Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/755

Rh EUROPE 719 TTere it is on the side of the weak and oppressed, and seems humane and benign ; there on the side of the strong and despotic, and seems stern and cruel. In spite of all difficulties and opposition it is making rapid progress, and is likely to be a powerful factor in Europe for generations to come, building up political unities, rehabilitating de cadent languages, and calling new literatures into life. Greece and Italy, Belgium and Bohemia, Hungary and lloumania, are testimonies of its power in the past decades of the century : who will say what it will have accom plished before the century is done 1 As a natural complement of nationalism we have interna- !n - tionalism, which in certain aspects may be regarded as a stage in the progress to cosmopolitanism. Just in propor tion as the various nations develop and recognize their national individuality they become conscious of their true relations to each other, and find the necessity of regulating their mutual intercourse and common activity ; isolation is impossible. Reciprocity must increase with the capacities and desires of each : there are many things which can be attained only by concerted action or division of labour. The, tendency of internationalism is displayed in the .purely political domain by the growth of international law, and the gradual endeavours after a system by which interna tional disputes may be settled by arbitration and discussion rather than by armaments and devastation. That it will end before long in something like a confederation of European states the optimist believes and the philanthropist hopes. Every European congress familiarizes the idea and establishes the habit. In the social domain the tendency is equally potent. Facilities of travel and accumulation of wealth are annually leading a greater proportion of the citizens of one country to make personal acquaintance with the citizens of another. Ignorance and bigotry are natur ally lessened, though there ara indeed an ignorance and a bigotry which return from abroad only more ignorant and bigoted than before. It needs no special insight to recognize the importance to the great progress of the world of such an innovation as the railway ; but it would require more than human grasp of intellect to estimate the enormous extent and complexity of its influence. It is the one touch of art which will make the whole world kin. As a mighty upheaval lifts an archipelago of islands into a continent, so is this one power heaving Europe into unity. The move ment is perhaps most noticeable in matters of little intrinsic importance as in the gradual dying out of national and provincial costumes before the invasions of Parisian taste : but to the philanthropist nothing can be uninteresting that either indicates or accelerates the advance. In literature and art we have a still more important de velopment of internationalism; for it was in this domain that it first made itself powerfully felt.. Though Spain, France, England, Germany, and Holland have each given birth to distinct schools of painting, the influence of Italy has been paramount from the beginning; and though the literatures of the several countries are distinguished from each other by much that is characteristically local and national, they have all been based more or less directly on the classical work of Greece and Rome, and undergone continual modifications from their mutual interaction. It i.s hard to conceive what would have been the progress of English literature apart from the influence of Dante and Boccaccio, or, in later times, the progress of French litera ture if Voltaire and his contemporaries had received no inspiration from this side the Channel. To write the history of any literature is impossible if no account is taken of its foreign indebtedness. This mutual interaction is rapidly increasing, and in spite of the recent additions to the number of distinct literary areas, it is imprinting more and tnore of a common character on the whole. The novels of a Scott or the poems of a Byron sweep over the Continent, and come back in manifold reverberations from Germany and France, from Sweden and Spain. If the phrase the republic of letters is appropriate, still more appropriate is the republic of science ; if literature is becoming interna tional, science is international However bitter the jealousies that may separate France and Germany, the French savant watches aagerly for the work of his German compeer, and the German cannot afford to disdain the con tributions of the Frenchman. International congresses of the representatives of particular departments of research are becoming mere matters of course ; a meteorological congress met at Vienna in 1868, a health congress at Brussels in 1877. An association ultimately joined by nearly all the Continental nations was formed at Berlin in 1866 to determine the meridian between Palermo and Christiania, and thus furnish a standard unit for Europe; and in 1877 a geographical congress for the exploration of Africa was opened under the presidency of the king of the Belgians. How necessary such co-operation really is is shown by the loss that science has already sustained from the existence of different methods of registration and observation : the labour of years has not unfrequently been rendered utterly useless to the general progress by the employment of incommensurable systems. Considerable advances have happily been made towards the universal adoption of the same metrical and monetary standards. The French system of weights and measures was introduced into the Netherlands in 1820, into Spain in 1859, into Por tugal in 1868, into Germany in 1872, and into Roumania in 1876. In 1881 it will become obligatory in Norway and Sweden. A monetary league, by which they agreed to perfect reciprocity of currency, was formed in 1865 by France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, and they were joined by Greece in 1875, and by Roumania in 1876. Uniformity of coinage was established throughout the German empire in 1872, and iu 1875 the Scan dinavian states agreed to adopt a common system. In 1874 a postal union was constituted by a convention at Bern between Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Servia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey ; and this has been followed by a similar telegraphic union. A third tendency fostered by the same conditions as Tolerv internationalism is what is known as religious and political tion. toleration. The name is an unhappy one, as it implies the mutual obnoxiousness of the various religious and political parties, but the time has hardly come when it can be con sidered a misnomer; the foremost countries of Europe are still far from having attained the full enjoyment of that intellectual liberty which formed the ideal of a Milton, a De Tocqueville, or a Stuart Mill. Thanks, indeed, to the influence of the French Revolution, rapid progress has been made during the present century, and the severer forms of persecution have fallen decidedly out of fashion. The Jews are the most notable monument of the change. Their his tory for centuries was full of blood and tears ; they were despised and rejected ; their very name was a byword and reproach. The 19th century has seen them gradually ad mitted to all the rights of citizens in the most flourishing countries of the continent, guiding the destinies of nations and mingling their blood with the proudest nobilities. In the more backward and conservative countries they still labour under many disadvantages : from Norway and Russia Proper they are excluded by law, and in Portugal and Spain they are emphatically aliens. The same number of Dr Lehmann s Der Israelit, one of the organs of the orthodox parly, re ports that Roumania is preparing a law for the civic and political equalization o*! the native Jews, and that in