and for the description of external objects in harmonious, varied, and dignified metre, the early Greek language has never been surpassed, and perhaps has never been equalled. A people capable of producing and appreciating such works as the Iliad and Odyssey must be considered as having attained a considerable height of esthetic development. Here, however, we must stop. Prose composition, for which the habitual use of writing is a necessary condition, did not exist; and poetry was confined to the epos. Music was in a rude state; painting, sculpture, and architecture were not as yet fine arts.

But in the interval between the Homeric period and the Augustan age, the Greeks had brought to perfection not only every species of literature, but sculpture and architecture, and they had probably attained to considerable excellence in the arts of painting and music. They had created and perfected the elegiac, lyric, dramatic, and epigrammatic styles: they had produced models of oratory, of history, and of the philosophical dialogue, considered with reference merely to their literary execution. The Romans exceeded them in architecture, considered as a useful and constructive art; but in architecture, considered as a fine art, the Greeks reached the highest point of excellence, and have never been surpassed. The Roman literature was, for the most part, formed upon Greek originals, though the Roman satire was a new literary creation. The painting and sculpture of Rome were likewise devoid of originality.

Modern literature has been to great extent modelled upon ancient forms: but, both in poetry and prose, it has produced numerous original works of the highest excellence, though the classical works of antiquity still remain unsurpassed.

In sculpture, the moderns have never equalled the Greeks, even in that small portion of the remains of Greek art which have been preserved. The art of painting has been the great field of original invention among the moderns. Having no antique models to imitate, they created for themselves, and in the sixteenth century reached a height of perfection which has never since been attained. In architecture, the moderns have

likewise produced a style of building, which, considered simply with reference to its esthetic merits, stands on an equality with the Grecian style.

In following the scientific and esthetic development in successive ages of the most civilized portion of mankind, it is necessary to advert to an important distinction between literature and the fine arts, on the one hand, and science and the useful arts on the other, in respect of progress. Science and the useful arts are improved by slow degrees, each successive inventor and discoverer adding something to what was known and had been contrived before; and thus the newest production supersedes its predecessors. No one now uses the Greek arithmetical notation; firearms have driven out battering-rams and cross-bows; the copyist of books is replaced by the printer; and the railway has supplanted the stage-coach-the steamer, the sailing-packet. In science, the matter and the method are more important than the form. In scientific treatment, excellence of form, which consists only in arrangement and perspicuity of style, is attainable by persons of ordinary ability; and thus, as science advances, and new proofs and methods are invented, the original productions of the greatest scientific geniuses are superseded, though their conclusions may be retained. Hence, all scientific works lose their value by time, if the science is in a progressive state. Writings which, when they first appeared, enlarged the domain of science, are, after a time, interesting only as illustrative of the progress of discovery.

In literary productions and works of art, however, the expression and form are not less important than the matter. They do not belong to a class of mental creations which admit of successive improvement and extension, in which the field is fertilized by the efforts of successive cultivators. When once formed, they have reached their ultimate development; something better in the same style may be produced, but each work of art retains its own individuality; and if the form is happily chosen, it may continue to please for ever. The Iliad and Odyssey, the Prometheus and the Edipus, the Oration for the Crown, the Parthenon, the Apollo Belvedere, the Æneid, and the Odes of Horace; the poems of Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton, and

the pictures of Raphael, are great works of art, in which the form is an essential element; and inasmuch as their form is the achievement of great masters in their respective branch of art, they cannot be superseded by subsequent terms in a progressive series. The Principia of Newton may be replaced by a modern treatise on astronomy; but Homer is not superseded by Dante, nor Eschylus by Shakspeare. One scientific work supersedes another, as a new edition of a book supersedes the former editions, and as the last fashion drives out its predecessors; whereas a great work of art is immortal, and is not subject to the law of = successive replacement which pervades so large a part of human affairs. Hence, too, works of art do not advance in a progressive line of excellence; but there are ebbs, according to the accident of genius in individuals, or other circumstances influencing the creative and imaginative power.

§ 9 Now, on reviewing the four series under which we have arranged the elements of civilization, and on comparing at certain successive intervals the most advanced countries with respect to each, we perceive that there is in general an improvement under each head. It is this improvement which constitutes the progress of civilization, and which characterizes communities of men as distinguished from communities of animals. (33) The capacity for improvement is most perceptible under the heads of politics, ethics, sciences, and the useful arts. Civilization consists principally in an improvement in these departments. On the other hand, religion, literature, and the fine arts are, for different reasons, less susceptible of a regular progress: religion, because it consists of a definite set of doctrines; of a fixed dogmatic system, not admitting of ulterior development; literature and the fine arts, because their productions are complete in the original form, and are not connected together as steps in a progressive movement.

7

By confining ourselves to the most civilized nations, at successive epochs, properly selected, we find a general progress in ́ civilization, which has continued, with certain oscillations, up to the present time, and may be expected to proceed farther. Inter

(33) See above, ch. ii. § 4 & 5 ; xxii. § 24; xxiv. § 5.

preted in this manner, the progress of civilization may be likened to a river, of which the fountain is undiscovered, and which continues during its whole course, with certain irregularities, to widen its channel and augment its stream, as it is further removed from its origin. We may say of civilized society as of the NileNon licuit parvum populis te, Nile, videre;'

but when its stream has once reached a tolerable width, we can follow its ulterior course, and measure its increasing magnitude. r § 10 It is only, however, by selecting certain communities, and treating them as specimens of the entire human race, that we can speak of a general progress of civilization, and that we can regard advancing civilization as the subject of universal history. Even if we take the history of the nations of Western Europe and their colonies, we perceive that, although their present civilization is tolerably uniform, their advance has been uncertain and irregular, and that, in order to trace a constant progress in them, it is necessary to compare their state at long intervals of time.(31)

With respect to other nations, they are universally on lower levels of civilization, and their inferiority has been sometimes owing to their incapacity to advance, sometimes to a retrograde movement, and to a loss of ground previously gained.' Thus, the plains of Assyria and the valley of Egypt are now in a more barbarous state than when Babylon and Thebes were the seats

(34) A philosopher (says Gibbon) may be permitted to enlarge his views, and to consider Europe as one great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation. The balance of power will continue to fluctuate, and the prosperity of our own or the neighbouring kingdoms may be alternately exalted or depressed; but these partial events cannot essentially injure our general state of happiness, the system of arts and laws and manners, which so advantageously distinguish above the rest of mankind the Europeans and their colonies.-'Observations on the Fall of the Western Empire,' at the end of c. 38. Compare Sismondi, Etudes sur les Constitutions des Peuples Libres, essai iv. p. 175, On the Progress and Progressive Tendency of the European Nations.'

'Our civilization, that is, the intellectual development of all the nations of the European continent, may be regarded as based on that of the dwellers around the Mediterranean, and more immediately on that of the Greeks and the Romans. . . From the shores of the Mediterranean, and especially from its Italic and Hellenic peninsulas, have indeed proceeded the intellectual character and political institutions of those nations

of empire-Asia Minor and Northern Africa have receded in wealth and population since they were occupied by the Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans.

Moreover, a large part of mankind, belonging to races less highly endowed than those which have made the great advances in civilization, continue to vegetate in a stationary condition, and adhere tenaciously either to the savage or to the Oriental type of society, without showing any aptitude for a higher development.

Mankind unquestionably, as Dr. Prichard has shown, forms one species, in the sense in which this word is used by naturalists; that is to say, all varieties of the human race are capable, not only of breeding together, but of producing a prolific offspring. (3) There is no such thing in physiology as a human mule: men of different races do not produce a hybrid progeny. The union of the Esquimaux and the Malay-of the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro produces children who can continue their species indefinitely, not less than the unions of parents belonging to the same race. The varieties in the races of mankind are not so great as those in the races of dogs, all of which form one natural species. The dog is, indeed, a domestic animal, and the varieties in the dog may have been increased by domestication, and by the influence of man in selecting the specimens for breeding. Nevertheless, even with dogs, no new varieties have been produced artificially within the time of historical memory; and some peculiar breeds known to the ancients (such as the small Maltese dog), (6) have become extinct, and cannot be restored.

who now possess the daily increasing treasures of scientific knowledge and creative artistic activity, which we would fain regard as imperishable; nations which spread civilization, and with it, first servitude, and then involuntarily liberty, over another hemisphere.'-Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 178-9. With respect to the decline of the ancient states, besides the work of Gibbon see Drumann, Ideen zur Geschichte des Verfalls der Griechischen Staaten (Berlin, 1815).

(35) On the nature and criterion of animal species, see Prichard, Natural History of Man, § 3 & 4; Lyell's Principles of Geology, b. iii. c. 1-4, 8, 11. It seems that in some instances the hybrid offspring of different species has been prolific for a single generation; but no hybrid race is permanently prolific, and the test in question is practically accurate.

(36) Aristot. Hist. An. ix. 6; Plin. Nat. Hist. iii. 30. See Camus, Notes sur l'Histoire des Animaux d'Aristote, p. 215.