The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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enacted only as war measures. The laws relating to marriage and
property are intended to increase the fertility and power of
the clan; the laws relating to religion are intended to
preserve the clan from the fury of the gods, against whom, at
an earlier period, they actually went to war. But out of this
feeling of sympathy, which arose in necessity, arises a
secondary sentiment, the love of esteem; and hence wars, which
at first were waged merely in self-defence, or to win food-grounds and females necessary for the subsistence and
perpetuation of the clan, are now waged for superfluities,
power, and the love of glory; commerce, which was founded in
necessity, is continued for the acquisition of ornaments and
luxuries; science, which at first was a means of life, provides
wealth, and is pursued for fame; music and design, which were
originally instincts of the hand and voice, are developed into
arts. It is therefore natural for man to endeavour to better
himself in life, that he may obtain the admiration of his
comrades. He desires to increase his means or to win renown in
the professions and the arts. Thus man presses upon man, and
the whole mass rises in knowledge, in power, and in wealth. But
owing to the division of classes resulting from war, and also
from the natural inequality of man, the greater part of the
human population could not obey their instinctive aspirations;
they were condemned to remain stationary and inert. By means of
caste, slavery, the system of privileged classes, and
monopolies, the people were forbidden to raise themselves in
life; they were doomed to die as they were born. But that they
might not be altogether without hope, they were taught by their
rulers that they would be rewarded with honour and happiness in
a future state. The Egyptian fellah received the good tidings
that there was no caste after death; the Christian serf was
consoled with the text, that the poor would inherit the kingdom
of heaven. This long and gloomy period of the human race may be
entitled Religion. History is confined to the upper classes.
All the discoveries, and inventions, and exploits of ancient
times are due to the efforts of an aristocracy; not only the
Persians and Hindus, but also the Greeks and the Romans, were
merely small societies of gentlemen reigning over a multitude
of slaves. The virtues of the lower classes were loyalty,
piety, obedience.
The third period is that of Liberty: it belongs only to Europe and to
modern times. A middle class of intelligence and wealth arises between
the aristocracy and the plebeians. They contend with the monopolies of
caste and birth; they demand power for themselves; they espouse the
cause of their poorer brethren; they will not admit that equality in
heaven is a valid reason for inequality on earth; they deny
that the aristocracy of priests know more of divine matters
than other men; they interpret the sacred books for themselves,
and translate them into the vulgar tongue; they separate
religion from temporal government, and reduce it to a system of
metaphysics and morality. It is in this period that we are at
present. Loyalty to the king has been transformed into
patriotism; and piety, or the worship of God, will give way, to
the reverence of law and the love of mankind. Thus the mind
will be elevated, the affections deepened and enlarged;
morality, ceasing to be entangled with theology, will be
applied exclusively to virtue.
It is difficult to find a title for the fourth period, as we
have as yet no word which expresses at the same time the utmost
development of mind and the utmost development of morals. I
have chosen the word Intellect, because by the education of the
intellect the moral sense is of necessity improved. In this
last period the destiny of Man will be fulfilled. He was not
sent upon the earth to prepare himself for existence in another
world; he was sent upon earth that he might beautify it as a
dwelling, and subdue it to his use; that he might exalt his
intellectual and moral powers until he had attained perfection,
and had raised himself to that ideal which he now expresses by
the name of God, but which, however sublime it may appear to
our weak and imperfect minds, is far below the splendour and
majesty of that power by whom the universe was made.
We shall now leave the darkness of the primeval times, and
enter the theatre of history. The Old World is a huge body,
with its head buried in eternal snows; with the Atlantic on its
left, the Pacific on its right, the Indian Ocean between its
legs. The left limb is sound and whole; its foot is the Cape of
Good Hope. The right limb has been broken and scattered by the
sea; Australia and the Archipelago are detached; Asia has been
amputated at the thigh. The lower extremities of this Old World
are covered for the most part with thorny thickets and with
fiery plains. The original natives were miserable creatures,
living chiefly on insects and shells, berries and roots;
casting the boomerang and the bone-pointed dart; abject, naked,
brutish, and forlorn. We pass up the body in its ancient state;
through the marsh of Central Africa, with its woolly-haired
blacks upon the left, and through the jungles of India, with
its straight-haired blacks upon the right; through the sandy
wastes of the Sahara, and the broad Asiatic tablelands; through
the forest of Central Europe, the Russian steppes, and the
Siberian plains, until we arrive at the frozen shores of the
open Polar Sea. The land is covered with fields of snow, on
which white bears may be seen in flocks like sheep. Ice
mountains tower in the air, and, as the summer approaches,
glide into the ocean and sail towards the south, The sky is
brightened by a rosy flame, which utters a crisp and crackling
sound. All else is silent, nature is benumbed. The signs of
human habitations are rare; sometimes a tribe of Esquimaux may
be perceived, dwelling in snow huts, enveloped in furs, driving
sledges with teams of dogs, tending their herds of reindeer on
the moss-grounds, or dashing over the cold waters in their
canoes to hunt the walrus and the seal.
This gloomy region, where the year is divided into one day and
one night, lies entirely outside the stream of history. We
descend through the land of the pine to the land of the oak and
beech. Huge woods and dismal fens covered Europe in the olden
time; by the banks of dark and sullen rivers the beavers built
their villages; the bears and the wolves were the aristocracy
of Europe; men paid them tribute in flesh and blood. A people,
apparently of Tartar origin, had already streamed into this
continent from Asia; but the true aborigines were not extinct;
they inhabited huts built on piles in the lakes of Switzerland;
they herded together in mountain caves. They were armed only
with stone weapons; but they cultivated certain kinds of grain,
and had tamed the reindeer, the ox, the boar, and the dog. In
ancient history Europe has no place. Even the lands to the
south of the Alps were inhabited by savages at a time when Asia
was in a civilised condition.
It is therefore Asia that we must first survey; it is there
that the history of books and monuments begins. The Tigris and
Euphrates rise in a tableland adjoining the Black Sea, and
flow into the Persian Gulf. On the right is a desert extending
to the Nile; on the left, a chain of hills. A shepherd people
descended from the plateau, occupied the land between the
rivers, the plains between the Tigris and the hills, and the
alluvial regions at the lower course of the Euphrates. They
wandered over the Arabian desert with their flocks and herds,
settled in Canaan and Yemen, crossed over into Africa, extended
along its northern shores as far as the Atlantic, overspread
the Sahara, and made border wars upon the Sudan. In the course of
many centuries the various branches of this people diverged
from one another. In Barbary and Sahara they were called
Berbers; in the valley of the Nile, Egyptians; Arabs, in the
desert and in Yemen; Canaanites, in Palestine; Assyrians, in
Mesopotamia and the upper regions of the Tigris; Chaldeans or
Babylonians, in the lower course of the Euphrates. The
Canaanites, the Arabs of Yemen, and the Berbers of Algeria
adopted agricultural habits and lived in towns; the Berbers of
Sahara, the Bedouins of the Syro-Arabian desert and of the
waste regions in Assyria, remained a pastoral and wandering
people. But in Chaldea and in Egypt the colonists were placed
under peculiar conditions. Famines impelled the shepherds to
make war on other tribes; famines impelled the Chaldeans and
Egyptians to contend with the Euphrates and the Nile, to
domesticate the waters, to store them in reservoirs, and to
distribute them, as required, upon the fields. It is not
improbable that the Egyptians were men of Babylonia driven by
war or by exile into the African deserts; that they were
composed of two noble classes, the priests and the military
men; that they took with them some knowledge of the arts and
sciences, which they afterwards developed into the peculiar
Egyptian type; that they found the valley inhabited by a negro
race, fishing in papyrus canoes, living chiefly on the lotus
root, and perhaps growing doura corn; that they reduced those
negroes to slavery, divided them into castes, allowed them to
retain in each district the form of animal worship peculiar to
the respective tribes:, making such worship emblematical, and
blending it with their own exalted creed; and finally, that
they married the native women, which would thus account for the
dash of the βtar-brushβ plainly to be read by the practised eye
in the portraits, though not in the conventional faces of the
monuments. On the other hand it may he held that Egypt was
colonised by a Berber tribe; that its civilisation was entirely
indigenous; that the distinction of classes arose from natural
selection, and was afterwards petrified by law, and that the
negro traits in the Egyptian physiognomy were due to the
importation of Ethiopian girls, who have always been favourites
in the harems of the East. But whichever of these hypotheses
may be true, the essential point is this, that civilisation
commenced in the application of mechanics to the cultivation of
the fields, and that this science could only have been invented
under pressure of necessity.
Let us now pass beyond the Tigris and climb up the hills which
bound it on the left. We find ourselves on the steppes of
Central Asia, in some parts lying waste in salt and sandy
plains, in others clothed with fields of waving grass. Over
these broad regions roamed the Turks or Tartars, living on
maresβ milk, dwelling in houses upon wheels. Beyond the steppes
towards the east is another chain of hills, and beyond them
lies the Great Plain of China, watered by two majestic rivers,
the Yang-tse Kiang and the Hoang Ho. The people of the steppes
and the mountains poured down upon this country, subdued the
savage aborigines, covered the land with rice fields, irrigated
by canals, and established many kingdoms which were afterwards
blended into one harmonious and civilised empire.
To the right hand of the Tartar steppes, as you travel towards
China, is a lofty tableland, the region of the sources of the
Oxus and Jaxartes. Thence descended a people who called
themselves the Aryas, or βthe nobleβ; they differed much in
appearance from the slit-eyed, smooth-faced, and fleshy-limbed
Mongols; and little in appearance, but widely in language, from
the people of the tableland of
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