The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel
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in its natural configuration, the new world is more widely different from the old, than the principal parts of the latter are from each other. As in comparing the Northern extremity of the earth with its Southern or aqueous extremity, we observe a striking disparity, and almost complete opposition between the two; so we shall find this to be the case, if, in advancing in the opposite direction from east to west, we divide the whole surface of the earth into two equal parts. On one hand that more important division of the earth, extending from the Western coast of Africa to the Eastern coast of Asia, comprises the three ancient continents, which, from the upper to the middle part, occupy almost the whole space of this half of the globe. Here is the greatest quantity of land, and the animal kingdom, too, is on a more large and magnificent scale. It is only at the Southern extremity of this hemisphere that sea and water are predominant; and here a continuous chain of islands from the southernmost point of Asia reaches to the fifth and last portion of the globe—Australia, making it a sort of Asiatic dependency. In the American hemisphere, the element of water is predominant, not only at the Southern extremity, but towards the middle; for, large as America may be, it can bear no comparison with the other continents in respect to extent of surface. Our hemisphere is more remarkable even for extent of population than for the quantity of land. Here indeed is the chief seat of population, and the principal theatre of human history and human civilization.
The entire population of America, which, as it is for the most part of European extraction, is better known to us than that of many countries more contiguous—the entire population of America at the highest computation of the whole number of inhabitants on the globe, forms but a thirtieth part, and at the lowest computation, not a four-and-twentieth part of the whole. Widely extended as this thinly peopled continent is, the whole number of its inhabitants scarcely exceeds the population of a single great European state, such as either France or Germany, whose population, indeed, it about equals. Vegetation, indeed, is most rich and luxuriant in America; but the two most generous plants reared by human culture, and which are so closely connected with the primitive history of man—corn and the vine—were originally unknown in this quarter of the world. In the animal kingdom, America is far inferior to the other and more ancient continents of the globe. Many of the noblest and most beautiful species of animals did not exist there originally; and others again were found most unseemly in form, and most degenerate in nature. Some species of animals indigenous to that continent form but a feeble compensation for the absence of others, the most useful and most necessary for the purposes of husbandry and the domestic uses of man. We may boldly lay it down as a general proposition not to be taxed with error or exaggeration, that in the new hemisphere, vegetation is predominant, while in the old, animal force preponderates, and is more fully developed. This superiority is apparent not only in the comparative extent of population, but in the organic structure of the human form. Even the African tribes are far superior in bodily strength and agility to the aboriginal natives of America; and in point of longevity and fecundity, the latter are not to be compared with the Malayan race, and the Mongul tribes in the central or North-eastern parts of Asia, and in Southern Tartary, races with whom, in other respects, they seem to bear some analogy.
As the American continent, in other respects so incomplete, is mostly separated from all the others; and its form is more simple and less complex than that of the ancient divisions of the globe, it well deserves our consideration in that point of view; and it may perhaps furnish the general type and true geographical outline of a continent in its natural state. A narrow isthmus connects the upper half, stretching in a widely extended tract towards the North Pole, and the inferior part, with its Southern peak; and thus both form, according to general impression but one and the same continent; and so prove, in fact, how totally the Northern and Southern parts of a continent may differ. That now in the period when the Euxine was still united to the Caspian, when the White sea stretched farther into land, and the Ural mountains formed an island, or were surrounded to the North and South by the sea, Asia and Europe were probably separated towards the North, is a point to which we have already had occasion to allude. But if, on the one hand, Europe were separated from Asia, it might on the other have been easily joined to Africa by an isthmus, where it is now divided from it by a straight, and so have formed with it one connected continent; in the same way as Australia is united with Asia, if at least we consider the long chain of islands between them as one unbroken continuity. Then in truth there would have been but three continents of a form similar to the above-mentioned one of America; except that the two nobler continents closely entangled with one another would not on that account have so well preserved the original conformation. That it is on the whole more correct, and more consonant with nature, as well as with theory, to suppose the existence of only three original portions of the globe, might be shown by much additional evidence.
But, laying aside these geological facts and observations, ideas and conjectures, the philosophic historian can reckon over the whole surface of the globe but fifteen historical and important civilized countries of greater or less extent, which can form the subject, and furnish the geographical outline of his remarks. This historical chain of lands, or this stream of historical nations from the south-east of Asia to the Northern and Western extremities of Europe, forms a tract, through both continents, which though of considerable breadth, is not, in proportion to the extent of these continents, of very great magnitude, and which may be divided into three classes, coinciding chronologically in their several periods of historical glory and development with the great eras or sections of universal history from the primitive ages down to the present times. In the first class of these mighty and celebrated civilized countries, I would place the three great magnificent regions in Eastern and Southern Asia, China, India, between which the ancient Bactriana forms a point of transition and connecting link—and lastly Persia. In a more westerly and somewhat more northerly direction than the three countries just named, the second or middle class is composed of four or five regions remarkable for extent and beauty, and above all for their historical importance and celebrity. First of all, there is that middle country of Western Asia above-mentioned, which is situate near two great streams—the Tigris and the Euphrates, and bounded by four inland seas, the Persian and Arabian gulfs, and the Caspian and Mediterranean seas. Upon this midland country of ancient history, in every respect so worthy of notice, I have but one observation to add, that in this great series of civilized countries it occupies nearly the middle place; for the Southern extremity of India is about as far removed from it as, in the opposite direction, the North of Scotland. And the Eastern part of China is not much more distant from this region than in the opposite quarter the Western coast of the Hesperian Peninsula. Next must be included in this class the circumjacent countries, Arabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, together with the Caucasian regions.
As in the flourishing period of her ancient history, Greece was in every way far more closely connected with Asia Minor, Phœnicia, and Egypt, than with the countries of Europe, she also must be comprised in this division of Central Asia. On the other hand, there is no country in Europe which, considered in itself, bears so strongly the distinctive geographical configuration peculiar to the European continent. This peculiar configuration of Europe, so well adapted to the purposes of settlement, and to the progress of civilization, consists in this—that in no other continent does the same given space of territory present to the sea so extensive and diversified a line of coast, and furnish it with so many streams, great and small, as Europe shut in, as it is, between two inland seas, and the great ocean, and which runs out into so many great and commodiously situated Peninsulas, and possesses large, magnificent, and, in part, very anciently and highly civilized islands, like Sicily and the British Isles. What Europe is in a large way, Greece is in a small—a region of coasts, islands and peninsulas. Belonging more to one continent in its natural conformation, and to the other by its historical connexion, Greece forms the point of transition and the intermediate link between Asia and Europe.
The other six or seven principal countries in Europe, taken according to a strict geographical classification, and without paying attention to the political variations of territory, whether in antiquity, the middle ages, or modern times, form the members of the third class. These are first the two beautiful peninsulas, Italy and Spain; next France on the North and South washed by two different seas, and towards the North, jutting out into a by no means inconsiderable peninsula—further on, the British isles, the ancient Germany with its Northern coast stretching along two seas, to which must be annexed from the ancient consanguinity