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




To maintain for himself, and to admit in his fellow citizen, a perfect
equality of privilege and station, is no longer the leading maxim of the
member of such a community. The rights of men are modified by their
condition. One order claims more than it is willing to yield; the other
must be ready to yield what it does not assume to itself; and it is with
good reason that Mr. Montesquieu gives to the principle of such governments
the name of _moderation_, not of _virtue_.

The elevation of one class is a moderated arrogance; the submission of the
other a limited deference. The first must be careful, by concealing the
invidious part of their distinction, to palliate what is grievous in the
public arrangement, and by their education, their cultivated manners, and
improved talents, to appear qualified for the stations they occupy. The
other, must be taught to yield, from respect and personal attachment, what
could not otherwise be extorted by force. When this moderation fails on
either side, the constitution totters. A populace enraged to mutiny, may
claim the right of equality to which they are admitted in democratical
states; or a nobility bent on dominion, may choose among themselves, or
find already pointed out to them, a sovereign, who, by advantages of
fortune, popularity, or abilities, is ready to seize for his own family,
that envied power which has already carried his order beyond the limits of
moderation, and infected particular men with a boundless ambition.
Monarchies have accordingly been found with the recent marks of
aristocracy. There, however, the monarch is only the first among the
nobles; he must be satisfied with a limited power; his subjects are ranged
into classes; he finds on every quarter a pretence to privilege that
circumscribes his authority; and he finds a force sufficient to confine his
administration within certain bounds of equity and determinate laws. Under
such governments, however, the love of equality is preposterous, and
moderation itself is unnecessary. The object of every rank is precedency,
and every order may display its advantages to their full extent. The
sovereign himself owes great part of his authority to the sounding titles
and the dazzling equipage which he exhibits in public. The subordinate
ranks lay claim to importance by a like exhibition, and for that purpose
carry in every instant the ensigns of their birth, or the ornaments of
their fortune. What else could mark out to the individual the relation in
which he stands to his fellow subjects, or distinguish the numberless ranks
that fill up the interval between the state of the sovereign and that of
the peasant? Or what else could, in states of a great extent, preserve any
appearance of order, among members disunited by ambition and interest, and
destined to form a community, without the sense of any common concern?

Monarchies are generally found where the state is enlarged, in population
and in territory, beyond the numbers and dimensions that are consistent
with republican government. Together with these circumstances, great
inequalities arise in the distribution of property; and the desire of
pre-eminence becomes the predominant passion. Every rank would exercise its
prerogative, and the sovereign is perpetually tempted to enlarge his own;
if subjects, who despair of precedence, plead for equality, he is willing
to favour their claims, and to aid them in reducing pretensions, with which
he himself is, on many occasions, obliged to contend. In the event of such
a policy, many invidious distinctions and grievances peculiar to
monarchical government, may, in appearance, be removed; but the state of
equality to which the subjects approach is that of slaves, equally
dependent on the will of a master, not that of freemen, in a condition to
maintain their own.

The principle of monarchy, according to Montesquieu, is honour. Men may
possess good qualities, elevation of mind, and fortitude; but the sense of
equality, that will hear no encroachment on the personal rights of the
meanest citizen; the indignant spirit, that will not court a protection,
nor accept as a favour what is due as a right; the public affection, which
is founded on the neglect of personal considerations, are neither
consistent with the preservation of the constitution, nor agreeable to the
habits acquired in any station assigned to its members.

Every condition is possessed of peculiar dignity, and points out a
propriety of conduct, which men of station are obliged to maintain. In the
commerce of superiors and inferiors, it is the object of ambition, and of
vanity, to refine on the advantages of rank; while, to facilitate the
intercourse of polite society, it is the aim of good breeding to disguise,
or reject them.

Though the objects of consideration are rather the dignities of station
than personal qualities; though friendship cannot be formed by mere
inclination, nor alliances by the mere choice of the heart; yet men so
united, and even without changing their order, are highly susceptible of
moral excellence, or liable to many different degrees of corruption. They
may act a vigorous part as members of the state, an amiable one in the
commerce of private society; or they may yield up their dignity as
citizens, even while they raise their arrogance and presumption as private
parties.

In monarchy, all orders of men derive their honours from the crown; but
they continue to hold them as a right, and they exercise a subordinate
power in the state, founded on the permanent rank they enjoy, and on the
attachment of those whom they are appointed to lead and protect. Though
they do not force themselves into national councils and public assemblies,
and though the name of senate is unknown, yet the sentiments they adopt
must have weight with the sovereign; and every individual, in his separate
capacity, in some measure, deliberates for his country. In whatever does
not derogate from his rank, he has an arm ready to serve the community; in
whatever alarms his sense of honour, he has aversions and dislikes, which
amount to a negative on the will of his prince.

Entangled together by the reciprocal ties of dependence and protection,
though not combined by the sense of a common interest, the subjects of
monarchy, like those of republics, find themselves occupied as the members
of an active society, and engaged to treat with their fellow creatures on a
liberal footing. If those principles of honour which save the individual
from servility in his own person, or from becoming an engine of oppression
in the hands of another, should fail; if they should give way to the maxims
of commerce, to the refinements of a supposed philosophy, or to the
misplaced ardours of a republican spirit; if they are betrayed by the
cowardice of subjects, or subdued by the ambition of princes; what must
become of the nations of Europe?

Despotism is monarchy corrupted, in which a court and a prince in
appearance remain, but in which every subordinate rank is destroyed; in
which the subject is told, that he has no rights; that he cannot possess
any property, nor fill any station independent of the momentary will of his
prince. These doctrines are founded on the maxims of conquest; they must be
inculcated with the whip and the sword; and are best received under the
terror of chains and imprisonment. Fear, therefore, is the principle which
qualifies the subject to occupy his station; and the sovereign, who holds
out the ensigns of terror so freely to others, has abundant reason to give
this passion a principal place with himself. That tenure which he has
devised for the rights of others, is soon applied to his own; and from his
eager desire to secure, or to extend his power, he finds it become, like
the fortunes of his people, a creature of mere imagination and unsettled
caprice.

Whilst we thus, with so much accuracy, can assign the ideal limits that may
distinguish constitutions of government, we find them, in reality, both in
respect to the principle and the form, variously blended together. In what
society are not men classed by external distinctions, as well as personal
qualities? In what state are they not actuated by a variety of principles;
justice, honour, moderation, and fear? It is the purpose of science not to
disguise this confusion in its object, but, in the multiplicity and
combination of particulars, to find the principal points which deserve our
attention; and which, being well understood, save us from the embarrassment
which the varieties of singular cases might otherwise create. In the same
degree in which governments require men to act from principles of virtue,
of honour, or of fear, they are more or less fully comprised under the
heads of republic, monarchy, or despotism, and the general theory is more
or less applicable to their particular case.

Forms of government, in fact, mutually approach or recede by many, and
often insensible gradations. Democracy, by admitting certain inequalities
of rank, approaches to aristocracy. In popular, as well as aristocratical
governments, particular men; by their personal authority, and sometimes by
the credit of their family, have maintained a species of monarchical power.
The monarch is limited in different degrees: even the despotic prince is
only that monarch whose subjects claim the fewest privileges, or who is
himself best prepared to subdue them by force. All these varieties are but
steps in the history of mankind, and, mark the fleeting and transient
situations through which they have passed; while supported by virtue, or
depressed by vice.

Perfect democracy and despotism appear to be the opposite extremes at which
constitutions of government farthest recede from each other. Under the
first, a perfect virtue is required; under the second, a total corruption
is supposed: yet, in point of mere form, there being nothing fixed in the
ranks and distinctions of men beyond the casual and temporary possession of
power, societies easily pass from a condition in which every individual has
an equal title to reign, into one in which they are equally destined to
serve. The same qualities in both, courage, popularity, address, and
military conduct, raise the ambitious to eminence. With these qualities,
the citizen or the slave easily passes from the ranks to the command of an
army, from an obscure to an illustrious station. In either, a single person
may rule with unlimited sway; and in both, the populace may break down
every barrier of order, and restraint of law.

If we suppose that the equality established among the subjects of a
despotic state has inspired its members with confidence, intrepidity, and
the love of justice; the despotic prince, having ceased to be an object of
fear, must, sink among the crowd. If, on the contrary, the personal
equality which is enjoyed by the members of a democratical state, should be
valued merely as an equal pretension to the objects of avarice and
ambition, the monarch may start up anew, and be supported by those who mean
to share in his profits. When the rapacious and mercenary assemble in
parties, it is of no consequence under what leader they inlist, whether
Caesar or Pompey; the hopes of rapine or pay are the only motives from which
they become attached to either.

In the disorder of corrupted societies, the scene has been frequently
changed from democracy to despotism, and from the last too, in its turn, to
the first. From amidst the democracy of corrupt men, and from a scene of
lawless confusion, the tyrant ascends a throne with arms reeking in blood.
But his abuses, or his weaknesses, in the station he has gained, in their
turn awaken and give way to the spirit of mutiny and revenge. The cries of
murder and desolation, which in the ordinary course of military government
terrified the subject in his private retreat, sound through the vaults, and
pierce the grates and iron doors of the seraglio. Democracy seems to revive
in a scene of wild disorder and tumult; but both the extremes are but the
transient fits of paroxysm or languor in a distempered state.

If men be anywhere arrived at this measure of depravity, there appears no
immediate hope of redress. Neither the ascendancy of the multitude, nor
that of the tyrant, will secure the administration of justice; neither the
license of mere tumult, nor the calm of dejection and servitude, will teach
the citizen that he was born for candour and affection to his fellow
creatures. And if the speculative would find that habitual state of war
which they are sometimes pleased to honour with the name of _the state of
nature_, they will find it in the contest that subsists between the
despotical prince and his subjects, not in the first approaches of a rude
and simple tribe to the condition and the domestic arrangement of nations.



AN ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF CIVIL SOCIETY.


* * * * *




PART SECOND.

OF THE HISTORY OF RUDE NATIONS.


* * * * *





SECTION I.

OF THE INFORMATIONS ON THIS SUBJECT WHICH ARE DERIVED FROM ANTIQUITY.


The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every
quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning.
Nations, distinguished by the possession of arts, and the felicity of their
political establishments, have been derived from a feeble original, and
still preserve in their story the indications of a slow and gradual
progress, by which this distinction was gained. The antiquities of every
people, however diversified, and however disguised, contain the same
information on this point.

In sacred history, we find the parents of the species, as yet a single
pair, sent forth to inherit the earth, and to force a subsistence for
themselves amidst the briars and thorns which were made to abound on its
surface. Their race, which was again reduced to a few, had to struggle with
the dangers that await a weak and infant species; and after many ages
elapsed, the most respectable nations took their rise from one or a few
families that had pastured their flocks in the desert.

The Grecians derive their own origin from unsettled tribes, whose frequent
migrations are a proof of the rude and infant state of their communities;
and whose warlike exploits, so much celebrated in story, only exhibit the
struggles with which they disputed the possession of a country they
afterwards, by their talent for fable, by their arts, and their policy,
rendered so famous in the history of mankind.

Italy must have been divided into many rude and feeble cantons, when a band
of robbers, as we are taught to consider them, found a secure settlement on
the banks of the Tiber, and when a people, yet composed only of one sex,
sustained the character of a nation. Rome, for many ages, saw, from her
walls, on every side, the territory of her enemies, and found as little to
check or to stifle the weakness of her infant power, as she did afterwards
to restrain the progress of her extended empire. Like a Tartar or a
Scythian horde, which had pitched on a settlement, this nascent community
was equal, if not superior, to every tribe in its neighbourhood; and the
oak which has covered the field with its shade, was once a feeble plant in
the nursery, and not to be distinguished from the weeds by which its early
growth was restrained.

The Gauls and the Germans are come to our knowledge with the marks of a
similar condition; and the inhabitants of Britain, at the time of the first
Roman invasions; resembled, in many things, the present natives of North
America: they were ignorant of agriculture; they painted their bodies; and
used for clothing the skins of beasts.

Such, therefore, appears to have been the commencement of history with all
nations, and in such circumstances are we to look for the original
character of mankind. The inquiry refers to a distant period, and every
conclusion should build on the facts which are preserved for our use. Our
method, notwithstanding, too frequently, is to rest the whole on
conjecture; to impute every advantage of our nature to those arts which we
ourselves possess; and to imagine, that a mere negation of all our virtues
is a sufficient description of man in his original state. We are ourselves
the supposed standards of politeness and civilization; and where our own
features do not appear, we apprehend, that there is nothing which deserves
to be known. But it is probable that here, as in many other cases, we are
ill qualified, from our supposed knowledge of causes, to prognosticate
effects, or to determine what must have been the properties and operations,
even of our own nature, in the absence of those circumstances in which we
have seen it engaged. Who would, from mere conjecture, suppose, that the
naked savage would be a coxcomb and a gamester? that he would be proud or
vain, without the distinctions of title and fortune? and that his principal
care would be to adorn his person, and to find an amusement? Even if it
could be supposed that he would thus share in our vices, and, in the midst
of his forest, vie with the follies which are practised in the town; yet no
one would be, so bold as to affirm, that he would likewise, in any
instance, excel us in talents and virtues; that he would have a
penetration, a force of imagination and elocution, an ardour of mind, an
affection and courage, which the arts, the discipline, and the policy of
few nations would be able to improve. Yet these particulars are a part in
the description which is delivered by those who have had opportunities of
seeing mankind in their rudest condition; and beyond the reach of such
testimony, we can neither safely take, nor pretend to give, information on
the subject.

If conjectures and opinions formed at a distance, have not sufficient
authority in the history of mankind, the domestic antiquities of every
nation must, for this very reason, be received with caution. They are, for
the most part, the mere conjectures or the fictions of subsequent ages; and
even where at first they contained some resemblance of truth, they still
vary with the imagination of those by whom they are transmitted, and in
every generation receive a different form. They are made to bear the stamp
of the times through which they have passed in the form of tradition, not
of the ages to which their pretended descriptions relate. The information
they bring, is not like the light reflected from a mirror, which delineates
the object from which it originally came; but, like rays that come broken
and dispersed from an opaque or unpolished surface, only give the colours
and features of the body from which they were last reflected.

When traditionary fables are rehearsed by the vulgar, they bear the marks
of a national character; and though mixed with absurdities, often raise the
imagination, and move the heart: when made the materials of poetry, and
adorned by the skill and the eloquence of an ardent and superior mind, they
instruct the understanding, as well as engage the passions. It is only in
the management of mere antiquaries, or stript of the ornaments which the
laws of history forbid them to wear, that they become even unfit to amuse
the fancy, or to serve any purpose whatever.

It were absurd to quote the fable of the Iliad or the Odyssey, the legends
of Hercules, Theseus, or Oedipus, as authorities in matter of fact relating
to the history of mankind; but they may, with great justice, be cited to
ascertain what were the conceptions and sentiments, of the age in which
they were composed, or to characterize the genius of that people, with
whose imaginations they were blended, and by whom they were fondly
rehearsed and admired.

In this manner fiction may be admitted to vouch for the genius of nations,
while history has nothing to offer that is entitled to credit. The Greek
fable accordingly conveying a character of its authors, throws light on
some ages of which no other record remains. The superiority of this people
is indeed in no circumstance more evident than in the strain of their
fictions, and in the story of those fabulous heroes, poets, and sages,
whose tales, being invented or embellished by an imagination already filled
with the subject for which the hero was celebrated, served to inflame that
ardent enthusiasm, with which so many different republics afterwards
proceeded in the pursuit of every national object.

It was no doubt of great advantage to those nations, that their system of
fable was original, and being already received in popular traditions,
served to diffuse those improvements of reason, imagination, and sentiment,
which were afterwards, by men of the finest talents, made on the fable
itself, or conveyed in its moral. The passions of the poet pervaded the
minds of the people, and the conceptions of men of genius, being
communicated to the vulgar, became the incentives of a national spirit.

A mythology borrowed from abroad, a literature founded on references to a
strange country, and fraught with foreign allusions, are much more confined
in their use: they speak to the learned alone; and though intended to
inform the understanding, and to mend the heart, may, by being confined to
a few, have an opposite effect. They may foster conceit on the ruins of
common sense, and render what was, at least innocently, sung by the
Athenian mariner at his oar, or rehearsed by the shepherd in attending his
flock, an occasion of vice, or the foundation of pedantry and scholastic
pride.

Our very learning, perhaps, where its influence extends, serves, in some
measure, to depress our national spirit. Our literature being derived from
nations of a different race, who flourished at a time when our ancestors
were in a state of barbarity, and consequently, when they were despised by
those who had attained to the literary arts, has given rise to a humbling
opinion, that we ourselves are the offspring of mean and contemptible
nations, with whom the human imagination and sentiment had no effect, till
the genius was in a manner inspired by examples, and directed by lessons
that were brought from abroad. The Romans, from whom our accounts are
chiefly derived, have admitted, in the rudeness of their own ancestors, a
system of virtues, which all simple nations perhaps equally possess; a
contempt of riches; love of their country, patience of hardship, danger,
and fatigue. They have, notwithstanding vilified, our ancestors for having
resembled their own; at least, in the defect of their arts, and in the
neglect of conveniencies which those arts are employed to procure.

It is from the Greek and the Roman historians, however, that we have not
only the most authentic and instructive, but even the most engaging
representations of the tribes from whom we descend. Those sublime and
intelligent writers understood human nature, and could collect its
features, and exhibit its characters, in every situation. They were ill
succeeded in this task by the early historians of modern Europe; who,
generally bred to the profession of monks, and confined to the monastic
life, applied themselves to record what they were pleased to denominate
facts, while they suffered the productions of genius to perish, and were
unable, either by the matter they selected, or the style of their
compositions, to give any representation of the active spirit of mankind in
any condition. With them, a narration was supposed to constitute history,
whilst it did not convey any knowledge of men; and history itself was
allowed to be complete, while, amidst the events and the succession of
princes that are recorded in the order of time, we are left to look in vain
for those characteristics of the understanding and the heart, which alone,
in every human transaction, render the story either engaging or useful.

We therefore willingly quit the history of our early ancestors, where Caesar
and Tacitus have dropped them; and perhaps till we come within the reach of
what is connected with present affairs, and makes a part in the system on
which we now proceed, have little reason to expect any subject to interest
or inform the mind. We have no reason, however, from hence to conclude,
that the matter itself was more barren, or the scene of human affairs less
interesting, in modern Europe, than it has been on every stage where
mankind were engaged to exhibit the movements of the heart, the efforts of
generosity, magnanimity, and courage.

The trial of what those ages contained, is not even fairly made, when men
of genius and distinguished abilities, with the accomplishments of a
learned and a polished age, collect the materials they have found, and,
with the greatest success, connect the story of illiterate ages with
transactions of a later date. It is difficult even for them, under the
names which are applied in a new state of society, to convey a just
apprehension of what mankind were, in situations so different, and in times
so remote from their own.

In deriving from historians of this character the instruction which their
writings are fit to bestow, we are frequently to forget the general terms
that are employed, in order to collect the real manners of any age from the
minute circumstances that are occasionally presented. The titles of
_Royal_ and _Noble_ were applicable to the families of Tarquin,
Collatinus, and Cincinnatus; but Lucretia was employed in domestic industry
with her maids, and Cincinnatus followed the plough. The dignities, and
even the offices, of civil society, were known many ages ago, in Europe, by
their present appellations; but we find in the history of England, that a
king and his court being assembled to solemnize a festival, an outlaw, who
had subsisted by robbery, came to share in the feast. The king himself
arose to force this unworthy guest from the company; a scuffle ensued
between them; and the king was killed. [Footnote: Hume's History, chap. 8.
p. 278] A chancellor and prime minister, whose magnificence and sumptuous
furniture were the subject of admiration and envy, had his apartments
covered every day in winter with clean straw and hay, and in summer with
green rushes or boughs. Even the sovereign himself, in those ages, was
provided with forage for his bed. [Footnote: Hume's History, chap. 8. p.73]
These picturesque features, and characteristical strokes of the times,
recal the imagination from the supposed distinction of monarch and subject,
to that state of rough familiarity in which our ancestors lived, and under
which they acted, with a view to objects, and on principles of conduct,
which we seldom comprehend, when we are employed to record their
transactions, or to study their characters.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.