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

the mind

were spread before him there! He listened first to a speech of

Pericles on political affairs, and then to a lecture by

Anaxagoras. He was taken to the studio of Phidias and of

Polygnotus: he went to a theatre built of Persian masts to see

a new tragedy by Sophocles or Euripides, and finished the

evening at Aspasia’s establishment, with odes of Sappho, and

ballads of Anacreon, and sweet-eyed musicians, and intellectual

heterae.

 

So great are the achievements of the Greeks, so deep

is the debt which we owe to them, that criticism appears

ungrateful or obtuse. It is scarcely possible to indicate the

vices and defects of this people without seeming guilty of

insensibility or affectation. It is curious to observe how

grave and sober minds accustomed to gather evidence with care,

and to utter decisions with impartiality, cease to be judicial

when Greece is brought before them. She unveils her beauty, and

they can only admire: they are unable to condemn. Those who

devote themselves to the study of the Greeks become

nationalised in their literature, and patriots of their domain,

It is indeed impossible to read their works without being

impressed by their purity, their calmness, their exquisite

symmetry and finish resembling that which is bestowed upon a

painting or a statue. But it is not only in the Greek writings

that the Greek spirit is contained: it has entered the modern

European mind it permeates the world of thought; it inspires

the ideas of those who have never read the Greek authors, and

who perhaps regard them with disdain. We do not see the

foundations of our minds: they are buried in the past. The

great books and the great discoveries of modern times are based

upon the works of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and their disciples.

All that we owe to Rome we owe to Greece as well, for Italy was

a child of Greece. The cities on the southern coast bestowed on

the rude natives the elements of culture, and when Rome became

famous it was colonised by Grecian philosophers and artists.

 

To Rome we are indebted for those laws from which our

jurisprudence is descended, and to Rome we are indebted for

something else besides. We shall not now pause on the Rome, of

the Republic, when every citizen was a soldier, and worked in

the fields with his own hands; when every temple was the

monument of a victory, and every statue the memorial of a hero;

when door-posts were adorned with the trophies of war, and

halls with the waxen images of ancestors; when the Romans were

simple, religious, and severe, and the vices of luxury were yet

unknown, and banquets were plain and sociable repasts, where

the guests in turn sang old ballads while the piper played. Nor

shall we pause on the Rome of Augustus, when East and West were

united in peace and with equal rights before the law; when the

tyranny of petty princedoms, and the chicanery of Grecian

courts of law, and the blood-feuds of families had been

destroyed; and the empire was calm and not yet becalmed, and

rested a moment between tumult and decay. We shall pass on to a

Rome more great and more sublime; a Rome which ruled Europe,

but not by arms; a Rome which had no mercenary legions, no

Praetorian Guards, and which yet received the tribute of kings,

and whose legates exercised the power of proconsuls. In this

Rome a man clad in the purple of the Caesars and crowned with

the tiara of the Pontifex sent forth his soldiers armed with

the crucifix, and they brought nations captive to his feet.

Rome became a city of God: she put on a spiritual crown. She

cried to the kings, Give! and gold was poured into her

exchequers; she condemned a man who had defied her, and he had

no longer a place among mankind; she proclaimed a Truce of God,

and the swords of robber knights were sheathed; she preached a

crusade, and Europe was hurled into Asia. She lowered the pride

of the haughty, and she exalted the heart of the poor; she

softened the rage of the mighty, she consoled the despair of

the oppressed. She fed the hungry, and she clothed the naked;

she took children to her arms and signed them with the Cross;

she administered the sacraments to dying lips, and laid the

cold body in the peaceful grave. Her first word was to welcome,

and her last word to forgive.

 

In the Dark Ages the European States were almost entirely

severed from one another; it was the Roman Church alone which gave

them one sentiment in common, and which united them within her fold.

In those days of violence and confusion, in those days of desolation and

despair, when a stranger was a thing which, like a leper or a

madman, any one might kill, when every gentleman was a highway

robber, when the only kind of lawsuit was a duel, hundreds of

men dressed in gowns of coarse dark stuff, with cords round

their waists and bare feet, travelled with impunity from castle

to castle, preaching a doctrine of peace and good will, holding

up an emblem of humility and sorrow, receiving confessions,

pronouncing penance or absolutions, soothing the agonies of a

wounded conscience, awakening terror in the hardened mind.

Parish churches were built: the baron and his vassals chanted

together the Kyrie Eleison, and bowed their heads together when

the bell sounded and the Host was raised. Here and there in the

sombre forest a band of those holy men encamped, and cut down

the trees and erected a building which was not only a house of

prayer, but also a kind of model farm. The monks worked in the

fields, and had their carpenters’ and their blacksmiths’ shops.

They copied out books in a fair hand: they painted Madonnas for

their chapel: they composed music for their choir: they

illuminated missals: they studied Arabic and Greek: they read

Cicero and Virgil: they preserved the Roman Law.

 

Bright, indeed, yet scanty are these gleams. In the long night of the

Dark Ages we look upon the earth, and only the convent and the

castle appear to be alive. In the convent the sound of

honourable labour mingles with the sound of prayer and praise.

In the castle sits the baron with his children on his lap, and

his wife, leaning on his shoulder: the troubadour sings, and

the page and demoiselle exchange a glance of love. The castle

is the home of music and chivalry and family affection. The

convent is the home of religion and of art. But the people

cower in their wooden huts, half starved, half frozen, and

wolves sniff at them through the chinks in the walls. The

convent prays, and the castle sings: the cottage hungers, and

groans, and dies. Such is the dark night: here and there a star

in the heaven: here and there a torch upon the earth: all else

is cloud and bitter wind. But now, behold the light glowing in

the East: it brightens, it broadens, the day is at hand! The

sun is rising, and will set no more: the castle and the convent

disappear: the world is illumined: freedom is restored. Italy

is a garden, and its blue sea shines with sails. New worlds are

discovered, new arts are invented: the merchants enrich Europe,

and their sons set her free. In a hall at Westminster, in a

redoubt at Bunker Hill, in a tennis court at Versailles, great

victories are won, and liberty at last descends even to the

poor French peasant growing grey in his furrow, even to the

negro picking cotton in the fields. Yet after all, how little

has been done! The sun shines as yet only on a corner of the

earth: Asia and Africa are buried in the night. And even here

in this island, where liberty was born, where wealth is

sustained by enterprise and industry, and war comes seldom, and

charity abounds, there are yet dark places where the sunlight

never enters, and where hope has never been: where day follows

day in never-changing toil, and where life leads only to the

prison, or the work house, or the grave. Yet a day will come

when the whole earth will be as civilised as Europe: a day will

come when these dark spots will pass away.

 

If we compare the present with the past, if we trace events at

all epochs to their causes, if we examine the elements of human

growth, we find that Nature has raised us to what we are, not

by fixed laws, but by provisional expedients, and that the

principle which in one age effected the advancement of a

nation, in the next age retarded the mental movement, or even

destroyed it altogether. War, despotism, slavery, and

superstition are now injurious to the progress of Europe, but

they were once the agents by which progress was produced. By

means of war the animated life was slowly raised upward in the

scale, and quadrupeds passed into man. By means of war the

human intelligence was brightened, and the affections were made

intense; weapons and tools were invented; foreign wives were

captured, and the marriages of blood relations were forbidden;

prisoners were tamed, and the women set free; prisoners were

exchanged, accompanied with presents; thus commerce was

established, and thus, by means of war, men were first brought

into amicable relations with one another. By war the tribes

were dispersed all over the world, and adopted various pursuits

according to the conditions by which they were surrounded. By

war the tribes were compressed into the nation. It was war

which founded the Chinese Empire. It was war which had locked

Babylonia, and Egypt, and India. It was war which developed the

genius of Greece. It was war which planted the Greek language

in Asia, and so rendered possible the spread of Christianity.

It was war which united the world in peace from the Cheviot

Hills to the Danube and the Euphrates. It was war which saved

Europe from the quietude of China. It was war which made Mecca

the centre of the East. It was war which united the barons in

the Crusades, and which destroyed the feudal system.

 

Even in recent times the action of war has been useful in condensing

scattered elements of nationality, and in liberating subject

populations. United Italy was formed directly or indirectly by

the war of 1859, 1866, and 187O. The last war realised the dreams

of German poets, and united the Teutonic nations more closely

than the shrewdest statesmen could have conceived to be

possible a few years ago. That same war, so calamitous for

France, will yet regenerate that great country, and make her

more prosperous than she has ever been. The American War

emancipated four million men, and decided for ever the question

as to whether the Union was a nationality or a league. But the

Crimean War was injurious to civilisation; it retarded a useful

and inevitable event. Turkey will some day be covered with

cornfields; Constantinople will some day be a manufacturing

town; but a generation has been lost. Statesmen and journalists

will learn in time that whatever is conquered for civilisation

is conquered for all. To preserve the Balance of Power was an

excellent policy in the Middle Ages, when war was the only

pursuit of a gentleman, and when conquest was the only ambition

of kings. It is now suited only for the highlands of Abyssinia.

The jealousy with which ‘true Britons’ regard the Russian

success in Central Asia is surely a very miserable feeling.

That a vast region of the earth should be opened, that robbery

and rapine and slave-making raids should be suppressed, that

waste-lands should be cultivated, that new stores of wealth

should be discovered, that