The Trinity upon which Civilization Rests: Justice, the Arts, and Labor; and these Depend upon Scientific Education. — Reason of the Failure of Theodoric and Charlemagne to Reconstruct the Pagan Civilization. — Contempt of Man. — Serfdom. — The Vices of the Time: False Philosophy, an Odious Social Caste, and Ignorance. — The Splendid Career of the Moors in Spain, in Contrast. — Effect upon Spain of the Expulsion of the Moors. — The Repressive Force of Authority and the Atrocious Philosophy of Contempt of Man. — The Rule of Italy — a Menace and a Sneer. — The work of Regeneration. — The Crusades. — The Destruction of Feudalism. — The Invention of Printing. — The Discovery of America. — Investigation. — Discoveries in Science and Art.

Civilization languishes in an atmosphere of injustice, and if the injustice is gross, as slavery, for example, and long continued, the State perishes in the social convulsion which ensues. Thus perished the nations of antiquity. Civilization depends upon the useful arts; in them it had its origin, and with them it advances. The savage, in his most primitive state, is ignorant of all the arts; the most highly civilized man is familiar with, and under obligations to, all of them. The useful arts depend upon labor. If the laborer is degraded, the useful arts decline, as he sinks, in the social scale; if he is honored, they advance, as he rises. The trinity upon which civilization rests is, therefore, justice, the useful arts, and labor; and this trinity of saving forces depends in turn upon the scientific education of man. Rome held all these things in contempt, and Rome perished. Anarchy ensued, and, from a state of governmental chaos, the feudal system was evolved. A brief analysis of the history of the mediæval period will show that education was unscientific, and consequently that justice was scorned, the useful arts neglected, and labor despised.

Theodoric strove to stem the tide of demoralization which succeeded the overthrow of the pagans in Italy. He was a semi-barbarian, but a man of genius, and ten years of his youth, spent at Constantinople, taught him the value of civilization. Under his reign there was a restoration of the common industries, work on internal improvements was resumed, and there was a revival of polite literature and the fine arts. But there was no general prosperity because there was no general system of education. Polite literature must rest upon a basis of general culture, or it is valueless to the country in which it flourishes. So of the fine arts; they can exist legitimately only as the natural outgrowth and embellishment of the useful arts.[80] In the due order of development the useful precede the fine arts. Theodoric began the reconstruction of the exhausted Roman civilization from the top, and his work was a complete failure, of course, because it had no foundation. It was like the Greek and Roman philosophy, it had no basis of things to rest upon. Hence the order evoked from chaos by the great Ostrogoth to chaos soon returned.

Charlemagne also attempted to reconstruct a worn-out civilization through the revival of polite literature and the fine arts. He assembled at his court distinguished littérateurs from all parts of the world, with the view of reviving classical learning. He established a normal school called “The Palatine,” whence classically trained teachers were sent into the provinces. He constructed gorgeous palaces, some of which were ornamented with columns and sculptural fragments, the spoil of the earlier architectural triumphs of Italy. But he did not found schools for the education of the common people. The common people were serfs. The theory of Plato still prevailed, namely, that the majority is always dull, and always wrong; that wisdom and virtue reside in the minority. In pursuance of this theory, which happens, curiously enough, to inure to the exclusive benefit of its inventors and supporters, education was confined to a small class. The training of the masses was wholly neglected, and they were poor, ignorant, and brutal. The state of mediæval society is graphically summarized by a modern historian:

“In the castle sits the baron, with his children on his lap, and his wife leaning on his shoulder; the troubadour sings, and the page and the demoiselle exchange a glance of love. The castle is the home of music and chivalry and family affection; the convent is the home of religion and of art. But the people cower in their wooden huts, half starved, half frozen, and wolves sniff at them through the chinks in the walls. The convent prays and the castle sings; the cottage hungers and groans and dies.”[81]

Enterprise was the slave of superstition and ignorance. Some monks in Germany desired to erect a corn-mill, but a neighboring lord objected, declaring that the wind belonged to him. The useful arts were unknown and unstudied except by the monks, and their practice of them was confined chiefly to fashioning utensils for the use of the altar. Mankind lay in a state of intellectual and moral paralysis. Feudalism emasculated human energy. One art only flourished—the art of war. The pursuit of any of the useful arts, beyond that of agriculture, by the serfs, was impracticable, since sufficient time could not be spared from feudal strife for the proper tillage of the soil. The vassal was always subject to summary call to arms. If in the spring the noble wished to fight, the fields remained unplanted; if he wished to fight in the fall, the harvest remained ungathered. The serf, therefore, led a precarious life. If he escaped death in battle, he was still quite likely to die of starvation. In the fertile plains of Lombardy, in the first half of the thirteenth century, there were five famines!

Nothing happens without due cause. The misfortunes suffered by the people of Europe during the Middle Ages did not fall upon them from the clouds. The moral darkness which veiled the face of justice, and the intellectual stupor which prevented scientific and art researches, are not inexplicable mysteries. The vices, the cruelties, the poverty, and the pitiable superstitions of that time were the product of a false philosophy, an odious social caste, and a state of general ignorance.

It happens that for hundreds of years of this period of wretchedness and crime there was in the heart of Europe an industrious, cultured, prosperous, and happy people. Their religion forbade the taking of usurious interest under terrible moral penalties; it also forbade “all distinctions of caste,” and enjoined full social equality. They were the friends of education. “To every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read and write.” They established libraries in their chief cities, and were the patrons of the sciences and of the useful arts in all their forms. In a word, to the general prevalence of superstition and ignorance in Europe the Moors in Spain constituted a glowing exception.

Wherever the Saracen went he carried science and art. He honored labor, and genius and learning followed in his footsteps. Taught by learned Jews, he studied the works of the ancient philosophers, and preserved and extended their knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, algebra, and geography. Cordova was the abode of wealth, learning, refinement, and the arts. Its mosques and palaces were models of architectural splendor, and its industries employed 200,000 families. Seville contained 16,000 silk-looms, and employed 130,000 weavers. The banks of the Guadalquivir were thickly studded with those gems of free labor, manufacturing villages. The dyeing of silk and wool fabrics was carried to great perfection, and the Moorish metal-workers were the most expert of the time. The Saracen invented cotton paper, introduced into Spain cotton and leather manufactures, and promoted the cultivation of sugar-cane, rice, and the mulberry. Nor did he neglect agriculture in any of its branches; he created a new era in husbandry. His kingdom in Spain was the richest and most prosperous in the Western world; indeed, its prosperity was in striking contrast with the poverty and misery of the peoples by whom it was surrounded. Under the third caliph its revenue reached £6,000,000 sterling, a sum, as Gibbon remarks, which in the tenth century probably surpassed the united revenues of all the Christian monarchs. But these industrious, cultured people were the descendants of invaders, and the Spaniards, under the influence of a blind and unreasoning impulse of religious and patriotic zeal, drove them from the soil they had literally made to “blossom like the rose,” and themselves relapsed into a state of indolence, ignorance, and poverty.

From the effects of the persecution of a race of artificers, and the proscription of the useful arts, Spain has never recovered. She has since always been, and is to-day, a striking exemplification of the verity of the proposition that stagnation in the useful arts is the death of civilization. In the last half of the seventeenth century the people of Madrid were threatened with starvation. To avert the impending calamity the adjacent country was scoured by the military, and the inhabitants compelled to yield supplies. There was danger that the Royal family would go hungry to bed. The tax-gatherer sold houses and furniture, and the inhabitants were forced to fly; the fields were left uncultivated, and multitudes died from want and exposure. During the seventeenth century Madrid lost half its population; the looms of Seville were silenced; the woollen manufactures of Toledo were transferred by the exiled Moriscoes to Tunis; Castile, Segovia, and Burgos lost their manufactures, and their inhabitants were reduced to poverty and despair.[82]

Two leading causes contributed to reduce the people of Europe during the Middle Ages to a state of moral obliquity, intellectual torpor, and physical incapacity—the repressive force of authority and the atrocious philosophy of contempt of man formulated by Machiavelli. The one forbade scientific investigation, the other strangled the spirit of invention in the grip of enforced ignorance. Authority chilled courage, and contempt withered hope. Italy governed the world, and her rule consisted of a menace and a sneer. Under this régime of cruelty and cynicism man shrunk into a state of moral cowardice and intellectual lethargy.

The political maxims which bear the name of Machiavelli were not invented by him. When he formulated them, in 1513, they had been in force in Italy a thousand years. These maxims explain the fact of the existence of a period of the world’s history known as “the Dark Ages.” The chief of them divides the human race into three classes, the members of the first of which understand things by their own natural powers; the second when they are explained to them; the third not at all. The third class embraces a vast majority of men; the second only a small number; the first a very small number. The first class is to rule both the other classes, the second by craft and duplicity, the third by authority, and, that failing, by force. Other maxims assume the despicable character of all men, and justify falsehood, duplicity, cruelty, and murder, in the ruling class. A single proposition shows the infamy of the whole system, namely, “There are three ways of deciding any contest—by fraud, by force, or by law, and a wise man will make the most suitable choice.”[83] These are maxims not of civilization but of barbarism. They involve a state of slavery, and where slavery exists the useful arts decline, and ultimately perish. And so it was in the Middle Ages.

Several great events led to the emancipation of the people of Europe from the joint reign of authority and contempt. The learning of the Jews and Saracens—their knowledge of the arts and sciences—gradually spread, and occupied the minds of cloistered students, giving to them an intellectual impulse. The Crusades, pitiful and prolific of horrors as they were, shed a great light upon Europe. They brought the men of the West face to face with a practical progressive civilization—a civilization that “filled the earth with prodigies of human skill.” The Crusaders were told that they would be led against hordes of barbarians. What astonishment must have seized them when they stood under the walls of Constantinople and beheld its splendors! Nor was their surprise less, doubtless, in the character of the foe they encountered. They had expected to meet with treachery and cruelty; they found chivalry, courtesy, and high culture.[84]

These surprises and contrasts profoundly impressed the Crusaders, and they returned to Europe relieved of many illusions, and notably of the fallacy that the wealth of Eastern princes was destined to supply the waste of their own squandered estates. They returned, too, to find a new civilization in process of development. Two hundred years of comparative freedom from the repressive force of feudalism changed the face of the country and the character of its people. During the absence of the nobles, in the Holy Land, a middle class sprung into existence, possessing the qualities which always distinguish that class—thrift and prudence. The mortgaged estates of the Crusaders had fallen partly into their hands, and partly into the hands of the Crown. Towns had sprung up, and a commercial class and a manufacturing class had been formed. The artisan became a factor in the social problem. He offered his wares to the lords and ladies of the castles, and they bought themselves poor. As Emerson says, “The banker with his seven per cent. drove the earl out of his castle.” In the eleventh century nobility was above price, in the thirteenth it was for sale, and soon afterwards it was offered as a gift.

The invention of printing, the art preservative of all arts, removed the seal from the lips of learning. The desire to conceal is no match for the desire to print. Thenceforth, through the medium of types, the voice of genius was destined to reach to the ends of the earth; and, more important still, every discovery in science, and every invention in art, became the sure heritage of future ages.

The discovery of America was the crowning act of man’s emancipation. In sweeping away the last vestige of the theory on which patristic geography was based, Columbus freed mankind. In the cry of “land ho!” with which he greeted the new continent, he sounded the death-knell of intellectual slavery. His was the last act in a series of acts which struck off the shackles of thought, and let in upon the long night of the Middle Ages the clear light of day. Leonardo da Vinci took up the interrupted work of Archimedes, and the science of mechanics made rapid progress. At last it was correctly observed that “experiment is the only interpreter of nature,” and the development of natural philosophy began. Bruno was still to be burned, and Galileo imprisoned. But the persecutors of those great men were no longer moved by mere blind zeal. They believed and trembled, and in seeking to drown the truth in the blood of the votaries of science, they rendered it more conspicuous. By the light of the flames which consumed the body of the too daring philosopher a thousand scientists studied the stars, the earth, and the air.

The invention of printing paralyzed authority, and the discovery of America gave wings to hope. A few manuscripts could be locked in vaults or burned, but millions of books must inevitably, ultimately, find their way to the people. Books were, therefore, the sure promise of universal culture—the precursor of the common school. The discovery of another continent startled the people of Europe from the deep sleep of a thousand years, and sent a fresh current of blood surging through their veins. It seemed like a sort of new creation, and appealed powerfully to the imagination. And it is always the imagination that “blazes” the path to glorious achievements. It is through the imagination that men are moved to “crave after the unseen,” and through the imagination that the human mind becomes big with “bold and lofty conceptions.” A new world having been discovered by one man, it was natural that all men should be put upon inquiry. Hence the era of investigation, the resulting discoveries of science, and their innumerable applications, through the useful arts, to the fast multiplying needs of man.