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 By S. TEACKLE WALLIS, Esq 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST 
 
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 PRINTED BY JOHN MURPHY, 
 
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• Baltimore, January 27, 1844. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 The pleasure and interest with which the Managers of Calvert Institute 
 listened to your Lecture of the 24th ult. were such as to determine them to 
 request a copy of it for publication. 
 
 In now making that request, we beg to couple with it the expression of our 
 sincere admiration of the ability displayed in the Lecture, and the assurance of 
 our gratification to find its merits so cordially appreciated by all who heard it. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 M. Courtney Jenkins, 
 
 T. Parkin Scott, 
 
 Committee on behalf of Managers Calvert Instit. 
 To 
 
 S. Teackle Wallis, Esq. 
 
 Baltimore, 27th January, 1844. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 My Lecture of Wednesday evening last having been (as you are aware) 
 written for delivery, not publication, is more unworthy, in many particulars, than 
 I could wish, of the favorable consideration so kindly expressed in your note. I 
 am happy, however, to place it at your disposal, and beg you to believe that 
 I appreciate your partial courtesy. 
 
 Very truly and respectfully, yours, 
 
 S, Teackle Wallis. 
 M. Courtney Jenkins, Esq. 
 
 T. Parkin Scott, Esq. 
 
 Committee, ^-c. 
 
LECTURE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, 
 
 AND SOME OF THE 
 
 |)opular (Errors toljulj are Jounbeb on It. 
 
 The poet who told us, that " the proper study of mankind is 
 man," would surely have been frightened from his propriety, 
 had it entered into his imagination to conceive the extent to 
 which, in a single century, the application of his maxim was to 
 carry us. Few men there are, in these days, who have not a 
 notion of their own, as to the going of things gone, and the 
 coming of things future, and the hearing of all things past, pre- 
 sent, and to come, upon the fortunes of the human family. To 
 almost every one, the day in which we live atFords a kind of 
 platform, upon which a mystic thing, denominated the spirit of 
 the age, comes forward, and like the chorus of an ancient tra-, 
 gedy, pronounces a mingled strain of chronicle and prophecy. 
 Different as may be the garb this spirit wears, according to the 
 fancy which has clothed it, there is one point upon which it 
 seems to speak, in the same tones, to all ; a point which displays 
 the actual spirit of the age in perhaps the least equivocal of its 
 phases — I mean its self-glorification. It is astonishing to see 
 the comparative unanimity with which the framers of current 
 philosophy and the guides of popular opinion unite in teaching 
 their disciples, that the present age is the consummation of all 
 the past, and that the spirit of progress which chiefly marks it, 
 is destined, inevitably, to lead our race to the consummation of 
 its perfection. I propose to examine these notions with a little 
 closeness ; to test the accuracy of the premises upon which 
 they rest, and to see how far their promulgation is consistent 
 with just social views, and the interest of our country, whose 
 citizens are so often favored with them, from press and lecture- 
 room. 
 
6 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 An intelligent audience does not need to be reminded that, 
 early in the last century, a new branch of study was called into 
 existence, which now bears the imposing title of the Philosophy 
 of History. Cultivated, towards the close of that century, and 
 the beginning of the present, by many of the first minds in Ger- 
 man literature, it grew to assume an important place among the 
 elements of enlightened knowledge. Since then, it has entered 
 extensively into the best efforts of French philosophy, and is 
 now beginning to make itself popular in England. It must be 
 admitted, however, that in this, as in all matters of enlarged and 
 profound generalization, the continent is greatly in advance. 
 
 The Philosopher of History looks upon human nature as a 
 vast science, of which the world furnishes and has furnished, in 
 the action of nations and individuals, but a series of protracted 
 experiments. He endeavors, and in his theory professes, to place 
 himself upon an elevation above humanity, calmly looking down 
 upon its movements throughout all time, as if he were beyond 
 the sphere of its revolutions, and the influence of its gravitation. 
 He takes mankind from their earliest recorded or imagined 
 actions, down to the living present, tracing in their career, what 
 seems to him to be the continuous outline of the world's life, and 
 the progression, relation and law of the principles set forth in it. 
 In the past and the present he finds sown the seeds of the future, 
 and looking upon humanity as one great problem, he solves the 
 mysteries of destiny, by applying the axioms of history to their 
 elucidation. 
 
 It will be seen, from this faint general notion, that the duty 
 which the Philosopher of History assumes, is one, which must 
 task, to their utmost limit, the highest faculties of the brightest 
 intellect. Men, of prominent abilities, have devoted years of 
 arduous and patient labor to the illustration of the wonders of 
 Providence, in the minutest, and, apparently, the most trivial of 
 liis works* Yet, after all those years, they have left their sub- 
 jects still unexhausted, and the toil of each succeeding student has 
 but served to open new vistas of wonder and wisdom, for still 
 succeeding laborers to explore. The extraordinary muscular 
 adaptations which the human hand displays — the miraculous 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 7 
 
 combinations which are involved in the organs of vision — the 
 mysteries which still slumber, unexplained, in the nervous sys- 
 tem — the phenomena which attend the planting, the growth, the 
 blossoming, the reproduction of a little wayside flower — all 
 these things have, in their turn, pointed the studies of long life- 
 times, and are full of unintelligible wonders still. What then, is 
 the interminable distance which he must travel, who begins 
 the journey of thought with the creation of man — who strives to 
 trace, through all the developments of human conduct — through 
 all the countless revolutions— contradictions — conflicts — con- 
 fusion of rolling ages, the ebbing and flowing of that measureless 
 ocean, the providence of God! Ocean did I call it? Rather 
 let it be counted as a mighty wind — which has passed over 
 human existence — unseen — the direction and impetus whereof 
 are to be gathered, only, from the marks of its progress which 
 have survived through time. 
 
 Not only is the subject, in itself, a vast one — but many of the 
 data, on which its scientific conclusions are to rest, have their 
 basis upon very clouds. Mutable as even the face of nature is, 
 through a succession of long ages — it is permanence itself, to 
 the changing fate of man. Let history be as busy as she may — 
 she is but a gatherer of fragments. She is a chronicler, that 
 tells scarce half The incidents of human existence — of man's 
 national, not less than his individual career — what security have 
 they of perpetuation — or, if they be treasured, dimly in memory, 
 what security have they that they will be above the frailties of 
 recollection — the metamorphosis of tradition — the chances of 
 perversion, by ignorance or wilful falsehood } Recent travellers 
 inform us that the honey of Mount Hymettus, in Attica, famous 
 for its excellence in Grecian song, is still as sweetly gathered 
 from the same fragrant thyme, as when the bards of Greece 
 were there to taste and praise it. Nature, here, proves to us, 
 that the poet's tale was truth. She is his witness, after two 
 thousand years. But who shall say of the men who lived in the 
 shadow of that classic hill, that their story, solemn, grave, elo- 
 quent as it may be, is as free from peradventure, as is that of the 
 little insect that buzzed among their g^ardens ^ Who shall say 
 
O I.ECTURE ON THE 
 
 that their good deeds and their evil — national and individual — 
 their political n)ovements and the springs and principles there- 
 of — have come down to us — all or one half of them — faithfully 
 as they were ? Who shall tell, that facts, which were but trifles, 
 have not been made the foundation of whole historic systems — 
 while others have gone into oblivion, lost or hidden, which 
 would have made sunlight, all over the dark places of their in- 
 dividual or national progress? Over how many of the best land- 
 marks, by which historical philosophy might have been guided, 
 may not the sands of ages have drifted altogether? There- 
 searches of antiquarians have discovered and are discovering, 
 yearly, in the southern portions of our own continent, traces of 
 mighty nations, whose arts, and sciences, and civil polity, had 
 reached, in many particulars, as high a point, as modern intellect 
 has been able to attain. The elaborate history of Mr. Prescott, 
 and the instructive productions of Stephens, Norman, and May- 
 er, have but recently placed the English reader in possession of 
 facts, as to the former inhabitants of Mexico, which astound us 
 by the wonders they disclose. Each succeeding step, which 
 oriental learning takes, among the chronicles of Egypt and Asia, 
 reveals some mighty fragment of a system, before untold of : 
 and leaves us at sea, as to the probable extent of a social pro- 
 gress, which, mighty as it was, had sunk out of human memory. 
 
 While then, I do not mean, for one moment, to plunge my 
 auditory or myself into the chaos of historical skepticism, I 
 nevertheless submit the views to which I have adverted, in order 
 that we may see how easily and how far the wisest may be led 
 away from certainty, or rational probability, in their deductions, 
 by the very wildness, or imperfection, or absence of the pre- 
 mises, on whicli they should depend. 
 
 There are other things too, besides the vastness of the sub- 
 ject and the incertitude of its elements, which deserve to be 
 noticed in this connection. Generalization is always a critical 
 business. It is one of the I ugliest efforts of mind, and likewise 
 among the most perilous. Viewed in one light, facts may seem 
 the exponent? of one set of principles— seen under other circum- 
 stances, a little distorted, or varied, or colored, they may be 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 9 
 
 made to uphold another. Drop one material fact from a series, 
 and it may render the most elaborate generalization worthless. 
 Give undue importance to one that is immaterial, and it may 
 produce, in an opposite way, the same results precisely. Add 
 to this too, the invariable tendency of human nature, from the 
 days of Procrustes to the present— exemplified in all, from the 
 son of the king on his throne, to the son of Crispin in his stall — 
 to make the sleeper fit the bed, the foot fit the shoe, the fact fit 
 the theory. Every speculative man has his own peculiar 
 notions of human nature, its whence and its whither, its progress 
 and tendency. As a rule, almost without exception, these 
 notions form the mould, into which his generalizations are apt 
 to run, and the bent of his mind will be, to discover a wonderful 
 harmony, between his own preconceived opinions and the facts 
 which history may have evolved. The fatalist and the believer 
 in Providential interposition, the perfectionist and the doubter 
 of human excellence, the radical and the conservative, the Chris- 
 tian reasoner and the skeptic, all find, or believe, or say they 
 find food, for their antagonistical speculations and deductions, in 
 ^ the same facts, the same histories, the same outline of human 
 
 progress. 
 
 " Such tricks hath strong imagination !" 
 
 It is no wonder then, from all these causes, that although the 
 great men who have labored in the Philosophy of History have 
 called it " science" — as indeed almost every thing is now called, 
 which looks like a system — it does not yet bid fair to rival the 
 mathematics, in the infallibility of its axioms or its solutions. 
 
 Numerous, and indeed amusing in their conflict, are the views 
 of human nature, its course and destiny, which different minds 
 have elicited. Throwing aside minor and more metaphysical 
 differences, which, though interesting to the student, would be 
 tedious in the lecturer, we will look at the conclusions merely, 
 which have been reached. One set of theorists look upon man 
 as having been almost perfect before his fall — and consider that 
 the true Philosophy of History consists, in watching his steady 
 progress back, from the day of his transgression, towards the 
 degree of perfection which he lost. Of this theory — sustained 
 
 2 
 
10 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 however by many honorable names in German literature — Fre- 
 derick Schlegel is, to the American public, the chief oracle — 
 his work having been translated and freely distributed through 
 our country. I will not pause, now, to resist this doctrine, but 
 will merely observe, in anticipation, as it strikes me, that if 
 humanity has really advanced towards its lost birthright, the 
 very trains of reasoning, which the philosopher relies on, show 
 that it has frequently been by a system of advance, which bears 
 a wondrous similitude to retrogradation. The same observation 
 may justly be made, I think, upon another class of writers, who 
 start with the idea, that man was originally a savage, and con- 
 sider that philosophical history traces him from that point on- 
 ward — marching ever towards ultimate perfection. This theory, 
 likewise, in modern times, the birth of German, or perhaps Italian 
 ingenuity, is now current in the French school — modified in its 
 details, according to the very varying tenets, theological and 
 metaphysical, of its particular advocates. Between the two 
 theories thus named, it seems that History need not trouble her- 
 self to make a selection — for, if both admit that mankind are 
 always advancing towards perfection — it matters little, in a 
 purely human point of view, whether it is a condition they have 
 lost, or one they never enjoyed. 
 
 Another set of philosophers boldly tell us, that the world has 
 reached its perfection, just at this particular epoch — that the 
 elements of progress have been exhausted — that society is at 
 the Pillars of Hercules — with no strong hand to open them 
 before her. This view is very pleasant, to us who are 
 living and see it. It presents rather a sad prospect, how- 
 ever, to the good people, who are to come after us. By way of 
 doing something to console posterity, a recent Westminster 
 reviewer — commenting upon this last named theory, as advocated 
 by Dr. Arnold — offers a new element to civilization. He admits 
 that the Caucasian race has worked out its vein — but he sees 
 bright hopes of human perfection hovering over the African 
 continent. There — he contends — the proud intellect and stub- 
 born will may not be found — but there. Christian perfection, 
 and love, which is its essence, will be seen, hereafter, to make 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 11 
 
 their dwelling. He quotes from Dr. Charming, to show the 
 coincident opinion of that eminent but not always philosophical 
 reasoner — and insists, that the mixture, hereafter, of the Cauca- 
 sian and African civilizations, will weave into the web of human 
 destiny, all the golden threads that can adorn it. I cannot tell 
 how far this view may strike you as philosophical. It seems to 
 me, that it partakes no little of the madness, with the eyes of 
 which 
 
 "The lover, all as frantic, 
 Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." 
 
 With the theory of Dr. Arnold or his reviewer, it is fair to 
 say, that the majority of writers and thinkers do not much trou- 
 ble themselves. The two great classes of which I first spoke — 
 uniting, as I observed in the opening, upon the great principle 
 of our progress toward perfection — comprise within their ranks 
 the majority — the large majority of historical philosophers. 
 Upon the mode, however, in which this perfection is to be attain- 
 ed, they are by no means unanimous. Some deem that intellec- 
 tual discovery — scientific attainment — knowledge — will lead us 
 to the goal. Others, and among them, a large class now stirring 
 the waters in England — inculcate the folly of positive know- 
 ledge and scientific pursuit, and substitute, as the engine of im- 
 provement, devotion to moral education. Some believe, that a 
 great union of the whole nations of the earth, under a Christian 
 government, is to work out the destiny of humanity. Some, 
 again, uphold that Christianity will introduce perfection in phi- 
 losophy and then retire, leaving, to its successor, the consumma- 
 tion of the great work. Others look forward to the time, when 
 both religion and philosophy will be superseded, and the Divi- 
 nity will speak in the teachings of a " new-born band,'"* who 
 are to lead the species, as a flock, to the pasture of perfection. 
 Which system is to be realized, it is, at this moment, rather 
 difficult to determine. Perhaps the soundest solution would be, 
 to apply to all these dreamings, what a forgotten poet has said 
 of the world — 
 
 " The world's a wood, in which all lose their way, 
 Though, by a difF'rent patfl^ each goes astray !" 
 
12 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 In all dissertations upon the Philosophy of History, the word 
 " civilization" has lately grown much into vogue. It has been 
 the subject of able treatises by able men. Among them, the 
 lectures of M. Guizot, (partly translated into English) are pre- 
 eminent, as specimens of admirable philosophical generalization. 
 The word itself is a very attractive one, and, like most words 
 which sound sensibly, and yet convey no definite idea — it is 
 popular with the extensive circle, who look upon indefiniteness 
 as " nine points" of philosophy. We hear of the civilization 
 of the Greeks and the Romans — the Pagan — Christian — feudal 
 — Northern — Southern civilization — lately we have had the 
 Aztec civilization — the familiar sound of the word persuading 
 us, all the while, that it conveys a very tangible notion, of what 
 is, in reality, a very abstract matter. Finally, we are taught 
 that all these civilizations (barring the Aztec, which, though a 
 very important one, has but lately come into the field) — all 
 have been gathered into one mighty river, the civilization of the 
 nineteentb century! Thus concentred, we learn that the waters 
 are rushing and will continue to rush on, until they shall ulti- 
 mately spread themselves as a great lake of perfection, no longer 
 to know the tides of human infirmity ! 
 
 This is all very poetical certainly, and agreeable likewise — 
 for, besides being very simple and intelligible, it puts us in high 
 conceit of our own times, and of ourselves. Nevertheless, it 
 seems that doctors disagree, as to the application of their prin- 
 ciples. M. Guizot contends that France is the focus of "civi- 
 lization," because of the greatness of her "ideas." M. De 
 Tocqueville, though quite ready to claim the same honor for his 
 country, inveighs heartily against this propensity of the French, 
 to discover some new " general and eternal laws" ^very morn- 
 ing, and, in the ardour of their generalization, " to compress 
 the human race into the compass of an article !" The English, 
 on their part, are apt to apply to the general and magnificent 
 ideas of their philosophical neighbors, the most approved An- 
 glo-Saxon expressions of polite contempt, and turn to arts and 
 arms — the India House and the Bank of England — their dock- 
 yards and their colonies — parliament and the spinning-jenny — as 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 13 
 
 the triumphant evidences of their " civilization." Our patriotic 
 philosophers here at home, are not backward in pointing to our 
 free institutions, as establishing our own claim to be deemed, 
 past all dispute, " the most enlightened nation under the sun." 
 
 In so unsettled a state of the controversy, it may be as well 
 to enquire, what " civilization," in reality, is. Let us look at 
 M. Guizot's definition — for his works are unquestionably the 
 ablest, and furnish, besides, a large quota of the materials, 
 openly borrowed or quietly stolen, which make up the philoso- 
 phical capital of minor essayists on the subject. 
 
 He divides civilization into two elements; 
 
 1. The advancement of society, as distinguished from the 
 improvement of the individuals who compose it. 
 
 2. The development, mentally and morally, of man, the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 With all deference to authority so deservedly distinguished, 
 it does not seem to me that the two elements are capable of 
 separation. 
 
 What is the object of human society? The moral, mental and 
 physical welfare of its members. It can have no other end. 
 Then society cannot be said to have fairly advanced, unless it 
 has carried with it a corresponding advancement in the mental, 
 moral and physical condition of its individuals. Society, being 
 but a means, cannot have improved, unless it has gone on pro- 
 moting its end. It follows, therefore, that M. Guizot's first 
 element of civilization, social progress^ merges in the second, 
 which is, individual progress — and civilization may thus be 
 defined to be — at any particular epoch — the state of mental, 
 moral, and physical improvement, which a particular society, or 
 mankind in general, at that epoch, presented. It will be observed 
 that I have added physical improvement to the narrower defini- 
 tion of M. Guizot, which confines itself to mental and moral 
 development. By this addition, I do not mean merely to include 
 the progress of mankind, in any ofsthose great plans and schemes 
 which minister to wealth and power, and the physical greatness 
 of empires. I refer to physical comfort, as an ingredient in hu- 
 man happiness — the physical comfort — protection — facility of 
 
14 LECTURE dN THE 
 
 subsistence of individuals — the means of enjoying moderately 
 and healthfully, the goods of life. This element of happiness, 
 I contend, is as important a subject of enquiry, in ascertaining 
 the civilization of any age or people, as are any of the intellec- 
 tual or political triumphs, which may have graced its annals. 
 
 These things premised, let us see — as well as a rapid glance 
 will allow us — how far the civilization of the nineteenth century 
 deserves the magnificent estimate, which it is fashionable to put 
 upon it. 
 
 In so far as knowledge — its diffusion and extent — are con- 
 cerned, no sane man of course, will deny, that the human in- 
 tellect has reached a point, the very dream of which, a century 
 or two ago, would have been deemed, itself, insanity. The dis- 
 coveries to which I before referred, as made by antiquarians 
 and orientalists, of latter days — leave us, it is true, in doubt, 
 whether we much surpass or indeed equal, in many points of 
 profoundest science, the forgotten centuries whose annals they 
 have been exploring. But let us yield this point, and concede 
 that in knowledge — science — we are immeasurably beyond the 
 past — and what will the concession prove ? Is the degree of 
 our approach to 'perfection, dependent on the amount of our 
 knowledge ? True, a popular author, Mr. Dick, has written a 
 popular book called " The Philosophy of a Future State," the 
 principle of which is, that the happiness of a better world will 
 be considerably affected by the extent of our acquisitions in 
 this, and that consequently — as the same author argues in his 
 book on the " Diffusion of Knowledge" — he who leaves this 
 world with his mind most full, will have the start of his less for- 
 tunate fellow beings, in the other. As a consequence of this 
 enlightened theory, the author gives a list of the studies which 
 will be prosecuted in the life hereafter, among which mathe- 
 matics, astronomy, natural philosophy, anatomy, and history are 
 set down as most prominent. Such moon-struck fancies, how- 
 ever, only go to show the absurdity of the principle which we 
 are resisting. Can the perfection of the human mind depend on 
 what it knows of external facts or their laws ? It is the mind 
 itself, which is in question, not the range of objects which it com- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OE .HISTORY. I 5 
 
 mands. It is the strength which is in the eagle-wing, to soar, 
 and the keenness which is in the eagle-eye, to see, and not the 
 multiplicity of things above which the one may rise, or which 
 the other may command by its gaze. As Mr. Sewell forcibly 
 has it, it " is power of mind, not accumulation of learning — 
 faculties, not facts." 
 
 Can this our age, then — though the humblest and most igno- 
 rant among us know, what Socrates did not dream of — can this 
 age, with all its knowledge, point to intellects which throw all 
 past intelligences in the shade ? Try them, man to man. Is 
 an artisan of our day — with his cheap publications and news- 
 papers, his respectable knowledge of science in its popular 
 forms, his education much or little — superior, in what constitutes 
 mental superiority, to the artisan, say of Greece or Rome, or of 
 the sixteenth century } True, he knows more : he reads more : 
 he knows much that Lord Bacon did not know. But is he 
 nearer intellectual perfection.'' Are his faculties brighter? 
 Does he think more infallibly } Is he nearer the image of his 
 Maker } It would be hard to tell in what. 
 
 Take a scientific, educated, able man, of the nineteenth 
 century — take the ablest. Measure him with Pythagoras, or 
 Aristotle, or Bacon, or Leibnitz. Put out of the question what 
 he knows — his mere acquisitions. Balance mind with mind — 
 weigh faculty against faculty — greatness of intellect and the de- 
 grees of its perfection — will the nineteenth century bear off the 
 palm.'' Is then the perfection of humanity, mentally, advanced 
 in our civilization, granting all that truth requires us to yield to 
 its multifarious knowledge .'' I confess I cannot see how. Nor, 
 does the argument of the perfectionist find more to strengthen 
 it, in the diffusion, than in the degree, of intellectual develop- 
 ment. We must concede, it is true, the wonderful increase of 
 cultivated men : but I am far from admitting that the number 
 of great, original minds is larger than of yore. Yet, were I to 
 grant their increase in number — denying, as I have denied, their 
 advancement in degree — it would not, surely, follow from such 
 concession, that a nearer approach of the species, to intellectual 
 perfection, could be inferred. A thousand coursers might start 
 
16 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 for the Olympic olive — but the speed of the victor, not the mul- 
 titude of his rivals, though all were swift, would be the criterion 
 of swiftness — the merit of the race. So too, with the race of 
 intellect. All the inhabitants of the world, might, at this 
 moment, be made as wise as Solomon, and yet humanity would 
 not rise a degree, on that account, above the point of Solomon's 
 elevation. The men might be sages ; but, man would be no more 
 god-like than before. Let us go farther. 
 
 In all that concerns the higher branches of human thought — 
 those branches which approach the mighty problems of our 
 spiritual nature, and our relation to the Being from whose es- 
 sence our spirits are an emanation — has the present age done 
 any thing to obliterate the efi'orts of genius two thousand years 
 ago ? What is there in the philosophy of this day, true or 
 false, which is wholly original ? Its Platonism and its Panthe- 
 ism, and all its other isms — its very ideas of human perfectibil- 
 ity which we are resisting — what are they but the regeneration 
 or the re-composition of systems or parts of systems, long since 
 invented and buried } In all the sublimest philosophy which 
 revelation has kindled into flame in our day — what is there that 
 the early Christians did not hear or read, for their consolation 
 and improvement, from the lips or in the works of the early 
 fathers ? In all the various creeds and systems which modern 
 ingenuity has built upon the sacred writings, what creed or sys- 
 tem is there, with which the theological subtlety of the early 
 centuries did not perplex the faithful ? How many of the most 
 fashionable errors of our very day may not be traced to Roman, 
 Grecian, Egyptian, even Indian origin ? Every now and then, 
 the hieroglyphical development of some unwrapped mummy^ 
 or the casually seen sculpture of some stone which a spade 
 turns up, gives traces of our modern inventions, almost as far 
 back as the flood. 
 
 Is it in our mental superiority, as displayed by our political 
 institutions, that we have pride ^ Test the institutions of many 
 ages of the past — not by the false criterion of an imaginary stand- 
 ard of excellence — but by their adaptation to the people and the 
 times they were meant to govern, and perhaps Pythagoras and 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 17 
 
 Solon, Lycurgus and Justinian, Charlemagne, Alfonso and Alfred, 
 may bid us pause, in the violence of our self-commendation. 
 
 Will the fine arts, do you think, afford matter of triumph to 
 our perfectionists of the present time ? Go to Elephanta and 
 the Pyramids — the Temple of Ephesus — the Parthenon and the 
 Coliseum ! Look, in later times, to the Cathedrals of Strasbourg, 
 and Milan, and Rheims, and the fairy magnificence of the Al- 
 hambra ! Call up as witnesses, the shades of Appelles and 
 Praxiteles — give life to the Yenus de Medici and the Apollo 
 Belvidere. Bid the genius of the nineteenth century outspan the 
 dome of St. Peter's, or shed a ray of more divinity upon the 
 Transfiguration of Raphael ? 
 
 If poetry and the development of genius in that high sphere 
 be made the test — we may satisfy ourselves with the simple 
 question— how much nearer to perfection have we been carried, 
 by the two centuries, which have rolled by since the death of 
 Shakspeare ? 
 
 But, forsaking the subject of intellectual progression — let u# 
 see whether the " civilization" of our day has brought, or is 
 carrying us nearer perfection, in moral development. That the 
 Christian revelation has been the parent of a new order of things, 
 in the moral history of our race, is of course a fact, which de- 
 monstration forces upon the convictions even of the skeptical. 
 That it conveys to us the sure and only rules, whereby our 
 erring nature may reach the climax of excellence accorded to 
 its weakness, is a truth, of acceptation equally universal. But 
 Christianity, holding out to us no promises of terrestrial perfec- 
 tion — teaches no such doctrine as the onward, infinite progression 
 of our race. It has, for man in the present century, no truths, 
 which were not revealed to the men who listened to the Apos- 
 tles. The civilization of this age, rich in the spoils and accu- 
 mulations of the civilizations which swell its current, has added, 
 and can add not one jot or tittle, to the doctrines whose ineffable 
 sublimity broke forth, upon the solemn silence of the holy mount. 
 ]N either can natural ethics boast any new discoveries, in any 
 state of civilization. They form a simple science — far easier 
 to understand than follow— a science which involves no mystery, 
 3 
 
18 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 and affords no scope to ingenuity or invention — which has been 
 promulged for centuries, and stands, as it t,hen stood. If there- 
 fore the moral advancement of our age means any thing — it must 
 refer to an improved appreciation — a steadier following — of the 
 precepts of natural and revealed religion. To what remarkable 
 extent then, has the nineteenth century taught its " civilization," 
 to avoid the vices of its erring predecessors ? 
 
 Has it infused into the dealings of nations with each other, 
 that feeling of brotherhood^ — that forgetfulness of self — which 
 alone can gather them together, as children of their universal 
 parent!* Has this age known less than the centuries before it, 
 of wars and rumors of wars? Has less of blood been poured 
 upon the bosom of the earth — for frivolous or unworthy pre- 
 texts — for vain ambition — for empire — for oppression? Are 
 armies and navies obsolete ? Is war no science — bloodshed no 
 business ? Are the conquests of France in Africa, and of England 
 in Asia — at this very moment — founded upon better or purer 
 principles of morality, than those which guided Xerxes to 
 Greece — the Carthaginian to Italy — the Roman to Gaul and 
 Britain — ^the Arab to Spain ? 
 
 What have governments — the representatives of national mo- 
 rality and intelligence — done, in our day, for the cause of morals 
 among the governed ? The statute-books — aye and of the freest 
 governments, not omitting our own — may be found full of com- 
 mercial regulations, and industrial laws, and all that can stimulate 
 production. Enactments too are there, in abundance, to punish 
 crime, and build prisons, and fill them — but where has there been 
 a great national, statutary effort, to lay, on solid and permanent 
 foundations, a system for crime's prevention ? What have the 
 freest nations — France — England — the United States — the great 
 competitors for the crown of civilization — what have they, with 
 their " general ideas" — and wealth and empire — and free insti- 
 tutions — done, in the palpable matter of education — compared 
 with what they have toiled and suffered to consummate, for trade 
 and glory? — compared with what kingdoms of Europe relatively 
 despotic, have done for the cultivation of their citizens ? 
 
 Look then at the records of crime among individuals. The 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 19 
 
 ruder and more barbarous offences, such as uncultivated men 
 committed, in their savageness, are of course less frequent — but 
 still, our daily chronicles show us, that even in the bosoms of the 
 most polished societies, crimes are for ever bursting out, W'hich 
 appal us by their horrors. But putting these aside, and pass- 
 ing over too, the dark records of grosser vices — have not 
 the refinements of society brought, with them, corresponding 
 refinements of guilt } Instead of highway robbery, marauding 
 and black-mail — the breach of faith and trust, public and private, 
 has sprung into existence — criminal bankruptcy — swindling — 
 fraud — deceit — in all the multiplied forms which the combina- 
 tions of social dealing may suggest ! Commerce alas ! the con- 
 comitant — almost the parent of modern " civilization" — how 
 feeble the tribute to its morality, which the candid historian 
 must pay! Along with its splendid enterprise — its wealth — its 
 luxuries and magnificence — its spread of knowledge — its wide 
 grasp of human development — how have avarice and selfishness, 
 national and individual, gone hand in hand ! How has it tended 
 ever, to make the merchant subordinate to the wares in which 
 he deals — to stimulate the rivalry of classes and nations, into 
 hatred and war — to degrade the operative into a mere machine — 
 to make of human life and labor, and the best exercise of hu- 
 man faculties, things to be bought and sold and played withes— 
 as the system or the mighty game might chance to require ! 
 
 And here we fall, insensibly — for all these things have inti- 
 mate connexion — into the further reflection, how far the happi- 
 ness of man — and involved in the question of happiness — how 
 far his physical welfare, has been improved by the progress, of 
 which the age is so boastful. Any one who pauses only to com- 
 pare the refinements and appliances of modern life, with the 
 roughness and rudeness of the best of times past, will go far to 
 conclude, at first sight, that there is hardly room for the form 
 of a parallel. But the first view is, here, as it generally is — 
 deceptive altogether. We see around us provisions for almost 
 every indulgence, which ingenuity can conceive, or stimulated 
 appetite enjoy. Yet let us not forget that this very progress of 
 gratification begets a parallel progress of desire, and that our 
 cravings are ever in advance of the means of their satisfaction. 
 
20 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 New provisions create new wants. What to-day was content 
 with, will give no contentment to-morrow, and the man of to- 
 morrow, with his additional appliances, will be as far from his 
 goal as the man of to-day ; for, though he has advanced in means, 
 his standard has advanced with him, and all human things are 
 relative. Even his bodily frame, increasing in sensibility, must 
 increase in refinement, so that the high gratification of the man 
 of this century may not be relatively higher, than to the man 
 of the past, with his coarser fibre, was the coarse enjoyment 
 which made up his maximum of gratification. An able medical 
 writer has recently produced a work, expressly devoted to " a 
 consideration of the changes produced by civilization, upon the 
 nervous system," wherein he sustains the position, that advanc- 
 ing civilization provides " a finer, and gradually more abundant 
 endowment of the purely nervous tissues, amongst the constitu- 
 ent elements of human physiology." To this doctrine, may be 
 added, in corroboration, the wonderful increase (out of all ratio, 
 with increased population) of diseases of the nerves and brain, 
 and disorders of the mind following thereupon — a circumstance 
 which has attracted much attention of late, and which is surely 
 an item of no trifling consideration in a view of our progress 
 towards perfection. 
 
 But even this very equivocal sort of physical improvement 
 is far from being extended to the masses, and still farther from 
 being permanent with any class. All old and thickly settled 
 countries, even the most civilized, are remarkable for their 
 startling contrasts of splendor and misery. National greatness 
 is no security against individual starvation. Of this the present 
 ■situation of Great Britain is a demonstration, painfully eloquent. 
 The crowded workshops, and their squalid denizens, — pauper- 
 ism increasing in a ratio larger than that of the increasing popu- 
 lation, — the reduction of the actual necessaries of life into a 
 smaller circle, andthe increased severity of the toil required to 
 obtain even those — all these things bear directly on our subject, 
 but I have space only to allude to them. Fortunately our own 
 position, as a new people, relieves us from the pain of an imme- 
 diate application of them to ourselves. We flatter ourselves 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 21 
 
 that we are freed from the chance of ever knowing them ex- 
 perimentally, by our peculiar institutions. Long be the day of 
 our disenchantment postponed ! 
 
 But, besides the palpable effects of social progression upon 
 the physical comfort of the masses, there are other evils — less 
 conspicuous, but not less real — which result from the vast ex- 
 tent of commerce, and the multiplication of systems for the 
 accumulation of wealth. The eagerness for gain, stimulating 
 men from the quiet walks of legitimate trade, to chase the rain- 
 bow-tinted bubbles of speculation — gambling, in a word — to 
 what fluctuations of fortune, and to what consequent misery has 
 it not been the parent ^ The whole system of imaginary funds 
 and capital — putting aside the blasting demoralization it has be- 
 gotten — how has it gone over individual prosperity, and domes- 
 tic competence and happiness, like the cloud of sand over the 
 wealth of the caravan ! Legislation, too, — bending before 
 every breath of changing theory to which popular fancy or in- 
 terest may have chosen to play the ^^olus — how often has it, in 
 our time, made beggars of the wealthy, and outcasts of the 
 humbly independent.^ 
 
 It is then a bold proposition, to say, that because nations are 
 great, and prosperous, and wise, their people are, therefore, 
 happy, or high in their moral standard. I am as far removed as 
 any one, from the absurd belief, that happiness and moral ex- 
 cellence are necessarily attendant upon the ruder stages of so- 
 ciety, or that a complicated and advanced social system drives 
 them, of necessity, to groves and sheepwalks. I only mean to 
 say, that a brilliant, ostensible, social progression may be ac- 
 companied by a low stage of individual welfare, physical and 
 moral. I have proven, 1 think, that the " civilization" of the 
 nineteenth century, is a sad exemplification of this sad truth. 
 " Will," says Carlyle, " the whole finance ministers, and uphol- 
 sterers, and confectioners of modern Europe, undertake, in joint- 
 stock company, to make one shoe-black happy .^" With some 
 probability of success, I think they may. Governments may 
 provide a thousand means for the improvement of his mind 
 and heart; or, if they are content to do less, they may increase 
 
22 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 his facilities for the enjoyment of physical existence, in humble 
 comfort, and even this, to the shoe-black, who is not likely to 
 be very transcendental, may be no small item of actual felicity. 
 With the capacity to do even thus much for their meanest citi- 
 zens or subjects, governments are false to duty v^^hile they ne- 
 glect it, let their rank in " civilization" be what it may. 
 
 We are led away and deceived, by the glittering semblances 
 and high sounding names of things. We speak of the feudal 
 times, with shuddering, and the dark ages with enlightened con- 
 tempt, but, is the nation of this day, in its intercourse with sister 
 nations, animated by principles more holy, than those which 
 governed the relations between feudal sovereigns ? More wise 
 they may be, I grant, but not more pure. Was the feudal vassal 
 of the middle ages altogether miserable and degraded, because 
 of the chain of fealty which bound him to do service, even with 
 his blood ? Did he throw away his happiness and his moral 
 worth, when he flung himself into the strife of bills and bows ? 
 In the tie which bound the long-descended vassal to his long- 
 descended lord, there was something of self-devotion, of affec- 
 tion, which made the foray a labor of love, and death in the 
 battle-field, a willing martyrdom, at the shrine of reverence and 
 duty. The artisan of the same times, a member of his guild or 
 corporation, united, in brotherhood and interest, with those who 
 plied the same art, was he to be pitied, because his unenlight- 
 ened mind knew not those laws of political economy, which 
 have since pronounced his guild a folly, a monopoly, a nuisance? 
 Has he profited much by the change, which has brought down 
 his pride, from independence as a burgher, to pauperism as an 
 operative — which has set him adrift, alone, in the wide world 
 of labor, with rules of scientific selfishness for over-reaching his 
 neighbor, if he can.'* The Chinese was surely as happy and as 
 good, centuries ago, in the persuasion of his own unapproach- 
 able wisdom and unfathomable antiquity, as he will be a century 
 hence, when long wars and slaughter shall have made him a 
 British subject, and taught him the wonders of Anglo-Saxon 
 civilization ! 
 
 The enlightened spirit of modern Europe, discards, as frivo- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 23 
 
 lous, the taste for rural and public pleasures — for festivals and 
 ceremonial — for all those pleasant observances, social though 
 national, which in earlier times made up so large an element of 
 popular enjoyment. Has the human mind or heart, think you, 
 gone nearer to perfection, in attribute or impulse, because a 
 cold policy has thus devoted to selfish and gainful purposes, the 
 few hours, once sacred to a general renewal of the kindly 
 sympathies of life ? 
 
 Has the tendency of governments, and of society — themselves 
 to monopolize or control the duties and opinions, once left to 
 individual observance and regulation — added any thing to the 
 development of individual character.'* Take, for example, as to 
 governments, the duty of succoring and maintaining the poor, 
 once a charge on private charity, now a matter of state adminis- 
 tration. Grant, if you please — what the statistics of British poor 
 laws do, however, most glaringly contradict — grant that this 
 assumption by government, to be the people's almoner, has given 
 effective and salutary system to the discharge of this sacred ob- 
 ligation. But, do you think that it has tended to elevate and 
 purify the moral tone of individuals, by converting the offering 
 of the heart, into an item in the detested tax-bill.'' 
 
 Then again, as to the interference of society with individual 
 thought and action. Has the introduction of the principle of 
 association in moral reforms, not tended to substitute enthusiasm 
 for virtue, and to weaken the surer reliance of man, on the 
 working of a nobler principle or a diviner agency, in his own 
 heart ^ Has not the substitution of a vast, irregular, irrespon- 
 sible public opinion, for the dictates of individual conscience, 
 had the effect of making men slaves — even where government is 
 most free — to a despotism which they despise, for its frequent 
 absurdity and worthlessness, but which they cannot brave, be- 
 cause i 3 power is irresistible.'* 
 
 So much, then, for the effect of " civilization" on the moral, 
 as well as the physical welfare of our race. The views which 
 i have sketched, thus rapidly, form but a small segment of the 
 wide field which the subject before us covers. Limited, too, as 
 has been the sphere of my examination, I have been compelled, 
 
24 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 by a regard for your patience, to give it a character, at best but 
 superficial. I pretend to nothing more ; but, I trust, I have said 
 enough, to convince you that the popular notion of " progress'' 
 is delusive in a high degree, and based upon principles of de- 
 lusion. 
 
 The scheme of Providence, so far as human eyes may read it, 
 is one, which, on the whole, has varied but little, in the range 
 of time. Instead of presenting us a career, which, with perfec- 
 tion before it, has not ceased to go forward, it has made manifest 
 to us a sum of virtues and vices, advantages and disadvantages, 
 powers and weaknesses, so balanced against each other, so 
 fairly, and, on the whole, so equally mingled, that one century 
 has had but little right to boast of more peculiar favors than its 
 fellows. " Civilization" has brought, with its increased bless- 
 ings, increase of woes, and all history seems to disclose an anal- 
 ogy in the life of generations, to the life of individual men, in 
 this, at any rate, that, in spite of striking contrasts, there is more 
 equality of lot, than human repining is willing to allow. Ap- 
 pearances, pretensions, may delude, names may deceive, theo- 
 ries lead astray, but, on the whole, it may be said with justice 
 of human destiny, as Richelieu has it of individual happiness : 
 
 " Through plots. 
 And counterplots, mid glory and disgrace. 
 Along the plains, where passionate discord rears 
 Eternal Babel, still the holy stream 
 
 its level but little varying, its volume ever near the same ! 
 
 I should serve but ill, the purposes for which public lectures 
 were intended, were I to pause, after showing the errors of a 
 system, and leave its evil consequences altogether unnoticed. 
 The tendency of the fashionable doctrine of progress is as per- 
 nicious, as the doctrine itself is false. It is two-fold ; it leads to 
 fatalism, or to blind, revolutionary radicalism. 
 
 So long as men are content to rest upon the ordinary principle, 
 that measures, wisely and virtuously planned and executed, will, 
 under Providence, result in benefit, happiness, improvement — in 
 either words, that good seed will spring up to good fruit, there 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 25 
 
 can be no danger but that good seed will be sown, and good 
 fruit, of course, be gathered. Opinions and conduct will be 
 weighed, with a sole regard to their worth and their justice, and 
 men will not hold, that their duty to the future implies forget- 
 fulness of the past, or contempt for its lessons. But, let it once 
 be understood and believed — that a constant current is bearing 
 our race, onward, from weakness to strength, from frailty to 
 virtue, from imperfection to perfection — that the occurrences 
 which, to human eyes, seem contradictions to such a theory, are 
 but as eddies, where some slight portions of the torrent^ for a 
 moment pause or retrograde, while the main stream rolls, irre- 
 sistibly and ever on — and an end is, from that moment, put to all 
 sound appreciation of individual and national principle and ac- 
 tion, to all worthy, and wise, and energetic effort, for individual 
 and social good. Fatalism — faith in destiny — becomes the 
 ruling principle of thought and conduct. Why should we toil 
 with brain or sinew, if all things will, in the end, be well, whe- 
 ther we toil or not } Thus will men regulate their actions. 
 Their opinions will all be graduated according to the simple 
 scale, that " whatever is, is right." 
 
 It is told, as an amusing instance of the folly which nations 
 commit, in attempting to force their institutions upon conquered 
 or dependent countries, that a British official, some time since, 
 in India, called together a coroner's jury of natives, in order to 
 hold his inquest over the body of a devotee, who had drowned 
 himself in the Ganges. The jury were all sworn, the testimony 
 was heard, in due and solemn form, and the verdict was de- 
 manded. True to the fatalism which their religion teaches, the 
 whole panel, unanimously, answered, " He died, because his 
 time had come !" 
 
 Now, precisely such is the verdict, which the historians and 
 philosophers of progress pass, upon the deeds and fortunes of 
 men and nations. Success, is evidence of a cause which deserved 
 success — defeat, of one which was ordained to fall ! " We 
 must," says Cousin, " be on the side of the victor, for his is 
 always the better cause ; it is the cause of civilization and of 
 humanity, of the present and the future, while the cause of the 
 vanquished party, is always that of the past." And again, " we 
 4 
 
26 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 ever find, on reflection, that the vanquished ought to have been 
 vanquished !" " Every revolution," says JoufFroy, " is a step 
 in the discovery of goodness and truth." 
 
 A mighty revolution, such as that of France, is consummated. 
 Blood is poured out like rain. The foundations of society are 
 levelled. The furies of vs^ar, with their serpents, are let loose 
 upon the civilized world. Europe trembles, and, for a moment, 
 totters: at last, quiet succeeds to storm, and then, there is not 
 wanting a philosophic historian, like a Thiers, to demonstrate, 
 that all the sickening detail of carnage, and rapine, and demoral- 
 ization, was a part of the great programme, according to which 
 humanity was to be carried a step nearer to perfection. The 
 ancient institutions of France were w^orn out. They would 
 serve no longer. The ancient fabric of society had grown 
 threadbare. The ancient rulers were no longer fit to rule. Their 
 lime had come ! and therefore it was entirely within the range 
 of necessity, nay, of propriety, that they should be gotten rid 
 of, in some way, no matter how. The French revolution hap- 
 pened, therefore it was fated to happen. It triumphed, therefore 
 it was right ! It developed goodness and truth ! 
 
 A mighty continent — our own, for example — is inhabited by 
 savage tribes. It is rich in the treasures of nature — glories in 
 variety of climate, in beauty and excellence, in valley, lake, and 
 hill. Two centuries pass, and a great empire is spread over its 
 surface — but the savage exists no longer. The historian of pro- 
 gress teaches us, that, as Anglo-Saxon energy built up this great 
 republic, of course this continent was meant as a new theatre 
 for Anglo-Saxon greatness. The Indian might have been civil- 
 ized, but it was more convenient to make way with him. He 
 perished, therefore it was right for him to perish. He was but 
 a victim to philosophical necessity. 
 
 In our own day, a great empire — China, for instance — refuses 
 any but a limited intercourse with other nations. On ordinary 
 principles, this would seem to be her undoubted right. But — 
 says the philosopher of progress, ever on the side of ambition — 
 it is the destiny of nations to be civilized : no nation has a right 
 to refuse this boon. China resists her destiny. Therefore it 
 is right to storm, burn, shoot, persecute, destroy. Civilization 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 27 
 
 has manufactured goods, rotting in her warehouses, which some- 
 body must pay for. China can, but will not. Civilization will 
 be retarded, if production be arrested by default of consumption. 
 Therefore China has no right to decline consuming. She must 
 learn the force of compulsion. Her old system is behind the 
 lights of the age. Its time has come. And so, by a simple 
 process, the crying outrage perpetrated on this singular people, 
 by the British arms, is, with the utmost facility, converted into a 
 glorious triumph of human progress — a subject not merely of 
 palliation, but jubilee! If I mistake not, one of our own most 
 eminent citizens has, in a public discourse, sustained this doc- 
 trine. 
 
 It would be superfluous for me to show you, in similar detail, 
 how this same principle will apply itself to the internal doings 
 of nations. With its establishment, all just notions of right and 
 wrong must perish. One of two things will inevitably follow. 
 Either the people will resign themselves, ingloriously, to the 
 chances which may await them, relying upon destiny to set all 
 things right at last : or they will consult expediency as the only 
 oracle, and regard success as the only criterion, of truth and 
 justice. How long the most prosperous national condition can 
 survive such a state of things, the history of the past may show 
 to us ; and common reason, of itself, would be able, readily^, to 
 divine. 
 
 But it is not merely the principle of fatalism, and its demoral- 
 izing influences, which we have to fear from the doctrine of 
 perfectibility. Let a people persuade themselves, or be per- 
 suaded, that the future is to be, of necessity, an improvement on 
 the past — that, by consequence, they can only reach the excel- 
 lence of the future, by discarding what the past has bequeathed 
 to them — and it is easy to see that every tendency will be 
 towards change, whether wise or foolish — change, for change's 
 sake. 
 
 The profoundest observer and commentator upon the institu- 
 tions of our country and their tendency, M. De Tocqueville, 
 has proven, with very great clearness, that the principle of de- 
 mocracy — which allows self-improvement, indeed stimulates 
 every man to it — necessarily superinduces a disposition, on the 
 
28 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 part of all men, to consider the sphere of their capacity for im- 
 provement, their perfectibility, almost indefinite. Among such 
 a people as ourselves, then — thus prone, from the democratic 
 character of our institutions, to restlessness and change — it 
 is clear that the additional stimulus of a philosophic system, 
 which teaches perfectibility as a dogma, must be peculiarly dan- 
 gerous. The indisposition to be stationary, the impulse to do 
 something, to go on, to alter, at all hazards, must become almost 
 irresistible. Under such stimulus, permanence must become a 
 thing impossible. 
 
 Thus is it, that even now, we find ourselves unwilling, by law 
 or social organization, to bind ourselves to any fixed policy or 
 principle. We look to the future, as necessarily containing 
 within itself, some new developments, whereof the past had no 
 idea, and whereunto the present affords no clue. We are indis- 
 posed, therefore, to lay the foundation of any thing permanent, 
 believing that there is something better to come, which will en- 
 tirely supersede the best conceptions of the present. 
 
 Like all other general and abstract principles, adopted by 
 masses as their rules of conduct, this principle of progress, thus 
 established, tends visibly towards fanaticism. Its hopes and 
 aspirations, the enthusiastic sentiments by w^hich it animates and 
 sustains them, grow to make up the mighty volume of public 
 opinion. Once linked with the despotic power which public 
 opinion, in democratic countries, has never failed to exercise, it 
 pronounces its anathemas of extermination, against all who would 
 attempt to resist the spirit of the age. For the past, and its 
 hoary truths and tried institutions, this fanaticism has no merc3^ 
 What it denominates established error, must perish at every 
 hazard, peaceably or forcibly. If it does not fall, like the walls of 
 Jericho, at the sound of the reformer's horn, it must be stormed, 
 as the Mussulman monarch overthrew Constantinople, with 
 lighted torches at the extremities of cimetar and lance. Accom- 
 panying its illumination, nay bound to its very torch, is its wea- 
 pon : and the enemy must take the light, at the point of the steel. 
 Laying it down as a maxim not to be questioned, that reform 
 must follow revolution — identifying improvement with change- 
 it gives the rein to the wildest sans-culottism, and annihilates 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 29 
 
 every thing like national or individual repose. It drives the 
 statesman from his half concocted plans of permanent polity^ 
 into the struggle for popularity and ephemeral applause — into 
 shifting and time-serving legislation. It snatches the student 
 from communion with the wisdom of the dead, into the arena of 
 excitement and controversy. It substitutes for the earnest and 
 calm inquiry into political, moral, and social truth, the hurried 
 disquisition, the superficial pamphlet, the plausible system. It 
 stimulates to a wide range of superficial acquirement, which may 
 give fluency and plausibility on all points, profundity and grave 
 knowledge upon none. It sees, from the history of past legisla- 
 tion, that men have been left too little to themselves, and it 
 rushes to the conclusion that all government is an evil, and that 
 men will be nearest to perfection, when left to themselves alto- 
 gether. A rational adherence to systems proven good by expe- 
 rience, is denominated an obstinate adherence to prejudices. The 
 lessons even of the very present, it treats as stones rolled in the 
 path of the future. Being fanatical, full of absolutism in its doc- 
 trines, it is of course rabid in its spirit of propagandism. Instead 
 of leaving every man to fill his appropriate sphere of usefulness in 
 the discharge of his duties as an individual and a citizen, it talks 
 of this and that man's " mission" to humanity, and sets all its dis- 
 ciples to teaching, instead of learning and acting. Hence the 
 abundance of philosophers in our day, all with some " mission" 
 or other to fulfil, and all, in some way or other, prepared to hasten 
 the certain progress of our race to a terrestrial millenium, where 
 metaphysics will constitute felicity. Each one of these re- 
 modellers of the world, feels that he stands upon an intellectual 
 and moral eminence, the impersonation of Tennyson's poet — 
 
 " When rites and forms, before his burning eyes. 
 Melted like snow !" 
 
 It needs then no vision of peculiar clearness, to see that a sys- 
 tem, with such tendencies, demands not only denunciation, but 
 an antidote. Not in enthusiastic, wild anticipations, but in grave, 
 and careful, and deliberate deductions, will the philosophy of 
 true progress find its realization. Not he who flings up his cap, 
 and cheers the spirit of the age, as through wTong, over right, it 
 
30 LECTURE ON THE 
 
 speeds, like Mazeppa's courser, its irresistible way, careless 
 where it travels, so it but travel on — not he is the minister at 
 the altar of sound morals or philosophy. The true political 
 philosopher, is he who strives to discover what is good, and to 
 hold fast to it when it has been found. To him, the march of 
 society is not as a mighty pageant, of which he judges, as the vul- 
 gar spectator may judge a passing army, by its flaunting ban- 
 ners, its music, its glitter, its array ! He knows the weakness of 
 his species, as familiarly as he knows its strength. His faith is 
 not in man merely, nor in a high imaginary destiny. He knows 
 that man may be wise and good without being perfect, and he 
 contents himself with realizing what can be realized, rather than 
 dreaming what may be dreamed. While the political or moral 
 alchymist is wasting life and toil, in search of an impossible se- 
 cret, he is satisfied with humbler aims. He is happy in devo- 
 ting his labor to simpler ends — pleased to accomplish something, 
 though but little, rather than grasp at infinity and clutch the air. 
 For him, the spirit of the age is not merely the downward or 
 onward rushing of a blind tendency. It is the balanced move- 
 ment of opposing forces; safe, because checked on every side. 
 It is the wisdom of the past, spoken from the lips of the present — 
 whispered in the ear of the future. Looking forward to the 
 improvement of his race within the limits of its frailty, his faith 
 regards it, not as the irresistible whirling of a maelstroom, into 
 which every thing is to be drawn, but as nothing more than an 
 effect, following a combination of causes, dependent on those 
 causes altogether, and on the Providence that rules them. " No 
 man," says Mr. Carlyle, " ever became a hero in his sleep." 
 No nation, it may with equal truth be averred, ever became 
 happy, or great, or justly glorious, through rash radicalism, or 
 blind and vicious fatalism, or in any mode, other than by the 
 unwearied application of appropriate human means. Faith in a 
 people, must arise from something intrinsic in their character 
 and their principles — hope for their future fortune, must spring 
 from faith well founded. Upon what can the faith and hope of 
 man, in any people, repose, unless it be on their ability and wil- 
 lingness to frame the elements of permanence — their readiness to 
 rest upon them, when once they have been framed ? What boots 
 
 6555-10-SB 
 5-13 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 31 
 
 k to a man, that he has lived, if his life has been but the chase 
 of a child after its butterfly — a pursuit after something which 
 has never been found ? What has a nation gained from half a 
 century, or twenty centuries of existence, if, like a wandering 
 savage tribe, it has demolished on each morning, the temporary 
 hut, beneath which it rested the night before, and has no remem- 
 brance or relic of its journey, save the fatigue of the travel ? 
 National life is worth nothing, save for its experiences and their 
 application. A wise philosopher has said that " a country of 
 yesterday has no to-morrow." His commentator has improved 
 the saying, by the paraphrase — " there is no future, for a people 
 who have no past." 
 
 Upon these maxims, I am willing to rest the moral of the 
 wandering discourse to which it has pleased you to listen. 
 That there is, for this land of ours, an opportunity of moving 
 in a glorious sphere of national development, the simplest, least 
 enthusiastic observation will unquestionably teach us. But that 
 an honorable destiny is to come upon us, like a thief in the night — 
 that it is a destiny, which no effort or instrumentality of ours is 
 needful to consummate, which no misconduct of ours can retard, or 
 even wholly avert — it is the climax of absurdity to dream. All the 
 poets whom the muses ever crowned, might sing the promise of 
 our national futurity, until the Alleghanies should rival Helicon; 
 yet not one blessing, which their rhapsodies might announce, 
 would come upon us, until head, and hand, and heart, should have 
 labored, faithfully, to secure it. All the enthusiasts, who ever 
 gave form to the shadows that came up to them through the 
 ivory gate of waking sleep, might preach of progress until their 
 " missions" were worn out, and all the world a-weary, yet never 
 would prophecy draw on fulfilment, or improvement come, till 
 something should be done to bring it. The present is parent to 
 the future, as " the child is father of the man" — and to secure 
 the future's destiny, provision must be made to shape the action 
 of the present, after the lessons of the past. 
 
 In an aristocratic or monarchical government, the political 
 philosopher, seeing that the tendency is to adhere with rigour 
 to the past, will advocate, most probably, the adoption of 
 counteracting principles — hoping that the resultant force will 
 
 '■• s" 
 
32 LECTURE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 pass through the happy medium. When, on the contrary, 
 he finds principles and action ever prone to break up the con- 
 servative elements of society, it will be his effort to cast his 
 anchor out upon some firm spot, and thus hold up against the 
 tempest. Instead of feeding his fancy with indefinite notions of 
 a perfection, which is sure to fall on us, no one knows when, or 
 how, or why, he will pause gravely, to examine, to weigh, to 
 regulate realities. He will not trust to the stars, till he has done 
 something to realize the augury of the " shining sybils." To 
 counteract an endless and bootless yearning for the future, he 
 will endeavour to extract all that is good, and great, and useful, 
 from the past — to throw some bread of permanence upon the 
 waters of change and progress, that he may look for its return 
 after many days. Laws and constitutions he will not regard as 
 capable of working miracles, merely by their adoption and 
 enactment. Free legislation, he will not proclaim to be, of ne- 
 cessity, wise legislation. Public opinion he will not bow to, as 
 the incarnation of truth. Change he will not hallow, because it 
 is clamoured for. Not in names, but in things, will his confi- 
 dence rest and his power. He will not squabble for the abstract 
 meaning of a governmental provision, while its essence fleets 
 away, nor, like Mr. Clutterbuck, lose his time in straightening a 
 crooked nail in his wine cask, while the generous liquid is was- 
 ted through the opening. He will not deem that every narrow- 
 ness, and bitterness, and weakness of practical administration, is 
 atoned for, by a boundless theoretical expansion of wisdom, love 
 and promise. He will eschew fatalism as folly, and the extre- 
 mity of radicalism he will denounce as something worse. His 
 effort will be to build up, not to pull down. His philosophy 
 will be of deeds, not of words. He will busy himself, more 
 with the good of individuals, than the destinies of the species. 
 He will not hang the silent harp of human sympathy upon the 
 willows of an abstract principle, nor devote himself to solving 
 the problems of humanity at large, while the welfare of his fel- 
 low beings in particular, lies all unheeded. In the present, he 
 will strive to found something for the aggregations of the future 
 to cling to, so that each generation may add its contribution to 
 the mass — so that additional strength and permanence may 
 grow, as, in the world of matter, chrystal forms itself on chrys- 
 tal, and stratum builds itself on stratum. 
 
 Let'such be the moral drawn, for the men of our country, from 
 the philosophy of history. Faith, in her destiny, will then rest 
 on something more substantial than fancy. Hope will be firm, 
 on something less evanescent than the rainbow. 
 
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 Connecticut 
 
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