Book: An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition

A >> Adam Ferguson, L.L.D. >> An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition




It is in this woful condition that mankind, being slavish, interested,
insidious, deceitful, and bloody, bear marks, if not of the least curable,
surely of the most lamentable sort of corruption. [Footnote: Chardin's
Travels.] Among them, war is the mere practice of rapine, to enrich the
individual; commerce is turned into a system of snares and impositions; and
government by turns oppressive or weak. It were happy for the human race,
when guided by interest, and not governed by laws, that being split into
nations of a moderate extent, they found in every canton some natural bar
to its farther enlargement, and met with occupation enough in maintaining
their independence, without being able to extend their dominion.

There is not disparity of rank, among men in rude ages, sufficient to give
their communities the form of legal monarchy; and in a territory of
considerable extent, when united under one head, the warlike and turbulent
spirit of its inhabitants seems to require the bridle of despotism and
military force. Where any degree of freedom remains, the powers of the
prince are, as they were in most of the rude monarchies of Europe,
extremely precarious, and depend chiefly on his personal character: where,
on the contrary, the powers of the prince are above the control of his
people, they are likewise above the restrictions of justice. Rapacity and
terror become the predominant motives of conduct, and form the character of
the only parties into which mankind are divided; that of the oppressor, and
that of the oppressed.

This calamity threatened Europe for ages, under the conquest and settlement
of its new inhabitants. [Footnote: See Hume's History of the Tudors. There
seemed to be nothing wanting to establish a perfect despotism in that
house, but a few regiments of troops under the command of the crown.] It
has actually taken place in Asia, where similar conquests have been made;
and even without the ordinary opiates of effeminacy, or a servile weakness,
founded on luxury, it has surprised the Tartar on his wain, in the rear of
his herds. Among this people, in the heart of a great continent, bold and
enterprising warriors arose; they subdued by surprise, or superior
abilities, the contiguous hordes; they gained, in their progress,
accessions of numbers and of strength; and, like a torrent increasing as it
descends, became too strong for any bar that could be opposed to their
passage. The conquering tribe, during a succession of ages, furnished the
prince with his guards; and while they themselves were allowed to share in
its spoils, were the voluntary tools of oppression. In this manner has
despotism and corruption found their way into regions so much renowned for
the wild freedom of nature: a power which was the terror of every
effeminate province is disarmed, and the nursery of nations is itself gone
to decay. [Footnote: See the History of the Huns.]

Where rude nations escape this calamity, they require the exercise of
foreign wars to maintain domestic peace; when no enemy appears from abroad,
they have leisure for private feud, and employ that courage in their
dissentions at home, which in time of war is employed in defence of their
country.

"Among the Gauls," says Caesar, "there are subdivisions, not only in every
nation, and in every district and village, but almost in every house, every
one must fly to some patron for protection." [Footnote: De Bello Gallico,
lib. 6.] In this distribution of parties, not only the feuds of clans, but
the quarrels of families, even the differences and competitions of
individuals, are decided by force. The sovereign, when unassisted by
superstition, endeavours in vain to employ his jurisdiction, or to procure
a submission to the decisions of law. By a people who are accustomed to owe
their possessions to violence, and who despise fortune itself without the
reputation of courage, no umpire is admitted but the sword. Scipio offered
his arbitration to terminate the competition of two Spaniards in a disputed
succession: "That," said they, "we have already refused to our relations:
we do not submit our difference to the judgment of men; and even among the
gods, we appeal to Mars alone." [Footnote: Livy.]

It is well known that the nations of Europe carried this mode of proceeding
to a degree of formality unheard of in other parts of the world: the civil
and criminal judge could, in most cases, do no more than appoint the lists,
and leave the parties to decide their cause by the combat: they apprehended
that the victor had a verdict of the gods in his favour: and when they
dropped in any instance this extraordinary form of process, they
substituted in its place some other more capricious appeal to chance; in
which they likewise thought that the judgment of the gods was declared.

The fierce nations of Europe were even fond of the combat, as an exercise
and a sport. In the absence of real quarrels, companions challenged each
other to a trial of skill, in which one of them frequently perished. When
Scipio celebrated the funeral of his father and his uncle, the Spaniards
came in pairs to fight, and by a public exhibition of their duels, to
increase the solemnity. [Footnote: Livy, lib. 3.]

In this wild and lawless state, where the effects of true religion would
have been so desirable, and so salutary, superstition frequently disputes
the ascendant even with the admiration of valour; and an order of men, like
the Druids among the ancient Gauls and Britons, [Footnote: Caesar.] or some
pretender to divination, as at the Cape of Good Hope, finds, in the credit
which is paid to his sorcery, a way to the possession of power: his magic
wand comes in competition with the sword itself; and, in the manner of the
Druids, gives the first rudiments of civil government to some, or, like the
supposed descendant of the sun among the Natchez, and the Lama among the
Tartars, to others, an early taste of despotism and absolute slavery.

We are generally at a loss to conceive how mankind can subsist under
customs and manners extremely different from our own; and we are apt to
exaggerate the misery of barbarous times, by an imagination of what we
ourselves should suffer in a situation to which we are not accustomed. But
every age hath its consolations, as well as its sufferings. [Footnote:
Priscus, when employed on an embassy to Attila, was accosted in Greek, by a
person who wore the dress of a Scythian. Having expressed surprise, and
being desirous to know the cause of his stay in so wild a company, was
told, that this Greek had been a captive, and for some time a slave, till
he obtained his liberty in reward of some remarkable action. "I live more
happily here," says he, "than ever I did under the Roman government: for
they who live with the Scythians, if they can endure the fatigues of war,
have nothing else to molest them; they enjoy their possessions undisturbed;
whereas you are continually a prey to foreign enemies, or to bad
government; you are forbid to carry arms in your own defence; you suffer
from the remissness and ill conduct of those who are appointed to protect
you; the evils of peace are even worse than those of war; no punishment is
ever inflicted on the powerful or the rich; no mercy is shown to the poor;
although your institutions Footnote: were wisely devised, yet, in the
management of corrupted men, their effects are pernicious and cruel."
_Excerpta de legationibus._] In the interval of occasional outrages,
the friendly intercourse of men, even in their rudest condition, is
affectionate and happy. [Footnote: D'Arvieux's History of the wild Arabs.]
In rude ages the persons and properties of individuals are secure; because
each has a friend, as well as an enemy; and if the one is disposed to
molest, the other is ready to protect; and the very admiration of valour,
which in some instances tends to sanctify violence, inspires likewise
certain maxims of generosity and honour, that tend to prevent the
commission of wrongs.

Men bear with the defects of their policy, as they do with hardships and
inconveniencies in their manner of living. The alarms and the fatigues of
war become a necessary recreation to those who are accustomed to them, and
who have the tone of their passions raised above less animating or trying
occasions. Old men, among the courtiers of Attila, wept when they heard of
heroic deeds, which they themselves could no longer perform. [Footnote:
Ibid.] And among the Celtic nations, when age rendered the warrior unfit
for his former toils, it was the custom, in order to abridge the languors
of a listless and inactive life, to sue for death at the hands of his
friends. [Footnote:
Ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos,
Impatiens aevi spernit novisse senectam.
Silius, lib. i. 225.]

With all this ferocity of spirit, the rude nations of the west were subdued
by the policy and more regular warfare of the Romans. The point of honour
which the barbarians of Europe adopted as individuals, exposed them to a
peculiar disadvantage, by rendering them, even in their national wars,
averse to assailing their enemy by surprise, or taking the benefit of
stratagem; and though separately bold and intrepid, yet, like other rude
nations, they were, when assembled in great bodies, addicted to
superstition, and subject to panics.

They were, from a consciousness of their personal courage and force,
sanguine on the eve of battle; they were, beyond the bounds of moderation,
elated on success, and dejected in adversity; and being disposed to
consider every event as a judgment of the gods, they were never qualified
by an uniform application or prudence to make the most of their forces, to
repair their misfortunes, or to improve their advantages.

Resigned to the government of affection and passion, they were generous and
faithful where they had fixed an attachment; implacable, froward, and
cruel, where they had conceived a dislike: addicted to debauchery, and the
immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, they deliberated on the affairs of
state in the heat of their riot; and in the same dangerous moments,
conceived the designs of military enterprise, or terminated their domestic
dissentions by the dagger or the sword.

In their wars they preferred death to captivity. The victorious armies of
the Romans, in entering a town by assault, or in forcing an encampment,
have found the mother in the act of destroying her children, that they
might not be taken; and the dagger of the parent, red with the blood of his
family, ready to be plunged at last into his own breast. [Footnote: Liv.
lib. xli. 11. Dio Cass.]

In all these particulars, we perceive that vigour of spirit, which renders
disorder itself respectable, and which qualifies men, if fortunate in their
situation, to lay the basis of domestic liberty, as well as to maintain
against foreign enemies their national independence and freedom.


AN ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY


* * * * *




PART THIRD.

OF THE HISTORY OF POLICY AND ARTS.


* * * * *




SECTION I.

OF THE INFLUENCES OF CLIMATE AND SITUATION


What we have hitherto observed on the condition and manners of nations,
though chiefly derived from what has passed in the temperate climates, may,
in some measure, be applied to the rude state of mankind In every part of
the earth: but if we intend to pursue the history of our species in its
further attainments, we may soon enter on subjects which will confine our
observation to narrower limits. The genius of political wisdom, and of
civil arts, appears to have chosen his seats in particular tracts of the
earth, and to have selected his favourites in particular races of men. Man,
in his animal capacity, is qualified to subsist in every climate. He reigns
with the lion and the tyger under the equatorial heats of the sun, or he
associates with the bear and the reindeer beyond the polar system. His
versatile disposition fits him to assume the habits of either condition, or
his talent for arts enables him to supply its defects. The intermediate
climates, however, appear most to favour his nature; and in whatever manner
we account for the fact, it cannot be doubted, that this animal has always
attained to the principal honours of his species within the temperate zone.
The arts, which he has on this scene repeatedly invented, the extent of his
reason, the fertility of his fancy, and the force of his genius in
literature, commerce, policy, and war, sufficiently declare either a
distinguished advantage of situation, or a natural superiority of mind.

The most remarkable races of men, it is true, have been rude before they
were polished. They have in some cases returned to rudeness again; and it
is not from the actual possession of arts, science, or policy, that we are
to pronounce of their genius.

There is a vigour, a reach of capacity, and a sensibility of mind, which
may characterize as well the savage as the citizen, the slave as well as
the master; and the same powers of the mind may be turned to a variety of
purposes. A modern Greek, perhaps, is mischievous, slavish, and cunning,
from the same animated temperament that made his ancestor ardent,
ingenious, and bold, in the camp, or in the council of his nation. A
modern Italian is distinguished by sensibility, quickness, and art, while
he employs on trifles the capacity of an ancient Roman; and exhibits now,
in the scene of amusement, and in the search of a frivolous applause, that
fire, and those passions, with which Gracchus burned in the forum, and
shook the assemblies of a severer people.

The commercial and lucrative arts have been, in some climates, the
principal object of mankind, and have been retained through every disaster;
in others, even under all the fluctuations of fortune, they have still been
neglected; while in the temperate climates of Europe and Asia, they have
had their ages of admiration as well as contempt.

In one state of society arts are slighted, from that very ardour of mind,
and principle of activity, by which, in another, they are practised with
the greatest success. While men are engrossed by their passions, heated and
roused by the struggles and dangers of their country; while the trumpet
sounds or the alarm of social engagement is rung, and the heart beats high,
it were a mark of dulness, or of an abject spirit, to find leisure for the
study of ease, or the pursuit of improvements, which have mere convenience
or ease for their object.

The frequent vicissitudes and reverses of fortune, which nations have
experienced on that very ground where the arts have prospered, are probably
the effects of a busy, inventive, and versatile spirit, by which men have
carried every national change to extremes. They have raised the fabric of
despotic empire to its greatest height, where they had best understood the
foundations of freedom. They perished in the flames which they themselves
had kindled; and they only, perhaps, were capable of displaying, by turns,
the greatest improvements, or the lowest corruptions, to which the human
mind can be brought.

On this scene, mankind have twice, within the compass of history, ascended
from rude beginnings to very high degrees of refinement. In every age,
whether destined by its temporary disposition to build, or to destroy, they
have left the vestiges of an active and vehement spirit. The pavement and
the ruins of Rome are buried in dust, shaken from the feet of barbarians,
who trod with contempt on the refinements of luxury, and spurned those
arts, the use of which it was reserved for the posterity of the same people
to discover and to admire. The tents of the wild Arab are even now pitched
among the ruins of magnificent cities; and the waste fields which border on
Palestine and Syria, are perhaps become again the nursery of infant
nations. The chieftain of an Arab tribe, like the founder of Rome, may have
already fixed the roots of a plant that is to flourish in some future
period, or laid the foundations of a fabric, that will attain to its
grandeur in some distant age.

Great part of Africa has been always unknown; but the silence of fame, on
the subject of its revolutions, is an argument, where no other proof can be
found, of weakness in the genius of its people. The torrid zone, every
where round the globe, however known to the geographer, has furnished few
materials for history; and though in many places supplied with the arts of
life in no contemptible degree, has no where matured the more important
projects of political wisdom, nor inspired the virtues which are connected
with freedom, and which are required in the conduct of civil affairs.

It was indeed in the torrid zone that mere arts of mechanism and
manufacture were found, among the inhabitants of the new world, to have
made the greatest advance: it is in India, and in the regions of this
hemisphere, which are visited by the vertical sun, that the arts of
manufacture, and the practice of commerce, are of the greatest antiquity,
and have survived, with the smallest diminution, the ruins of time, and the
revolutions of empire.

The sun, it seems, which ripens the pineapple and the tamarind, inspires a
degree of mildness that can even assuage the rigours of despotical
government: and such is the effect of a gentle and pacific disposition in
the natives of the east, that no conquest, no irruption of barbarians,
terminates, as they did among the stubborn natives of Europe, by a total
destruction of what the love of ease and of pleasure had produced.

Transferred, without any great struggle, from one master to another, the
natives of India are ready, upon every change, to pursue their industry, to
acquiesce in the enjoyment of life, and the hopes of animal pleasure: the
wars of conquest are not prolonged to exasperate the parties engaged in
them, or to desolate the land for which those parties contend: even the
barbarous invader leaves untouched the commercial settlement which has not
provoked his rage: though master of opulent cities, he only encamps, in
their neighbourhood, and leaves to his heirs the option of entering, by
degrees, on the pleasures, the vices, and the pageantries which his
acquisitions afford: his successors, still more than himself, are disposed
to foster the hive, in proportion as they taste more of its sweets; and
they spare the inhabitant, together with his dwelling, as they spare the
herd or the stall, of which they are become the proprietors.

The modern description of India is a repetition of the ancient, and the
present state of China is derived from a distant antiquity, to which there
is no parallel in the history of mankind. The succession of monarchs has
been changed; but no revolutions have affected the state. The African and
the Samoiede are not more uniform in their ignorance and barbarity, than
the Chinese and the Indian, if we may credit their own story, have been in
the practice of manufacture, and in the observance of a certain police,
which was calculated only to regulate their traffic, and to protect them in
their application to servile or lucrative arts.

If we pass from these general representations of what mankind have done, to
the more minute description of the animal himself, as he has occupied
different climates, and is diversified in his temper, complexion, and
character, we shall find a variety of genius corresponding to the effects
of his conduct, and the result of his story.

Man, in the perfection of his natural faculties, is quick and delicate in
his sensibility; extensive and various in his imaginations and reflections;
attentive, penetrating, and subtile, in what relates to his fellow
creatures; firm and ardent in his purposes; devoted to friendship or to
enmity; jealous of his independence and his honour, which he will not
relinquish for safety or for profit: under all his corruptions or
improvements, he retains his natural sensibility, if not his force; and his
commerce is a blessing or a curse, according to the direction his mind has
received.

But under the extremes of heat or of cold, the active range of the human
soul appears to be limited; and men are of inferior importance, either as
friends, or as enemies. In the one extreme, they are dull and slow,
moderate in their desires, regular, and pacific in their manner of life; in
the other, they are feverish in their passions, weak in their judgments,
and addicted by temperament, to animal pleasure. In both the heart is
mercenary, and makes important concessions for childish bribes: in both the
spirit is prepared for servitude: in the one it is subdued by fear of the
future; in the other it is not roused even by its sense of the present.

The nations of Europe who would settle or conquer on the south or the north
of their own happier climates, find little resistance: they extend their
dominion at pleasure, and find no where a limit but in the ocean, and in
the satiety of conquest. With few of the pangs and the struggles that
precede the reduction of nations, mighty provinces have been successively
annexed to the territory of Russia; and its sovereign, who accounts within
his domain, entire tribes, with whom perhaps none of his emissaries have
ever conversed, despatched a few geometers to extend his empire, and thus
to execute a project, in which the Romans were obliged to employ their
consuls and their legions. [Footnote: See Russian Atlas.] These modern
conquerors complain of rebellion, where they meet with repugnance; and are
surprised at being treated as enemies, where they come to impose their
tribute.

It appears, however, that on the shores of the Eastern sea, they have met
with nations [Footnote: The Tchutzi.] who have questioned their title to
reign, and who have considered the requisition of a tax as the demand of
effects for nothing. Here perhaps may be found the genius of ancient
Europe; and under its name of ferocity, the spirit of national
independence; [Footnote: Notes to the Genealogical History of the Tartars,
vouched by Strahlenberg.] that spirit which disputed its ground in the west
with the victorious armies of Rome, and baffled the attempts of the Persian
monarchs to comprehend the villages of Greece within the bounds of their
extensive dominion.

The great and striking diversities which obtain betwixt the inhabitants of
climates far removed from each other, are, like the varieties of other
animals in different regions, easily observed. The horse and the reindeer
are just emblems of the Arab and the Laplander: the native of Arabia, like
the animal for whose race his country is famed, whether wild in the woods,
or tutored by art, is lively, active, and fervent in the exercise on which
he is bent. This race of men, in their rude state, fly to the desert for
freedom, and in roving bands alarm the frontiers of empire, and strike a
terror in the province to which their moving encampments advance.
[Footnote: D'Arvieux.] When roused by the prospect of conquest, or disposed
to act on a plan, they spread their dominion, and their system of
imagination, over mighty tracts of the earth: when possessed of property
and of settlement, they set the example of a lively invention, and superior
ingenuity, in the practice of arts, and the study of science. The
Laplander, on the contrary, like the associate of his climate, is hardy,
indefatigable, and patient of famine; dull rather than tame; serviceable in
a particular tract; and incapable of change. Whole nations continue from
age to age in the same condition, and, with immoveable phlegm, submit to
the appellations of _Dane_, of _Swede_, or of _Muscovite_, according
to the land they inhabit; and suffer their country to be severed
like a common, by the line on which those nations have traced their limits
of empire.

It is not in the extremes alone that these varieties of genius may be
clearly distinguished. Their continual change keeps pace with the
variations of climate with which we suppose them connected: and though
certain degrees of capacity, penetration, and ardour, are not the lot of
entire nations, nor the vulgar properties of any people; yet their unequal
frequency, and unequal measure, in different countries, are sufficiently
manifest from the manners, the tone of conversation, the talent for
business, amusement, and the literary composition, which predominate in
each.

It is to the southern nations of Europe, both ancient and modern, that we
owe the invention and embellishment of that mythology, and those early
traditions, which continue to furnish the materials of fancy, and the field
of poetic allusion. To them we owe the romantic tales of chivalry, as well
as the subsequent models of a more rational style, by which the heart and
the imagination are kindled, and the understanding informed.

The fruits of industry have abounded most in the north, and the study of
science has here received its most solid improvements: the efforts of
imagination and sentiment were most frequent and most successful in the
south. While the shores of the Baltic became famed for the studies of
Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler, those of the Mediterranean were
celebrated for giving birth to men of genius in all its variety, and for
having abounded with poets and historians, as well as with men of science.

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