away and suppressing; too
hastily, extravagantly, especially where the ancients are concerned,
because their historical expedition is simply a scouting trip; but
nevertheless with such an overall insight that we may still approve
almost all the outlines of their summary chart. The (newly discovered)
primitive Man was not a superior being, enlightened from above, but
a coarse savage, naked and miserable, slow of growth, sluggish in
progress, the most destitute and most needy of all animals, and, on this
account, sociable, endowed like the bee and the beaver with an instinct
for living in groups, and moreover an imitator like the monkey, but
more intelligent, capable of passing by degrees from the language of
gesticulation to that of articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic
idiom which gradually increases in richness, precision and
subtlety.[3117] How many centuries are requisite to attain to this
primitive language! How many centuries more to the discovery of the most
necessary arts, the use of fire, the fabrication of "hatches of silex
and jade", the melting and refining of metals, the domestication of
animals, the production and modification of edible plants, the formation
of early civilized and durable communities, the discovery of writing,
figures and astronomical periods.[3118] Only after a dawn of vast and
infinite length do we see in Chaldea and in China the commencement of
an accurate chronological history. There are five or six of these great
independent centers of spontaneous civilization, China, Babylon, ancient
Persia, India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the two American empires. On
collecting these fragments together, on reading such of their books as
have been preserved, and which travelers bring to us, the five Kings of
the Chinese, the Vedas of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians of the
ancient Persians, we find that all contain religions, moral theories,
philosophies and institutions, as worthy of study as our own. Three of
these codes, those of India, China and the Muslims, still at the present
time govern countries as vast as our Europe, and nations of equal
importance. We must not, like Bossuet, "overlook the universe in a
universal history," and subordinate humanity to a small population
confined to a desolate region around the Dead Sea.[3119] Human history
is a thing of natural growth like the rest; its direction is due to its
own elements; no external force guides it, but the inward forces that
create it; it