The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗
- Author: Winwood Reade
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Humanity, that revolution regenerated France, and planted
principles which spread over the continent of Europe, and which
are now bearing fruit in Italy and Spain. With the nineteenth
century, a new era of history begins.
Such then is the plain unvarnished story of the human race. We
have traced the stream of history to its source in the dark
forest; we have followed it downwards through the steppes of
the shepherds and the valleys of the great priest peoples; we
have swept swiftly along, past pyramids and pagodas, and the
brick-piles of Babylon; past the temples of Ionia, and the
amphitheatres of Rome; past castles and cathedrals lying
opposite to mosques with graceful minaret and swelling dome;
and so, onwards and onwards, till towns rise on both sides of
the stream; towns sternly walled with sentinels before the
gates; so, onwards and onwards, till the stream widens and is
covered with ships large as palaces, and towering with sail;
till the banks are lined with gardens and villas; and huge
cities, no longer walled, hum with industry, and becloud the
air; and deserts or barren hills are no longer to be seen; and
the banks recede and open out like arms, and the earth-shores
dissolve, and we faintly discern the glassy glimmering of the
boundless sea. We shall descend to the mouth of the river, we
shall explore the unknown waters which lie beyond the present,
we shall survey the course which man has yet to run. But before
we attempt to navigate the future, let us return for a moment
to the past; let us endeavour to ascertain the laws which
direct the movements of the stream, and let us visit the ruins
which are scattered on its banks.
The progress of the human race is caused by the mental efforts
which are made at first from necessity to preserve life, and
secondly from the desire to obtain distinction. In a healthy
nation, each class presses into the class which lies above it;
the blood flows upwards, and so the whole mass, by the united
movements of its single atoms, rises in the scale. The progress
of a nation is the sum-total of the progress of the individuals
composing it. If certain parts of the body politic are stifled
in their growth by means of artificial laws, it is evident that
the growth of the whole will be arrested; for the growth of
each part is dependent on the growth of all. It is usual to
speak of Greece as a free country; and so it was in comparison
with Asia. But more than half its inhabitants were slaves;
labour was degraded; whatever could be done by thought
alone, and by delicate movements of the hands, was carried to
perfection; but in physical science the Greeks did little,
because little could be done without instruments, and
instruments can seldom be invented except by free and
intelligent artisans. So the upper part of the Greek body grew;
the lower part remained in a base and brutal state, discharging
the offices of life, but without beauty and without strength.
The face was that of Hyperion; the legs were shrivelled and
hideous as those of a satyr. In Asia human laws have been still
more fatal to the human progress. In China there is no slavery,
and there is no caste; the poorest man may be exalted to the
highest station; not birth but ability is the criterion of
distinction; appointments are open to the nation, and are
awarded by means of competitive examinations. But the Chinese
are schoolboys who never grow up; generals and statesmen who
incur the displeasure of the Crown are horsed and flagellated
in the Eton style, a bamboo being used instead of a birch. The
patriarchal system of the steppes has been transferred to the
imperial plain. Just as a Chinese town is merely a Tartar camp
encircled by earthen walls; just as a Chinese house is merely a
Tartar tent, supported by wooden posts and cased with brick, so
it is with the government, domestic and official, of that
country. Every one is the slave of his father, as it was in the
old tent-life; every father is the slave of an official who
stands in the place of the old clan chief; and all are slaves
of the emperor, who is the viceroy of God. In China, therefore,
senility is supreme; nothing is respectable unless it has
existed at least a thousand years; foreigners are barbarians,
and property is insecure.
In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained.
In the despotic lands of the East, the peasant who grows more
corn than he requires is at once an object of attention to the
police; he is reported to the governor, and a charge is laid against
him, in order that his grain may be seized. He not only loses the
fruit of his toil, but he also receives the bastinado. In the same
manner, if a merchant, by means of his enterprise, industry, and talents,
amasses a large fortune; he also is arrested and is put to
death, that his estate may escheat to the Crown. As the Chinese
say, “The elephant is killed for his ivory.” This, then, is the
secret of Asiatic apathy, and not the heat of the climate, or
the inherent qualities of race. Civilised Asia has been always
enthralled, because standing armies have always been required
to resist the attacks of those warlike barbarians who cover the
deserts of Arabia and Tartary, the highlands of Ethiopia and
Kabul. Asia, therefore, soon takes a secondary place, and
Europe becomes the centre of the human growth. Yet it should
not be forgotten that Asia was civilised when Europe was a
forest and a swamp. Asia taught Europe its A B C; Asia taught
Europe to cipher and to draw; Asia taught Europe the language
of the skies, how to calculate eclipses, how to follow the
courses of the stars, how to measure time by means of an
instrument which recorded with its shadow the station of the
sun; how to solve mathematical problems; how to philosophise
with abstract ideas. Let us not forget the school in which we
learnt to spell, and those venerable halls in which we acquired
the rudiments of science and of art.
The savage worships the shades of his ancestors chiefly from
selfish fear; the Asiatic follows, from blind prejudice, the wisdom
of the ancients, and rejects with contempt all knowledge which was
unknown to them. Yet within these superstitions a beautiful sentiment lies
concealed. We ought, indeed, to reverence the men of the past,
who, by their labours and their inventions, have made us what
we are. This great and glorious city in which we dwell, this
mighty London, the metropolis of the earth; these streets
flowing with eager-minded life, and gleaming with prodigious
wealth; these forests of masts, these dark buildings, turning
refuse into gold, and giving bread to many thousand mouths;
these harnessed elements which whirl us along beneath the
ground, and which soon will convey us through the air; these
spacious halls, adorned with all that can exalt the imagination
or fascinate the sense; these temples of melody; these
galleries, exhibiting excavated worlds; these walls covered
with books in which dwell the souls of the immortal dead,
which, when they are opened, transport us by a magic spell to
lands which are vanished and passed away, or to spheres created
by the poet’s art; which make us walk with Plato beneath the
plane trees, or descend with Dante into the dolorous abyss—
to whom do we owe all these? First, to the poor savages,
forgotten and despised, who, by rubbing sticks together,
discovered fire, who first tamed the timid fawn, and first made
the experiment of putting seeds into the ground. And, secondly,
we owe them to those enterprising warriors who established
nationality, and to those priests who devoted their lifetime
to the culture of their minds.
There is a land where the air is always tranquil, where Nature wears
always the same bright yet lifeless smile; and there, as in a vast museum,
are preserved the colossal achievements of the past. Let us enter the sad
and silent river; let us wander on its dusky shores. Buried cities
are beneath our feet; the ground on which we tread is the
pavement of a tomb. See the Pyramids towering to the sky; with
men, like insects, crawling round their base; and the Sphinx,
couched in vast repose, with a ruined temple between its paws.
Since those great monuments were raised, the very heavens have
been changed. When the architects of Egypt began their work,
there was another polar star in the northern sky, and the
Southern Cross shone upon the Baltic shores. How glorious are
the memories of those ancient men, whose names are forgotten,
for they lived and laboured in the distant and unwritten past.
Too great to be known, they sit on the height of centuries and
look down on fame. The boat expands its white and pointed
wings; the sailors chaunt a plaintive song; the waters bubble
around us as we glide past the tombs and temples of the by-gone
days. The men are dead, and the gods are dead. Nought but their
memories remain. Where now is Osiris, who came down upon earth
out of love for men, who was killed by the malice of the Evil
One, who rose again from the grave, and became the Judge of the
dead? Where now is Isis the mother, with the child Horus on her
lap? They are dead; they are gone to the land of the shades.
To-morrow, Jehovah, you and your son shall be with them!
Men die, and the ideas which they call gods die too; yet death
is not destruction, but only a kind of change. Those strange
ethereal secretions of the brain, those wondrously distilled
thoughts of ours—do they ever really die? They are embodied
into words; and from these words, spoken or written, new
thoughts are born within the brains of those who listen or who
read. There was a town named Heliopolis; it had a college
garden, and a willow hanging over the Fountain of the Sun; and
there the professors lectured and discoursed on the Triune God,
and the creation of the world, and, the Serpent Evil, and the
Tree of Life; and on chaos and darkness, and the shining stars;
and there the stone quadrant was pointed to the heavens; and
there the laboratory furnace glowed. And in that college two
foreign students were received, and went forth learned in its
lore. The first created a nation in the Egyptian style; the
second created a system of ideas; and, strange to say, on
Egyptian soil the two were reunited: the philosophy of Moses
was joined in Alexandria to the philosophy of Plato, not only
by the Jews, but also by the Christians; not only in Philo
Judaeus, but also in the Gospel of St. John.
Over the bright blue waters, under the soft and tender sky,
with the purple sails outspread and roses twining round the
mast, with lute and flute resounding from the prow, and red
wine poured upon the sea, and thanksgiving to the gods, we
enter the Piraeus, and salute with our flag the temple on the
hill. Vessels sweep past us, outward bound, laden with statues
and paintings, for such are the manufactures of Athens, where
the milestones are masterpieces, and the streetwalkers poets
and philosophers. Imagine the transports of the young
provincial who went to Athens to commence a career of ambition,
to make himself a name! What raptures he must have felt as he
passed through that City of the Violet Crown with Homer in his
bosom, and hopes of another United Greece within his heart!
What a banquet of delights, what varied treasures of
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