Whatever objections in detail may stand against the account I have
been giving of barbarism and civilization—and I trust there are none
which do not admit of removal—so far, I think, is clear, that, if my
account be only in the main correct, the Turkish power certainly is not
a civilized, and is a barbarous power. The barbarian lives without
principle and without aim; he does but reflect the successive outward
circumstances in which he finds himself, and he varies with them. He
changes suddenly, when their change is sudden, and is as unlike what he
was just before, as one fortune or external condition is unlike
another. He moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he remains in
sloth and inactivity. He lives, and he dies, and he has done nothing,
but leaves the world as he found it. And what the individual is, such
is his whole generation; and as that generation, such is the generation
before and after. No generation can say what it has been doing; it has
not made the state of things better or worse; for retrogression there
is hardly room; for progress, no sort of material. Now I shall show
that these characteristics of the barbarian are rudimental points, as I
may call them, in the picture of the Turks, as drawn by those who have
studied them. I shall principally avail myself of the information
supplied by Mr. Thornton and M. Volney, men of name and ability, and
for various reasons preferable as authorities to writers of the present
day.
1.
“The Turks,” says Mr. Thornton, who, though not blind to their
shortcomings, is certainly favourable to them, “the Turks are of a
grave and saturnine cast ... patient of hunger and privations, capable
of enduring the hardships of war, but not much inclined to habits of
industry.... They prefer apathy and indolence to active enjoyments; but
when moved by a powerful stimulus they sometimes indulge in pleasures
in excess.” “The Turk,” he says elsewhere, “stretched at his ease on
the banks of the Bosphorus, glides down the stream of existence without
reflection on the past, and without anxiety for the future. His life is
one continued and unvaried reverie. To his imagination the whole
universe appears occupied in procuring him pleasures.... Every custom
invites to repose, and every object inspires an indolent
voluptuousness. Their delight is to recline on soft verdure under the
shade of trees, and to muse without fixing the attention, lulled by the
trickling of a fountain or the murmuring of a rivulet, and inhaling
through their pipe a gently inebriating vapour. Such pleasures, the
highest which the rich can enjoy, are equally within the reach of the
artizan or the peasant.”
M. Volney corroborates this account of them:—“Their behaviour,” he
says, “is serious, austere, and melancholy; they rarely laugh, and the
gaiety of the French appears to them a fit of delirium. When they
speak, it is with deliberation, without gestures and without passion;
they listen without interrupting you; they are silent for whole days
together, and they by no means pique themselves on supporting
conversation. If they walk, it is always leisurely, and on business.
They have no idea of our troublesome activity, and our walks backwards
and forwards for amusement. Continually seated, they pass whole days
smoking, with their legs crossed, their pipes in their mouths, and
almost without changing their attitude.” Englishmen present as great a
contrast to the Ottoman as the French; as a late English traveller
brings before us, apropos of seeing some Turks in quarantine:
“Certainly,” he says, “Englishmen are the least able to wait, and the
Turks the most so, of any people I have ever seen. To impede an
Englishman's locomotion on a journey, is equivalent to stopping the
circulation of his blood; to disturb the repose of a Turk on his, is to
re-awaken him to a painful sense of the miseries of life. The one
nation at rest is as much tormented as Prometheus, chained to his rock,
with the vulture feeding on him; the other in motion is as
uncomfortable as Ixion tied to his ever-moving wheel.”[79]
2.
However, the barbarian, when roused to action, is a very different
being from the barbarian at rest. “The Turk,” says Mr. Thornton, “is
usually placid, hypochondriac, and unimpassioned; but, when the
customary sedateness of his temper is ruffled, his passions ... are
furious and uncontrollable. The individual seems possessed with all the
ungovernable fury of a multitude; and all ties, all attachments, all
natural and moral obligations, are forgotten or despised, till his rage
subsides.” A similar remark is made by a writer of the day: “The Turk
on horseback has no resemblance to the Turk reclining on his carpet. He
there assumes a vigour, and displays a dexterity, which few Europeans
would be capable of emulating; no horsemen surpass the Turks; and, with
all the indolence of which they are accused, no people are more fond of
the violent exercise of riding.”[80]
So was it with their ancestors, the Tartars; now dosing on their
horses or their waggons, now galloping over the plains from morning to
night. However, these successive phases of Turkish character, as
reported by travellers, have seemed to readers as inconsistencies in
their reports; Thornton accepts the inconsistency. “The national
character of the Turks,” he says, “is a composition of contradictory
qualities. We find them brave and pusillanimous; gentle and ferocious;
resolute and inconstant; active and indolent; fastidiously abstemious,
and indiscriminately indulgent. The great are alternately haughty and
humble, arrogant and cringing, liberal and sordid.” What is this but to
say in one word that we find them barbarians?
According to these distinct moods or phases of character, they will
leave very various impressions of themselves on the minds of successive
beholders. A traveller finds them in their ordinary state in repose and
serenity; he is surprised and startled to find them so different from
what he imagined; he admires and extols them, and inveighs against the
prejudice which has slandered them to the European world. He finds them
mild and patient, tender to the brute creation, as becomes the children
of a Tartar shepherd, kind and hospitable, self-possessed and
dignified, the lowest classes sociable with each other, and the
children gamesome. It is true; they are as noble as the lion of the
desert, and as gentle and as playful as the fireside cat. Our traveller
observes all this;[81] and seems to forget that from the humblest to
the highest of the feline tribe, from the cat to the lion, the most
wanton and tyrannical cruelty alternates with qualities more engaging
or more elevated. Other barbarous tribes also have their innocent
aspects—from the Scythians in the classical poets and historians down
to the Lewchoo islanders in the pages of Basil Hall.
3.
2. But whatever be the natural excellences of the Turks, progressive
they are not. This Sir Charles Fellows seems to allow: “My intimacy
with the character of the Turks,” he says, “which has led me to think
so highly of their moral excellence, has not given me the same
favourable impression of the development of their mental powers. Their
refinement is of manners and affections; there is little cultivation or
activity of mind among them.” This admission implies a great deal, and
brings us to a fresh consideration. Observe, they were in the eighth
century of their political existence when Thornton and Volney lived
among them, and these authors report of them as follows:—“Their
buildings,” says Thornton, “are heavy in their proportions, bad in
detail, both in taste and execution, fantastic in decoration, and
destitute of genius. Their cities are not decorated with public
monuments, whose object is to enliven or to embellish.” Their religion
forbids them every sort of painting, sculpture, or engraving; thus the
fine arts cannot exist among them. They have no music but vocal; and
know of no accompaniment except a bass of one note like that of the
bagpipe. Their singing is in a great measure recitative, with little
variation of note. They have scarcely any notion of medicine or
surgery; and they do not allow of anatomy. As to science, the
telescope, the microscope, the electric battery, are unknown, except as
playthings. The compass is not universally employed in their navy, nor
are its common purposes thoroughly understood. Navigation, astronomy,
geography, chemistry, are either not known, or practised only on
antiquated and exploded principles. As to their civil and criminal
codes of law, these are unalterably fixed in the Koran. Their habits
require very little furniture; “the whole inventory of a wealthy
family,” says Volney, “consists in a carpet, mats, cushions,
mattresses, some small cotton clothes, copper and wooden platters for
the table, a mortar, a portable mill, a little porcelain, and some
plates of copper tinned. All our apparatus of tapestry, wooden
bedsteads, chairs, stools, glasses, desks, bureaus, closets, buffets
with their plate and table services, all our cabinet and
upholstery-work are unknown.” They have no clocks, though they have
watches. In short, they are hardly more than dismounted Tartars still;
and, if pressed by the Powers of Christendom, would be able, at very
short warning, to pack up and turn their faces northward to their
paternal deserts. You find in their cities barbers and mercers;
saddlers and gunsmiths; bakers and confectioners; sometimes butchers;
whitesmiths and ironmongers; these are pretty nearly all their trades.
Their inheritance is their all; their own acquisition is nought. Their
stuffs are from the classical Greeks; their dyes are the old Tyrian;
their cement is of the age of the Romans; and their locks may be traced
back to Solomon. They do not commonly engage either in agriculture or
in commerce; of the cultivators of the soil I have said quite enough in
a foregoing Lecture, and their commerce seems to be generally in the
hands of Franks, Greeks, or Armenians, as formerly in the hands of the
Jews.[82]
The White Huns took to commerce and diplomacy in the course of a
century or two; the Saracens in a shorter time unlearned their
barbarism, and became philosophers and experimentalists; what have the
Turks to show to the human race for their long spell of prosperity and
power?
As to their warfare, their impracticable and unprogressive
temperament showed itself even in the era of their military and
political ascendancy, and had much to do, as far as human causes are
concerned, with their defeat at Lepanto. “The signal for engaging was
no sooner given,” says the writer in the “Universal History,” “than the
Turks with a hideous cry fell on six galeasses, which lay at anchor
near a mile ahead of the confederate fleet.” “With a hideous
cry,”—this was the true barbarian onset; we find it in the Red Indians
and the New Zealanders; and it is noticed of the Seljukians, the
predecessors of the Ottomans, in their celebrated engagement with the
Crusaders at Dorylæum. “With horrible howlings,” says Mr. Turner, “and
loud clangour of drums and trumpets, the Turks rushed on;” and you may
recollect, the savage who would have murdered the Bishop of Bamberg,
began with a shriek. However, as you will see directly, such an onset
was as ignorant as it was savage, for it was made with a haughty and
wilful blindness to the importance of firearms under their
circumstances. The Turks, in the hey-day of their victories and under
their most sagacious leaders, had scorned and ignored the use of the
then newly invented instruments of war. In truth, they had shared the
prejudice against firearms which had been in the first instance felt by
the semi-barbarous chivalry of Europe. The knight-errant, as Ariosto
draws and reflects him, disdained so dishonourable a means of beating a
foe. He looked upon the use of gunpowder, as Mr. Thornton reminds us,
as “cruel, cowardly, and murderous;” because it gave an unfair and
disgraceful advantage to the feeble or the unwarlike. Such was the
sentiment of the Ottomans even in the reign of their great Soliman.
Shortly before the battle of Lepanto, a Dalmatian horseman rode express
to Constantinople, and reported to the Divan, that 2,500 Turks had been
surprised and routed by 500 musqueteers. Great was the indignation of
the assembly against the unfortunate troops, of whom the messenger was
one. But he was successful in his defence of himself and his
companions. “Do you not hear,” he said, “that we were overcome by guns?
We were routed by fire, not by the enemy. It would have been otherwise,
had it been a contest of courage. They took fire to their aid; fire is
one of the elements; what is man that he should resist their shock?”
They did not dream of the apophthegm that knowledge is power; and that
we become strong by subduing nature to our will.
Accordingly, their tactics by sea was a sort of land engagement on
deck, as it was with our ancestors, and with the ancients. First, they
charged the adverse vessel, with a view of taking it; if that would not
do, they boarded it. They fought hand to hand, and each captain might
pretty much exercise his own judgment which ship to attack, as Homer's
heroes chose their combatants on the field of Troy. However, the
Christian galeasses at Lepanto,—for to these we must at length
return,—were vessels of larger dimensions than the Ottomans had ever
built; they were fortified, like castles, with heavy ordnance, and were
so disposed as to cover the line of their own galleys. The consequence
was, that as the Turks advanced in order of battle, these galeasses
kept up a heavy and destructive fire upon them, and their barbarian
energy availed them as little as their howlings. It was the triumph of
civilization over brute force, as well as of faith over misbelief.
“While discipline and attention to the military exercises could insure
success in war, the Turks,” says Thornton, “were the first of military
nations. When the whole art of war was changed, and victory or defeat
became matter of calculation, the rude and illiterate Turkish warriors
experienced the fatal consequences of ignorance without suspecting the
cause; accustomed to employ no other means than force, they sunk into
despondency, when force could no longer avail.”
Another half century has passed since this was written, and the
Turkish power has now completed its eighth century since Togrul Beg,
the first Seljukian Sultan; and what has been the fruit of so long a
duration? Just about the time of Togrul Beg, flourished William, Duke
of Normandy; he passed over to take possession of England; compare the
England of the Conquest with the England of this day. Again, compare
the Rome of Junius Brutus to the Rome of Constantine, 800 years
afterwards. In each of these polities there was a continuous
progression, and the end was unlike the beginning; but the Turks,
except that they have gained the faculty of political union, are pretty
much what they were when they crossed the Jaxartes and Oxus. Again, at
the time of Togrul Beg, the Greek schism also took place; now from
Michael Cerularius, in 1054, to Anthimus, in 1853, Patriarchs of
Constantinople, eight centuries have passed of religious deadness and
insensibility: a longer time has passed in China of a similar political
inertness: yet China has preserved at least the civilization, and
Greece the ecclesiastical science, with which they respectively passed
into their long sleep; but the Turks of this day are still in the less
than infancy of art, literature, philosophy, and general knowledge; and
we may fairly conclude that, if they have not learned the very alphabet
of science in eight hundred years, they are not likely to set to work
on it in the nine hundredth.
Moreover, it is remarkable that with them, as with the ancient Medes
and Persians, change of law and government is distinctly prohibited.
The greatest of their Sultans, and the last of the great ten, Soliman,
known in European history as the Magnificent, is called by his
compatriots the Regulator, on account of the irreversible sanction
which he gave to the existing administration of affairs. “The magnitude
and the splendour of the military achievements of Soliman,” says Mr.
Thornton, “are surpassed in the judgment of his people by the wisdom of
his legislation. He has acquired the name of Canuni, or institutor of
rules ... on account of the order and police which he established in
his Empire. He caused a compilation to be made of all the maxims and
regulations of his predecessors on subjects of political and military
economy. He strictly defined the duties, the powers, and the privileges
of all governors, commanders, and public functionaries, He regulated
the levies, the services, the equipments, and the pay of the military
and maritime force of the Empire. He prescribed the mode of collecting,
and of applying, the public revenue. He assigned to every officer his
rank at court, in the city, and in the army; and the observance of his
regulations was enforced on his successors by the sanction of his
authority. The work, which his ancestors had begun, and which his care
had completed, seemed to himself and his contemporaries the compendium
of human wisdom. Soliman contemplated it with the fondness of a parent;
and, conceiving it not to be susceptible of further improvement, he
endeavoured to secure its perpetual duration.” The author, after
pointing out that this was done at the very time when a new hemisphere
was in course of exploration, when the telescope was mapping for
mankind the heavens, when the Baconian philosophy was about to convert
discovery and experiment into instruments of science, printing was
carrying knowledge and literature into the heart of society, and the
fine arts were receiving one of their most remarkable developments,
proceeds: “The institutions of Soliman placed a barrier between his
subjects and future improvement. He beheld with complacency and
exultation the eternal fabric which his hands had reared; and the curse
denounced against pride has reduced the nation, which participated in
his sentiments, to a state of inferiority to the present level of
civilized men.” The result is the same, though we say that Soliman only
recognized and affirmed that barbarism was the law of the Ottoman
power.
4.
3. It is true that in the last quarter of a century efforts have
been made by the government of Constantinople to innovate on the
existing condition of its people; and it has addressed itself in the
first instance to certain details of daily Turkish life. We must take
it for granted that it began with such changes as were easiest; if so,
its failure in these small matters suggests how little ground there is
for hope of success in other advances more important and difficult.
Every one knows that in the details of dress, carriage, and general
manners, the Turks are very different from Europeans: so different, and
so consistently different, that the contrariety would seem to arise
from some difference of essential principle. “This dissimilitude,” says
Mr. Thornton, “which pervades the whole of their habits, is so general,
even in things of apparent insignificance, as almost to indicate design
rather than accident. The whole exterior of the Oriental is different
from ours.” And then he goes on to mention some specimens, to which we
are able to add others from Volney and Bell. For instance:—The
European stands firm and erect; his head drawn back, his chest
advanced, his toes turned out, his knees straight. The attitude of the
Turk, in each of these particulars, is different, and, to express
myself by an antithesis, is more conformable to nature, and less to
reason. The European wears short and close garments, the Turk long and
ample. The one uncovers the head, when he would show reverence; with
the other, a bared head is a sign of folly. The one salutes by an
inclination, the other by raising himself. The one passes his life
upright, the other sitting. The one sits on raised seats, the other on
the ground. In inviting a person to approach, the one draws his hand to
him, the other thrusts it from him. The host in Europe helps himself
last; in Turkey, first. The one drinks to his company, or at least to
some toast; the other drinks silently, and his guests congratulate him.
The European has a night dress, the Turk lies down in his clothes. The
Turkish barber pushes the razor from him; the Turkish carpenter draws
the saw to him; the Turkish mason sits as he builds; and he begins a
house at the top, and finishes at the bottom, so that the upper rooms
are inhabited, when the bottom is a framework.
Now it would seem as if this multitude of little usages hung
together, and were as difficult to break through as the meshes of some
complicated web. However, the Sultan found it the most favourable
subject-matter of his incipient reformation; and his consequent attempt
and the omens of its ultimate issue are interestingly recounted in the
pages of Sir Charles Fellows, the panegyrist both of Mahmood and his
people. “The Turk,” he says, “proud of his beard, comes up from the
province a candidate for, or to receive, the office of governor. The
Sultan gives him an audience, passes his hand over his own
short-trimmed beard; the candidate takes the hint, and appears the next
day shorn of his honoured locks. The Sultan, who is always attired in a
plain blue frock coat, asks of the aspirant for office if he admires
it; he, of course, praises the costume worn by his patron; whereupon
the Sultan suggests that he would look well in it, as also in the red
unturbaned fez. The following day the officer again attends to receive
or lose his appointment; and, to promote the progress of his suit,
throws off his costly and beautiful costume, and appears like the
Sultan in the dull unsightly frock.”
Such is the triumph of loyalty and self-interest, and such is its
limit. “A regimental cloak,” continues our author, “may sometimes be
seen covering a fat body inclosed in all the robes of the Turkish
costume; the whole bundle, including the fur-lined gown, being strapped
together round the waist. Some of the figures are literally as broad as
long, and have a laughable effect on horseback. The saddles for the
upper classes are now generally made of the European form; but the
people, who cannot give up their accustomed love of finery for plain
leather, have them mostly of purple or crimson velvet, embroidered with
silver or gold, the holsters ornamented with beautiful patterns.” After
a while, he continues: “One very unpopular reform which the Sultan
tried to effect in the formation of his troops was that of their
wearing braces, a necessary accompaniment to the trousers; and why?
because these form a cross, the badge of the infidel, upon the back.
Many, indeed, will submit to severe punishment, and even death, for
disobedience to military orders, rather than bear upon their persons
this sign hostile to their religion.”
In another place he continues this subject with an amusing accuracy
of analysis:—“The mere substitution of trousers for their loose dress
interferes seriously with their old habits; they all turn in their
toes, in consequence of the Turkish manner of sitting, and they walk
wide, and with a swing, from being habituated to the full drapery: this
gait has become natural to them, and in their European trousers they
walk in the same manner. They wear wide-topped loose boots, which push
up their trousers. Wellington boots would be still more inconvenient,
as they must slip them off six times a day for prayers. In this new
dress they cannot with comfort sit or kneel on the ground, as is their
custom; and they will thus be led to use chairs; and with chairs they
will want tables. But, were these to be introduced, their houses would
be too low, for their heads would almost touch the ceiling. Thus by a
little innovation might their whole usages be unhinged.”
5.
4. In these failures, however, should they turn out to be such, the
vis inertiæ of habit is not the whole account of the matter; an
antagonistic principle is at work, characteristic of the barbarian, and
intimately present to the mind of a Turk—national pride. All nations,
indeed, are proud of themselves; but, as being the first and the best,
not as being the solitary existing perfection, among the inhabitants of
the earth. Civilized nations allow that foreigners have their specific
excellences, and such excellences as are a lesson to themselves. They
may think too well of their own proficiency, and may lose by such
blindness; but they admit enough about others to allow of their own
emulation and advance; whereas the barbarian, in his own estimate, is
perfect already; and what is perfect cannot be improved. Hence he
cherishes in his heart a self-esteem of a very peculiar kind, and a
special contempt of others. He views foreigners, either as simply
unworthy of his attention, or as objects of his legitimate dominion.
Thus, too, he justifies his sloth, and places his ignorance of all
things human and divine on a sort of intellectual basis.
Robertson, in his history of America, enlarges on this peculiarity
of the savage. “The Tartar,” he says, “accustomed to roam over
extensive plains, and to subsist on the produce of his herds,
imprecates upon his enemy, as the greatest of all curses, that he may
be condemned to reside in one place, and to be nourished with the top
of a weed. The rude Americans ... far from complaining of their own
situation, or viewing that of men in a more improved state with
admiration or envy, regard themselves as the standard of excellence, as
beings the best entitled, as well as the most perfectly qualified, to
enjoy real happiness.... Void of foresight, as well as free from care
themselves, and delighted with that state of indolent security, they
wonder at the anxious precautions, the unceasing industry, and
complicated arrangements of Europeans, in guarding against distant
evils, or providing for future wants; and they often exclaim against
their preposterous folly, in thus multiplying the troubles, and
increasing the labour of life.... The appellation which the Iroquois
give to themselves is, 'The chief of men.' Caraibe, the original name
of the fierce inhabitants of the Windward Islands, signifies 'The
warlike people.' The Cherokees, from an idea of their own superiority,
call the Europeans 'Nothings,' or 'The accursed race,' and assume to
themselves the name of 'The beloved people....' They called them the
froth of the sea, men without father or mother. They suppose that
either they have no country of their own, and, therefore, invaded that
which belonged to others; or that, being destitute of the necessaries
of life at home, they were obliged to roam over the ocean, in order to
rob such as were more amply provided.”[83]
It is easy to see that an intense self-adoration, such as is here
suggested, is, in the case of a martial people, to a certain point a
principle of strength; it gives a sort of intellectual force to the
impetuosity and obstinacy of their attacks; while, on the other hand,
it is in the long run a principle of debility, as blinding them to the
most evident and imminent dangers, and, after defeat, burdening and
precipitating their despair.
Now, is it possible to trace this attribute of barbarism among the
Turks? If so, what does it do for them, and whence is it supplied? You
will recollect, I have not been unwilling in a former Lecture to
acknowledge what is salutary in Mahometanism; certainly it embodies in
it some ancient and momentous truths, and is undeniably beneficial so
far as their proper influence extends. But, after all, looked at as a
religion, it is as debasing to the populations which receive it as it
is false; and, as it arose among barbarians, it is not wonderful that
it subserves the reign of barbarism. This it certainly does in the case
of the Turks; already three great departments of intellectual activity
in civilized countries have incidentally come before us, which are
forbidden ground to its professors. The first is legislation; for the
criminal and civil code of the Mahometan is unalterably fixed in the
Koran. The second is the modern system of money transactions and
finance; for “in obedience to their religion,” says an author I have
been lately quoting,[84] “which, like the Jewish law, forbids taking
interest for money, the Turks abstain from carrying on many lucrative
trades connected with the lending of money. Hence other nations,
generally the Armenians, act as their bankers.” The third is the
department of the Fine Arts for, it being unlawful to represent the
human form, nay, any natural substance whatever, as fruit or flowers,
sculpture loses its solitary object, painting is almost extinguished,
while architecture has been obliged to undergo a sort of revolution in
its decorative portions to accommodate it to the restriction. These,
however, are matters of detail, though of very high importance; what I
wish rather to point out is the general tendency of Mahometanism, as
such, to foster those very faults in the barbarian which keep him from
ameliorating his condition. Here something might be said on what seems
to be the acknowledged effect of its doctrine of fatalism, viz., in
encouraging a barbarian recklessness of mind both in special seasons of
prosperity and adversity, and in the ordinary business of life; but
this is a point which it is difficult to speak of without a more
intimate knowledge of its circumstances than can be gained at a
distance; I prefer to show how the Religion is calculated to act upon
that extravagant self-conceit, which Robertson tells us is so congenial
to uncivilized man. While, on the one hand, it closes the possible
openings and occasions of internal energy and self-education, it has no
tendency to compensate for this mischief, on the other, by inculcating
any docile attention to the instruction of foreigners.
6.
To learn from others, you must entertain a respect for them; no one
listens to those whom he contemns. Christian nations make progress in
secular matters, because they are aware they have many things to learn,
and do not mind from whom they learn them, so that he be able to teach.
It is true that Christianity, as well as Mahometanism, which imitated
it, has its visible polity, and its universal rule, and its especial
prerogatives and powers and lessons, for its disciples. But, with a
divine wisdom, and contrary to its human copyist, it has carefully
guarded (if I may use the expression) against extending its revelations
to any point which would blunt the keenness of human research or the
activity of human toil. It has taken those matters for its field in
which the human mind, left to itself, could not profitably exercise
itself, or progress, if it would; it has confined its revelations to
the province of theology, only indirectly touching on other departments
of knowledge, so far as theological truth accidentally affects them;
and it has shown an equally remarkable care in preventing the
introduction of the spirit of caste or race into its constitution or
administration. Pure nationalism it abhors; its authoritative documents
pointedly ignore the distinction of Jew and Gentile, and warn us that
the first often becomes the last; while its subsequent history has
illustrated this great principle, by its awful, and absolute, and
inscrutable, and irreversible passage from country to country, as its
territory and its home. Such, then, it has been in the divine counsels,
and such, too, as realized in fact; but man has ways of his own, and,
even before its introduction into the world, the inspired
announcements, which preceded it, were distorted by the people to whom
they were given, to minister to views of a very different kind. The
secularized Jews, relying on the supernatural favours locally and
temporally bestowed on themselves, fell into the error of supposing
that a conquest of the earth was reserved for some mighty warrior of
their own race, and that, in compensation of the reverses which befell
them, they were to become an imperial nation.
What a contrast is presented to us by these different ideas of a
universal empire! The distinctions of race are indelible; a Jew cannot
become a Greek, or a Greek a Jew; birth is an event of past time;
according to the Judaizers, their nation, as a nation, was ever to be
dominant; and all other nations, as such, were inferior and subject.
What was the necessary consequence? There is nothing men more pride
themselves on than birth, for this very reason, that it is irrevocable;
it can neither be given to those who have it not, nor taken away from
those who have. The Almighty can do anything which admits of doing; He
can compensate every evil; but a Greek poet says that there is one
thing impossible to Him—to undo what is done. Without throwing the
thought into a shape which borders on the profane, we may see in it the
reason why the idea of national power was so dear and so dangerous to
the Jew. It was his consciousness of inalienable superiority that led
him to regard Roman and Greek, Syrian and Egyptian, with ineffable
arrogance and scorn. Christians, too, are accustomed to think of those
who are not Christians as their inferiors; but the conviction which
possesses them, that they have what others have not, is obviously not
open to the temptation which nationalism presents. According to their
own faith, there is no insuperable gulf between themselves and the rest
of mankind; there is not a being in the whole world but is invited by
their religion to occupy the same position as themselves, and, did he
come, would stand on their very level, as if he had ever been there.
Such accessions to their body they continually receive, and they are
bound under obligation of duty to promote them. They never can
pronounce of any one, now external to them, that he will not some day
be among them; they never can pronounce of themselves that, though they
are now within, they may not some day be found outside, the divine
polity. Such are the sentiments inculcated by Christianity, even in the
contemplation of the very superiority which it imparts; even there it
is a principle, not of repulsion between man and man, but of good
fellowship; but as to subjects of secular knowledge, since here it does
not arrogate any superiority at all, it has in fact no tendency
whatever to centre its disciple's contemplation on himself, or to
alienate him from his kind. He readily acknowledges and defers to the
superiority in art or science of those, if so be, who are unhappily
enemies to Christianity. He admits the principle of progress on all
matters of knowledge and conduct on which the Creator has not decided
the truth already by revealing it; and he is at all times ready to
learn, in those merely secular matters, from those who can teach him
best. Thus it is that Christianity, even negatively, and without
contemplating its positive influences, is the religion of civilization.
7.
But I have here been directing your attention to Christianity with
no other view than to illustrate, by the contrast, the condition of the
Mahometan Turks. Their religion is not far from embodying the very
dream of the Judaizing zealots of the Apostolic age. On the one hand,
there is in it the profession of a universal empire, and an empire by
conquest; nay, military success seems to be considered the special note
of its divine origin. On the other hand, I believe it is a received
notion with them that their religion is not even intended for the north
of the earth, for some reasons connected with its ceremonial; nor is
there in it any public recognition, as in intercessory prayer, of the
duty of converting infidels. Certainly, the idea of Mahometan missions
and missionaries, unless an army in the field may be considered to be
such, is never suggested to us by Eastern historian or traveller, as
entering into their religious system. Though the Caliphate, then, may
be transferred from Saracen to Turk, Mahometanism is essentially a
consecration of the principle of nationalism; and thereby is as
congenial to the barbarian as Christianity is congenial to man
civilized. The less a man knows, the more conceited he is of his
proficiency; and, the more barbarous is a nation, the more imposing and
peremptory are its claims. Such was the spirit of the religion of the
Tartars, whatever was the nature of its tenets in detail. It deified
the Tartar race; Zingis Khan was “the son of God, mild and venerable;”
and “God was great and exalted over all, and immortal, but Zingis Khan
was sole lord upon the earth.”[85] Such, too, is the strength of the
Greek schism, which there only flourishes where it can fasten on
barbarism, and extol the prerogatives of an elect nation. The Czar is
the divinely-appointed source of religious power; his country is “Holy
Russia;” and the high office committed to him and to it is to extend
what it considers the orthodox faith. The Osmanlis are not behind
Tartar or Russ in pretending to a divine mission; the Sultan, in his
treaties with Christian Powers, calls himself “Refuge of Sovereigns,
Distributor of Crowns to the Kings of the earth, Master of Europe,
Asia, and Africa, and shadow of God upon earth.”
We might smile at such titles, were they not claimed in good
earnest, and professed in order to be used. It is said to be the
popular belief among the Turks, that the monarchs of Europe are, as
this imperial style declares, the feudatories of the Sultan. We should
smile, too, at the very opposite titles which they apply to Europeans,
did they not here, too, mean what they say, and strengthen and
propagate their own scorn and hatred of us by using them. “The
Mussulmans, courteous and humane in their intercourse with each other,”
says Thornton, “sternly refuse to unbelievers the salutation of peace.”
Not that they necessarily insult the Christian, he adds, by this
refusal; nay, he even insists that polished Turks are able to practise
condescension; and then, as an illustration of their courtesy, he tells
us that “Mr. Eton, pleasantly and accurately enough, compared the
general behaviour of a Turk to a Christian with that of a German baron
to his vassal.” However, he allows that at least “the common people,
more bigoted to their dogmas, express more bluntly their sense of
superiority over the Christians.” “Their usual salutation addressed to
Christians,” says Volney, “is 'good morning;' but it is well if it be
not accompanied with a Djaour, Kafer, or Kelb, that is, impious,
infidel, dog, expressions to which Christians are familiarized.” Sir C.
Fellows is an earnest witness for their amiableness; but he does not
conceal that the children “hoot after a European, and call him Frank
dog, and even strike him;” and on one occasion a woman caught up a
child and ran off from him, crying out against the Ghiaour; which gives
him an opportunity of telling us that the word “Ghiaour” means a man
without a soul, without a God. A writer in a popular Review, who seems
to have been in the East, tells us that “their hatred and contempt of
the Ghiaour and Frangi is as burning as ever; perhaps even more so,
because they are forced to implore his aid. The Eastern seeks Christian
aid in the same spirit and with the same disgust as he would eat
swine's flesh, were it the only means of securing him from
starvation.”[86] Such conduct is indeed only consistent with their
faith, and the untenableness of that faith is not my present question;
here I do but ask, are these barbarians likely to think themselves
inferior in any respect to men without souls? are they likely to
receive civilization from the nations of the West, whom, according to
the well-known story, they definitively divide into the hog and the
dog?
I have not time for more than an allusion to what is the complement
of this arrogance, and is a most pregnant subject of thought, whenever
the fortunes of the Ottomans are contemplated; I mean the despair which
takes its place in their minds, consistently with the barbarian
temperament, upon the occurrence of any considerable reverses. A
passage from Mr. Thornton just now quoted refers to this
characteristic. The overthrow at Lepanto, though they rallied from
their consternation for a while, was a far more serious and permanent
misfortune in its moral than in its material consequences. And, on any
such national calamity, the fatalism of their creed, to which I have
already referred, consecrates and fortifies their despair.
* * * * *
I have been proving a point, which most persons would grant me, in
thus insisting on the essential barbarism of the Turks; but I have
thought it worth while to insist on it under the feeling, that to prove
it is at the same time to describe it, and many persons will vaguely
grant that they are barbarous without having any clear idea what
barbarism means. With this view I draw out my formal conclusion:—If
civilization be the ascendancy of mind over passion and imagination; if
it manifests itself in consistency of habit and action, and is
characterised by a continual progress or development of the principles
on which it rests; and if, on the other hand, the Turks alternate
between sloth and energy, self-confidence and despair,—if they have
two contrary characters within them, and pass from one to the other
rapidly, and when they are the one, are as if they could not be the
other;—if they think themselves, notwithstanding, to be the first
nation upon earth, while at the end of many centuries they are just
what they were at the beginning;—if they are so ignorant as not to
know their ignorance, and so far from making progress that they have
not even started, and so far from seeking instruction that they think
no one fit to teach them;—there is surely not much hazard in
concluding, that, apart from the consideration of any supernatural
intervention, barbarians they have lived, and barbarians they will die.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] Formby's Visit, p. 70.
[80] Bell's Geography.
[81] Vid, Sir Charles Fellows' Asia Minor.
[82] The correspondent of the Times in February, 1854,
speaking of the great arsenal of Rustchuk, observes: “All the heavy
smith work was done by Bulgarians, the light iron work by gipsies, the
carpenters were all Turks, the sawyers Bulgarians, the tinmen all
Jews.”
[83] Lib. iv. fin.
[84] Sir C. Fellows.
[85] Bergeron, t. 1.
[86] Edinburgh Rev. 1853.