The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel

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СКАЧАТЬ foreigners and Europeans. In another and somewhat earlier statistical work, composed towards the close of the 18th century, the population of this empire is estimated at 147 millions; and the very incredible statement is added, that a hundred and fifty years before, or about the middle of the 17th century, the Chinese population amounted only to 27 millions and a half. This rapid rise, or rather this prodigious stride in the numbers of a people, would be in utter opposition to all principles and observations on the growth and progressive increase of population, even in the most civilized countries. Thus even the statistical estimates of the Chinese furnish us with no certain information on this subject. However as this vast region is every where intersected by navigable rivers and canals, every where studded with large and highly populous cities, and enjoys a climate as genial, or even still more genial, and certainly far more salubrious than that of India; as, like the latter country, it every where presents to the eye the richest culture, and is in all appearance as much peopled, or over-peopled, we may take India, whose total population is not near included in the 110 millions under British rule, as furnishing a pretty accurate standard for the computation of the Chinese population. Now, when we reflect that even the proper China is larger than the whole western peninsula of India, and that the vast countries dependent on China, such as Thibet and southern Tartary are very populous, the conjectural calculation of the English writer, from whom I have taken these critical remarks on the early estimates of Chinese population, and who reckons it at 150 millions, may be regarded as a very moderate computation, and may with perfect safety, be considerably raised. Thus then the Chinese population is nearly as large as the whole population of Europe, and constitutes, if not a fourth, at least a fifth, of the total population of the globe.

      I permit myself to indulge in cursory comparisons of this kind, and for the reason that the history of civilization, which forms the basis, and as it were the outward body, of the philosophy of history, which should be the inner and higher sense of the whole, is deeply interested in all that refers to the general condition of humanity. And such an interest, which does not of itself lie in mere statistical calculations, but in the outward condition of mankind, as the symbol of its inward state, may very well attach to comparisons of this nature.

      The interest, however, which the philosophic historian should take in all that relates to humanity in general, and to the various nations of the earth, ought not to be regulated by the false standard of an indiscriminate equality, that would consider all nations of equal importance, and pay equal attention to all without distinction. This would indeed betray an indifference to, or at least ignorance of, the higher principle implanted in the human breast. But this interest should be measured not merely by the degree of population in a state, or by geographical extent of territory, or by external power, but by population, territory and power combined—by moral worth and intellectual pre-eminence, by the scale of civilization to which the nation has attained. The Tongoosses, though a very widely diffused race, the Calmucks, though, compared with the other nations of central Asia, they have much to claim our attention, cannot certainly excite equal interest, or hold as high a place in the history of human civilization, as the Greeks or the Egyptians; though the territory of Egypt itself is certainly not particularly large, nor according to our customary standard of population, were its inhabitants in all probability ever very numerous. In the same way, the Empire of the Moguls, which embraced China itself, has not the same high interest and importance in our eyes as the Roman Empire either in its rise or in its fall. Writers on universal history have not however always avoided this fault, and have been too much disposed to place all nations on the same historical footing—on the false level of an indiscriminate equality; and to regard humanity in a mere physical point of view, and according to the natural classification of tribes and races. In these sketches of history, the high and the noble is often ranked with the low and the vulgar, and neither what is truly great, nor what is of lesser importance, (for this, too, should not be overlooked) has its due place in these portraits of mankind.

      A numerous, or even excessive population is undoubtedly an essential element of political power in a state; but it is not the only, nor in any respect, the principal symptom or indication of the civilization of a country. It is only in regard to civilization that the population of China deserves our consideration. Although in these latter times, when Europe by her political ascendency over the other parts of the world has proved the high pre-eminence of her arts and civilization; England and Russia have become the immediate neighbours of China towards the north and west; still these territorial relations affect not the rest of Europe; and China, when we leave out of consideration its very important commerce, cannot certainly be accounted a political power in the general system. Even in ancient, as well as in modern times, China never figured in the history of Western Asia or Europe, and had no connection whatever with their inhabitants; but this great country has ever stood apart, like a world within itself, in the remote, unknown Eastern Asia. Hence the earlier writers on universal history have taken little or no notice of this great Empire, shut out as it was from the confined horizon of their views. And this was natural, when we consider that the conquests and expeditions of the Asiatic nations were considered by these writers as subjects of the greatest weight and importance. No conquerors have ever marched from China into Western Asia, like Xerxes, for instance, who passed from the interior of Persia to Athens; or Alexander the Great, who extended his victorious march from his small paternal province of Macedon, to beyond the Indus, and almost to the borders of the Ganges, though the latter river, he was in despite of all his efforts, unable to reach. But the great victorious expeditions have proceeded not from China, but from central Asia, and the nations of Tartary, who have invaded China itself; though in these invasions the manners, mind, and civilization of the Chinese have evinced their power, as their Tartar conquerors, in the earliest as in the latest times, have after a few generations, invariably conformed to the manners and civilization of the conquered nation, and become more or less Chinese.

      Not only the great population and flourishing agriculture of this fruitful country, but the cultivation of silk, for which it has been celebrated from all antiquity; the culture of the tea-plant, which forms such an important article of European trade; as well as the knowledge of several most useful medicinal productions of nature; and unique and, in their way, excellent products of industry and manufacture; prove the very high degree of civilization which this people has attained to. And how should not that people be entitled to a high or one of the highest places among civilized nations, which had known, many centuries before Europe, the art of printing, gun-powder, and the magnet—those three so highly celebrated and valuable discoveries of European skill? Instead of the regular art of printing with transposeable letters, which would not suit the Chinese system of writing, this people make use of a species of lithography, which, to all essential purposes is the same, and attended with the same effects. Gunpowder serves in China, as it did in Europe in the infancy of the discovery, rather for amusement and for fire-works, than for the more serious purpose of warlike fortification and conquest: and though this people are acquainted with the magnetic needle, they have never made a like extended application of its powers, and never employ it either in a confined river and coasting navigation, or on the wide ocean, on which they never venture.

      The Chinese are remarkable too for the utmost polish and refinement of manners, and even for a fastidious urbanity and a love of stately ceremonial. In many respects indeed their politeness and refinement almost equal those of European nations, or at least are very superior to what we usually designate by the term of oriental manners—a term which in our sense can apply only to the more contiguous Mahometan countries of the Levant. Of this assertion we may find a sufficient proof in any single tale that pourtrays the present Chinese life and manners, in the novel, for instance, translated by M. Remusat.[43] In their present manners and fashions, however, there are many things utterly at variance with European taste and feelings; I need only mention the custom of the dignitaries, functionaries, and men of letters, letting their nails grow to the length of birds' claws, and that other custom in women of rank, of compressing their feet to a most artificial diminutiveness. Both customs, according to the recent account of a very intelligent Englishman, serve to mark and distinguish the upper class; for the former renders the men totally incapable of hard or manual labour, and the latter impedes the women of rank in walking, or at least gives them a mincing gait, and a languid, delicate and interesting air. These minute traits of manners СКАЧАТЬ