The Savage Must Learn To WANT; He Must Learn To Be Ambitious;
And To Covet More Than The Mere Animal Necessities Of Food And Drink.
This Can Alone Be Taught By A Communication With Civilized Beings:
The
sight of men well clothed will induce the naked savage to covet
clothing, and will create a WANT; the supply of this demand will be the
first step towards commerce.
To obtain the supply, the savage must
produce some article in return as a medium of barter, some natural
production of his country adapted to the trader's wants. His wants will
increase as his ideas expand by communication with Europeans: thus, his
productions must increase in due proportion, and he must become
industrious; industry being the first grand stride towards civilization.
The natural energy of all countries is influenced by climate; and
civilization being dependent upon industry, or energy, must accordingly
vary in its degrees according to geographical position. The natives of
tropical countries do not progress: enervated by intense heat, they
incline rather to repose and amusement than to labour. Free from the
rigour of winters, and the excitement of changes in the seasons, the
native character assumes the monotony of their country's temperature.
They have no natural difficulties to contend with, - no struggle with
adverse storms and icy winds and frost-bound soil; but an everlasting
summer, and fertile ground producing with little tillage, excite no
enterprise; and the human mind, unexercised by difficulties, sinks into
languor and decay. There are a lack of industry, a want of intensity of
character, a love of ease and luxury, which leads to a devotion to
sensuality, - to a plurality of wives, which lowers the character and
position of woman. Woman, reduced to that false position, ceases to
exercise her proper influence upon man; she becomes the mere slave of
passion, and, instead of holding her sphere as the emblem of
civilization she becomes its barrier. The absence of real love
engendered by a plurality of wives, is an absolute bar to progress; and
so long as polygamy exists, an extension of civilization is impossible.
In all tropical countries polygamy is the prevailing evil: this is the
greatest obstacle to Christianity. The Mahommedan religion, planned
carefully for Eastern habits, allowed a plurality of wives, and
prospered. The savage can be taught the existence of a Deity, and become
a Mussulman; but to him the hateful law of fidelity to one wife is a bar
to Christianity. Thus, in tropical climates there will always be a
slower advance of civilization than in more temperate zones.
The highest civilization was originally confined to the small portion of
the globe comprised between Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In those
countries was concentrated the world's earliest history; and although
changed in special importance, they preserve their geographical
significance to the present day.
The power and intelligence of man will have their highest development
within certain latitudes, and the natural passions and characters of
races will be governed by locality and the temperature of climate.
There are certain attractions in localities that induce first
settlements of man; even as peculiar conditions of country attract both
birds and animals. The first want of man and beast is food: thus fertile
soil and abundant pasture, combined with good climate and water
communication, always ensure the settlement of man; while natural
seed-bearing grasses, forests, and prairies attract both birds and
beasts. The earth offers special advantages in various positions to both
man and beast; and such localities are, with few exceptions, naturally
inhabited. From the earliest creation there have been spots so
peculiarly favoured by nature, by geographical position, climate, and
fertility, that man has striven for their occupation, and they have
become scenes of contention for possession. Such countries have had a
powerful influence in the world's history, and such will be the great
pulses of civilization, - the sources from which in a future, however
distant, will flow the civilization of the world. Egypt is the land
whose peculiar capabilities have thus attracted the desires of conquest,
and with whom the world's earliest history is intimately connected.
Egypt has been an extraordinary instance of the actual formation of a
country by alluvial deposit; it has been CREATED by a single river. The
great Sahara, that frightful desert of interminable scorching sand,
stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, is cleft by one solitary
thread of water. Ages before man could have existed in that inhospitable
land, that thread of water was at its silent work: through countless
years it flooded and fell, depositing a rich legacy of soil upon the
barren sand until the delta was created; and man, at so remote a period
that we have no clue to an approximate date, occupied the fertile soil
thus born of the river Nile, and that corner of savage Africa, rescued
from its barrenness, became Egypt, and took the first rank in the
earth's history.
For that extraordinary land the world has ever contended, and will yet
contend.
From the Persian conquest to the present day, although the scene of
continual strife, Egypt has been an example of almost uninterrupted
productiveness. Its geographical position afforded peculiar advantages
for commercial enterprise. Bounded on the east by the Red Sea, on the
north by the Mediterranean, while the fertilizing Nile afforded inland
communication, Egypt became the most prosperous and civilized country of
the earth. Egypt was not only created by the Nile, but the very
existence of its inhabitants depended upon the annual inundation of that
river: thus all that related to the Nile was of vital importance to the
people; it was the hand that fed them.
Egypt depending so entirely upon the river, it was natural that the
origin of those mysterious waters should have absorbed the attention of
thinking men. It was unlike all other rivers. In July and August, when
European streams were at their lowest in the summer heat, the Nile was
at the flood! In Egypt there was no rainfall - not even a drop of dew in
those parched deserts through which, for 860 miles of latitude, the
glorious river flowed without a tributary.
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