Review of Draper's Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America.

Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America. By John William Draper, M. D., LL. D. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1865. 8vo. pp. 317. [From North American Review 101.2 (October 1865): 589-597.] ²⁰

The object of this book is to show the application to America of the principles set forth by the author in his work on “The Intellectual Development of Europe,” in which he endeavored to show “that the historical progress of the nations of that continent illustrates the fact that social advancement is as completely under the control of natural law as is the bodily growth of an individual.” The present work is founded on four lectures delivered before the New York Historical Society for the purpose of showing this application.

Encouraged by the popularity of his principal work, the author deems it advisable to give these lectures a more permanent form. This appears the more desirable, since “at the present moment, when the Republic has reached one of those epochs at which it must experience important transformations, it may not be inopportune to direct attention to the effects of physical agents and laws on the advancement of nations.” “We are too prone,” he adds, “to depreciate their influence.”

Dr. Draper more than atones, however, for the neglect which the workings of physical agents have suffered at the hands of the philosophical historian, at least in his appreciation of them. The possibility of historical foresight from a knowledge of physical science is much insisted on; but if ever the movements of society come to be traced scientifically to the workings of physical agencies, the merit of the discovery will hardly be Dr. Draper’s. Like two other recent and popular writers, Mr. Buckle and Mr. Spencer, he begins at the end of this possible future science, asserting roundly and in most unqualified terms conclusions of which the demonstration would require a knowledge amounting almost to omniscience, as compared with any conceivable attainments of science. These conclusions may be correct, at any rate they cannot be refuted; but the practical importance of insisting on them does not consist in any use that can be made of them so long as the science exists in the undeveloped state in which Dr. Draper leaves it. For he contributes little or nothing to filling up the void which exists between the problem and its solution. The historian who deals with the more particular and proximate causes and the empirical laws of historical events will be more successful, we think, and of much greater service to the statesman.

The connection between remote physical causes and their effects on the character and movements of society and the individual will, though we may be easily persuaded of its reality, is one which we can hardly

hope to bring within the compass of exact science, or to employ for the practical purposes of historical foresight; and the only motive we can conceive for insisting on its reality is a polemical desire to dogmatize in opposition to those who ignore or deny its existence.

To avoid the imputation of such a motive, Dr. Draper affects a practical object. He proposes to offer principles for the guidance of the American statesman. The only practical lesson of the book occupies, however, but little space for its development. The author advises American statesmen to prevent the division of the country into separate nationalities, and to counteract the modifying effects of climate by encouraging constant emigration and intercommunication.

“It is not enough,” he says, “that there should be free movement for thought; free movement for the people themselves is of equal importance. That is the true method for combating climate effects, — preventing communities from falling into Asiatic torpor, and contracting senseless antipathies against each other. Had the Southern States for the last ten years been pervaded by an unceasing stream of Northern travel in every direction, the civil war would not have occurred.”

Three pages back the author exempts the great empire of China from this description of “Asiatic torpor,” and recommends it as an example for us. To the question, “Can we not neutralize those climate differences, which, if unchecked, must transmute us into different nations?” he says: —

“In two words, I think, we find an answer, — Education and Intercommunication. Nor is this the suggestion of mere theorists. Under that formula four hundred millions of men — one third of the human race — have found stability for their institutions in China. By their public school system they have organized their national intellect; by their canal system they have made themselves, though living in a climate as diversified as ours, essentially one people. The principle on which their political system is thus founded has for many thousand years confronted successfully all human variations, and has outlived all revolutions.”

The practical statesman might object, however, that restrictions on “free movement for thought” in the Southern States have been for the last ten years among the most serious obstacles to that “unceasing stream of Northern travel” which the author thinks so desirable.

It is doubtless true, that commerce and free intercommunication are among the most valuable means of maintaining civilizations and nationalities, whether by counteracting climate effects, or by those obvious utilities which will more readily occur to the unscientific observer of human nature. But our Professor of Physiology is haunted with the idea that there is a peculiar fatality in climates. These can change the

color of the skin, the habitual employments, and the objects of familiar contemplation, and hence the habits of thought; hence the mental character; hence the development of the brain, and, finally, the shape of the skull; and lo! we have a new race of men, no longer fitted to live with each other in peace and amity! The fatal, inevitable character of these changes so fills his imagination, that he appears to ascribe to them a celerity equal to their certainty, apparently forgetting that throughout the whole length of recorded history, and during the rise and fall of all known nations and empires, the physical features of the human races have undergone very slight, if any, material modifications. But our author builds national differences on very slight physical changes due to climate. Speaking of the zone of the Northern States, he says: —

“Follow that zone with a prophetic eye, as it becomes peopled to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and tell me, as those busy hordes extend over the vast sandy desert, climb up the threatening ridges of the mountain chains, descend through the moaning forests of enormous pines beyond, how many are the vicissitudes through which life must be maintained, and I will tell you how many distinct families of men there must be.”

The view which is most acceptable to philosophical naturalists of the present day represents race-variation as the effect, primarily, of geographical separation and isolation, and the cumulative effects of many and obscure causes, most of which are as likely to be of a very special character as to be dependent on general conditions such as climates. But the immense sweep of the causes which our author delights to contemplate — their simple and irresistible character, their fatality — obscure his vision of all those intermediate proximate causes to which men ordinarily ascribe the actions and peculiarities of their species. Hence we have such specimens of aphoristical wisdom as this: “The absence of summer is the absence of taste and genius; where there is no winter, loyalty is unknown.” Again, we are told that “without the Gulf Stream Newton would never have written his Principia, nor Milton Paradise Lost.” What a comprehensive view of causation we have in these facts! It impresses “the control of universal law” very forcibly upon our author. Those so-called Special Providences, long trains of trivial events and apparent accidents, on which the lives of the poet and philosopher depended, which are the fittest to excite surprise in the unsophisticated heart, are as nothing compared with the long reach of the causes through which the productions of genius are made to depend on the facts of physical geography and meteorology, and astronomical events to work out their own science.

A fatalistic view of causation is presented throughout the book, — not dogmatically, but rather in the rhetorical figures in which the

author’s imagination delights to revel. He is most profoundly impressed with “the existence of controlling law.” He discovers that animals and plants change “helplessly” under physical influences, and he therefore regards them as illustrations of “the control of universal law.” The empirical laws, disclosed in the statistics of crime, are quoted from the same motives, “for the purpose of bringing into clearer relief the cardinal doctrine that in individual life, in social life, in national life, everything is influenced by physical agents, and is therefore under the control of law. Far from denying,” he adds, “the operation of man’s free will, I give to that great truth all the weight that can be desired; but then I affirm there is something that overrides, that forever keeps it in check.” Then follows this curious illustration of his meaning: —

“If the reader will try a very simple physiological experiment upon himself, he will probably come to a clearer understanding of what is here meant. Let him execute with his right hand the motion he would resort to in winding a thread upon a reel. Then let him do the same thing with his left hand, only winding the opposite way. Are not these two contrary motions which he thus consecutively accomplishes thoroughly under his control? He wills to do either, and forthwith either is done. Both illustrate his voluntary power. But next let him try to do both, not successively, but simultaneously. Let him put forth all the strength of his determination. A free-will actor, he has now the opportunity of giving an illustration of his power. In the failure of repeated trials, he may discern what his voluntary determinations come to, and what they are really worth. He may learn from this simple experiment that there is something that over-controls him, and puts a limit to his power.”

Certain important considerations are overlooked in this remarkable example, which materially affect its value. The compound motion which, according to the author, baffles the free will of man, is something more than the sum of the other two. To perform either simple act of which it is apparently composed requires the guidance of the sight or the imagination. Now, although men have two hands, they have only one imagination, and the difficulty of this double motion is in the action of this guiding faculty. It is a difficulty, however, which is not insurmountable. A little practice will overcome this “something that overrides” the free will, “that forever keeps it in check.” More familiar though less imposing illustrations might have shown our author’s meaning more clearly. Indeed, examples of the limitations of human agency, whether free or otherwise, are not infrequent in human experience.

But our author’s salvo in favor of the “great truth” of free agency is not exempt from more weighty objections. If we can correctly interpret his meaning independently of his illustration, his doctrine of free

agency does not rise in dignity a whit above the barbaric fatalism which pervades the volume. This free will is one of the “resistances” to the “force” of universal law; “overridden,” it is true, and “forever kept in check.” Thus, if climate induce a man to fan himself or seek the shade, it is his free will that is coerced, not his indolence. The idea comports well with the doctrine that plants and animals are “compelled” to change their forms and habits to meet the variations of climate and other circumstances; that they “yield helplessly” to physical influences. Writers like Dr. Draper and Mr. Spencer, who closely resembles him both in style and doctrine, though they disclaim alike the dogmas of Free Agency and Necessity, or any hostility to either, yet present in their philosophies what is far more prejudicial to a clear scientific philosophy or a healthy moral nature. It is not the dogma that hurts. It is in its influence on the imagination, and, through this, on our scientific conceptions and moral feelings, that fatalism is mischievous; and in this manner the language and conceptions of fatalism are quite as efficacious as the dogma itself. We have said, that the author does not present his fatalistic views dogmatically. It is difficult, however, to distinguish, in a style luxuriant in vague paradoxical illustrations, what is meant to impress the reader and what to instruct him, but the moral tendency of the figure or doctrine is illustrated in the following passage: —

“And here I cannot help making the remark, that whoever accepts these principles as true, and bears in mind how physical circumstances control the deeds of men, as it may be said, in spite of themselves, will have a disposition to look with generosity on the acts of political enemies. Even when in madness they have rushed to the dread arbitrament of civil war, — a crime in the face of which all other crimes are as nothing, — and brought upon their country immeasurable woes, he will distinguish the instrument from the cause, and, when he has overpowered, will forgive.”

There may be good reasons why our moral feelings, in view of the crimes of the late Rebellion, should yield to higher motives; but the reason Dr. Draper gives would, if logically insisted on, suppress moral feeling altogether. He distinguishes only by the names between a crime and a physical evil. Men of sense punish the one, and prevent or overcome the other, if they can; and if they do not punish crimes, it is not because physical circumstances have produced them, but only because punishment will not prevent them.

The real search of science is for the laws of physical and other forces; but the lesson our author and similar writers seek to draw from the facts of science is the doctrine that there is force in physical laws. Between these two aims there is all the difference of the most enlightened

modern philosophy of science from the Manicheism of a barbarous theology. Under the formulas of matter and force, power and resistance, agent and patient, nature and circumstance, we still preserve the old duality of principles. Science still finds these phrases convenient; but scientific philosophy has at length emancipated itself from their doctrinal import and their influence on the imagination. They have degenerated into merely technical, abstract terms, expressive of nothing specifically real, though still useful in representing phenomena. The dogmas implied in these terms are like the old doctrine of Optimism, the doctrine that the world was created the best, the simplest, the most perfect which devising skill could make. The conception of a potential obstacle or hindrance to creative power, some hostile power or an intractable material, lurked under the doctrine, since otherwise there could be no question of better or worse, more or less perfect. In the same manner, the dominion of law, the control of physical forces, “the existence of controlling law,” plants and animals and the human will “yielding helplessly” to physical influences, suggest that there might be something to hinder, some lawlessness or some perverseness in the nature of things and in the human will which required to be overcome.

The law of causation, the highest principle of positive science, which teaches that law or regularity is everywhere to be found even in the determinations of the human will, is guilty of no such fatalism as this. True scientific philosophy finds no compulsion in the laws it investigates, because it finds no opposition to them. Opposing laws and opposing forces are not found in real nature. The notions are used in the abstract scientific analyses and representations of nature, but only where no ambiguity or misconception can arise. They are concretely propounded only in such barbarous philosophies as this we are noticing, and in similar popular works. The fascination of such crudities constitutes one of the chief attractions of these books to the general reader, whose imagination is pleased to drive the round of the sciences with a tight rein, all the forces under control and well in the traces.

Another secret of their popularity is in their frequent resort to entertainments of really valuable and interesting scientific and historical facts, ostensibly given to furnish illustrations of the dreary platitudes which they really serve to relieve. Many digressions of this sort adorn Dr. Draper’s pages. His scientific facts are, however, too frequently obscured by paradox, and his historical facts by doubtful theories. Well-ascertained facts and scientific guesses are given with equal positiveness. Facts, irrelevant to the illustrations in which they occur, find place in his pages, if they are only interesting and connected with the others. But the reader will not complain of this, nor ought we to find fault with

it. Abstracts of physiology and physical geography, historical monographs, facts of social and industrial science, biblical history and criticism, are scattered through the book. A complete treatise on the physical sciences is sketched, to “illustrate” man’s conquest of nature, the great idea which will hereafter compete with the climates of North America in the development of our nation. This treatise gives us information on gases, meteorology, acoustics, the sea, the steam-engine, electricity, magnetism, and the wonders of science. “But,” he concludes, “it is vain to go on. I remarked a few pages back that the facts of science exceed the capacity of any book.”

This principal digression is intended “to give emphasis to the proposition that a nation which is preparing itself for sovereignty among the powers of the earth, must shake off the traditions of obsolete policy, and stand forth the defender and protector of free thought.”

The following is, perhaps, the most impressive passage in this “illustration”: —

“Who could have believed that the twitching of a frog’s leg, in the experiments of Galvani, would give rise in a very few years to the establishment beyond all question of the compound nature of water, separating its constituents from one another, — would lead to the deflagration and dissipation in a vapor of metals that can hardly be melted in a furnace, — would show that the solid earth we tread upon is an oxide, — yield new metals, light enough to swim upon water, and even seem to set it on fire, — produce the most brilliant of all artificial lights, rivalling, if not excelling, in its intolerable splendor the noontide sun, — would occasion a complete revolution in chemistry, compelling that science to accept new ideas and even a new nomenclature, — that it would give us the power of making magnets capable of lifting more than a ton, cast a light on that riddle of ages, the pointing of the mariner’s compass north and south, and explain the mutual attraction or repulsion of magnetic needles, — that it would enable us to form exquisitely in metal casts of all kinds of objects of art, and give workmen a means of performing gilding and silvering without risk to their health, — that it would suggest to the evil-disposed the forging of bank-notes, the sophisticating of jewelry, and be invaluable in the uttering of false coinage,— that it would carry the messages of commerce and friendship instantaneously across continents, or under oceans, and ‘waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole ’!”

It is indeed surprising that the twitching of a frog’s leg should have given rise to all this, and were it not that many other causes conspired with it, we should be disposed to regard the occurrence as little less than miraculous.

Two historical “illustrations” are intended to show the political force of ideas, for the agency of which there is still opportunity in spite of climate. Two ideas, a sane and a crazy one, coming into the

disturbed brain of Mohammed, produce from our author the sketch of a treatise on the “causes of mental delusions,” and other consequences as numerous and important as those to which the twitchings of Galvani’s frog gave rise. Arabian history is made to give “a most striking instance of the impelling power of an idea.” Jewish history, on the other hand, is made to furnish an example of the resisting power of an idea, and many interesting facts and discussions are elicited in connection with the history, though they have nothing to do with the idea illustrated by it. Indeed, the general reader will be much impressed by the author’s great and various learning, though it consists for the most part of information which the press has already disseminated in encyclopedias, gazetteers, and elementary works on science and history.

No work of this sort could be complete, without basing itself on the two great cardinal doctrines of modern science, — the imperishable nature of matter and force, and the order of organic development. These are presented in the vague, paradoxical terms which fit them for the “illustrative” uses they are made to serve. In place of the precise physical facts which these doctrines express, we have vague analogical extensions of them to phenomena of which our knowledge is as unprecise as possible. One of these doctrines is incorrectly illustrated, even within the sphere of its proper and well-ascertained application. We are told that plants are nothing more than condensations of the air, extracts from an invisible and noxious gas, “their parts being held together by force that has been derived from the sun, — force that, as it were, is imprisoned in them, but ever ready to reappear.” But really only a small part of the force which the sun expends in vegetation is represented by the forces that hold the parts of an organism together and in their organic order. This force is chiefly expended in separating the main elements of organic compounds from oxygen; and it is represented by the conditions which keep them sundered from this element, for which they have so powerful an attraction. This attraction represents the intense heat of combustion, and a much greater quantity of force than is developed by the chemical separation of the parts of the plant. Poetical imagery comes in place when the facts of the case are not obscured by it. It might be poetically correct to describe the power of an avalanche as bound, Prometheus-like, to the mountain-side; but to present unfamiliar scientific facts in such images is neither poetically nor scientifically correct. This is, however, of little consequence to the use which our author makes of the abstract ideas and general laws of science. He hastens, like Mr. Spencer, to apply them not so much to a clear elucidation of known phenomena as to a vague description of what he fancies certain phenomena ought

to be, but which exact science is still very far from having adequately investigated.

In spite of the serious defects of thought and style with which this book is marred, it will generally be well received. Dr. Draper, like Mr. Spencer, is a popular writer, and interests us by nearly the same means which have heretofore entertained us in treatises on Natural Theology. The pious or the impressive applications which serve as convenient transitions to new topics of a scientific character, rest the understanding from its pleasant rambles among the wonders of science. The interest is nearly the same, whether the lesson be on Divine Providence or on the force of an inscrutable and irresistible fate. The main interest is in the facts of science and the narratives of history.