8

gether. But the objections which apply to the French are stil more applicable to the Germans. For the protective principle has been, and still is, stronger in Germany than in France. Even the best of the German governments are constantly interfering with the people; never leaving them to themselves, always looking after their interests, and meddling in the commonest affairs of daily life. Besides this, the German literature, though now the first in Europe, owes its origin, as we shall hereafter see, to that great sceptical movement, by which, in France, the Revolution was preceded. Before the middle of the eighteenth century, the Germans, notwithstanding a few eminent names, such as Kepler and Leibnitz, had no literature of real value; and the first impetus which they received, was caused by their contact with the French intellect, and by the influence of those eminent Frenchmen who, in the reign of Frederick the Great, flocked to Berlin, a city which has ever since been the head-quarters of philosophy and science. From this there have resulted some very important circumstances, which I can here only briefly indicate. The German intellect, stimulated by the French into a sudden growth, has been irregularly developed; and thus hurried into an activity greater than the average civilization of the country requires. The consequence is, that there is no nation in Europe in which we find so wide an interval between the highest minds and the lowest minds. The German philosophers possess a learning, and a reach of thought, which places them at the head of the civilized world. The German people are more superstitious, more prejudiced, and, notwithstanding the care which the government takes of their education, more really ignorant, and more unfit to guide themselves, than are the inhabitants either of France or of England. This sep

9

"The history of this remarkable, though short-lived, union between the French and German intellects, will be traced in the next volume; but its first great effect, in stimulating, or rather in creating, the German literature, is noticed by one of the most learned of their own writers: "Denn einestheils war zu diesen Gegenständen immer die lateinische Sprache gebraucht, und die Muttersprache zu wenig cultivirt worden, anderntheils wurden diese Schriften auch meistentheils nur von Gelehrten, und zwar Universitätsgelehrten, für welche sie auch hauptsächlich bestimmt waren, gelesen. Gegen die Mitte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, als mehrere englische und französische Werke gelesen und übersetzt wurden, und durch die Vorliebe des Königs von Preussen Friedrichs II., der von Franzosen gebildet worden war, französische Gelehrte besonders geehrt und angestellt wurden, entstand ein Wetteifer der Deutschen, auch in dem schriftlichen Vortrage nicht zurück zu bleiben, und die Sprache hob sich bald zu einem hohen Grade von Vollkommenheit." Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. xi. pp. 286, 287.

A popular view of the system of national education established in Germany, will be found in Kay's Social Condition ana Education of the People of Europe, vol. ii. pp. 1-344. But Mr. Kay, like most literary men, overrates the advantages of literary acquirements, and underrates that education of the faculties which neither books nor schools can impart to a people who are debarred from the exercise of civil and political rights. In the history of the protective spirit (chaps. ix. and x. of the present volume), I shall return to this subject, in connexion with France;

10

aration and divergence of the two classes is the natural result of that artificial stimulus, which a century ago was administered to one of the classes, and which thus disturbed the normal proportions of society. Owing to this, the highest intellects have, in Germany, so outstripped the general progress of the nation, that there is no sympathy between the two parties; nor are there at present any means by which they may be brought into contact. Their great authors address themselves, not to their country, but to each other. They are sure of a select and learned audience, and they use what, in reality, is a learned language; they turn their mother-tongue into a dialect, eloquent indeed, and very powerful, but so difficult, so subtle, and so full of complicated inversions, that to their own lower classes it is utterly incomprehensible. From this, there have arisen some of the most marked peculiarities of German literature. For, being deprived of ordinary readers, it is cut off from the influence of ordinary prejudice; and in the next volume I shall examine it in regard to German civilization. In the mean time, I must be allowed to protest against the account Mr. Kay has given of the results of compulsory education; an agreeable picture, drawn by an amiable and intelligent writer, but of the inaccuracy of which I possess decisive evidence. Two points only I will now refer to. 1st. The notorious fact, that the German people, notwithstanding their so-called education, are unfit to take any share in political matters, and have no aptitude for the practical and administrative parts of government. 2d. The fact, equally notorious to those who have studied the subject, that there are more popular superstitions in Prussia, the most educated part of Germany, than there are in England; and that the tenacity with which men cling to them is greater in Prussia than in England. For illustration of the practical working, in individual cases, of compulsory education, and of the hardship it causes, see a scanda lous occurrence, related in Laing's Notes of a Traveller, 8vo, 1842, p. 165, first series; and on the physical evils produced by German education, see Phillips on Scrofula, London, 1846, pp. 253, 254, where there is some useful evidence of the consequences of "that great German sin of over-regulation."

10 This is well stated by Mr. Laing, by far the ablest traveller who has published observations on European society: "German authors, both the philosophic and the poetic, address themselves to a public far more intellectual, and more highly cultivated, than our reading public. . . . . In our literature, the most obscure and abstruse of metaphysical or philosophical writers take the public mind in a far lower state, simply cognisant of the meaning of language, and possessed of the ordinary reasoning powers. . . . . The social influence of German literature is, consequently, confined within a narrower circle. It has no influence on the mind of the lower, or even of the middle classes in active life, who have not the opportunity or leisure to screw their faculties up to the pitch-note of their great writers. The reading public must devote much time to acquire the knowledge, tone of feeling, and of imagination, necessary to follow the writing public. The social economist finds accordingly in Germany the most extraordinary dullness, inertness of mind, and ignorance, be low a certain level, with the most extraordinary intellectual development, learning, and genius, at or above it." Laing's Notes of a Traveller, first series, pp. 266, 267. The same acute observer says in a later work (Notes, third series, 8vo, 1852, p. 12): "The two classes speak and think in different languages. The cultivated German language, the language of German literature, is not the language of the common man, nor even the man far up in the middle ranks of society,-the farmer, tradesman, shopkeeper." See also pp. 351, 352, 354. It is singular that so clear and vig orous a thinker as Mr. Laing evidently is, should have failed in detecting the cause of this peculiar phenomenon.

and hence it has displayed a boldness of inquiry, a recklessness in the pursuit of truth, and a disregard of traditional opinions, which entitle it to the highest praise. But on the other hand, this same circumstance has produced that absence of practical knowledge, and that indifference to material and physical interests, for which the German literature is justly censured. As a matter of course, all this has widened the original breach, and increased the distance which separates the great German thinkers from that dull and plodding class, which, though it lies immediately beneath them, still remains uninfluenced by their knowledge, and uncheered by the glow and fire of their genius.

In America, on the other hand, we see a civilization precisely the reverse of this. We see a country, of which it has been truly said, that in no other are there so few men of great learning, and so few men of great ignorance." In Germany, the speculative classes and the practical classes are altogether disunited; in America, they are altogether fused. In Germany, nearly every year brings forward new discoveries, new philosophies, new means by which the boundaries of knowledge are to be enlarged. In America, such inquiries are almost entirely neglected: since the time of Jonathan Edwards no great metaphysician has appeared; little attention has been paid to physical science; and with the single exception of jurisprudence, 12 scarcely any thing has been done for those vast subjects on which the Germans are incessantly labouring. The stock of American knowledge is small, but it is spread through all classes; the stock of German knowledge is immense, but it is confined to one class. Which of these two forms of civilization is the more advantageous, is a question we are not now called upon to decide. It is enough for our present purpose, that in Germany, there is a serious failure in the diffu

"1 "Je ne pense pas qu'il y ait de pays dans le monde où, proportion gardée avec la population, il se trouve aussi peu d'ignorants et moins de savants qu'en Amérique.” Tocqueville de la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. i. p. 91.

The causes of this exception I shall endeavor to trace in the next volume; but it is interesting to notice, that, as early as 1775, Burke was struck by the partiality of the Americans for works on law. See Burke's Speech, in Parliamentary History, vol. xviii. p. 495; or in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 188. He says: "In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read,-and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England." Of this state of society, the great works of Kent and Story were, at a later period, the natural result. On the respect at present felt for the legal profession, see Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, 1849, vol. i. p. 45; and as to the judges, Combe's N. America, vol. ii. p. 329.

sion of knowledge; and, in America, a no less serious one in its accumulation. And as civilization is regulated by the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge, it is evident that no country can even approach to a complete and perfect pattern, if, cultivating one of these conditions to an excess, it neglects the cultivation of the other. Indeed, from this want of balance and equilibrium between the two elements of civilization, there have arisen in America and in Germany those great but opposite evils, which, it is to be feared, will not be easily remedied; and which, until remedied, will certainly retard the progress of both countries, notwithstanding the temporary advantages which such onesided energy does for the moment always procure.

I have very briefly, but I hope fairly, and certainly with no conscious partiality, endeavoured to estimate the relative value of the history of the four leading countries of the world. As to the real greatness of the countries themselves, I offer no opinion; because each considers itself to be the first. But, unless the facts I have stated can be controverted, it certainly follows, that the history of England is, to the philosopher, more valuable than any other; because he can more clearly see in it the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge going hand-in-hand; because that knowledge has been less influenced by foreign and external agencies; and because it has been less interfered with, either for good or for evil, by those powerful, but frequently incompetent men, to whom the administration of public affairs is intrusted.

It is on account of these considerations, and not at all from those motives which are dignified with the name of patriotism, that I have determined to write the history of my own country, in preference to that of any other; and to write it in a manner as complete, and as exhaustive, as the materials which are now extant will enable me to do. But, inasmuch as the circumstances already stated, render it impossible to discover the laws of society solely by studying the history of a single nation, I have drawn up the present Introduction, in order to obviate some of the difficulties with which this great subject is surrounded. In the earlier chapters, I have attempted to mark out the limits of the subject considered as a whole, and fix the largest possible basis upon which it can rest. With this view, I have looked at civilization as broken into two vast divisions: the European division, in which Man is more powerful than Nature; and the non-European division, in which Nature is more powerful than Man. This has led us to the conclusion, that national progress, in connexion with popular liberty, could have originated in no part of the world except in Europe; where, therefore, the rise of real civilization, and the encroachments of the human mind

upon the forces of nature, are alone to be studied. The superiority of the mental laws over the physical, being thus recognized as the groundwork of European history, the next step has been, to resolve the mental laws into moral and intellectual, and prove the superior influence of the intellectual ones in accelerating the progress of Man. These generalizations appear to me the essential preliminaries of history, considered as a science; and, in order to connect them with the special history of England, we have now merely to ascertain the fundamental condition of intellectual progress, as, until that is done, the annals of any people can only present an empirical succession of events, connected by such stray and casual links as are devised by different writers, according to their different principles. The remaining part of this Introduction will, therefore, be chiefly occupied in completing the scheme I have sketched, by investigating the history of various countries in reference to those intellectual peculiarities on which the history of our own country supplies no adequate information. Thus, for instance, in Germany, the accumulation of knowledge has been far more rapid than in England; the laws of the accumulation of knowledge may, on that account, be most conveniently studied in German history, and then applied deductively to the history of England. In the same way, the Americans have diffused their knowledge much more completely than we have done; I, therefore, purpose to explain some of the phenomena of English civilization by those laws of diffusion, of which, in American civilization, the workings may be most clearly seen, and hence the discovery most easily made. Again, inasmuch as France is the most civilized country in which the protective spirit is very powerful, we may trace the occult tendencies of that spirit among ourselves by studying its obvious tendencies among our neighbours. With this view, I shall give an account of French history, in order to illustrate the protective principle, by showing the injury it has inflicted on a very able and enlightened people. And, in an analysis of the French Revolution, I shall point out how that great event was a reaction against the protective spirit; while, as the materials for the reaction were drawn from England, we shall also see in it the way in which the intellect of one country acts upon the intellect of another; and we shall arrive at some results respecting that interchange of ideas which is likely to become the most important regulator of European affairs. This will throw much light on the laws of international thought; and, in connection with it, two separate chapters will be devoted to a History of the Protective Spirit, and an Examination of its relative intensity in France and England. But the French, as