activity; of, I will not say, oppression, for they do not understand the feeling, but of compression. We are not without instances of this state of things. There has been a great number of small aristocratic republics in which the people have been thus treated like flocks of sheep, well kept and materially happy, but without moral and intellectual activity. Is this civilization? Is this a people civilizing itself? Another hypothesis: here is a people whose material existence is less easy, less comfortable, but still supportable. On the other hand, moral and intellectual wants have not been neglected, a certain amount of mental pasture has been served out to them; elevated, pure sentiments are cultivated in them; their religious and moral views have attained a certain degree of development; but great care is taken to stifle in them the principle of liberty; the intellectual and moral wants, as in the former case the material wants, are satisfied: each man has meted out to him his portion of truth; no one is permitted to seek it for himself. Immobility is the characteristic of moral life; it is the state into which have fallen most of the populations of Asia; wherever theocratic dominations keep humanity in check; it is the state of the Hindoos, for example. I ask the same question here as before: is this a people civilizing itself? I change altogether the nature of the hypothesis: here is a people among whom is a great display of individual liberties, but where disorder and inequality are excessive: it is the empire of force and of chance; every man, if he is not strong, is oppressed, suffers, perishes; violence is the predominant feature of the social state. No one is ignorant that Europe has passed through this state. Is this a civilized state? It may, doubtless, contain principles of civilization which will develop themselves by successive degrees; but the fact which dominates in such a society is, assuredly, not that which the common sense of mankind calls civilization. state of savage tribes: liberty and equality are there, but assuredly not civilization. I might multiply these hypotheses, but I think we have before us enough to explain what is the popular and natural meaning of the word civilization. It is clear that none of the states I have sketched corresponds, according to the natural good sense of mankind, to this term. Why? It appears to me that the first fact comprised in the word civilization (and this results from the different examples I have rapidly placed before you), is the fact of progress, of development: it presents at once the idea of a people marching onward, not to change its place, but to change its condition; of a people whose culture is condition itself, and ameliorating itself. The idea of progress, of development, appears to me the fundamental idea contained in the word, civilization. What is this progress? What this development? Herein is the greatest difficulty of all. The etymology of the word would seem to answer in a clear and satisfactory manner: it says that it is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society, properly so called, of the relations of men among themselves. Such is, in fact, the first idea which presents itself to the understanding when the word civilization is pronounced: we at once figure forth to ourselves the extension, the greatest activity, the best organization of the social relations: on the one hand, an increasing production of the means of giv ing strength and happiness to society; on the other, a more equitable distribution, amongst individuals, of the strength and happiness produced. Is this all? Have we then exhausted all the natural, ordinary meaning of the word civilization? Does the fact contain nothing more than this? It is almost as if we asked: Is the human species after all a mere ant-hill, a society in which all that is required is order and physical happiness, in which the greater the amount of labour, and the more equitable the division of the fruits of labour, the more surely is the object attained, the progress accomplished? Our instinct at once feels repugnant to so narrow a definition of human destiny. It feels at the first glance, that the word civilization comprehends something more extensive, more complex, something superior to the simple perfection of the social relations, of social power and happiness. I take a fourth and last hypothesis: the liberty of each individual is very great, inequality amongst them is rare, and at all events, very transient. Every man does very nearly just what he pleases, and differs little in power from his neighbour; but there are very few general interests, very few public ideas, very little society,-in a word, the faculties and existence of individuals appear and then pass away, wholly apart and without acting upon each other, Fact, public opinion, the generally reor leaving any trace behind them the succeived meaning of the term, are in accordcessive generations leave society at the same ance with this instinct. point at which they found it: this is the Take Rome in the palmy days of the re : FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. public, after the second Punic war, at the time of its greatest virtues, when it was marching to the empire of the world, when its social state was evidently in progress. Then take Rome under Augustus, at the epoch when her decline began, when, at all events, the progressive movement of society was arrested, when evil principles were on the eve of prevailing: yet there is no one who does not think and say that the Rome of Augustus was more civilized than the Rome of Fabricius or of Cincinnatus. 391 ures of sublime enjoyment, it there recognizes and names civilization. Two facts, then, are comprehended in this great fact; it subsists on two conditions, and manifests itself by two symptoms: the development of social activity, and that of individual activity; the progress of society and the progress of humanity. Wherever the external condition of man extends itself, vivifies, ameliorates itself; wherever the internal nature of man displays itself with lustre, with grandeur; at these two signs, and often despite the profound imperfection of the social state, inankind with loud applause proclaims civ Such, if I do not deceive myself, is the result of simple and purely common-sense examination of the general opinion of mankind. If we interrogate history, properly so called, if we examine what is the nature of the great crises of civilization, of those facts which, by universal consent, have pro Let us transport ourselves beyond the Alps: let us take the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: it is evi-ilization. dent that in a social point of view, considering the actual amount and distribution of happiness amongst individuals, the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was inferior to some other countries of Europe, to Holland and to England, for example. I believe that in Holland and in England the social activity was greater, waspelled it onward, we shall constantly recog increasing more rapidly, distributing its fruit more fully, than in France; yet ask general good sense, and it will say that the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the most civilized country in Europe. Europe has not hesitated in her affirmative reply to the question: traces of this public opinion, as to France, are found in all the monuments of European literature. We might point out many other states in which the prosperity is greater, is of more rapid growth, is better distributed amongst individuals than elsewhere, and in which, nevertheless, by the spontaneous instinct, the general good sense of men, the civilization is judged inferior to that of countries not so well portioned out in a purely social sense. What does this mean? What advantages do these latter countries possess? What is it gives them, in the character of civilized countries, this privilege? What so largely compensates in the opinion of mankind for what they so lack in other respects? A development other than that of social life has been gloriously manifested by them; the development of the individual, internal life, the development of man himself, of his faculties, his sentiments, his ideas. If society with them be less perfect than elsewhere, humanity stands forth in more grandeur and power. There remain, no doubt, many social conquests to be made; but immense intellectual and moral conquests are accomplished; worldly goods, social rights, are wanting to many men; but many great men live and shine in the eyes of the world. Letters, sciences, the arts, display all their splendour. Wherever mankind beholds these great signs, these signs glorified by human nature, wherever it sees created these treas nize one or other of the two elements I have just described. They are always crises of individual or social development, facts which have changed the internal man, his creed, his manners, or his external condition, his position in his relation with his fellows. Christianity, for example, not merely on its first appearance, but during the first stages of its existence, Christianity in no degree addressed itself to the social state; it an nounced aloud that it would not meddle with the social state; it ordered the slave to obey his master; it attacked none of the great evils, the great wrongs, of the society of that period. Yet who will deny that Christianity was a great crisis of civilization? Why was it so? Because it changed the internal man, creeds, sentiments; because it regenerated the moral man, the intellectual man. We have seen a crisis of another nature, a crisis which addressed itself, not to the internal man, but to his external condition; one which changed and regenerated society. This also was assuredly one of the decisive crises of civilization. Look through all history, you will find everywhere the same result; you will meet with no important fact instrumental in the development of civilization, which has not exercised one or other of the two sorts of influence I have spoken of. Such, if I mistake not, is the natural and popular meaning of the term; you have here the fact, I will not say defined, but described, verified almost completely, or, at all events, in its general features. We have here before us the two elements of civilization. Now comes the question, Would one of these two suffice to constitute it; would the development of the social state, the de velopment of the individual man, separately presented, be civilization? Would the human race recognize it as such? or have the two facts so intimate and necessary a relation between them, that if they are not simultaneously produced, they are notwithstanding inseparable, and sooner or later one brings on the other? We might, as it appears to me, approach this question on three several sides. We might examine the nature itself of the two elements of civilization, and ask ourselves, whether by that alone, they are or are not closely united with, and necessary to each other. We might inquire of history whether they had manifested themselves isolately, apart the one from the other, or whether they had invariably produced the one the other. We may, lastly, consult upon this question the common opinion of mankind common sense. History of Civilization in Europe, translated by William Hazlitt, edit. Bohn, 1856, i. 11-13. OLIVER CROMWELL. Cromwell died in the plenitude of his power and greatness. He had succeeded beyond all expectation, far more than any other of those men has succeeded, who, by their genius, have raised themselves, as he had done, to supreme authority; for he had attempted and accomplished, with equal success, the most opposite designs. During eighteen years that he had been an evervictorious actor on the world's stage, he had alternately sown disorder and established order, effected and punished revolution, overthrown and restored government, in his country. At every moment, under all circumstances, he had distinguished with admirable sagacity the dominant interests and passions of his time, so as to make them the instruments of his own rule,-careless whether he belied his antecedent conduct, so long as he triumphed in concert with the popular instinct, and explaining the inconsistencies of his conduct by the ascendant unity of his power. He is, perhaps, the only example which history affords of one man having governed the most opposite events, and proved sufficient for the most various destinies. And in the course of his violent and changeful career, incessantly exposed to all kinds of enemies and conspiracies, Cromwell experienced this crowning favour of Fortune, that his life was never actually attacked: the sovereign against whom Killing had been declared to be No Murder, never found himself face to face with an assassin. The world has never known another example of success at once so constant and so various, or of fortune so invariably favourable, in the midst of such manifold conflicts and perils. Yet Cromwell's death-bed was clouded with gloom. He was unwilling, not only to die, but also, and most of all, to die without having attained his real and final object. However great his egotism may have been, his soul was too great to rest satisfied with the highest fortune, if it were merely per sonal, and, like himself, of ephemeral, earthly duration. Weary of the ruin he had caused, it was his cherished wish to restore to his country a regular and stable government,-the only government which was suited to its wants, a monarchy under the control of Parliament. And at the same time, with an ambition which extended beyond the grave, under the influence of that thirst for permanence which is the stamp of true greatness, he aspired to leave his name and race in possession of the throne. He failed in both designs: his crimes had raised up obstacles against him, which neither his prudent genius nor his persevering will could surmount; and though covered, as far as he was himself concerned, with power and glory, he died with his dearest hopes frustrated, and leaving behind him, as his successors, the two enemies whom he had so ardently combated,-anarchy and the Stuarts. God does not grant to those great men, who have laid the foundations of their greatness amidst disorder and revolution, the power of regulating at their pleasure, and for succeeding ages, the government of nations. History of Oliver Cromwell and the English GEORGE COMBE, a brother of Andrew Combe, M.D., infra, and born in 1788 in Edinburgh, where for twenty-five years he practised law, in 1816 became a hearer, and soon after a disciple, of Spurzheim, and advocated phrenology with great zeal in the United States (183840) and elsewhere; died 1858. Essays on Phrenology, Edin., 1819, Svo, 5th edit.,-A System of Phrenology,-1843, 2 vols. 8vo; Outlines of Phrenology, 4th edit., Edin., 1859, 8vo; The Constitution of Man considered in Relation to External Objects, Edin., 1828, 12mo, 8th edit., 1848, post 8vo (also in French, German, and Swedish); Letters on the Prejudices of the Great in Science and Philosophy against Phrenology, Edin., 1829, 8vo; Elements of Phrenology, 7th edit., Edin., 1849, 12mo; Lectures on Popular Education, Bost., 1834, 12mo, 3d GEORGE COMBE. edit., 1848, p. 8vo; On the Functions of the Cerebellum, from the French, Edin., 1838, 8vo; Notes on the United States of North America, 1838–40, 1841, 3 vols. p. 8vo; Lectures on Phrenology, etc., New York, 1839, 12mo, new edit., 1847, post 8vo; Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 3d edit., 1846, p. 8vo; Remarks on the Principles of Criminal Legislation, etc., Lond., 1854, 8vo; Phrenology Applied to Painting and Sculpture, Lond. and Edin., 8vo; Science and Religion, 1857, 8vo. He also published a pamphlet on Currency, etc. See Edin. Review, Sept. 1826, North Brit. Review, May, 1852; Fraser's Mag., Nov. 1840. DISTINCTION BETWEEN POWER AND ACTIVITY. There is a great distinction between power and activity of mind; and it is important to keep this difference in view. Power, strictly speaking, is the capability of thinking, feel ing, or perceiving, however small in amount that capability may be; and in this sense it is synonymous with faculty: action is the exercise of power; while activity denotes the quickness, great or small, with which the action is performed, and also the degree of proneness to act. The distinction between power, action, and activity of the mental faculties is widely recognized by describers of human nature. Thus Cowper says of the more violent affective faculties of man: "His passions, like the watery stores that sleep Again : "In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war; Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze." The Task, B. 5. Dr. Thomas Brown, in like manner, speaks of latent propensities; that is to say, powers not in action. "Vice already formed," says he, "is almost beyond our power: it is only in the state of latent propensity that we can with much reason expect to overcome it by the moral motives which we are capable of presenting:" and he alludes to the great extent of knowledge of human nature requisite to enable us 66 to distinguish this propensity before it has expanded itself, and even before it is known to the very mind in which it exists, and to tame those passions which are never to rage." In Crabbe's Tales of the Hall a character is thus described : "He seemed without a passion to proceed, Or one whose passions no correction need; 393 "Nature," says Lord Bacon, "will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation; like as it was with Æsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her." In short, it is plain that we may have the capability of feeling an emotion,-as anger, fear, or pity, and that yet this power may be inactive, insomuch that, at any particular time these emotions may be totally absent from the mind; and it is no less plain, that we may have the capability of seeing, tasting, calculating, reasoning, and composing music, without actually performing these operations. Two It is equally easy to distinguish activity from action and power. When power is exercised, the action may be performed with very different degrees of rapidity. individuals may each be solving a problem in arithmetic, but one may do so with far greater quickness than the other; in other words, his faculty of Number may be more easily brought into action. He who solves abstruse problems slowly, manifests much power with little activity; while he who can quickly solve easy problems, and them alone, has much activity with little power. The man who calculates difficult problems with great speed, manifests in a high degree both power and activity of the faculty of Number. As commonly employed, the word power is synonymous with strength, or much power, instead of denoting mere capacity, whether much or little, to act; while by activity is usually understood much quickness of action, and great proneness to act. As it is desirable, however, to avoid every chance of ambiguity, I shall employ the words power and activity in the sense first before explained; and to high degrees of power I shall apply the terms energy, intensity, strength, or vigour; while to great activity I shall apply the terms vivacity, agility, rapidity, or quickness. In physics, strength is quite distinguishable from quickness. The balance-wheel of a watch moves with much rapidity, but so slight is its impetus, that a hair would suffice to stop it; the beam of a steam-engine progresses slowly and massively through space, but its energy is prodigiously great. In muscular action these qualities are recognized with equal facility as different. The greyhound bounds over hill and dale with animated agility; but a slight obstacle would counterbalance his momentum, and arrest his progress. The elephant, on the other hand, rolls slowly and heavily along; but the impetus of his motion would sweep away an impediment sufficient to re sist fifty greyhounds at the summit of their speed. played without vivacity, and in the other vivacity without strength: the latter he calls the man of "nimble wit," the former the man of "slow but sure wit." In this respect the French character may be contrasted with the Scotch. As a general rule, the largest organs in each head have naturally the greatest, and the smallest the least, tendency to act, and to perform their functions with rapidity. The temperaments also indicate the amount of this tendency. The nervous is the most vivacious, next the sanguine, then the bilious, while the lymphatic is characterized by proneness to inaction. In a lymphatic brain, great size may be present and few manifestations occur through sluggishness; but if a strong external stimulus be presented, energy often appears. If the brain be very small, no degree of stimulus, either external or internal, will cause great power to be manifested. A certain combination of organs-name In mental manifestations (considered apart from organization), the distinction between energy and vivacity is equally palpable. On the stage Mrs. Siddons and Mr. John Kemble were remarkable for the solemn deliberation of their manners, both in declamation and in action, and yet they were splendidly gifted with energy. They carried captive at once the sympathies and the understandings of the audience, and made every man feel his faculties expanding, and his whole mind becoming greater under the influence of their power. Other performers, again, are remarkable for agility of action and elocution, who, nevertheless, are felt to be feeble and ineffective in rousing an audience to emotion. Vivacity is their distinguishing attribute, with an absence of vigour. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the senate, the same distinction prevails. Many members of the learned professions display great fluency of elocution and felicity of illustration, surprising us with the quick-ly, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, ness of their parts, who, nevertheless, are felt to be neither impressive nor profound. They exhibit acuteness without depth, and ingenuity without comprehensiveness of understanding. This also proceeds from vivacity with little energy. There are other public speakers, again, who open heavily in debate, their faculties acting slowly but deeply, like the first heave of a mountain wave. Their words fall like minute-guns upon the ear, and to the superficial they appear about to terminate ere they have begun their efforts. But even their first accent is one of power; it rouses and arrests attention; their very pauses are expressive, and indicate gathering energy to be embodied in the sentence that is to come. When fairly animated they are impetuous as the torrent, brilliant as the lightning's beam, and overwhelm and take possession of feebler minds, impressing them irresistibly with a feeling of gigantic power. The distinction between vivacity and energy is well illustrated by Cowper in one of his letters: "The mind and body," says he, "have in this respect a striking resemblance of each other. In childhood they are both nimble, but not strong; they can skip and frisk about with wonderful agility, but hard labour spoils them both. In maturer years they become less active but more vigorous, more capable of fixed application, and can make themselves sport with that which a little earlier would have affected them with intolerable fatigue." Dr. Charlton also, in his Brief Discourse Concerning the Different Wits of Men, has admirably described two characters, in one of which strength is dis Firmness, Acquisitiveness, and Love of Approbation, all large--is favourable to general vivacity of mind; and another combination namely, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, and Acquisitiveness, small or moderate, with Veneration and Benevolence large-is frequently attended with sluggishness of the mental character; but the activity of the whole brain is constitutionally greater in some individuals than in others, as already explained. It may even happen that. in the same individual, one organ is naturally more active than another without reference to size, just as the optic nerve is sometimes more irritable than the auditory; but this is by no means a common occurrence. Exercise greatly increases activity as well as power, and hence arise the benefits of education. Dr. Spurzheim thinks that long fibres produce more activity, and thick fibres more intensity." The doctrine that size is a measure of power, is not to be held as implying that much power is the only or even the most valuable quality which a mind in all circumstances can possess. To drag artillery over a mountain, or a ponderous wagon through the streets of London, we would prefer an elephant or a horse of great size and muscular power; while for graceful motion, agility, and nimbleness, we would select an Arabiar palfrey. In like manner, to lead men in gigantic and difficult enterprises,-to com mand by native greatness, in perilous times, when law is trampled under foot,-to call forth the energies of a people, and direct them against a tyrant at home, or an alliance of tyrants abroad,-to stamp the impress of |