of their suffer- ings. This formidable sanction is first addressed to the fears, and later to the supplementary principle of good, which is drawn, of course, in like manner from the other twin motive of hope ; even as every pedagogue knows the age of presents to be posterior to that of punishments. By these means it is that the priest, that is to say the peda- gogue of the infant species, has been able to lay the first foundation of social " order ;" he fixed a point of resist- ance against which " progress" has played its lever in the early disciplination of mankind. Nor was any other pos- sible at the time. Where the parental power is no longer 402 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. able to force, or the popular intellect fit as yet to induce, obedience by the application of known infliction and en- joyment, it was imperative to resort to the unknown and the supernatural. The civilization of man himself has accordingly begun like the mensuration of his planet, by the medium of extraneous worlds. I repeat these obser- vations, already established at large, to deprecate the indis- criminate condemnation of an effete ministry, which has had its use, we see, like every other — not excepting its predecessor and successor, the devil and the politicians. It is much more to the purpose of correction, as well as jus- tice, to learn to distinguish the abuse. But this consists in perpetuating the discipline of the nursery ; its swathing bands and go-cart, its ghost stories and fairy tales, wherever the mind of mankind, or of any portion of it in particular, has attained to the age of manhood cr even of adolescence. For the consequence is, to degrade the priestly office itself from an elevating enthusiasm into a tricky hypocrisy, and thus deprave the public morality into a system of cant, and the popular understanding into a jumble of contradictions. It is comfort, however, to add, that by the natural policy thus slightly indicated, this monstrous mixture of things repugnant, is doomed to ultimate self-destruction, should the issue be not anticipated by the scientific analysis. Like the ancient tyrant, who perished by his own instru- ment of oppression, it must expire of the very contradic- tion which it thus imposed upon the human mind. And there remains, to close our survey of the religious system of the Moral Cycle, but to show how its synthetic rem- nant, the old and " apostolic" Church, must sink at last through the spreading interval of her own " ambiguous middle" — with the usual fate denounced by the adage against those who " sit between two stools." § 176. The best known pair of these shifting sup- porters, employed in modern times, is the two societies of the Jesuits and Port Royalists ; the former verging, on the one hand, towards the position of Luther, the other vibrating towards the opposite extreme of Calvinism. Now all the world knows that these celebrated bodies stood not only widely apart, but were violently at variance. But all the world does not know (or at least no one has hitherto said so) that they were really not more at variance •METAPHYSICAL CTCLE. 403 with each oiher than with themselves. In other words, the Jesuits, while heretical in practice, were orthodox in theory ; and the Jansenists were exactly the reverse. Here, if proved, are assuredly the most cunning and com- plicate elements, and thus the most conclusive evidence, of a catastrophe. But besides being objects the most conspi- cuous to give the bearings of this event, I also select those two societies for collateral conveniences : there is an out- standing promise to speak more specially of the Jesuits ; the Jansenists form one of the two divisions above alluded to, as still remaining to be defined upon our general chart of Christianity ; and in fine, both Jansenists and Jesuits continue yet to be the theme of much more general curi- osity and erudite error than perhaps any other sects of the system. That the doctrines of the Jesuists were in tendency heretical — that is to say, proceeded upon the analytic basis of free-will and its natural power of giving moral merit to human action — has been abundantly shown already, in their demonstrated affinity, at once of place and principle, to the main tenets of Luther. For what, in fact, is the natural power of directing the "attention," which the latter makes a con- dition of salvation, but an extreme relaxation of the veritable Jesuit maxim concerning the " direction of the intention 1" Both alike are acts of will ; only " attention" lets down the effort to the competence of the multitude. The 6ame principle and proportion are exhibited no less- signally in the other cardinal tenet of Protestants, I mean the doc- trine of " private judgment ;" which is plainly but the popularization of these " probable opinions," so compla- cently ridiculed in the Jesuit aristocracy of " doctors." On this point, there is another analogy which will shed a light much broader in the method and the issue of Jesuit- ism. It is well known that the like system of graduated Probability prevailed at the corresponding epoch of the Mythological Cycle, and in the transitive form of theTheo- logic school of Plato, which was denominated accordingly the Middle Academy, and which consisted of a species of skeptics, analytically intermediate the elder Atomists and the later Epicureans. § 177. But while the Society was thus heretical in principle and tendency, it was in theory pre-eminently 404 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. orthodox. I have, perhaps, before remarked, that with the religions of Heathenism, a Future state of reward, and punishment, as it begins to be imagined late, so always re- mains a mere appendix, or political sanction to the present life. With Christianity, the synthetic sequel of the pro- gression, it was the converse in this as in all things, and the present life was but the preface, the passage, a pilgrim- age, a probation stage to the world of the future. This spi- ritual life was deemed the paramount or rather sole end of the temporal. Consequently, the supreme criterion of human conduct and concerns — all morality as well as reli- gion being but the putative means to attaining the great- est good of mankind. Now, it was the consistent and quite Christian application of this axiom that led the Jesuits to their peculiar system of ethics; and authorized them in concluding, even if they did not do so expressly, that pious fraud, mendacity, theft, and even homicide, were not only pardonable but obligatory as a means to this one thing needful. And the conclusion was irresistible. The principle, too, was especially plain, where, as here, the good pro- posed was deemed both absolute and exclusive. The facts alone of the application were open to question. That is to say, it might be questioned that happiness in a future life was indeed the proper end of existence in this-; and if so, whether, at all events, the practices alluded to were efficacious means to that end. These were the true objec- tions to the decried " morals of the Jesuits." But they were not convenient, even if conceivable, to the age or the assailants. For the latter held, themselves, to the paramount nature of the end ; and, in fact, must otherwise renounce the Christian revelation. And, then, the efficacy of the means was not easily disproved. To say nothing of lying and fraud, of which the pious value was loo manifest, and which appeared to be prescribed expressly in the Scripture model of the wily serpent (as it is an express precept of the religion of Brahma, and, in fact, the real principle (§ 43) of all others), how should the point be much more dubious in the other cases. Respecting theft ; suppose for instance the robbery of a miser's hoard for the purpose of erecting a church to the worship' of Jehovah, or outfitting a " mission for the con- METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 405 version of the heathen;" was this- not clearly a valid means of saving souls that might else be lost, and amongst them perhaps the soul of the plundered wretch himself; who might thus be won from Mammon to God ? And, again, in the matter of homicide, only imagine some Jaque Clements to have cut the throat of Voltaire, on his boyish imprisonment in the Bastile; what sincere Christian was there of that day, or is there even of this, who could deny that the pious deed had been conducive to the salvation both of this arch reprobate himself and of the myriad victims of his writings ? Moreover, though such a course had not been necessary to prevention, as it is proved to have been, in this case, by the event ; though there had been other means more moderate, while equally effectual, still the murder could at worst be but an error of judg- ment, a weW-intended blunder, not a sin or a crime. And so through the entire scale of human actions having eter- nity for their end. It was not safe, therefore, to meet the Jesuits on the reaj merits of their application. It was, accordingly, this Christian consent with their assumed premises, joined to the common sense abhorrence of the consequences, that drove men, in a dilemma, to charge the latter upon the means. And it was proclaimed that the " end does not justify the means." § 178. But it has never been, nor can it be, proved. So true, indeed, is the contrary that, if an end in reality good, might be said in any sense not to justify the requisite means, it would be rather because such means cannot stand in need. of excuse — being, in the order of nature or providence, an integral part of the end. To assume the means to be good or evil except in reference to the end, was to shift both "the logical question and the moral crite- rion. But this is what was done by the blind-denouncers of the -Jesuits 4 who did not see that they were themselves appealing to the profane test of morals, the good oi man- kind in, this life, and so betraying the old theological object of future happiness. So that, as I have stated, they were heterodox in theory or rather spirit, as the casuists were, on the other hand, in practice. But that both should have been so unconsciously, is only the promised sequel of what was designated as the policy of nature : for had they not blindness, that necessary quality of all tools, they would, 35 406 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. doubtless, have revolted with horror from their destined tasks, and might thus "defeat the ends of human progress. Still it may be necessary to make this complicate and common error of nations and generations somewhat clearer. And for this purpose it will be best to let the reader hear a Jesuit discuss the matter briefly with a Jansenist adver- sary. — You, Gentlemen of Port-Royal, profess to agree with our Society in each and all of the following propositions : That the Christian religion' is the sole and a sufficient au- thority on human duty ; that the ruling end which it pro- poses refers exclusively to a future state; that the means too are of course revealed, more or less explicitly, in the Holy Scriptures; that in case of doubt the declaration or tradition of the Church supplies an equally infallible guide; and finally, that, in absence of the decision of this guide upon the multitude of new relations and corruptions of these evil times, the selection of the saving means must, by peremptory implication, be confided to the executive ministry themselves, on pain of forfeiting- the very end of the whole dispensation. You also admit effectually the growing frequency of this last contingency; for it is the progress of iniquity, in what you style ascetically the world, that drives, it seems, your own Society into retire- ment. Nor can you prove that ours, who stay fo stem or steer the torrent, are not, in fact, sustained, in the ex- ecution of this high discretion, (if not also by explicit examples in the Bible itself,) at least by the great Christian criterion alluded to— the nothingness of this life save as subservient to the next. And as if to con- summate our warrant, you consider, nay you complain, that our maxims and practices enjoy the sanction of that Church which you dare not deny yourselves to be infalli- ble ! What is it then, in the double name of Christianity and consistency, that you quarrel with in the morals of the Jesuits? Are we not right in thus observing the clear deductions of revealed ethics, because they contravene occasionally the dubious rules of a corrupt world 1" — No, replies the Jansenist ; " the end is good undoubt- edly ; but we must not do evil for the sake, or even the certainty, of good." — Granted, rejoins the Jesuit; we are there too agreed. METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 407 But so renowned writers upon logic and grammar as you should not commence by begging the question and miscalling the terms. You assume that a proper, a neces- sary means to a paramount, an absolute good, may be an evil. But to us the supposition is self-contradictory. For what less is it to hold, that an action truly evil can be the means to a real good, according to the same moral criterion ? Or that, on the other hand, an end can be properly called good, without its adequate and available means 1 In truth both these things are counterparts of one and the same system. The difference is, however, that the end, being the substantive or prerogative element, determines with a proportionate absoluteness, the quality of the requisite means ; while the latter and adjective element gives reality to the former. Now the " maxims" of the Jesuits are but a supplementary application of this plain axiom, to the ethical system of Christianity — of which the future is, you know, the supreme End, and the present life the proper Means. Such then is our divine warrant for allowing, in particular cases, the taking of men's lives, or their wives, or even their purses ; as for example to prevent a heresy, to people a nunnery, to promote a charity. You, there- fore, in pronouncing these actions to be an evil, while ap- proving of the objects which they alone might effect as good ; you are, I repeat, both inconsistent and unchristian. For your objection appeals to a different standard of mo- rals, and one in direct derogation of the divine. " But what is still more aggravating is, that this standard should be borrowed from the corrupt world which you affect to fly from so fastidiously. Nor is it merely the blind sentiments of our perverted humanity that you thus oppose to the maxims of the Jesuits ; it is even the .pagan principles of our civil jurisprudence. You are known, Gentlemen, to have a peculiar predilection for the ancient classics, and like your favorite Augustine, to be also dab- blers in philosophy. May it not be that you are more fa- miliar with the Offices of Cicero than with the oracles of St. Paul ; with the Summum bonum of Chrysippus than the One-thing-needful of Christ? And it is from this pile of inconsistency, profanity and heresy that you flare to de- nounce as immoral the society of Jesus ; and because this body will not, like yours, resign the reprobate to perdition 408 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. and thus betray the trust of its divine master j but, keeping its eye inflexibly upon the great end of the future, will treat the actions and the interests of this petty and passing life, as right or wrong, as good or evil, by the sole crite- rion of their conduciveness to the welfare of the Church of G-od and the salvation of the soul of man ?" § 179. And in truth the Jesuit is quite correct; ex- cept, of course, in the motives imputed. The cant phrase that " the end does not justify the means" discovers aptly that state of transition, when men's minds are sufficiently advanced to be shocked at certain consequences of an ef- fete hypothesis, without being yet prepared to surrender the theory in terms. Such was the situation of the noble intellects of Port-Royal, who only yielded, however uncon- sciously, to the spirit of human progress that was fast transferring the pole of ethics from the theological to the temporal world. So that they were, in fact, empirically but humanely heretical ; as the Jesuits were not more con- sistent, in being atrociously orthodox. Now this curious contrast of self-contradiction (so to speak) is precisely what enabled the Church to steer her course between the two parties in their memorable con- troversy. For her policy was to hold to both by their least obnoxious extremities, without indentifying herself with the internal incoherencies of either. Accordingly, to main- tain her habitual " ambiguous middle," we find her lean to ihe Port-Royalists on the doctrine of means, while adher- ing to the Jesuits by the deeper affinity of end'. Nor was this policy but the simple instinct of self-preservation, I repeat it. And I do so for the purpose of adding (as I seize all occasions of doing) a new apolbgy for the crimes of individuals or institutions. It is, that the darkest which have-been ever perpetrated by the Catholic Church or any class of her agents have been amply warranted by the or- thodoxy above denominated atrocious. The theory there alluded to is literally the right divine, not merely for the Jesuit morals, but for all plunder and persecution. It is in fact the sentiment of such a right that gives their peculiar relentlessness to all religious rulers and persecutors. It rankles stijl, in a state of impotence, in the rancorous ma- lice of the Christian monk. In the flush of power, it lights with rapture the ruddy faces of the Mexican sacrifices and METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 409 his surpliced brethren who hold the victim upon the altar, | while he tears out the throbbing vitals of his groaning fellow- ' creatures. Or turn to the Catholic tortures of the Holy In- quisition — more excruciatingly refined as being applied to freemen, not to slaves, and offerred to a god of will,, not a god of passion — and observe the exultant air of the execu- tioners. It is that theologians (and more especially those of the synthetic Cycle and celibitic life) have the misfortune of being taught that heart' for humanity is incompatible with holiness to G-od. No ! cruelty in the secular tyrant must resort to rage to keep down remorse. In the public hangman it finds a refuge in the torpor of habit. In the priest alone does it wear insatiably that monstrous self- complacency which supplies perhaps the sublimest possible conception of the diabolical. § 180. As to the Jansenisls — whom we just saw fall- ing towards the humanity of the philosopher — the Jesuit adversary has left us little to expose in their inconsistency. Representing, it has been shown, the dogmatic phase of the Christian system, the position of the Port-Royalists was the same, under the New Testament, which caused (as Neander has well observed) the Sadduceesto be accounted heretics, in the like decline of the Old Law. These Jew- ish dogmatists, to the last, would tolerate no interpretation, to keep pace with the progress of the public mind. The Pentateuch to the letter and Moses as their prophet were the only and peremptory rule of life ; just as the Scriptures and Augustine were the watchword of the Jansenists. What was the necessary consequence ? Why, that Moses and the Pentateuch having made no mention of a future state — a notion reserved, in its moral import, for a later mental development (§ 142) — this doctrine, when it duly dawned towards the advent of the Christian era, was re- fused by the Sadducees, who denounced it as an innovation of the Pharisees, the Jewish Jesuits. And this they did by dint of orthodoxy ; although the result, we see, was her- esy. The parallelism of the modern instance is evident and exact, and has been reflected through a series of inter- mediate stages. For the same rule which led the Saddu- cees to deny the existence of a spiritual state, obliged Au- gustine, at the Christian meridian, to deny happiness in that state, whether to all men upon any practicable condi- 35* 410 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. tion whatever, or to any save through a miraculous inter- position of divine Grace. Obliged Calvin, in the dogma- tic decline of the system, and when the miracles of grace were discerned to become rarer, to draw more strictly the dread distinction of the Predestined and the Elect. Obliged in fine, the Port- Royalists, after a century's additional ex- perience of the progressive disproportion of the candidates for each condition — in other words, between the " ortho- dox" means of salvation and the intractable " corruption" of man — to abandon, in holy horror, the social state itself, denouncing not merely its vicious pleasures but even its intellectual pursuits. Obliged Pascal, the greatest of them, to extend this reprobatory consequence of primitive Scrip- ture doctrine and its malevolent deity to his own body ; and thus, in virtue (who should imagine it ?) of his logical pre-eminence, to sink into the macerations of a monk or a maniac ! Such are the natural incidents, and necessa- ry inconsistency of acting, in riper ages, upon systems of any sort, having their origin in the ruder stages of the hu- man mind. § 181. Quite opposite here, too, was the procedure of the Jesuits. These, instead of impracticably seeking to pin mankind, for all time, to the sleeve of Moses or even of Augustine, did what they thought the holy Father and the Hebrew prophet would themselves have done, had they to deal with the thinking transgressors of our day. Instead of renouncing society, they mingled with, in order to know, it. Instead of denouncing its pursuits, they affected to follow, in order to lead, them. For this they became scholars and courtiers* and even statesmen ; not monks, or fanatics, or frivolous declaimers to female audi- ences, or lazy incumbents of lordly sinecures. Instead of counselling men to stand, like the heathen votary of Hercules, imploring the grace of God whether " effica- cious" or " praevenient," they taught that each believer had received, through the general atonement, a grace "suffi- cient" to work out his own salvation. Instead, in short, of dogmatizing from a text promulged in the savage in- fancy, and revamped in the slavish decline, of a long de- parted civilization, they applied themselves to interpreting the will of man, as well as the word of the Bible, and in this way opening the rock-pent fountain of his real regene- METAPHYSICAL CYCLEv 411 ration. In this, no doubt, the Jesuits sapped the system of Christianity, by reducing its essential principle to pal- pable practice. But the Jansenists were contributing no less to the same result by the opposite effort to retrovert the moral practice of the present day to the narrow letter of its primitive constitution. However, the more liberal tribunal of the theory I ex- pound has already discharged them both without even a trial, as being but instruments of Nature in working out her own great end, and by means of that demonstration which she habitually employs, as alone intelligible to the coarse col- lective intellect of nations, I allude to the reductio ad ab- surdum. And thus again, I may be allowed to add, does the application too exemplify, what a chaos of calumny upon God and man is most that passes still for history ; and, in- stead of echoing the jumbled ignorance and animosity of sectarianism, lead us, particularly, to be grateful, in teach- ing us to be just, to the Jesuits. Nor is it only in the work of destruction that they have served the cause of Progress. Their folios of " cases" afford a rich repository of rare materials to the Inductive moralist ; who shall come the last, nor the least, of the prophets to construct a scientific system. A system not in hostility with the Christian spirit, assuredly. But a new conception of that spirit, born partly of its own workings, and come in turn to fulfil it and not to destroy ; even- as was its own supplemental mis- sion in relation to the elder Covenants A law which shall inculcate the pure worship of the Creator, not the superstitions paid to Nature and to Man himself; and which shall appeal, not to the slavish or selfish sanctions of fear and hope, but to the mutually becoming sentiment of Grati- tude. A doctrine which shall teach that harmony between, the Means and End of life, for which the species have groped, progressively, through imaginary discords between, darkness and light, between winter and summer, between destiny and man, between suffering and providence, be- tween the human and the divine will, between sin, in fine, and grace, or to sum up all in the generic formula,.between evil and good, pleasure and pain ; and which shall vindi- cate the ways of God from the blame of this long illusion by proving it a necessary process of education — by show- 412 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. ing that the star of providence beamed benignly from the beginning, and suffered cloud or cooling but relatively to man's position, the opacity of his ignorance and eccentri- city of his conception. A Religion which shall enjoin happiness, not misery or maceration, here to be the surest path to hope or to happiness hereafter. An Education which shall lead mankind to seek that happiness or salva- tion, not for their miserable selves or sect or country alone, but rather for the entire brotherhood of humanity collec- tively, and this as a condition of obtaining it at all ; and which shall fashion them to expect it, not through special interpositions (which would whimsically turn into correla- tive states of chaos at once the order of the creator and the understanding of the creature), but from the know- ledge and observance of the laws eternal, equal, evident, to which the former has systematically subjected all his works, the heart and mil of man, of course, inclusive. § 182. I would doubtless be here reminded that the theory is still indebted for a third and tardier form of Christian speculation ; that soon after the analytic advent of interpretation and free-will should have effected a serious rupture in the rocky basis of the Church, synthesis would be found at work in re-constructing the ruins upon the less frangible foundation of reason. The fact of this opera- tion and the corresponding sect, I am very certainly obliged to produce. And yet there remains undisposed of, as above observed, but a single sample. This, however, meets ex- actly the conditions of the prediction, in point of method, of principle, and even time. I may add, the farther coin- dence, that it offers the primitive stage of the great system I have just been indicating as the Religion of the Future. The sect in question bears the name of its founder, So- cinus. The synthetic form is more evident in the writings of the nephew — in their character of comprehensiveness and conciliation ; it is also recognized by the adversaries of the doctrine in their opprobrious appellation of Latitudi narianism ; it appears in even the genial and philosophical temper of the author, one of the gentlest of theologi- cal reformers. The epoch of his appearance was duly after the Reformation. And the principle of his system is attested quite significantly by the common pretension of placing, as the phrase is, " the Socinian," not only outside METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 413 the city walls of Catholic orthodoxy, but even beyond the " liberties" of Protestant heresy. That this principle in fact was reason may be verified directly by reference to the two cardinal points of the system. Of these the less essential, though it has proved the more obnoxious, is the denial of the incarnation of the Godhead in Jesus Christ. In fact this position, with slight difference, had been taken by more than one of the anti- trinitarian heresies of the early Church. For this cause, however, of greater simplicity and obviousness, it was better calculated to give alarm, and consequently to gain adherents, in the age or in the audience of Socinus than the more fatal, but also more abstract or less appreciable innovation. Accordingly throughout this audience — which was confined to more northern Europe — the metaphysical attack upon the trinity was made the standard of the sect, and has given it the English denomination of Unitarian. I do not mean that this simpler side of Sociniauism was over- rated, if taken, as was doubtless the case, in its merely Christian consequences ; for it has been rightly considered as striking at the very root of the Christian system. (1) But the other tenet goes still farther, and strikes at all re- vealed religion, by submitting it to rational arbitration. This second and more forward feature of the synthetic order of heresies consists in their well-known maxim : — That the interpretation of the Scriptures, whether Chris- tian or Hebrew, was controllable in even the article of mysteries and miracles, by the ultimate decision of Reason. The plain tendency of this was in the first place to subor- dinate,, and finally to supersede the authority of faith. Such a principle — of which in fact Socinus was himself but imperfectly conscious — had quite naturally, for a long time made no sect : indeed the worship of reason never makes any, for it, and it alone, is truly catholic. In order, therefore, to keep the movement on foot among the ruder nations, it must be presented in its most tangible and theo- (1) The epitaph upon his tomb, presents a rather curious commen- tary not only on the part ascribed to himself in the text, but also the relative places assigned the chiefs of the Reformation : Tota licet Babylon destruxit tecta Lutherus r Muros Calvinus, sed fundaments Socinus. 414 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. logical aspect ; it is the policy that gave their doctrine and origin to the Unitarians. Yet even this, the most palpable and pious part of Socinianism, remains to this day, in the two countries where almost alone it now exists, among the least numerous of the religious denominations ; and though dependent for its votaries on the relatively culti- vated, is, notwithstanding, scarce acquainted, it would seem, in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the great epochal idea of their founder an the sixteenth. We may hence conceive why this idea should have only recently embodied a school, and this in merely the most synthetic of the Protestant and Teutonic nations. I refer, of course, to the Rationalists of Germany. In conclusion, its existence here was owing to the same national trait of character which made that country the first theatre of the Reformation. The honest German is apt to make a mare's nest of what is left elsewhere to ex- pire in peace. Indulgences and monks and even the Church herself were seen through and ridiculed for a century before Luther, by the polished skeptics of the Celtic and more^civilized South. But these philosophers would have never thought of bringing such grievances before the multitude. It is only in Germany that a meta- physical quibble may be ibught about in the streets. It was this respectable, if awkward probity — incidental to mental boyhood — that gave vehemence to the protest of the coarse but candid monk, and thus co-operated, as we have seen, with the casuists in advancing the cause of Pro- gress. The same solemn puerility pursues the Rationalists themselves ; who will as laboriously dispute upon the num- ber of steps in Jacob's ladder, or the architectural dimen- sions of the three.-days' domicil of Jonas as if the question concerned the unity of races or the theory of society. Yet the delect in this case, too, by dissembling imaginary perils, only facilitates the passage of the more backward Protestant sects, out of the maelstrom of their actual an- archy, to the side of the right synthesis. § 183. I say the right synthesis, for there is unfortunately a sinister ; I mean, of course, the yawning receptacle of the Church. The vital want of the human intellect consists in unity, order, constitution. If this be not furnished by science (as it could not have been hitherto), it is inevitably METAPHYSICAL CYCLE. 415 sought in superstition. In the thin air of negation, of in- termediate oscillation, there is, there can be no durable life. But this is the present condition of most of the Protestant sects. And the case is particularly aggravated in England and America, where the metaphysical elment of progress remains far less controlled than elsewhere, not only by the penalties ef law, but also by the principles of logic. Here I fear the state of mental minuteness and debility is less likely to rise to Rationalism than to relapse into Romanism : more especially when we consider, with Martinus Scrible- rus, that the human mind, has like the body, an alacrity for sinking. There was, however, a principle of repulsion in the common horror of the name, which might be expected to keep those sects in their transitive suspension until the spirit of the age should rectify them into progressive affinity with the Socinian symbol of reason. But the hope of rescue is much abated by the recent rise of a counter system, destined to serve for an analogous transition to Rome. Such is the philosophical significance of Puseyism ; which, accordingly, had its origin in, and limits its exten- sion to, the two countries assigned as the area of the exi- gence. In fact, this sly sect is a species of Protestant limbo, into which the several denominations are quite liable to be drawn successively, according to their diminishing divergence from Episcopacy; and where the heretics are to undergo a preparatory purification, before passing under the old tyrant theology of the middle ages, and being re- penned, for their eternal felicity and temporal fleecing, in the pitiless fold of the Church. If exhortation were my present province, instead of explication, there would be much to say to American rea- ders on this subject. But if the simple image of the situation does not impress them beyond all eloquence, assuredly any I could use would prove of small avail. Besides I find I have allowed this chapter to exhaust my utmost limits. The theme, however, not only itself, but even the dullest prejudices that becloud it, were too res- pectable to be dispatched without more than ordinary em- phasis. They have both, I trust, been treated with decent tenderness to honest error ; and yet, it seems, with the usual triumph to the theory. Not one, it has been seen of 416 VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION. the doctrines or sects of the Christian system which is not deducible k priori from the application of our principles. And whether, in my discretion of selecting examples, where all could not be specified, I have once shrunk from the knottiest problems and most complicated tests, I confi- dently leave the learned in the subject to say. I do not in fact remember any marked exclusions whatsoeverfunless it should be among the forms of mysticism. But of this class (beside holding generically to the metaphysical or analytic line) the only character is, like all madness, to have no character at all, and be considerable, but in quality of sign. NOTE TO THE READER. I must Tiere abandon the effort of compression. After stripping the matter for some hundred pages back to the bare essentials of the ex- position, there still remains, of the second Cycle, the heads of Arts and Institutions. And the space they occupy in the present period may be conceived .of from the preceding. But they are also of an im- portance which I deem it of still more serious consequence not to dis- figure than the appearance of the book. In the survey of arts is ex- plained the revival of the whole aesthetic scale from the seeming torpor of mediaeval night, in their metaphysical transformation. That of Insti- tutions embraces, among.other things, a rationale of the Feudal system in its rise, its reign as the ^reassigned and Monarchical type of the Cycle, and its dissolution, now in progress, into the third or Republican form ; a confirmation of the theory which farther unfolds spontaneously the actual condition and approaching destination both of European and American polities and society. Upon these themes it is not either commonplaces or crudities that are wanted — two extremes from which, I trust, I have hitherto kept equally aloof. But nothing better could be made intelligible within less than half again the size of the volume. Nor can the omission be regarded any breach of engagement with the reader. The undertaking, it will be remembered, was not the explanation of history ; it was the establishment of a theory, by means of history as far as necessary. But the end I submit was fully answered by the survey of even the first Cycle ; which is, moreover a type or function of the two following. But there is a matter of which I regret the extrusion still more. I designed to close the work with some precautionary rules, to be ob- served in applying the theory to states of social perturbation. These I attempted to explain in some of the chief anomalies of history such as the monotheism of the Jews, the peculiarities of the Chinese language and the precedence of our own Union in the second stage of Republi- canism. To which was added a fourth case, not unlikely at the pres- ent to become a future and a fatal example ; I mean the destiny of " Romanism" in this country. But these may all be soon supplied, should the public deem the writer to have any thing of value to com- municate.