History of the Intellectual Development of Europe Volume I Part 1

History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.

Volume I.

by John William Draper.

PREFACE.

At the meeting of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, held at Oxford in 1860, I read an abstract of the physiological argument contained in this work respecting the mental progress of Europe, reserving the historical evidence for subsequent publication.

This work contains that evidence. It is intended as the completion of my treatise on Human Physiology, in which man was considered as an individual. In this he is considered in his social relation.

But the reader will also find, I think, that it is a history of the progress of ideas and opinions from a point of view heretofore almost entirely neglected. There are two methods of dealing with philosophical questions--the literary and the scientific. Many things which in a purely literary treatment of the subject remain in the background, spontaneously a.s.sume a more striking position when their scientific relations are considered. It is the latter method that I have used.

Social advancement is as completely under the control of natural law as is bodily growth. The life of an individual is a miniature of the life of a nation. These propositions it is the special object of this book to demonstrate.

No one, I believe, has. .h.i.therto undertaken the labour of arranging the evidence offered by the intellectual history of Europe in accordance with physiological principles, so as to ill.u.s.trate the orderly progress of civilization, or collected the facts furnished by other branches of science with a view of enabling us to recognize clearly the conditions under which that progress takes place. This philosophical deficiency I have endeavoured in the following pages to supply.

Seen thus through the medium of physiology, history presents a new aspect to us. We gain a more just and thorough appreciation of the thoughts and motives of men in successive ages of the world.

In the Preface to the second edition of my Physiology, published in 1858, it was mentioned that this work was at that time written. The changes that have been since made in it have been chiefly with a view of condensing it. The discussion of several scientific questions, such as that of the origin of species, which have recently attracted public attention so strongly, has, however remained untouched, the principles offered being the same as presented in the former work in 1856.

_New York, 1861._

THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW.

_The subject of this Work proposed.--Its difficulty._

_Gradual Acquisition of the Idea of Natural Government by Law.--Eventually sustained by Astronomical, Meteorological, and Physiological Discoveries.--Ill.u.s.trations from Kepler's Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of Vegetable and Animal Life, Variation of Species and their Permanence._

_Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and Universal Humanity.--They exhibit Epochs of Life like his, and, like him are under the Control of Physical Conditions, and therefore of Law._

_Plan of this Work.--The Intellectual History of Greece.--Its Five characteristic Ages.--European Intellectual History._

_Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law._

[Sidenote: The subject proposed.]

I intend, in this work, to consider in what manner the advancement of Europe in civilization has taken place, to ascertain how far its progress has been fortuitous, and how far determined by primordial law.

Does the procession of nations in time, like the erratic phantasm of a dream, go forward without reason or order? or, is there a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events?

[Sidenote: Its difficulty and grandeur.]

In a philosophical examination of the intellectual and political history of nations, an answer to these questions is to be found. But how difficult it is to master the ma.s.s of facts necessary to be collected, to handle so great an acc.u.mulation, to place it in the clearest point of view; how difficult it is to select correctly the representative men, to produce them in the proper scenes, and to conduct successfully so grand and complicated a drama as that of European life! Though in one sense the subject offers itself as a scientific problem, and in that manner alone I have to deal with it; in another it swells into a n.o.ble epic--the life of humanity, its warfare and repose, its object and its end.

Man is the archetype of society. Individual development is the model of social progress.

Some have a.s.serted that human affairs are altogether determined by the voluntary action of men, some that the Providence of G.o.d directs us in every step, some that all events are fixed by Destiny. It is for us to ascertain how far each of these affirmations is true.

[Sidenote: Individual life of a mixed kind.]

The life of individual man is of a mixed nature. In part he submits to the free-will impulses of himself and others, in part he is under the inexorable dominion of law. He insensibly changes his estimate of the relative power of each of these influences as he pa.s.ses through successive stages. In the confidence of youth he imagines that very much is under his control, in the disappointment of old age very little. As time wears on, and the delusions of early imagination vanish away, he learns to correct his sanguine views, and prescribes a narrower boundary for the things he expects to obtain. The realities of life undeceive him at last, and there steals over the evening of his days an unwelcome conviction of the vanity of human hopes. The things he has secured are not the things he expected. He sees that a Supreme Power has been using him for unknown ends, that he was brought into the world without his own knowledge, and is departing from it against his own will.

[Sidenote: It foreshadows social life.]

Whoever has made the physical and intellectual history of individual man his study, will be prepared to admit in what a surprising manner it foreshadows social history. The equilibrium and movement of humanity are altogether physiological phenomena. Yet not without hesitation may such an opinion be frankly avowed, since it is offensive to the pride, and to many of the prejudices and interests of our age. An author who has been disposed to devote many years to the labour of ill.u.s.trating this topic, has need of the earnest support of all who prize the truth; and, considering the extent and profundity of his subject, his work, at the best, must be very imperfect, requiring all the forbearance, and even the generosity of criticism.

[Sidenote: First opinions of savage life.]

In the intellectual infancy of a savage state, Man transfers to Nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that every thing he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all pa.s.sing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a const.i.tution like his own. His tendency is necessarily to superst.i.tion. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations of an indwelling spirit, and therefore worthy of his veneration.

After Reason, aided by Experience, has led him forth from these delusions as respects surrounding things, he still clings to his original ideas as respects objects far removed. In the distance and irresistible motions of the stars he finds arguments for the supernatural, and gives to each of those s.h.i.+ning bodies an abiding and controlling genius. The mental phase through which he is pa.s.sing permits him to believe in the exercise of planetary influences on himself.

[Sidenote: Fetichism displaced by star-wors.h.i.+p.]

But as reason led him forth from fetichism, so in due time it again leads him forth from star-wors.h.i.+p. Perhaps not without regret does he abandon the mythological forms he has created; for, long after he has ascertained that the planets are nothing more than s.h.i.+ning points, without any perceptible influence on him, he still venerates the genii once supposed to vivify them, perhaps even he exalts them into immortal G.o.ds.

[Sidenote: The idea of government by law.]

Philosophically speaking, he is exchanging by ascending degrees his primitive doctrine of arbitrary volition for the doctrine of law. As the fall of a stone, the flowing of a river, the movement of a shadow, the rustling of a leaf, have been traced to physical causes, to like causes at last are traced the revolutions of the stars. In events and scenes continually increasing in greatness and grandeur, he is detecting the dominion of law. The goblins, and genii, and G.o.ds who successively extorted his fear and veneration, who determined events by their fitful pa.s.sions or whims, are at last displaced by the n.o.ble conception of one Almighty Being, who rules the universe according to reason, and therefore according to law.

[Sidenote: Its application to the solar system.]

In this manner the doctrine of government by law is extended, until at last it embraces all natural events. It was thus that, hardly two centuries ago, that doctrine gathered immense force from the discovery of Newton that Kepler's laws, under which the movements of the planetary bodies are executed, issue as a mathematical necessity from a very simple material condition, and that the complicated motions of the solar system cannot be other than they are. Few of those who read in the beautiful geometry of the 'Principia' the demonstration of this fact, saw the imposing philosophical consequences which must inevitably follow this scientific discovery. And now the investigation of the aspect of the skies in past ages, and all predictions of its future, rest essentially upon the principle that no arbitrary volition ever intervenes, the gigantic mechanism moving impa.s.sively in accordance with a mathematical law.

[Sidenote: And to terrestrial events.]

And so upon the earth, the more perfectly we understand the causes of present events, the more plainly are they seen to be the consequences of physical conditions, and therefore the results of law. To allude to one example out of many that might be considered, the winds, how proverbially inconstant, who can tell whence they come or whither they go! If any thing bears the fitful character of arbitrary volition, surely it is these. But we deceive ourselves in imagining that atmospheric events are fortuitous. Where shall a line be drawn between that eternal trade-wind, which, originating in well-understood physical causes, sweeps, like the breath of Destiny, slowly, and solemnly, and everlastingly over the Pacific Ocean, and the variable gusts into which it degenerates in more northerly and southerly regions--gusts which seem to come without any cause, and to pa.s.s away without leaving any trace?

In what lat.i.tude is it that the domain of the physical ends, and that of the supernatural begins?

All mundane events are the results of the operation of law. Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government.

But if we admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the sunbeam to multiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to carry our principles to their consequences, and recognise a like operation of law among living as among lifeless things, in the organic as well as the inorganic world? What testimony does physiology offer on this point?

[Sidenote: And to the organic world.]