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But all this well-labored system of German
antiquities is annihilated by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and
of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the age of
Tacitus, were unacquainted with
the use of
letters;
16 and
the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages incapable of
knowledge or
reflection. Without that
artificial help, the human
memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas entrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the
mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the
judgment becomes
feeble and
lethargic, the
imagination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between
the man of learning and
the illiterate peasant. The former, by
reading and
reflection, multiplies his own
experience, and lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of
existence, surpasses but very little his fellow-laborer, the
ox, in the
exercise of his mental faculties. The same, and even a greater, difference will be found between nations than between individuals; and we may safely pronounce, that without some species of
writing, no people has ever preserved the
faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable
progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.
Footnote 16: Tacit. Germ. ii. 19. Literarum secreta viri pariter ac foeminae ignorant. We may rest contented with this decisive authority, without entering into the obscure disputes concerning the antiquity of the Runic characters. The learned Celsius, a Swede, a scholar, and a philosopher, was of opinion, that they were nothing more than the Roman letters, with the curves changed into straight lines for the ease of engraving. - M.
Of these arts, the ancient Germans were wretchedly
destitute. They passed their lives in a state of
ignorance and
poverty, which it has pleased some declaimers to dignify with the appellation of virtuous
simplicity. Modern Germany is said to contain about two thousand three hundred walled towns.
17 In a much wider extent of country, the geographer
Ptolemy could discover no more than ninety places which he decorates with the
name of cities;
18 though, according to our ideas, they would but ill deserve that splendid title. We can only suppose them to
have been rude
fortification, constructed in the center of the woods, and designed to secure the women, children, and cattle,
whilst the warriors of the
tribe marched out to repel a sudden
invasion.
19 But Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact, that the Germans, in his time, had no cities;
20 and that they affected to
despise the works of
Roman industry, as places of
confinement rather than of security.
21 Their edifices were not even contiguous, or formed into regular villas;
22 each
barbarian fixed his independent dwelling on the spot to which a
plain, a
wood, or a
stream of fresh water, had induced him to
give the preference. Neither stone, nor brick, nor tiles, were employed in these slight habitations.
23 They were indeed no
more than low huts, of a circular figure, built of rough timber, thatched with straw, and pierced at the top to leave a free
passage for the smoke. In the most inclement winter, the hardy German was satisfied with a scanty garment made of the skin of
some animal. The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed themselves in furs; and the women manufactured for their own
use a coarse kind of
linen.
24 The game of various sorts, with which the forests of Germany were plentifully stocked, supplied its inhabitants with food and exercise.
25 Their monstrous herds of cattle, less remarkable indeed for their beauty than for their utility,
26 formed the principal object of their wealth. A small quantity of corn was the only produce exacted from the earth; the use of
orchards or artificial
meadows was unknown to the Germans; nor can we expect any improvements in
agriculture from a people, whose prosperity every year experienced a general change by a new division of the
arable lands, and who, in that strange operation, avoided disputes, by suffering a great part of their territory to lie waste and without tillage.
27
Footnote *: Luden (the author of the Geschichte des Teutschen Volkes) has surpassed most writers in his patriotic enthusiasm for the virtues and noble manners of his ancestors. Even the cold of the climate, and the want of vines and fruit trees, as well as the barbarism of the inhabitants, are calumnies of the luxurious Italians. M. Guizot, on the other side, (in his Histoire de la
Civilisation, vol. i. p. 272, &c.,) has drawn a curious parallel between the Germans of Tacitus and the North American Indian tribes. M.
Footnote 17: Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. iii. p. 228. The author of that very curious work is, if I am not misinformed, a German by birth. (De Pauw.)
Footnote 18: The Alexandrian Geographer is often criticized by the accurate Cluverius.
Footnote 19: See Caesar, and the learned Mr. Whitaker in his History of Manchester, vol. i.
Footnote 20: Tacit. Germ. 15.
Footnote 21: When the Germans commanded the Ubii of Cologne to cast off the Roman yoke, and with their new freedom to resume their ancient manners, they insisted on the immediate demolition of the walls of the colony. Tacit. Hist. iv. 64.
Footnote 22: The straggling villages of Silesia are several miles in length. See Cluver. l. i. c. 13.
Footnote 23: One hundred and forty years after Tacitus, a few more regular structures were erected near the Rhine and Danube. Herodian, l. vii. p. 234.
Footnote 24: Tacit. Germ. 17.
Footnote 25: Tacit. Germ. 5.
Footnote 26: Caesar de Bell. Gall. vi. 21.
Footnote 27: Tacit. Germ. 26. Caesar, vi. 22.
Gold,
silver, and
iron, were extremely
scarce in Germany. Its barbarous inhabitants wanted both skill and patience to
investigate those rich veins of silver, which have so liberally rewarded the attention of the princes of
Brunswick and
Saxony.
Sweden, which now supplies Europe with iron, was equally ignorant of its own riches; and the appearance of the arms of the
Germans furnished a sufficient proof how little iron they were able to bestow on what they must have deemed the noblest use of
that metal. The various transactions of peace and war had introduced some Roman coins (chiefly silver) among the borderers of
the Rhine and Danube; but the more distant tribes were absolutely unacquainted with the use of money, carried on their
confined traffic by the exchange of commodities, and prized their rude earthen vessels as of equal value with the silver vases,
the presents of Rome to their princes and ambassadors.
28 To a mind capable of reflection, such leading facts convey more
instruction, than a tedious detail of subordinate circumstances. The value of
money has been settled by general consent to
express our wants and our
property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more
active energy to the powers and passions of
human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to
represent. The use of gold and silver is in a great measure factitious; but it would be impossible to enumerate the important and
various services which agriculture, and all the arts, have received from iron, when tempered and fashioned by the operation of
fire, and the dexterous hand of man.
Money, in a word, is the most universal incitement, iron the most powerful instrument, of
human industry; and it is very difficult to conceive by what means a people, neither actuated by the one, nor seconded by the
other, could emerge from the grossest
barbarism.
29
Footnote 28: Tacit. Germ. 6.
Footnote 29: It is said that the Mexicans and Peruvians, without the use of either money or iron, had made a very great progress in the arts. Those arts, and the monuments they produced, have been strangely magnified. See Recherches sur les
Americans, tom. ii. p. 153, &c
If we contemplate a
savage nation in any part of the globe, a supine
indolence and a carelessness of
futurity will be found to
constitute their general character. In a civilized state, every faculty of man is expanded and exercised; and the great chain of
mutual dependence connects and embraces the several members of society. The most numerous portion of it is employed in
constant and useful labor. The select few, placed by fortune above that necessity, can, however, fill up their time by the pursuits
of interest or
glory, by the improvement of their
estate or of their understanding, by the duties, the pleasures, and even the follies
of
social life. The Germans were not possessed of these varied resources. The care of the house and family, the management of
the land and cattle, were delegated to the old and the infirm, to women and slaves. The lazy warrior, destitute of every art that
might employ his leisure hours, consumed his days and nights in the animal gratification of sleep and food. And yet, by a
wonderful diversity of nature, (according to the remark of a writer who had pierced into its darkest recesses,) the same
barbarians are by turns the most indolent and the most restless of mankind. They delight in
sloth, they detest
tranquility.
30
The
languid soul, oppressed with its own weight, anxiously required some new and powerful sensation; and war and danger
were the only amusements adequate to its fierce temper. The sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear.
It roused him from his uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active pursuit, and, by strong exercise of the body, and violent
emotions of the mind, restored him to a more lively sense of his existence. In the dull intervals of peace, these barbarians were
immoderately addicted to deep
gaming and
excessive drinking; both of which, by different means, the one by inflaming their
passions, the other by extinguishing their
reason, alike relieved them from
the pain of thinking. They gloried in passing whole
days and nights at table; and the blood of friends and relations often stained their numerous and drunken assemblies.
31 Their debts of honor (for in that light they have transmitted to us those of play) they discharged with the most
romantic fidelity. The desperate gamester, who had staked his person and liberty on a last throw of the dice, patiently submitted to the decision of
fortune, and suffered himself to be bound, chastised, and sold into remote
slavery, by his weaker but more lucky
antagonist.
32
Footnote 30: Tacit. Germ. 15.
Footnote 31: Tacit. Germ. 22, 23.
Footnote 32: Id. 24. The Germans might borrow the arts of play from the Romans, but the passion is wonderfully inherent in the human species.
Strong
beer, a
liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly
expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of
wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German
debauchery. But those
who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more
delicious species of
intoxication. They
attempted not, however, (as has since been executed with so much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine
and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor
what might be ravished by arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit.
33 The intemperate
thirst of strong liquors
often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents. The
Tuscan who betrayed his country to the
Celtic nations, attracted them into Italy by the prospect of the rich fruits and delicious
wines, the productions of a happier climate.
34 And in the same manner the German auxiliaries, invited into France during the
civil wars of the sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous quarters in the provinces of
Champagne and
Burgundy.
35 Drunkenness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous of our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.
Footnote 33: Tacit. Germ. 14.
Footnote 34: Plutarch. in Camillo. T. Liv. v. 33.
Footnote 35: Dubos. Hist. de la Monarchie Francoise, tom. i. p. 193.
The climate of ancient Germany has been modified, and the soil fertilized, by the labor of ten centuries from the time of
Charlemagne. The same extent of ground which at present maintains, in ease and plenty, a million of husbandmen and artificers, was unable to supply a hundred thousand lazy warriors with the simple necessaries of life.
36 The Germans abandoned their immense forests to the exercise of
hunting, employed in pasturage the most considerable part of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a rude and careless
cultivation, and then accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of
famine severely admonished them of the importance of the arts, the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of a third, perhaps, or a fourth part of their youth.
37 The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilized people to an improved country. But the Germans, who carried with them what they most valued, their arms, their cattle, and their women, cheerfully abandoned the vast silence of their woods for the unbounded hopes of
plunder and
conquest. The innumerable swarms that issued, or seemed to issue, from the great storehouse of nations, were multiplied by the fears of the vanquished, and by the credulity of succeeding ages. And from facts thus exaggerated, an opinion was gradually established, and has been supported by writers of distinguished reputation, that, in the age of Caesar and Tacitus, the inhabitants of the North were far more numerous than they are in our days.
38 A more serious inquiry into the causes of population seems to have convinced modern philosophers of the falsehood, and indeed the impossibility, of the supposition. To the names of Mariana and of
Machiavelli,
39 we can oppose the equal names of Robertson and
David Hume.
40
Footnote 36: The Helvetian nation, which issued from a country called Switzerland, contained, of every age and sex, 368,000 persons, (Caesar de Bell. Gal. i. 29.) At present, the number of people in the Pays de Vaud (a small district on the banks of the Leman Lake, much more distinguished for politeness than for industry) amounts to 112,591. See an excellent tract of M. Muret, in the Memoires de la Societe de Born.
Footnote 37: Paul Diaconus, c. 1, 2, 3. Machiavel, Davila, and the rest of Paul's followers, represent these emigrations too much as regular and concerted measures.
Footnote 38: Sir William Temple and Montesquieu have indulged, on this subject, the usual liveliness of their fancy.
Footnote 39: Machiavel, Hist. di Firenze, l. i. Mariana, Hist. Hispan. l. v. c. 1
Footnote 40: Robertson's Charles V. Hume's Political Essays. Note: It is a wise observation of Malthus, that these nations "were not populous in proportion to the land they occupied, but to the food they produced. They were prolific from their pure morals and constitutions, but their institutions were not calculated to produce food for those whom they brought into being. - M
- 1845.
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To cite original text:
Gibbon, Edward, 1737-1794.
The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. 1st ed. (London : Printed for W. Strahan ; and T. Cadell, 1776-1788.), pp. 221-227.