The advancement of society in knowledge and religion

Front matter

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Part First. The Past

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1. Progress of Society. — 2. Opinions of the Ancients. — 5

3. Defect of Materials. — 4. Early condition of Mankind. — 5. First Monarchies. — 6. Grecian Republics — 7. Rome.— 8. Saracens.— 9. Gothic Race. — 10. Modern Europe. — 11. Summary. — 12. Defect of Terms. — 13. Complex Movement of Society. — 14. Advancement not Necessary but Providential. — 15. Ancient and Mod - em Action of Society. — 16. Removal of Impediments. — 17. New Social Order in America.— 18. Conclusion.

Part Second. The Future

1. New Era of Society. — 2. Voluntary Association. — 7 i 3. Supplies the Prima Philosophia. — 4. Objections to it. — 5. The Survey of Science. — 6. Review of the Past. — 7. Scientific Travellers. — 8. General Correspondence. — 9. Improved Elements or Science. — 10. Improved Method of Science. — 11. Improvement of the Arts. — 12. Improvement of Life. — 13. General Society. — 14. Its Influence over Government — 15. Its Influence over Europe. — 16. Advantages of Science to Religion. 17. Advantages of Religion to Science.

Part Third. The Advancement Of Religion At Home

1. Difference in the Condition of Jews and Christians. — 136 2. Advantages and Disadvantages of the Latter. —

IV. CONTENTS.

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3. Utility of Association. — 4. Best Form of Society.— 5. District Division. — 6. General Correspondence. — 7. Newspapers. — 8. Reviews. — 9. Schools. — 10. Libraries. — 11. Home Missions. — 12. Bible Society. — 13. Advancement of Religion at Home and Abroad, mutual.

Part Fourth. Advancement Of Religion Abroad

1. Map of the World.— 2. Rise of False Religions.— II 3. Nominal Christendom. — 4. Mohammedan Countries. — 5. Eastern Asia. — 6. Central Africa. — 7. The Jews. — 8. Christianity Universal. — 9. England the Centre of Action. — 10. System. — 11. Economy. — 12. Superintendance. — 13. Native Agency. — 14. Education. — 15. English Language. — 16. Translations. — 17. Colonies. — 18 Conclusion.

Part Fifth. Tendency Of The Age

1. Voluntary and Involuntary Changes. — 2. Philosophy 272 of Charity. — 3. Augmented Power of Moral Instruments. — 4. Increasing Improvement of Society. — 5. Improvement of Governments. — 6. Revolution in Opinion. ■ — 7. Classic Republics. — 8. Gothic Kingdoms. — 9. Universal Form. — 10. Public Opinion. — 11. Europe. — 12. America. — 13. Universal Prevalence of Religion and Knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION

Part First. Progress Of Society

I. "One generation passetli away, and anotfaei generation cometh ; but the earth abideth for ever." Is the change in its generations the only change in society ? Are the actors alone renewed, and the same drama of life for ever repeated \ Or does each succeeding generation, standing on the grave of their forefathers, rise to a higher vantage ground, as the oaks of the wilderness in succession strike deeper roots, and grow more flourishing', over the dust of their predecessors ?

It is not many ages since Hakewell wrote his learned Apology, to show that the moderns were not left so destitute either of hope or of providence, as utterly to despair of emulating the ancients. Still shorter is the interval, since Milton had his misgivings as to the coldness of the climate, and lateness of the age for an epic poem, though in this there is more than meets the general ear. 1

Now, the tide has set in with an opposite current, and "the present enlightened age" regards itself with as much self-complacency, and the past with as much contempt, as if, like Love in Aristophanes, it had been hatched from the egg of Night, and all of a sudden had spread its radiant wings over the primeval darkness.

OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENTS.

II. The ancients, as they are beforehand with the moderns in most of their disputes, rival them also in the discrepancy of their tenets upon this head ; for of the three opinions respecting society, that it is progressive, stationary, or retrograde, each was defended and illustrated by some powerful sect of philosophy.

That society is retrograde was always the favourite and most prevalent side of the question ; the creeds of all nations teem with recollections of men having fallen from a higher state of felicity, of earth being blended with heaven, and of that golden age, when humanity lived near to the gods, and held frequent and familiar converse with the immortals. This opinion may be styled the mythological, since it is interwoven with the recollections of the remotest antiquity, blended with the light of the heroic and fabulous ages, and wrought into all the various fictions which diversify the legends of polytheism. It is carried to the greatest height in the Hindoo writings, but more or less it has prevailed among all nations, and has

IN KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION. i

been handed down with an increase of conviction and fresh arguments, from the respect which learners bear to their teachers, — stamped with the reverence which the Grecians paid to their Egyptian masters, — the Romans to the Grecians. — and the middle ages to the Romans.

The opinion which advocates the advancement of society, received its origin, or its strength, from the recorded rise of the Grecian States, and the broken traces of their ancient history, and may therefore be termed the historical : it rests on the tradition of the ancient inhabitants having been tamed by Orpheus, and the other tuneful legislators of Greece, and reclaimed from the condition ol savages among the woods, and from a subsistence upon acorns, to a social existence, under laws, and in cities: this opinion received new support from I second source, — the Atomic Philosophy, which, as it deduced the intelligence of each individual from the sum and record of his past impressions, so it deduced the national mind from the experience of the individuals who composed it ; discarding at once the inspiration of the early ages, and their higher illumination.

That society is stationary, may be termed the Atheistical Opinion, since it upheld the eternity of the species on the same grounds on which it upheld the eternity of the world ; for observing that what once was sea had become dry land, and that the earth in return was gradually swallowed up by the waves, it concluded that the continent and the a ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY

ocean were interchangeably destroyed and reproduced, and that the parts of the great system alone were fluctuating, while the whole remained fixed and for ever. Corresponding to these apparent changes, and this real stability of nature, it observed new wonders of art rising to perfection in one quarter, compensating, and only compensating, for the decay of equally numerous and admirable monuments in another, and thence concluded that the sciences, ever seeking for new worshippers, rather changed their abodes, than received any accession to the number of their temples. Thus binding alike the natural and the moral world in the same iron chain of necessity, it viewed all the movements of the universe as alternating between fixed and narrow limits of progress and decay, and repeating the same rounds through the endless lapse of time.

These three opinions, which might appear to exhaust the subject, are severally insufficient, for the movement of society is too complicated to be solved by a single principle ; however varying and opposite, they are all partially founded in truth, and all, taken in their utmost extent, and viewed separately, lead to error. At one and the same time there is a progressive, stationary, and retrograde tendency in society, as shall afterwards be pointed out, and also within what limits each tendency ex* erts itself.

DEFECT OF MATERIALS.

III. There is no good history of the progress of society. The sketch of Condorcet is undeserving of minute examination. Some valuable thoughts were furnished from the conversation or writings of Turgot, but exaggerated to support an untenable theory. The work of Condorcet is the image of his mind — vast and vague — feeble yet aspiring — containing some noble views amid a mass of misrepresentations, discoloured by a hatred of all religion verging upon insanity — undervaluing, from ignorance, the past, and shaping to its own impracticable wishes the clouds of futurity. (A.)

We have not even the rude materials for such a work, either in an exact or complete history of the particular branches of science, of the origin of languages, or of the state of the ancient world. Literary history, though recommended by Bacon, has made small progress, except among the disciples of Kant ; and they are either systematic or visionary ; seeing every thing in antiquity through the mist of some recent theory, reversing the miracle of tongues, and making men of every age and clime speak with a truly Teutonic accent ; or when freed from system, caught by remote resemblances, and puerile or monstrous analogies, and too frequently preferring the weaker evidence to the stronger, as leading to the conclusion the most likely to elevate and surprise. (B.)

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Extremes meet, and etymology, where of all studies the evidence is the weakest, and mathematics, where it is the strongest, seem alike to unfit their followers for balancing opposing probabilities, yet the want of a rational work on the origin and connexion of languages is necessary to be supplied before a complete account of the progress in society can be obtained. (C.)

Ancient history, on the other hand, has either been received in gross, or totally rejected, and the art has not yet been discovered of separating its ore from its dross, the fragments of truth from the load of fables which conceal them.

The chronology of the earliest nations is dilated into an enormous and impossible antiquity, while heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, and other equally real personages, live and reign for long astronomical periods, over happy and prosperous nations, and the train of these figurative sovereigns is increased by the artifice of making the contemporaneous kings who reigned at the same time, in the same country, before it was formed into one empire, follow each other in a long line of successive dynasties. (D.)

To this chronological list of names, in the oblivion of the real events of history, were appended the traditions current among the vulgar ; narrative too far transformed into fable to be again easily recognised in its just lineaments ; romantic, improbable, or ludicrous, as the wonder, misconception? or buffoonery of the narrators prevailed. Such

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are the accounts which Herodotus has transmitted .ting the monarchies of Egypt and the East. vague and distorted rumours of past events preserving, indeed, an air of truth for three or four generations backwards, and then lost in an inextricable labyrinth : less trust-worthy records than the songs of pensioned and flattering bards, and bearing the same relation to real characters and actions, that the tales of the Arabian Nights do to the History of Haroun Alraschid.

The difficulties attending the varying accounts of the elder Cyras, together with the opportunities of information which the Greeks possessed, and the interest which they had in the affairs of Persia. sufficiently indicate how unsafe a guide profane history is. when it attempts to follow tradition beyond the limits of a few generatio:

EARLY CONDITION OF MANKIND.

IV. Amid the obscurity of these fables and instencies, the books of Moses shed a solitarv light : and. independent of the arguments for their inspiration, earn- with them internal evidence of their authenticity, and of their containing within their brief notices, all that can be known of the earliest condition of man.

The Mosaic records secure us from an error into which philosophers, who trust more to their own conjectures than to the Bible, have generally fallen. It is requisite for clearness and precision to reduce even* thing to its simplest elements, and from its least modified state, to enumerate the changes it undergoes, and the additions it receives. But what is allowable in a work of which the sole aim is simplicity, may be very erroneous when considered as matter of fact. And though, in a treatise which accommodates itself to an arbitrary method, and not to the truth of events, mankind may be represented as passing from the occupation of hunters to that of shepherds, and then from pasturage to tillage, and a life in cities, yet the error is great, if we mistake the process of our own minds for the progress of the human race, and imagine that men must first have existed as savages, because the savage state stands at the head of our own artificial system.

And yet this misapprehension is the sole support of a theory which is alike refuted by the evidence of revelation, and by the situation of the ancient world. From the sea of China to the German ocean, tribes, too rude to have tamed the wild animals for their own use, were in possession of domestic cattle ; and beyond the bounds of civilization the pastoral state alike prevailed in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The only exceptions strengthen the general rule : some hunters, scattered over ranges of mountains ; some fishers, amid wide intersecting lakes, or some tribes deprived of their cattle by the severity of the climate towards the Icy Sea. In this respect, the new world is contrasted with the old, and in this very contrast affords an additional proof that the pastoral state has preceded the savage, since its savage inhabitants, with the strong marks of their Scythian descent, will be generally allowed to have sprung from a race in possession of numerous herds, and the only assignable cause of the difference between the hunters of America and their pastoral ancestors of Upper Asia, is the intervening sea, with the want of barks of sufficient burden to transport their cattle.

The appearances of society, over both the old and the new continent, exactly tally with the effects wilich must have resulted from the dispersion of mankind, as described by Moses ; a dispersion which took place after a common sojourn, for a length of years, in a country favourable for the increase of their flocks ; and after having had long access to the arts and knowledge of a still earlier race, by the long lives of the patriarchs, who formed a connecting link between the antediluvian and postdilu_ vian world. The light, which spread over the earth, may be traced to the plains of Babylon as its centre, and the barbarism and the depression of the different tribes of men is shaded more deeply, according to their distance from the parent seats of mankind, and the difficulties of their journey.

It is from this one fount of emanation that the first vestiges of thought and improvement are derived, which are common to all nations and languages ; and which have been assigned, even by infidel philosophers, to one primitive race, the stock whence the many families of the earth have sprung ; who have left behind them resemblances and affinities in the remotest languages and recollections, however disguised by fable and mythology, which refer to a period when all the earth had one common history and interest.

Thus the time which elapsed between the deluge and the dispersion of mankind, must be looked upon as the first period of civilization. No doubt? owing to the early invention of arts among the descendants of Cain, and the long life of the antediluvians, so favourable to the cultivation of science* great advances would be made, and commanding heights of knowledge would be reached, by men* who could not complain, like Theophrastus, that nature had denied them that length of days for cultivating their reason, which she bestowed upon many irrational animals ; but it is not by the mass of knowledge that existed before the deluge, but by the remnants that were preserved in the ark, that aftertimes have been affected and benefited. To form some conception of the change which ancient science would undergo in the hands of the postdiluvians, we may imagine what would be the fate of a varied and copious language, which, after abounding in works of every character, came to exist only in the speech of few individuals ; how the additions by which it had been enriched would fall into disuse, and the language itself would return to its first rudiments and primitive simplicity, while the derivatives would occasionally remain, and the roots from which they had sprung be forgotten. The same would it fare with science, reduced to the same circumstances, the higher and more speculative parts would be forgotten, the ap. plication might be retained without the principle, and the elements might rest behind as witnesses of the perfection to which knowledge had been brought, and of the advanced state of the sciences from which they had been separated.

Possessed of the relics of ancient language and of ancient knowledge, a new population rapidly multiplied in the land where nature had planted the olive and Noah the vine, and wandered, with their increasing flocks, beneath that serene sky where the stars were first classed into constellations, without fixed habitation in the country of their transient pilgrimage, previous to their spreading anew the tide of life over the dispeopled earth, and rearing in the wilderness once more the dwellings of men.

It is this period of universal intercommunity which has given an indissoluble bond of connection to the far scattered family of man. and irresistibly carries back whatever holds of high antiquity to the common origin of the species. Among the remotest races, dissevered by vast ages and unnavigated oceans, fragments of language, tradition, and opinion are found, which piece in together, and when united with every remnant from every distant region, almost recompose that body of transmitted recollections, which, surviving an earlier civilization, and an almost universal catastrophe, was separated and dispersed over the earth, by the separation and dispersion of mankind.

FIRST MONARCHIES.

V, A second period of advancement in civilization was that of the early monarchies. Egypt, Chaldea, India, and China, have each pretensions to superior antiquity, and a claim to invention ; and the claim of each may be allowed. Their common nature and common origin sufficiently account for coincidences which have too hastily been judged certain marks of imitation. Yet if the question were still urged, what country had the best claim to the highest antiquity, that honour might be allowed to Egypt. It is certain mankind never adopt improvements, much less invent them, without the pressure of an immediate want, and a ready facility of removing it. Where the chase is abundant, and the supply of game sure, no tribe of hunters will ever be at the labour, or use the foresight of rearing animals tame, and providing a domestic stock. Where the pastoral country is sufficient for the unlimited increase of their cattle, no tribe of herdsmen will ever make agriculture an object of first-rate importance. And thus, at every step of their progress, men are goaded forward by their wants, and incited and allured by the prospect of supply. It will be readily admitted, that Egypt is the country where these wants would be soonest felt in succession, and most easily removed. Even had the first inhabitants been savages, the vale of the Nile is so narrow, that the beasts of chase would be quickly thinned, and animals for domestic purposes caught and tamed. The habitable country being extremely limited in extent, agriculture would soonest be thought of, and most easily practised, since the Nile itself does the work of the plough and the harrow, manures the ground, covers the seed, and leaves but the work of harvest for the husbandmen, and is the true Ceres and Triptolemus of antiquity, the first indicator of culture, the inventor of tillage, and the bestower of corn. It is there also that men, from the nature of the country, must first have lived in towns, crowded upon the few elevated spots which were superior to the inundation of the Nile, and which, rising like so many cities from the waves, reminded the early Grecian traveller of his native islands amid the Egean sea. Hence also the Nile, by leaving a water communication alone between the different towns, made the Egyptians the earliest sailors ; and the barks, which opened to them the only path to the neighbouring cities, found, by following the course of the river, an easy entrance into the Mediterranean sea ; and though, after their early discoveries and colonies, this art amongst them altogether declined, and passed to another nation ; yet the Phoenicians, as they had the first lunt of an alphabet in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, so they saw the earliest navy, in the vessels, which with a full sail, and a north wind were ascending the stream, and in return, gently floating down the current of the Nile.

The priority of Egyptian civilization to that of the Indians, might be evinced either from ancient 2 history, or from ancient monuments ; from the direction of the earliest commerce, or the planting of the earliest colonies. (E.)

The prior antiquity of India rests upon the suspicions and partial authority of its own writings, themselves of suspected antiquity. The antiquity of Egypt is vouched for by the oldest authenticated writers extant, the Hebrews and the Greeks. Again, there are no monuments in Egypt which need the explanation of having been reared by Indian architects; though there are remains in India which appear to indicate an African origin. It may be added that the monuments of Egypt alone are covered with hieroglyphics, which carry them back to an age, and a literature anterior to the invention of alphabetic characters. Ancient commerce was founded upon the riches of India, and the wants of the West. Egypt held out no inducement to the Hindoos to emigrate ; its narrow valley was soon filled with population, and was surrounded by forbidding deserts; but the wide, and to the ancients, interminable regions of India, with the romantic fables of wealth and wonder attached to them, might easily have induced Egyptian emigrants to leave the scorched and barren shores of the Red Sea, and embark in some of those fleets which were ever steering towards the treasures of the East. With respect to colonies, those which proceeded from India, and have been scattered over the islands of the Indian Ocean, cannot compare either in antiquity or celebrity with those of the

Egyptians who commenced the civilization of Greece previous to the period of written history. All this might be proved at length, but this proof is not necessary; we should consider as equally in error those who would borrow the civilization of tjie Egyptians from the Indians, or those who, on the other hand, would make the Egyptians the instructors of the Indians in the arts and sciences. It was not imitation, but a native impulse, and the concurrence of the same favourable circumstances, which, across the most fertile zone of the earth, and from the shores of the Yellow Sea to the Mediterranean, spread a wide and prosperous civilization. Along the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, and the great Chinese rivers, the nations entered upon a new career, and undertakings were formed, and works executed, of a vastness which throws a shade upon the wonders of following ages. It was there that the productions most necessary to existence, which have from thence been carried into distant countries, and cultivated with so much labour, grew spontaneously, where bread corn sprang up like the grass of the field, and the earth, in emulation of the golden age, and with the fertility of the fabled islands of the west, poured forth unbidden food, and renewed a perpetual banquet. It was there that the pastoral tribes changed without effort their manner of life, and with nature for their example and instructress, cultivated the fruits of the earth which already grew so freely around them, into a greater abundance, and reared as if by enchantment cities which, like Babylon, rebuilt by the Assyrian for his tributary allies the Chaldeans, received whole nations within their ample walls, and contained and subsisted within their ramparted gardens, the population which had been previously spread over the waste of the desert.

The policy and civilization of these nations was gigantic, and disproportionate, their aim was vastness, and their means violence ; the colossal piles of their towers and walls were reared by slaves ; and these slaves were the vanquished nations, torn up by the roots, and transplanted entire into countries scarcely known to them by report. Compared to their works, the buildings of the Romans, who possessed a wider empire and enlarged science, appear like the edifices of individuals, eclipsed by the efforts of kings. Our wonder increases the more we consider the only remaining witnesses of their power and skill, the masses of mighty ruins, or those fabrics which, still enduring, promise to coexist with the earth itself; regarding these, we must confess them to have been the master builders of the world, and that their structures are as astonishing as if the dreams of oriental romance had been realized, and the genii of the elements had been tasked to super-human exertion by the seal of Solomon, or the talisman of the pre- Adamite kings.

The resources for such undertakings existed in the wealth possessed by the first conquerors. — Riches in modern times are diffused through society, and, being nowhere gathered into such a heap as to inspire their possessor with the hope of any unusual accomplishment, are spent in elaborate trifles, and perishing gratifications, luxury draining away into numberless channels, the treasures which were in those days exhausted upon some abiding monument, which, previous to the invention of letters, and in the absence of other records, was intended to keep the name of the erector, and to perpetuate his memory. The ancient method of war, as it swept along with it the wealth and the population of every conquered country, furnished hands for these works in the enslaved inhabitants and funds in their plundered property. In Egypt, on the other hand, which long enjoyed uninterrupted peace, a standing host of labourers was not more wasteful to the state than a standing army ; the magnitude and magnificence of what was public, was grounded upon the meanness of what was private, and the pyramids fitted, according to the intention of their authors, to resist the waste of time, and to await the expected revolution of nature, and the new and recommencing series of existence, were built by dwellers in houses of clay, which were crushed before the moth.

The acquisition of their knowledge, like the fabric of their dominion, was forced into a premature vigour, and an ill-proportioned greatness ; and became fixed in the inveteracy of established customs and hereditary professions. While on the way to knowledge they turned aside to its imaginary semblance ; with them science throughout was infected

2* with superstition, -and the corruption of knowledge more valued than knowledge itself; arithmetic was cultivated less for the utility of figures than for the sake of the magical powers attributed to numbers ; and the changes in the heavenly bodies were observed as being casual or predictive of the changes in earthly things.

Very different was the fate of this early civilization to the east and the west of the Indus. It is preserved entire in India and China, which remain such as they were, at the same point of civilization to which they were carried by an impulse given them three thousand years ago, with science still elementary, and still enslaved to superstition, worshipping the same idols with the same rites, venerating the same works, and thinking in the same prescribed form of thought. But westward of the Indus that ancient mode of manners gave way to a new advancement in knowledge, and was scattered before the arms of Alexander and the arts of Greece. The observations made by the Chaldees of the heavens, like their observatory, the tower of Belus sunk into dust and forgetfulness, and the secrets of Egyptian invention perished with the priesthood, to whom they were confined. But the elements which were restricted to a prescriptive form, or a superstitious use, by the shackles of caste and of priesthood, were wrought by the genius of a free country, into every variety of fashion, and those seeds of improvement which had been checked in their growth in the east, became fruitful and luxuriant in another climate.

GRECIAN REPUBLICS.

VI. A third period of civilization is the Grecian, and the most difficult problem in history is to account for its originality and its brilliancy ; how it came to differ so widely from that of Egypt and Phoenicia from which it sprang ; and why the causes that conferred upon it an unrivalled excellency, never conspired to exalt any other country to an r equal eminence. ( F.)

It is in the history of nations as in the history of individuals ; their commencement and their weakness are passed over in silence ; and it is that very weakness which gives power to circumstances to form their character, and to impress upon them that bias which becomes their destiny. We know not the birth or growth of the Grecian states ; we know nothing of them till they were matured into fulness of strength, till their language was the most harmonious, and their poetry the most powerful that ever existed. All that relates to Greece lies hid in darkness till Homer effulges, like the new created light upon the world — a sun without a dawn.

If, however, in the midst of this obscurity we were called to account for the height of Grecian genius, we would seek its cause, not in one or two circumstances, but in the multiplicity of favourable coincidences, each wafting it, as by wave after wave, along the brightness of its way ; and we would seek it, not only in the multiplicity, but in the harmony of those many combining influences, where nothing was jarring, but all united into one impulse, and towards one end.