History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

This was the first great consequence induced in India by the cheapness and abundance of the national food.114 But the evil by no means stopped there. In India, as in every other country, poverty provokes contempt, and wealth produces power. When other things are equal, it must be with classes of men as with individuals, that the richer they are, the greater the influence they will possess. It was therefore to be expected, that the unequal distribution of wealth should cause an unequal distribution of power; and as there is no instance on record of any class possessing power without abusing it, we may easily understand how it was that the people of India, condemned to poverty by the physical laws of their climate, should have fallen into a degradation from which they have never been able to escape. A few instances may be given to illustrate, rather than to prove, a principle which the preceding arguments have, I trust, placed beyond the possibility of dispute.

To the great body of the Indian people the name of Sudras is given;115 and the native laws respecting them contain some minute and curious provisions. If a member of this despised class presumed to occupy the same seat as his superiors, he was either to be exiled or to suffer a painful and ignominious punishment.116 If he spoke of them with contempt, his mouth was to be burned;117 if he actually insulted them, his tongue was to be slit;118 if he molested a Brahmin, he was to be put to death;119 if he sat on the same carpet with a Brahmin, he was to be maimed for life;120 if, moved by the desire of instruction, he even listened to the reading of the sacred books, burning oil was to be poured into his ears;121 if, however, he committed them to memory, he was to be killed;122 if he were guilty of a crime, the punishment for it was greater than that inflicted on his superiors;123 but if he himself were murdered, the penalty was the same as for killing a dog, a cat, or a crow.124 Should he marry his daughter to a Brahmin, no retribution that could be exacted in this world was sufficient; it was therefore announced that the Brahmin must go to hell, for having suffered contamination from a woman immeasurably his inferior.125 Indeed, it was ordered that the mere name of a labourer should be expressive of contempt, so that his proper standing might be immediately known.126 And lest this should not be enough to maintain the subordination of society, a law was actually made forbidding any labourer to accumulate wealth;127 while another clause declared, that even though his master should give him freedom, he would in reality still be a slave; ‘for,’ says the lawgiver – ‘for of a state which is natural to him, by whom can he be divested?’128

By whom, indeed, could he be divested? I ween not where that power was by which so vast a miracle could be worked. For in India, slavery, abject, eternal slavery, was the natural state of the great body of the people; it was the state to which they were doomed by physical laws utterly impossible to resist. The energy of those laws is, in truth, so invincible, that wherever they have come into play, they have kept the productive classes in perpetual subjection. There is no instance on record of any tropical country, in which wealth having been extensively accumulated, the people have escaped their fate; no instance in which the heat of the climate has not caused an abundance of food, and the abundance of food caused an unequal distribution, first of wealth, and then of political and social power. Among nations subjected to these conditions, the people have counted for nothing; they have had no voice in the management of the state, no control over the wealth their own industry created. Their only business has been to labour; their only duty to obey. Thus there has been generated among them, those habits of tame and servile submission, by which, as we know from history, they have always been characterized. For it is an undoubted fact, that their annals furnish no instance of their having turned upon their rulers, no war of classes, no popular insurrections, not even one great popular conspiracy. In those rich and fertile countries there have been many changes, but all of them have been from above, not from below. The democratic element has been altogether wanting. There have been in abundance, wars of kings, and wars of dynasties. There have been revolutions in the government, revolutions in the palace, revolutions on the throne; but no revolutions among the people;129 no mitigation of that hard lot which nature, rather than man, assigned to them. Nor was it until civilization arose in Europe, that other physical laws came into operation, and therefore other results were produced. In Europe, for the first time, there was some approach to equality, some tendency to correct that enormous disproportion of wealth and power, which formed the essential weakness of the greatest of the more ancient countries. As a natural consequence, it is in Europe that everything worthy of the name of civilization has originated; because there alone have attempts been made to preserve the balance of its relative parts. There alone has society been organized according to a scheme, not indeed sufficiently large, but still wide enough to include all the different classes of which it is composed, and thus, by leaving room for the progress of each, to secure the permanence and advancement of the whole.

The way in which certain other physical peculiarities confined to Europe, have also accelerated the progress of Man by diminishing his superstition, will be indicated towards the end of this chapter; but as that will involve an examination of some laws which I have not yet noticed, it seems advisable, in the first place, to complete the inquiry now before us; and I therefore purpose proving that the line of argument which has been just applied to India, is likewise applicable to Egypt, to Mexico, and to Peru. For by thus including in a single survey, the most conspicuous civilizations of Asia, Africa, and America, we shall be able to see how the preceding principles hold good of different and distant countries; and we shall be possessed of evidence sufficiently comprehensive to test the accuracy of those great laws which, without such precaution, I might be supposed to have generalized from scanty and imperfect materials.

The reasons why, of all the African nations, the Egyptians alone were civilized, have been already stated, and have been shown to depend on those physical peculiarities which distinguish them from the surrounding countries, and which, by facilitating the acquisition of wealth, not only supplied them with material resources that otherwise they could never have obtained, but also secured to their intellectual classes the leisure and the opportunity of extending the boundaries of knowledge. It is, indeed, true that, notwithstanding these advantages, they effected nothing of much moment; but this was owing to circumstances which will be hereafter explained; and it must, at all events, be admitted that they raised themselves far above every other people by whom Africa was inhabited.

The civilization of Egypt being, like that of India, caused by the fertility of the soil, and the climate being also very hot,130 there were in both countries brought into play the same laws; and there naturally followed the same results. In both countries we find the national food cheap and abundant: hence the labour-market over-supplied; hence a very unequal division of wealth and power; and hence all the consequences which such inequality will inevitably produce. How this system worked in India, I have just attempted to examine; and although the materials for studying the former condition of Egypt are much less ample, they are still sufficiently numerous to prove the striking analogy between the two civilizations, and the identity of those great principles which regulated the order of their social and political development.

If we inquire into the most important circumstances which concerned the people of ancient Egypt, we shall see that they are exactly the counterpart of those that have been noticed in India. For, in the first place, as regards their ordinary food, what rice is to the most fertile parts of Asia, that are dates to Africa. The palm-tree is found in every country from the Tigris to the Atlantic;131 and it supplies millions of human beings with their daily food in Arabia,132 and in nearly the whole of Africa north of the equator.133 In many parts of the great African desert it is indeed unable to bear fruit; but naturally it is a very hardy plant, and produces dates in such profusion, that towards the north of the Sahara they are eaten not only by man, but also by domestic animals.134 And in Egypt, where the palm is said to be of spontaneous growth,135 dates, besides being the chief sustenance of the people, are so plentiful, that from a very early period they have been given commonly to camels, the only beasts of burden generally used in that country.136

From these facts, it is evident that, taking Egypt as the highest type of African civilization, and India as the highest type of Asiatic civilization, it may be said that dates are to the first civilization what rice is to the second. Now it is observable, that all the most important physical peculiarities found in rice are also found in dates. In regard to their chemistry, it is well known that the chief principle of the nutriment they contain is the same in both; the starch of the Indian vegetable being merely turned into the sugar of the Egyptian. In regard to the laws of climate, their affinity is equally obvious; since dates, like rice, belong to hot countries, and flourish most in or near the tropics.137 In regard to their increase, and the laws of their connexion with the soil, the analogy is also exact; for dates, just the same as rice, require little labour, and yield abundant returns, while they occupy so small a space of land in comparison with the nutriment they afford, that upwards of two hundred palm-trees are sometimes planted on a single acre.138

Thus striking are the similarities to which, in different countries, the same physical conditions naturally give rise. At the same time, in Egypt, as in India, the attainment of civilization was preceded by the possession of a highly fertile soil; so that, while the exuberance of the land regulated the speed with which wealth was created, the abundance of the food regulated the proportions into which the wealth was divided. The most fertile part of Egypt is the Said;139 and it is precisely there that we find the greatest display of skill and knowledge, the splendid remains of Thebes, Carnac, Luxor, Dendera, and Edfou.140 It is also in the Said, or as it is often called the Thebaid, that a food is used which multiplies itself even more rapidly than either dates or rice. This is the dhourra, which until recently was confined to Upper Egypt,141 and of which the reproductive power is so remarkable, that it yields to the labourer a return of two hundred and forty for one.142 In Lower Egypt the dhourra was formerly unknown; but, in addition to dates, the people made a sort of bread from the lotos, which sprang spontaneously out of the rich soil of the Nile.143 This must have been a very cheap and accessible food; while to it there was joined a profusion of other plants and herbs, on which the Egyptians chiefly lived.144 Indeed so inexhaustible was the supply, that at the time of the Mohammedan invasion there were, in the single city of Alexandria, no less than four thousand persons occupied in selling vegetables to the people.145

From this abundance of the national food, there resulted a train of events strictly analogous to those which took place in India. In Africa generally, the growth of population, though on the one hand stimulated by the heat of the climate, was on the other hand checked by the poverty of the soil. But on the banks of the Nile this restraint no longer existed,146 and therefore the laws already noticed came into uncontrolled operation. By virtue of those laws, the Egyptians were not only satisfied with a cheap food, but they required that food in comparatively small quantities; thus by a double process, increasing the limit to which their numbers could extend. At the same time the lower orders were able to rear their offspring with the greater ease, because, owing to the high rate of temperature, another considerable source of expense was avoided; the heat being such that, even for adults, the necessary clothes were few and slight, while the children of the working classes were entirely naked; affording a striking contrast to those colder countries where, to preserve ordinary health, a supply of warmer and more costly covering is essential. Diodorus Siculus, who travelled in Egypt nineteen centuries ago, says, that to bring up a child to manhood did not cost more than twenty drachmas, scarcely thirteen shillings English money; a circumstance which he justly notices as a cause of the populousness of the country.147

To compress into a single sentence the preceding remarks, it may be said that in Egypt the people multiplied rapidly, because while the soil increased their supplies, the climate lessened their wants. The result was, that Egypt was not only far more thickly peopled than any other country in Africa, but probably more so than any in the ancient world. Our information upon this point is indeed somewhat scanty, but it is derived from sources of unquestioned credibility. Herodotus, who the more he is understood the more accurate he is found to be,148 states that in the reign of Amasis there were said to have been twenty thousand inhabited cities.149 This may, perhaps, be considered an exaggeration; but what is very observable is, that Diodorus Siculus, who travelled in Egypt four centuries after Herodotus, and whose jealousy of the reputation of his great predecessor made him anxious to discredit his statements,150 does nevertheless, on this important point, confirm them. For he not only remarks that Egypt was at that time as densely inhabited as any existing country, but he adds, on the authority of records which were then extant, that it was formerly the most populous in the world, having contained, he says, upwards of eighteen thousand cities.151

These were the only two ancient writers who, from personal knowledge, were well acquainted with the state of Egypt;152 and their testimony is the more valuable because it was evidently drawn from different sources; the information of Herodotus being chiefly collected at Memphis, that of Diodorus at Thebes.153 And whatever discrepancies there may be between these two accounts, they are both agreed respecting the rapid increase of the people, and the servile condition into which they had fallen. Indeed, the mere appearance of those huge and costly buildings, which are still standing, are a proof of the state of the nation that erected them. To raise structures so stupendous,154 and yet so useless,155 there must have been tyranny on the part of the rulers, and slavery on the part of the people. No wealth, however great, no expenditure, however lavish, could meet the expense which would have been incurred, if they had been the work of free men, who received for their labour a fair and honest reward.156 But in Egypt, as in India, such considerations were disregarded, because everything tended to favour the upper ranks of society and depress the lower. Between the two there was an immense and impassable gap.157 If a member of the industrious classes changed his usual employment, or was known to pay attention to political matters, he was severely punished;158 and under no circumstances was the possession of land allowed to an agricultural labourer, to a mechanic, or indeed to any one except the king, the clergy, and the army.159 The people at large were little better than beasts of burden; and all that was expected from them was an unremitting and unrequited labour. If they neglected their work, they were flogged; and the same punishment was frequently inflicted upon domestic servants, and even upon women.160 These and similar regulations were well conceived; they were admirably suited to that vast social system, which, because it was based on despotism, could only be upheld by cruelty. Hence it was that, the industry of the whole nation being at the absolute command of a small part of it, there arose the possibility of rearing those vast edifices, which inconsiderate observers admire as a proof of civilization,161 but which, in reality, are evidence of a state of things altogether depraved and unhealthy; a state in which the skill and the arts of an imperfect refinement injured those whom they ought to have benefited; so that the very resources which the people had created were turned against the people themselves.

That in such a society as this, much regard should be paid to human suffering, it would indeed be idle to expect.162 Still, we are startled by the reckless prodigality with which, in Egypt, the upper classes squandered away the labour and the lives of the people. In this respect, as the monuments yet remaining abundantly prove, they stand alone and without a rival. We may form some idea of the almost incredible waste, when we hear that two thousand men were occupied for three years in carrying a single stone from Elephantine to Sais;163 that the Canal of the Red Sea alone, cost the lives of a hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians;164 and that to build one of the pyramids required the labour of three hundred and sixty thousand men for twenty years.165

If, passing from the history of Asia and Africa, we now turn to the New World, we shall meet with fresh proof of the accuracy of the preceding views. The only parts of America which before the arrival of the Europeans were in some degree civilized, were Mexico and Peru;166 to which may probably be added that long and narrow tract which stretches from the south of Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama. In this latter country, which is now known as Central America, the inhabitants, aided by the fertility of the soil,167 seem to have worked out for themselves a certain amount of knowledge; since the ruins still extant, prove the possession of a mechanical and architectural skill too considerable to be acquired by any nation entirely barbarous.168 Beyond this, nothing is known of their history; but the accounts we have of such buildings as Copan, Palenque, and Uxmal, make it highly probable that Central America was the ancient seat of a civilization, in all essential points similar to those of India and Egypt; that is to say, similar to them in respect to the unequal distribution of wealth and power, and the thraldom in which the great body of the people consequently remained.169

But although the evidence from which we might estimate the former condition of Central America is almost entirely lost,170 we are more fortunate in regard to the histories of Mexico and Peru. There are still existing considerable and authentic materials, from which we may form an opinion on the ancient state of those two countries, and on the nature and extent of their civilization. Before, however, entering upon this subject, it will be convenient to point out what those physical laws were which determined the localities of American civilization; or, in other words, why it was that in these countries alone, society should have been organized into a fixed and settled system, while the rest of the New World was peopled by wild and ignorant barbarians. Such an inquiry will be found highly interesting, as affording further proof of the extraordinary, and indeed irresistible, force with which the powers of nature have controlled the fortunes of man.

The first circumstance by which we must be struck, is that in America, as in Asia and Africa, all the original civilizations were seated in hot countries; the whole of Peru proper being within the southern tropic, the whole of Central America and Mexico within the northern tropic. How the heat of the climate operated on the social and political arrangements of India and Egypt, I have attempted to examine; and it has, I trust, been proved that the result was brought about by diminishing the wants and requirements of the people, and thus producing a very unequal distribution of wealth and power. But, besides this, there is another way in which the average temperature of a country affects its civilization, and the discussion of which I have reserved for the present moment, because it may be more clearly illustrated in America than elsewhere. Indeed, in the New World, the scale on which Nature works, being much larger than in the Old, and her forces being more overpowering, it is evident that her operations on mankind may be studied with greater advantage than in countries where she is weaker, and where, therefore, the consequences of her movements are less conspicuous.

If the reader will bear in mind the immense influence which an abundant national food has been shown to exercise, he will easily understand how, owing to the pressure of physical phenomena, the civilization of America was, of necessity, confined to those parts where alone it was found by the discoverers of the New World. For, setting aside the chemical and geognostic varieties of soil, it may be said that the two causes which regulate the fertility of every country are heat and moisture.171 Where these are abundant, the land will be exuberant; where they are deficient, it will be sterile. This rule is, of course, in its application subject to exceptions, arising from physical conditions which are independent of it; but if other things are equal, the rule is invariable. And the vast additions which, since the construction of isothermal lines, have been made to our knowledge of geographical botany, enable us to lay this down as a law of nature, proved not only by arguments drawn from vegetable physiology, but also by a careful study of the proportions in which plants are actually distributed in different countries.172

A general survey of the continent of America will illustrate the connexion between this law and the subject now before us. In the first place, as regards moisture, all the great rivers in the New World are on the eastern coast, none of them on the western. The causes of this remarkable fact are unknown;173 but it is certain that neither in North, nor in South America, does one considerable river empty itself into the Pacific; while on the opposite side there are numerous rivers, some of enormous magnitude, all of great importance, as the Negro, the La Plata, the San Francisco, the Amazon, the Orinoco, the Mississippi, the Alabama, the Saint John, the Potomac, the Susquehannah, the Delaware, the Hudson, and the Saint Lawrence. By this vast water-system the soil is towards the east constantly irrigated:174 but towards the west there is in North America only one river of value, the Oregon;175 while in South America, from the Isthmus of Panama to the Straits of Magellan, there is no great river at all.

But as to the other main cause of fertility, namely heat, we find in North America a state of things precisely the reverse. There we find that while the irrigation is on the east, the heat is on the west.176 This difference of temperature between the two coasts is probably connected with some great meteorological law; for in the whole of the northern hemisphere, the eastern part of continents and of islands is colder than the western.177 Whether, however, this is owing to some large and comprehensive cause, or whether each instance has a cause peculiar to itself, is an alternative, in the present state of knowledge, impossible to decide; but the fact is unquestionable, and its influence upon the early history of America is extremely curious. In consequence of it, the two great conditions of fertility have not been united in any part of the continent north of Mexico. The countries on the one side have wanted heat; those on the other side have wanted irrigation. The accumulation of wealth being thus impeded, the progress of society was stopped; and until, in the sixteenth century, the knowledge of Europe was brought to bear upon America, there is no instance of any people north of the twentieth parallel, reaching even that imperfect civilization to which the inhabitants of India and of Egypt easily attained.178 On the other hand, south of the twentieth parallel, the continent suddenly changes its form, and, rapidly contracting, becomes a small strip of land, until it reaches the Isthmus of Panama. This narrow tract was the centre of Mexican civilization; and a comparison of the preceding arguments will easily show why such was the case; for the peculiar configuration of the land secured a very large amount of coast, and thus gave to the southern part of North America the character of an island. Hence there arose one of the characteristics of an insular climate, namely, an increase of moisture caused by the watery vapour which springs from the sea.179 While, therefore, the position of Mexico near the equator gave it heat, the shape of the land gave it humidity; and this being the only part of North America in which these two conditions were united, it was likewise the only part which was at all civilized. There can be no doubt that if the sandy plains of California and southern Columbia, instead of being scorched into sterility, had been irrigated by the rivers of the east, or if the rivers of the east had been accompanied by the heat of the west, the result of either combination would have been that exuberance of soil by which, as the history of the world decisively proves, every early civilization was preceded. But inasmuch as, of the two elements of fertility, one was deficient in every part of America north of the twentieth parallel, it followed that, until that line was passed, civilization could gain no resting-place; and there never has been found, and we may confidently assert never will be found, any evidence that even a single ancient nation, in the whole of that enormous continent, was able to make much progress in the arts of life, or organize itself into a fixed and permanent society.