Chapter XVI (2)

Alexander von Humboldt does not think that this hypothesis can apply
to the migration of plants. “What we know,” he says, “of the
deleterious action exerted by sea-water, during a voyage of 500 or 600
leagues, over the reproductive power of most grains, does not favour
the theory of the migration of vegetables by means of ocean currents.
Such a theory is too general and comprehensive” (_Examen critique de
l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent_, vol. ii, p. 78).

Footnote 92:

Alexander von Humboldt gives the law determining these facts in the
following passage (_Asie centrale_, vol. iii, p. 23): “The foundation
of the science of climatology is the accurate knowledge of the
inequalities of a continent’s surface (hypsometry). Without this
knowledge we are apt to attribute to elevation what is really the
effect of other causes, acting, in low-lying regions, on a surface of
which the curve is continuous with that of the sea, along the
isothermic lines (i.e. lines along which the temperature is the
same).” By calling attention to the multiplicity of influences acting
on the temperature of any given geographical point, Von Humboldt shows
how very different conditions of climate may exist in places that are
quite near each other, independently of their height above sea-level.
Thus in the north-east of Ireland, on the Glenarn coast, there is a
region, on the same parallel of latitude as Königsberg in Prussia,
which produces myrtles growing in the open air quite as vigorously as
in Portugal; this region is in striking contrast with those round it.
“There are hardly any frosts in winter, and the heat in summer is not
enough to ripen the grapes.... The pools and small lakes of the Faroe
Islands are not frozen over during the winter, in spite of the
latitude (62°).... In England, on the Devonshire coast, the myrtle,
the camelia iaponica, the fuchsia coccinea, and the Boddleya globosa
flourish in the open, unsheltered, throughout the winter.... At
Salcombe the winters are so mild that orange-trees have been seen,
with fruit on them, sheltered by a wall and protected merely by
screens” (pp. 147–48).

Footnote 93:

I will explain in due course the reasons why I do not include the
American Indian as a pure and primitive type. I have already given
indications of my view on p. 112. Here I merely subscribe to the
opinion of Flourens, who also recognizes only three great subdivisions
of the species—those of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The names call for
criticism but the divisions are in the main correct.

Footnote 94:

Carus gives his powerful support to the law I have laid down, namely
that the civilizing races are especially prone to mix their blood. He
points out the immense variety of elements composing the perfected
human organism, as against the simplicity of the infinitesimal beings
on the lowest step in the scale of creation. He deduces the following
axiom: “Whenever there is an extreme likeness between the elements of
an organic whole, its state cannot be regarded as the expression of a
complete and final development, but is merely primitive and
elementary” (_Über die ungleiche Befähigkeit der verschiedenen
Menschheitstämme für höhere geistige Entwickelung_, p. 4). In another
place he says: “The greatest possible diversity (_i.e._ inequality) of
the parts, together with the most complete unity of the whole, is
clearly, in every sphere, the standard of the highest perfection of an
organism.” In the political world this is the state of a society where
the governing classes are racially quite distinct from the masses,
while being themselves carefully organised into a strict hierarchy.

Footnote 95:

Flourens (_Eloge de Blumenbach_, p. xi) describes the Polynesian race
as “a mixture of two others, the _Caucasian_ and the Mongolian.”
_Caucasian_ is probably a mere slip; he certainly meant _black_.

Footnote 96:

The physiological characteristics of the ancestors are reproduced in
their descendants according to fixed rules. Thus we see in South
America that though the children of a white man and a negress may have
straight soft hair, yet the crisp woolly hair invariably appears in
the second generation (A. d’Orbigny, _l’Homme américain_, vol. i, p.
143).

Footnote 97:

It may be remarked that the happiest blend, from the point of view of
beauty, is that made by the marriage of white and black. We need only
put the striking charm of many mulatto, Creole, and quadroon women by
the side of such mixtures of yellow and white as the Russians and
Hungarians. The comparison is not to the advantage of the latter. It
is no less certain that a beautiful Rajput is more ideally beautiful
than the most perfect Slav.

Footnote 98:

_See_ (among other authorities), for the American aborigine, Martius
and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, p. 259; for the negroes,
Pruner, _Der Neger, eine aphoristische Skizze aus der medizinischen
Topographie von Cairo_, in the _Zeitschrift der Deutschen
morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, vol. i, p. 131; for the muscular
superiority of the white race over all the others, Carus, _op. cit._,
p. 84.

Footnote 99:

Amédée Thierry, _Histoire de la Gaule sous l’administration romaine_,
vol. i, p. 241.

Footnote 100:

One is sometimes led to consider the government of the United States
of America as an original creation, peculiar to our time; its most
remarkable feature is taken to be the small amount of opportunity left
for Government initiative or even interference. Yet if we cast our
eyes over the early years of all the States founded by the white race,
we shall find exactly the same phenomenon. “Self-government” is no
more triumphant in New York to-day, than it was in Paris at the time
of the Franks. It is true that the Indians are treated far less
humanely by the Americans than the Gallo-Romans were by the nobles of
Chlodwig. But we must remember that the racial difference between the
enlightened Republicans of the New World and their victims is far
greater than that between the Germanic conqueror and those he
conquered.

In fact, _all_ Aryan societies began by exaggerating their
independence as against the law and the magistrates.

The power of political invention possessed by the world cannot, I
think, travel outside the boundaries traced by two particular peoples,
one of them living in the north-east of Europe, the other on the banks
of the Nile, in the extreme south of Egypt. The Government of the
first of these peoples (in Bolgari, near Kazan) was accustomed to
“order men of intelligence to be hanged” as a preventive measure. We
owe our knowledge of this interesting fact to the Arabian traveller
Ibn Foszlan (A. von Humboldt, _Asie centrale_, vol. i, p. 494). In the
other nation, living at Fazoql, whenever the king did not give
satisfaction, his relations and ministers came and told him so. They
informed him that since he no longer pleased “the men, women,
children, oxen, asses,” &c., the best thing he could do was to die;
they then proceeded to help him to his death as speedily as possible
(Lepsius, _Briefe aus Ägypten, Äthiopien, und der Halbinsel des
Sinai_; Berlin, 1852).

Footnote 101:

Amédée Thierry, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 241.

Footnote 102:

Martius and Spix, _Reise in Brasilien_, vol. iii, p. 950, &c.

Footnote 103:

In many tribes of Oceania the institution of marriage is conceived as
follows:—A man sees a maiden, who, he thinks, will suit him. He
obtains her from her father, by means of a few presents, among which a
bottle of brandy, if he has been able to get one, holds the most
distinguished place. Then the young suitor proceeds to conceal himself
in a thicket, or behind a rock. The maiden passes by, thinking no
harm. He knocks her down with a blow of his stick, beats her until she
becomes unconscious, and carries her lovingly to his house, bathed in
her blood. The formalities have been complied with, and the legal
union is accomplished.

Footnote 104:

D’Orbigny tells how Indian mothers love their children to distraction,
and take such care of them as to be really their slaves. If however
the child annoys the mother at any time, then she drowns him or
crushes him to death, or abandons him in the forest, without any
regret. I know no other example of such an extraordinary change
(D’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, vol. ii, p. 232).

Footnote 105:

“The native Indian trade in books is very active, and many of the
works produced are never seen in the libraries of Europeans, even in
India. Sprenger says, in a letter, that in Lucknow alone there are
thirteen lithographic establishments occupied purely in printing
school-books, and he gives a considerable list of works of which
probably not one has reached Europe. The same is the case at Delhi,
Agra, Cawnpore, Allahabad, and other towns” (Mohl, _Rapport annuel à
la Société asiatique_, 1851, p. 92).

Footnote 106:

“The Siamese are the most shameless people in the world. They are at
the lowest point of Indo-Chinese civilization; and yet they can all
read and write” (Ritter, _Erdkunde, Asien_, vol. iii, p. 1152).

Footnote 107:

Prichard, “Natural History of Man,” sec. 41.

Footnote 108:

King of Palmyra in Syria, and husband of Zenobia. He was recognized by
the Emperor Gallienus as co-regent of the East in 267, and was
murdered in the same year.—Tr.

Footnote 109:

“The impulse towards this science given them by their kinship with the
Græco-Syrians made them capable of really absorbing the Greek language
and spirit; for the Arabs preferred to confine themselves to the
purely scientific results of Greek speculation” (W. von Humboldt,
_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. cclxiii).

Footnote 110:

The severest judgment on the negro that has perhaps been passed up to
now comes from one of the pioneers of the doctrine of equality.
Franklin defines the negro as “an animal who eats as much, and works
as little, as possible.”

Footnote 111:

I have no hesitation in regarding the exaggerated development of
instinct among savage races as a specific mark of intellectual
inferiority. The sharpening of certain senses can only be gained by
the deterioration of the mental facilities. On this point, compare
what Lesson says of the Papuans, in a paper printed in the _Annales
des sciences naturelles_, vol. x.

Footnote 112:

_See_ p. 139.

Footnote 113:

W. von Humboldt, in one of the most brilliant of his minor works, has
admirably expressed this fact, in its essentials. “In language,” he
says, “the work of time is helped everywhere by national
idiosyncrasies. The characteristic features in the idioms of the
warrior hordes of America and Northern Asia were not necessarily those
of the primitive races of India and Greece. It is not possible to
trace a perfectly equal, and as it were natural, development of any
language, whether it was spoken by one nation or many” (W. von
Humboldt, _Über das Entstehen der grammatischen Formen, und ihren
Einfluss auf die Ideenentwickelung_).

Footnote 114:

W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction.

Footnote 115:

I am inclined to believe that the monosyllabic quality of Chinese is
not really a specific mark of the language at all; and though a
striking characteristic, it does not seem to be an essential one. If
it were, Chinese would be an “isolating” language, connected with
others having the same structure. We know that this is not so. Chinese
belongs to the Tatar or Finnish system, of which some branches are
polysyllabic. On the other hand, we find monosyllabic languages among
groups with quite a different origin. I do not lay any stress on the
example of Othomi, a Mexican dialect which, according to du Ponceau,
has the monosyllabic quality of Chinese, and yet in other respects
belongs to the American family among which it is found, as Chinese
does to the Tatar group (_see_ Morton, “An Inquiry into the
Distinctive Characteristics of the aboriginal race of America,”
Philadelphia, 1844). My reason for neglecting this apparently
important example is that these American languages may one day be
recognized as forming merely a vast branch of the Tatar family; and
thus any conclusion I might draw from them would simply go to confirm
what I have said as to the relation of Chinese to the surrounding
dialects, a relation which is in no way disproved by the peculiar
character of Chinese itself.

I find therefore a more conclusive instance in Coptic, which will not
easily be shown to have any relation to Chinese. But here also every
syllable is a root; and the simple affixes that modify the root are so
independent that even the determining particle that marks the time of
the verb does not always remain joined to the word. Thus _hon_ means
“to command”; _a-hon_, “he commanded”; but _a Moyses hon_, “Moses
commanded” (_see_ E. Meier, _Hebräisches Wurzelwörterbuch_).

Thus it seems possible for monosyllabism to appear in every linguistic
family. It is a kind of infirmity produced by causes which are not yet
understood; it is not however a specific feature, separating the
language in which it occurs from the rest, and setting it in a class
by itself.

Footnote 116:

Goethe says in _Wilhelm Meister_: “Few Germans, and perhaps few men of
modern nations, have the sense of an æsthetic whole. We only know how
to praise and blame details, we can only show a fragmentary
admiration.”

Footnote 117:

_Cf._ W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xcv:
“We may call the sound that imitates the meaning of a word _symbolic_,
although the symbolic element in speech goes far deeper than this....
This kind of imitation undoubtedly had a great, and perhaps exclusive,
influence over the early attempts at word-building.”

Footnote 118:

There is probably another jargon of the same kind as Balaïbalan. This
is called “Afnskoë,” and is spoken by the pedlars and horse-dealers of
Greater Russia, especially in the province of Vladimir. It is confined
to men. The grammar is entirely Russian, though the roots are foreign.
(_See_ Pott, Ersch and Gruber’s _Encyclopädie, Indogermanischer
Sprachstamm_, p. 110.)

Footnote 119:

C. O. Müller, in an admirable passage which I cannot resist the
temptation of transcribing, shows the true nature of language: “Our
age has learnt, by the study of the Hindu and especially the Germanic
languages, that the laws of speech are as fixed as those of organic
life. Between different dialects, developing independently after their
separation, there are still mysterious links, which reciprocally
determine the sounds and their sequences. Literature and science set
limits to this growth, and arrest perhaps some of its richer
developments; but they cannot impose any law on it higher than that
ordained by nature, mother of all things. Even a long time before the
coming of decadence and bad taste, languages may fall sick, from
outward or inward causes, and suffer vast changes; but so long as life
remains in them, their innate power is enough to heal their wounds, to
set their torn limbs, and to restore unity and regularity, even when
the beauty and perfection of the noble plants has almost entirely
disappeared” (_Die Etrusker_, p. 65).

Footnote 120:

Pott, _op. cit._, p. 74.

Footnote 121:

That the mixture of idioms is proportionate to that of the races
constituting a nation had already been noticed before philology, in
the modern sense, existed at all. Kämpfer for example says in his
“History of Japan” (published in 1729): “We may take it as a fixed
rule that the settlement of foreigners in a country will bring a
corresponding proportion of foreign words into the language; these
will be naturalized by degrees, and become as familiar as the native
words themselves.”

Footnote 122:

Keferstein shows that German is merely a hybrid language made up of
Celtic and Gothic (_Ansichten über die keltischen Altertümer_, Halle,
1846–51; Introduction, p. xxxviii). Grimm is of the same opinion.

Footnote 123:

W. von Humboldt says: “Languages, that are apparently crude and
unrefined, may show some striking qualities in their structure, and
often do so. In this respect they may quite possibly surpass more
highly developed tongues. The comparison of Birman with Delaware, not
to speak of Mexican, can leave no doubt of the superiority of the
latter; yet a strand of Indian culture has certainly been interwoven
into Birman by Pali” (_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p.
xxxiv).

Footnote 124:

This difference of level between the intellect of the conqueror and
that of the conquered is the cause of the “sacred languages” that we
find used in the early days of an empire; such as that of the
Egyptians, or the Incas of Peru. These languages are the object of a
superstitious veneration; they are the exclusive property of the upper
classes, and often of a sacerdotal caste, and they furnish the
strongest possible proof of the existence of a foreign race that has
conquered the country where they are found.

Footnote 125:

W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xxxiv.

Footnote 126:

_See_ p. 82 above.

Footnote 127:

Ancient Greece contained many dialects, but not so many as the Greece
of the sixteenth century, when seventy were counted by Simeon
Kavasila; further we may notice (in connexion with the following
paragraph) that in the thirteenth century French was spoken throughout
Greece, and especially in Attica (Heilmayer, quoted by Pott, _op.
cit._, p. 73).

Footnote 128:

The Hebrews themselves did not call their language “Hebrew”; they
called it, quite properly, the “language of Canaan” (Isaiah xix, 18).
Compare Roediger’s preface to the Hebrew grammar of Gesenius (16th
edition, Leipzig, 1851, p. 7 _et passim_).

Footnote 129:

This is also the view of W. Edwards (“Physical Characteristics of the
Human Races”).

Footnote 130:

Besides the Jews, I might also mention the Gipsies. There is, further,
the case where a people speaks two languages. In Grisons almost all
the peasants of the Engadine speak Roumansch and German with equal
facility, the former among themselves, the latter to foreigners. In
Courland there is a district where the peoples speak Esthonian (a
Finnish dialect) to each other and Lithuanian to every one else (Pott,
_op. cit._, p. 104).

Footnote 131:

_See_ pp. 97–102.

Footnote 132:

The way was not so long from rustic Latin, _lingua rustica Romanorum_,
to the _lingua romana_ and thence to corruption, as it was from the
classical tongue, the precise and elaborate forms of which offered
more resistance to decay. We may add that, as every foreign legionary
brought his own provincial patois into the Gallic colonies, the advent
of a common dialect was hastened, not merely by the Celts, but by the
immigrants themselves.

Footnote 133:

Sulp. Severus, _Dial. I de virtutibus monachorum orientalium_.

Footnote 134:

Both troubadours who flourished in the latter half of the twelfth
century.—Tr.

Footnote 135:

Macaulay, “History of England,” _ad init._ The Albigenses are the
special favourites of revolutionary writers, especially in Germany
(_see_ Lenau’s poem, _Die Albigenser_). Nevertheless the sectaries of
Languedoc were recruited mainly from the knightly orders and the
dignitaries of the Church. Their doctrines were indeed anti-social;
and for this reason much may be pardoned to them.

Footnote 136:

See the curious remarks of Génin in his preface to the _Chanson de
Roland_ (edited 1851).

Footnote 137:

_See_ Hickes, _Thesaurus litteraturæ septentrionalis_; also
_L’Histoire littéraire de France_, vol. xvii, p. 633.

Footnote 138:

Published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.

Footnote 139:

P. Pâris, _Garin le Loherain_, preface.

Footnote 140:

It may however be observed that the accent of Vaud and Savoy has a
southern ring, strongly reminiscent of the colony of Aventicum.

Footnote 141:

_See_ p. 43.

Footnote 142:

Pott brings out very well the fact that the different dialects
maintain the balance between the blood of a race and its language,
when he says, “Dialects are the diversity in unity, the prismatic
sections of the monochromatic light and the primordial One” (Ersch and
Gruber’s _Encyclopädie_, p. 66). The phraseology is obscure; but it
shows his meaning clearly enough.

Footnote 143:

This caution applies only when the history of a single people is in
question, not that of a group of peoples. Although one nation may
sometimes change its language, this never happens, and could not
happen, in the case of a complex of nationalities, racially identical
though politically independent. The Jews have given up their national
speech; but the Semitic nations as a whole can neither lose their
native dialects nor acquire others.

Footnote 144:

“Taste and smell in the negro are as powerful as they are
undiscriminating. He eats everything, and odours which are revolting
to us are pleasant to him” (Pruner).

Footnote 145:

Carus, _op. cit._, p. 60.

Footnote 146:

Martius observes that the European is superior to the coloured man in
the pressure of the nervous fluid (_Reise in Brasilien_, vol. i, p.
259).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE RENAISSANCE

BY COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

TRANSLATED BY PAUL V. COHN, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON COUNT
GOBINEAU’S LIFE AND WORK, BY DR. OSCAR LEVY

One Volume, Demy 8vo, Illustrated, 10s net

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

These five historical dramas cover the flowering time of the Italian Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the last days of Michael Angelo (about 1560). While grouped round the leading figures who provide the titles—Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, and Michael Angelo—the plays introduce almost every interesting character of the period. Nor are we only concerned with the great names; the author aims at catching the spirit of the people, and the thoughts and feelings of soldier, artisan, trader, and their womenfolk find ample voice in his pages.

The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in history: even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much—or at any rate so much that has survived-to the world of politics, art, and thought. Now while this interest is amply reflected in contemporary literature, from the monumental work of Symonds down to the flotsam and jetsam of everyday fiction, there is one kind of man who more than an historian would show insight into this age, and that is a poet.

It is as a poet’s work that Gobineau’s “Historical Scenes” recommend themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets; there is the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and sub-moral kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral kind. Only the last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise with such mighty figures as Cesare Borgia and Julius II—the religious poet being inclined to paint them as monsters, the sub-religious as freaks and neurotics. _Similia similibus_: equals can only be recognised by their equals, and Gobineau was himself a type of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an age of low bourgeois and socialist ideals. In a century swayed by romanticism and democracy, Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He is a forerunner of Nietzsche (“the only European spirit I should care to converse with,” said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is peculiarly fitted to deal with one of the few periods that was _not_ dominated by the moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to attract the large and evergrowing circle of students of Nietzsche in this country and America.

“I can only add that this is a volume of serious import, worth reading
from cover to cover, a book which even a jaded reviewer closes with a
sigh of regret that he has not got to read it all over again.”—G. S.
LAYARD in the _Bookman_.

“We scarcely know whether to be more struck with the truth or
liveliness of these portraits. Savonarola, for example, is something
more than the Savonarola of history and tradition. Not only is the
character of the man subtly brought out; not only are we made aware,
for the first time, adequately, of that devouring egotism which could
see nothing but self as God’s instrument, self as the scourge of
Florence, self as the inspired prophet; but beneath all this and
vouching for it is the consciousness of the reality of the man, the
consciousness that his cries of distress are real cries, and his
moments of fierce aspiration and black despair genuine experiences.
More touching and even more lifelike is the figure of Michael Angelo,
a figure in the main familiar to us, but endowed with advancing years
with a peace of mind, a lucidity of intelligence, and a breadth of
sympathy such as were foreign to its young and stormy epoch. The last
scene between Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna is a noble one, and
can be read more than once with pleasure.”—_The Morning Post._

“A debt is due to Dr. Oscar Levy for bringing before English readers
this translation of that great work of Count Gobineau, in which,
through the medium of the drama, he reveals his reverence for the
spirit that inspired the Italian Renaissance. The plays constituting
the book are five in number, ‘Savonarola,’ ‘Cesare Borgia,’ ‘Julius
II,’ ‘Leo X,’ and ‘Michael Angelo,’—and nothing more brilliant has
appeared in recent times. In scope we can only compare with it Mr.
Hardy’s ‘Dynasts,’ but no more striking contrast could be conceived
than the creations of these two geniuses. Through the pages of these
plays moves the whole glittering pageant of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, a mob of soldiers, priests, artists, men and
women, slaying, plundering, preaching, poisoning, painting, rioting,
and loving, while out of the surgent mass rise the figures of the
splendid three, Borgia, Julius, and Michael Angelo, dominating all by
the sheer greatness of their ideas and their contempt for other men’s
opinions. They are the great aristocrats of their time, and the five
plays—really one in conception—are an assertion of the saving grace of
aristocracy, of the glory of race, at a time when the democratic
flood, whose source is Christianity, was beginning to pour over
Europe, to the overwhelming of all greatness of thought and art. The
translation, which is excellent, is by Paul V. Cohn.”—_Glasgow
Herald._

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.