The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

name of

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