There cannot, then, be any doubt that drawing, the basis of all the arts, was intensely practised in a country where the symbolic characters [hieroglyphs] forced even writers to be draughtsmen. But individuals retained the national taste, which considered only masses and neglected details. It is true that details, if they are not intelligently employed, serve only to destroy the overall effect and I believe that this was as little understood among the Egyptians as the art of composing groups. This is another reason why I have such a low opinion of their painting.
Not only was their way of drawing unfavourable to the great effects of this art, but painting also requires breaking up colour in a way that could only alter the solidity that they sought in everything they did. My judgement on this point does not depend only on the paintings that I have seen, which, bad as they are, might nevertheless have come from a country where excellent paintings existed, but on the accounts that I have read and what Père Sicard and other Travellers report of those that they have seen in a number of other places in Egypt, and above all in a ceiling at Dendera. I think that their colour was applied flat, in a continuous band and without contrasting colours. I further believe that they regarded painting with something like scorn. Let me explain: I believe that it seemed to them trivial and lacking in durability, and as such, at odds with the claims that they made on the esteem of posterity.
IIC4 Voltaire (François‐Marie Arouet; 1694–1778) from Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations
Voltaire was one of the generation of thinkers who established the intellectual atmosphere enabling the French Revolution. His Essai sur les moeurs (1756), whose full title includes the phrase ‘an essay on Universal History’, took as its point of departure Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History of 1681. In that text Bossuet, writing as a Roman Catholic bishop, had argued for the pre‐eminence of Christian Europe over ‘pagan’ nations. In contrast, Voltaire offered a more nuanced account, one not driven by religious partisanship but speaking to the secular concerns of Enlightenment debate. Bossuet’s book had aspired to cover a period from the beginning of the world to the empire of Charlemagne. It was the latter that Voltaire took as his point of departure. The present short extracts include Voltaire’s initial statement of his reasons for beginning his account of world history with the East, followed by some of his observations on China, India, ancient Persia and the early Islamic state (which was approximately coeval with Charlemagne). Throughout, Voltaire’s position has two sides. On the one hand, he emphasized the much longer period of civilization in the East than in Europe. But on the other, he had to acknowledge that eighteenth‐century European civilization appeared to have advanced in significantly new and powerful ways. That said, Voltaire’s openness to non‐European civilizations did not always extend to their art; his sociocultural radicalism was balanced by something altogether more conventional when it came to matters of ‘taste’ (cf. IIC5). The term ‘moeurs’, in Voltaire’s usage, goes beyond its conventional meaning of ‘customs’ and ‘manners’ to imply something of the sense of culture as a ‘whole way of life’ that did not become widely accepted until the twentieth century. The extracts are taken from An Essay on Universal History, the Manners and Spirit of Nations from the Reign of Charlemaign to the Age of Lewis XIV. Written in French by M. de Voltaire and Translated into English by Mr. Nugent, London 1759, pp. 2–4 (Introduction), 10 and 17–19 (on China), 30 and 32–4 (on India), 37–8 (on ancient Persepolis) and 56–9 (on the early Islamic Caliphate).
The celebrated Bossuet, who in his discourse on one part of universal history has entered into the true spirit of it, went no lower than Charlemaign. Your intent is to begin at this era, and thence to form a general idea of the universe; but you will be often obliged to go back to remoter times.1 This great writer takes but a slight notice of the Arabians who founded so potent an empire and so flourishing a religion; he makes mention of them as a swarm of barbarians. He expatiates on the Egyptians; but he is silent in regard to the Indians and the Chinese, nations as antient at least, and as considerable as the people of Egypt.
Nourished with the produce of their lands, clothed with their silks, amused by the games which they invented, and even instructed by their moral fables, why should we neglect to be acquainted with the spirit of those nations, to whose coasts our European merchants did not fail to steer, as soon as the way was laid open?
When you consider this globe as a philosopher, you first direct your attention to the east, the nursery of all arts, and from whence they have been communicated to the west. […] The whole Levant from Greece to the extremity of our hemisphere, was long celebrated in history, before we knew enough to convince us that we were barbarians. […]
Let us then survey this globe together. Let us see in what state it was, and consider it in the same order as it seems to have been civilized, that is, by proceeding from the eastern nations to our own; and let us give our attention first of all to a people, who had a connected history in a language already fixed, before we knew how to write.
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The empire of China, even in those days, was larger than that of Charlemaign, especially if we include Corea and Tonquin, provinces at that time tributary to the Chinese: it extends to about 30 degrees in longitude, and 24 in latitude. This state has subsisted in splendour above 4,000 years, without having undergone any material alteration in its laws, manners, language and even in the mode and fashion of dress. […]
This country, so greatly favoured by nature, produces all the different sorts of fruits that grow in Europe, and a great many others which we are strangers to. The earth is covered with wheat, rice, vines, pulse, and trees of every kind; but the inhabitants never make any wine, being satisfied with a liquor of sufficient strength, which they extract from rice.
That precious insect which produces silk, is originally from China, from whence it was not imported into Persia till very late, together with the art of weaving the down, in which it is inveloped: this manufacture was so very scarce even in Justinian’s time, that silk was sold in Europe for its weight in gold.
The Chinese have had a paper manufacture time immemorial; the paper is exceeding white and fine, and made of the strings of boiled bamboo. We cannot tell when first their porcelain was invented, nor that beautiful varnish which we begin now to imitate and to rival in Europe.
They have had glass manufacture these 2,000 years, but their glass is not so fine so transparent as ours.
They invented printing at the same time. It is well known that their method of printing is by engraving on wooden blocks, in the manner as was first practised by Guttenberg at Mentz in the fifteenth century. The art of stamping characters on wood is more improved in China; but such is their attachment to ancient customs, that they have not yet adopted our method of using moveable and fount types, though greatly superior to theirs. […]
Pekin has an observatory full of astrolabes