type of the free constitution of England has been sought and found in the Anglo-Saxon times; while Blackstone has been able to discover the theoretical perfection of its public law in the reign of Charles the Second. (39) Literature and theological learning have been discerned among the half-savage septs of Ireland() and the Hebrides; nor do the authentic records of the primitive church altogether represent that picture of unity, harmony, and sound doctrine, which it has been supposed to exhibit. An imaginary state of popular happiness and prosperity has been perceived in the medieval centuries; feudalism and chivalry have been refined and sublimated into an ethereal essence, almost devoid of human grossness. (") Every nation,

cere credence, when we recollect how many similar delusions have obtained vogue in modern times, far more favourable to historical accuracy-how much false colouring has been attached by the political feeling of recent days to matters of ancient history, such as the Saxon Wittanegemote, the Great Charter, the rise and growth of the English House of Commons, or even the poor-law of Elizabeth.'-1b. p. 529.

(39) He fixes it at the year 1679, after the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, and that for licensing the press had expired, 4 Com. p. 439, n. Blackstone (1 Com. p. 70) mentions the dictum of the old lawyers, that the common law is the perfection of reason-another instance of a reality being idealized by the imagination.

(40) Compare Berington's Literary History of the Middle Ages, p. 122-3; ed. 1846.

(41) D'autre part, lorsqu'on cherche à faire connaître l'état social, la législation, les moyens de pouvoir, les droits et les devoirs des hommes d'autrefois, on peut se trouver entraîné à introduire dans l'esprit une notion fausse. La forme même dans laquelle on expose le résultat des recherches donne à tout une apparence de système et de regularité. On présente comme un ensemble légal, comme des institutions bien ordonnées, ce qui, dans la réalité, n'était qu'une sorte d'esprit général, de caractère commun, qui se retrouvait au milieu du désordre. Des indices fortuits d'un avenir plus ou moins prochain sont donnés en preuve de la prévoyance des législateurs, de l'habileté des hommes d'état. Tout prend une forme exacte et déterminée; le lecteur, trompé par nos habitudes d'aujourd'hui, voit une constitution sociale dans un chaos qui commençait à peine à se débrouiller; ce qui était passager lui semble fixé, ce qui était accidentel lui semble accoutumé. Les débris épars et incohérens des temps antérieurs lui sont donnés comme preuves d'origines et de filiations légales. Les tentatives essayées pour établir un peu d'ordre et de justice dans une société ravagée par le droit de la force, les efforts pour sortir de l'abîme où avait été engloutie toute civilisation, sont convertis en un régime revêtu de la sanction des temps et des souvenirs, et qui pouvait suffire au bienêtre, à la morale et à la dignité, des générations contemporaines. C'est de la sorte qu'a pu se créer, sous le nom de féodalité, l'idéal de la constitution sociale du moyen âge, de même qu'on a créé, sous le nom de che

indeed, has its good old time-a golden age floating in the popular belief, which can never be identified with any real period. (4) Perhaps, however, the most remarkable instance of this illusion is furnished by the admirers of savage life, and by the believers in a blissful state of nature. Not contented with placing their golden age in some former state of civilized society, they recede beyond the limits of civilization, and find their type of human virtue and happiness in a state of things so completely idealized, that it scarcely bears any resemblance to the authentic descriptions of savage life derived from contemporary observers. In pictures of this sort the real passes into the ideal, and no certain line can be drawn between the two. They resemble a portrait which, professing to exhibit the features of

valerie, la perfection imaginaire de son caractère moral.'—Barante, Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne, préf. p. 15.

Dans les siècles modernes, quelques hommes d'esprit ont tenté de réhabiliter la féodalité comme système social; ils ont voulu y voir un état légal, réglé, progressif; ils s'en sont fait un âge d'or. Demandez-leur où ils le placent, sommez-les de lui assigner un lieu, un temps-ils n'y réussiront point; c'est une Utopie sans date; c'est un drame, pour lequel on ne trouve, dans le passé, ni théâtre ni acteurs.'-Guizot, Civ. en Europe, leçon 4.

(42) Machiavel, in the introduction to the second book of his Discorsi, treats of the disposition of men to praise the past at the expense of the present, both as regards former ages, and also the time which was contemporary with their youth. He says that sometimes the past time is really better than the present. In cases where it is worse, or not better, he attributes the error of judgment to ignorance of the past, and particularly of those matters which redound to its dishonour-also to the absence of fear or envy, two potent causes of hatred, which do not exist with respect to a bygone age. Our ignorance of the past, he remarks, is not so great with respect to arts, as with respect to the life and customs of men. As to the comparison of the state of things in a man's youth with that in his old age, he observes that, as strength declines, and the judgment matures, many things which appeared good and tolerable come to appear evil and insupportable. Bodin (Meth. Hist. c. 7, ad fin.) exposes the fallacy of good old times' with arguments similar to those of Machiavel. Gibbon (c. 2) speaks of the propensity of mankind to exalt the past, and to depreciate the present.' Again, in c. 25, n., he says: I am informed that some champions of the Milesian colony may still be found among the original natives of Ireland. A people dissatisfied with their present condition grasp at any visions of their past or future glory.'

Ammianus Marcellinus, after describing the calamities produced by the Gothic invasion of the Roman empire, in 376 B.C., proceeds thus: Negant antiquitatum ignari tantis malorum tenebris offusam aliquando fuisse rempublicam; sed falluntur malorum recentium stupore confixi. Namque si superiores vel recens præteritæ evolvantur ætates, tales tamque tristes rerum motus sæpe contigisse monstrabunt.'—xxxi. 5.

a real man, is so idealized by the flattery of the artist, that all the characteristic marks of the individual subject are obliterated.(43) Hence (as we shall see in the next chapter) the historical pictures of the state of nature, and the poetical pictures of the golden age, melt into one another by imperceptible transitions, and embody the same images.

Mr. Macaulay has justly remarked, that the tendency to admire an imaginary antiquity springs from the same source as the tendency to progressive amelioration.(*) Men are dissatis

(43) With respect to the state of nature, see Puffendorf, b. 2, c. 2; Zacharia, Vom Staate, vol. i. p. 49. Upon Rousseau's theory of the superiority of the state of nature to civilization, see Say, Cours d'Econ. Pol. tom. i. p. 105-9, and C. Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. iv. c. 15; also, liv. i. c. 4. Compare his description of the social and moral state of the American savages, ib. liv. iii. c. 17 to 21, and particularly the note in c. 20. An excellent sketch of the savage state is given in Volney's account of the North American Indians, subjoined to his work on America. The character of savage man is faithfully depicted by M. Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. iv. p. 627. In the infancy of society (he says), the instincts relative to selfpreservation and the acquisition of food are in the ascendant, and even predominate over the sexual appetite, though the latter is still in its coarsest form. Savages are distinguished by an unbounded voracity, and a taste for physical stimulants, which is only kept in check by the frequent intervals of destitution to which they are subject. Moreover, their love of ornament, notwithstanding the scantiness of their dress, is much stronger than the same feeling in a civilized people. Their domestic affections are feeble; and their social affections are limited to a very narrow fragment of mankind, without which everything is alien, and even hostile. The various malignant passions are, after the physical appetites, the chief habitual motives of action in the savage state. On the state of savages, see likewise Cooke Taylor's Natural History of Society, c. 2-10.

• D'autres ont exclusivement transporté à la naissance de l'univers le bonheur, la justice, et la vertu. Qui ne connoît les tableaux que des poètes ingénieux ont faits des premiers âges du monde? On aime à les fire, et on voudroit y croire. Des philosophes chagrins ont aussi célébré avec quelque enthousiasme ce qu'ils appellent l'état de nature, l'état antérieur à cette formation des sociétés civiles, qu'ils regardent comme la dégénération des hommes, comme une source féconde de malheurs et de crimes; déclamateurs en délire, qui ne louent ce qu'ils ignorent que par haine de ce qu'ils connoissent, qui font mentir le passé pour calomnier le présent; hors de la société, n'est encore que l'enfance de l'homme; la civilisation est l'âge mûr de l'espèce humaine.'-Pastoret, Histoire de la Législation, tom. i. p. 3.

(44) History of England, c. 3 ad fin. (vol. i. p. 426.) A similar remark is made by Machiavel (ibid.): Sendo oltra di questo gli appetiti umani insaziabili, perchè hanno dalla natura di potere e voler desiderare ogni cosa, e dalla fortuna di potere conseguirne poche; ne risulta continuamente una mala contentezza nelle menti umane, ed un fastidio delle cose che si posseggono; il che fa biasimare i presenti tempi, laudare i passati, e desiderare i futuri, ancorchè a far questo non fussino mossi da alcuna ragionevole cagione.'

Π

fied with their present condition, and seek to improve it; but, instead of advancing into an untried ideal future, they wish to recede to an idealized past. While the impatience of their present lot urges some persons to invent a pattern constitution, to which they attempt to lead on society, others are prompted by the same feeling to see an imaginary state of perfection in the past, to which they desire that society should return. In this manner, a mythico-historical age-a generation of heroic warriors, benevolent princes, and wise statesmen, whose heads are encircled with a dim but luminous halo, whose existence is real, but whose acts and character are unreal-may serve the purpose of an Utopia. There is, besides, a general disposition to admire what is remote and imperfectly known, and to fill up the voids of information with ideal excellences, which extends to other subjects than ancient states of society.(5)

Accordingly, when the region is remote, or little visited, the same effect may be produced by distance in space as by distance in time. Tacitus, in his Germania, drew an embellished picture of the simple manners of the barbarous Germans, as a foil to the corrupt manners of polished Rome. (6) Some eminent writers of the eighteenth century found a model of political and social excellence in the Chinese, whose remoteness, and exclusion of strangers, afforded a free scope to an active imagination;(")

(45) τὰ διὰ πλείστου πάντες ἴσμεν θαυμαζόμενα, καὶ τὰ πεῖραν ἥκιστα τῆς dóns dóvra. Thucyd. vi. 11. 'Major e longinquo reverentia.'-Tacit. Ann. i. 47. Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.'-Agric. c. 30.

Men admire what is absent (says Aristotle), and admiration is pleasing.' θαυμασταὶ τῶν ἀπόντων εἰσίν· ἡδὺ δὲ τὸ θαυμαστόν ἐστι.—Rhet. iii. 2, 3.

There are two modern proverbs expressive of this truth: Far folks fare well, and fair children die' (Ray's Proverbs, p. 105); and Far awa fowls hae aye fair feathers,' Henderson's Scottish Proverbs, p. 111. Obscurity may be a cause of fear as well as of admiration; hence the proverb, Semper plus metuit animus ignotum malum.'-Publ. Syrus 715. - Plus nominis horror,

Quam tuus ensis aget. Minuit præsentia famam.'
Claudian de Bell. Gild. 384.

(46) Bähr, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, § 329. See particularly the words of Tacitus, Germ. c. 19: 'Nemo enim illic vitia videt; nec corrumpere et corrumpi, sæculum vocatur.' Again, Plus ibi valent boni mores, quam alibi bonæ leges.' By alibi is meant Rome.

(47) Wolf considered China as the ideal perfection of human society -See Raumer, Recht, Staat, und Politik, p. 72; Buhle, Hist. de Phil.

while the system of forced labour and virtual slavery established by the Jesuits in Paraguay has been metamorphosed into an Utopia of community and equality.(48) Under the imperfect system of communications which existed in antiquity, the Platonists of the age of Justinian, expelled from the Roman empire, expected to find a real image of the republic of Plato in the kingdom of Persia, governed by the despotic sceptre of Chosroes. (9) Distant or rarely-visited communities may thus be so highly idealized, as almost to resemble the innocent and sacred nation of the Hyperboreans, which the fables of the Greeks placed in a sunny region, beyond the influence of the icy Boreas. (50) Hence, models of society and of institutions which profess to be real are often, in fact, ideal, and properly belong to the subject . of the next chapter. An idealized reality scarcely differs from

a pure ideal. § 12

We have now examined the nature of the argument

Moderne, tom. iv. p. 499, 567. Montesquieu, though his praises are qualified, sometimes refers to the institutions of China with eulogy-víi. 7 ; x. 15; viii. 21; xiv. 5; xviii. 6; xxix. 18. Benjamin Constant comments upon the absurd eulogies of Chinese institutions by Filangieri and others, remarking that, as the writers of the last century were prevented from direct censure of their own governments, they resorted to the indirect censure conveyed in the commendation of remote countries, and ancient states of society.-Euvres de Filangieri, tom. iii. p. 265, 309-11.

His

Speaking of Dryden's tragedy of Aurengzebe, Johnson says: country is at such a distance, that the manners might be safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for the remoteness of place is remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniences to a poet as length of time.'Life of Dryden.

(48) See Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. v. c. 32.

(49) Seven friends and philosophers, Diogenes and Hermias, Eulalius and Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius, who dissented from the religion of their sovereign, embraced the resolution of seeking in a foreign land the freedom which was denied in their native country. They had heard, and they credulously believed, that the republic of Plato was realized in the despotic government of Persia, and that a patriot king reigned over the happiest and most virtuous of nations. They were soon astonished by the natural discovery, that Persia resembled the other countries of the globe; that Chosroes, who affected the name of a philosopher, was vain, cruel, and ambitious; that bigotry, and a spirit of intolerance, prevailed among the magi; that the nobles were haughty, the courtiers servile, and the magistrates unjust; that the guilty sometimes escaped, and that the innocent were often oppressed.'-Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 40. See Agathias, ii. 30, from whom the account is derived. (50) Pindar, Pyth. x. 56; Mela, iii. 5.