Read the book: «The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863», page 11
PROMISE
O watcher for the dawn of day,
As o'er the mountain peaks afar
Hangs in the twilight cold and gray,
Like a bright lamp, the morning star!
Though slow the daybeams creep along
The serried pines which top the hills,
And gloomy shadows brood among
The silent valleys, and the rills
Seem almost hushed—patience awhile!
Though slowly night to day gives birth,
Soon the young babe with radiant smile
Shall gladden all the waiting earth.
By fair gradation changes come,
No harsh transitions mar God's plan,
But slowly works from sun to sun
His perfect rule of love to man.
And patience, too, my countrymen,
In this our nation's fierce ordeal!
Bright burns the searching flame, and then,
The dross consumed, shall shine the real.
Wake, watcher! see the mountain peaks
Already catch a golden ray,
Light on the far horizon speaks
The dawning of a glorious day.
Murky the shadows still that cling
In the deep valleys, but the mist
Is soaring up on silver wing
To where the sun the clouds has kissed.
Hard-fought and long the strife may be,
The powers of wrong be slow to yield,
But Right shall gain the victory,
And Freedom hold the battle field.
AMERICAN DESTINY
We would study the question of American Destiny in the light of common sense, of history, and of science.
It may be unusual to illustrate from science a principle which is to have a political application; but we shall endeavor to do so, believing it to be unexceptionably legitimate. The different departments of science, science and history, science and politics, have been, heretofore, kept quite distinct as to the provinces of inquiry to which it was presumed they severally belonged. Each has been cultivated as if it had no relation external to itself, and was not one of a family of cognate truths. This, however, is undergoing a gradual but certain change, in which it is becoming constantly more manifest that between the different departments of human inquiry there are mutual dependences and complicated interrelations, which enable us, by the truths of one science, to thread the mazes of another.
There are certain general laws which pertain with equal validity to many departments of activity in the natural world; there are parallel lines of development as the result of the inherent correlation of forces. Thus, if we have found a great general law in physiology, that same law may apply with equal aptness to astronomy, geology, chemistry, and even to social and political evolution.
One of these general laws, and perhaps the most comprehensive in its character and universal in its application of any yet known, we will announce in the language of Guyot, the comparative geographer: 'We have recognized in the life of all that develops itself, three successive states, three grand phases, three evolutions, identically repeated in every order of existence; a chaos, where all is confounded together; a development, where all is separating; a unity, where all is binding itself together and organizing. We have observed that here is the law of phenomenal life, the formula of development, whether in inorganic nature or in organized nature.'
This answers for the department of physics and physiology. We will let Guizot, the historian, speak for the political and social realm: 'All things, at their origin, are nearly confounded in one and the same physiognomy; it is only in their aftergrowth that their variety shows itself. Then begins a new development which urges forward societies toward that free and lofty unity, the glorious object of the efforts and wishes of mankind.'
We find an illustration of this law in the simplest of the sciences, if the nebular hypothesis be true, as most astronomers believe. We have first the chaotic, nebulous matter, then the formation of worlds therefrom, by a continuous process of unfolding. Each world is a unit within itself, but part of a still greater unit composed of a system of worlds revolving around the same sun; and this greater unit, part of one which is still greater—a star cluster, composed of many planetary systems, and subject to the same great cosmical laws. If the theory be correct, we find, in this example, the heterogeneous derived from the simple, and far more completely an organized unit, with all its complexity, than was the chaotic mass from which development originally proceeded.
We find additional illustration in coming to our own world. Its primeval geography was simple and uniform; there was little diversity of coast line, soil, or surface. But the cooling process of the earth went on, the surface contracted and ridged up, the exposed rocks were disintegrated by the action of the atmosphere and the waters; the sediment deposited in the bottom of the seas was thrown to the surface; continents were enlarged, higher mountain ranges upheaved, the coasts worn into greater irregularity of outline; and everywhere the soil became more composite, the surface more uneven, the landscape more variegated.
Corresponding changes have taken place in the climate. At first the temperature of the earth was much warmer than now, and uniform in all parallels of latitude, as is shown by the fossil remains. Now we have a great diversity of climate, whether we contrast the polar with the torrid regions, or the different seasons of the temperate zone with each other.
The same law of increasing diversity obtains in the fauna and flora of the various periods of geological history. The earliest fossil record of animal life is witness to the simplicity of organic structure. Among vertebrated animals, fishes first appear, next reptiles, then birds; still higher, the lower type of animals which suckle their young; and as the strata become more recent, still higher forms of mammalia, till we reach the upper tertiary, in which geologists have discovered the remains of many animals of complex structure nearly allied to those which are now in existence. In the historic period appear many organic forms of still greater complexity, with man at the head of the zoological series.
In this glance of zoological progress, we discover increasing complication of two kinds; for while the individual structure has been constantly becoming more complex, there are now in existence the analogues of the lowest fossil types, which, with the highest, and with all the intermediate, present a maze and vastness of complication, which, in comparison with the homogeneity of the aggregate of early structure, is sufficiently obvious and impressive.
There is in this view, still another outline of increasing complexity. At first the same types prevailed all over the earth's surface; but as the soil, atmosphere, and climate changed, and the animal structure became more complex and varied, the limits of particular species became more and more localized, till the earth's surface presented zoological districts, with the fauna of each peculiar to itself.
But, what of unitization? Here, there appears to be divergence only, and that continually increasing.
Guyot says that 'the unity reappears with the creation of man, who combines in his physical nature all the perfections of the animal, and who is the end of all this long progression of organized beings.' Agassiz recognizes man alone as cosmopolite; and Comte regards him as the supreme head of the economy of nature, and representative of the fundamental unity of the anatomical scale.
But another and more obvious example of unitization in complexity, is derivable from the consideration of the animal organism, and will soon be given.
We will merely mention in passing, that the most complex animals, in the various stages of fetal development through which they pass, correspond to the types of structure which are permanent in the lower forms of animal life. Thus, in the zoological chain, there are beings of all grades, from the most simple in structure to the most complex; and the most complex animal, in its development from the ovum or egg, passes through all these grades of structure, ending in that which is above all, and distinctively its own. 'Without going into tedious details, man presents, as regards the most important of his constituent structures, his nervous system, the successive characteristics of an avertebrated animal, a fish, a turtle, a bird, a quadruped, a quadrumanous animal, before he assumes the special human characteristics.' (Draper.)
Our purpose being to show that while complexity of structure is constantly increasing, unitization, or the organized dependence of one part on another, is, at the same time, becoming more complete, we shall refer briefly to the comparative anatomy and physiology of animals. There is in this connection such wealth of material—a long chain of animal beings with all grades of structure from very simple to very complex; each complex animal, in its development from the ovum, passing through all the lower types of structure in succession; so many new organs and functions arising in the course of this development; each organ so arising, becoming, in its turn, more complex in structure, more specialized in function, and more dependent on the office of other organs;—in the midst, I say, of all this wealth of material, indicated here in a great general and imperfect manner, the difficulty, in so brief an exposition as this, is to know what facts to seize upon as calculated to illustrate most aptly the principle under consideration.
The development of the senses, with reference to their organs, nerves, and functions, presents a striking illustration of increasing complexity.
In the lowest forms of animal life, we find general sensibility only, and it is claimed that this exists in the lowest forms, without even the presence of nerves. But as we rise higher in the scale, the special organs of sense gradually become developed—one new sense after another appears; but this is not the only line of increasing complexity. When an organ of sense first appears, its function is of the simplest character; and it is only when we reach the highest types of animal life that it performs the greatest variety of offices peculiar thereto. That of touch is, at first, but crude and simple, becoming delicate and complicated only in the highest types. The sense of pain is a differentiated function, possessed only in a slight degree by reptiles and fishes, and probably not at all by animals still lower in the scale.
The eye-spots of star fishes and jelly fishes simply distinguish light from darkness, much as we do with our eyes closed. There are many degrees of development from this condition of the inferior organism to that of the human eye, which distinguishes the nicest shades of color, distance, form, and size of objects, and the play of passion on the human countenance.
The same variety of function is acquired by the ear in its development from its simplest to its most complex form. In the higher animals, the organ of hearing is formed of three parts, an external, middle, and internal portion; but in birds the external ear is wanting; in fishes both the external and middle parts are wanting; in mollusks it is reduced to a simple sack of microscopic dimensions, filled with a liquid in which there are otolithes, or pebbly substances. Such an organ can distinguish noises only; it can recognize nothing of the infinite variety of articulations, notes, tones, melodies, harmonies of the human voice and of musical instruments. There is even a great difference between the disciplined, and therefore differentiated ear of a cultured person, and the undisciplined, and therefore less differentiated ear of a boor. Similar specializations of structure and function pertain to the other senses; but we may pass them.
The digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems, and all the other systems of the animal structure, evince the same law.
The lowest form of the circulating fluid, as in sponges, is simply water containing gases and organic particles; and this can scarcely be spoken of as circulating, for it is merely drawn in and then expelled. A little higher in the scale naturalists find a 'chylaqueous fluid,' which oscillates in the general cavity of the sack-like animal. The true blood is another step in development; and even this organized fluid changes its character as the scale advances. Most animals have no heart; and when the organ does first appear, it is but a simple, rudimentary structure, very unlike the complex machine which plays at the centre of circulation in the higher types.
Though fishes breathe through their gills, receiving all the oxygen they require from the small amount of air in the water, the swimming bladder is in them the rudimentary lung—a very simple structure, indeed, when compared with the more complex arrangement for respiration in the higher animals.
Some animals of gelatinous, and therefore flexible structure, perform digestion by folding their bodies over the food, and pressing the nutritious matter out of it: they extemporize a stomach for the occasion. And even in some of their higher types, in such as have a permanent mouth and stomach, the digestive process is simply a squeezing out of the elements of nutrition. The digestive apparatus, from being a simple sack in the polype and similar organisms, becomes, by a continuous unfolding, the complicated structure which we find in the higher animals, with various organs effecting various parts of the digestive change, and even different parts of the same organ having specialized functions to perform.
The most complex animal proceeds originally from a simple cell; and 'at the two extremes we may contemplate the single germinal membrane of the ovum, which is discharging contemporaneously every function—digesting, absorbing, respiring, etc.; and the complete organic apparatus of man, the stomach, the lungs, the skin, the kidneys, and the liver—mechanisms set apart each for the discharge of a special duty, yet each having arisen, as we know positively from watching the order of their development, from that simple germinal membrane.' (Draper.) This is what one physiologist says of the ovum which is being developed into a complex being. Here is what another says of animals at the lower end of the zoological scale: 'The simplest organisms breathe, exhale, secrete, absorb, and reproduce, by their envelopes alone.' (Lewes.) Here we perceive the resemblance between the ovum of the higher animals and the permanent structure of the lower animals. Indeed, some of the lower forms of animal life are simply cells. How vast the difference between the organism of man, with all its complexity of structure, and that of the Ameba or Actinophrys, which, being merely a homogeneous mass of organic matter, performs all the functions of its simple life without any special organ whatever! Yet, is man any less a unit than the Ameba, or any other simple organism? Does his multiplicity of organs impair the integrity of his anatomical and physiological oneness? Is the circulation independent of respiration? Is digestion independent of the circulation? Can any one organ act independently of the others? Is not the entire series of parts, organs, and functions bound up in complete and inseparable unity? The vicarious action of one organ for another has been a question among physiologists; and if admitted, as in the case of the salivary glands acting for the kidneys in profuse spitting, and the skin for the liver, the vicarious function can only obtain to a slight degree and in a temporary manner. The destruction of any considerable organ involves the destruction of all the rest. I repeat that the integrity of the physiological unity at the top of the scale, is far more complete, with all its complexity, than is the integrity of the physiological unity at the bottom of the scale, with its marked simplicity of structure. By no sort of legerdemain or surgical skill can we make an individual mammal become two. If we divide it, the whole dies. Not so, however, with some of the lower grades of animal existence. Cut a hydra into thirty or forty pieces, and each piece will become a distinct animal—a facsimile of the original one. In quite an analogous way do a large number of animals at the lower end of the scale propagate, by segmentation and division; one individual becoming two, two four, and so on.
Many examples might be adduced to show the absence of organized unity in the lower orders of the animal creation. Thus, in the annelid, which is composed of a great many similar rings, and is regarded as quite a complex creature, there is so little dependence of one part on another, that a number of the rings may be destroyed without any injury to the rest. The Synapta, when in want of food, will amputate its own body to procure the necessary supply; and it has been observed to repeat the operation, until it 'had by degrees eaten away the whole of its body to keep life in the head.' (Quatrefages.) Such a phenomenon as this is very unlike that presented by the higher animals, which, together with their multiplied individuality of part and function, and their infinite variety of physiognomic expression, present, at the same time, a unity of organization so complete, that an injury to one part is instantaneously telegraphed to all parts of the system, and sympathized in by all to a greater or less extent.
As in physiology, the development of the individual corresponds to the development of the entire zoological series; so, when we rise into the psychological realm, do we ascertain that the development of the individual mind corresponds to the development of the mental series from the savage to the civilized. In the physiognomy of the savage there is little variety of expression; he has not differentiated that multiplicity of thought and feeling which moulds the face and plays upon its lineaments in the cultivated Teuton. The same is true of the latter while an infant. But who will say that the cultured man of this age is less a balanced, unitized creature than the child of the cradle, or of the forest? The latter is but a creature of impulse, moved by every appetite, and swayed by every gust of passion. He has no fixed principles for the regulation of his life. There is no presiding power to rule and subordinate the tumultuous and refractory elements of his character, and thus unitize the mental organism and its manifestations. This is what culture gives. Here then we also perceive that with the development of variety and complexity, the element of unity becomes more active and manifest. This view of the progressive unitization of the individual man in a psychological aspect, is very suggestive when taken in connection with the wane of despotism and the growth of liberty, as society and government advance, and it becomes ever less the province of law to govern, and also to regulate.
We have adduced some of the illustrations which physical and physiological science affords of the Law of Universal Development: let us close this part of our subject with the illustrations afforded by the rise and progress of Science as a whole. The first germs of science were very simple, existing in connection with Art, and subserving the purposes of priestcraft. For a long time the range of scientific inquiry was so limited that the same individual was able to grasp it entire. But one branch after another has sprung up, diverging more and more into the realms of the unknown, until no one mind can hope to obtain even a general knowledge of them all.
But this has not been the only tendency of scientific growth. Divergence and differentiation had not proceeded far till the combining and organizing movement began. The more individuality and complexity have threatened to outreach the mental powers and become unmanageable, the more have order and organization shown their ability to subordinate and unitize the seeming diversity of elements. While the sciences continued to increase in number and complexity, they began to overlap and interlace, the principles of one running into the domain of another, and even coördinating and binding together its seemingly incongruous parts.
A simple scientific generalization is based on certain facts which, taken in their collective capacity, mean the truth which is expressed in the formula. A higher generalization embraces those which are simpler, and unites by its expression the truths which they contain into the formula of one great truth. This process goes on, rising constantly higher and higher, the generalizations of the ascending series becoming more comprehensive, and the convergence of all the diversified elements into great general laws more striking and complete. Thus advances the unitizing movement of science; and it is now progressing with a steadiness and certainty unknown in former periods of research. Great minds are at this moment occupied in the discovery and verification of these great unitizing laws. Thus we perceive, that while science has developed a bewildering mass of individual facts and minor principles, it has also developed the germs of a unity which is destined to unfold with a richness and magnificence of result heretofore unknown in the annals of human inquiry.
As the special departments of science have testified, so also does the general view of all science testify to this Law of Universal Development.
But, what has all this to do with American Destiny? Very much, as may yet appear. It is by the Past only that we can read the Future; and if in history and in all development, there is revealed by the inductive process a great general law, that law becomes the Oracle of Destiny.
A fitting transition from science to history would be ethnology, the science of races, connected as it is with physics, chemistry, and physiology, on the one hand, and with history on the other.
There are different theories in vogue to account for the diversity of human races now in existence. Some refer human origin to an original pair, whose descendants have changed through the action of physical causes, as food, soil, climate, and scenery, and also through the operation of moral ones as dependent on the physical, and therefore secondary thereto, such as manners, customs, and government. Others deduce it from different lines of development, coming up through the zoological scale, and thence passing from the lower to the higher races of men. Others still speak of mankind as originating 'in nations,' each race being fixed in its physical and mental characteristics, and having an origin independent and distinct from all others.
It matters little to our purpose which of these theories may be true, the difference as to aptness of illustration being only one of degree. We prefer, however, to deal with facts in regard to which there is little or no difference of opinion among the theorists themselves.
There are simple and complex peoples or races, as there are simple and complex organisms. Take any primitive race, whether described in history or by some contemporaneous traveller: in a physical point of view, the men are all very nearly alike, and the women likewise. Describe one individual, and you have the description for all other individuals of the same sex belonging to the race. And there is not usually as much difference in the physical appearance of the sexes in primitive races as among those who stand higher in the scale. What is true of their physique, is also true of their minds. As one thinks and feels, so all think and feel—and that, too, without concert; it is the simple expression of an undiversified mental organism. Their faculties are rude and uncultivated; they act chiefly on the perceptive plane, reflecting but little. They are predominantly sensual, not having developed the higher mental activities which pertain to an advanced state of society and result in those great diversities of attainment and expression among individuals of the same people. There are reasons for believing that there was a time when this planet had no human inhabitants but races of this simple type. Great changes have taken place since that day; changes which, by the law of their accomplishment, correspond precisely with the changes which have taken place in the zoological scale. Owing to causes which we may not fully understand, races have been developed which present, each within its own limits, great contrarieties of physical appearance and mental characteristics. Among 'Anglo-Saxons' there is often greater diversity in members of the same family, than you would find in a million individuals of a primitive race. The complex appears, somehow or other, to have been developed from the simple.
The simple fact of a population becoming more numerous, necessitates certain changes—from hunting to pasturage, for example, from pastoral life to agricultural and fixed habitation—and these would affect the habits, modes of thought, and, to some extent, personal appearance. The modification of climate by clearing, draining, and cultivation, and the removal of a people from one climate to another, would effect still other changes. But the intermixture of races by war and immigration has, perhaps, done more than any other cause to produce the great physical diversities which we now find in the higher races. Having traced the stream of warlike immigration from Eastern Asia westward, and thence to Central Europe, and still westward and southward to the shores of the Atlantic, and even across the Mediterranean into Africa, overwhelming the Roman Empire of the West in its course,—observe this tide of human movement, as wave followed wave for centuries, rolling peoples against and over one another, confounding them together, and leaving them upon the same soil, or in close proximity to each other; and, even admitting that they were simple and primitive to begin with, we shall not wonder at the diversified aspect of the people of Europe and their descendants in America. But this is only one series of movements from which has resulted the intermixture of races; there are others, and some, no doubt, beyond the farthest reach of history. The process of intermixture is still going on, especially in the Western World, though by methods usually more peaceful than formerly. The result multiplies itself, and the leading races of mankind are becoming constantly more composite.
The contact and intermixture of races have had a moral result, which, in its turn, acts upon the physical. Mental development has been one of the results of war and immigration; one people learning from another, and striking out new modes of thought from the sheer necessity of new circumstances; and this mental development changing the physiognomic expression and general bearing of the man. This result has been increasing in geometrical progression since history, printing, and the facilities of intercommunication have made the culture of one people contagious to other peoples, and the attainments of one generation available to all the generations that follow. Thus does every movement among the nations conspire to change the simple types into those which are more complex.
The ethnological unity may be less apparent; and before we clearly perceive it, we may have to rise into the consideration of social and political relations, not divorcing these from physiology, without which no question relative to man can be rightly judged. And it may be that after greater development in this direction, the unity of races may become more distinctly pronounced and more readily recognized.
We may observe, in passing, that the same causes which have contributed to this ethnological complexity, have, at the same time, aided in the development of the cosmical idea—the idea of the unity of the universe. At first, tribes had little communication with each other, and knew nothing of geography beyond the limits of their own hunting grounds. They knew as little of the vastness of the earth outside of their domain as of that of the universe. This could only be conjectured from the vantage ground of some degree of intellectual culture, and the idea must remain vague and indefinite till after long ages of real experience and intellectual unfolding. It was not till after Alexander's conquests in the East, the extension of the Roman Empire, the invention of the mariner's compass, the discovery of America, and the circumnavigation of the globe, together with the perfection of optical instruments by the use of which the true character of the celestial bodies was demonstrated, that the cosmical idea became truly a scientific one. (Humboldt.) Thus were the partial and fragmentary notions of early peoples at length corrected, enlarged, unitized.
Closely akin to this is the development of the god-idea. Fetich-worship is that of the rudest people. They see a god in every individual object, in every stream, in every tree, in every stone. All they see is, however, shrouded in mystery, and they have a blind veneration for every object. A step farther, and the developing mind generalizes these objects. The individual trees, for example, are taken collectively, and their divine representative worshipped as the god of the groves. There are, at the same time, other unitizing conceptions of the god-idea. There is a god of the hills, a god of the streams, of the seas, and so on. New classes of divinities may be evolved in the mythological system; the strong and salient passions of our nature may come to have their deities—to be unitized, at length, with all other gods. Meantime, mankind are forming into states, with some degree of regular government; and apparently in accordance with this fact, the gods are subjected to the partial control of one who is greater than all the rest, and who is their father and king, but himself subject to the decrees of Fate. Another grand step, and seemingly in correspondence with the more centralized government of a vast and powerful empire, we hear of one God only, who is all-powerful, and master of Fate itself, with a hierarchy of angels, powers, and principalities, reaching from God to man, and subordinate to the Central Will, which rules all things, whether 'in the armies of heaven or among the inhabitants of the earth.' Thus did the idea of one God eventually swallow up all the others; and the god-idea was completely unitized.
