The Continental Monthly, Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 | Page 9

so little of it. There is a favorite compensative theory that man is miraculously self-adaptive to all circumstances, and that deprived of modern comforts and luxuries he would only become more vigorous and independent--that in fact he was on the whole considerably happier under a feudal baron than he has been since. I will believe in this when I find that a man who has exchanged a stinging gout for a mere rheumatism finds himself entirely free from pain. No, the serfs of the Middle Ages were in no sense happy. Stifled moans of misery, a sense of their unutterable agonies, steal up from proverb and by-corners of history--we feel that they were more miserable than jail prisoners at the present day--for then, as now, man groaned at being an inferior, and he had much more than that to groan over in those days of strifes and dirt. And yet every one of those serfs was God's child, as well as the baron who enslaved him. To himself he was a world with an eternity, and of as much importance as all other men. Through what strange heresies and insurrections, based either on innate passion or religious conviction, do we not find Republicanism bursting out in every age, from remote Etruscan rebellions down to Peasants' wars, Anabaptist uprisings, and Jack Cade out-flamings. It was always there, that sense of political equality and right--it always goaded and tormented man, in the silent darkness of ignorance as in the broad light of learning.
So long as European society consisted in a great measure of war tempered by agriculture, there could be but little progress towards a better state of things. But the germ of industry sprouted and grew, though slowly. Merchants bought social privileges for money; even law was grudgingly sold them, and they continued to buy. Against the old idealism, against bugbears and mythology, fairy tales and astrology, dreams, spells, charms, muttered exorcisms, commandments to obey master, ship and serfdom, de jure divino, clouds, mists, and lies infinite; slowly rose that stupendous power of truth and of Nature which had hitherto in humanity only visited the world in broken gleams. We may assume different eras for this dividing point between immutability and progress, between slavery and freedom. In religion, Christianity appears as first offering future happiness for the people and for all. The revival of letters and the Reformation were glorious storms, battering down thousands of old barriers. But in a temporal and worldly point of view the name of Bacon, perhaps, since a name is still necessary, best distinguishes between the old and the new. From him--or his age--dates that grappling with facts, that classifying of all knowledge so soon as obtained, that Wissenschaft or Science which never goes backward; in fine, that information which by its dissemination continually equalizes men and renders rank futile. With science, labor and the laboring man began at once to rise. Comfort and cleanliness and health for the many took the place of ancient deprivation and dirt--whether of body or of soul. Humanity began to improve--for, with all the legends of the bravery of the Middle Ages, it is apparent enough that their heroes or soldiers were not so strong or large as the men of the present day. And through all, amid struggles and strivings and subtle drawbacks and deceits, worked and won its way the great power of Republicanism or of Progress, destroying, one by one, illusions, and building up in their stead fair and enduring realities.
It is but a few decades since the greater portion of all intellectual or inventive effort was devoted to setting off rank, to exalting the exalted, and, by contrast, still further degrading the lowly. What were the glorious works of those medi?val artists in stone and canvas, in orfevery and silver, in marble and bronze, nielloed salvers, golden chasing, laces as from fairy-land, canopies, garments and gems? All beautiful patents of rank, marks to honor wealthy rank--nothing more, save that and the imperishable proof of genius, which is ever lovely, as a slave or free. But where goes the inventive talent now? Beaumarchais worked for a year to make a watch which only 'the king' could buy. Had he lived to-day he would have striven to invent some improvement which should be found in every man's watch. It 'pays better,' in a word, to invent for the poor many than for the rich few--and invention has found this out. Something which must be had in every cottage,--soap for the million, medicine for the masses, cheap churns, cheap clocks, always something of which one can sell many and much,--such are the objects which claim the labor of genius now. Fools grieve that Art is dead; 'lives at best only in imitation;' and that we have chanced on a