The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1857-09-03
REFORMERs.

Natural history hss philosophy, or, more
properly, it is philosophy itself, for it is sci
ence, which is nothing else than the facts and
forces, or, the phenomena and laws of its sub.
ject, arranged in systematic order. A science
means a complete knowledge of the subject
matter-of Its natural constitution, elements,
activities, relations, ard the conditions of
their operation. We have no such knowl.
edge as this of human society. We have
no history of the social organism that covers
all this ground and, therefore, we have no
philosophy of civil history. We talk great
swelling words of vanity, or little empty words
of ignorance, when we speak Of the philosophy
of our chronicles, annals, legends, and other fc-
tions, which we dignity with the name of his
tory. Gibbon, Hume, Hallam, and Macaulay,
abound in anecdotes and adventures of national
life; but its physiology and pathology are still
about where the corresponding theories of the
human body were, when the nerves were thought
to carry animal spirits, and the arteries, sir.
We are not only ignorant of the process of the
growth from barbarism to civiliza alton, but we
are even unable to define civilization so as to
determine with certainty which of the nations
in the past and present are entitled to be class
ed under it. Topsy's answer to the question,
who made you ? was, spect crowd" That
is really about all, and it is certainly the best
account we can give of the causes by which we
have reached our present SECRETARY state. We
suspect that we grew to it. For the simple
truth of social development is, that communi
ties of men advance in the execution of plan,
which they have not conceived, and of which
they are not even aware. They are only the
intelligent artifcers of work which is not their
own. They do not perceive it until it mani
tests itself in the facts of experience, and then
they do not understand, so as to command the
forces which effected it. If the coral insects
were asked how they build their cities of the
deep, they would wriggle as badly through the
explanation, ard would have reason to exult
almost much in their success as the popula
tions of the continents who have the great ad
vantage of wearing their limestone inside OF
their bodies. Their Macaulays hsve written
out their island history in volumes of block
They register the revolutions of the winds and
the instructions of the waves where the crown
of the reef has perchance been wrenched from
the structure; and the seams tell, as plainly as
fragments, lines, and plaster, cen speak, that il
was cobbled On again, until it was fairly built
up above the high-wster mark of elementary
oommotion; but how it came about, when every
individual of the lagoon was 30 busy all the
while with bis own cell, and struggling so ear.
nestly with his neighbor for the atoms Of sus
tenance ahoat, that the ruititudinous and
competitive spscialities grew into an interlinked
system of polty, which locks as if they had de-
signed it, their philosophy of history no more
explains than does that of the islands of Great
Britain explain the mystery Of their civil and
social experiences.
Our historians travel over the record to ex-
plore it and post up their journals, very much
after the fashion of commonplace tourists, who
note down distances, stages, populations, public
edi6ces, manners aud customs, the price of pro-
visions, and the amount of their tavern bills,
noting the differences and resemblances that
present themselves, and so present pictured
page of words, which the reader may unridd!e
for the science of society at his leisure. Take
up any English history of the middle ages or
of the reign OF James II, or Of the Common.
wealth, and read the details, till memory can
hold no more of the particulars, and then ask
the plump question, how all this came about,
and see whether you get any more instruction
than physician gets from nervous patient,
who talks by the hour of his aches and anxetes
The symptoms are given in unendurAble cir
cumstantiality of detail; bet, what do they
mean? What were the predisposing, and,
especially, what were the efficient causes +? for
we are tired of the occasional ones. We want
doctors of history-we have gSsa enough of its
gossips, the one-haf Of them tale bearers, mere.
ly, and the other half liars.
Walpole was right when he said to his son,
"Read TO me-" "What shall read, father
History" No, no; don't worry me with that
sort of stuff. l have been behind the curtain
long enough to know It's wcrthlessness. 1t is
either written by contemporaries whose party
spirit will not permit them to tell the truth, or
by those who come long enough after to be re
lieved from partiality, indeed, but too long to
know anything truly about it. Read me some
clever work of fiction for History is true only
in names and dates, and false in everything else
while fiction is false only in names and dates
but true in everything else"
If history is philosophy teaching by exam
ples. all that we have to say of it is, that the
pupils don't understand the teaching. As long
as communities have anything to attain in the
matter of institutions and order, they have some
thing to learn and their failures can only teach
that their arrangements don't answer, leaving
all the defects to be made up at the proper ex
pense of the experimenters.
The priori method of discovery is in the
right track; but, as we have seen, theories
have always failed in practice. A true policy
might be evolved from principles, certainly
and very respectable attempts have been made
10 attain it. But here lies the dificulty-wt
need not q perfect system, but a remedia
method adapted to conditions, accidents, snC
incapacities, which are not the subjects of alb
solute law.
Science works with truths, and it does no
understand falsehoods, and cannot manage
them; as a s.rsightedge exposes the depart
ures of a crooked stick, but cannot reform
them. Take Fourier's system, or any other
that hiss been or may be devised for perfect
order of society, and endeavor its realization
and, behold, the elements and agencies are al
incapable and iutractsble, and there is an END
of the experiment. The Church does not SC
-, dbl LIVING m he ~,