ART. II. THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT TENDENCIES OF CIVILIZATION. Spe trepido: haud unquam vidi tam magna daturos, LUCAN. viii. 297-9. Two forms of civilization have in different ages and in different countries existed in the earth, strikingly distinguished from each other in their principle and their effects.* In the one, the entire direction of society-the exclusive superintendence of its mental and spiritual interests, and, through that, the ultimate control of government, of jurisprudence, and even of material industry-has been confided to an independent and irresponsible priesthood, claiming a direct derivation of its authority from heaven, and holding the rest of mankind in slavish subjection. In the other, we find the order of social relations reversed; the priesthood subdued; the civil power invested with supreme authority in its place; and the cultivation of knowledge, and the exercise of religion, taken out of the hands of an exclusive caste, and left-under the sanction of the laws-with more or less freedom of speech and action, according to the political constitution of society-to the spontaneous efforts of those classes which enjoy the rank and privileges of citizens. For an immense period of time, long before the commencement of authentic history, the inhabitants of the most favoured regions of the earth appear to have subsisted under the first of these forms of civilization, and to have attained under it to a very remarkable degree of wealth, industry and social tranquillity, and of skill in the practical arts of life. The valley of the Nile, the alluvial plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, of the Oxus, the Indus and the Ganges, in the new world, the regions of Mexico and Peru, and perhaps, at a period anterior to the ascendancy of the Hellenic and the Roman races, the peninsulas of Greece and Italy-were once the seats of this sacerdotal culture; present to us through the dimness of tradition just dawning into history, the first striking contrast, in the progress of human affairs, of civilization with barbarism; and still contain many curious and instructive monuments of the powerful and industrious multitudes that once occupied their surface. * This observation is made by Humboldt; Researches into the Ancient Inhabitants of America; Preface. As we descend the stream of time, the second of these forms of civilization comes into view. We observe an evident preparation made for it in the freer spirit and more independent character of different branches of the Semitic family of nationsmore especially of the Hebrews and the Phoenicians; although the precise steps of the transition to its complete realization among the Greeks are hidden from us in the obscurity of the remote past. This new form of civilization did not rest within the limits of its original domain; it spread itself over the ancient seats of sacerdotal despotism; and, through the conquests of Alexander, scattered the seeds of a higher mental culture in Egypt and the East. The Romans sustained it by the nature of their constitution, and the prowess of their legions; they humbled the priesthood in every land submitted to their sway; and through the whole of the civilized world, from the shores of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Parthia, they maintained undisputed the ascendancy of law, policy and arms. With the introduction of Christianity, a new principle began to operate. Religion had hitherto been attached either to an independent body of priests, or to the state which assumed their functions and exercised their authority. The idea of its separating itself at once from the priest and from the magistrate, was a novelty as yet unheard of. Yet this was the great idea of primitive Christianity. It made its appeal to the hidden man of the heart; it discarded authority and the use of outward force; its weapons were spiritual, and its kingdom not of this world; it conquered by conviction; it ruled by faith; and its empire was the conscience and the heart. History obliges us to confess that this idea was too pure and elevated to be completely realised in the actual circumstances of human nature, and amidst the overwhelming accumulation of external calamities which attended the downfall of the Roman Empire. It was perhaps quite as much a necessity of the time, as a deliberate corruption of its spirit, which embodied Christianity, after the age of Constantine, in the form of a hierarchy. In this form it subsisted, compact and unbroken, amidst the shock of hostile forms; subduing into humanity, by its awful front and firm arm, the wild rigour of the tribes that descended from the North to impregnate with a new life the exhausted elements of the ancient civilization; cherishing in its deep bosom, under the deadening folds of formalism and secularity, a latent spark of divine life; and carrying safely, as in an ark, across the dark and troubled flood of strife and ignorance, the most precious relics of the mind of the old world. A priesthood is essentially conservative; it is the natural depository of the traditions of the past. When we no longer need its services, we should not be ungrateful for its former benefits, but remember that the very instruments of its destruction are furnished by itself. The reformation was an effort to go back to the original principle of Christianity, and to rescue it from sacerdotal bondage. It is an epoch in the history of modern civilization, which may be compared with the great impulse of Grecian freedom in that of the old; and the effects which have accompanied the two periods bear no little analogy. We have a purer religion, and a greater accumulation of knowledge, to guide us through our course; and there are circumstances in the present intercourse of nations, and in the means of rapidly disseminating intelligence, which seem to secure the permanent ascendancy of civilization, and guarantee the perpetuity of future progress. If then we look back on the past, and compare the influence upon the human mind of the two forms of civilization, to which we have referred, we are at once made sensible of the striking difference between them. We may designate one the stationary, and the other the progressive, form of civilization. In the one, we observe society arrive with great rapidity and remarkable precision at a certain point of advancement in the arts essential to the physical well being of mankind; moulding all its ideas, habits, and institutions into a compact and harmonious whole; and then, as if crystallized, enduring for ages in one unaltered form, with scarce an indication of inward life and growth. In the other, there is great wildness and irregularity; much less certain progress at first; perpetual conflict, vicissitude and alternation; but withal, in the midst of these warring elements, the decided development of a higher and more vigorous moral life—an awakening of individual intelligence and character, which subdues and controls the outward world, and leaves through all future time indelible traces of its existence on human affairs. Through the thousands of years, during which the great priesthoods of Egypt and the East upheld their tranquil and immoveable despotism, they announce to us not one name of eminence;-they have not bequeathed to us a single work in prose or in verse, which gives utterance to the free inspirations of genius, or embodies the personal convictions of an independent searcher after truth. The monuments they have left, whether mental or material, are the work of an organized class, not the creations of individuals. But the space of the comparatively few centuries during which the Greeks enjoyed a national existence, is richly studded with names, eminent in every department of intellectual exertion-poets, historians, orators, artists, philosophers,-whose productions are * still venerated as models of excellence, and the impulse of whose commanding minds has vibrated through all the realms of thought to the present day.* The glory of their genius was reflected in the literature and philosophy of Rome, and a faint revival of its former lustre crowned the decline of the ancient civilization. Society in the middle ages resumed the sacerdotal form, though its uniformity was broken by the energetic daring of a few great men, who prepared the way for the revolution, by which it was to be terminated:-yet, if we compare all the fruits which it produced during the thousand years that it reposed under the tutelage of the Church, from the fall of the Western to that of the Eastern Empire-with the progress of the human mind in arts, science and philosophy, in the course of the three centuries which have elapsed since the spell of authority was broken by the Reformers, and the right of free investigation has been asserted and exercised; we cannot doubt, whatever may be the occasional evils of social discord and disorganization-if progress be the condition of the highest dignity and happiness of man, and we are to estimate the degree of civilization, not by the ease and the success with which the great mass of human beings may be kept in a state of tranquil and contented acquiescence, but by the amount of moral and intellectual energy, which is called into existence, and by the richness and multiplicity of the new forms of truth and beauty, which are continually presented to view-that the few centuries which have borne the fruits of freedom and genius, infinitely outweigh in value the dull monotony of the thousands of years which preceded them, and that their power of producing such fruits must be mainly ascribed to their exemption from the despotism of the priest. We naturally inquire, whether this progressive form of civilization may be expected to endure beyond a limited time, or whether, after having completed a certain cycle of glory, it must decline and cease, and again give place to some new modification of the stationary and despotic condition of society. The question is deeply interesting to us, because we are now involved in one of those great crises of human affairs in which society is preparing to make a turn, and momentous change is evidently at hand. The state of things which grew immediately out of the Reformation, cannot subsist much longer. It has done its work, and exhausted its results; its unsatisfactory and * Ruhnken, perhaps the profoundest and most universal Greek scholar of his age, observes in the preface to his edition of the Lexicon of Timæus, that he could trace the influence of the mind of Plato, not only on the general caste of thought, but on the very forms of expression, in subsequent writers, far down into the Christian æra, to the very extinction of the Hellenic civilization. inconsequential character is on all sides increasingly acknowledged; and it must sooner or later pass away. But what will succeed it? are we to go on to a higher and nobler freedom? or must we return again under the " beggarly elements" of authority and law? Two opposite tendencies are at this moment violently distracting our country. One party is determined on obtaining the full rights of conscience; is resolved to place all religious bodies on a footing of perfect equality; and demands from the state, that all the national provisions for education shall be made without any reference to the distinctions of sect and creed. On the other hand, an immense majority of the clergy, and no small proportion of the laity whom they instruct, are not disposed to relinquish their long-established religious ascendancy; are using every means to wrest back from the dissenters the territory they have won from them; and have set their hearts on reducing all the intellectual, moral and religious interests of society once more under the authority of the Church. Our persuasion that such a result would prove fatal to the healthful action of the human mind, combined with our conviction, that Providence is a progressive evolution of good, drawing out of all the past, the elements of a better futurity for our race,—will not permit us to be apprehensive about the final issue of this contest. But the contest itself may be long and arduous; and the speediness as well as the completeness of its successful termination must depend on the temper, intelligence and moral principle of those who engage in it. In the meantime, therefore, it behoves us to ensure the perpetuity of right principles, by upholding the cause of unsectarian education; to spread its influences, far and wide and deep; to make provision for strengthening the minds, directing the views, and forming the characters of those, who in coming generations, are destined by their position in society to become the friends and advocates of truth and liberty. We speak now with more immediate reference to the education of the middle classes; not only because it is to these classes that the readers of this periodical chiefly belong, but also because their moral influence is great and increasing in the present constitution of society. The distinction of churchman and dissenter has operated most injuriously on the cause of the higher education in England. It has carried the invidious feelings of sect and party into a question, with which they ought to have no concern. It has converted those very interests of civilization, which from their pure and elevated nature ought to be, and might be, binding, humanizing and beneficent, into a |