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THE THIRD REVOLUTION
THE THIRD REVOLUTION

XI JINPING AND THE NEW

CHINESE STATE

ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY
A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by
publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Elizabeth Economy 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law,
by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights
organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above
should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address
above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–086607–5
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent,
nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher
dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials,
business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and
religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them
better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the
United States and other countries. Founded in 1921, CFR carries out
its mission by maintaining a diverse membership, with special
programs to promote interest and develop expertise in the next
generation of foreign policy leaders; convening meetings at its
headquarters in New York and in Washington, DC, and other cities
where senior government officials, members of Congress, global
leaders, and prominent thinkers come together with CFR members
to discuss and debate major international issues; supporting a
Studies Program that fosters independent research, enabling CFR
scholars to produce articles, reports, and books, and hold
roundtables that analyze foreign policy issues and make concrete
policy recommendations; publishing Foreign Affairs, the preeminent
journal on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy; sponsoring
Independent Task Forces that produce reports with both findings
and policy prescriptions on the most important foreign policy topics;
and providing up-to-date information and analysis about world
events and American foreign policy on its website, www.cfr.org.
The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional positions on
policy issues and has no affiliation with the U.S. government. All
views expressed in its publications and on its website are the sole
responsibility of the author or authors.
For David, Alexander, Nicholas, and Eleni
 CONTENTS

Map of China and its Provinces

Preface
Acknowledgments

1 Introduction
2 Heart of Darkness
3 Chinanet
4 The Not-So-New Normal
5 Innovation Nation
6 War on Pollution
7 The Lion Awakens
8 The Road Forward

Notes
Index
 Map of China and Its Provinces

Map of China and Its Provinces

Credit: mapsopensource.com
 PREFACE

China’s rise on the global stage has been accompanied by an

explosion of facts and information about the country. We can read
about China’s aging population, its stock market gyrations, and its
investments in Africa. We can use websites to track the air quality in
Chinese cities, to monitor China’s actions in the South China Sea, or
to check on the number of Chinese officials arrested on a particular
day.
In many respects, this information does what it is supposed to do:
keep us informed about one of the world’s most important powers.
From the boom and bust in global commodities to the warming of
the earth’s atmosphere, Chinese leaders’ political and economic
choices matter not only for China but also for the rest of the world;
and we can access all of this information with a few strokes on our
keyboards.
Yet all these data also have the potential to overload our circuits.
The information we receive is often contradictory. We read one day
that the Chinese government is advancing the rule of law and hear
the next that it has arrested over two hundred lawyers and activists
without due process. Information is often incomplete or inaccurate.
In the fall of 2015, Chinese officials acknowledged that during 2000–
2013, they had underestimated the country’s consumption of coal by
as much as 17 percent; as a result, more than a decade of reported
improvements in energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions
were called into question. We are confused by dramatic but often
misleading headlines that trumpet China’s every accomplishment.
More Americans believe (incorrectly), for example, that China, not
the United States, is the world’s largest economic power. It is a
country that often confounds us with contradictions.
The challenge of making sense of China has been compounded in
recent years by the emergence of Xi Jinping as Chinese Communist
Party general secretary (2012) and president (2013). Under his
leadership, significant new laws and regulations have been drafted,
revised, and promulgated at an astonishing rate, in many instances
challenging long-held understandings of the country’s overall political
and economic trajectory. While previous Chinese leaders recognized
nongovernmental organizations from abroad as an essential element
of China’s economic and social development, for example, the Xi-led
government drafted and passed a law to constrain the activities of
these groups, some of which Chinese officials refer to as “hostile
foreign forces.” In addition, contradictions within and among Xi’s
initiatives leave observers clamoring for clarity. One of the great
paradoxes of China today, for example, is Xi Jinping’s effort to
position himself as a champion of globalization, while at the same
time restricting the free flow of capital, information, and goods
between China and the rest of the world. Despite his almost five
years in office, questions abound as to Xi’s true intentions: Is he a
liberal reformer masquerading as a conservative nationalist until he
can more fully consolidate power? Or are his more liberal reform
utterances merely a smokescreen for a radical reversal of China’s
policy of reform and opening up? How different is a Xi-led China
from those that preceded it?
I undertook this study to try to answer these questions for myself
and to help others make sense of the seeming inconsistencies and
ambiguities in Chinese policy today. Sifting through all of the fast-
changing, contradictory, and occasionally misleading information that
is available on China to understand the country’s underlying trends is
essential. Businesses make critical investment decisions based on
assessments of China’s economic reform initiatives. Decisions by
foundations and universities over whether to put down long-term
stakes in China rely on an accurate understanding of the country’s
political evolution. Negotiations over global climate change hinge on
a correct distillation of past, current, and future levels of Chinese
coal consumption. And countries’ security policies must reflect a
clear-eyed view of how Chinese leaders’ words accord with their
actions in areas such as the South China Sea and North Korea.
As much as possible, I attempt to assess the relative success or
shortcomings of the Chinese leadership’s initiatives on their own
merits. In other words, I ask, what is the Chinese leadership seeking
to accomplish with its policy reforms and what has it accomplished?
I begin with Xi Jinping himself and lay out his vision for China and its
historical antecedents. I then dive into six areas the Xi government
has identified as top reform priorities—politics, the Internet,
innovation, the economy, the environment, and foreign policy. In
some cases, there are competing interests and initiatives to tease
out. Nonetheless, taken together, these separate reform efforts
provide a more comprehensive picture of the arc of Chinese reform
over the past five years and its implications for the rest of the world.
I conclude the book with a set of recommendations for how the
United States and other countries can best take advantage of the
transformation underway to achieve their own policy objectives.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is both a solo and a collective endeavor. For over two
decades, I have been privileged to call the Council on Foreign
Relations a second home. For this, I thank both Leslie A. Gelb, who
hired me as a newly minted PhD and nurtured me through my first
decade, and Richard Haass, who has supported me ever since by
giving me the room to make mistakes, learn from them, and find my
voice in the process. My colleagues have been an integral part of my
intellectual journey as well—Adam Segal, always my best sounding
board, but also Max Boot, Irina Faskianos, Shannon O’Neil, Micah
Zenko, and my terrific Asia Studies colleagues, Alyssa Ayres, Jerome
Cohen, Yanzhong Huang, Josh Kurlantzick, Ely Ratner, Sheila Smith,
and Scott Snyder. All of them set a high standard of quality and
productivity that I strive to meet. Amy Baker, Nancy Bodurtha, and
Patricia Dorff also all provided important support in the process of
writing the book. Outside the Council on Foreign Relations, Winston
Lord and Orville Schell, two outstanding leaders in U.S.‒China
relations, inspire me both for their intellectual integrity and their
generosity of spirit. Arthur Kroeber read part of the manuscript and
provided invaluable advice.
The actual process of writing this book was facilitated by many
people. Certainly, I owe an enormous debt to those Chinese
scholars, activists, businesspeople, and officials who took the time to
meet with me and share their perspectives. In some cases, our
conversations spanned a decade or more. I am fortunate as well
that two outside reviewers, as well as CFR Director of Studies James
Lindsay and President Richard Haass took the time to read the
manuscript carefully and pushed me to make it better. Their
contributions cannot be overstated. I am grateful to David McBride
for his support and guidance throughout the publication process.
The Starr Foundation also has my deepest gratitude for providing
the financial support that enabled me to research and write this
book. My two research associates, Rachel Brown and Gabriel Walker,
provided invaluable research assistance and brought intellectual rigor
and an attention to detail that aided me throughout the process of
research and writing. I was fortunate that when they went off to
graduate school, two more outstanding research associates, Maylin
Meisenheimer and Viola Rothschild, stepped into their shoes and
helped me complete the process of fact-checking and proofreading.
Natalie Au, who interned during the final editing stages, also
provided critical support. All translations and any mistakes, of
course, are my own.
Last, but never least, I would like to thank my family. My parents,
James and Anastasia Economy; my siblings, Peter, Katherine, and
Melissa; and above all my husband, David; and our children,
Alexander, Nicholas, and Eleni. They all remind me on a daily basis
what really matters in life.
Elizabeth C. EconomyNew York City
THE THIRD REVOLUTION
 1

Introduction

IN MID-NOVEMBER 2012, the World Economic Forum hosted a

breakfast in Dubai for several dozen prominent Chinese scholars,
businesspeople, and government officials.1 The Chinese had traveled
there to discuss pressing global matters with their counterparts from
around the world. I was one of a few non-Chinese citizens at the
breakfast and soon noticed that the attention of most of the
participants was not on climate change or youth unemployment but
instead on the dramatic news from home. After months of suspense,
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had just revealed the
membership of the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)—the seven
men selected to lead the country for the next five years.
Strikingly, most of the Chinese at the breakfast could say little
about the new leaders. In contrast to the American and other
democratic political systems, which are designed to strip bare the
political and personal inclinations of public officials, the selection of
Chinese leadership takes place almost entirely behind closed doors.
It combines a bargaining and bartering process among former top
leaders with a popularity contest among the two hundred or so
members of the Communist Party who comprise the powerful Central
Committee.
The run-up to this particular selection process had been
particularly fraught. It was the first time in two-and-a-half decades
that the general secretary of the CCP had not been hand-picked by
Deng Xiaoping, the transformative leader of the country from the
late 1970s until his death in 1997. Deng had led China out of the
Other documents randomly have
different content
Michael Angelo termed his "gentle spouse," and was, doubtless, the
precursor of Brunellesco's architecture. When beheld arrayed in its
pomp on festal days, draped in silk and gold, with its altars lighted;
or, better still, when contemplated in its severe simplicity, toward
evening, when the grand shadows of the pillars cross each other,
falling on the opposite walls, and the richly tinted rays stream
through its storied windows, coloring every object around, the
spectator feels himself exhilarated and ennobled with a thousand
celestial thoughts. And be it remembered to the honor of the two
Dominican architects, Fra Sisto and Fra Ristaro, that they went not
to the outer world for models of such beauty as this; for it was not
till 1294 that Arnolfo laid the foundation of St. Croce, and St. Maria
del Fiore was not begun till 1298. But the latter building, the
cathedral of Florence, is the masterpiece of Italian Gothic, one of the
largest and finest churches produced in the middle ages. The nave
and smaller domes of the choir were probably completed as they
now stand, in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The great
octagon remained uncovered till Brunelleschi commenced the
present dome in the year 1420, and finished it before his death, in
1444. The building may, therefore, be considered as essentially
cotemporary with the cathedral of Cologne, and is very nearly of the
same size. What a contrast in both spirit and form! Perhaps the most
typical example of Italian art in its best period, is the tower erected
close to the Duomo just referred to, from designs by Giotto,
commenced in 1324, and probably finished at the time of his death,
two years afterward. It is certainly a very beautiful structure, and
worthy of the enthusiastic praise which it has received. The openings
are happily graduated, and being covered with ornament from the
base to the summit, it has not that naked look so repulsive in many
others. The convent of St. Mark, whose history is identified with that
of literature, arts, politics, and religion, was founded toward the
close of the thirteenth century. Little did the magnificent Cosimo
imagine that he was there preparing an asylum for that terrible
Savonarola, who was destined to dispute the dominion of Florence
with his posterity. It was in the midst of these buildings that those
great minds moved, the regenerators of Europe, "who first broke the
universal gloom, sons of the morning."
If the Florentine monuments indicate the revival of science and the
consequent debasement of art, the most impressive proof relative to
this point is presented in the famous church of St. Peter at Rome.
Nothing more pagan in form was ever erected on the seven hills
where roamed the primitive she-wolf. Not as the mausoleum of a
Christian martyr, but as the stupendous temple of some classic deity,
it is doubtless full of surpassing attractions. Nothing was ever done
for Leonidas or Camillus, for Regulus or for Julius Cæsar, in
comparison with this monument to a humble fisherman. But what
stranger to the purpose of its erection would ever think of him in the
presence of this gorgeous shrine? Of the magnificent inscriptions
raised to the wise and mighty of time, the sublimest must yield to
that which encircles the sky-suspended vault of St. Peters. A
conqueror of the habitable world once wept at having reached the
limits of his sway; for, vast as was his ambition, it conceived of no
such trophy as is written around that golden horizon, consigning the
keys of heaven to one who ruled the empire of earth. But before
that huge inscription had been raised to its pride of place, the last
great transition of human society in the age of Leo X. transpired, the
most sudden and complete of all revolutions, the change from the
middle age to the modern, from the world without printed books to
the world with them. St. Peters was coeval with the invention of
printing, and the universal revival of science. Before the sacristy was
finished, the splendid endeavors of Watt had been crowned with
success; and in the interval had occurred the discovery of America
and the Reformation. The fall of Catholic domination and Gothic art
was coeval with the ending of that mighty cycle of mutation wherein
the web of society had been unraveled and rewoven for a yet more
auspicious use.
Sculpture was little practiced during the first mediæval centuries, but
the church soon gave that art her patronage, and produced
innumerable works. Plastic and pictorial art was from the earliest
period employed in sacred places for the instruction of the people
and the edification of the faithful. In 433, pope Sixtus dedicated to
the "people of God" the Mosaics and sculptures in Santa Maria
Maggiore, at Rome. St. John Damascenus, in the eighth century,
reasoned earnestly in defense of statuary for religious purposes.
"Images speak," exclaims the eloquent apologist; "they are neither
mute nor lifeless blocks, like the idols of the pagans. Every figure
that meets our gaze in a church relates, as if in words, the
humiliation of Christ for his people, the miracles of the mother of
God, the deeds and conflicts of the saints. Images open the heart
and awake the intellect, and, in a marvelous and indescribable
manner, engage us to imitate the persons they represent."
As Catholicism advanced it was subjected to opposing influences,
and the faintest shadow that darkened, or the lightest breath that
disturbed, the external prosperity or the internal harmony of the
church, was immediately reflected by the pencil of the artist and the
chisel of the sculptor. Almost every ancient edifice, therefore,
becomes to the eye of careful observation a hieroglyphic record of
the dogmas believed and the changes which transpired in the course
of successive ages. During the centuries intervening between the
ninth and seventeenth of our era, numerous cathedrals, parish
churches, and private chapels, colleges, abbeys, and priories,
teemed with an almost incredible profusion of figures, images, and
sacred compositions, carved, sculptured, and engraved, as the
medium of devout instruction. Time and violence have done much to
deface or destroy these early works, but the western states of
Europe, especially France and England, are even now immensely rich
in statues and other sculptured works. The majority of the French
cathedrals are illustrated with a vast variety of "Mirrors" in stone; but
the most complete is that which adorns the masterpiece at Chartres,
which has no less than eighteen hundred and fourteen statues on
the exterior alone. The sculptures here open with the creation of the
world, to illustrate which thirty-six tableaux and seventy-five statues
are employed, beginning with the moment when God leaves his
repose to create the heavens and the earth, and is continued to that
in which Adam and Eve, having been guilty of disobedience, are
driven from Paradise, to pass the remainder of their lives in tears
and in labor. It is the genesis of organic and inorganic nature, of
living creatures and reasoning beings; that in which the biblical
cosmogony is developed, and which leads to that terrible event, the
fearful malediction pronounced upon man by his God. From the
Natural the sculptor passed to the Moral Mirror, and showed how
that man has a heart to be softened, a mind to be enlightened, and
a body to be preserved. Thence arise the four orders of virtues, the
theological, political, domestic, and personal; all placed in opposition
to their contrary vices, as light is to darkness. Theological and
political virtues, the influence of which is external, and suitable for
the public arena, are placed without; domestic and personal virtues,
which affect the individual and his family, are made to retire within,
where they find shelter in stillness and comparative obscurity. Man's
career is then continued from the creation to the last judgment, just
as the sun pursues his course from east to west, and the remaining
statues are employed to exhibit the history of the world, from the
period of Adam and Eve down to the end of time. The inspired
sculptor has, indeed, by the aid of the Prophets and of the
Apocalypse, divined the future fate of man, long after his earthly
existence should have terminated. This is the fourth and last
division, completing what was called in the language of the middle
ages, the "Mirror of the Universe." The intellectual framework of this
stone Encyclopædia contained an entire poem, in the first canto of
which we see reflected the image of nature; in the second, that of
science; that of the moral sense in the third; of man in the fourth;
and in the aggregate, the entire world.
In those days, the state of society was such as to allow little vent to
the innermost thoughts of the finely endowed, and the pent-up mind
was glad to expend a vast amount of thought and labor upon works
which mechanical skill eventually came to supersede. Before the
press could do the same work more effectually, the sculptor used a
building as a book on which to announce in powerful language his
own peculiar disposition, hopes, sentiments, and experience. The
apparently grotesque carvings sometimes met with in the better
period of sculptural art, are indubitably intended to illustrate fables,
legends, romances, as well as individual creeds. But in the sixteenth
century, a moral and political revolution spread widely in all
countries, and led to a marked change in sculpture as in every other
intellectual pursuit. Manual dexterity became nearly perfect, and the
capability of molding stone like wax, combined with the rapid
unfolding of bold and novel ideas, induced a passionate love of
fantastic ornament so peculiar to a vicious Renaissance style. Thus,
while the figure sculpture of France and England still possessed a
very peculiar and severe character, eminently ideal, in Italy, under
the Pisani, plastic art grew to be dramatic and picturesque, the
conventionalities of the antique were revived, and with the study of
abstract beauty, came the loss of much freshness and individuality.
In the age when the republic of Florence bid one of her architects
"build the greatest church in the world," all the fine arts rose
simultaneously, and advanced with gigantic steps. Architecture and
sculpture led the van, and had their chief seat in Tuscany, under the
disciples of Nicholas of Pisa. Rienzi and Petrarch had been as diligent
in the collection of gems and medals as in their search after classical
manuscripts, and their example was not lost upon their successors.
Poggio, Cosmo de Medici, and other illustrious private men gave
origin to princely museums. The gallery of statues and other
antiquities belonging to Lorenzo de Medici, and the academy
annexed to it, constituted the great school in which, with many
others, the genius of young Michael Angelo was formed. Berfoldo,
the Florentine sculptor, an aged and experienced master, who had
studied under Donatello, was the custodian of the Medician garden,
and gave lessons to all the youthful cultivators of art. Poets hymned
the praises of each splendid creation, and thus stimulated the most
enthusiastic rivalry. Pindarus and Tirteus sang the glories of the
Greeks, and why should not the bards of Florence enkindle in these
young bosoms the love of a similar glory? It was a grand spectacle
to behold the flower of Italian genius assembled, where chisel and
hammer made the marble ring, and the emulative canvas glowed
with most fascinating tints. Thus was this garden a lyceum for the
philosopher, an arcadia for the poet, and an academy for the artist;
and no quality that it could either elicit or impart was foreign to the
mighty mind of Michael Angelo. He was the truest exponent of the
fifteenth century, and should be regarded as the chief agent in
substituting modern for mediæval art. He founded modern Italy
immediately on ancient ruins, and did much to efface the memory of
the middle ages. Marble was to Michael Angelo what the Italian
language was to the greatest of Florentine writers; and with a mind
as vast and free as that of Dantè, of whom he was the warmest
admirer, he simultaneously illustrated supreme ability in all the liberal
arts.
While a new life impelled art in Germany, France, and the
Netherlands, during the eleventh century, the appreciation of
sculpture had already begun in Italy; and, at the end of the
succeeding century, it had reached the lowest point of ignorance.
But in the thirteenth century occurred the incident which was the
occasion of a favorable reaction. Among the multitude of ancient
marbles brought home from the East by the Pisan fleet at the time
of rebuilding the cathedral of Pisa, was a bas-relief representing two
subjects taken from the story of Phædra and Hippolytus. Being used
as a decoration in the front of that noble building, young Nicholas
observed, admired, and emulated its artistic worth. His successful
endeavors led to a complete revolution in sculpture. In the
fourteenth century, Andrew of Pisa continued the work of his
predecessors, and was aided in keeping the art in an elevated path
by Orgagna, and the brothers Agostino and Agnolo of Siena. At the
beginning of the fifteenth century, under Donatello, and Ghiberti,
sculpture had again attained a high degree of perfection. Other
eminent proficients united with these great leaders, and carried
forward the auspicious development into Germany where the artistic
centre of sculpture, in the sixteenth century was fixed at Nuremberg,
the residence of Adam Kraft, Peter Vischer, and his sons, Veit Stoss,
and the great Albert Durer. Before the close of this century, however,
the Italian renaissance became universally diffused in Germany,
France, and Flanders, and superseded whatever of originality the
native artists had until then preserved. Thenceforth, throughout the
whole domain of the mediæval age, arabesques, festoons of flowers
and fruit, branches, animals, and human figures, arranged in the
most fantastic manner, took the place of all high art, and the
excellence of sculpture was at an end. During the whole of the
sixteenth century, and a great part of the seventeenth, from Michael
Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci to the death of Salvator Rosa, the fine
arts underwent an irresistible and humiliating decline.
Bronze casting early attained high excellence at Florence, and
further north-west. The gates cast by Ghiberti, for the church of S.
Giovanni, are perhaps the finest that ever came from human hands;
and those of the cathedral of Pisa are excelled by none save these,
which Michael Angelo pronounced to be fit for the portal of Heaven.
In Mosaics and Gem engraving, also, the Italians greatly excelled
previous to the seventeenth century, so fatal to the arts, literature,
and morals of that fated land. All the beauties of Christian art faded
away one after the other, and that same century witnessed the
apostacy of painting, as well as sculpture, which, after having
abjured its high and holy office of civil and religious instructress,
sought to derive its inspirations from the Pagan Olympus.
Mediæval Italy exulted in art generally, and especially in painting;
but it was of a type utterly unlike that which the ancients produced.
The Greeks loved art because it enabled them to embody the images
which were inspired by direct intercourse with earth's fairest forms,
and they used it simply as the minister of nature, and of beauty. But
the Italians were imbued with more celestial sympathies, and
employed beauty and nature chiefly as the vehicles of spiritual
sentiment and exalted aspirations. In the fifth century pictorial art
was gradually Romanized in the hands of early Christianity, and
became transformed as it was transmitted toward the West. Mount
Athos and Constantinople, were, for many centuries, the great
sources of artistic activity, which imparted to painting a peculiar
style. Long after originality in literature had ceased in the East, and
national life was there unknown, the creation of pictures faltered
not, but they were dry and heavy, like the immobile Byzantine
government, and served only to preserve the elements of noble art,
while Christianity itself was laying the foundations for the future
unity of Europe among the progressive races. Down to the tenth
century, art was absolutely controlled by this frigid conventionalism,
but great improvements supervened as soon as an appreciative race
had been prepared.
As the effete world beyond the Adriatic expired, the republic of
Venice arose and inherited all that the superseded orient had
preserved. In point of art, down to the thirteenth century, she may
be considered almost exclusively a Byzantine colony, inasmuch as
her painters adhered entirely to the hereditary models. But as
Byzantium had condemned all the higher forms of plastic art, Venice
could derive no assistance from that source, and, consequently, her
sculpture bore an entirely new phase. The Venetian mosaics,
especially, we may regard as the most legible record of the great
transition and new creation which at this era transpired. As early as
the year 882, large works in this compound style, in a church at
Murano, represented Christ with the Virgin, between saints and
archangels. With incomparably greater originality and force is this
new type represented in the church of St. Mark, founded a.d. 976,
the earliest mural pictures of which date back at least to the
eleventh, perhaps even to the tenth century.
Mediæval painting perfected itself in the same way as ancient
sculpture. The imperfect but severe and characteristic
representations of primitive art became types, which later ages were
slow to alter; they were copied and recopied until a great revolution
in popular thought broke the fetters of conventional control. Such, in
the olden times, was the victory over the Persians, the triumph of
Greek independence; in the middle ages it was the struggle between
the secular and sacred powers. As Æschylus and Phidias mark that
epoch in the Periclean age, so Dantè and Giotto, with the Rhenish
masters, form, in this respect, the great symbols of the age of Leo X.
With them pure religious feeling is the most pervading impulse, and
a sense of divinity habitually directs their hands; but the perception
of the latter was more comprehensive, and rising above the narrow
horizon of their predecessors, they soared beyond the periphery of
actual life, and embraced the infinite. All leading spirits, like Dantè
and Giotto, stood before the world, and, with the power of their
genius, surveyed the whole extent of what was required by their
age, religiously and politically. They were inspired by the belief which
they glorified, and participated in benevolent struggles, not more by
their writings than by their paintings. They extended the boundaries
of the realm of art; its representations became richer and broader;
the composition was rendered dramatical, the drawing and coloring
natural; and a loftier development was occasioned by the discovery
of monuments of the old civilization, which had been buried and
forgotten for centuries. Art-elements which had before existed in a
mummified state, now fell like over-ripe fruit; but not before the soil
of the western world was sufficiently fitted to receive the precious
seed.
After architecture, miniature drawing alone sustained the chief honor
of art through a long course of centuries; and, without it, the history
of painting could not be written. Born in the disastrous days of
barbaric irruptions, miniature grew up within the shadow of the
cloister, and contained within itself the germs of all the magnificence
which the pencil of Italy finally produced. Enamored of solitude and
contemplative life, the graphic industry of monks employed the
darkest period of human history in preserving the precious
fragments of the classics, while it adorned itself with the charms of
liturgical poetry, and the wealth of biblical truth. Usually the same
individual was at once a chronicler of pious legends, a transcriber of
antique manuscripts, and a miniaturist, and his glowing lines were
not more significant than the little pictures which gemmed the page.
Above each vignette he was wont to wreathe a crown of flowers,
that his written words might find an echo in the graces of his pencil;
and the latter was a better interpreter of the author's heart than the
barbarous idioms then spoken. The Idyl, the Eclogue, and the Epic,
called forth all the power and graces of this refined art; and if
Allighieri, in the Divina Commedia, records with honor the two great
fathers of Italian painting, Cimabue and Giotto, he has not omitted
the two most celebrated miniaturists of his age, Oderigi da Gubbio,
and Franco of Bologna. This association of extremes was a proper
one, since the ideas of large compositions lay inclosed in the
smallest illuminations, like unfolded flowers, each shrined in its
delicate bud.
Glass-painting sprang into existence simultaneously with miniature in
the dark ages; and these inseparable companions were subjected to
the same vicissitudes, and shared one common fate. The former was
cultivated in Italy as early as the eighth century, as may be seen in
the treatise on this subject and mosaic, published by Muratori; also
in the work of the monk Theophilus, who flourished in the ninth
century. Like miniature, it constituted the delight of the cloister for
many an age, during which the cultivators of these twin-born arts
produced many glorious monuments of their genius, when both
species closed their career east of the Alps with Fra Eustachio of
Florence. Perugino, Ghiberti, Donatello, and other artists of the
highest order, frequently furnished designs at a later period; but in
preparing and coloring glass, the Italians were greatly excelled by
more western races. The fifteenth century was the most luminous
period of the art; in that which succeeded, it reached its perfection
on the Atlantic shore and died.
Mediæval painting, properly so called, emerged from the Byzantine
types in the thirteenth century. The superstitious rigor of symbolism
was then escaped, and the infant genius of true art attained the
earliest movements of creative power. This is shown in the Madonna
of Duccio, at Siena, dated a.d., 1220, and which is the oldest existing
picture, or movable work, by an Italian artist. Next in date, and
superior as art, is the Madonna by Cimabue, in the Novella at
Florence. But even this seems rather a petrified type of womanhood,
and could hardly be regarded as the flaming morning-star of a day
about to spread from the bay of Naples to the borders of the Rhine,
bright with the splendors of Giotto, Perugino, Raphael, Fra Beato,
Leonardo da Vinci, and the sweet masters of the German school. It
is not our purpose to note particularly the character and career of
individual painters, but to remind our readers of the great and
wonderful law of progress, in this as in every other respect. For
example, while the two leading universities of Bologna and Paris
arose to feed the lamp of science, art, following the general
movement, and in the same direction, elevated itself to greater
dignity of development and conception. Poesy lisped with the
Troubadours, but they were sent to prepare the way for the manly
utterance of the great Allighieri; and painting, associating itself with
the bards, did not give Giotto to the world till Dantè was prepared to
sing the three kingdoms of the second life. From the first etchings
on the walls of catacombs, and the primitive symbols of faith
depicted on martyr-urns, actual advancement had not ceased: but a
still more auspicious hour now dawned when forms of beauty
appeared which rivaled the productions of Greece and Rome,
excelling the ancients by the sublimity of those holy sentiments
transfused from heaven into the heart and intellect of its cultivators.
Giovanni, of the noble family of Cimabue, was born in the year 1240,
and on account of the great improvement which he wrought in his
art, is looked upon, perhaps too exclusively, as the founder of
modern painting. He was the disciple of a Greek mosaic painter at
Florence, and worthily reproduced the excellence he was born to
perpetuate.
Giotto, the son of Bondone, was born near Florence in the year
1276. It is said that he was a shepherd boy, and was discovered
drawing a sheep upon a slab of stone by Cimabue, who took him
home and instructed him in painting. In him the graphic art was
associated with the ecstasy of a contemplative mind, and became a
powerful and animated language. He did not astound or flatter the
senses by the strength of tints, or the violent contrast of lights and
shadows; but like his great successor, Angelico, in the urbanity and
variety of lines, in the profiling of countenances, and in the
ingenuous movement of the figure, he portrayed that harmony
which pervades all creation, and which reveals itself most divinely in
the gentle companion of man.
Amid the rugged Apennines about Umbria there was reared a simple
and solitary school of painting in the fifteenth century, which gloried
in sublime inspirations, and cultivated external beauty only to show
the splendor of its conceptions. Such were Fabriano, Credi, Perugino,
Pinturricchio, and Raphael who came down to Florence to mature
their capacities and ennoble their art, in competition with the great
leaders of the Tuscan school, Giotto Memmi, Gaddi, Spinello, Pietro
Cavallini, and the rest. These are the men who first burst the
trammels of dryness, meagreness and servile imitation; who first
introduced a free, bold, and flowing outline, coupled with examples
of dignified character, energetic action, and concentrated expression;
invented chiaroscuro and grouping, and at the point of culmination
imparted to their works a majesty unrivaled in the history of pictorial
art. That was a memorable epoch truly, and for the imitative arts
one of superlative glory. For while the people were struggling
between tyranny and liberty; while philosophy was engaged in its
deliriums about judicial astrology, and the civil code was cruel and
oppressive, painting gradually approached that sovereign excellence
to which the genius of Leonardo and Raphael were destined to exalt
it; till, with the rapidity that signalized its ascent, it began to sink
into decay and ruin.
It would seem that oil-painting was practiced in Giotto's time; but it
came not into general use until about 1410, when this superior
medium of art was either invented or revived by the Flemish artist,
John Van Eyck, of Brughes. The place of this invention is significant,
and still more the fact that ever since the progress of art and the
perfection of color in Europe has neared that vicinity.
Next to the revival of ancient learning, and the progress of science,
the age of Leo X. was indebted to the perfection of painting for its
glory. It sprang from an inspiration as special, bore a character
equally definite, and yet is invested with an excellence as absolute
as that of Greek sculpture. It was a spiritual plant of the most
delicate texture, the life of which may be defined as to its limits with
the greatest precision. Our countryman, unfortunately now lost to
literature, science, and art, Horace Binney Wallace, presents the
facts in the following summary form: "The first bud broke through
the hard rind of conventionality about the year 1220, and the scene
of its first growth may be fixed at Siena; and by the year 1320 the
germination of the whole trunk was decisively advanced. Cimabue
and Giotto had spread examples of Art over all Italy. In the next
century, till 1470, all the branches and sprays that the frame was to
exhibit were grown; the leafage was luxuriantly full, and the buds of
the flowers were formed, Memmi, the Gaddis, the Orgagnas, the
Lippis, Massaccio, and, more than all, as relates to spiritual
development, Fra Beato had lived and wrought. About 1470, the
peerless blossom of Perfection began to expand, and continued open
for seventy years, the brightest period of its glow being between
1500 and 1535. Its life declined and expired almost immediately.
After 1570 nothing of original or progressive vitality was produced in
Italy. Fra Bartolomeo had died in 1517; Leonardo in 1519; Raphael
in 1520; Coreggio in 1534; Michael Angelo, at a great age, in 1563;
Giorgione had died in 1511; John Bellini in 1516; Titian survived till
1576, at the age of 99; and Veronese died in 1588. The complete
exhaustion of the vital force of Art, in the production of the great
painters who were all living in 1500, is a noticeable fact. With the
exception of the after-growth of the Bolognese school—of whom
Dominicheno, Guido, and Guercino, alone are worth notice—which
flourished between 1600 and 1660, nothing in the manner of the
previous days, but false and feeble imitations appeared."
Great artists went westward often to execute masterpieces for the
most appreciative and powerful patrons in the age of Leo, as before
in the times of Augustus and Pericles, but progress in refinement
called them eastward never. When the arts were in their highest
vigor in Italy, they were wooed to the banks of the Seine and the
Thames, by that true lover, Francis I., of France, and by the monied
might of England. The richest art treasures on earth have ever since
accumulated in the retreats where choice collections then were first
commenced, as we shall have occasion more fully to state when we
come to sketch the age now transpiring. For ten centuries the vast
and progressive populace of continental Europe had no other
representative than the Church; it was then that Art achieved its
greatness under the fostering care of Catholicism, when the Church
belonged to the People, and they were comparatively free. But when
Religion sank into bigotry, and Art, instead of addressing the popular
heart, was compelled to minister to the narrow demands of private
patrons, she passed beyond seas, and awaited fairer auspices in the
midst of a freer race.
 CHAPTER III.
SCIENCE.
Exactly at the era when the great European race was dismembered,
the Latin tongue was disused. This had formerly been the universal
tie between dissimilar tribes, and when it was sundered by such men
as Dantè, who rose to stamp the seal of their genius upon the idiom
of the common people, science soared sublimely amid the new
growth of national languages, and became the supreme and most
universally uniting bond. When Italy had gradually become
nationalized as one Italy, Spain as one Spain, Germany as one
Germany, France as one France, and Britain as one Great Britain;
and when that still mightier process of civilization, the Reformation,
had supervened, ecclesiastical union was destroyed, and then it was
that enlarged invention came to the rescue and supplied the
conservative influence which was most in demand. Increased ardor
in the pursuit of knowledge led to wider and more frequent
intercommunications, both mental and physical, while these in turn
were encouraged and protected by the improved polity of aspiring
states. A new voice even more cosmopolitic than cotemporaneous
creeds broke upon the roused and exulting peoples saying, "One is
your master, Thought, and all ye are brethren!" Sciences lead most
directly, and with greatest efficiency to general views; and, above all,
natural law, that science which treats of inherent and universal
rights, arose and was cultivated with propitious zeal. The dawn was
begun, and the noon was not far off when in central Europe a great
proficient in universal history could say: "The barriers are broken,
which severed states and nations in hostile egotism. One
cosmopolitic bond unites at present all thinking minds, and all the
light of this century may now freely fall upon a new Galileo or
Erasmus."
From the sixth to the fourteenth century the science of government,
as laid down by Justinian, was illustrated by the labors and
comments of numerous celebrated jurisconsults. The Byzantine
legislation yielded on two essential points to the influence of
Christianity. The institution of marriage, which in the Code and
Pandects was only directed by motives of policy, assumed, in 911, a
legal religious character; and domestic slavery disappeared
gradually, to be replaced by serfdom. A charter was even granted to
the serfs by the emperor Emanuel Comnenus in 1143. Irnerius, at
the beginning of the twelfth century, opened the first law-school in
his native city, Bologna, and thenceforth that science absorbed
republican intellects, and led to a clearer defining of civil rights. A
passion for this study possessed even the gentler sex; as in the case
of Novella Andrea da Bologna, who was competent to fill the
professor's chair, during her father's absence, and delivered eloquent
lectures on arid law. Sybil-like, she took care to screen her lovely
face behind a curtain, "lest her beauty should turn those giddy
young heads she was appointed to edify and enlighten." Modeled
after this pattern, law-schools spread widely, and the study of the
Lombard and Tuscan municipal constitutions eventually roused the
European communities to break the bonds of feudalism. The
principle of personal and political freedom so indelibly rooted in each
individual consciousness respecting the equal rights of the whole
human race, is by no means the discovery of recent times. At the
darkest hour of the middle period of history this idea of "humanity"
in no mean degree existed and began to act slowly but continuously
in realizing a vast brotherhood in the midst of our race, a unit
impelled by the purpose of attaining one particular object, namely,
the free development of all the latent powers of man, and the full
enjoyment of all his rights.
In this department, as in all the rest, Florence was the seat of
supreme mental power during the age of Leo X.; she fostered the
genius which spread widely in beauty and might. In the fifteenth
century, an ancient and authentic copy of the Justinian constitutions
was captured at Pisa, and given by Lorenzo de Medici to the custody
of Politiano, the most distinguished mediæval professor of legal
science. He corrected numerous manuscripts, supervised the
publication of repeated editions, and prepared the way for all the
great improvements which, in his profession, have since been made.
Politiano and Lorenzo, as they together took daily exercise on
horseback, were wont to converse on their morning studies, and this
was characteristic of the intellectual life of that age and city. The
vivifying light which began to pour on a hemisphere was especially
concentrated on the Tuscan capital, and all the sciences
simultaneously awoke from torpor under the invigorating beams.
Like a sheltered garden in the opening of spring, Florence re-echoed
with the earliest sounds of returning energy in every walk of
scientific invention. The absurdities of astrology were exposed, and
legitimate deduction was substituted in the place of conjecture and
fraud. Antonio Squarcialupi excelled all his predecessors in music,
and Francesco Berlinghieri greatly facilitated the study of geography.
Lorenzo de Medici himself gave especial attention to the science of
medicine, and caused the most eminent professors to prosecute
their researches under the auspices of his name and bounty. Paolo
Toscanelli erected his celebrated Gnomen near the Platonic
academy; and Lorenzo da Volpaja constructed for his princely
namesake a clock, or piece of mechanism, which not only marked
the hours of the day, but the motions of the sun and of the planets,
the eclipses, the signs of the zodiac, and the whole revolutions of
the heavens.
The study of scientific progress requires us again to notice the
wonderful use which Providence makes of the three original
elements of post-diluvian humanity in the execution of infinite
designs. The Arabians were a Shemitic race, raised into power in
near neighborhood to the heritage of Ham, and were the
contributors of numerous mental stores which were happily adapted
yet further to augment the superiority of Japhet. These children of
Ishmael existed at a gloomy period, and performed a most
important work. They drew from the last living sources of Grecian
wisdom, and directed numerous new tributaries into the great
central current of civilization.
Arabia is the most westerly of the three peninsulas of southern Asia,
a position remarkably favorable to political influence and commercial
enterprise. The Mohammedans were an energetic and intelligent
people, whose ancestors led a nomadic life for more than a
thousand years; but from the middle of the ninth century they rose
rapidly in the appreciation and extension of ennobling science. The
same race who, two centuries before, had fearfully ravaged the
great conservatory of learning at Alexandria, themselves became the
most ardent admirers of the muses, and were unequaled proficients
in the very studies they had previously, in their bigoted fury, so
nearly annihilated. They garnered Greek manuscripts with the
greatest assiduity, and became sufficiently masters of their import,
to set a proper estimate on these valuable relics of ancient
knowledge.
To the Arabian mathematicians, we are indebted for most valuable
improvements in arithmetic, if not in fact for its invention. They also
transmitted to Europe the knowledge of algebra; and rendered still
more important service to geometrical science, by preserving many
works of the ancients, which, but for them, had been inevitably lost.
The elements of Euclid, with other valuable treatises, were all
transmitted to posterity by their means. The Arabian mathematicians
of the middle ages were the first to apply to trigonometry the
method of calculation which is now generally adopted. Astronomy,
optics, and mechanics were cultivated with no less success; and to
the Arabs especially must be accredited the origin of chemistry, that
science which has been productive of so many invaluable results.
This gave them a better acquaintance with nature than the Greeks
or the Romans ever possessed, and was applied by them most
usefully to all the necessary arts of life. "Alchemy" is an Arabic term,
denoting a knowledge of the substance or composition of a thing.
The transmutation of common metals into gold and silver, and the
discovery of a universal medicine, were futile pursuits; but they led
to the method of preparing alcohol, aqua-fortis, volatile alkali,
vitriolic acid, and many other chemical compounds, which might
have remained much longer unknown but for the persevering labors
and patient experiments of the mediæval alchemists.
History records many laudable efforts on the part of the Arabians in
cultivating the natural sciences. Abou-al-Ryan-Byrouny, who died in
the year 941, traveled forty years for the purpose of studying
mineralogy; and his treatise on the knowledge of precious stones, is
a rich collection of facts and observations. Aben-al-Beïthar, who
devoted himself with equal zeal to the study of botany, traversed all
the mountains and plains of Europe, in search of plants. He
afterward explored the burning wastes of Africa, for the purpose of
describing such vegetables as can support the fervid heat of that
climate; and finally passed into the remote countries of Asia. The
animals, vegetables, and fossils common to the three great portions
of earth then known, underwent his personal inspection; and he
returned to his native West loaded with the spoils of the South and
East.
Nor were the arts cultivated with less success, or less enriched by
the progress of natural philosophy. A great number of inventions
which, at the present day, add to the comforts of life, are due to the
Arabians. Paper is an Arabic production. It had long, indeed, been
made from silk in China, but Joseph Amrou carried the process of
paper-making to his native city, Mecca,a. d. 649, and caused cotton
to be employed in the manufacture of it first in the year 706.
Gunpowder was known to the Arabians at least a century before it
appeared in European history; and the compass also was known to
them in the eleventh century. From the ninth to the fourteenth
century, a brilliant light was spread by literature and science over the
vast countries which had submitted to the yoke of Islamism. But the
boundless regions where that power once reigned, and still
continues supreme, are at present dead to the interests of science.
Deserts of burning sand now drift where once stood their
academies, libraries, and universities; while savage corsairs spread
terror over the seas, once smiling with commerce, science, and art.
Throughout that immense territory, more than twice as large as
Europe, which was formerly subjected to the power of Islamism, and
enriched by its skill, nothing in our day is found but ignorance,
slavery, debauchery and death.
Herein we have a striking illustration of the wonder-working of
Providence. At a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in
comparative barbarism, the Arabians were the depositaries of
science and learning; when the Christian states were in infancy, the
fair flower of Islamism was in full bloom. Nevertheless, the sap of
the Mohammedan civilization was void of that vitality and of those
principles which alone insure eternal progress, therefore was it
requisite that the whole system should be transferred and exhausted
on a more productive field, in order to secure the desired end.
The Arabians were the aggressive conservators of talent rather than
the productive agents of genius; and it must be confessed that they
neither had the presentiment, nor have been direct harbingers of
any of the great inventions which have placed modern society so far
above the ancients. They greatly aggregated and improved the
details of knowledge, but discovered none of the fundamental
solutions which have totally changed the scientific world. At the
needful moment, a new system came suddenly into existence, and
spread rapidly from the Indus to the Tagus, under the victorious
crescent. Apparently indigenous in every clime, its monuments arose
in India, along the northern coast of Africa, and among the Moors in
Spain. At Bagdad and Cairo, Jerusalem and Cordova, Arabian taste
and skill flourished in all their magnificence. It is said that no nation
of Asia, Africa, or Europe, either ancient or modern, has possessed a
code of rural regulations more wise, just, and perfect, than that of
the Arabians in Spain; nor has any nation ever been elevated by the
wisdom of its laws, the intelligence, activity, and industry of its
inhabitants, to a higher pitch of agricultural prosperity. Agriculture
was studied by them with that perfect knowledge of the climate, the
soil, and the growth of plants and animals, which can alone reduce
empirical experience into a science. Nor were the arts cultivated with
less success, or less enriched by the progress of natural philosophy.
What remains of so much glory? Probably not ten persons living are
in a situation to take advantage of the manuscript treasures which
are inclosed in the library of the Escurial. Of the prodigious literary
riches of the Arabians, what still exist are in the hands of their
enemies, in the convents of the monks, or in the royal collections of
the West. The instant they had brought forward all the wealth of the
East, and planted it where by a fruitful amalgamation great and wide
benefits could be produced, then Charles Martel, the hammer,
heading the progressive progeny of Japhet, broke down the might of
Shem, and repelled his offspring forever toward the sombre domain
and fortunes of Ham.
In this connection, we should consider the use which Providence
made of Feudalism, that great military organization of the middle
ages. It pre-eminently conduced to greater centralization and unity
among civilizing powers. After having destroyed the majesty and
influence of the Germanic and imperial royalty which Pepin and
Charlemagne had revived over the ruins of the Roman world, it
rapidly declined and gave place ultimately to popular liberty.
"Feudality," says Guizot, "has been a first step out of barbarism—the
passage from barbarism to civilization: the most marked character of
barbarism is the independence of the individual—the predominance
of individualism; in this state every man acts as he pleases, at his
own risk and peril. The ascendancy of the individual will and the
struggle of individual forces, such is the great fact of barbarian
society. This fact was limited and opposed by the establishment of
the feudal system of government. The influence alone of territorial
and hereditary property rendered the individual will more fixed and
less ordered; barbarism ceased to be wandering; and was followed
by a first step, a surpassing step toward civilization."
Feudalism engendered new institutions, and they entered deeply
into the spirit of progress. Such were, for example, the Court of
Peers and the Establishments of St. Louis, wherein the first trial was
made toward a uniform legislation for the whole nation. The
Crusades form also a conspicuous feature in the political activity of
the Japhetic nations during the middle ages. The great movement
that induced western Europe to rush to the East had, by no means,
the expected results; yet its consequences became numerous and
beneficial. Oppressing Shem was repulsed in a new direction, and
great wealth of science was attained through his avaricious and
violent hands. Thus the turbulent energy of the military classes,
which threatened the progress of civilization, was exhausted in a
distant land; and at the same time the different races of Europe
were made to know each other better, and to banish all mental
hostility, by uniting in one uniform devotion to a lofty design.
Another great consequence of the Crusades was the change of
territorial property, the sale of the estates of the nobles, and their
division among a great number of smaller proprietors. Hence the
feudal aristocracy was weakened, and the lower orders arose with
acquired immunities, ennobled by the spirit of independence, and
protected by municipal laws.
To excel in arms, not in arts, was the ambition of the crusading
knights; and if they gazed for a while with stupid amazement upon
the classic treasures of the East, it was only to calculate the vastness
of their booty, and to collect force for the campaign. Blind frenzy
often characterized the instruments, but infinite wisdom was in the
purpose which governed them. The Crusades contributed to the
stability of governments, the organization of institutions, the
cultivation of arts, the emancipation of thought, and the
enlargement of the various realms of science. Had they not
accomplished the needful preparation, under the guidance of
Providence, the influx of literature into Europe consequent upon the
fall of Constantinople would have been worse than in vain. It was,
therefore, wisely ordained that these romantic expeditions should
not be occasions for the acquisition of knowledge which would
transcend the capacities of its agents; but of preparatory changes
fitted to facilitate the adaptation and profitable application of eastern
elements, when, on the vast expanse of the West, the full time
should arrive for them to be completely introduced. The Crusades
tended to confirm and extend pre-existing impressions; to import
rather than to originate knowledge. For any considerable proficiency
in literature or art, unknown to pilgrims in the East, we search in
vain previous to the fifteenth century; but, as we have seen, their
importations of scientific elements were neither few nor small. If the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the age of the Crusades, the
following two were not less the age of improvement growing out of
the conflicts in Palestine. They were perpetuated as the popular
watchword of chivalry and theme of romance, till Tasso embodied
the thrilling annals in his immortal poem, which even in his age
ceased not to glow in the common mind. Nor was the fourteenth
century in the least a vacuum between the Crusades and the revival
of literature and science; it was but slightly productive in original
material, but its spirit was permeating, and formed a necessary link
between cause and effect, be the connection however remote. Such
is the golden thread which extends through all the web of passing
events, leading on to the accomplishment of one grand design. In
like manner, minstrels formed an integrant part of the Crusade
retinue, by whose happy interposition a more than imaginary union
was formed between martial exploits and poetical conceptions.
Thenceforth the recollection of those enthusiastic adventures
summoned up a train of highly romantic associations, by which the
ideal world was greatly enlarged and peopled with new orders of
captivating creatures, capable of an endless series of fruitful
suggestions. Furthermore, the occupation of the eastern empire was
productive of much advantage to the mental culture of the West.
Persecuted scholars sought refuge and employment beyond the
Alps, where they repaid the hospitality they received with such
wisdom as they possessed.
The Saracenic conquests in Spain brought in vast stores of oriental
knowledge, and frequent intercourse with that land, and with
Palestine, for devotional or commercial purposes, tended greatly to
increase the treasure, and a taste for its enjoyment. But Arabian
literature was a forced plant in Europe, and was as transient in its
bloom as it was unnatural in its maturity. Some traces of a more
substantial cultivation, however, were yet extant within the walls of
Bagdad, and thence the crusaders secured whatever could be
advantageously employed. But the fire of inventive genius,
expressed in literary and scientific research, which once
characterized the Arabians, had passed away; the seeds of
preliminary culture had been sown, and their mission ended with the
predestined work of their hands. The arts and sciences of the
Arabians were as unique as their authors; too practical to be
elegant, and too fanciful for ordinary use. To their skill in medicine,
and the exactness of arithmetic, they added the vagueness of the
talisman and horoscope. Astronomy was lost in astrology, chemistry
in alchymy, and medicine in empiricism. But amid the darkness of
their errors dwelt gleams of scientific light superior to any the world
had yet seen. The principal utility lay in the fact that these dim
intimations prompted western Europe to break through habitual
associations in matters of taste and knowledge, and rendered her
the instrument of her own intellectual resuscitation, by exciting an
ardor in mental pursuits hitherto unknown.
The crusades happily exhausted the military spirit of Europe, and
prepared the way for advancement in the arts of peace. This done,
the decline of the feudal system was hastened by the necessity of
meeting the enormous expenses thereby incurred. Many baronial
estates were consequently sold, and thus by degrees were abolished
those impediments which had long been adverse to all the varied
forms of culture by which the afflictions of man are mitigated, or his
toils abridged. The great evil which then required to be abolished
had given strength to a greater good that was to succeed; the
commerce which was mainly created to carry supplies to the
crusaders, was ready, on the decline of martial renown, to go still
further in search of a new world, or to hold mercantile speculations
with the remotest regions of the old. Consequent upon the facilities
and refinements of navigation, followed all those arts of utility and
convenience by which the productions of nature are applied or
improved. The arts of weaving and dyeing, the perfection of paper
and the press, as well as gunpowder and the compass, were the
results of quickened industry and enlarged commerce. All great
civilizing powers then attained a simultaneous and distinct
culmination over a new field and under brighter auspices, when each
department of progressive pursuit, the commercial, the literary, and
the military, was furnished, at the fall of the feudal system, with its
own peculiar instrument of invincible conquest.
Bearing in mind that Charles Martel, Peter the Hermit, Richard of the
Lion Heart, and John Sobieski, with their mighty co-agents in the
great preparatory work above described, all arose on the western
edge of the field and age we are now exploring, let us proceed
briefly to notice the still grander developments which followed
thereupon.
The westward track on high was determined by the early
astronomers of Egypt. Thales, the father of Greek astronomy, made
great advances upon the speculations he derived from the
Egyptians, and expounded them in his own country. A scholar of his
was the first person who pointed out the obliquity of the circle in
which the sun moves among the stars, and thus "opened the gate of
nature." Certainly he who had a clear view of that path in the
celestial sphere, made that first step which led to all the rest. But
when Greek science fell with Ptolemy, there was apparently no
further advance till the rise of Copernicus. During this interval of
thirteen hundred and fifty years, as before stated, the principal
cultivators of astronomical science were the Arabians, who won their
attainments from the Greeks whom they conquered, and from whom
the conquerors of western Europe again received back their treasure
when the love of science and the capacity for its use had been
sufficiently awakened in their minds. In mechanics, also, no marked
advancement was made from Archimedes till the time of Galileo and
Stevinus. The same was true of hydrostatics, the fundamental
problems of which were solved by the same great teacher, whose
principles remained unpursued till the age of Leo X. began to give
perfection to the true Archimedean form of science. As early as
Euclid, mathematicians drew their conclusions respecting light and
vision by the aid of geometry; as, for instance, the convergence of
rays which fall on a concave speculum. But, down to a late period,
the learned maintained that seeing is exercised by rays proceeding
from the eye, not to it; so little was the real truth of optical science
understood. In this respect, as in most others, it was attempted to
explain the kind of causation in which scientific action originates,
rather than to define the laws by which the process is controlled.
In the darkest period of human history, astronomy was the Ararat of
human reason; but it became especially the support and rallying
point of the scientific world, when intellect at large was astir to
investigate the new wonders which rose to view with the effulgent
noon of the middle age. Alphonso, king of Castile, in the year 1252,
corrected the astronomical tables of Ptolemy; and Copernicus, of
Thorn, revived the true solar system, about 1530. Tycho Brahe and
Longomontanus brought forward opposing systems, but which were
soon rejected. Kepler, soon after, gave the first analysis of planetary
motions, and discovered those laws on which rests the theory of
universal gravitation. Galileo advocated the Copernican system; and
by the aid of one of the first telescopes, discovered the satellites of
Jupiter. Hygens discovered Saturn's ring, and fourth satellite; and
four others were soon after noticed by Cassini. Thus was the great
secret of the sidereal universe read, its movements comprehended,
and the glories thereof proclaimed, while emancipated and
sublimated thought, from the loftiest throne of observation began
forever to soar aloft.
As a ray of light became the conductor of mind upward into infinite
space, so a bit of gray stone projected the invisible bridge which
spans from continent to continent, and makes the path over
trackless oceans plain as a broad highway. The properties of this
wonderful mineral were not unknown to the ancients, who, Pliny
says, gave the name "Magnet" to the rock near Magnesia, in Asia
Minor; and the poet Hesiod also makes use of the term "magnet
stone." The compass was employed twelve hundred and fifty years
before the time of Ptolemy, in the construction of the magnetic
carriage of the emperor Tsing-wang; but the Greeks and Romans
were completely ignorant of the needle's pointing toward the north,
and never used it for the purpose of navigation. Before the third
crusade, the knowledge of the use of the compass for land purposes
had been obtained from the East, and by the year 1269 it was
common in Europe. But as the time approached when God would
advance, by mightier strides than before, the work of civilization, he
discovered the nations one to another, through the agency of a tiny
instrument, then first made to vibrate on the broadest sublunary
element, and the throne of grandest power. The discovery of the
polarity of the magnet, and the birth of scientific navigation resulting
therefrom, was as simple as it was providential. Some curious
persons were amusing themselves by making swim in a basin of
water a loadstone suspended on a piece of cork. When left at liberty,
they observed it point to the north. The discovery of that fact soon
changed the aspect of the whole world. This invention, which is
claimed by the Neapolitans to have been made by one of their
citizens about the year 1302, and by the Venetians as having been
introduced by them from the East, about 1260, led to the discovery
of the New World by Columbus in 1492. When the mariner's
compass was needed, it was produced, and from the most western
port of the Old World, mind shot outward forever! Like the relation
between the earth's axis and the auspicious star which attracts the
eye of the wanderer, and shows the North in the densest wilderness
or on the widest waste, so from eternity the magnetic influence had
reference to the business of navigation, and the true application of
this arrived at the destined moment, when, in connection with
correlative events, in like manner prepared, it would produce the
greatest good. After eastern talent had proved the form of earth,
western genius discovered the vastness of oceanic wealth. The
Pillars of Hercules were passed by the great adventurers at sea in
the fifteenth century, and trophies were won richer by far than ever
graced the triumphs of an Alexander on shore. The works of creation
were doubled, and every kingdom forced its treasures upon man's
intellect, along with the strongest inducements to improve recent
sciences as well as ancient literatures, for the widest and most
beneficent practical ends.
The style of working with Providence is, to attain some grand result,
compatibly with ten thousand remote and subordinate interests. One
yet higher and more comprehensive instrumentality was requisite to
garner all the past, ennoble the present, and enrich the future, and
at the fitting moment for its appearance and use, the press stood
revealed.
Though the Chinese never carried the art of writing to its legitimate
development in the creation of a perfect phonetic alphabet, they yet
preceded all other nations in the discovery of a mode of rapidly
multiplying writings by means of printing, which was first practiced
by Fung-taou as early as four centuries before its invention in
Europe. Beyond that first step the old East never advanced; there
each page of a book is still printed from an entire block cut for the
occasion, having no idea of the new western system of movable
types. What astrology was to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, and
the search for the universal panacea to the system of scientific
medicine, the crude process of block-printing was to the perfected
press. Engraved wooden plates were re-invented by Coster, at
Harlaem, as early as 1430; but the great invention of typography is
accredited to Guttenberg, who was assisted by Schoeffer and Faust.
This occurred in 1440; and stereotype printing, from cast metallic
plates, is due to Vander-Mey, of Holland, who first matured it about
1690.
The time had come when men were required to comprehend the
ancients, in order to go beyond them; and at the needful crisis,
printing was given to disseminate all precious originals throughout
the world, in copies innumerable. Had the gift been bestowed at an
earlier period, it would have been disregarded or forgotten, from the
want of materials on which to be employed; and had it been much
longer postponed, it is probable that many works of the highest
order, and most desirable to be multiplied, would have been totally
lost. Coincident with this most conservative invention, was the
destruction of the Roman empire in the East. In the year 1453,
Constantinople was captured by the Turks, and the encouragement
which had been shown to literature and science at Florence, induced
many learned Greeks to seek shelter and employment in that city.
Thus, the progressive races were favored with multiplied facilities for
gathering and diffusing those floods of scientific illumination
vouchsafed to deliver from the fantasies that had hitherto peopled
the world—from the prejudices that had held the human mind in
thrall. When Guttenberg raised the first proof-sheet from movable
types, the Mosaic record—"God said, let there be light, and light
was"—flashed upon earth and heaven with unprecedented glory, and
that light of intellect must shoot outward, upward, and abroad
forever! It was not a lucky accident, but the golden fruit of
omniscient design, an invention made with a perfect consciousness
of its power and object, to congregate once isolated inquirers and
teachers beneath one temple, wherein divine aspirations might unite
and crown with success all the scattered and divided efforts for
extending the empire of love and science over the whole civilized
earth.
On the banks of the same river Rhine, where printing first attained a
practical use in the hands of a soldier, the discovery of gunpowder
was made by a priest. Its properties were obscurely known long
before the crusades, but are said to have been first traced in their
real nature by Berthold Schwartz, and were made known in 1336,
ten years before cannon appeared in the field of Crecy. Small arms
were unknown until nearly two centuries afterward, and were first
used by the Spaniards, about the year 1521. Fortified with this new
power, Cortez, with a handful of soldiers, was able to conquer the
natives of Mexico, the most civilized and powerful of all the nations
then on this western continent. From the hour when the blundering
monk was blown up by his own experiment, gross physical strength
was surrendered to expert military science; and gunpowder has
increasingly exalted intellect in the conduct of war, not less than in
the triumphs of peace.
The history of civilization is written in the triumphs which are won by
scientific invention over the physical laws of nature, and over the
mental infirmities of inferior human tribes. These multiply at points
in space, and periods of time, most happily adapted to promote the
progress and welfare of mankind. The manufacture of glass
windows, chimneys, clocks, paper, the mariner's compass, fire-arms,
watches, and saw-mills, with the process of printing with movable
types, and the use of the telescope, comprise nearly all the
inventions of importance which were made during the lapse of
twelve centuries; all the best of which appeared near the close of
the mediæval period, and were not a little indebted to information
obtained from Mohammedans through the crusades. In the gradual
development of human destiny occur flourishing periods, when
numerous men of genius are clustered together with mutual
dependence, and in a narrow space. For instance, Tycho, the
founder of the new measuring system of astronomy, Kepler, Galileo,
and Lord Bacon of Verulam, were cotemporaries; and all of them,
except the first, lived to see the works of Descartes and Fermat. The
true celestial system was discovered by Copernicus in the same year
in which Columbus died, fourteen years after the grandest mundane
discovery was made. The sudden appearance and disappearance of
three new stars which occurred in 1572, 1600, and 1604, excited the
wonder of vast assemblies of people, all over Europe, while humble
artizans, in an obscure corner thereof, were constructing an
instrument which should at once calm their fears and excite the
most absorbing astonishment. The telescope was discovered in
Holland, in 1608, and two years after the immortal Florentine
astronomer began to shine prominently above all other leaders of
sublime science. Galileo was the Huss of mediæval progress, if it be
not better to call him the Columbus. The day of predestined freedom
rose over his cradle, and his life-struggle struck the hour. His hand
kindled brighter lamps in the great temple of knowledge, and,
sublime priest of true evangelism as he was, it was fitting that his
place and mission were so central, when he held aloft supremest
light. We love to read the history of his mighty spirit, and
contemplate the serene old man, blinded by gazing at stars,
bereaved of his pious daughter, dragged to the dungeon of the
Inquisition, and there visited by the future secretary of the English
Commonwealth. In his own great maxim, that "we can not teach
truth to another, we can only help him to find it," is contained the
germ of all true wisdom, and the foundation of those future
inductions which were to underlie a new age and revolutionize the
world.