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FOUNDATIONS OF THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY
VOL. I
FOUNDATIONS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
A TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN
BY JOHN LEES, M.A., D.LIT. ERS)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION ww

BY LORD REDESDALE, G.C.V.O..K.C.B,ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES: VOLUME I

LONDON: JOHN LANE TH” ODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LAN COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN : MCMXIII .
A. 2t112%

2
anol

First Impression November 1910
Second Impression January 1912
Third Impression May 1912
Fourth Impression March 1933

PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON
INTRODUCTION

OME ten years ago there appeared in Germany

a work of the highest importance which at once

arrested the attention of the literary world, and

was speedily declared to be one of the master-

pieces of the century. The deep learning, the sympathy

with knowledge in its most various forms, a style some-

times playful, sometimes ironical, always persuasive,

always logical, pages adorned with brilliant passages of

the loftiest elogquence—these features were a passport to

immediate recognition. Three editions were exhausted

in as many years, and now when it has gone through

eight editions, and, in spite of the expense of the two

bulky volumes, no fewer than sixty thousand copies

have been sold in Germany, it is surely time that

England should see the book clothed in the native language
of its author.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born at Southsea
in 1855, the son of Admiral William Charles Chamberlain.
Two of his uncles were generals in the English army, a
third was the well-known Field-Marshal Sir Neville
Chamberlain. His mother was a daughter of Captain
Basil Hall, R.N., whose travels were the joy of the boy-
hood of my generation, while his scientific observations

v
vi INTRODUCTION

won for him the honour of Fellowship of the Royal
Society. Captain Basil Hall’s father, Sir James Hall,
was himself eminent in science, being the founder of
experimental geology. As a man of science therefore
(and natural science was his first love), Houston Chamber-
lain may be regarded as an instance of atavism, or, to
use the hideous word coined by Galton, ‘‘ eugenics.”

His education was almost entirely foreign. It began
in a Lycée at Versailles. Being destined for the army
he was afterwards sent to Cheltenham College: but the
benign cruelty of fate intervened ; his health broke
down, he was removed from school, and all idea of entering
the army was given up: and so it came to pass that the
time which would have been spent upon mastering the
goose-step and the subtleties of drill was devoted under
the direction of an eminent German tutor, Herr Otto
Kuntze, to sowing the seed of that marvellous harvest of
learning and scholarship the full fruit of which, in the
book before us, has ripened for the good of the world.
After a while he went to Geneva, where under Vogt,
Graebe, Miiller Argovensis, Thury, Plantamour and other
great professors he studied systematic botany, geology,
astronomy, and later the anatomy and physiology of the
human body. But the strain of work was too great and
laid too heavy a tax upon his strength; so, for a time
at any rate, natural science had to be abandoned and he
migrated to Dresden, a forced change which was another
blessing in disguise ; for at Dresden he plunged heart and
soul into the mysterious depths of the Wagnerian music
and philosophy, the metaphysical works of the master
probably exercising as strong an influence upon him as
the musical dramas.
INTRODUCTION vil

Chamberlain’s first published work was in French,
Notes sur Lohengrin. This was followed by various
essays in German on Wagnerian subjects : but they were
not a success, and so, disgusted with the petty jealousies
and unrealities of art-criticism, he fell back once more
upon natural science and left Dresden for Vienna, where
he placed himself under the guidance of Professor Wiesner.
Again the miseries of health necessitated a change. Out
of the wreck of his botanical studies he saved the materials
for his Recherches sur la séve ascendante, a recognised
authority among continental botanists, and natural
science was laid aside, probably for ever.

Happily the spell of the great magician was upon him.
In 1892 there appeared Das Drama Richard Wagners,
which, frozen almost out of existence at first (five copies
were sold in the twelvemonth, of which the author
was himself the buyer), has since run into four greedily
purchased editions. Then came that fine book, the Lie
of Wagner, which has been translated into English by
Mr. Hight, and Chamberlain’s reputation was made, to
be enhanced by the colossal success of the Grundlagen
des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts which followed in 1899.
Naturally enough, criticism was not spared. The book
was highly controversial and no doubt lent itself to some
misunderstanding: moreover the nationality of the
author could hardly fail to be in a sense provocative of
some slight jealousy or even hostility. One critic did
not hesitate to accuse him of plagiarism—plagiarism,
above all, from Richard Wagner, the very man whose
disciple and historian he was proud to be, whose daughter
he was, years afterwards, to marry. But this attack
is one for which Chamberlain might well be thankful,
viii INTRODUCTION

for it gave him the chance, in the preface to the third
edition, of showing all his skill in fence, a skill proof even
against the coup de Jarnac. His answer to his critics
on his theory of Race, and his criticism of Delitzsch
in the preface to the fourth edition are fine pieces of
polemical writing. /~

What is the Book ? How should it be defined? Is
it history, a philosophical treatise, a metaphysical in-
quiry ? I confess, I know not: probably it is all three.
I am neither an historian, alas! nor a philosopher, nor
a metaphysician. To me the book has been a simple
delight—the companion of months—fulfilling the highest
function of which a teacher is capable, that of awakening
thought and driving it into new channels. That is the
charm of the book. The charm of the man is his ob-
viously transparent truthfulness. Anything fringing
upon fraud is abhorrent to him, something to be scourged
with scorpions. As in one passage he himself says, the
enviable gift of lying has been denied to him. Take his
answer to Professor Delitzsch’s famous pamphlet Babel
und Bibel, to which I have alluded above.

No writer is so dangerous as the really learned scholar
who uses his learning, as a special pleader might, in
support of that which is not true. Now, Professor
Delitzsch is an authority in Assyriology and the know-
ledge of the cuneiform inscriptions. The object of his
brilliant and cleverly named pamphlet was to arouse
interest in the researches of the German Orientalischer
Verein. In this sense any discovery which can be brought
into line with the story of the Old Testament is an engine
the price of which is above pearls. Accordingly, Professor
Delitzsch, eager to furnish proof of Semitic monotheism,
INTRODUCTION ix

brings out the statement that the Semitic tribes of Canaan
which, at the time of Khammurabi, two thousand years
before Christ, flooded Assyria, were worshippers of one
God, and that the name of that God was Jahve (Jehovah),
and in support of that statement he translates the inscrip-
tions on two tablets, or fragments of tablets, in the British
Museum. Now it must be obvious to the poorest intelli-
gence that an obscure script like that in the cuneiform
character can only be read with any approach to certainty
where there is the opportunity of comparison, that is to
say, where the same groups of wedges or arrowheads, as
they used to be called, are found repeated in various con-
nections : even so, the patience and skill which have been
spent upon deciphering the inscriptions, from the days
of Hincks and Rawlinson until now, are something
phenomenal. Where a proper name occurs only once,
the difficulty is increased a hundredfold. Yet this did
not deter Delitzsch from making his astounding mono-
theistic assertion on the strength of an arbitrary inter-
pretation of a single example of a group of signs, which
signs moreover are capable of being read, as is proved
by the evidence of the greatest Assyriologists, in six if
not eleven different ways. Truly a fine case for doctors
to disagree upon! Chamberlain, with that instinctive
shying at a fraud which distinguishes him, at once
detected the imposition. He is no Assyriologist, but his
work brings him into contact with the masters of many
crafts, and so with the pertinacity of a sleuth-hound he
runs the lie to earth. In a spirit of delicate banter,
through which the fierce indignation of the truth-lover
often pierces, he tears the imposture to tatters; his
attack is a fighting masterpiece, to which I cannot but
x INTRODUCTION

allude, if only in the sketchiest way, as giving a good
example of Chamberlain’s methods. So much for Tablet
No. I.

The interpretation of the second tablet upon which
Professor Delitzsch reads the solemn declaration “ Jahve
is God” fares no better at our author’s hands; for he
brings forward two unimpeachable witnesses, Hommel and
Kénig, who declare that Delitzsch has misread the signs
which really signify ‘‘ The moon is God.”

It is well known—a fact scientifically proved by much
documentary evidence—that Khammurabi and his con-
temporaries were worshippers of the sun, the moon and
the stars; the name of his father was Sin-mubalit, “ the
moon gives life,” his son was Shamshuiluna, “‘ the sun is
our God.” But no evidence is sufficient to check Pro-
fessor Delitzsch’s enthusiasm over his monotheistic
Khammurabi! That much in the deciphering of As-
syrian inscriptions is to a great extent problematical is
evident. One thing, however, is certain in these readings
of Professor Delitzsch: in the face of the authority of
other men of learning, his whole fabric, ‘a very Tower of
Babel, but built on paper, crumbles to pieces; and in-
stead of the pompously announced, unsuspected aspect
of the growth of monotheism, nothing remains to us but
a surely very unexpected insight into the workshop of
lax philology and fanciful history-mongering.”’

It seems to me that Khammurabi has been made a
victim in this controversy. \ Even if he was a worshipper
of the sun and the stars and the moon, he was, unless
we ignorant folk have been cruelly misled, a very great
man: for he appears to have been the first king who
recognised the fact that if a people has duties to its
INTRODUCTION xi

sovereign, the sovereign on the other hand has duties
to his people—and that, for a monarch who reigned so
many centuries before Moses, must be admitted to show
a very high sense of kingly responsibility. But Delitzsch,
in trying to prove too much, has done him the dis-service
of exposing him to what almost amounts to a sneer from
the Anti-Semites. I have submitted what I have written
above to Dr. Budge of the British Museum, who authorises
me to say that he concurs in Chamberlain’s views of
Professor Delitzsch’s translation.

But it is time that we should leave these battles of
the learned in order to consider the scheme, the scope
and the conduct of the book. To write the story of the
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century was a colossal
task, for which the strength of a literary Hercules would
alone be of any avail. Mr. Chamberlain, however, has
brought to the uridertaking such a wealth of various
knowledge and reading, set out with unrivalled dialectical
power, that even those who may disagree with some of
his conclusions'must perforce incline themselves before
the presence of a great master. That his book should be
popular with those scholars who are wedded to old tradi-
tions was not to be expected. He has shattered too
many idols, dispelled too many dearly treasured illusions.
And the worst of it is that the foundations of his beliefs—
perhaps I should rather say of his disbeliefs—are built
upon rocks so solid that they will defy the cunningest
mines that can be laid against them. This is no mere
chronicle of ruling houses, no record of butcheries.” It
is the story of the rise of thought, of religion, of poetry, of
learning, of civilisation, of art; the story of all those
elements of which the complex life of the Indo-European
xii INTRODUCTION

of to-day is composed—the story of what he calls “ Der
Germane.”’

And here let me explain once for all what Chamberlain
means by “ Der Germane”’: obviously not the German,
for that would have been ‘‘ Der Deutsche.” To some
people the name may be misleading ; but he has adopted
‘it, and I may have to use it again, so let us take his own
explanation of it. In this term he includes the Kelts,
the Germans, the Slavs, and all those races of northern
Europe from which the peoples of modern Europe have
sprung (evidently also the people of the United States
of America). The French are not specifically mentioned,
but it is clear from more than one passage that they too
are included. As indeed how should they be left out ?
Yet it strikes one almost as a paradox to find Louis XIV.
claimed as a “‘ genuine Germane”’ for resisting the en-
croachments of the Papacy, and bearding the Pope as
no other Catholic sovereign ever did; and blamed as a
Germane false to his ‘‘ Germanentum ” for his shameless
persecution of the Protestants! In the Germane, then,
he describes the dominant race of the nineteenth century.
Strange indeed is the beginning of the history of that
race.

Far away in Asia, behind the great mountain fastnesses
of India, in times so remote that even tradition and fable
are silent about them, there dwelt a race of white men.
They were herdsmen, shepherds, tillers of the soil, poets
and thinkers. They were called Aryas—noblemen or
householders—and from them are descended the domi-
‘nant caste of India, the Persians, and the great nations
of Europe. The history of the Aryan migrations, theit
dates, their causes, is lost in the clouds of a mysterious
INTRODUCTION xiii

past. All that we know is that there were at least three
great wanderings: two southward to India and Persia,
one, or perhaps several, across the great Asiatic continent
to Europe. What drove these highly gifted people from
their farms and pastures ? Was it the search for change
of climate? Was it pressure from the Mongols? There
are some reasons for supposing that religious dissent
may have had something to do with it. For instance,
the evil spirits of the Zendavesta, the scriptures of the
Zoroastrians, are the gods of the Rigveda, the sacred
poems of the Indian Aryans, and vice versd. Be that as
it may, wherever the Aryans went they became masters. _
The Greek, the Latin, the Kelt, the Teuton, the Slav—
all these were Aryans: of the aborigines of the countries 2
which they overran, scarcely a trace remains. So, too,
in India it was “‘ Varna,’’ colour, which distinguished the j
white conquering Arya from the defeated black man, the
Dasyu, and so laid the foundation of caste. It is to the
Teuton branch of the Aryan family that the first place in
the world belongs, and the story of the Nineteenth Century
is the story of the Teuton’s triumph. -

While by no means ignoring, or failing to throw light
upon, the Assyrian or Egyptian civilisations, this all-
embracing book ascribes the laying of the Foundations of
the Nineteenth Century to the life-work of three peoples :
two of these, the Greek and Roman, being of Aryan
extraction, the third, the Jew, Semitic.

Of Greek poetry and art Chamberlain writes with
all the passionate rapture of a lover. “‘ Every inch of
Greek soil is sacred.” Homer, the founder of a religion,
the maker of gods, stands on a pinnacle by himself. He
was, as it were, the Warwick of Olympus. ‘“ That any
xiv INTRODUCTION

one should have doubted the existence of the poet Homer
will not give to future generations a favourable impression
of the pexspicacity of our times.” It is just a hundred
years since Wolf started his theory that there was no such
poet as Homer—that the Iliad and Odyssey were a parcel
of folk-songs of many dates and many poets pasted
together. By whom? asks Chamberlain. Why are
there no more such “able editors’? Is it paste that
is lacking or brain-paste? Schiller at once denounced
the idea as “ simply barbarous ” and proclaimed Wolf to
be a “stupid devil.’’ Goethe at first was caught by the
idea, but when he examined the poems more closely,
from the point of view of the poet, recanted, and came to
the conclusion that there could be only one Homer.
And now “Homer enters the twentieth century, the
fourth millennium of his fame, greater than ever.’’ No
great work of art, as Chamberlain points out, was ever
produced by the collaboration of a number of little men.
The man who made the faith of a people was, as Aristotle
put it, ‘‘ divine before all other poets.” If Greek poetry
and Greek art were in those two branches of human
culture the chief inheritance of the nineteenth century,
then we may safely assert that Homer in that direction
dominated all other influence and was the first prophet
of our Indo-European culture.

Never, indeed, did the sacred fire of poetry and art
burn with a purer flame than it did in ancient Greece.
Homer was followed by a radiant galaxy of poets. The
tragic dramas of Aischylus and Sophocles, the farces of
Aristophanes, the idylls of Theocritus, the odes of Pindar,
the dainty lyrics of Anacreon, have made the Greek
genius the test by which all subsequent work must be
INTRODUCTION XV

judged. In architecture and sculpture the Greeks have
never been equalled; of their painting we know less;
but the men who were under the influence of a Phidias and
a Praxiteles, we may safely say, would not have borne
with a mere dauber. Poetry and art then were the very
essence of Greek life; they penetrated the soul and
thrilled every fibre of the ancient Hellenes. Their
philosophy, the deep thoughts that vibrated in their brain,
were poetry. Plato himself was, as Montesquieu said
of him, one of the four great poets of mankind. He was
the Homer of thought, too great a poet, according to
Zeller, to be quite a philosopher. But Plato was Himself;
and his spirit is as young and as fresh to-day as it was
when he was so penetrated with the sense of beauty that
he made his Socrates lecture only in the fairest scenes,
and pray to the great god Pan that he might be beautiful
in his inner self, and that his outer self should be in tune
with it. ‘ Much that has come between has sunk in
oblivion ; while Plato and Aristotle, Democritus, Euclid
and Archimedes live on in our midst stimulating and
instructing, and the half-fabulous figure of Pythagoras
grows greater with every century.”

But—and it is a big “‘ but ’’—when we come to meta-
physics Chamberlain cries, Halt! With all his reverence
for Plato as statesman, moralist and practical reformer ;
for Aristotle as the first encyclopzedist ; full of admiration
for the philosophers of the great epoch so far as they
represent a “creative manifestation” of the mind of
man closely allied to the poetic art, in the history of human
thought he dethrones them from the high place which
has hitherto been assigned to them, he denies them the
honour of having been the first thinkers. To Aristotle,
xvi INTRODUCTION

indeed, with all his gifts, he traces the decadence of the
Hellenic spirit.

It has been the fashion among the schoolmen to hold
the Greeks up to admiration as being historically the first
thinkers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
They laid the foundations of our science, of geography,
natural history, logic, ethics, mathematics—of meta-
physics they were not the founders, though they taught
us to think. Bacon indeed condemned their philosophy as
“childish, garrulous, impotent and immature in creative
power.” Centuries before the birth of the great Greeks,
India had produced philosophers who in the realms of
thought reached heights which never were attained by
Plato or Aristotle. The doctrine of the transmigration
of souls was brought by Pythagoras from India. In
Greece, until it was published by Plato, it was regarded
as the mystery of mysteries, only to be revealed to the
elect—to the high priests of thought: but in India it was
the common belief of the vulgar ; whereas to the philoso-
phers, a small body of deep thinkers, it was and is an
allegorical representation of a truth only to be grasped
by deep metaphysical pondering. The common creed
of the Indian coolie, invested by Plato with the halo of
his sublime poetry, became glorified as the highest
expression of Greek thought !

Alas ! for the long years wasted in the worship of false
gods! Alas! for the idols with feet of clay, ruthlessly
hurled from their pedestals! That the ancient Greek
was the type of all that was chivalrous and noble was the
accepted belief taught by the old-fashioned, narrow-
minded pedagogues of two generations ago. They took
the Greeks at their own valuation, accepting all their
INTRODUCTION xvii

figures and facts without a question. Their battles were
always fought against fearful odds; they performed
prodigies of valour; their victories decided the fate of
the world. To the student brought up in the faith of
such books as Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the
World, it comes as a shock to be told that Marathon was
a mere skirmish without result, in which, as a matter of
fact, the Athenians had if anything rather the worst
of it. Even Herodotus inconveniently let out the fact
that Miltiades hurried on the battle knowing that his
brave Hoplites were half minded to go over to the enemy,
and that delay might cause this treacherous thought to
be carried into effect. Another half-hour and the “‘ heroes
of Marathon ”’ would have been seen marching against
Athens side by side with the Persians. As it was, the
latter quietly sailed back to Ionia in their Grecian ships,
carrying with them several thousand prisoners and a
great store of booty. Gobineau has shown that Salamis
was no better, and he describes Grecian history as “la
plus élaborée des fictions du plus artiste des peuples.” |

In the view of writers like Gobineau and Chamberlain
the ancient Greek was a fraud, a rogue and a coward, a
slave-driver, cruel to his enemies, faithless to -his friends,
without one shred of patriotism or of honour. Alcibiades
changing colour like a chameleon, Solon forsaking his
life’s work and going over to Pisistratus, Themistocles
haggling over the price for which he should betray Athens
before Salamis, and living at the Court of Artaxerxes as
the declared enemy of Greece, despised by the Persians
“as a wily Greek snake,” these and others are sickening
pictures which Chamberlain draws of the Hellene when
viewed as a man apart from his poetry and his art.

1 6
xviii INTRODUCTION

Probably in these days of critical investigation the
fanciful teaching of previous generations will be modified.
The Greeks have enough really to their credit, they have
a sufficient title to our gratitude for what they were,
without being held up to our admiration for that which
they distinctly were not. It seems laughable that
Grote should have accepted as gospel truth, and held up
as an example for future ages, what Juvenal had summed
up, eighteen hundred years before, as “all that lying
Greece dares in history.” ze

No two people could be in sharper contrast to one
another than the Greeks and the Romans. From the
creative genius of the Greeks we have inherited Olympus,
the Gods, and Homer who made them, poetry, architecture,
sculpture, philosophy, all that makes up the joy of life:
not our religion—that comes from a higher source—and
yet, even here perhaps something, some measure of
religiosity which fitted us to receive the Divine Message.
The gift of the matter-of-fact Roman, on the other hand,
\has been law, order, statecraft, the idea of citizenship,
‘the sanctity of the family and of property. Borne on
the pinions of imagination the Greek soared heavenward.
The Roman struck his roots deep into the soil. In all
that contributes to the welfare and prosperity of the State
and of the man the Roman was past-master. In poetry,
in the fine arts, in all that constitutes culture, he was an
imitator, a follower—at a great distance—of the Greeks.
A poet in the true sense of the word, he certainly was not.
A poet means one who creates. Consider the trans-
lations and imitations wrought with consummate skill
by Virgil, at the imperial command, into an epic in honour
of a dynasty and a people. Compare these, masterpieces
INTRODUCTION xix

of their kind though they be, with the heaven-inspired
creations of Homer, and you will see what Chamberlain
means when he says that “to unite Greek poetry with
Latin poetry in the one conception of classical litera-
ture, is a proof of incredible barbarism in taste, and of a
lamentable ignorance of the essence and value of artistic
genius.” The Roman was no true poet, no creator.
Horace, with all his charm—the most quotable of writers
because his dainty wit had the secret of rendering with
delicate fancy the ideas which occur at every step, on
every occasion of our lives—-was after all only the first
and foremost of all society verse-writers. Chamberlain
is inclined to make an exception in favour of Lucretius,
of whom in a footnote he says that he is worthy of ad-
miration both as thinker and bard. (I hesitate here to
translate the word Dichter by “ poet.’””) Yet in the same
note he goes on to say that his thoughts are altogether-
Greek, and his materials preponderatingly so. ‘“‘ More-
over there lies over his whole work the deadly shadow of
that scepticism that sooner or later leads to barrenness,
and which must be carefully distinguished from the deep
intuition of truly religious spirits that preserve the
figurative in that which they set forth without thereby
casting doubt upon the lofty truth of their inmost fore-
bodings, their inscrutable mysteries.’”” For Lucretius,
Epicurus, the man who denied the existence of God, was
the greatest of mortals. And yet there came a day
when even Epicurus must needs fall down before Zeus.
“Never,” cried Diokles, who found him in the Temple,
"did I see Zeus greater than when Epicurus lay there
at his feet.” Footnotes are apt to be skipped, and I
have felt it right to dwell upon this one because of its
xx INTRODUCTION

importance as bearing upon Chamberlain’s views of the
** deadly shadow of scepticism.”

The poetry of Greecewas the dawn of all that is beautiful,
the bounteous fountain of all good gifts, at which, century
after century, country after country, have quaffed the
joyous cup, seeking inspiration that in their turn they
might achieve something lovely.

The influence which Rome has exercised upon our
development has been in a totally different direction.
From the beginning of time the races of Aryan extraction
have been deeply imbued with the conviction of the
importance of law. Yet it was reserved for the Romans
to develop this instinct, and they succeeded because to
them alone among the Aryans was possible the con-
solidation of the State. The law was the foundation of
personal right ; the State was based upon the sacrifice of
that personal right, and the delegation of personal power
for the common weal. If we realise that, we recognise
the immense value of the inheritance bequeathed to us
by the Romans. Without the great quality of patriotism
this would have been impossible.

The spot upon which the Roman had settled had
little physically to recommend it. There was no romantic
scenery, there were no lofty mountains, no rushing rivers.
The seven mean hills, the yellow mud of the Tiber, the
fever-stricken marshes, a soil poor and unproductive,
were not features to captivate the imagination. But
the Roman loved it and cherished it in his heart of hearts.
Surrounded by hostile tribes, his early history was one
long struggle for life, in which his great qualities always
won the day. Once defeated, he would have been wiped
off the face of the earth: strength of character, deter-
INTRODUCTION xxi

mination, courage above proof, saved him, and in the
end made him the conqueror of the world. There was
no need in his case to pass laws enforcing valour as in the
case of Sparta, making men brave, as it were, by act of
Parliament. There was no fear of his turning traitor ;
he was loyal to the core. His home, his family, his father-
land were sacred, the deeply treasured objects of his
worship, a religion in themselves. Self was laid on one
side—the good of the community was everything. It was
the idea of the family carried into statecraft. One word
represented it, Patria, the fatherland, and the man who
worked for the Patria was the ideal statesman.

Is it fair, asks Chamberlain, to call the Roman a con-
queror or invader ? He thinks not. He was driven to
war not by the desire of conquest or of aggrandisement,
but by the desperate determination to maintain his home
or die. With the defeat and disappearance of the sur-
rounding tribes, he found himself ever compelled to push
his outposts farther and farther still ; it was self-preserva-
tion; not the lust of conquest, which armed the Roman.
For him war was a political necessity, and no people
ever possessed the political instinct in so high a degree.

The struggle with Carthage was a case in point. His-
torians from the earliest times, from Polybius to Momm-
sen, have denounced the barbarity shown by the
Romans in the extermination of Carthage. Chamberlain
in a few convincing paragraphs teaches us what was the
real issue. He shows us that annihilation was an absolute
necessity. Rome and Carthage could not exist together.
The fight was for the ‘supremacy in the Mediterranean,
and therefore for the mastery of the world. On the one
side was the civilising influence of Rome, colonising under
xxii INTRODUCTION

laws so beneficent that nations even came to petition
that they might be placed under her rule: on the other
side a system of piratical colonisation undertaken in the
sole cause of gain, the abolition of all freedom, the
creation of artificial wants in the interest of trade, no
attempt at legal organisation beyond the imposition of
taxes, slavery, a religion of the very basest in which
human sacrifices were a common practice. The Roman
felt that it must be war to the knife without quarter.
In his own interest, and, though he knew it not, in that
of the world, there could be nothing short of extermination.
«“ Delenda est Carthago” was the cry. Had he failed,
had the piracy of the Semitic combination of Phcenicians
and Babylonians won the day against the law and order
of the Aryan, it is not too much to say that culture and
civilisation would have come to a standstill, and the
development of the nineteenth century would have been
an impossibility, or at any rate hopelessly retarded. “It
is refreshing,’ writes Chamberlain, ‘“‘ for once to come
across an author who, like Bossuet, simply says, ‘ Carthage
was taken and destroyed by Scipio, who herein proved
himself worthy of his great ancestor,’ without any outburst
of moral indignation, without the conventional phrase,
* ‘all the misery that later burst upon Rome was retribution
for this crime.’”” Czsar rebuilt Carthage, and it became
a congeries of all the worst criminals, Romans, Greeks,
Vandals, all rotten to the very marrow of their bones.
It must have been something like Port Said in the early
days some forty years ago, which seemed to be the
trysting-place of the world’s rascaldom: those who
remember it can form some idea of what that second
Carthage of Ceesar’s must have been.
INTRODUCTION xxiii

In the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans one
sees the hand of Providence. It was largely the act of
the Jew himself, the born rebel against State law, or any
law save that which he deemed to be his own sacred
inheritance. It was immaterial that he had himself
petitioned Rome to save him from his own Semitic kings
and to take him under her charge. He was a continual
thorn in the side of his chosen rulers, and his final sub-
jugation and dispersal became a necessity. Had the
Jew remained in Jerusalem, Christianity would have
become a mere sect of the Jews. Long before our era
the Diaspora had taken place. Originally the Diaspora
meant the Jews who, after the Babylonian captivity,
refused to go back to Palestine because of the prosperity
which they enjoyed in their place of exile. Later it
embraced all those Jews who, for various reasons of trade,
or convenience, or missionary enterprise, went forth into
the world. In Alexandria alone these numbered over one
million. The making of proselytes was universal. But
wherever they might be, to Jerusalem they looked as to
their home. To Jerusalem they sent tribute, in the
interests of Jerusalem they worked as one man. The
influence of Jerusalem was all-pervading. Even the first
Christians, in spite of St. Paul, held to the rites of Judaism ;
those who did not were branded by St. John as “ them
of the Synagogue of Satan.” In destroying the strong-
hold of Judaism the Romans, though here again they
knew it not, were working for the triumph of Christianity.
As it is, much of Judaism pervades our faith. Had
Jerusalem stood, the “ religious monopoly of the Jews,”
says Chamberlain, ‘‘ would have been worse than the
trade monopoly of the Pheenicians. Under the leaden
xxiv INTRODUCTION

‘pressure of these born dogmatists and fanatics, all free-
dom of thought and of belief would have vanished from
the world: the flat materialistic conception of God
would have been our religion, pettifoggery our philosophy.
This is no fancy picture, there are too many facts crying
aloud: for what is that stiff, narrow-minded, spiritually
cramped dogmatising of the Christian Church, such as
no Aryan people ever dreamt of ; what is that blood-
thirsty fanaticism disgracing the centuries down to the
nineteenth, that curse of hatred fastening on to the
religion of love from the very beginning, from which
Greek and Roman, Indian and Chinese, Persian and
Teuton, turm with a shudder? What is it if not the
shadow of that Temple in which sacrifice was offered to
the God of wrath and of revenge, a black shadow cast
over the young generation of heroes striving out of the
Darkness into the Light ?”

With the help of Rome, Europe escaped from the chaos
of Asia. The imaginative Greek was ever looking towards
“Asia—to him the East called. The practical Roman
transferred the centre of gravity of culture to find an
eternal home in the West, so that Europe “ became the
beating heart and the thinking brain of all mankind.”
The Aryan had mastered the Semite for all time.

It comes somewhat as a surprise to find Rome, the ideal
Republic, pointed to as the fountain-head from which the
conception of Constitutional Monarchy is drawn. The
principle of Roman Law and the Roman State was, as
we have seen, that of the rights of the individual and his
power to choose representatives. In the course of time
when Rome ceased to be Rome, when she fell unde: the
Tule of half-breeds from Africa, aliens from Asia Minor,
INTRODUCTION xxv

baseborn men from Illyria, not chosen by the people,
but elected by the army ; when she had ceased even to
be the capital of her own Empire ; one would have thought
that the decay of the Republic would have been the end
of all the constitutional principles which it had established.
But it was not so. The jurists in the service of Diocletian,
an Illyrian shepherd, of Galerius, an Illyrian cowherd, of
Maximinus, an Illyrian swineherd, were the men who
based the imperial conception upon the theory of the will
of the people, upon the same power which had elected the
consuls and the other officers of the ancient State. Never
before had the world beheld such a phenomenon. ‘“‘ Des-
pots had ruled as direct descendants of the Gods, as in the
case of the Egyptians and the Japanese of to-day, or as
in Israel as representatives of the Godhead, or again by
the Jus Gladii—the right of the sword.” The soldier-
emperors who had made themselves masters of the Roman
Empire founded their rights as autocrats upon the con-
stitutional law of the Republic. There was no usurpation,
only delegation pure and simple. To this we owe the
conception of the Sovereign and the Subject.

In the meantime Christianity had become a power ;
and with it had taken place the abolition of slavery in
Europe. Only a Sovereign could abolish slavery—that
we saw in Russia in 1862. The nobles would never have
given up their slaves, who were their property, their goods
and chattels; far rather would they have made free men
into bondsmen. But the establishment of the monar-
chical principle has been the main pillar of law and order
and of that civic freedom from which, as we see, it origin-
ally sprang : it is one proof of the great debt of gratitude
which Europe owes to ancient Rome. “t is not the only one.
xxvi INTRODUCTION

It would be an impertinence were I to attempt te
discuss Roman Law. The treatment of the subtleties
and intricacies of a highly technical subject must be left
to those who have made of them a special study. Yet
it is impossible to pass over in silence the effect of the
great legacy which the world has inherited from Rome.
The effect is an historical fact and must be as patent to
the layman as to the professed jurist. What Greece did
for the higher esthetic culture, that Rome did for law,
good government and statecraft. The one made life
beautiful, the other made it secure. As a poet, or as a
philosopher, the Roman was insignificant ; he had not
even an equivalent for either word in his language; he
must borrow the name, as he borrowed the idea, from the
Greek. But in the practical direction of the life of the
individual, of the life of the State, he remains, after more
than twenty centuries, the unrivalled master. The
pages in which Chamberlain brings into relief the noble
qualities of the Roman character are, to my thinking,
among the best and most eloquent in his book, and they
should be read not without profit in an age which is
singularly impatient of discipline. For after listening
to Chamberlain we must come away convinced that it
was discipline which made the Roman what he was. He
learnt to obey that he might learn to command, and so
he became the ruler of the world. That his conception
of the law has become the model upon which all jurispru-
dence has been moulded, the State as he founded it being
based upon the great principles of reciprocity and self-
sacrifice on the one side and of protection of the sanctity
of private rights on the other, is a fact which bears lasting
testimony to the force of Roman character. There have
INTRODUCTION xxvii

been great jurists in many nations—professors learned
in the law—laws have been amplified and changed to
meet circumstances; but no single nation has ever
raised such a legal monument as that of the Romans,
which, according to Professor Leist, is ‘‘ the everlasting
teacher for the civilised world and will so remain.”

It is interesting to consider wherein lay the difference
between Greek and Roman legislation. How came it,
asks Chamberlain, that the Greeks, mentally so incom-
parably superior to the Romans, were able to achieve
nothing lasting, nothing perfect, in the domain of law?
The reason he gives is simple enough—simple and con-
vincing. The Roman started with the principle of the
family, and on the basis of the family he raised the
structure of State and Law. The Greek, on the contrary,
ignored the family, and took the State as his starting-
point. Even the law of inheritance was so vague that
questions in connection with it were left by Solon to
the decision of the Courts. In Rome the position of the
Father as King in his own house, the rank assigned to
the Wife as house-mistress, the reverential respect for
matrimony, these were great principles of which the Greeks
knew nothing ; but they were the principles upon which
the existence of the private man depended, upon which
the Res Publica was founded. The Jus Privatum and the
Jus Publicum were inseparable, and from them sprang the
Jus Gentium, the law of nations. The laws of Solon, of
Lycurgus and others have withered and died; but the
laws of Rome remain a stately and fruit-bearing tree,
under whose wholesome shade the civilisation of Europe
has sprung up and flourished.

Few men have approached a great subject in a loftier
xxviii INTRODUCTION

spirit of reverence than that in which Chamberlain
deals with what, to him, as to all of us, is the one great
and incomparable event in the whole story of our planet.
“No battle, no change of dynasty, no natural phe-
nomenon, no discovery possesses a significance which
can be compared with that of the short life upon earth
of the Galilean. His birth is, in a sense, the beginning of
history. The nations that are not Christian, such as the
Chinese, the Turks and others have no history; their
story is but a chronicle on the one hand of ruling houses,
butcheries and the like, and on the other, represents the
dull, humble, almost bestially happy life of millions that
sink in the night of time without leaving a trace.”

With the dogmas of the Church or Churches, Chamber-
lain has scant sympathy, and on that account he will
doubtless be attacked by swarms as spiteful as wasps
and as thoughtless. And yet how thoroughly imbued
with the true spirit of Religion, as apart from Church-
craft, is every line that he has written! Christ was no
Prophet, as Mahomet dubbed him. He was no Jew.
The genealogies of St. Matthew and St. Luke trace to
Joseph, but Joseph was not His father. The essence
of Christ’s significance lies in the fact that in Him God
was made man. Christ is God, or rather since, as St.
Thomas Aquinas has shown, it is easier to say what
God is not than what He is, it is better to invert the
words and say God is Christ, and so to avoid explaining
what is known by what is not known. Such are but a
few ideas of the author culled at random and from memory.
But (and here is the stone of offence against which the
Churchman will stumble) “it is not the Churches that
form the strength of Christianity, but that Fountain
INTRODUCTION xxir

from which they themselves draw their power, the vision
of the Son of Man upon the Cross.”

In two or three masterly pages written with such
inspiration that it is difficult to read them without
emotion, Chamberlain has drawn a parallel between
Christ and Buddha, between the love and life-breathing
doctrine of the One and the withering renunciation of
the other. Buddha tears from his heart all that is dear
to man—parents, wife, child, love, hope, the religion of
his fathers—all are left behind when he wanders forth
alone into the wilderness to live a living suicide and wait
for death, an extinction that can only be perfect, in the
face of the doctrine of metempsychosis, if it is so spiritually
complete that the dread reaper can harvest no seed for
a new birth. How different is it with the teaching of
Christ, whose death means no selfish, solitary absorption
into a Nirvana, a passionless abstraction, but the Birth
of the whole world into a new life. Buddha dies that
there may be no resurrection. Christ dies that all men
may live, that all men may inherit the Kingdom of
Heaven. And this Kingdom of Heaven, what is it ?
Clearly no Nirvana, no sensuous Paradise like that of
Mahomet. He gives the answer Himself in a saying
which must be authentic, for His hearers could not under-
stand it, much less could they have invented it. The
Kingdom of God is within you. “In these sayings of
Christ we seem to hear a voice: we know not His exact
words but there is an unmistakable, unforgettable tone
which strikes our ear and so forces its way to the heart.
And then we open our eyes and we see this Form, this
Life. Across the centuries we hear the words, Learn
irom me! and at last we understand what that means:
XXX INTRODUCTION

to be as Christ was, to live as Christ lived, to strive as
Christ died, that is the Kingdom of Heaven, that is
eternal Life.”

As I sit writing I can see on a shelf a whole row of books
written on Buddhism by eminent scholars and mission-
aries, comparing its doctrines with those of the Saviour.
It is not too much to say that the sum of all the wisdom
and learning of that little library of Buddhism is contained
in the few paragraphs of which I have given the kernel.
Chamberlain in burning words points out how radiant
is the doctrine of hope preached by the Saviour—
where is there room for pessimism since the Kingdom of
God is within us ?—and he contrasts the teaching of our
Lord with the dreary forebodings of the Old Testament,
where all is vanity, life is a shadow, we wither like grass,
The Jewish writers took as gloomy a view of the world
as the Buddhists. But our Lord who went about among
the people and loved them, taking part in their joys and
in their sorrows—His was a teaching of love and sympathy,
and above all of hope. Christ did not retire into the
wilderness to seek death and annihilation. He came
out of the wilderness to bring life eternal. Buddha re-
presents the senile decay of a culture that has finished its
life: Christ represents the Birth of a new day, of a new
civilisation dawning under the sign of the Cross, raised
upon the ruins of the old world, a civilisation at which
we must work for many a long day before it may be
worthy to be called by His name.

Chamberlain is careful to tell us that he does not
intend to lift the veil which screens the Holy of Holies
of his own belief. But it must be clear from such utter-
ances as those upon which I have drawn above, how
INTRODUCTION XXxi

noble and how exalted is the conception of Christ and of
His teaching which is borne in on the mind of one of
the foremost thinkers of our day. He draws his inspira-
tion at the fountain head. For the dogmas of cecumenical
councils, for the superstitions and fables of monks, he
has an adequate respect: he preaches Christ and Him
crucified: that is to him all-sufficing. Can there be a
purer ideal ?

It is this same lofty conception which accounts for
the contrast which this protestant layman draws
between Catholicism and the hierarchy of Rome. For
the former he has every sympathy: upon the latter he
looks as a hindrance to civilisation and to the essential
truths of Religion. How could it be otherwise with an
institution which until the year 1822 kept under the ban
of the Index every book which should dare to contest the
sublime truth that the sun goes round the Earth? The
whole Roman system, hierarchical and political, is in
direct opposition to the development of Indo-European
culture, of which the “‘ Germane ” constitutes the highest
expression. The Catholic, on the other hand, when
not choked by the mephitic vapours of Roman dogma
and Roman imperialism, left free to follow the simple
teaching of the cross, and to practise so far as in him
lies the example of the Saviour, is worthy of all the
respect which is due to the true Christian of whatsoever
denomination he may be. He at any rate is no enemy
to the Truth.

Very striking are the passages in which Chamberlain
points out the ambiguous attitude of our Lord towards
Jewish thought and the religion of which His teaching
was the antithesis. How he brushed aside the narrow
xxxii INTRODUCTION

prescriptions of the Law, as for example in the great
saying, “‘ the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath ” ; —and yet how, born in the midst of Jewish
ideas and bigotry, the bearer of the new Glad Tidings,
the Teacher who was to revolutionise the world, never
altogether shook off the old traditions. Chamberlain’s
argument leads us a step farther. It is impossible not
to feel how much more completely St. Paul, a Pharisee
after the strictest sect of his religion, cut himself adrift
from Judaism. There was no beating about the bush,
no hesitation, no searching of the soul. A convert, he
at once threw into his new faith all the zeal and energy
with which up to that very moment he had persecuted it.
He ceased to be a Jew: he became the Apostle to the
Gentiles, and bade his followers refuse all “‘ old wives’
fables ” (1 Tim. iv. 7), while to Titus he says, ‘‘ rebuke
them sharply, not giving heed to Jewish fables and
commandments of men, that turn from the truth”
(Titus i. 14). Christ’s life upon earth was spent among
the Jews: it was to them that His ‘ good tidings ”
were addressed. To touch the hearts of men you must
speak to them in a language that they understand. St.
Paul, on the other hand, who lived and worked among
the Gentiles, was unfettered by any preconceived ideas
on the part of his hearers. His doctrine was to them
absolutely new, standing on its own foundation, the rock
of Christianity—and yet, as Chamberlain points out in
a later part of the book, it was St. Paul, the very man
who after his conversion avoided the Jews and separated
himself from them as much as he could, who did more
than any of the first preachers of Christianity to weld
into the new faith the traditions of the Old Testament.
INTRODUCTION XXxiil

In the Epistle to the Romans the fall of man is given as
an historical event; our Lord born ‘‘ from the seed of
David according to the flesh” is declared to be the son
of God; Israel is the people of God, the good olive-tree
into which the branches of the wild olive-tree, the Gentiles,
may be ‘“‘graffed.’”’” The death of the Messiah is an
atoning sacrifice in the Jewish sense, &c. &c., all purely
Jewish ideas preached by the man who hated the Jews.
When we read these contradictions of the man’s self
we may say of St. Paul’s epistles as St. Peter did, in
another sense, “in which are some things hard to be
understood.”

The influence of Judaism on Indo-European civilisation
is a subject upon which the author of the Grundlagen
dwells with special stress. He cannot withhold his
admiration from the sight of that one small tribe standing
out amid the chaos of nationalities, which was the legacy
of the fallen Roman Empire, “ like a sharply cut rock in
the midst of a shapeless sea,’’ maintaining its identity
and characteristics in the midst of a fiery vortex where
all other peoples were fused into a molten conglomerate
destroying all definition. The Jew alone remained
unchanged. His belief in Jehovah, his faith in the
promises of the prophets, his conviction that to him
was to be given the mastery of the world—these were the
articles of his creed, a creed which might be summed up
as belief in himself. Obviously to Chamberlain the Jew -
is the type of pure Race, and pure Race is what he looks
upon as the most important factor in shaping the destinies
of mankind. Here he joins issue with Buckle, who con-
sidered that climate and food have been the chief agents
in mental and physical development. Rice as a staple

I c
XXXIV INTRODUCTION

food Buckle held to be the explanation of the special
aptitudes of the Indian Aryans. The error is grotesque.
As Chamberlain points out, rice is equally the food of
the Chinese, of the hard-and-fast materialists who are
the very antipodes of the idealist, metaphysical Aryans.
In the matter of climate Chamberlain might have brought
the same witnesses into court. There are more variations
of climate in China than in Europe. The climate of
Canton differs as much from that of Peking as from that
of St. Petersburg. The Chinaman of the north speaks
a different language from that of the south, though the
ideographic script is the same: his food is different, the
air that he breathes is different: but the racial charac-
teristics remain identical.

/ Race and purity of blood are what constitute a type;
and nowhere has this type been more carefully preserved
than among the Jews. I remember once calling upon
a distinguished Jewish gentleman. Mr. D’Israeli, as
he was then, had just left him. “ What did you talk
about ?”’ I asked at haphazard. “Oh,” said my host,
“the usual thing—the Race.’’ No one was more deeply
penetrated with the idea of the noble purity of ‘‘ the
Race” than Lord Beaconsfield. No one believed more
fully in the influence of the Jew working alongside of
the Indo-European. With what conviction does he

_ insist upon this in Coningsby /

That Race, however, does not drop ready-made from
the skies is certain; nature and history show us no
single example either among men or beasts of a promi-
nently noble and distinctly individual race which is not
the result of a mixture. Once the race established it
must be preserved. Fhe English constitute a Race and
INTRODUCTION XXXV

a noble one, though their pedigree shows an infusion of
Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Norman bloods. In spite of
its history which is its religion, there is proof that
at a remote stage of its existence the Jewish race was
actually formed of several elements. Its stability,
unchanged for thousands of years, is one of the wonders
of the world. One rigidly observed law is sufficient for
their purpose. The Israelite maiden may wed a Gentile :
such an alliance tends not to the degeneracy of the race:
but the Jewish man must not marryoutside his own nation,
the seed of the chosen people of Jehovah must not be
contaminated by a foreign alliance. That Chamberlain
is a strong Anti-Semite adds to the value of the testimony
which he bears to the nobility of the Sephardim, the
intensely aristocratic Jews of Spain and Portugal, the
descendants of the men whom the Romans, dreading
their influence, deported westward. “ That is nobility
in the fullest sense of the word, genuine nobility of race !
Beautiful forms, noble heads, dignity in speech and in
deportment.... That out of the midst of such men
prophets and psalmists should go forth, that I understood
at the first glance—something which I confess the closest
observation of the many hundred ‘ Bochers’ in the
Friedrichstrasse in Berlin had failed to enable me to do.”
To the Ashkenazim, the so-called German Jews, Cham-
berlain is as it seems to me unjust. That they have
played a greater part in the history of the nineteenth
century than the Sephardim is hardly to be denied.
They are born financiers and the acquisition of money
has been their characteristic talent. But of the treasure
which they have laid up they have given freely. The |
charities of the great cities of Europe would be in asad \
XXXVI INTRODUCTION

plight were the support of the Jews to be withdrawn ;
indeed many noble foundations owe their existence to
them. Politically too they have rendered great services :
one instance which Chamberlain himself quotes is the
settlement of the French indemnity after the war of 1870.
Bismarck was represented by a Jew, and the French
on their side appointed a Jew to meet him, and these two
Jews belonged to the Ashkenazim, not to the noble
Sephardim.

Who and what then is the Jew, this wonderful man
who during the last hundred years has attained such a
position in the whole civilised world ?

Of all the histories of the ancient world there is none
that is more convincing, none more easily to be realised,
than that of the wanderings of the patriarch Abraham.
It is a story of four thousand years ago, it is a story of
yesterday, it is a story of to-day. A tribe of Bedouin
Arabs with their womenkind and children and flocks
flitting across the desert from one pasture to another
is a sight still commonly seen—some of us have even
found hospitality in the black tents of these pastoral
nomads, where the calf and the foal and the child are
huddled together as they must have been in Abraham’s
day. Such a tribe it was that wandered northward from
the city of Ur on the fringe of the desert, on the right
bank of the Euphrates, northward to Padan Aram at
the foot of the Armenian Highlands; six hundred kilo-
metres as the crow flies, fifteen hundred if we allow for
the bends of the river and for the seeking of pasture.
From Padan Aram the tribe travels westward to Canaan,
thence south to Egypt and back again to Canaan. It is
possible that the names of the patriarchs may have been
INTRODUCTION XXXvil

used to indicate periods, but however that may be, these
journeys, long in themselves, and complicated by the
incumbrances of flocks and herds, occupied a great space
in time ; there were moreover long halts, residences lasting
for centuries in the various countries which were traversed,
during which intermarriages took place with the highly
civilised peoples with whom the wanderers came in
contact.

The Bible story, ethnology, the study of skulls and of
racial types, all point to the fact that the Jewish people,
the descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin,
united in themselves the five great qualifications which
Chamberlain holds to be necessary for the establishment
of a powerful race. First, to start with, a strong stock.
This the Jew possessed in his Arab origin. No type,
surely, was ever so persistent as that of the Bedouin
Arab of the desert, the same to-day as he was thousands
of years ago. Secondly, inbreeding. Thirdly, such in-
breeding not to be at haphazard but carefully carried
out, the best mating only with the best. Fourthly,
intermarriage with another race or races. Fifthly, here
again careful selection is essential, The Jewish race,
built up under all these conditions, was, as we have seen,
once formed, kept absolutely pure and uncontaminated.
Of what happens where these laws are not observed the
mongrels of the South American republics—notably of
Peru—furnish a striking example.

In the days of the Roman Republic the influence of
the Israelite was already felt. It is strange to read of
Cicero, who could thunder out his denunciations of a
Catiline, dropping his voice in the law courts when of
the Jews he spoke with bated breath lest he should incur
XXXViii INTRODUCTION

their displeasure. In the Middle Ages high offices were
conferred by Popes upon Jews, and in Catholic Spain
they were even made bishops and archbishops. In
France the Jews found the money for the Crusades—
Rudolph of Habsburg exempted them from the ordinary
laws. In all countries and ages the Jew has been a
masterful man. Never was he more powerful than he is
to-day. Well may Chamberlain count Judea as the
third ancient country which with Greece and Rome has
made itself felt in the development of our civilisation.
It is not possible within the limits of this brief notice to
give an idea of the extraordinary interest of Chamber-
lain’s special chapter upon the Jews and their entry into
+ the history of the West. I have already hinted that with
some of his conclusions I do not agree: but I go all
lengths with him in his appreciation of the stubborn
singleness of purpose and dogged consistency which have
made the Jew what he is. The ancient Jew was not a
| soldier—foreigners furnished the bodyguard of his king.
| He was no sailor like his cousins the Phcenicians, indeed
‘ he had a horror of the sea. He was no artist—he had to
import craftsmen to build his Temple—neither was he
a farmer, nora merchant.* What was it then that gave

* It was a common creed of the days of my youth that all the
great musical composers were of Jewish extraction. The bubble has
long since been pricked. Joachim, who was a Jew, and as proud of his
nationality as Lord Beaconsfield himself, once expressed to Sir Charles
Stanford his sorrow at the fact that there should never have been
a Jewish composer of the first rank. Mendelssohn was the nearest
approach to it, and after him, Meyerbeer. But in these days
Mendelssohn, in spite of all his charm, is no longer counted in the
first rank. Some people have thought that Brahms was a Jew, that
his name was a corruption of Abrahams. But this is false. Brahms
came of a Silesian family, and in the Silesian dialect Brahms means
eteed. (Sec an interesting paper in Truth of January 13, 1909). In
INTRODUCTION XXxXiX

him his wonderful self-confidence, his toughness of
character, which could overcome every difficulty, and
triumph over the hatred of other races? It was his
belief in the sacred books of the law, the Thora: his
faith in the promises of Jehovah: his certainty of belong-
ing to the chosen people of God. The influence of the
books of the Old Testament has been far-reaching indeed,
but nowhere has it exercised more power than in the stab-
lishing of the character of the Jew. If it means so much
to the Christian, what must it not mean to him? It is
his religion, the history of his race, and his individual
pedigree all in one. Nay! it is more than all that: it
is the attesting document of his covenant with his
God.

Within the compass of a few pages Chamberlain has
performed what amounts to a literary feat: he has made
us understand the condition of Europe and of the chief
countries of the Mediterranean littoral at the time of
the first symptoms of decay in the power of Rome. It
was the period of what he calls the “‘ Volker-chaos,” a
hurly-burly of nationalities in which Greeks and Romans,
Syrians, African mongrels, Armenians, Gauls and Indo-
Europeans of many tribes were all jumbled up together—
a seething, heterogeneous conflicting mass of humanity
in which all character, individuality, belief and customs
were lost. In this witches’ Sabbath only the Jew main-
tained his individuality, only the Teuton preserved the
two great characteristics of his race, freedom and faith—
poetry, on the other hand, the Jew excelled. The Psalms, parts of
Isaiah, the sweet idyll of Ruth are above praise. The Book of Job is
extolled by Carlyle as the finest of all poems, and according to

Chamberlain poetry is the finest of all arts. In the plastic arts, as in
music, the Jew has been barren.
xl 7 INTRODUCTION

the Jew the witness of the past; the Teuton the power
of the future.

They were a wonderful people, these tall men with the _
fair nair and blue eyes, warriors from their birth, fighting
for fighting’s sake, tribe against tribe, clan against clan,
so that Tiberius, looking upon them as a danger, could
think of no better policy than to leave them alone to
destroy one another. But the people who held in their
hands the fate of mankind were not to be got rid of
like so many Kilkenny cats. Their battlesomeness made
them a danger to the State—to a Roman Emperor, ever
under the shadow of murder, their trustworthiness made
them the one sure source from which he could recruit
his bodyguard. But they were not mere fighting machines,
though war was to them a joy and a delight. From their
Aryan ancestors, from the men to whom the poems of
the Rigveda were a holy writ, they had received, instilled
in their blood, a passion for song and for music, an imagi-
nation which revelled in all that is beautiful, and which
loved to soar into the highest realms of thought. And
so it came to pass that when in the fulness of time they
absorbed the power of Europe, they knew how to make
the most of the three great legacies which they had
inherited : poetry and art from the Greeks, law and state-
craft from the Romans, and, greatest of all, the teaching
of Christ. By them, with these helps, was founded the
culture of the nineteenth century.

In the descendants of such men it is not surprising to
see the union of the practical with the ideal. A Teuton
writes Ths Criticism of Pure Reason. A Teuton invents
the steam-engine. ‘‘ The century of Bessemer and Edison
is equally the century of Beethoven and Richard Wagner.
INTRODUCTION xli

.. . Newton interrupts his mathematical inquiries to
write a commentary on the Revelation of St. John.
Crompton troubles himself with the invention of the
spinning mule, that he may have more leisure to devote
to his one love—music. Bismarck, the statesman of
blood and iron, in the critical moments of his life causes
the sonatas of Beethoven to be played to him.’”” Whoso
does not realise all this, fails to understand the essence
of the Teuton character, and is unable to judge of the
part which it has played in the past and is still playing
in the present.

The Goths, who of course were Teutons, have been,
as Gibbon puts it, ‘‘injuriously accused of the ruin of
antiquity.”” Their very name has passed into a byword
for all that is barbarous and destructive; yet, as a
matter of fact, it was Theodosius and his followers who,
with the help of the Christian fanatics, destroyed the
Capitol and the monuments of ancient art, whereas it
was Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, on the contrary, who issued
edicts for the preservation of the ancient glories of Rome.
Yet “this man could not write; for his signature he
had to use a metal stencil... . But that which was
beautiful, that which the nobler spirits of the Chaos of
Peoples hated as a work of the devil, that the Goth at
once knew how to appreciate: to such a degree did the
statues of Rome excite his admiration that he appointed
a special official for their protection.” Who will deny
the gift of imagination in the race which produced a
Dante (his name Alighieri a corruption of Aldiger, taken
from his grandmother who was of a Goth family from
Ferrara), a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Goethe, a Schiller,
not to speak of many other great and lesser lights ? Who
xii INTRODUCTION

will dispute the powers of thought of a Locke, a Newton,
a Kant, a Descartes? We have but to look around us
in order to see how completely our civilisation and culture
are the work of the Germane.

Freedom, above all things Freedom, was the watchword
of the Germane—Dante taking part with the Bianchi against
the Neri and Pope Boniface; Wycliffe rebelling against
the rule of the Church of Rome; Martin Luther leading
a movement which was as much political as it was
religious, or even more so; all these were apostles of
Freedom. The right to think and to believe, and to
live according to our belief, is that upon which the free
man insists: our enjoyment of it is the legacy of those
great men to us. Without the insistence of the Germane
religious toleration would not exist to-day.

We have seen that Chamberlain takes the year one—
the birth of our Lord—as the first great starting-point of
our civilisation. The second epoch which he signalises
as marking a fresh departure is the year 1200. The
thirteenth century was a period of great developments.
It was a period full of accomplishment and radiant with
hope. In Germany the founding and perfecting of the
great civic league known as the Hansa, in England the
wresting of Magna Charta from King John by the Barons,
laid the foundation of personal freedom and security.
The great religious movement in which St. Francis of
Assisi was the most powerful agent ‘‘ denied the despotism
of the Church as it did the despotism of the State, and
annihilated the despotism of wealth.” It was the first
assertion of freedom to think. Thomas Aquinas, Duns
Scotus, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon were leaders,
the first two in philosophical thought, the last two in
INTRODUCTION xliii

modern natural science. In poetry, and not in poetry
alone but in statecraft, Dante towers above all those of
his day; and yet there were many poets, singers whose
names are still famous, while at the same time lived
Adam de la Halle, the first great master in counterpoint.
Among painters we find such names as Niccolo Pisani,
Cimabue, Giotto, from whom sprang the new school
of art. And while these men were all working each at
his own craft, great churches and cathedrals and monu-
ments were springing up, masterpieces of the Gothic
architect’s skill. Well did the thirteenth century de-
serve the title given to it by Fiske, “the glorious
century.” *

When we reach these times we stand on fairly firm
ground. The details of history, when we think how the
battle rages round events which have taken place in our
own times [for instance, the order for the heroic mistake of
the Balaclava charge, where “‘some one had blundered ”’]
may not always command respect, but the broad outlines
are clear enough. We are no longer concerned with the
deciphering of an ambiguous cuneiform inscription. The

* It is strange to see how great tidal waves of intellectual and
creative power from time to time flood the world. Take as another
example the sixteenth century, the era of the artistic revival in Italy,
of the heroes of the Reformation. What a galaxy of genius is there,
To cite only a few names: Ariosto,Tasso, Camoens, Magellan, Copernicus,
Tycho Brahe, St. Francis Xavier, St. Ignatius Loyola, Rabelais,
Shakespeare, Bacon. The best works of Indian art are produced
under tbe reign of the Moghul Akbar, Damascus turns out its finest
blades; the tiles of Persia, and the porcelain of China under the Ming
Dynasty, reach their highest perfection ; while in far Japan Miyéchin,
her greatest artist in metal, is working at the same time as Benvenutc
Cellini in Florence and Rome. Such epidemics of genius as those ot

the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries are mysteries indeed. This,
however. is but an aside, though as I think one worthy of note,
xliv INTRODUCTION

works of the great men testify, and their witness commands
respect.

The second volume of the Grundlagen opens with a
chapter entitled “ Religion ’’—a chapter which leaves
upon the mind of the reader a vivid impression of the
superstitions and myths which gave birth to the dogmas
of the Christian Church in its early years, dogmas the
acceptance or rejection of which was decided by the votes
of Councils of Bishops, many of whom could neither read
nor write. It seems incredible that such sublime questions
as those of the nature of the Godhead, the relation of the
Father to the Son, Eternal Punishment and others,
should have been settled by a majority of votes “ like
the imposition of taxes by our Parliaments.” In the dark
ages of Christianity, Judaism, Indian mythology, Egyptian
mysteries and magic, were woven into a chequered woof,
which was an essential contradiction of the touching sim-
plicity of our Lord’s teaching. It was astrange moment in
the world’s history, and one which lent itself to the welding
together of utterly dissimilar elements. In the Chaos of
Peoples, all mixed up in the weirdest confusion, the dogma-
monger found his opportunity. Judaism, which up to
that time had been absolutely confined to the Jews, was
clutched at with eagerness by men who were tired of the
quibbles, the riddles and the uncertainties of the philo-
sophers. Here was something solid, concrete; a creed
which preached facts, not theories, a religion which
announced itself as history. In the international hodge-
podge, a jumble in which all specific character, all feeling
of race or country had been lost, the Asiatic and Egyptian
elements of this un-Christian Christianity, this travesty
of our Lord’s teaching, found ready acceptance. The
INTRODUCTION xlv

seed bed was ready and the seed germinated and prospered
greatly. In vain did the nobler spirits, the wiser and
more holy-minded of the early Fathers raise their voices
against gross superstitions borrowed from the mysteries
of Isis and of Horus. The Jews and dogma triumphed.
The religion of Christ was too pure for the vitiated minds
of the Chaos of Peoples, and perhaps dogma was a neces-
sity, a hideous evil, born that good might arise. Men
needed a Lord who should speak to them as slaves:
they found him in the God of Israel. They needed a
discipline, a ruling power ; they found it in the Imperial
Church of Rome.

Conversion to Christianity was in the days of the
Empire far less a question of religious conviction than
one of Law arbitrarily enforced for political reasons by
autocrats who might or might not be Christians. Aurelian,
a heathen, established the authority of the Bishop of
Rome at the end of the third century. Theodosius
made heresy and heathenism a crime of high treason.
Lawyers and civil administrators were made Bishops—
Ambrosius even before he was baptized—that they might
enforce Christianity, as a useful handmaid in government
and discipline. As the power of the Empire dwindled,
that of the Church grew, until the Cesarism of the Papacy
was crystallised in the words of Boniface VIII., ‘‘ Ego
sum Cesar, ego sum Imperator.”

In vain did men of genius, as time went on and the
temporal claims of the Popes became intolerable, rise
in revolt against it. Charlemagne, Dante, St. Francis,
all tried to separate Church from State. But the Papacy
stood-its ground, firm as the Tarpeian Rock, immutable
as the Seven Hills themselves. It held to the inheritance
xlvi INTRODUCTION

which came to it not from St. Peter, the poor fisherman
of the Sea of Galilee, but from the Caesars, like whom
the Bishops of Rome claimed to be Sovereigns over the
world. How much more tolerant the early Popes were
in religious matters than in temporal is a point which
Chamberlain forcibly brings out: they might bear with
compromise in the one ; in the other they would not budge
an inch. Like the Phcenix in the fable, out of its own
ashes the Roman Empire arose in a new form, the Papacy.

It is not possible here to dwell upon our author’s
contrast between St. Paul and Augustine, that wonderful
African product of the Chaos, in whom the sublime and
the ridiculous went hand in hand, who believed in the
heathen Gods and Goddesses as evil spirits, who took
Apuleius and his transformation into an ass seriously,
to whom witches and sorcerers, and a dozen other childish
fancies of the brain, were realities. We must leave
equally untouched his interesting sketches of Charlemagne
and Dante and their efforts at Reformation. His main
object in this chapter is to show the position of the
Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The
Papacy was in its glory. Its doctrines, its dogmas and
its temporal supremacy had been enforced—politically it
stood upon a pinnacle. The proudest title of the Czsars
had been that of Pontifex Maximus. The Pontifex
Maximus was now Cesar.

And the present position—what of to-day? The
Church of Rome isas solid as ever it was. The Reforma-
tion achieved much politically. It achieved freedom.
But as the parent of a new and consistent religion,
Protestantism has been a failure. Picking and choosing,
accepting and rejecting, it has cast aside some of the
INTRODUCTION xlvii

dogmas of the early days of the Chaos, but it remains
a motley crowd of sects without discipline, all hostile
to one another, all more or less saturated with the tenets
of the very Church against which they rebelled. Rome
alone remains consistent in its dogmas, as in its claims,
and, purged by the Reformation of certain incongruous
and irreconcilable elements, has in religion rather gained
than lost strength. It is easy to see what difficulties the
lack of unity creates for Protestant missionaries. Church
men, Chapel men, Calvinists, Baptists, Presbyterians,
Methodists, Congregationalists and Heaven knows how
many more, all pulling against one another! and the
Roman Catholic Church against them all! The religion
of Christ as He taught it absolutely nowhere! Small
wonder that the heathen should grin and be puzzled.
The building up of the ideal State as we know it to-day
was the result of two mighty struggles which raged
during the first twelve centuries of our era. The first,
as we have seen, was the fight for power between the
Cesars and the Popes for the Empire of the world in
which now one, now the other, had the upper hand.
The second was the struggle between ‘‘ Universalism ”
and “Nationalism,” that is to say, between the idea
on the one hand of a boundless Empire, whether under
Cesar or Pope, and on the other a spirit of nationality
within sure bounds, and a stubborn determination to be
free from either potentate, which ended in the organisation
of independent States and the triumph of the Teuton.
His rise meant the dawn of a new culture, not as we are
bidden to remember a Renaissance in the sense of the
calling back into life of a dead past, but a new birth into
freedom, a new birth in which the cramping shackles, the
xlviii INTRODUCTION

levelling influences of the Imperium Romanum, of the
Civitas Dei, were cast aside—in which at last, after long
centuries of slavery, men might live, thinking and working
and striving according to their impulses, believing
according to the faith that was in them.

Independent statecraft then, as opposed to the all-
absorbing Imperium, was the work of the rebellious
Teuton, the poet warrior, the thinker, the free man.
It was a mighty victory, yet one in which defeat has never
been acknowledged. From his prison in the Vatican the
Pope continues to issue Bulls and Briefs hurling defiance at
the world and at common sense ; new saints are canonised,
new dogmas proclaimed by cecumenical councils sum-
moned from all parts of the inhabited world; and there
are good men and, in many respects, wise men, who
bow their heads and tremble. No one can say that
the Papacy, though shorn of its earthly dominions, is not
still a Power to be reckoned with: its consistency com-
mands respect; but the Civitas Dei is a thing of the
past: it is no more than a dream in the night, from
which a weary old man wakens to find its sole remnant
in the barren semblance of a medieval court, and the
man-millinery of an out-of-date ceremonial. Truly a
pathetic figure !

A new world has arisen. The thirteenth century was
the turning-point. The building is even now not ended.
But the Teuton was at work everywhere, and the founda-
tions were well and truly laid. In Italy, north and south,
the land was overrun with men of Indo-European race
—Goths, Lombards, Norsemen, Celts. It was to them
that was owing the formation of the municipalities and
cities which still remain as witnesses of their labour.
INTRODUCTION xlix

It was their descendants, certainly not the hybrids of
the Chaos, that worked out the so-called ‘‘ Renaissance,”
and when owing to the internecine feuds and petty
wars, as well as to the too frequent intermixture with
the hybrids, the Teuton element became weaker and
weaker, the glory of Italy waned likewise. Happily
for the world the race was maintained in greater purity
elsewhere.

The leitmotiv which runs through the whole book is the
assertion of the superiority of the Teuton family to all
the other races of the world—and more especially, as
we have seen, is this shown by the way in which the
Germane threw off the shackles with which, under the
guise of religion, the Papacy strove to fetter him. It is,
interesting to consider how Immanuel Kant, the greatest
thinker that ever lived, treated this subject. He, the
man who was so deeply penetrated with religious feeling
that he held it to be ‘‘ the duty of man to himself to have
religion,’ saw in the teaching of Christ a “ perfect
religion.” His demand was for a religion which should
be one in spirit and in truth, and for the belief in a God
“whose kingdom is not of this world.” He by no
means rejected the Bible, but he held that its value lay
not so much in that which we read in it, as in that which
we read into it, nor is he the enemy of Churches, “ of
which there may be many good forms.” But with
superstition and dogma he will have no dealings. Nor
is this to be wondered at when we consider how, by whom,
and for what purpose dogmas, as we have seen above,
were manufactured, and what manner of men they were
who degraded the early Church with their superstitions.
In the mass of ignorant monks and bishops who were the
1 INTRODUCTION

so-called “‘ Fathers of the Church” there are brilliant
exceptions. Perhaps the greatest of these was St,
Augustine. He was a good and a holy man, but even his
great brain, as we have seen, was saturated with Hellenic
mythology, Egyptian magic and witchcraft, Neoplatonism,
Judaism, Romish dogmatism. If we cite him as an
irrefutable authority on a point of dogma, we should,
to be consistent, go a step farther, and equally hold him
as irrefutable when he inclines to a belief in Apuleius and
his ass, and in his views as to Jupiter, Juno and the
theocracy of Olympus. Religious dogmas, superstitions,
so bred, could not be accepted by a man of Kant’s
intellect. They were noxious weeds to be rooted up
and swept out of existence. Christ’s teaching being,
as he held it to be, perfect, could only be degraded by
being loaded with heathen fables and tawdry inanities.
It was the scum of the people who invented superstitions,
the belief in witches and demons: it was the priestcraft
who welded those false doctrines into the semblance of
a religion to which they gave Christ’s name.*

Kant said of himself that he was born too soon; that
acentury must elapse before his day should come. “ The
morning has dawned,” as Chamberlain says in another
book,f and ‘it is no mere chance that the first complete
and exact edition of Kant’s collected works and letters
should have begun to appear for the first time in the

* The Christian religion, I would point out here, is not the only
one which has suffered in this way. Nothing can be simpler, nothing
purer in its way than Buddhism as the Buddha taught it. Yet see
what the monks have made of it! The parallel is striking.

t Immanuel Kant, by Chamberlain. Bruckmann, Munich, 1905)
The book which Chamberlain tells me that he himself considers the
“mast important’ of his works. It is published in German,
INTRODUCTION li

year 1900; the new century needed this strong guardian
spirit, who thought himself justified in saying of his
system of philosophy that it worked a revolution in the
scheme of thought analogous to that of the Copernican
system. There are to-day a few who know, and many
who suspect, that this scheme of philosophy must form
a pillar of the culture of the future. For every cultivated
and civilised man Kant’s thought possesses a symbolical
significance ; it wards off the two opposite dangers—
the dogmatism of the Priests and the superstition of
science—and it strengthens us in the devoted fulfilment
of the duties of life.”’ Now that thought is less cramped
and Kant is beginning to be understood, the true reli-
giosity of his august nature is surely being recognised,
and the last charge that will be brought against him will
be that of irreligion. If he destroyed, he also built ; he
was not one of those teachers who rob a man of what
he possesses without giving anything in exchange. He
completed the work which Martin Luther had begun.
Luther was too much of a politician and too little of a
theologian for his task; moreover he never was able
altogether to throw off the monk’s cowl. To the
last he believed in the Real Presence in the Sacra-
ment, and hardly knew what dogmas he should accept
and what he should reject. Kant was the master who
taught Christianity in all its beauty of simplicity. The
kingdom of God is in you! There was no cowl to
smother Kant.

The foundation-stone of the nineteenth century was
laid by Christ himself. For many centuries after His
death upon the Cross, ignorant men, barbarians, under
the cloak of religion, were at pains to hide that stone in an
lii INTRODUCTION

overwhelming heap of rubbish. Kant laid it bare, and
revealed it to the world: his reward was the execration
of men who were not worthy to unloose the latchet of
his shoes: but the tables are turned now. His morning
has indeed dawned, and the twentieth century is recog-
nising the true worth of the man who, more than any
other, has influenced the thought of the educated world.
Goethe, indeed, said of Kant that he had so penetrated
the minds of men that even those who had not read him
were under his influence.

The last section of Chamberlain’s ninth chapter is
devoted to Art. He has kept one of his most fascinating
subjects for the end. And who is better qualified to
write upon it than he? Here is not the conventional
aspect of Art contained in the technical dictionaries and
encyclopedias, ‘‘in which the last judgment of Michael
Angelo, or a portrait of Rembrandt by himself, are to be
seen cheek by jowl with the lid of a beer-mug or the
back of an arm-chair.” Art is here treated as the great
creative Power, a Kingdom of which Poetry and Music,
twin sisters, inseparable, are the enthroned Queens.
To Chamberlain, as it was to Carlyle, the idea of divorcing
Poetry from Music is inconceivable. ‘ Music,’’ wrote
Carlyle, ‘‘ is well said to be the speech of angels ; in fact
nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to
be so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite.” “I
give Dante my highest praise when I say of his Divine
Comedy that it is in all senses genuinely a song.”’ Again:
“All old Poems, Homer’s and the rest, are authentically
songs. I would say in strictness, that all right Poems
are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem,
but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines, to the
INTRODUCTION liii

great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the
reader for the most part!’ so spoke Carlyle, and so
speaks Chamberlain, with the masterly competence of
aman who as critic and disciple, for he is both, has sat
at the feet of the great Tone-Poet of our times.*

The hurry and bustle of this fussy age have largely
robbed us of true enthusiasm, for which men substitute
catchwords and commonplaces. All the more delight
is there in meeting it in such sayings as this, coming
straight from the heart of a man who is never in a hurry,
whose convictions are the result of measured thought.
“A Leonardo gives us the form of Christ, a Johann
Sebastian Bach his voice, even now present to us.”
The influence of Religion upon Art, and in reflex action,
that of Art upon Religion has never been better shown
than in these words. Religion inspired the artists,
furnished them with their subject; the artists, so in-
spired, have touched the hearts of thousands, infusing
them with some perception, some share of their own
inspiration.

Who can say how many minds have been turned to
piety by the frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto picturing the
life of St. Francis at Assisi ? Who can doubt the influ-
ence of the Saint upon the painters of the early Italian
school? Who has not felt the religious influence of the
architect, the painter, the sculptor? Two great princi-
ples are laid down for us by Chamberlain in regard to Art.

* It is curious to note that of the three greatest English poets of
our day, Tennyson, whose songs are music itself, knew no tune, Swin-
burne, whose magic verses read with the lilt of a lovely melody, bad
not the gift of Ear, while Browning, the rugged thinker, the must
unvocal of poets, never missed an opportunity of listening to music
in its most exalted form.
liv INTRODUCTION

First: Art must be regarded as a whole: as a “ pulsing
blood-system of the higher spiritual life.” Secondly: all
Art is subordinated to poetry. But not that which has
been written is alone poetry: the creative power of
poetry is widespread. As Richard Wagner said, “ the
true inventor has ever been the people. The individual
cannot invent, he can only make his own that which
has been invented.” This I take it is the true spirit

of folk-lore. If you think of it, the epic of Homer, _

the ‘‘mystic unfathomable song,’ as Tieck called it,
of Dante, the wonders of Shakespeare, all prove the
truth of Wagner’s saying. The matter is there: then
comes the magician: he touches it with his wand,
and it lives! That is true creative art, the art which
in its turn inspires, fathering all that is greatest and
noblest in the world. It is the art upon which the
culture of the nineteenth century has been founded
and built.

Rich indeed have been the gifts which have been
showered upon mankind between the thirteenth and
the nineteenth centuries. New worlds have been
discovered, new forces in nature revealed. Paper
has been introduced, printing invented. In_ political
economy, in politics, in religion, in natural science
and dynamics there have been great upheavals all
paving the way for that further progress for which
we are apt to take too much credit to ourselves,
giving too little to those glorious pioneers who preceded
us, to the true founders of the century.

I have endeavoured to give some idea of the scope of
Chamberlain’s great work. I am very sensible of my
inadequacy to the task, but it was his wish that I should
INTRODUCTION lv

undertake it, and I could not refuse. I console myself
with the thought that even had I been far better fitted
for it, I could not within the limits of these few pages
have given a satisfying account of a book which embraces
so many and so various subjects, many of which I had
of necessity to leave untouched. Indeed, I feel appalled
at the range of reading which its production must have
involved ; but as to that the book is its own best witness.
We are led to hope that some day the history of the
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century may be followed
by an equally fascinating analysis of the century itself
from the same pen. It will be the fitting crown of a
colossal undertaking. It may be doubted whether there
is any other man equipped as Chamberlain is to erect
such a monument in honour of a great epoch. To few
men has been given in so bountiful a measure the power
of seeing, of sifting the true from the false, the essential
from the insignificant ; comparison is the soul of observa-
tion, and the wide horizon of Chamberlain’s outlook
furnishes him with standards of comparison which are
denied to those of shorter sight: his peculiar and cosmo-
politan education, his long researches in natural history,
his sympathy and intimate relations with all that has
been noblest in the world of art—especially in its most
divine expression, poetry and music—point to him as
the one man above all others worthy to tell the further
tale of a culture of which he has so well portrayed the
nonage, and which is still struggling heavenward. But
in addition to these qualifications he possesses, in a style
which is wholly his own, the indescribable gift of charm,
so that the pupil is unwittingly drawn into a close union
with the teacher, in whom he sees an example of the truth
lvi INTRODUCTION

of Goethe’s words, which Chamberlain himself more than
once quotes :
Hochstes Gliick der Erdenkinder
Ist nur die Persénlichkeit.
REDESDALE

BaTSFoRD PARK
January 8, 1909

Nore. This introduction was in print before the writer
had seen Dr. Lees’ translation. There may, therefore, be
some slight discrepancies in the passages quoted,
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

HE translator desires to express his great

obligation to Miss Elizabeth A. J. Weir, M.A.,

for reading through the manuscript; to his

colleagues, Dr. Schlapp of Edinburgh, Dr.
Scholle of Aberdeen, and Dr. Smith of Glasgow, for
correcting portions of the proof; and above all to
Lord Redesdale for his brilliant and illuminating intro-
duction. ' Apart, however, from this, it is only just to say
that Lord Redesdale has carefully read and re-read every
page and revised many important passages.

The publisher wishes to associate himself with the
translator in making this entirely inadequate acknow-
ledgment to Lord Redesdale for the invaluable assistance
that he has so generously rendered.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

Alles beruht auf Inhalt, Gehalt und Tuchtigkeit eines zuerst
aufgestellten Grundsatzes und auf der Reinheit des Vorsatzes.
GozTHE.

PLAN OF THE WorK

HE work of which this is the first Book is one
that is not to be made up of fragments patched
together, but one that has been conceived!
and planned out from the beginnmg as a

complete and finished whole. The object, therefore, of
this general introduction must be to give an idea of the
scheme of the whole work when it shall have been brought
to an end. It is true that this first book is, in form,
complete in itself; yet it would not be what it is if it
had not come into existence as a part of a greater con-
ception. It is this greater conception that must be the
subject of the preface to the “ part which, in the first
instance, is the whole.”

There is no need to dwell in detail upon the limita-
tions which the individual must admit, when he stands
face to face with an immeasurable world of facts. The
mastery of such a task, scientifically, is impossible ;
it is only artistic power, aided by those secret parallels
which exist between the world of vision and of thought,
by that tissue which—like ether—fills and connects
the whole world, that can, if fortune is favourable, pro-
duce a unity here which is complete, and that; too,
though only fragments be employed to make it. If

the artist does succeed in this, then his work has not
lix
Ix AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

been superfluous: the immeasurable has been brought
within the scope of vision, the shapeless has acquired a
form. In such a task the individual has an advantage
over a combination of men, however capable they may
be, for a homogeneous whole can be the work only of
an individual mind. But he must know how to tum
this advantage to good account, for it is his only one.
Art appears only as a whole, as something perfect in
itself ; science, on the other hand, is bound to be frag-

_Mentary. Art unites and science disconnects. Art
gives form to things, science dissects forms. The man
of science stands on an Archimedean point outside the
world : therein lies his greatness, his so-called objectivity ;
but this very fact is also the cause of his manifest in-
sufficiency ; for no sooner does he leave the sphere of
actual observation, to reduce the manifoldness of ex-
perience to the unity of conception and idea, than he
finds himself hanging by the thin thread of abstraction in
empty space. The artist, on the contrary, stands at the
world’s centre (that is, at the centre of his own world),
and his creative power t?xes him as far as his senses can
teach ; for this creative power is but the manifestation
of the individual mmd acting and reacting upon its
surroundings. But for that reason also he cannot be
reproached for his “ subjectivity’: that is the funda-
mental condition of his creative work. In the case
before us the subject has definite historical boundaries
and is immutably fixed for ever. Untruth would be
ridiculous, caprice unbearable ; the author cannot say,
like Michael Angelo, “ Into this stone there comes nothing
but what I put there”:

in pietra od in candido foglio
che nulla ha dentro, et evvi ci ch’io voglio!
On the contrary, unconditional respect for facts must
be his guiding star. He must be artist, not in the sense
of the creative genius, but only in the limited sense of one
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixi

who employs the methods of the artist. He should give
shape, but only to that which is already there, not to
that which his fancy may mirror. Philosophical history
is a desert ; fanciful history an idiot asylum. We must
therefore demand that the artistic designer should have
a positive tendency of mind and a strictly scientific

conscience. Before he reasons, he must know: before

he gives shape to a thing, he must test it. He cannot
look upon himself as master, he is but a servant, the
servant of truth.

These remarks will probably suffice to give the reader
some notion of the general principles which have been
followed in planning this work. We must leave the
airy heights of philosophic speculation and descend to
the earth. If in such undertakings the moulding and
shaping of the materials at hand is the only task which
the individual can entrust to himself, how is he to set
about it in the present case ?

The Nineteenth Century! It seems an inexhaustible
theme, and so it really is; and yet it is only by including
more that it becomes comprehensible and possible of
achievement. This appears paradoxical, but it is
nevertheless true. As soon as our gaze rests long
and lovingly upon the past, out of which the present
age developed amid so much suffering, as soon as the
great fundamental facts of history are brought vividly
home to us and rouse in our hearts violent and con-
flicting emotions with regard to the present, fear and
hope, loathing and enthusiasm, all pointing to a future
which it must be our work to shape, towards which too
we must henceforth look with longing and impatience—
then the great immeasurable nineteenth century shrivels
up to relatively insignificant dimensions; we have no
time to linger over details, we wish to keep nothing but
the important features vividly and clearly before our
minds, in order that we may know who we are and whither
Ixii AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

we are tending. This gives a definite aim with a fair
prospect of attaining it: the individual can venture
now to begin the undertaking. The lines of his work
are so clearly traced for him that he only requires to
follow them faithfully.

The following is the outline of my work. In the
“Foundations ” I discuss the first eighteen centuries of
the Christian era with frequent reference to times more
remote ; I do not profess to give a history of the past,
but merely of that past which is still living ; asa matter
of fact this involves so much, and an accurate and critical
knowledge of it is so indispensable to every one who
wishes to form an estimate of the present, that I am
inclined to regard the study of the “ Foundations ” of
the nineteenth century as almost the most important
part of the whole undertaking. A second book would
be devoted to this century itself: naturally only the
leading ideas could be treated in such a work, and the
task of doing so would be very much lightened and
simplified by the “‘ Foundations,” in which our attention
had been continually directed to the nineteenth century.
A supplement might serve to form an approximate
idea of the importance of the century; that can only
be done by comparing it with the past, amd here the
“Foundations ” would have prepared the ground; by
this procedure, moreover, we should be able to fore-
shadow the future—no capricious and fanciful picture,
but a shadow cast by the present in the light of the
past. Then at last the century would stand out before
our eyes clearly shaped and defined—not in the form
of a chronicle or an encyclopedia, but as a living “ cor-
poreal ” thing.

So much for the general outline. But as I do not
wish it to remain as shadowy as the future, I shall
give some more detailed information concerning
the execution of my plan. As regards the results at
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Lxiii

which I arrive, I do not feel called upon to anticipate
them here, as they can only carry conviction after con-
sideration of all the arguments which I shall have to
bring forward in their support.

THE FOUNDATIONS

In this first book it has been my task to endeavour to
reveal the bases upon which the nineteenth century rests ;
this seemed to me, as I have said, the most difficult and
important part of the whole scheme; for this reason I
have devoted two volumes toit. In the sphere of history
understanding means seeing the evolution of the present
from the past; even when we are face to face with a
fact which cannot be explained further, as happens in
the case of every pre-eminent personality and every
nation of strong individuality at its first appearance on
the stage of history, we see that these are linked with the
past, and it is from this point of connection that we must
start, if we wish to form a correct estimate of their sig-
nificance. If we draw an imaginary line separating the
nineteenth from all preceding centuries, we destroy at
one stroke all possibility of understanding it critically.
The nineteenth century is not the child of the former ages
—for a child begins life afresh—rather it is their direct
product ; mathematically considered, a sum; physio-
logically, a stage of life. We have inherited a certain
amount of knowledge, accomplishments, thoughts, &c.,
we have further inherited a definite distribution of
economic forces, we have inherited errors and truths,
conceptions, ideals, superstitions: many of these things
have grown so familiar that any other conditions would
be inconceivable; many which promised well have
become stunted, many have shot up so suddenly that
they have almost broken their connection with the
aggregate life, and while the roots of these new flowers
reach down to forgotten generations, their fantastic
lxiv AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

blossoms are taken for something absolutely new. Above
all we have inherited the blood and the body by which
and in which we live.

Whoever takes the admonition ‘‘ Know thyself”
seriously will soon recognise that at least nine-tenths
of this ‘self’? do not really belong to himself.
And this is true also of the spirit of a century. The pre-
eminent individual, who is able to realise his physical
position in the universe and to analyse his intellectual
inheritance, can attain to a relative freedom; he then
becomes at least conscious of his own conditional position;
and though he cannot transform himself, he can at
least exercise some influence upon the course of further
development ; a whole century, on the other hand, hurries
unconsciously on as fate impels it: its human equip-
ment is the fruit of departed generations, its intellectual
treasure—corn and chaff, gold, silver, ore and clay—
is inherited, its tendencies and deviations result with
mathematical necessity from movements that have gone
before. Not only, therefore, is it impossible to com-
pare or to determine the characteristic features, the
special attributes and the achievements of our century,
without knowledge of the past, but we are not even able to
make any precise statement about it, if we have not
first of all become clear with regard to the material of
which we are physically and intellectually composed.
This is, I repeat, the most important problem.

THE TURNING-POINT

My object in this book being to connect the present
with the past, I have been compelled to sketch in
outline the history of that past. But, inasmuch as
my history has to deal with the present, that is to
say, with a period of time which has no fixed limit,
there is no case for a strictly defined beginning. The

 
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixv

nineteenth century points onward into the future, it
points also back into the past: in both cases a limita-
tion is allowable only for the sake of convenience, it
does not lie in the facts. In general I have regarded
the year 1 of the Christian era as the beginning of our
history and have given a fuller justification of this view
in the introduction to the first part: but it will be seen
that I have not kept slavishly to this scheme. Should
we ever become true Christians, then certainly that
which is here merely suggested, without being worked
out, would become an historical actuality, for it would
mean the birth of a new race: perhaps the twenty-fourth
century, into which, roughly speaking, the nineteenth
throws faint shadows, will be able to draw more definite
outlines. Compelled as I have been to let the beginning
and the end merge into an undefined penumbra, a clearly
drawn middle line becomes all the more indispensable
tome, and as adate chosen at random could not be satis-
factory in this case, the important thing has been to fix the
turning-point of the history of Europe. The awakening
of the Teutonic peoples to the consciousness of their
all-important vocation as the founders of a completely
new civilisation and culture forms this turning-point ;
the year 1200 can be designated the central moment of
this awakening.

Scarcely any one will have the hardihood to deny
that the inhabitants of Northern Europe have become the
makers of the world’s history. At no time indeed have
they stood alone, either in the past or in the present ; on
the contrary, from the very beginning their individuality
has developed in conflict with other individualities, first
of all in conflict with that human chaos composed of
the ruins of fallen Rome, then with all the races of the
world in turn; others, too, have exercised influence—
indeed great influence—upon the destinies of mankind,
but then always merely as opponents of the men from

I é
Ixvi AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

the north. What was fought out sword in hand was of
but little account ; the real struggle, as I have attempted
to show in chaps. vii. and viii. of this work, was one
of ideas ; this struggle still goes on to-day. If, however,
the Teutons were not the only peoples who moulded
the world’s history, they unquestionably deserve the
first place : all those who from the sixth century onwards
appear as genuine shapers of the destinies of mankind,
whether as builders of States or as discoverers of new
thoughts and of original art, belong to the Teutonic race.
The impulse given by the Arabs is short-lived; the
Mongolians destroy, but do not create anything ; the great
Italians of the vinascimento were all born either in the
north saturated with Lombardic, Gothic and Frankish
blood, or in the extreme Germano-Hellenic south; in
Spain it was the Western Goths who formed the element
of life; the Jews are working out their “ Renaissance”
of to-day by following in every sphere as closely as
possible the example of the Teutonic peoples. From
the moment the Teuton awakes, a new world begins
to open out, a world which of course we shall not be able
to call purely Teutonic—one in which, in the nineteenth
century especially, there have appeared new elements,
or at least elements which formerly had a lesser share
in the process of development, as, for example, the Jews
and the formerly pure Teutonic Slavs, who by mixture
of blood have now become “un-Teutonised ”—a
world which will yet perhaps assimilate great racial
complexes and so lay itself open to new influences from
all the different types, but at any rate a new world and
a new civilisation, essentially different from the Helleno-
Roman, the Turanian, the Egyptian, the Chinese and all
other former or contemporaneous ones. As the “ begin-
ning ” of this new civilisation, that is, as the moment when
it began to leave its peculiar impress on the world, we
can, I think, fix the thirteenth century. Individuals
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixvii

such as Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Scotus Erigena
and others had long ago proved their Teutonic
individuality by their civilising activity. It is, however,
not individuals, but communities, that make history ;
these individuals had been only pioneers. In order to
become a civilising power the Teuton had to awaken and
grow strong in the exercise far and wide of his individual
will in opposition to the will of others forced upon him
from outside. This did not take place all at once, neither
did it happen at the same time in all the spheres of life ;
the choice of the year 1200 as turning-point is therefore
arbitrary, but I hope, in what follows, to be able to justify
it, and my purpose will be gained if I in this way succeed
in doing away with those two absurdities—the idea of
Middle Ages and that of a Renaissance—by which more
than by anything else an understanding of our present
age isnot only obscured, but rendered directly impossible.

Abandoning these formule which have but served to
give rise to endless errors, we are left with the simple
and clear view that our whole civilisation and culture
of to-day is the work of one definite race of men, the
Teutonic.* It is untrue that the Teutonic barbarian”
conjured up the so-called ‘‘ Night of the Middle Ages” ;
this night followed rather upon the intellectual and
moral bankruptcy of the raceless chaos of humanity
which the dying Roman Empire had nurtured; but for
the Teuton everlasting night would have settled upon
the world; but for the unceasing opposition of the non-
Teutonic peoples, but for that unrelenting hostility to
everything Teutonic which has not yet died down among
the racial chaos which has never been exterminated, we
should have reached a stage of culture quite different

* Under this designation I embrace the various portions of the 6ne
Ixvuii AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

from that witnessed by the nineteenth century. It is
equally untrue that our culture is a renaissance of the
Hellenic and the Roman : it was only after the birth
of the Teutonic peoples that the renaissance of past
achievements was possible and not vice versé; and this
vinascimento, to which we are beyond doubt eternally
indebted for the enriching of our life, retarded nevertheless
just as much as it promoted, and threw us for a long
time out of our safe course. The mightiest creators of
that epoch—a Shakespeare, a Michael Angelo—do not
know a word of Greek or Latin. Economic advance
—the basis of our civilisation—takes place in opposition
to classical traditions and in a bloody struggle against
false imperial doctrines. But the greatest mistake of all
is the assumption that our civilisation and culture are
but the expression of a general progress of mankind ;
not a single fact in history supports this popular belief
(as I think I have conclusively proved in the ninth
chapter of this book) ; and in the meantime this empty
phrase strikes us blind, and we lose sight of the self-
evident fact— that our civilisation and culture, as in
every previous and every other contemporary case, are
the work of a definite, individual racial type, a type
possessing, like everything individual, great gifts but
also insurmountable limitations. And so our thoughts
float around in limitless space, in a hypothetical
“humanity,” and we pass by unnoticed that which
is concretely presented and which alone effects any-
thing in history, the definite individuality. Hence
the obscurity of our historical groupings. For if we
draw one line through the year 500, and a second through
the year 1500, and call these thousand years the Middle
Ages, we have not dissected the organic body of history
as a skilled anatomist, but hacked it in two like a butcher.
The capture of Rome by Odoacer and by Dietrich of
Berne are-only episodes in that entry of the Teutonic
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixix

peoples into the history of the world, which went on for
a thousand years: the decisive thing, namely; the idea
of the unnational world-empire, far from receiving its
death-blow thereby, for a long time drew new life from
the intervention of the Teutonic races. While, therefore,
the year 1—the (approximate) date of the birth of
Christ—is a date which is ever memorable in the history
of mankind and even in the mere annals of events, the
year 500 has no importance whatever. Still worse is
the year 1500, for if we draw a line through it we draw
it right through the middle of all conscious and unconscious
efforts and developments—economic, political, artistic,
scientific—which enrich our lives to-day and are moving
onward to a still distant goal. If, however, we insist on
tetaining the idea of ‘‘ Middle Ages” there is an easy
way out of the difficulty : it will suffice if we recognise
that we Teutons ourselves, together with our proud
nineteenth century, are floundering in what the old
historians used to call a “Middle Age’’—a genuine
“Middle Age.’’ For the predominance of the Pro-
visional and the Transitional, the almost total absence
of the Definite, the Complete and the Balanced, are
marks of our time; we are in the “midst” of a
development, already far from the starting-point and
presumably still far from the goal.

What has been said may in the meantime justify the
rejection of other divisions ; the conviction that I have
not chosen arbitrarily, but have sought to recognise the
one great fundamental fact of all modern history, will
be established by the study of the whole work. Yet I
cannot refrain from briefly adducing some reasons to
account for my choice of the year 1200 as a convenient
central date,
Ixx AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

THE YEAR 1200

If we ask ourselves when it is that we have the first
sure indications that something new is coming into being,
a new form of the world in place of the old shattered
ruin, and of the prevailing chaos, we must admit
that they are already to be met with in many places in
the twelfth century (in Northern Italy evenin the eleventh),
they multiply rapidly in the thirteenth—the glorious
century, as Fiske calls it—attain to a glorious early
full bloom in the social and industrial centres in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in art in the fifteenth
and sixteenth, in science in the sixteenth and seventeenth,
and in philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth.
This movement does not advance in a straight line; in
State and Church fundamental principles are at war
with each other, and in the other spheres of life there is
far too little consciousness to prevent men from ever
and anon straying from the right path; but the all-
important question we have to ask ourselves is, whether
it is only interests that clash, or whether ideals, suggested
by a definite individuality, are floating before the eyes
of men; these ideals we do possess approximately since
the thirteenth century; but we have not yet attained
them, they are floating before us in the distance, and
to this fact is due the feeling that we are still very
deficient in the moral equilibrium and the esthetic
harmony of the ancients, but it is at the same time the
basis of our hope for better things. When we glance
backwards we are indeed entitled to cherish high hopes.
And, I repeat, if when looking back we try to discover
when the first shimmer of those rays of hope can be
clearly seen, we find the time to be about the year 1200.
In Italy the movement to found cities had begun in the
eleventh century, that movement which aimed at the
same time at the furtherance of trade and industry and
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxi

the granting of far-reaching rights of freedom to whole
classes of the population, which had hitherto pined under
the double yoke of Church and State; in the twelfth
century this strengthening of the core of the European
population had become so widely spread and intensified
that at the beginning of the thirteenth century the
powerful Hansa and the Rhenish Alliance of Cities could
be formed. Concerning this movement Ranke writes
(Weltgeschichte, iv. 238): “It is a splendid, vigorous
development, which is thus initiated ... the cities
constitute a world power, paving the way for civic
liberty and the formation of powerful States.” Even
before the final founding of the Hansa, the Magna Charta
had been proclaimed in England, in the year 1215, a
solemn proclamation of the inviolability of the great
principle of personal freedom and personal security.
‘No one may be condemned except in accordance with
the laws of the land. Right and justice may not be bought
nor refused.” In some countries of Europe this first
guarantee for the dignity of man has not to this day
become law; but since that June 15, 1215, a general.
law of conscience has gradually grown out of it, and
whoever runs counter to this is a criminal, even though
he wearacrown. I may mention another important point
in which Teutonic civilisation showed itself essentially
different from all others: in the course of the thirteenth
century slavery and the slave trade disappeared from
European countries (with the exception of Spain). In
the thirteenth century money begins to take the place
of natural products in buying and selling ; almost exactly
in the year 1200 we see in Europe the first manufacture
of paper—without doubt the most momentous indus-
trial achievement till the invention of the locomotive.
It would, however, be erroneous to regard the advance
of trade and the stirring of instincts of freedom as the
only indications of the dawn of a new day. Perhaps
Ixxii AUTHUR’S INTRODUCTION

the great movement of religious feeling, the most power-
ful representative of which was Francis of Assisi (b. 1182)
is a factor of deeper and more lasting influence; in it
a genuinely democratic impulse makes itself apparent ;
the faith and life of men like Francis call in question the
tyranny of Church as of State, and deal a death-blow
to the despotism of money. ‘‘ This movement,” one of
the authorities * on Francis of Assisi writes, “ gives men
the first forewarning of universal freedom of thought.”
At the same moment the avowedly anti-Catholic move-
ment, that of the Albigenses, came into dangerous promi-
nence in Western Europe. In another sphere of religious
life some equally important steps were taken at the same
time: after Peter Abelard (d. 1142) had unconsciously
defended the Indo-European conception of religion
against the Semitic, especially by emphasising the sym-
bolic character of all religious ideas, two orthodox school-
men, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, made in the
thirteenth century an admission which was just as
dangerous for the church dogma by conceding, in agree-
ment with each other (though they were otherwise
opponents), the right of existence to a philosophy which
differed from theology. And while theoretical thinking
here began to assert itself, other scholars, among whom
Albertus Magnus (0. 1193) and Roger Bacon (0. 1214) are
especially conspicuous, laid the foundations of modern
natural science by turning the attention of men from
logical disputes to mathematics, physics, astronomy and
chemistry. Cantor (Vorlesungen uber Geschichte der
Mathematik, 2 Aufl. ii. 3) says that in the thirteenth
century “a new era in the history of mathematical
science ” began ; this was especially the work of Leonardo
of Pisa, who was the first to introduce to us the Indian
(falsely called Arabian) numerical signs, and of Jordanus
Saxo, of the family of Count Eberstein, who initiated

® Thode, Franz von Assisi, p. 4.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxiii

us into the art of algebraic calculation (also originally
invented by the Hindoos). The first dissection of a
human body—which was of course the first step towards
scientific medicine—took place towards the end of the
thirteenth century, after an interval of one thousand
six hundred years, and it was carried out by Mondino
de’ Luzzi, of Northern Italy. Dante, likewise a child
of the thirteenth century, also deserves mention here
—indeed very special mention. ‘“‘ Nel mezzo del cam-
min di nostra vita’’ is the first line of his great poem,
and he himself, the first artistic genius of world-wide
importance in the new Teutonic epoch of culture, is
the typical figure at this turning-point of history, the
point at which she has left behind her “ the half of her
way,” and, after having travelled at break-neck speed
downhill for centuries, sets herself to climb the steep,
difficult path on the opposite slope. Many of Dante’s
sentiments in the Divina Comedia and in his Tractatus
de monarchia appear to us like the longing glance of the
man of great experience out of the social and political
chaos surrounding him, towards a harmoniously ordered
world; and such a glance was possible as a sure sign
that the movement had already begun; the eye of
genius is a ray of light that shows the way to
others.*

But long before Dante—this point must not be over-
looked—a poetical creative power had manifested itself

* I am not here thinking of the details of his proofs, coloured as they
are by scholasticism, but of such things as his views on the relation
of men to one another (Monarchia, I. chaps. iii. and iv.) or on the
federation of States, each of which he says shall retain its own in-
dividuality and its own legislature, while the Emperor, as “ peace-
maker” and judge in matters that are ‘common and becoming to all,”
shall form the bond of union (I. chap. xiv.). In other things Dante
himself, as genuine ‘‘middle’’ figure, allows himself to be very much
influenced by the conceptions of his time and dwells in poetical Utopias,
This point is more fully discussed in chap. vii., and especially in
the introduction to chap. viii. of this book,
Ixxiv, AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

in the heart of the most genuine Teutonic life, in the
north, a fact in itself sufficient to prove how little need
we had of a classical revival to enable us to create in-
comparable masterpieces of art: in the year 1200,
Chrestien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von
Eschenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, Gottfried von
Strassburg were writing their poems, and I mention
only some of the most famous names, for, as Gottfried.
says, “of the nightingales there are many more.” And
up to this time the questionable separation of poetry and
music (which originated from the worship of the dead
letters) had not taken place: the poet was at the same
time singer ; when he invented the “‘ word ” he invented
for it at the same time the particular “ tone”’ and the
particular ‘‘ melody.’”’ And so we see music too, the
most original art of the new culture, develop just at the
moment when the peculiar individuality of this culture
began to show itself in a perfectly new form as polyphonic
harmonious art. The first master of note in the treatment
of counterpoint is the poet and dramatist Adam de la
Halle (0. 1240). With him—and so with a genuinely
Teutonic word- and sound-creator—begins the develop-
ment of music in the strict sense, so that the musical
authority Gevaert can write: f Désormais l’on peut
considérer ce treiziéme siécle, si décrié jadis, comme le
siécle initiateur de tout l’art moderne.” Likewise in
the thirteenth century those inspired artists Niccolo
Pisano, Cimabue and Giotto revealed their talents, and to
them we are indebted, in the first place, not merely for
a ff Renaissance”’ of the plastic and graphic arts, but
above all for the birth of a perfectly new art, that of
modern painting. It was also in the thirteenth century
that Gothic architecture came into prominence (the
“Teutonic style” as Rumohr rightly wished to call it):
almost all masterpieces of church architecture, the in-
comparable beauty of which we to-day admire but cannot
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxv

imitate, originate in that one century. In the meantime
(shortly before 1200), the first purely secular university
had been founded in Bologna, at which only jurisprudence,
philosophy and medicine were taught.* We see in
how many ways a new life began to manifest itself about
the year 1200. A few names would prove nothing; but
the fact that a movement embraces all lands and grades
of society, that the most contradictory phenomena point
backwards to a similar cause and forwards to a common
goal, proves that we have here to deal not with an acci-
dental and individual thing but with a great, general
process which is maturing with unconscious imperative-
ness in the inmost heart of society. And that peculiar
decline in historical sense and historical understanding
about the middle of the thirteenth century,” to which
different scholars have wonderingly called attention,t
should be taken also, I think, in this connection: under
the guidance of the Teutonic peoples men have just
begun a new life; they have, so to speak, turned a corner
in their course and even the nearest past has completely
vanished from their sight: henceforth they belong to
the future.

It is most surprising to have to chronicle the fact
that exactly at this moment, when the new European
world was arising out of chaos, the discovery of the
remaining parts of the world also began, without which
our blossoming Teutonic culture could never have de-
veloped its own peculiar power of expansion: in the
second half of the thirteenth century Marco Polo made
expeditions of discovery and thereby laid the foundations
of our still incomplete knowledge of the surface of our
planet. What is gained by this is, in the first place

* The theological faculty was not established till towards the end
of the fourteenth century (Savigny).

t See Dollinger, Das Kaisertum Karls des Grossen (Akad, Vertrage
iii. 156),
lxxvi AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

and apart from the widening of the horizon, the capability
of expansion ; this, however, denotes only something rela-
tive ; the most important thing is that European authority
may hope within a measurable space of time to encompass
the earth and thereby no longer be exposed, like former
civilisations, to the plundering raids of unlooked for and
unbridled barbaric Powers.

So much to justify my choice of the thirteenth century
as separating-line.

That there is, nevertheless, something artificial in such
a choice I have admitted at the very beginning and I
repeat it now; in particular one must not think that I
attribute a special fateful importance to the year 1200:
the ferment of the first twelve centuries of the Christian
era has of course not yet ceased, it still confuses thousands
and thousands of intellects, and on the other hand we
may cheerfully assert that the new harmonious world
began 40 dawn in the minds of individuals long before
1200. The rightness or wrongness of such a scheme is
revealed only by its use. As Goethe says: ‘‘ Everything
depends on the fundamental truth, the development of
which reveals itself not so easily in speculation as in
practice: this is the touch-stone of what has been
admitted by the intellect.”4

DIvIsIon INTO Two Parts

In consequence of this fixing of the turning-point of
our history, this book, which treats of the period up to
the year 1800, falls naturally into two parts: the one
deals with the period previous to the year 1200, the other
the period subsequent to that year.

In the first part—the origins—I have discussed first
the legacy of the old world, then the heirs and lastly the
fight of the heirs for their inheritance. As everything
new is attached to something already in existence, some-
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxvii

thing older, the first fundamental question is, “What
component parts of ourintellectual capital are inherited >”
the second, no less important, is, “‘Who are we?”
Though the answering of these questions may take us
back into the distant past, the interest remains always
a present interest, because in the whole construction of
every chapter, as well as in every detail of the discussion,
the one all-absorbing consideration is that of the nineteenth
century. The legacy of the old world forms still an
important—often quite inadequately digested—portion
of the very youngest world : the heirs with their different
natures stand opposed to one another to-day as they
did a thousand years ago; the struggle is as bitter, as
confused as ever; the investigation of the past means
therefore at the same time an examination of the too
abundant material of the present. Let no one, however,
regard my remarks on Hellenic art and philosophy, on
Roman history and Roman law, on the teaching of Christ,
or, again, on the Teutonic peoples and the Jews, &c., as
independent academic treatises and apply to them the
corresponding standard. I have not approached these
subjects as a learned authority, but as a child of to-day
that desires to understand the living present world;
and I have formed my judgments, not from the Aristo-
phanic cloud-cuckoo-land of a supernatural objectivity,
but from that of a conscious Teuton whom Goethe not
in vain has warned:
Was euch nicht angehort,
Miisset ihr meiden ;
Was euch das Inn’re stért,
Dirft ihr nicht leiden!

In the eyes of God all men, indeed all creatures, may
be equal: but the divine law of the individual is to
maintain and to defend his individuality. I have formed
my idea of Teutonicism on a scale quite as large; which
means in this case “as large-heartedly as possible,’ and
Ixx viii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

have not pleaded the cause of any particularism whatever.
I have, on the other hand, vigorously attacked what-
ever is un-Teutonic, but—as I hope—nowhere in an
unchivalrous manner.
The fact that the chapter on the entry of the Jews into
western history has been made so long may perhaps
demand explanation. For the subject of this book, so
diffuse a treatment would not have been indispensable ;
but the prominent position of the Jews in the nineteenth
century, as also the great importance for the history of
our time of the philo- and anti-semitic currents and
controversies, made an answer to the question, ‘‘ Who
is the Jew?” absolutely imperative. Nowhere could I
find a clear and exhaustive answer to this question, so
I was compelled to seek and to give it myself. The
essential point here is the question of religion; and so
I have treated this very point at considerable length,
not merely in the fifth, but also in the third and in the
seventh chapters. For I have become convinced that
the usual treatment of the “‘ Jewish question ”’ is altogether
and always superficial ; the Jew is no enemy of Teutonic
civilisation and culture; Herder may be right in his
assertion that the Jew is always alien to us, and con-
sequently we to him, and no one will deny that this
is to the detriment of our work of culture; yet I think
that we are inclined to under-estimate our own powers
in this respect and, on the other hand, to exaggerate the
importance of the Jewish influence. Hand in hand
with this goes the perfectly ridiculous and revolting
tendency to make the Jew the general scapegoat for
all the vices of our time. In reality the « Jewish peril”
lies much deeper; the Jew is not responsible for it;
we have given rise to it ourselves and must overcome
it ourselves. No souls thirst more after religion than
the Slavs, the Celts and the Teutons: their history
proves it; it is because of the lack of a true religion that
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxix

our whole Teutonic culture is sick unto death (as I show
in the ninth chapter), and this will mean its ruin if
timely help does not come. We have stopped up the
spring that welled up in our own hearts and made ourselves
dependent upon the scanty, brackish water which the
Bedouins of the desert draw from their wells. No
people in the world is so beggarly-poor in religion as the
Semites and their half-brothers the Jews; and we, who
were chosen to develop the profoundest and sublimest
religious conception of the world as the light, life and
vitalising force of our whole culture, have with our own
hands firmly tied up the veins of life and limp along like
crippled Jewish slaves behind Jehovah’s Ark of the
Covenant! Hence my exhaustive treatment of the
Jewish question: my object was to find a broad and
strong foundation for so important a judgment.

The second part—the gradual rise of a new world—
has in these ‘“ Foundations’ only one chapter devoted
to it, ‘‘from the year 1200 to the year r800.”’ Here
I found myself in a sphere which is pretty familiar even
to the unlearned reader, and it would have been altogether
superfluous to copy from histories of politics and of
culture which are within the reach of all. My task was
accordingly limited to shaping and bringing into clearer
range than is usually the case the too abundant material
which I could presume to be known—as material; and
here again my one consideration was of course the nine-
teenth century, the subject of my work. This chapter
stands on the border-line between the two parts, that now
published and what is to follow ; many things which in the
preceding chapters could only be alluded to, not fully
and systematically discussed, such for instance as the
fundamental importance of Teutonicism for our new
world and the value of our conceptions of progress and
degeneration for the understanding of history, find
complete treatment here ; on the other hand. the short
ieee AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

sketch of development in the various spheres of life
brings us hurriedly to the nineteenth century, and the
tabular statement concerning knowledge, civilisation
and culture, and their various elements points to the
work of comparison which forms the plan of the supple-
ment and gives occasion for many an instructive parallel :
at the same moment as we see the Teuton blossom forth
in his full strength, as though nothing had been denied
him, and he were hurrying to a limitless goal, we behold
also his limitations; and this is very important, for
it is upon these last characteristics that his individuality
depends.

In view of certain prejudices I shall probably have to
justify myself for treating State and Church in this chap-
ter as subordinate matters—or, more properly speaking,
as phenomena among others, and not the most important.
State and Church form henceforth, as it were, only the
skeleton: the Church is an inner bone structure in which,
as is usual, with advancing age an always stronger ten-
dency to chronic anchylosis shows itself; the State
develops more and more into the peripheric bore-cuirass,
so well known in zoology, the so-called dermatoskeleton ;
its structure becomes always massier, it stretches over
the ‘soft parts,” until at last in the nineteenth century
it has grown to truly megalotheric dimensions and sets
apart from the true course of life and, if I may say so,
“ ossifies ’’ an extremely large percentage of the effective
powers of humanity as military and civil officials. This
is not meant as criticism; the boneless and invertebrate
animals have never, as is well known, played a great
part in the world; it is besides far from my purpose
to wish to moralise in this book ; I wish merely to explain
why in the second part I have not felt obliged to lay
special stress upon the further development of Church
and State. The impulse to their development had already
been given in the thirteenth century, when nationalism
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxxi

having prevailed over imperialism, the latter was schem-
ing how to win back what was lost ; nothing essentially
new was added later ; even the movements against the all
too prevalent violation of individual freedom by Church
and State had already begun to make themselves felt
very forcibly and frequently. Church and State serve
from now onwards, as I have said, as the skeleton—now
and then suffering from fractures in arms and legs but
nevertheless a firm skeleton—yet take comparatively
little share in the gradual rise of a new world ; henceforth
they follow rather than lead. On the other hand, in all
European countries in the most widely different spheres of
free human activity there arises from about the year 1200
onwards a really recreative movement. The Church
schism and the revolt against State decrees are in reality
rather the mechanical side of this movement; they
spring from the deeply felt need, experienced by newly
awakening powers, of making room for themselves ; the
creative element, strictly speaking, has to be sought
elsewhere. I have already indicated where, when I
sought to justify my choice of the year 1200 as turning-
point: the advance in things technical and industrial, the
founding of commerce on a large scale on the thoroughly
Teutonic basis of stainless uprightness, the rise of busy
towns, the discovery of the earth (as we may daringly
call it), the study of nature which begins diffidently
but soon extends its horizon over the whole cosmos,
the sounding of the deepest depths of human thought,
from Roger Bacon to Kant, the soaring of the spirit up
to heaven, from Dante to Beethoven: it is in all this
that we may recognise the rise of a new world.

THE CONTINUATION

With this study of the gradual rise of a new world,
approximately from the year 1200 to the year 1800,
Ixxxii AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

these “ Foundations’? come to a close. The detailed
plan of the “ Nineteenth Century ” lies before me. In it
I carefully avoid all artificial theorising and all attempts
to find an immediate connection between the two parts.
It is quite sufficient that the explanatory account of
the first eighteen centuries has been already given;
even though frequent and express reference to it be not
necessary, it will prove itself as the indispensable intro-
duction; the supplement will then be devoted to draw-
ing parallels and to the calculation of comparative values.
Here I shall confine myself to considering one by one the
most important phenomena of the century ; the principal
features of political, religious and social organisation,
the course of development of the technical arts, the
progress of natural science and the humanities, and,
lastly, the history of the human mind as a thinking and
creative power ; everywhere, of course, only the principal
currents will be emphasised and nothing but the highest
achievements mentioned.

The consideration of these points is led up to by an
introductory chapter on the “ New Forces ” which have
asserted themselves in this century and have given to it
its characteristic physiognomy, but which could not be
treated adequately within the limits of one of the general
chapters. The press, for instance, is at the same time
a political and a social power of the very first rank; its
stupendous development in the nineteenth century it
owes primarily to industry and art. I do not refer so
much to the production of newspapers by time-
saving machinery, &c., as to telegraphy, which supplies
the papers with news, and to railways, which spread
printed matter everywhere. The press is the most
powerful ally of capitalism; on art, philosophy and
science it cannot really exercise a distinct determining
influence, but even here it can hasten or delay, and
so exercise in a high degree a formative influence upon
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxxiii

the age. This is a power unknown to previous centuries.
In the same way technical developments, the invention
and perfection of the railway and the steamboat, as
also of the electric telegraph, have exercised no small in-
fluence upon all spheres of human activity and wrought
a great change in the face of our earth and in the
conditions of life upon it: quite direct is the influence
on strategy and consequently upon politics, as well as
on trade and industry, while science and even art have
also been indirectly affected: the astronomers of all
lands can with comparative ease betake themselves to
the North Cape or the Fiji Islands to observe a total
eclipse of the sun, and the German festival plays in
Bayreuth have, towards the end of the century, thanks
to the railway and the steamboat, become a living centre
of dramatic art for the whole world. Among these
forces I likewise reckon the emancipation of the Jews.
Like every power that has newly dropped its fetters,
like the press and quick transit, this sudden inroad of
the Jews upon the life of the European races, who
mould the history of the world, has certainly not brought
good alone in its train ; the so-called Classical Renaissance
was after all merely a new birth of ideas, the Jewish
Renaissance is the resurrection of a Lazarus long con-
sidered dead, who introduces into the Teutonic world the
customs and modes of thought of the Oriental, and who
at the same time seems to receive a new lease of life
thereby, like the vine-pest which, after leading in America
the humble life of an innocent little beetle, was introduced
into Europe and suddenly attained to a world-wide
fame of serious import. We have, however, reason
to hope and believe that the Jews, like the Americans,
have brought us not only a new pest but also a new
vine. Certain it is that they have left a peculiar im-
press upon our time, and that the «new world ” which
is arising will require a very great exercise of its strength
Ixxxiv AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

for the work of assimilating this fragment of the “ old
world.” There are still other «‘ new forces” which will
have to be discussed in their proper place. The founding
of modern chemistry, for example, is the starting-point of a
new natural science ; and the perfecting of a new artistic
language by Beethoven is beyond doubt one of the
most pregnant achievements in the sphere of art since
the days of Homer; it gave men a new organ of speech,
that is to say, a new power.

The supplement is intended, as I have said, to furnish
a comparison between the “ Foundations ” and the book
which is to follow. This comparison I shall carry out
point by point in several chapters, using the scheme of
the first part; this method will, I think, be found to
lead to many suggestive discoveries and interesting
distinctions. Besides, it paves the way splendidly for
the somewhat bold but indispensable glance into the
future, without which our conception would not acquire
complete plasticity ; it is only in this way that we can
hope to gain a bird’s-eye view of the nineteenth century
and so be able to judge it with perfect objectivity ; this
will be the end of my task.

Such then is the extremely simple and unartificial plan
of the continuation. It is a plan which, perhaps, |
may not live to carry out, yet I am obliged to mention
it here, as it has to no small degree influenced the form
of the present book.

ANONYMOUS FORCES

In this general introduction I must also discuss briefly
some specially important points, so that later we may
not be detained by out-of-place theoretical discussions.

Almost all men are by nature “ hero-worshippers ”’ ;
and no valid objection can be urged against this healthy
instinct. Simplification is a necessity of the human
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxxv

mind ; we find ourselves involuntarily setting up a single
name in place of the many names representative of a
movement ; further, the personality is something given,
individual, definite, while everything that lies beyond is
an abstraction and an ever-varying circle of ideas.

We might therefore put together the history of a cen-
tury by a mere list of names: it seems to me, how-
ever, that a different procedure is necessary to bring
out what is really essential. For it is remarkable
how slightly the separate individualities stand out in
relief from each other. Men form inside their racial
individualities an atomic but nevertheless very homo-
geneous mass. If a great spirit were to lean out from
among the stars and, bending in contemplation over our
earth, were capable of seeing not only our bodies but also
our souls, the human population of any part of the world
would certainly appear to him as uniform as an ant-
heap does to us: he would of course distinguish warriors,
workers, idlers and monarchs, he would notice that the
one runs hither, the other thither, but on the whole his
impression would be that all individuals obey, and must
obey, a common impersonal impulse. Extremely narrow
limits are set to the influence as well as to the arbitrari-
ness of the great personality. All great and lasting revo-
lutions in the life of society have taken place “ blindly.”
A remarkable personality, as, for example, that of
Napoleon, can lead us astray on this point, and yet
even his, when closely examined, appears as a blindly
working Fate. Its possibility is explained by previous
events: had there been no Richelieu, no Louis XIV.,
no Louis XV., no Voltaire, no Rousseau, no French
Revolution—there would have been no Napoleon!
How closely linked, moreover, is the life-achievement of
such a man with the national character of the whole
people, with its virtues and its failings: without a French
people, no Napoleon! The activity of this commander
Ixxxvi AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

is directed in particular towards the outside world, and
here again we must say: but for the irresolution of
Friedrich Wilhelm III., but for the want of principle in the
House of Habsburg, but for the troubles in Spain, but
for the criminal treatment of Poland just previously, no
Napoleon had been possible! And if, in order to be quite
clear on this point, we consult the biographies and corre-
spondence of Napoleon, to see what were his aims and
aspirations, we shall find that all of them remained un-
realised, and that he sank back into the indistinguishable
homogeneous mass, as clouds dissipate after a storm, as
soon as the community rose to oppose the predominance
of individual will. On the other hand, the radical change of
our whole economic conditions of life, which no power on
earth could prevent, the passing of a considerable portion
of the property of nations into new hands, and further,
the thorough remodelling of the relations of all parts of the
earth, and so of all men, to one another, which we read
of in the history of the world, took place in the course of
the nineteenth century as the result of a series of technical
discoveries in the sphere of quick transit and of industry,
the importance of which no one even suspected. We
need only read in this connection the masterly exposition
in the fifth volume of Treitschke’s Deutsche Geschichte.
The depreciation of landed property, the progressive im-
poverishment of the peasant, the advance of industry,
the rise of an incalculable army of industrial proletarians,
and consequently of a new form of Socialism, a radical
change of all political conditions: all this is a result of
changed conditions of traffic and has been brought about,
if I may so express it, anonymously, like the building of
an ant’s nest, in which each ant only sees the individual
grains which it laboriously drags to the heap. The same,
however, is true of ideas: they hold man in a tyrannical
grasp, they clutch his mind as a bird of prey its quarry
and no one can resist them; so long as any particular

 

 
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxxvii

conception is dominant, nothing can be accomplished
outside the sphere of its magic influence ; whoever cannot
feel as it dictates is condemned to sterility, however
talented he may be. This we have seen in the second
half of the nineteenth century in connection with Darwin’s
theory ofevolution. This idea hadalready begun to appear
in the eighteenth century, as a natural reaction from the
old theory of the immutability of species, which Linnzus
had brought to formal perfection. In Herder, Kant and
Goethe we meet with the idea of evolution in characteristic
colouring ; it is the revolt of great minds against dogma:
in the case of the first, because he, following the course
of Teutonic philosophy, endeavoured to find in the
development of the idea “‘ nature’ an entity embracing
man; in the case of the second, because he as meta-
physician and moralist could not bear to lose the conception
of perfectibility, while the third, with the eye of the
poet, discovered on all sides phenomena which seemed
to him to point to a primary relationship between all
living organisms, and feared lest his discovery should
evaporate into abstract nothingness if this relationship
were not viewed as resting upon direct descent. This
is how such thoughts arise. In minds of such pheno-
menal breadth as Goethe’s, Herder’s and Kant’s there
is room for very different conceptions side by side;
they are to be compared with Spinoza’s God, whose one
substance manifests itself simultaneously in various
forms ; in their ideas on metamorphosis, affinities and
development, I can find nothing contrary to other views,,
and I believe that they would have rejected our present
dogma of evolution, as they did that of immutability.*
T return to this point in another place. The overwhelming

* Compare in this connection Kant’s extremely complete exposition
which forms the concluding portion of the division ‘‘On the regulative
use of ideas of pure reason” in his Critique of pure Reason. The
great thinker here points to the fact that the idea of a *‘ continuous
gradation of creatures * did not and cannot originate from observation
Ixxxviit AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

majority of men with their display of ant-like activity
are quite incapable of viewing things in such an original
manner; productive power can be generated only by
simple healthy specialisation. A manifestly unsound
system like that of Darwin exercises a much more powerful
influence than the deepest speculations, just because of its
“ practicability.’’ And so we have seen the idea of evolu-
tion develop itself till it spread from biology and geology
to all spheres of thought and investigation, and, intoxi-
cated by its success, exercised such a tyranny that any
one who did not swear by it was to be looked upon as
asimpleton. Iam not here concerned with the philosophy
of all these phenomena ; I have no doubt that the spirit
of man as a whole expresses itself appropriately. I may,
however, appropriate Goethe’s remark, ‘‘ what especially
impresses me is the people, a great mass, a necessary
inevitable existence’? and thus establish and explain
my conviction, that great men are in reality the flower
of history and not its roots. And so I consider it
proper to portray a century not so much by an enu-
meration of its leading men as by an emphasising of the
anonymous currents, from which it has derived its
peculiar and characteristic stamp in the various centres
of social. industrial and scientific life.

but from an interest of reason. '! The steps of such a ladder, as ex-
perience can supply them to us, are far, too far, removed from one
another, and what we suppose to be little distinctions are commonly
in nature itself such wide clefts that on such observations as intentions
of nature we can lay no stress whatever (especially when things are
so manifold, since it must always be easy to find certain resemblances
and approximations).”” In his criticism of Herder he reproaches the
hypothesis of evolution with being one of those ideas ‘‘in the case of
which one cannot think anything at all.’ Kant, whom even Haeckel
calls the most important predecessor of Darwin, had thus gone so far a3
to supply the antidote to the dogmatic abuse of such a hypothesis.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION Ixxxix

GENIUS

There is, however, one exception. When we are
dealing not with the mere power of observation, of com-
parison, of calculation, or with the inventive, industrial
or intellectual activity struggling for existence, but
with a purely creative activity, then Personality is every-
thing. The history of art and philosophy is the history
of individual men, the history of the really creative men
of genius. Here nothing else counts. Whatever outside
this is achieved within the sphere of philosophy—and
much of importance is so achieved—belongs to science ;
in art it belongs to mechanical art, that is, to industry.

I lay all the more stress on this point, because at the
present day regrettable confusion prevails with regard
to it. The idea and consequently the word “‘ Genius ”’
originated in the eighteenth century; they arose from
the necessity of possessing a particular defining expression
for ‘specifically creative minds.’ No less a thinker
than Kant calls our attention to the fact that “the
greatest discoverer in the sphere of science differs only in
degree from the ordinary man, the Genius, on the other
hand, differs specifically.” This remark of Kant’s is
beyond doubt just, but we make the one reservation,
that of extending—as we cannot help doing—the term
“work of genius ”’ to every creation, in which the imagi-
nation plays a formative and predominant part, and in
this connection the philosophic genius deserves the same
place as the poetic or the plastic. Here let me say
that I give to the word philosophy its old, wide signi-
fication, which embraced not only the abstract philosophy
of reason, but natural philosophy, the philosophy of
religion, and all thought which rises to the dignity of a
philosophy/jof life. If the word genius is to retain a
sense, we must employ it only of men who have ever-
lastingly enriched our intellectual store by powerful
xe AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

creations of their imagination, but it must be applicable
to all such without exception. Not only the Iiad and
Prometheus Bound, the Adoration of the Cross and Hamlet,
but also Plato’s World of Ideas and Democritus’ World
of Atoms, the Chandogya’s tat-twam-asit and Copernicus’
System of the Heavens are works of immortal genius ;
for just as indestructible as matter and power are the
flashes of light which radiate from the brains of men
endowed with creative power; they never cease to re-
flect for each other the generations and the nations,
and if they sometimes pale for a time, they shine out
brightly once more when they strike a creative eye.
In recent years it has been discovered that in the depths
of the ocean, to which the sunlight does not penetrate,
there are fishes which light up this world of darkness
electrically ; even thus is the dark night of human know-
ledge lighted up by the torch of genius. Goethe lit a
torch with his Faust, Kant another with his conception
of the transcendental ideality of time and space: both
were creators of great imaginative power, both were
men of genius. The scholastic strife about the Kénigs-
berg thinker, the battles between Kantians and anti-
Kantians seem to me of just as much moment as the
work of the zealous Faust critics: what is the use of
logical hair-splitting here ? What in such a case is the
meaning of the phrase, ‘to be right’? Blessed are
they who have eyes tosee and earstohear! If the study
of the stone, the moss, the microscopic infusorium fills
us with wonder and admiration, with what reverence
must we look up to the greatest phenomenon that nature
presents to us—Genius !

GENERALISATIONS

I must here add a remark of some importance. Though
we are to concern ourselves particularly with general
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION xci

tendencies, not with events and personages, still the
danger of too wide generalisations must not be over-
looked. We are but too prone to sum up prematurely.
It is this tendency that makes men so often hang, ag
it were, a ticket round the neck of the nineteenth cen-
tury, even though they must know that it is utterly
impossible by means of a single word to be just both to
ourselves and to the past. A fixed idea of this kind is
quite sufficient to render a clear comprehension of
historical development impossible.

Quite commonly, for example, the nineteenth century
is called the ‘century of natural science.” When we
remember what the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries have achieved in this very sphere, we must
surely hesitate before bestowing any such title on the
nineteenth. We have but continued to build and by
our industry have discovered much, but whether we
can point to a Copernicus and a Galileo, to a Kepler
and a Newton, to a Lavoisier and a Bichat * appears to
me at least doubtful. Cuvier’s activity attains indeed
to the dignity of philosophical importance, and the powers
of observation and invention of men like Bunsen (the
chemist) and Pasteur come remarkably near genius ;
of imperishable fame are men like Louis Agassiz, Michael
Faraday, Julius Robert Mayer, Heinrich Hertz and
perhaps some few others; but we must at least admit
that their achievements do not surpass those of their
predecessors. Some years ago a University teacher of
the medical faculty with a fine reputation for theoretical
as well as practical work remarked to me, *‘ In the case
of us scholars nowadays it is not so much a question of
brain convolutions as of perseverance.” It . would
indeed be false modesty, and an emphasising of the un-
important, to designate the nineteenth century the
‘century of perseverance.” All the more so, since the

® He died in 1802,
xcii AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

designation of “ the century of the rolling wheel” would
certainly be quite as justifiable for an epoch which has
produced the railway and the bicycle. Better, certainly,
would be the general term “the century of science,”
by which would be understood that the spirit of accurate
investigation which received its first encouragement from
Roger Bacon had put all departments of study under its
yoke. This spirit, however, if the matter be fully con-
sidered, will be found to have brought about less sur-
prising results in the sphere of natural science, in which
since earliest times the exact observation of the heavenly
bodies formed the basis of all knowledge, than in other
spheres, in which arbitrary methods had hitherto been the
order of the day. Perhaps it would be a true and apt
characterisation of the nineteenth century—though at the
same time an unfamiliar one to most educated people—
to style it the “ century of philology.” First called into
being towards the end of the eighteenth century by
such men as Jones, Anquetil du Perron, the brothers
Schlegel and Grimm, Karadzic and others, comparative
philology has in the course of a single century made
quite extraordinary progress. To establish the organism
and the history of language means not merely to thro

light upon anthropology, ethnology and history, Fout
particularly to strengthen human minds for new achieve-
mentsf~ And while the philology of the nineteenth
century thus laboured for the future, it unearthed buried
treasures of the past, which are among the most valuable
possessions of mankind. It is not necessary to feel
sympathy for the pseudo-Buddhistical sport of half-
educated idlers in order to recognise clearly that the dis-
covery of the divine doctrine of understanding of the ancient
Indians is one of the greatest achievements of the nine-
teenth century, destined to exercise an enduring influ-
ence upon distant ages. To this has been added the
knowledge of old Teutonic poetry and mythology. Every-
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION xciii

thing that tends to strengthen genuine individuality
is a real safety anchor. The brilliant series of Teutonic
and Indian scholars has, half unconsciously, accom-
plished a great work at the right moment ; now we too
possess our “ holy books,” and what they teach is*more
beautiful and nobler than what the Old Testament
sets forth./ The belief in our strength, which the history
of the nineteenth century gives us, has been intensified
to an incalculable extent by this discovery of our in-
dependent capacity for much that is of the highest,
and to which our relation was hitherto one of ‘subjec-
tion :}'in particular the myth of the peculiar aptitude
of the Jew for religion is finally exploded; for this
later generations will owe a debt of gratitude to the
nineteenth century. This is one of the greatest and
most far-reaching achievements of our time, and so
the title “‘ the century of philology ”’ would be in a certain
sense justified. In this connection we have mentioned
another of the characteristic phenomena of the nineteenth
century. Ranke had prophesied that our century would
be a century of nationality ; that was a correct political
prognostic, for never before have the nations stood
opposed to each other so clearly and definitely as antago-
nistic unities. i It has, however, also become a century of *
races, and that indeed is in the first instance a necessary
and direct consequence of science and scientific thinking.
I have already said at the beginning of this introduction
that science does not unite but dissects. That state-
ment has not contradicted itself here. Scientific anatomy
has furnished such conclusive proofs of the existence of
physical characteristics distinguishing the races from
each other that they can no longer be denied ; scientific
philology has discovered between the various languages
fundamental differences which cannot be bridged over ;
the scientific study of history in its various branches
has brought about similar results, especially by the
xciv AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

exact determination of the religious history of each race,
in which only the most general of general ideas can raise
the illusion of similarity, while the further development
has always followed and still follows definite, sharply
dive®gent lines. / The so-called unity of the human
race is indeed still honoured as a hypothesis, but only
as a personal, subjective conviction lacking every material
foundation.f The ideas of the eighteenth century with
regard to ‘the brotherhood of nations were certainly
very noble but purely sentimental in their origin f and
in contrast to these ideas to which the Socialists)
still cling, limping on like reserves in the battle,
stern reality has gradually asserted itself as the neces-
sary result of the events and investigations of our
time. There are many other titles for which much
might be said: Rousseau had already spoken pro-
phetically of a “‘siécle des révolutions,’’ others speak
of a century of Jewish emancipation, century of elec-
tricity, century of national armies, century of colonies,
century of music, century of advertisement, century of
the proclamation of infallibility. Lately I found the
nineteenth century described in an English book as the
religious century, and could not quite dispute the state-
ment; for Beer, the author of the Geschichte des Welt-
handels, the nineteenth century is the “‘ economic”
century, whereas Professor Paulsen in his Geschichte des
gelehrten Unterrichts (2 Aufl. ii. 206) calls it the seculum
historicum in contrast to the preceding seculum philoso-
phicum, and Goethe’s expression “‘ ein aberweises Jahr-
hundert ” could be applied quite as well to the nineteenth
century as to the eighteenth. No such generalisation
possesses any real value.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

These remarks bring me to the close of this general
introduction. But before I write the last line I should
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION XCV

like to place myself, according to an old custom, under
the protection of highly honoured men.

Lessing writes in his Briefe, die neueste Litteratur
betreffend, that “history should not trouble with un-
important facts, should not burden the memory, but
enlighten the understanding.” Taken generally, this
is saying too much. But in the case of a book which is
directed not to historians but to the educated layman,
the remark is perfectly justified. To enlighten the
understanding, not to teach in the real sense of the word,
but to suggest, to stimulate thoughts and conclusions,
that is my aim.

Goethe differs somewhat from Lessing in his conception
of the task of the historian. He says, “‘ The best thing
that we get from history is the enthusiasm it arouses.”
These words, too, I have kept in mind in the course of
my work, for I am convinced that understanding, how-
ever well enlightened, avails little, if not united to enthu-
siasm. The understanding is the machine; the more
perfect every detail in it, the more neatly every part
fits into the other, the more efficient will it be, but only
potentially, for, in order to be driven, it requires the
motive-power, and the motive-power is enthusiasm.
Perhaps, however, it is difficult to take Goethe’s hint and
wax enthusiastic over the nineteenth century, simply for
this reason, that self-love is so contemptible ; we wish to
test ourselves strictly, and tend to under-estimate rather
than over-estimate; may future ages judge us more
leniently. I find it difficult to grow enthusiastic because
the material element is so predominant in this century.
Just as our battles have generally been won not by the
personal superiority of individuals but by the number
of the soldiers, or to put it more simply by the amount
of food for powder, so in the very same way have treasures
in gold and knowledge and discoveries been piled up.
Things have increased in numbers and in bulk, men
xcvi AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

have collected but not sifted ; such, at any rate, has been
the general tendency. The nineteenth century is essen-
tially a century of accumulation, an age of transition and
of the provisional; in other respects it is neither fish mor
flesh ; it dangles betwee empiricism and siti fs
tween liberalismus vulgaris, as it has been wittily called,
and the impotent efforts of senile conservatism, between
autocracy and anarchism, doctrines of infallibility and the
most stupid materialism, worship of the Jew and Anti-
Semitism, the rule of the millionaire and proletarian
government. {Not ideas, but material gains, are the
characteristic feature of the nineteenth century. { The
great thoughts that have cropped up here and there,
the mighty creations of art, from Faust, Part II., to
Parsifal, have brought undying fame to the German
people, but they are for future times. After the great
social revolutions and the momentous intellectual achieve-
ments (at the close of the eighteenth and the early dawn
of the nineteenth century) material for further develop-
ment had again to be collected. /And so this too great
preoccupation with the material banished the beautiful
almost entirely from life; at the present moment there
exists perhaps no savage, at least no half-civilised people,
which does not to my mind possess more beauty in its
surroundings and more harmony in its existence as a
whole than the great mass of so-called civilised Europeans.
It is therefore, I think, necessary to be moderate in our
enthusiastic admiration for the nineteenth century. On
the other hand it is easy to feel the enthusiasm spoken of
by Goethe, as soon as our glance rests not upon the one
century alone but embraces all that “ new world” which
has been slowly unfolding for centuries. Certainly the
commonly accepted idea of “‘ progress ’’ has by no means
a sound philosophical foundation ; under this flag sail
almost all the refuse wares of our time; Goethe, who
never tires of pointing to enthusiasm as the motive element
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION xcvii

in our nature, declares his conviction nevertheless to be
that ‘‘Men become wiser and more discerning, but not
better, happier and more vigorous, or if they do become
so, it is only for a time.” * But what could be more
elevating than consciously to work towards such an
epoch, in which, if only for a time, mankind will be
better, happier and more vigorous? fAnd when we
regard the nineteenth century not as something isolated
but as part of a much greater period of time, we discover
soon that out of the barbarism which followed upon
the downfall of the old world, and out of the wild ferment
called forth by the shock of opposing forces, some
centuries ago a perfectly new organisation of human
society began to develop, and that our world of to-day
—far from being the summit of this evolution—simply
represents a transition stage, a “‘ middle point ”’ in the
long and weary journey. If the nineteenth century were
really a summit, then the pessimistic view of life would
be the only justifiable one: to see, after all the great
achievements in the intellectual and material spheres,
bestial wickedness still so widespread, and misery in-
creased a thousandfold, could cause us only to repeat
Jean Jacques Rousseau’s prayer: “ Almighty God, deliver
us from the sciences and the pernicious arts of our fathers !
Grant us ignorance, innocence and poverty once more
as the only things which can bring happiness and which
are of value in Thine eyes!’’ If, however, as I have
said, we see in the nineteenth century a stage in the
journey, if we do not let ourselves be blinded by visions
of “ golden ages,” or by delusions of the future and the
past, if we do not allow ourselves to be led astray in
our sound judgment by Utopian conceptions of a gradual
improvement of mankind as a whole, and of political
machinery working ideally, then we are justified in the
hope and belief that we Teutonic peoples, jand the
* Eckerman October 23, 1828.
1 a
xcviii AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

peoples under our influence, are advancing towards a
new harmonious culture, incomparably more beautiful
than any of which history has to tell, a culture in
which men should really be “better and happier”
than they are at present. It may be that the tendency
of modern education to direct the glance so unceasingly
to the past is regrettable, but it has the advantage
that one does not require to be a Schiller to feel with him
that “‘no single modern man can vie with the individual
Athenian for the prize of manhood.” * For that reason
we now direct our glance to the future, to that future
the character of which is beginning to dawn upon us,
as we are gradually becoming aware of the real significance
of the present era which embraces the last seven hundred
years. We will vie with the Athenian. We will form
a world in which beauty and harmony of existence do
not, as in their case, depend upon the employment of
slaves, upon eunuchs, and the seclusion of women! We
may confidently hope to do so, for we see this world
slowly and with difficulty rising up around our brief span
of life. And the fact that it does so unconsciously does
not matter; even the half-fabulous Phcenician historian
Sanchuniathon says in the first part of his first book,
when speaking of the creation of the world: ‘“‘ Things
themselves, however, knew nothing of their own origin.”
The same holds true to-day ; history endlessly illustrates
Mephisto’s words, ‘Du glaubst zu schieben und du
wirst geschoben.” f When, therefore, we look back at
the nineteenth century, which certainly was driven more
than it drove, and in most things deviated to an almost
ridiculous extent from the paths it had originally intended
to pursue, we cannot help feeling a thrill of honest
admiration and almost of enthusiasm. In this century

* This famous sentence is only conditionally true; I have submitted

it to a thorough criticism in the last chapter, to which I here refer in
order to avoid misconceptions.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION XCIX

an enormous amount of work has been done, and that
is the foundation of all “ growing better and happier ¥ ;
this was the morality of our age, if I may so express myself.
And while the workshop of great creative ideas was
seemingly unproductive, the methods of work were
perfected in a manner hitherto undreamt of. ~
The nineteenth century is the triumph of method. In
this more than in any political organisation we see a
victory of the democratic principle. Men as a whole
rose hereby a step higher, and became more efficient.
In former centuries only men of genius, later only highly
gifted men could accomplish anything; now, thanks
to method, every one can do so, Compulsory education,
followed by the imperative struggle for existence, has
provided thousands to-day with the ‘‘ method ” to enable
them, without any special gift, to take part in the common
work of the human race as technicians, industrials,
natural investigators, philologists, historians, mathe-
maticians, psychologists, &c. The mastery of so colossal
a material in so short a space of time would otherwise
be quite unthinkable. Just consider what was under-
stood by “philology” a hundred years ago!
Where was there such a thing as true “ historical.
investigation’? ? We meet with exactly the same spirit
in all spheres which lie far remote from science: the
national armies are the most universal and simple appli-
cation of method and the Hohenzollerns are in so far the
democrats of the nineteenth century that they set the
fashion for others: method in arm and leg movement,
but at the same time method in education, of the will,
of obedience, of duty, of responsibility. (Skill and con-
scientiousness have in consequence—unfortunately not
everywhere, but nevertheless in many spheres—decidedly
increased: we make greater demands on ourselves
and on others than we did of old; in a sense a general
technical improvement has taken place—an improvement
c AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

which extends even to men’s habits of thinking This
amelioration of conditions can hardly fail to have
a bearing upon morality: the abolition of human
slavery outside Europe—at least in the officially recognised
sense of the word—and the beginning of a movement to
protect animal slaves are omens of great significance.

And so I believe that in spite of all doubts a just and
loving contemplation of the nineteenth century must
both “enlighten the understanding’ and “ awaken
enthusiasm.” To begin with, we consider only its
“Foundations,” that is, the ‘‘ sum of all that has gone
before ’’—that Past out of which the nineteenth century
has laboriously but successfully extricated itself.
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY LORD REDESDALE, G.C.V.O.,

K.C.B., &c. v-lvi
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE Ivii
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION lix-c

Plan of the Work, lix—The Foundations, Ixiii—The Turninz-point, lxiv—
The Year 1200, lxx—Division into two parts, lxxvi~The Continua-
tion, Ixxxi—Anonymous Forces, Ixxxiv—Genius, Ixxxix—Generali-
sations, xc—The Nineteenth Century, xciv.

FIRST PART: THE ORIGINS
DIVISION I: THE LEGACY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

INTRODUCTORY

Historical Principles, 3— Hellas, Rome, Judea, 8 — Philosophy of
History, 12.

First CHAPTER: HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY
Man’s Awakening, 14—Animal and Man, 17—Homer, 27—Artistic
Culture, 33—Shaping, 40— Plato, 45— Aristotle, 49 — Natural
Science, 51—Public Life, 58—Historical Falsehoods, 60. —Decline of
Religion, 69—-Metaphysics, 80—Theology, 87—Scholasticism, 89
—Conclusion, gt.

SECOND CHAPTER: RoMaN Law

Disposition, g3—Roman History, 93— Roman Ideals, 104—The Struggle
against the Semites, 112—- Rome under the Empire, 122—The
Legacy of Constitutional Law, 128—Jurisprudence as a Technical
Art, 135—Natural Law, tgo—Roman Law, 145—The Family, 155—
Marriage, 160— Woman, 163 — Poetry and Language, 166—
Summary, 171.

TurrD CHAPTER: THE REVELATION OF CHRIST

introductory,174—The Religion of Experience,177—Buddha and Christ, :
182—Buddha, 184—Christ, 187—The Galileans, 200—Religion, 213
et
cil CONTENTS

—Christ not a Jew, 221—Historical Religion, 228—Will in the
Semitic Race, 238—The Prophet, 244—Christ a Jew, 246—The
Nineteenth Century, 248.

DIVISION II: THE HEIRS

INTRODUCTORY
The Chaos, 251—The Jews, 253—The Teutonic Races, 256.

FourtTH CHAPTER: THE CHaos
' Scientific Confusion, 258—Importance of Race, 269—The Five Cardinal
Laws, 275—Other Influences, 289—The Nation, 292—The Hero, 297
—The Raceless Chaos, 299—Lucian, 302—Augustine, 309—Ascetic
Delusion, 314—Sacredness of Pure Race, 317—=-The Teutonic
Peoples, 320. a

FirtH CHAPTER: THE ENTRANCE OF THE JEWS INTO
WESTERN History

The Jewish Question, 329—The ‘Alien People,” 336— Historical
Bird’s-eye View, 341—Consensus Ingeniorum, 344—Princes and
Nobility, 347—Inner Contact, 351—Who is the Jew? 352—Sys-
tematic Arrangement of the Investigation, 356—Origin of the
Israelite, 360—The Genuine Semite, 368—The Syrian, 371—The
Amorites, 381—Comparative Numbers, 387—Consciousness of Sin
against Race, 3g0--Homo Syriacus, 393—Homo Europeus, 396—
Homo Arabicus, 397—Homo Judeus, 4o8—Excursus on Semitic
Religion, 411—Israel and Judah, 441—Development of the Jew,
448—The Prophets, 466—The Rabbis, 472—The Messianic Hope,
477—The Law, 483—The Thora, 486—Judaism, 488.

S1xTH CHAPTER: THE ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE
INTO History

The Term ‘‘ Germanic,” 494—Extension of the Idea, 498—The Ger-
manic Celt, 499—The Germanic Slav, 505—The Reformation, 511
—Limitation of the Notion, 517—Fair Hair, 522—The Form of
the Skull, 526—Rational Anthropology, 534—Physiognomy, 538—
Freedom and Loyalty, 542—Ideal and Practice, 550—Teuton and
Anti-Teuton, 552—Ignatius of Loyola, 564—Backward Glance, 574
—Forward Glance, 575.
FOUNDATIONS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
FIRST PART
THE ORIGINS

Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickelt
Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.
GOETHE.
DIVISION I

THE LEGACY OF THE ANCIENT
WORLD

Das Edelste, was wir besitzen, haben wir nicht von uns
selbst ; unser Verstand mit seinen Kraften, die Form in
welcher wir denken, handeln und sind, ist auf uns gleich-
sam herabgeerbet.—HERDER.

INTRODUCTORY

‘HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES

“ HE WORLD,” says Dr. Martin Luther, “is
tuled by God through a few heroes and
pre-eminent persons.” The mightiest of
these ruling heroes are the princes of intel-

lect, men who without sanction of diplomacy or force of

arms, without the constraining power of law and police,
exercise a defining and transforming influence upon
the thought and feeling of many generations, men who
may be said to be all the more powerful the less power
they have, but who seldom, perhaps never, ascend their
throne during their lifetime; their sway lasts long. but
begins late, often very late, especially when we leave
out of account the influence which they exercise upon
individuals and consider the moment when that which
filled their life begins to affect and mould the life of
whole peoples. More than two centuries elapsed before
3
4 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

the new conception of the Cosmos, which we owe to
Copernicus, and which was bound to revolutionise all
human thought from its foundations, became common
property. Men as important among his contemporaries
as Luther said of Copernicus that he was ‘“‘a fool who
turned upside down the whole art of astronomia.”
Although his system of the world was already taught in
antiquity ; although the works of his direct predecessors,
Regiomontanus and others, had prepared everything
that made the last discovery inevitable, so that one
might safely say that the Copernican system was only
awaiting for its completion the spark of inspiration in
the brain of the “most pre-eminent”; although it was
here not a question of baffling problems in metaphysics
and morals, but of a simple and, moreover, a demon-
strable conception ; although no material interest what-
ever was threatened by the new doctrine, much time
was needed for this conception, which was in so many
important respects of a revolutionary character, to
travel from the brain of its author into that of a few
other privileged men, and, ever spreading, finally take
possession of the whole of mankind. It is well known
how Voltaire in the first half of the eighteenth century
fought for the recognition of the great triad—Copernicus,
Kepler, Newton—but as late as the year 1779 the worthy
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg felt himself compelled to
undertake a campaign in the Gittingisches Taschenbuch,
against the “Tychonians,” and it was not till the year
of grace one thousand eight hundred and twenty-two
that the Congregation of the Index authorised the
printing of books which teach that the earth moves! :

I make this statement in advance that the reader may
comprehend in what sense the year I is here chosen as
the starting-point of our age. It is no random date,
chosen for reasons of convenience, or because the outward
course of political events had stamped this year as
HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES q

particularly noteworthy; it has been adopted because
the simplest logic compels us to trace a new force back
to its origin. It is a matter of “history”? how slowly
or how quickly it grows into an effective power; the
actual life of the hero is, and cannot but be, the living
source of all subsequent developments.

The birth of Jesus Christ is the most important
date in the whole history of mankind.* No battle, no
dynastic change, no natural phenomenon, no discovery
possesses an importance that could bear comparison
with the short earthly life of the Galilean; almost two
thousand years of history prove it, and even yet we have
hardly crossed the threshold of Christianity. For pro-
foundly intrinsic reasons we are justified in calling that
year the “first year,” and in reckoning our time
from it. In a certain sense we might truly say
that “history” in the real sense of the term only begins
with the birth of Christ. The peoples that have not
yet adopted Christianity—the Chinese, the Indians, , the
Turks "and others—have_all so-far-no true history ; all
‘they fb have is, on the one hand, a chronicle of ruling
‘dynasties, butcheries “and” the ‘like: on the other the |
uneventful, humble existence of countless millions living
a life of bestial happiness, who disappear in the night of '
ages ‘leaving no trace behind; whether the kingdom of
the Pharaohs was founded in the year. 3285 or in the
year 32850 is in itself of no consequence; to know
Egypt under one Rameses is the same as to know it _
under all fifteen Ramesides. And so it is with the
other pre-Christian nations (with the exception of those
three—of which I shall speak presently—that stand
in organic relation to our Christian epoch) : their culture,
their art, their religion, in short their condition may
interest us, achievements of their intellect or their

 

* The fact that this birth did not take place in the year 1, but in
all probability some years before, is for us here of no special consequence.
6 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

industry may even have become valuable parts of our
own life, as is exemplified by Indian thought, Babylonian
science and Chinese methods; their history, however,
purely as such, lacks moral greatness, in other words,
that force which rouses the individual man to conscious-
ness of his individuality in contrast to the surrounding
world and then—like the ebb and flow of the tide—
makes him employ the world, which he has discovered in
his own breast, to shape that which is without it. The
Aryan Indian, for example, though he unquestionably
possesses the greatest talent for metaphysics of any people
that ever lived, and is in this respect far superior to all
peoples of to-day, does not advance beyond inner en-
lightenment: he does not shape; he is neither artist
nor reformer, he is content to live calmly and to die
redeemed—he has no history. No more has his opposite,
the Chinaman—that unique representative of Positivism
and Collectivism ; what our historical works record as
his “history” is nothing more than an enumeration of
the various robber bands, by which the patient, shrewd
and soulless people, without sacrificing an iota of its
individuality, has allowed itself to be ruled: such env-
merations are simply “criminal statistics,” not history,
at least not for us: we cannot really judge actions which
awaken no echo in our breast.

Let me give an example. While these lines are being
written [1897], the civilised world is clamorously in-
dignant with Turkey; the European Powers are being
compelled by the voice of public opinion to intervene
for the protection of the Armenians and Cretans; the
final destruction of the Turkish power seems now only
a question of time. This is certainly justified; it was
bound to come to this; nevertheless it is a fact that
Turkey is the last little corner of Europe in which a
whole people lives in undisturbed prosperity and happi-
ness. It knows nothing of social questions, of the bitter
HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES 7

struggle for existence and other such things; great
fortunes are unknown and pauperism is literally non-
existent ; all form a single harmonious family, and no
one strives after wealth at the expense of his neighbour.
I am not simply repeating what I have read in newspapers
and books, I am testifying to what I have seen with my
own eyes. If the Mohammedan had not practised
tolerance at a time when this idea was unknown to the
rest of Europe, there would now be idyllic peace in the
Balkan States and in Asia Minor. Here it is the
Christian who throws in the leaven of discord; and with
the cruelty of a ruthlessly reacting power of nature, the
otherwise humane Moslem rises and destroys the dis-
turber of his peace. In fact, the Christian likes neither
the wise fatalism of the Mohammedan nor the prudent
indifferentism of the Chinese. “I come not to bring
peace, but a sword,” Christ himself said. The Christian
idea can, in a certain sense, be said to be positively
anti-social. Now that the Christian has become conscious
of a personal dignity otherwise never dreamt of, he is
no longer satisfied with the simple animal instinct of
living with others; the happiness of the bees and the
ants has now no charm for him. If Christianity be
curtly characterised as the religion of love, its importance
for the history of mankind is but superficially touched
upon. The essential thing is rather this: by Christianity
each individual has received an inestimable, hitherto
unanticipated value—even the “hairs on his head are
all numbered by God” (Matthew x. 30); his outward
lot does not correspond to this inner worth; and thus
it is that life has become tragic, and only by tragedy
does history receive a purely human purport. For
no event is in itself historically tragic ; it is only rendered
tragic by the mind of those who experience it ; otherwise
what affects mankind remains as sublimely indifferent
as all other natural phenomena. I shall return soon to
8 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

the Christian idea. My purpose here has been merely to
indicate, first, how deeply and manifestly Christianity
revolutionises human feeling and action, of which we still
have living proofs before our very eyes ;* secondly, in
what sense the non-Christian peoples have no true
history, but merely annals.

HELLAS, ROME, JUDEA

History, in the higher sense of the word, means only
that past which still lives actively in the consciousness
of man and helps to mould him. In pre-Christian times,
therefore, it is only when it concerns peoples which are
hastening towards the moral regeneration known as Chris-
tianity that history acquires an interest at once scientific
and universally human. Hellas, Rome, Judea alone of the
peoples of antiquity are historically important for the living
consciousness of the men of the nineteenth century.

Every inch of Hellenic soil is sacred to us, and rightly
so. On the other side of the strait, in Asia, not even
the men had or yet have a personality; here, in Hellas,
every river, every stone is animate and individualised,
dumb nature awakes to self-consciousness. And the
men by whom this miracle was performed stand before
us, from the half-fabulous times of the Trojan War on
to the supremacy of Rome, each one with his own
incomparable physiognomy: heroes, rulers, warriors,
thinkers, poets, sculptors. Here man was torn: man
capable of becoming a Christian. Rome presents in
many respects the most glaring contrast to Greece; it
is not only geographically but also mentally more distant
from Asia, that is, from Semitic, Babylonian and

* It is altogether erroneous to think one must attribute such
effects not to the awakened soul-life, but merely to race; the Bosniac
of pure Servian descent and the Macedonian of Grecian stock are, as

Mohammedans, just as fatalistic and anti-individualistic in their mode
of thinking as any Osmanli whatever.
HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES 9

Egyptian influences; it is not so bright and easily
satisfied, not so flighty. Possession is the ambition of the
peopte as it is of the individual. The Roman mind turns
from the sublimely intuitive in art and philosophy to the
intellectual work of organisation. In Greece a single
Solon, a single Lycurgus in a way created fundamental
laws of State as dilettanti, from purely individual con-
viction of what was right, while later a whole people of
glib amateurs forcibly took the supreme power into their
own hands; in Rome there grew up a long-lived com-
munity of sober, serious legislators, and while the outward
horizon—the Roman Empire and its interests—con-
tinually widened, the horizon of internal interests grew
most perilously narrower. Morally, however, Rome
stands in many respects higher than Greece: the Greek
has from the earliest times been what he is to-day,
disloyal, unpatriotic, selfish; self-restraint was foreign
to him and so he has never been able either to control
others or to submit with dignified pride to being con-
trolled. On the other hand, the growth and the longevity
of the Roman state point to the shrewd, strong, conscious
political spirit of the citizens. The family and the law
that protects it are the creations of Rome. And indeed
this is true of the family in the narrower sense of an
institution laying the foundation of every higher morality,
as well as in the extended sense of a power which unites
the whole of the citizens into one firm state capable of
self-defence; only from the family could a permanent
state arise, only through the state could that which
to-day we call civilisation become a principle of society
capable of development. All the states of Europe are
grafts on the Roman stem. And however frequently
of old, as to-day, might prevailed over right, the con-
ception of right is our inheritance from the Roman.
Meanwhile, just as the day is followed by the night (the
sacred night, which reveals to our eye the secret of other
to FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

worlds, worlds above us in the firmament of heaven and
worlds within ourselves, in the depths of our silent hearts),
so the glorious positive work of the Greeks and Romans
demanded a negative completion ; and this was provided
by Israel. To enable us to see the stars, the light of day
must be extinguished; in order to become truly great,
to attain that tragic greatness which, as I have said,
alone gives vivid purport to history, man had to be-
come conscious not only of his strength but also of his
weakness. It was only by clear recognition and un-
sparing accentuation of the triviality of all human action,
the pitiableness of reason in its heavenward flight,
the general baseness of human feelings and_ political
motives, that thought was able to take its stand upon
a totally new foundation, from which it was to discover
in the heart of man capacities and talents, that guided
it to the knowledge of something that was sublimer
than all else; Greeks and Romans would never by
their methods have reached this sublimest goal; it
would never have occurred to them to attach so
great importance to the life of the single individual.
“If we contemplate the outward history of the people
of Israel, it certainly offers at the first glance little that
is attractive; with the exception of some few pleasing
features, all the meanness of which men are capable
seems concentrated in this one small nation; not that
the Jews were essentially baser than other men, but the
grinning mask of vice stares at us from out their history
in unveiled nakedness; in their case no great political
sense excuses injustice, no art, no philosophy reconciles
_us to the horrors of the struggle for existence. Here it
was that the negation of the things of this world arose,
and with it the vague idea of a higher extra-mundane
vocation of mankind. Here men of the people ventured
to brand the princes of this earth as ‘‘ companions
of thieves,” and to cry out upon the rich, ‘Woe unto
HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES II

them that join house to house, that lay field to field till
there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the
midst of the earth.” That was a different conception
of right from that of the Romans, to whom nothing
seemed more sacred than property. But the curse
extended not merely to the mighty, but also to “them
that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own
sight,” and likewise to the joyous heroes, who “ drink
wine,’ and have chosen the world as their sporting
place. So speaks an Isaiah already in the eighth century
before the birth of Christ.* But this first outcry against
what is radically evil-in man and in human society
rings louder and louder in the course of the following
centuries from the soul of this strange people: it grows
in earnestness, until Jeremiah cries out, ‘‘ Woe unto me,
O mother, that thou hast given me birth!” Finally
the negation becomes a positive principle of life, and
the sublimest of prophets suffers on the cross out of
love. Now it matters not whether we adopt the
attitude of a believing Christian or simply that of the
objective historian; one thing is certain, that in order
to understand the figure of Christ, we must know the
people who crucified Him. One point of course must be
kept in mind: in the case of the Greeks and Romans
their deeds were their positive and permanent achieve-
ment; in the case of the Jews, on the other hand, it
was the negation of the deeds of this people that was
the only positive achievement for mankind. But this
negation is likewise an historical fact, a fact indeed that
has “ grown historically.” Even if Jesus Christ, as is
extremely probable, was not descended from the Jewish
people,f nothing but the most superficial partisanship

* See Isaiah, chaps. i. and v.

+ For the proof that Christ was no Jew (in the sense of Jew by race)
and also for the exposition of his close relation to the moral life of
the real Jewish people, see chap. iii.; chap. v. then deals more fully
with the Jewish people.
12 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIX1H CENTURY

can deny the fact that this great and divine figure is
inseparably bound up with the historical development of
that people.

Who could doubt it? The history of Hellas, that of
Rome, and that of Judea have had a moulding influence
upon all centuries of our era and still had a living in-
fluence upon the nineteenth century. Indeed they
were not merely living, but also life-retarding influences,
inasmuch as they obstructed our free view into the
purely human sphere in many directions by a fence of
man’s height. This is the unavoidable fate of mankind:
what advances him, at the same time fetters him. And
so the history of these peoples must be carefully noted
by any one who proposes to discuss the nineteenth
century.

In the present work a knowledge of pure history, of
the chronology of the world, has been assumed. I can
attempt only one thing here, viz., to define with the greatest
possible brevity what are the most essential distinguish-
ing marks of this “legacy of the old world”. This I
shall do in three chapters, the first of which treats of
Hellenic art and philosophy, the second of Roman law,
and the third of the advent of Jesus Christ.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.

Before concluding these introductory remarks, one
more warning! The expression, this or that “had to”
happen, slipped from my pen a moment ago; perhaps
it will recur in what follows. Thereby I am far from
admitting that the philosophy of history has any right
to dogmatise. The contemplation of the past from the
point of view of the present admits the logical conclusion
that certain events “had to”’ happen at that time, in
order that the present should become what it has become.
The subtle question as to whether the course of history
HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES 13

might have been different from what it was would be
out of place here. Scared by the dreary clamour of so-
called scientism, most of our modern historians have
handled this subject with timidity. And yet it is clear
that it is only when considered sub specie necessitatis
that the present acquires an instructive significance.
Vere scive est per causas scire, says Bacon; this way of
viewing things is the only scientific one; but how shall
it be successfully applied if necessity is not everywhere
recognised ? The phrase ‘‘ had to’ expresses the neces-
sary connection of cause and effect, nothing more; it
is with such examinations as these that we men gild
the main beams of our narrow intellectual sphere,
without imagining that thereby we have flown out into
the open air. The following should, however, be borne
in mind: if necessity be a shaping power, then round
this central point wider and wider circles form themselves,
and no one can blame us if, when our purpose demands
it, we avoid the long circuitous path, in order that we may
take our stand as near as possible to the axis which while
causing motion is itself hardly moved—that point where
what appears to be an arbitrary law almost merges into
undeniable necessity,
FIRST CHAPTER
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY

Nur durch den Menschen tritt der Mensch in das Tageslicht
des Lebens ein.—JEAN PauL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

Man BECOMING MAN

Mucu wit has been spent in defining the difference
between man and beast, but the distinction between man
and man seems to me to be even more important, pre-
paring the way, as it does, for the recognition of a fact
of greater significance. The moment a man awakens
to a consciousness of freely creative power, he crosses
a definite boundary and breaks the spell which showed
how closely, in spite of all his talent and all his achieve-
ments, he was related even in mind to other living
creatures. Through art a new element, a new form
of existence, enters into the cosmos.

In expressing this as my conviction, I put myself on
the same footing as some of Germany’s greatest sons.
This view of the importance of art corresponds, too, if
I am not mistaken, to a specific tendency of the German
mind; at any rate so clear and precise a formulation
of this thought, as we find in Lessing and Winckelmann,
Schiller and Goethe, Hélderlin, Jean Paul and Novalis,
in Beethoven and Richard Wagner, would hardly be
met with among the other members of the related Indo-
Teutonic group. In order to do justice to this view, we
must in the first place know exactly what is here meant

14
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 15

by “art.” When Schiller writes, “ Nature has formed
creatures only, art has made men,” we surely cannot
believe that he was thinking here of flute-playing or
verse-writing ? Whoever reads Schiller’s writings (es-
pecially of course his Briefe ber die dsthetische Erziehung
des Menschen) carefully and repeatedly, will recognise
more and more that the idea “art”? means to the
poet-philosopher something very vivid, something glow-
ing in him, as it were, and yet a very subtle thing,
which can scarcely be confined within a brief definition.
A man must have misunderstood him if he believes
himself free of such a belief. Let us hear what Schiller
says, for an understanding of this fundamental idea
is indispensable not merely for the purpose of this
chapter, but also for that of the whole book. He writes:
“Nature does not make a better beginning with man
than with her other works: she acts for him, while he
cannot yet act for himself as a free intelligent being. But
what precisely makes him a man is the fact that he does
not stand still as mere nature made him, but is endowed
with the capacity of retracing with the aid of reason the
steps which nature anticipated with him, of  trans-
forming the work of necessity into a work of his free
choice and of raising the physical necessity to a moral
one.” First and foremost then it is the eager struggle for
freedom which, according to Schiller, betokens the artistic
temperament. Man cannot escape necessity, but he
“transforms ”’ it, and, in so doing, shows himself to be an
artist. Assuch he employs the elements, which nature offers
him, to create for himself a new world of semblance ; but a
second consideration follows from this, which must not
on any account be overlooked: by placing himself ‘“ on
his esthetic standpoint,” as it were, “ outside the world
and contemplating it,” man for the first time clearly
sees this world, the world outside himself! The desire
to tear himself away from nature had indeed been a
to FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

delusion, but it is this very delusion which is now bringing
him to a full and proper consciousness of nature: for
‘“man cannot purge the semblance from the real without
at the same time freeing the real of the semblance,”
It is only when man has begun to invent artistically
that he also begins to think consciously, it is only
when he himself builds that he begins to perceive
the architectonics of the universe. Reality and sem-
blance are at first mixed up in Is consciousness;
the conscious, freely creative dealing with the semblance
is the first step towards attaining to the freest and
purest possible cognition of reality. True science—a
science that not only measures and records, but con-
templates and perceives—owes its origin, according to
Schiller, to the direct influence of the artistic efforts
of man. Then for the first time philosophy finds
a place in the human intellect; for it hovers between
the two worlds. Philosophy is based at once on art
and on science: it is, if I may so express myself, the
latest artistic elaboration of a reality which has been
sifted and purified. But this does not by any means
exhaust the import of Schiller’s conception of art.
For “beauty” (that freely transformed, new world) is
not simply an object, in it rather there is mirrored also
“a condition of our subject”: “‘ Beauty is, in truth,
form, because we contemplate it, but it is at the same
time life, because we feel it. In a word, it is at oncea
state and an achievement.” * To feel artistically, to think
artisticaly denotes then a particular condition of man
in general; it is a phase of feeling, or rather attitude of
mind—still better, perhaps, a latent store of power,
which must everywhere act as a “‘ freeing,” “‘ transforming,”
‘“‘ purging ’’ element in the life of the individual man, as
well as in the life of a whole nation, even where art,

* Cf. Aesthetische Erziehung, Bd. 3, 25,26. Further particulars in chap.
x. div. 7 of this book (vol. ii.).
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 17

science and philosophy are not directly concerned. Or,
to present this relation to ourselves from a different side,
we can also—and indeed here too with Schiller *—say,
“From being a successful instrument, man became an
unsuccessful artist.’ That is the tragedy of which 1
spoke in the introductory remarks.

We must, I think, admit that this German
conception of “‘man becoming man” goes deeper,
embraces more, and throws a brighter light upon that
future of mankind after which we have to strive than
any narrowly scientific or purely utilitarian one. How-
ever that may be, one thing is certain: whether such a
view is to have unconditional or merely conditional
validity, it is of the very greatest service for a study of
the Hellenic world and the sure revelation of its principle
of life; for though in this subjective formulation it may
be a characteristically German conception, it leads back
in the main to Hellenic art and to Hellenic philosophy,
which embraced natural science, and proves that
Hellenism lived on in the nineteenth century not merely
outwardly and historically, but also as an inherent force
that has helped to mould the future.t

ANIMAL AND MAN

Not every artistic activity is art. Numerous animals
evince extraordinary skill in the construction of dwellings ;
the song of the nightingale vies successfully with the
natural song of the savage; capricious imitation we find

* Cf. Etwas tiber die erste Menschengesellschaft, div. 1.

tj To avoid misunderstanding, I wish to mention that here at the
beginning of my book I have without further criticism joined hands with
Schiller, to ensure that what follows may be more easily understood ;
only.in my final chapter can I establish my view that in the caseof the
Teutonic peoples. in contrast to the Hellenes, the turning-point in “man
becoming man ”’ is to be sought not in art, but in religion—this how-
ever does not mean a deviation from Schiller’s conception of “art *,
but purely and simply a particular gradation,

I B
18 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

highly developed in the animal kingdom, and that too
in the most various spheres—imitation of activity, of
sound, of form—and here it must also be remembered
that we know next to nothing of the life of the higher
apes;* language, that is, communication of feelings
and judgments from one individual to another, is wide-
spread throughout the whole animal kingdom and the
means adopted are so incredibly sure that not only
anthropologists but also philologistst do not consider
it superfluous to warn us against thinking that vibration
of the human vocal chords—or for that matter sound
in general—is the only thing that can be called language.
By instinctively uniting into civic organisations, no
matter how complex and intricate they may be, the
human race similarly achieves nothing which is in
principle an advance on the exceedingly complex animal
communities ; modern sociologists, indeed, consider the
origin of human society as having a close organic con-
nection with the development of the social instincts in
the surrounding animal kingdom.§ If we consider

* See, however, the observations of J. G. Romanes in the case of a
female chimpanzee, given in fullest detail in Nature, vol. xi., p. 160 ff,
condensed in the books of the same author. In a short time this ape
learned to count up to seven with unfailing accuracy. On the other
hand, the Bakairi (South American Indians) are able to count only
up to six, and that with great difficulty. (See Karl von Steinen:
Unter den Naturvélkern Brasiliens.)

} See, forexample, Whitney, The Life of Language (Fr. edit. p. 238 4).

{~ Compare especially the instructive remarks of Topinard in his
Anthropologie, pp. 159-162. It is interesting to know that so great
and at the same time so extremely cautious a naturalist as Adolf
Bastian, with all his abhorrence of everything fantastic, claims for
the articulata (with the tentacles with which they touch each
other) a language analogous to ours and in keeping with their nature;
see Das Bestdndige in den Menschenrassen, p. viii. of the preface.
In Darwin’s Descent of Man, chap. iii, we find an exceedingly
interesting review of the facts pertaining to this question and an
energetic refutation of the paradoxes of Max Miller and others.

§ See, for example, the Principles of Sociology of the American
Professor Franklin H. Giddings (Fr. edit:, 1897, p. 189): ‘‘ Les bases de
l’empire de homme furent posées sur les associations zoogéniques
des plus humbles formes de la vie consciente.”
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 19

the civic life of the ants, and see by what daring refine-
ments they ensure the practical efficiency of the social
mechanism and the faultless fitting of all parts into each
other—as an example I shall mention only the remeval
of the baneful sexual impulse in a large percentage of
the population, and that too not by mutilation, as is
the case with our wretched makeshift castration, but
by shrewd manipulation of the fecundating germs—
then we must admit that the civic instinct of man is
not of a high standard; compared with many animal
species we are nothing but political blunderers.* Even
in the special exercise of reason we can indeed recognise
a peculiar specific feature of man, but hardly a funda-
mentally new natural phenomenon. Man in his natural
condition uses his superior reason exactly as the stag his
speed of foot, the tiger his strength, the elephant his
weight; it is his finest weapon in the struggle for ex-
istence, it takes the place of agility, bulk and so many
other things that he lacks. The times are past when
men had the effrontery to deny that animals have reason ;
not only do the ape, the dog and all higher animals
manifest conscious reflection and unerring judgment,
‘but insects have been experimentally proved to do the
same: a colony of bees, for example, placed in un-
accustomed and absolutely new surroundings, adopts
new measures, tries this and that, till it has found what

* See Carl Vogt’s amusing Untersuchungen tiber die Tierstaaten (1851).
In Brehm, Vom Nordpol zum A equator (1890), we find very noteworthy
facts concerning the waging of war by baboons; their tactics change
according to the nature of the ground, they divide their forces into
definite groups, first line, second line of attack, &c., several work
together, so as to roll a large boulder down on the enemy, &c. Perhaps
the most amazing social life is that of the farming ants from
South America, first reported upon by Belt, Naturalist in Nica-
ragua, then by the German Alfred Méller; now we can observe
these animals in the Zoological Garden in London, where it is especially
easy to follow the activity of the large-headed “overseers,” which
rush omiard and shake up the workers whenever they take things
easy !
zo FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

suits it.* There is no doubt that if we investigate with
more care and insight the psychological life—so far

* Cf. Huber, Nouvelles observations sur les abeilles, ii. 198, and the
fine bookjby Maurice Maeterlinck, La vie des abeilles, 1901. The best
and shortest recent résumé_,of the most important facts pertinent to our
case is probably that by J. G. Romanes, Essays on Instinct, 1897;
even this distinguished pupil of Darwin is, however, under the constant
necessity of referring to the series of observations of the two Hubers
as being the most brilliant and reliable; but too little known is another
work, that of J. Traherne Moggridge, Observations on harvesting
Ants and Trapdoor Spiders (Reeve, London, 1873); in general the
psychologists of the animal kingdom should direct more attention to
the spiders, which beyond doubt are endowed with special gifts of
their own. But see H. C. MacCook, American Spiders (Philadelphia,
1889), and the various volumes of the invaluable Souvenirs entomo-
logiques by Fabre. Among older writings, Kirby’s History, Habits,
and Instincts of Animals is of lasting value. Of the more philosophic
writings I shall here call attention especially to Wundt’s Vorlesungen
tiber die Menschen- und Tierseele and to Fritz Schulze’s Vergleichende
Seelenkunde (Second Part, ‘‘ The Psychology of Animals and Plants,”
1897). In this note I should like at the same time to put inan express
caveat, namely, that here and further on I do not fail to recognise
the deep gulf between the intellect of thinking man and that of the animal ;
it was high time that a Wundt with all his intellectual keenness should
openly oppose our almost ineradicable inclination to anthropomorphic
interpretations ; but it seems to me that Wundt himself and with him
Schulze, Lubbock and others fall into the opposite error: they make
indeed a just protest against the uncritical over-estimation of the
thought-life of the animals, yet these learned men, accustomed from
their earliest years to think and speculate unceasingly, do not seem
to have any idea of the minimum of consciousness and reflection
with which mankind as a whole manages to go through life; they are
in general inclined to attach too great importance to “ consciousness”
and “‘reflection’’; this manifests itself in their treatises on the
elementary conditions of the human yvy7 and—perhaps still more
clearly—in their lack of ability to explain the nature of the real act of
creative genius (Art and Philosophy). One Wundt having reduced
the estimate of animal intelligence to its right level, we should need a
second to expose our tendency to overrate enormously our own im-
portance. The following point also seems to me never to have been
properly emphasised : that in our observations of animals we, do what
we will, remain anthropomorphists ; for we cannot even conceive a
sense (I mean a physical instrument for acquiring knowledge of the
surrounding world) if we do not possess it ourselves, and we must
of necessity remain for ever blind and deaf to all manifestations of
feeling and understanding, which are not immediately echoed in our
own intellectual life. It is all very well for Wundt to warn against
“false analogies’? ; in this whole sphere no conclusions but those
of analogy are possible. As Clifford has clearly shown (cf. Seeing and
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY a1

practically unknown to us—of animals from remote
classes, we shall everywhere find similar things.

Thinking), we can proceed neither purely objectively nor purely
subjectively here; this mixed method of knowing he has therefore
termed an “‘ejective” one. We estimate those animals as most
intelligent whose intelligence most closely resembles our own, and
is therefore best understood by us, but is not this extremely simple
and thoughtless in reference to a cosmic problem such as that of in-
tellect ? Is this not disguised anthropomorphism ? Most certainly.
When Wundt therefore maintains, ‘In this sphere experiment is in
a high degree superior to mere observation,” one can only very con-
ditionally agree with him; for experiment is from the outset a
reflex of our purely human conceptions, whereas the loving observa-
tion of a quite differently organised creature in its own most normal
conditions and that with the desire not to criticise its achievements
but to understand them—as far as our human narrow intellectuai
horizon permits us—would be bound to lead to many surprising
discoveries. And so old blind Huber has taught us much more about
bees than Lubbock in his—nevertheless admirable—book on Ants,
Bees and Wasps (1883). And so it is that the rough trainers,
who demand of each animal only such tricks as they can expect
from it on the basis of daily observation of its capabilities, achieve
such remarkable results. Here as elsewhere our science of to-day is
still in the toils of Helleno-Jewish anthropomorphism, and not least
just where it warns us against it——Since the above has been written,
the sensational book of Bethe, Dirfen wir Ameisen und Bienen psychische
Qualitaten zuschreiben ? has appeared, which in its whole argumenta-
tion is a classical example of disguised anthropomorphism. By ingenious
(thoughin my opinion by no means conclusive) tests, Bethe has come
to the conclusion that ants recognise by smell that they belong to the
nest, and their finding of their way depends on the excretion of a
chemical substance, &c. The whole is ‘‘ Chemoreflex,” the whole life
of these animals “ purely mechanical.’”” One is astonished to find such
an abyss of philosophical barbarity. Why, is not the whole sense-life
as such inevitably mechanical ? Can I recognise my own father with-
out help of a mechanism? Does not the dog recognise its master
almost entirely by smell? Are Descartes’ automata always to rise
into life again, as though science and philosophy had stood still for
three hundred years? Here we have thereal ineradicable anthropo-
morphism. In the case of vertebrates their strict analogy with our
own structure lets us draw conclusions about psychical processes ; in
the insect, on the other hand, a totally strange being is before us, built
on a plan which is so fundamentally at variance with that of our body
that we are not in a position to explain with certainty even the
purely mechanical working of the organs of sense (see Gegenbaur,
Vergleichende Anatomie) and in consequence cannot know at all what
a world of sense-impressions and of possibilities of communication,
&c., quite closed to us, may surround these creatures. Not to com-
prehend this fact is to display an ant-like naiveté——(Addenda of the
22 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

Thus the comparatively enormous development of the
human brain * gives us after all only a relative superiority.
Man does not walk upon earth like a God, but as a
creature among other creatures, perhaps it would be no
exaggeration to say as primus inter pares; for it is
difficult to comprehend why a higher differentiation,
with its countless disadvantages, should be forthwith
regarded as higher “perfection”; the relative per-
fection of an organism should be judged, in my opinion,
by its suitability to given conditions. Through all the
fibres of his nature man is organically and closely con-
nected with his surroundings; all this is blood of his
blood; if we think him apart from nature, he is a frag-
ment, an uprooted stem.

What now distinguishes man from other beings?
Many will answer, his inventive power: it is the instru-
ment which shows him to be prince among the animals.
Yet even with this he still remains an animal among
animals, Not only the anthropoid, but also the common

third edition.) In the opening speech of the fourth International
Congress of Zoologists on August 23, 1898, Sir John Lubbock violently
attacked the automata theory and said, inter alia: ‘‘ Many animals
possess organs of sense, the meaning of whichisinscrutable to us men.
They notice sounds which we cannot hear, they see things which
remain invisible to us, they receive impressions of sense, which lie
beyond the sphere of our power of conception. The world which we
know so well must have for them quite a different physiognomy.”
Montaigne had already expressed the opinion: ‘‘Les bétes ont
plusieurs conditions qui se rapportent aux nétres; de celles-la, par
tomparaison, nous pouvons tirer quelque conjecture: mais ce qu’elles
ont en particulier, que savons-nous que c’est ?”’ The psychiatrician
Forel became convinced after thirty years of diligent observation
that ants possessed memory, had the capacity of unifying in their
brain various impressions of sense and acted with conscious reflection.
(Speech delivered on August 13, 1901, at the Congress of Zoologists in
Berlin.)

* It is well known that Aristotle has made a serious mistake here,
as he often does: man possesses, neither absolutely nor relatively
(that is, in relation to weight of body), the largest brain ; the superiority
of this apparatus in his case is based on other things, (See Ranke,
Der Mensch., second edition, I., pp. 551 and 542 f.}.
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 23

ape, invents simpler instruments (any one can obtain
information on this point by referring to Brehm’s Tiere
leben), and the elephant is. if perhaps not in invention,
yet in the employment of instruments a real master.
(See Romanes, Die geistige Entwickelung im Tierreich,
pp. 389 ff.) The most ingenious dynamo machine
does not raise men one inch over the earth-surface which
is common to all creatures ; all such things denote merely
a new accumulation of strength in the struggle for ex-
istence ; man becomes thereby in a way a more highly
potentiated animal. Instead of going to bed, he illu-
mines with tallow candles, oil, gas or electricity; he
thereby gains time and can do more work ; but there are
likewise countless animals which procure light for them-
selves, many by phosphorescence, others, particularly
the deep sea fishes, by electricity ; * we travel by bicycle,
by train, and shall perhaps soon travel by airship—
the bird of passage and the inhabitant of the sea had
brought travelling long ago into fashion, and just like
them, men travel in order to subsist. The incalculable
superiority of man shows itself certainly in this, that he
can invent all these things rationally and can unite
individual discoveries, so as to make still further pro-
gress. The impulse to imitate and the capacity for
assimilation which one certainly finds in all mammals
are in his case of so high a standard that the same
thing becomes, so to speak, a different thing ; in analo-
gous manner we see in chemical substances that fre-
quently the addition of a single essentially similar atom,

* Emin Pasha and Stanley tell about chimpanzees which go out
at night with torches on their predatory raids. With Romanes, one
would do well to doubt this fact till further information is available.
Stanley did not see it himself and Emin Pascha was exceedingly
shortsighted. If apes have really discovered the art of lighting fires,
to us men there would remain nevertheless the invention of the figure
of Prometheus, and that this, and not that, is what makes man man
forms exactly the substance of my remarks,
24 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH# CENTURY

accordingly a simple numerical addition, fundamentally
changes the qualities of the substance in question; if
one adds oxygen to oxygen, a new compound, ozone, is
formed (O,+ O,= Os). One should, however, not for-
get that all humar discoveries rest on assimilation and
imitation; man ‘“‘tinds out” (er-findet) what is there
and has only awaited his coming, just as he “ discovers ”
what hitherto was covered with a veil; nature
plays at “hide and seek” and “blind man’s buff”
with him. Quod invenitur, fuit, says Tertullian. The
fact that he understands this, that he seeks what is
hidden, and bit by bit reveals and finds so much, certainly
testifies to the possession of incomparable gifts; but if
he did not possess them, he would indeed be the most
miserable of creatures, for there he stands weaponless,
powerless, wingless; bitter necessity is his incentive,
the faculty of invention his salvation.

-~ Now man becomes truly man, a creature differing
from all animals, even human ones, when he reaches the
stage of inventing without necessity, when he exercises
his incomparable gifts of his own free will and not because
nature compels him, or—to use a deeper and more
suitable expression—when the necessity which impels
him to invent enters his consciousness, no longer from
outside, but from his inner self; when that which was
his salvation becomes his sanctuary. The decisive
moment is when free invention consciously appears, that
is, therefore, when man becomes artist. The study of
surrounding nature, as, for example, of the starry heavens,
may have made great strides, and a complex cult of gods
and spirits have been formed without thereby anything
fundamentally new entering into the world. All this
proves a latent capacity; essentially, however, it is
nothing more than the half-unconscious exercise of an
instinct. It is only when an individual man, like Homer,
invents the gods of his own free will as he wishes them
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 25

to be; it is only when an observer of nature, like Democ-
ritus, from free creative power invents the conception
of the atom; when a pensive seer, like Plato, with the
wilfulness of the genius superior to the world throws
overboard all visible nature and puts in its place
the realm of ideas that man has created; it is only when
a most Sublime Teacher proclaims, “‘ Behold the kingdom
of Heaven is within you’’—it is only then that a com-
pletely new creature is born, that being of whom Plata
says, ‘‘He has generative power in his soul rather than
in his body,” it is only then that the macrocosm contains
a microcosm. The only thing that deserves to be called
culture is the daughter of such “creative freedom,” or -
in a word “art,” and with art philosophy—genuine,
creative philosophy and science—is so closely related
that both must be recognised as two sides of the same
being; every great poet has been a philosopher, every
philosopher of genius a poet. That which lies outside
this microcosmic life of culture is nothing more than
“civilisation,’’ that is, a more and more highly potentiated,
increasingly more industrious, easier and less free ant-like
state-existence, certainly rich in blessing and in so far
desirable, nevertheless a gift of the ages, in the case of
which it frequently remains exceedingly questionable
whether the human race does not pay more for it than
it receives from it. Civilisation is in itself nothing, for
it denotes something merely relative ; a higher civilisation
could be regarded as a positive gain (?.e., an “‘ advance ’’)
only when it led to an increasingly intensive intellectual and
artistic shaping of life and to an inner moral enlightenment.
Because this seemed to him not to be the case with
us, Goethe, as the most competent judge, could make the
melancholy confession, ‘“ These times are worse than one
thinks.” On the other hand, the undying importance of
Hellenism lies in this, that it understood how to create
for itself an age better than any that we can conceive,
26 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

an age incomparably better, if I may so express it,
than its own backward civilisation deserved. To-day
all ethnographists and anthropologists distinguish clearly
between morals and religion, and recognise that both in
a certain sense are independent of each other; it would
be just as useful to learn to distinguish clearly between
culture and civilisation. A highly developed civilisation
is compatible with a rudimentary culture: Rome, for
example, exemplifies a wonderful civilisation with very
insignificant and quite unoriginal culture. Athens, on
the other hand (with its free citizens) reveals a stage of
culture in comparison with which we Europeans of the
nineteenth century are in many respects still barbarians,
and this is united with a civilisation which—in com-
parison with ours—may with perfect justice be
termed really barbaric.* Compared with all other
phenomena of history, Hellenism represents an
exuberantly rich blossoming of the human intellect, and
the reason of this is that its whole culture rests on an
artistic basis. The freely creative work of human
imagination was the starting-point of the infinitely rich
life of the Hellenes. Their language, religion, politics,
philosophy, science (even mathematics), history and
geography, all forms of imaginative invention in words
and sounds, their whole public life and the whole inner
life of the individual—everything radiates from this
work, and everything finds itself in it once more as in a
figurative and at the same time organic centre, a centre
which reduces the greatest divergencies in characters,

* We have an excellent example of this in the case of the Indo-
Aryans in their original home, where the formation of a language,
“‘which surpassed all others, was completely uniform and wonderfully
perfect,” apart from other intellectual achievements, pointed to a
aigh culture. These men were nevertheless a race of shepherds who
walked abroad almost naked and knew neither cities nor metals. (Se
in particular Jhering, Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropder, p. 2.) For a
definite distinction between knowledge, civilisation and culture I refer
readers to vol. ii: chap. ix. of this book and the synopsis contained in it:
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 27

interests and endeavours to reach a living conscious
unity. At this central point stands Homer.

HomeER

The fact that the existence of the poet Homer has
been open to doubt will give later generations no very
favourable idea of the intellectual acumen of our epoch.
It is exactly a century ago since F. A. Wolf published
his hypothesis; since that time our neo-Alexandrians
have bravely “sniffed and shovelled away,” till at last
they arrived at the conclusion that Homer was merely a
pseudo-mythical collective term and the Ziad and the
Odyssey nothing more than a skilful pasting together
and re-editing of all sorts of poems.... Pasted to-
gether by whom? and by whom so beautifully edited ?
Well, naturally by learned philologists, the ancestors of the
modern ones! The only matter for surprise is that, as we
are once more in possession of such an ingenious race
of critics, these gentlemen have not taken the trouble
to piece together for us poor wretches a new Iliad. There
is truly no lack of songs, no lack of genuine, beautiful
folksongs; is there, perhaps, a lack of paste, of brain-
paste ? The most competent judges in such a question
are clearly the poets, the great poets; the philologist
clings to the shell which has been exposed to the caprice
of centuries; but the congenial glance of the poet, on
the other hand, penetrates to the kernel and perceives
the individual creative process. Now Schiller, with his
unerring instinct, immediately stigmatised as “simply
barbaric’ the view that the Jad and the Odyssey were
not, in all essential points of their construction, the work
of a single inspired individual. Indeed, in his excite-
ment, he so far oversteps the mark that he calls Wolf a
“stupid Devil’! The opinion of Goethe is almost more
interesting. His much-lauded objectivity manifested
itself, among other things, in this, that he unreservedly
28 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

and unresistingly let himself be influenced by an impres-
sion; Wolf’s great philological merits and the mass of
correct statements which his expositions contained,
misled the great man; he felt convinced and declared
this openly. But later, when he again had the oppor-
tunity of studying the Homeric poems thoroughly—
and viewed them no longer from a philologico-historical
but from a purely poetic standpoint—he retracted his
over-hasty endorsement of the “subjective trash” (as
he now called it), for now his knowledge was precise;
behind these works there stands a “ glorious unity, a
single, higher poetical sense.” * But the philologists
too, in their necessarily roundabout way, have come to
the same view, and Homer enters the twentieth century,
the fourth millennium of his fame, greater than ever.t

* See, for example, the small work, Homer noch einmal, of the
year 1826.

t+ I must take care to avoid even the slightest assumption of a
learning which I do not possess ; aman in my position can only note the
results of learned research ; but it is his right and his duty to approach
these results as a free man, possessing unexceptionable critical power.
Indeed, he must, in my opinion, use his critical power above all in the
same way as a monarch whose wisdom has especially to prove itself in
the choice of his advisers ; the layman cannot sit in judgment on the
value of learned arguments, he can, however, from style, language and
train of thoughts very well form an estimate of the individual scholar
and distinguish between mason and architect. It is not therefore in
the sense of a material proof, but merely in order that the reader
himself may be able, in the sense alluded to, to gauge my ability to form
a critical judgment, that I now and then refer in the notes to my
“authorities.” As I have pointed out in the text, I here in the
first place hold with Socrates that musicians are the best judges
of flute-playing, poets of poetical works. Goethe’s opinion with
regard to Homer is worth more to me than that of all the philo-
logists together who have lived since the beginning of the world.
I have, however, informed myself, as far as a layman can, in regard to
the latter, and in so complicated a question this is very essential.
The summary accounts of Niese, Die Entwickelung der Homerischen
Poesie, 1882, and of Jebb, Homer, 1888, enable us to follow the course
of the discussion up to modern times, but nothing more. On the
other hand, in Bergk, Griechische Litteraturgeschichte, 1872-84, we have
a safe guide. That Bergk was a Hellenist of the first rank is admitted
by all Homeric scholars and even the ordinary man is impressed by
the comprehensive and penetrating character of his knowledge, com-
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 29

For besides many philologising nonentities, Germany
has produced an undying race of really great linguistic
and literary scholars; F. A. Wolf himself was one of
them; he never lowered himself to the absurd idea
afterwards propounded, that a great work of art
could be produced by the united efforts of a number
of insignificant men or directly from the vague con-
sciousness of the masses, and he would be the first to learn
with satisfaction of the successful issue that finally
attended the protracted scientific researches. Even
if as great a genius as Homer himself had devoted himself
to improving and embellishing Homer’s works—this is
of course almost a senseless supposition—the history
of all art teaches us that genuine individuality defies all
imitation ; but the farther the critical investigations of
the nineteenth century advanced, the more was every
capable investigator compelled to realise that even the
most important imitators, completers and restorers of
the epics of Homer all differed from him in this, that
not one of them approached even in the slightest degree
bined as it is with a moderation which bordered on the jejune;
Bergk is not a fiery spirit; his attitude in this question forms the
complement to the lightning intuition of a Schiller. One should read
not only the chapter, ‘‘ Homer an historical personality,” but particularly
also in the later paragraph, ‘‘ Homer in modern times,” the remarks on
the song-theory, of which Bergk says, ‘‘ The general premisses, from
which the advocates of the song-theory proceed, prove themselves on
closer examination, especially when one considers the Homeric poems in
connection with the whole development of epic poetry, as quite unten-
able. This theory could only be formulated by critics by whom the
Homeric epic, separated from its surroundings and without any regard
to the history of Greek literature. was submitted tu their disintegrating
criticism” (i. §25). Oneshould read also his proof that the use of writing
was common in Homer’s time. and that external as well as internal facts
testify that Homer actually left his works in writing (i. 527 tf).—1905. In
the meantime the discoveries in Crete have proved that the use of
‘tript was common among the Hellenes long before the Achzans
entered the Peloponnese. In the palace of Minos, the most modern
parts of which can be proved to have been built not later than 1550
years before Christ, whole libraries and archives have been discovered

(cf. the publications of A. J. Evans in the last volumes ot the Annual
ot the British School at Athens).

e
30 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

his commanding genius. Disfigured though they were
2y countless misconceptions, copyists’ mistakes, and
still more by the supposed improvements of irrepressible
wiseacres and the interpolations of well-meaning followers,
the more the patchwork of the present form of these
poems was shown up by the polishing work of research,
the more they testified to the incomparable divine
creative power of the original artist. What marvellous
power of beauty must have been possessed by works
which could so successfully defy for centuries the stormy
social conditions, and for a still longer time the desecrating
tempest of narrow-mindedness, mediocrity and pseudo
genius, that even to-day, from the midst of the ruins,
the ever youthful charm of artistic perfection greets us
like the good fairy of our own culture! At the same
time other investigations, which had gone their own
independent way—historical and mythological studies—
clearly proved that Homer must have been an historical
personage. It has, in fact, been shown that in these
poems both saga and myth have been treated very
freely and according to definite principles of conscious
artistic shaping. To mention only the most essential
point: Homer was a remarkable simplifier, he un-
ravelled the tangled clue of popular myths, and from the
planless medley of popular sagas, which had a different
form in every district, he wove certain definite forms
in which all Hellenes recognised themselves and their
gods, although this very delineation was quite new to
them. What we have now discovered after so much toil
the ancients knew very well; I quote in this connection
the remarkable passage in Herodotus: ‘‘ From the
Pelasgians the Hellenes took their gods. But whence
each of the gods comes, whether they were always there,
what their form is, we Hellenes only know as it were
since yesterday. For it is Hesiod and Homer, in the
first place, who created for the Greeks their race of

e
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 31

gods, who gave the gods their names, distributed honours
and arts among them, and described their forms. The
poets, however, who are supposed to have lived before
these two men, in my opinion at least, really came
after them” (Book II. 53). Hesiod lived about a
hundred years after Homer and was directly influenced
by him ; with the exception of this little error the simple
naive sentence of Herodotus contains all that the gigantic
critical work of a century has brought to light. It has
been proved that the poets who according to the priestly
tradition lived before Homer—e.g., Orpheus, Muszos,
Eumolpos from the Thracian school, or Olen and others
of the Delian school—in reality lived after him; * and
it is likewise proved that the religious conceptions of the
Greeks have been drawn from very different sources ;
the Indo-European inheritance forms the main capital ;
to this were added all kinds of motley Oriental influences
(as Herodotus had also shown in the passage which
precedes that above quoted): upon this chaos a hand
was now laid by the one incomparable man with the
sovereign authority of the freely creative, poetic genius,
and out of it he formed by artistic means a new world;
as Herodotus says: he creates for the Greeks their race
of gods.

May I here be permitted to quote the words of Erwin
Rohde, recognised as one of the most learned of living
Hellenists : ‘“‘ The Homeric epic can only be called folk-
poetry because it is of such a nature that the whcle
Greek-speaking people willingly took it up and could
make it their own, not because the ‘ people’ in any
mystic way were engaged in its production. Many
hands have been at work on the two poems, but all in

* Sce in particular Flach, Geschichte der griechischen Lyrik nach
den Quellen dargestelit, I. pp. 45 ff, 90 ff.

J Since the above was written, German science has had to deplore
the death of this extraordinary man,
32 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

the direction and in the sense which the greatest poetic
genius among the Greeks, and probably of mankind,
and not the people or the saga, as one certainly hears
maintamed, gave to them. In Homer’s mirror Greece
appears united and unifcrm in belief, in dialect, in con-
stitution, customs and morals. One may, however,
boldly maintain that this unity cannot in reality have
existed; the elements of Panhellenism were doubtless
present, but it was the genius of the poet alone that
collected and fused them together in a merely imaginary
whole.”* Bergk, whose whole rich scholastic life was
devoted tu the study of Greek poetry formulates the
opinion: ‘‘ Homer draws chiefly from himself, from his
own inner soul; he is a truly original spirit, not an imi-
tator, and he practises his art with full consciousness”
(Griech. Litteraturgesch., p. 527). Duncker, too, the
historian, remarks that “what was lacking in the
imitators of Homer—what accordingly distinguished this
one man—was the comprehensive eye of genius.’f
And to close these quotations in a worthy manner I
refer to Aristotle, in whom one must admit some com-
petence, so far as critical acumen is concerned. It
is striking and consoling to see that he too discovers
the distinguishing-mark of Homer to be his eye; in
the eighth chapter of his Poetics (he is speaking of the
qualities of poetic action), he says: “‘ But Homer, just as
he is different in other things also, seems here too to have
seen aright, either by art or by nature.’’ A profound
remark! which prepares us for the surprising outburst
of enthusiasm in the twenty-third chapter of the Poetics:
Homer is above all other poets divine.

* Seelennult und Unsterblichkettsglaube der Griechen, pp. 35, 36.
+ Gesch. des Altertums, v. 566.
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY — 33

ARTISTIC CULTURE

I have felt bound to prove this, even at the
cost of some detail; not because it is of importance
for the subject treated in this book, whether one man
named Homer wrote the Iiad, or in how far the poem,
which to-day is so entitled, may correspond to the
original poem ; the special proof is a side issue. It is,
on the other hand, essential for my whole work that I
should emphasise the incomparable importance of person-
ality in general; it is likewise essential to recognise the
fact that every work of art always and without exception
presupposes a strong individual personality,—a great
work of art a personality of the first rank, a Genius; it
is, finally, imperative that we should grasp the fact, that
the secret of the magic power of Hellenism lies locked
in this idea “‘ personality.” For indeed if we would
understand what Hellenic art and Hellenic thought
have meant for the nineteenth century, if we would
know the secret of so lasting a power, we must realise
especially that it is the power of great personalities that,
coming down from that vanished world, still influences
us with the freshness of youth.

Hoéchstes Gliick der Erdenkinder
Ist nur die Persénlichkeit :

says Goethe; this greatest gift—hochstes Glitck—the
Greeks possessed as no other people ever did, and it is
this very thing that surrounds them with that sunny
halo which is peculiarly theirs. Their great poems and
their great thoughts are not the work of anonymous
commercial companies, as are the so-called art and wisdom
of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, e tutti quanti ;
the life-principle of this people is heroism; the individual
steps forward alone: boldly ~-sassing the boundary
I c
34 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

of what is common to all, he leaves behind all that
civilisation which has accumulated instinctively, uncon-
sciously and uselessly, and fearlessly hews out a path
in the ever-deepening gloom of the primeval forest of
accumulated superstitions,—he dares to have Genius!
And this daring gives rise to a new conception of
manhood ; for the first time man has “ entered into the
daylight of life.’

The individual, however, could not accomplish this
alone. Personalities can clearly reveal themselves as
such, only when surrounded by other personalities;
action receives a conscious existence only after reaction
has taken place; the genius can breathe only in an
atmosphere of genius. If then a single, surpassingly
great, incomparably creative personality has undoubt-
edly been the condition and absolutely indispensable
primum mobile of the whole Grecian culture, we must
recognise as the second characteristic factor in this
culture the fact that the surroundings proved themselves
worthy of so extraordinary a personality. That which is
lasting in Hellenism, that which keeps it alive to-day and
has enabled it to be a bright ideal, a consolation anda
hope to so many of the best men in the nineteenth
century, can be summed up in one word: it is its element
of Genius. What would a Homer have availed in Egypt
or Phcenicia? The one would have paid no heed to
him, the other would have crucified him; yes, even in
Rome... but here we have the experimental
proof before our eyes. Has all the poetry of Greece
succeeded in striking even a single spark out of
this sober, inartistic heart ? Is there among the Romans
a single true poetic genius? Is it not pitiful that our
schoolmasters are condemned to embitter the fresh years
of our childhood by compulsory admiration of these
rhetorical, unnatural, soulless, hypocritical imitations
of genuine poetry? And is this example alone not
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 35

mough to prove—a few poets more or less make really
no difference—how all culture is linked to art? What
is one to say to a history which embraces more than
1200 years and does not show a single philosopher,
not even a philosopher in miniature ? What to a people
which has to conceal its own modest claims in this
respect by the importation of the latter-day persecuted,
anemic Greeks, who, however, are not philosophers at
all but merely very commonplace moralists ? How low
must the quality of genius have sunk when a good
Emperor, who wrote maxims in his leisure hours, is
commended to the reverence of coming generations
as a thinker! * Where is there a great, creative natural
scientist among the Romans? Surely not the industrious
encyclopedist, Pliny ? Where is there a mathematician

* Lucretius might be named as a man certainly worthy of admiration
both as a thinker and as a poet; but his thoughts are, as he admits,
always Greek thoughts, and his poetical apparatus is predominantly
Greek. And withal there lies over his great poem the deadly shadow
of that scepticism, which sooner or later leads to unproductivity, and
which must be carefully distinguished from the deep insight of truly
religious minds, which become aware of the figurative element in
their conceptions, without for that reason doubting the sublime truth
of what they vaguely feel in their hearts but cannot fathom, as when,
for example, the Vedish seer suddenly exclaims:

From what it has arisen, this creation
Whether created it has been or not—
Whoever in the heavens watches o’er it,
He knows it well! Or does he too not know ?
Rigveda, X: 129,

or as Herodotus in the passage quoted a few pages previously, where
he expresses the opinion that the poet created the gods. And Epicurus
himself, the ‘‘ atheist,’’ the man whom Lucretius describes as the
greatest of all mortals, the man from whom he takes his whole system
—do we not learn that in his case ‘‘ religious feeling must have been
so to speak inborn?”’ (See the sketch of Epicurus’ life by K. L. von
Knebel, which Goethe recommends.) ‘‘ Never,’’ exclaimed Diocles
when he found Epicurus in the temple, “never have I seen Zeus
greater than when Epicurus lay at his feet!” The Latin fancied he
had spoken the last word of wisdom with his Primus in orbe deos fecit
timoy ; the Greek, on the other hand, as an enlightened being, knelt
more fervently than ever before the glorious god-image, which heroism
had freely created for itself, and in so doing testified to his own genius.
36 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

of importance? Where a meteorologist, a geographer,
an astronomer? All that was achieved under the sway
of Rome, in these and other sciences, is derived without
exception from the Greeks. But the poetical fountain
had dried up, and so too, bit by bit, creative thinking
and creative observation were exhausted, even among
the Greeks of the Roman Empire. The life-giving
breath of genius was gone; neither in Rome nor in
Alexandria was there anything of this manna of the
human spirit for the ever upward-soaring Hellenes; in
the one city the superstition of utility, in the other,
scientific elephantiasis, gradually choked every move-
ment of life. Learning indeed steadily increased, the
number of known facts multiplied continually, but the
motive-power, instead of increasing, decreased, where
increase was badly needed. Thus the European world,
in spite of its great progress in civilisation, underwent
a gradual decline in culture—sinking down into naked
bestiality. Nothing probably is more dangerous for the
human race than science without poetry, civilisation
without culture.*

In Hellas the course of events was quite different.
So long as art flourished, the torch of genius flashed up
heavenward in all spheres. The power, which in Homer
had fought its way to a dominant individuality,
recognised in him its vocation, narrowed down in
the first instance to the purely artistic creation
of a world of beautiful semblance. Around the
radiant central figure arose a countless army of poets
and a rich gradation of poetical styles. Immediately
after Homer’s time and later, originality formed
the hall-mark of Greek creation. Inferier powers
naturally took their direction from those of greater
eminence; but there were so many of the latter, and

* Compare in vol. ii., chap, ix., the remarks about China, &ei
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 37

these had invented so infinitely manifold forms, that
the lesser talent was enabled to choose what was exactly
fitted to it, and thus achieve its highest possibilities. I
am speaking not only of poetry in words wedded to
music, but also of the unexampled glory of the
poetry that delights the eye, which grew up beside the
other, like a dearly beloved younger sister. Architecture,
sculpture, painting, like epic, lyric and dramatic
poetry, like the hymn, the dithyramb, the ode,
the romance, and the epigram, were all rays of that
same sun of art, only differently refracted according
to the individual eye. It is surely ridiculous that
schoolmen cannot distinguish between true culture and
ballast, and should inflict on us interminable lists of
unimportant Greek poets and sculptors; the protest—
ever growing in violence—which began to be made
against this at the end of the nineteenth century, must
be welcome; but before we consign the many super-
fluous names to a deserved oblivion, we would express
our admiration of the phenomenon as a whole; it gives
evidence of a supremacy of good taste which is always
desirable, of a fineness of judgment never since equalled,
and of a widespread creative impulse. Greek art was a
truly “living” thing, and soitisaliveto-day. That which
lives is immortal. It possessed a solid, organic central
point, and obeyed a spontaneous and therefore unerring
impulse, which knitted into one creative artistic whole of
the most varied luxuriance the most trifling fragments,
and even the wildest excrescences. In short—if I
may be forgiven for the apparent tautology—Hellenic art
was an artistic art, and no individual, not even a Homer,
could make it that; it could only become such by the
united efforts of a whole body of artists. Since that
time nothing similar has happened, and so it is that
Greek art not only still lives, works and preaches in
our midst, but the greatest of our artists (of our artistic
38 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

creators of actions, sounds, words, figures) have in the
nineteenth century as in former ages felt themselves
drawn to Greece as to a home. Among us the man
of the people has only an indirect knowledge of
Greek art; for him the gods have not, as for
Epicurus, ascended a still higher Olympus; they have
been hurled down and dashed to pieces by rude Asiatic
scepticism and rude Asiatic superstition; but he meets
them on our fountains and theatre curtains, in the park,
whither he resorts on Sundays for fresh air, and in the
museums, where sculpture has always had a greater
attraction for the masses than painting. The “man
of culture” carries fragments of this art in his head as
the undigested material of education: names rather
than living conceptions ; yet he meets it too frequently
at every step, to be able ever to lose sight of it com-
pletely; it has a greater share in the building of his
intellect than he himself is aware of. The artist, on the
other hand—and here I mean every artistic mind—
cannot help turning eyes of longing to Greece, not merely
because of the individual works which arose there—
for among us too many a glorious thing has been
created since the year 1200: Dante stands alone,
Shakespeare is greater and richer than Sophocles, the
art of a Bach would have been a complete novelty for
a Greek—no, what the artist finds there and misses
here is the artistic element, artistic culture. Since the
time of the Romans, European life has had a political
basis: and now it is gradually becoming economic.
Whereas among the Greeks no free man could venture
to be a merchant, among us every artist is a born slave:
art is for us a luxury, a realm of caprice; it is not
a State necessity, and it does not lay down for our
public life the law that the feeling for beauty should
pervade everything. Even in Rome it was the caprice of
a single Maecenas that called poetry into life, and
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 39

since that time the greatest achievements of the most
glorious minds have depended largely on a Pope’s passion
for building, on the conceit of a prince educated in the
classics, or on the extravagant taste of a pompous com-
mercial guild. Now and then a lifegiving breath was
wafted from higher spheres, as, for example, from the
religious New Birth which the great and saintly Francis
of Assisi tried to bring about—a movement which gave
the first impetus to our modern art of painting—or from
the gradual awakening of the German soul to which we
owe that glorious new art German music. But what
has become of the pictures? The wall-paintings were
covered over with plaster because they were thought:
ugly ; the pictures were torn from the sacred places of'
worship and hung side by side on the walls of museums ;
and then—because otherwise the evolution up to these
most treasured masterpieces could not have been scien-
tifically explained—the plaster was scratched off, well
or badly as the case might be, the pious monks were.
turned out and cloisters and campi santi became a second:
class of museums. Music fared little better; I have
myself been present at a concert where J. S. Bach’s
“Passion of Matthew” was given. It was in one of
the capitals of Europe—which, moreover, is specially
famed for its educated musical taste—and here every
“number” was followed by applause and the Chorale
“OQ Haupt voll Blut und Wunden ” was actually received
with cries of “Da capo”! We have much that the
Greeks did not possess, but such instances are clear yet
painful proofs of how much is lacking in us that they
possessed. One can well understand how Hélderlin
could exclaim to the artist of to-day:

Stirb! Du suchst auf diesem Erdenrunde,
Edler Geist, umsonst dein Element !
(Die! Thou seekest on this earthly ball,
In vain, O noble mind, thine element !)
40 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

It is not lack of inner strength or of originality that
draws the heart of the artist of to-day to Greece, but the
consciousness and the experience that the individual,
by himself, cannot be really original. For originality
is quite different from caprice; originality is the free
pursuit of the path involuntarily marked out for itself
by the particular nature of the personality in question ;
but the artist can only find this freedom where he is
surrounded by a thoroughly artistic culture; such a
culture he cannot find to-day. It would of course be
absolutely unjust to deny to our European world of
to-day artistic impulses: the interest in music shows
that men’s minds are in a mighty ferment, and
modem painting is laying hold upon well-defined but
at the same time extensive circles, and rousing an en-
thusiasm which amounts to an almost uncanny passion,
but all this remains outside the life of the nations, it
is a supplement—for hours of leisure and men of leisure;
and so fashion and caprice and manifold hypocrisy are
predominant, and the atmosphere in which the genuine
artist lives lacks all elasticity. Even the most powerful
genius is now bound, hemmed in, repelled on many
sides. And so Hellenic art lives on in our midst as a
lost ideal, which we must strive to recover.

SHAPING

Under a happier star Hellenic philosophy and natural
science enjoy with us children of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries a hospitality gladly and gratefully
bestowed. Here too it is not a question of mere Jares,
or worship of ancestry; on the contrary, Hellenic
philosophy is very much alive among us, and
Hellenic science, so helpless on the one hand, and so
incredibly powerful in intuition on the other, compels
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 41

us to take in it not merely an historical but also a living
interest. The pure joy excited in us by contemplating
Greek thought may be due, to some extent, to the con-
sciousness that we have advanced so much further
here than our great ancestors. Our philosophy has
become more philosophical, our science more scientific :
an advance which, unfortunately, we do not find in the
domain of art. So far as philosophy and science are
concerned, our modern culture has shown itself worthy
of its Hellenic origin; we have a good conscience.

It cannot pertain to my purpose here to point out
connections of which every educated man must be aware.
These connections, so far as philosophy is concerned,
are purely genetic, since it was only through contact
with Greek thought that modern thought awoke, acquir-
ing from it indeed that power of contradiction and inde-
pendence which was the last to reach maturity: so far
as mathematics, the foundation of all science, are con-
cerned, they were equally genetic; in the case of the
sciences of observation * they were less genetic, and in
former years rather a hindrance than a help. My one
task must be to explain in a few words what secret
power gave these old thoughts such a tenacious spirit
of life.

How much of what has been done since has passed into
everlasting oblivion, while Plato and Aristotle, Democ-
ritus, Euclid and Archimedes still live on in our midst,
inspiring and teaching us, and while the half-fabulous
form of Pythagoras grows greater with every century ! f
And I am of opinion that what gives everlasting youth
to the thought of a Democritus, a Plato, a Euclid, an

* With regard to the last point one must, however, remark that
many a splendid achievement of Hellenic talent in this sphere remained
unknown to us till a short time ago.

+ This is a return to a former view. When the Romans were

commanded by an oracle to erect a statue to the wisest of the Hellenes,
they put up the statue of Pythagoras (Plutarch, Numa, chap. xi.).
4z2 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

Aristarchus * is that same spirit, that same mental
power which makes Homer and Phidias ever young:
it is the creative and—in the widest sense of the word—
the really artistic element. For the important thing
is that the conception by which man seeks to master
the inner world of his Ego, or the outer world, and
assimilate them in himself, should be sharply defined and
shaped with absolute clearness. If we glance back at about
three thousand years of history, we shall see that while
the human mind has certainly been broadened by the
knowledge of new facts, it has been enriched only by new
ideas, that is, by new conceptions. This is that creative
power, of which Goethe speaks in the Wanderjahre, which
“glorifies nature”? and without which in his opinion
“the outer worid would remain cold and lifeless.” ¢
But its creations are lasting only when beautiful and
perspicuous, that is, artistic.

As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes.

SHAKESPEARE.

But only those conceptions which have been transformed
into shapes form a lasting possession of human con-
sciousness. The supply of facts is ever changing,
hence the centre of gravity of the Actual (if I may so
express it) is subject to constant shifting; besides,
about the half of our knowledge or even more is pro-
visional: what was yesterday regarded as true is false
to-day; nor can the future change anything in this
respect, since the multiplication of the material of know-
ledge keeps pace with the extension of knowledge itself.t
On the other hand, that which man in the capacity of

* Aristarchus of Samos, the discoverer of the so-called Copernican
system of the world.

f One sees that according to Goethe a creative act of the human
mind is necessary, in order that life itself may become “ living”!

_ 4A general text-book of botany or of zoology of the year 1875
is, for example, useless to-day, and that not solely or even chiefly
a ek eee

eee

HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 43

artist has formed, the figure into which he has breathed
the breath of life, does not decay. I must repeat what
I have already said: what lives is immortal. We know
that to-day most zoologists teach the theory of im-
mortality—physical immortality—of the germ-plasma ;
the gulf between organic and inorganic, that is, between
living and dead nature, which at the beginning of the
nineteenth century was thought to have been bridged,

because of the new material collected, but because actual relations
are viewed differently and exact observations are overthrown by still
more exact ones. Trace, for example, the dogma of Imbibition with
its endless series of observations from its first appearance in 1838 to
its point of highest popularity, about 1868 ; then begins the counter-
mine and in the year 1898 the zealous student hears no more about it.
It is particularly interesting to observe how in zoology, in which at
the beginning of the nineteenth century great simplification had been
considered possible and in which, under Darwin’s influence, there had
been an effort to reduce, if possible, all animal forms to one single family,
now, as our knowledge has gradually increased, an ever greater com-
plication of the original scheme of types has revealed itself. Cuvier
thought four ‘‘ general structure-plans’’ sufficient. Soon, however,
it was necessary to recognise seven different types, all disconnected,
and about thirty years ago Carl Claus found that nine was the minimum.
But this minimum is not enough. When we disregard all but the
convenience and needs of the beginner (Richard Hertwig’s well-known
and otherwise excellent text-book is an example), when we weigh
structural differences against each other without reference to richness
of forms and so on—we find now that anatomical knowledge is
more thorough, that not less than sixteen different groups, all equally
important as types, must be taken into account. (See especially
the masterly Lehybuch dey Zoologie, by Fleischmann, 1898.)—At
the same time opinions with regard to many fundamental zoological
facts have been quite changed by more exact knowledge. For
instance, twenty years ago when I studied zoology under Karl
Vogt it was considered an established fact that worms stood in direct
genetic relation to vertebrates; even such critically independent
Darwinists as Vogt considered this settled and could tell many splendid
things about the worm, which had developed as high asman. In
the meantime much more accurate and comprehensive investigations
on the development of animals in the embryo have led to the recogni-
tion of the fact that there are two great groups inside the ‘‘ metazoa ”
(which comprises animals that do not consist of simple separable cells),
the development of which from the moment of the fecundation of the
embryo proceeds on quite different lines, so that every true—not
merely apparent—relationship between them is out of the question,
not only the genetic relationship which the evolutionists assume, but
also the purely architectonic, And behold! the worms belong to
44 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

becomes deeper every day;* this is not the proper
place for a discussion on the subject; I merely adduce
this fact by way of analogy, to justify me in extending
to the intellectual sphere the sharp distinction which I
have drawn between organised and inorganised con-
ceptions, and in expressing my conviction that nothing
which the style of the creative artist has formed into a
living figure has ever yet died. Cataclysms may bury

the one group (which reaches its highest point in the insects), and
the vertebrates belong to the other and might as well be said to
be descended from cuttle-fishes and sea-urchins! (Cf. especially
Karl Camillo Schneider: Grundziige der tierischen Organisation in the
Preussische Jahrbiicher, 1900, July number, p. 73 ff.) Such facts serve
to prove and confirm what has been said on p. 42, and it is absolutely
necessary that the layman, who is ever apt to suppose that the science
of his time is perfection, should learn to recognise in it only a transition
stage between a past and a future theory.

* See, for example, the standard work of the American zoologist,
E. B. Wilson (Professor in Columbia): The Cell in Development and
Inheritance, 1896, where we read: ‘‘ The investigation of cell activity
has on the whole rather widened than narrowed the great gulf which
separates the lowest forms of life from the phenomena of the inorganic
world.” Privy Councillor Wiesner lately assured me of the absolute
correctness of this statement from the standpoint of pure natural science.
Wilson’s book has in the meantime (1900) appeared in a second enlarged
edition, The sentence quoted stands unaltered on p. 434. The whole of
the last chapter, Theories of Inheritance and Development, is to be recom-
mended to all who desire not mere phrases but real insight into the
present state of scientific knowledge with reference to the important
facts of the animal form. They will find a chaos. As the author says
(p- 434), ‘‘ The extraordinary dimensions of the problem of development,
whether ontogenetic or phylogenetic, have been underestimated.”
Now it is recognised that every newly discovered phenomenon does
not bring enlightenment and simplification, but new confusion and
new problems, so that a well-known embryologist (see Introduction)
lately exclaimed: ‘‘ Every animal embryo seems to carry its own law
in itself!’’ abl arrives at similar results in his investigations on
Der Bau und die Entwickelung der Linse (1900); he finds that every
animal form possesses its specific organs of sense, the differences between
which are already conditioned in the embryo cell. And thus by the
progress of true science—as distinguished from the nonsense regarding
power and matter, with which generations of credulous laymen have been
befooled—our view of life became always ‘‘ more living,’ and the day
is surely not far distant when it will be recognised as more reasonable
to try to interpret the dead from the standpoint of the living than the
other way about. (I refer to my Immanuel Kant, p. 4821.)
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 45

such figures, but centuries later they once more emerge
in perpetual youth from their supposed grave; it fre-
quently occurs also that the children of thought, like
their brothers and sisters, the marble statues, become
maimed, broken or even completely shattered; that
is, however, a mechanical destruction, not death. And
thus Plato’s theory of ideas, more than one thousand
years old, has been a living factor in the intellectual life
of the nineteenth century, an “origin” of very many
thoughts; almost every philosophical speculation of
importance has been connected with it at one point or
another. In the meantime the spirit of Democritus has
been paramount in natural science: fundamental as were
the alterations that had to be made on his brilliant theory
of atoms in order to adapt it to the knowledge of to-day,
he still remains the inventor, the artist. It is he who,
to use the language of Shakespeare, has by the force of
his imagination bodied forth “the forms of things un-
known,” and then “‘ turned them to shapes.”

PLATO

Instances of the manner in which Hellenic creative
power has given life and efficacy to thought are not
difficult to find. Take Plato’s philosophy. His material
is not new; he does not sit down, like Spinoza, to evolve
a logical system of the world out of the depths of his
own consciousness; nor does he with the splendid
simplicity of Descartes reach into the bowels of
nature, in the delusion that he will there find as ex-
planation of the world a kind of clockwork ; he rather
takes here and there what seems to him the best—from
the Eleatics, from Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, Socrates
—and forms out of this no really logical, but certainly
an artistic, whole. The relation of Plato to the former
philosophers of Greece is not at all unlike that of Homer
46 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

to past and contemporary poets. Homer, too, probably
“invented” nothing, just as little as Shakespeare
did later on; but from various sources he laid hold
of that which suited his purpose and welded it into a
new whole, something thoroughly individual, endowed
with the incomparable qualities of the living individual
and burthened with the limitations, failings, and
peculiarities inseparably bound up with his nature—for
every individual says with the God of the Egyptian
mysteries: “I am who I am,” and stands before us
a new, inscrutable, unfathomable thing.* Similar is
Plato’s philosophy. Professor Zeller, the famous historian
of Greek philosophy, expresses the opinion that “‘ Plato
is too much of a poet to be quite a philosopher.” It
would probably be difficult to extract any definite sense
out of this criticism. Heaven knows what a philosopher
in abstvacto may be. Plato was himself, and no one
else, and his example shows us how a mind had to be
fashioned in order that Greek thought might yield its
highest fruit. He is the Homer of this thought. Ifa
competent man were to analyse the doctrine of Plato in
such a way that we could clearly see what portions are
the original property of the great thinker, not merely
by the process of reproduction through genius but as
entirely new inventions, then the poetical element in
his work would certainly become specially clear. For
Montesquieu, too (in his Pensées), calls Plato one of the
four great poets of mankind. Especially that which
is blamed as inconsistent and contradictory would reveal
itself as an artistic necessity. Life is in itself a contra-
diction: Ja vie est ensemble des fonctions qui résistent @
la mort, said the great Bichat; each living thing has
therefore something fragmentary about it, something

* «A genuine work of art is, like a work of nature, always infinite
to our mind ; it is seen, felt ; it produces its effect, but it cannot really
be known, much less can its essence, its merit, be expressed in words.”
(Goethe.}
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 47

which might be called arbitrary; the addition which
man makes to it—a free, poetical and only conditionally
valid addition—is the sole thing that makes the joining
of the two ends of the magic girdle possible. Works of
art are no exception. Homer’s Ziad is a splendid ex-
ample of this, Plato’s philosophy a second, Democritus’
theory of the world a third of equal importance. And
while the philosophies and theories so finely carved by
the “logical”? method disappear one after the other in the
gulf of time, these old ideas take their place in all the
freshness of youth, side by side with the most recent.
Clearly it is not ‘ objective truth,” but the manner in
which things receive shape, l'ensemble des fonctions, as
Bichat would say, that is the decisive thing.

Still another remark in reference to Plato; again it
is only a hint—for the space at my disposal will not
allow of lengthy treatment—but enough, I hope, to
leave nothing vague. That Indian thought has exercised
an influence of quite a determinative character upon
Greek philosophy is now a settled fact; our Hellenists
and philosophers have, it is true, long combated this
with the violent obstinacy of prejudiced scholars;
everything was supposed to have originated in Hellas as
autochthon ; at most the Egyptians and the Semites were
allowed to have exercised a moulding influence—whereby
philosophy would in truth have had little to gain; the
more modern Indologists, however, have confirmed
the conjectures of the oldest (particularly of that
genius Sir William Jones). It has been fully proved
in regard to Pythagoras especially that he had
a thorough knowledge of Indian doctrines,* and as
Pythagoras is being recognised more and more as the
ancestor of Greek thought, that in itself means a great
deal. Besides, direct influence upon the Eleatics,
Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, &c., has been

* Cf, on this point Schroeder: Pythagoras und die Inder (1884)
48 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

shown to be most probable.* In these circumstances it
cannot be surprising that so lofty a spirit as Plato forced
his way through much misleading extraneous matter
and—especially in reference to some essential points in
all genuine metaphysics—endorses in every detail some of
the sublimest views of Indian thinkers.f But compare
Plato and the Indians, his works and their works! Then
we shall no longer wonder why Plato lives and influences,
while the Indian philosophers live indeed but do not
directly affect the wide world and the progress of man-
kind. Indian thought is unsurpassed in depth and com-
prehensive many-sidedness; if Professor Zeller thought
that Plato was “too much of a poet to be quite a phi-
losopher,’’ we see from the example of the Indian what
becomes of a philosopher when a thinker is too “ com-
pletely ’” a philosopher to be at the same time something
of a poet. This pure thinking of the Indians lacks all
capacity of being communicated—and we find this
simply but at the same time profoundly expressed by
the Indians themselves, for according to their books
the highest and final wisdom can be taught only by
silence.{ How different the Greek! Cost what it

* The best summary account of recent times that is known to me
is that of Garbe in his Sdmkhya-Philosophie (1894), p. 85 f.; there we
also find the most important bibliography.

+ For the comparison between Plato and the Indians in reference
to the recognition of the empirical reality and transcendental ideality
of experience see specially Max Miller: Three Lectures on the Veddnta
Philosophy (1894), p. 128f. Plato’s relation to the Eleatics becomes
hereby for the first time clear. Fuller information in Deussen’s works,
especially in his lecture, ‘‘On the Philosophy of the Vedanta in Relation
to the Metaphysical Doctrines of the West,’ Bombay, 1893.

¢ ‘“ When Bahva was questioned by Vashkali, the former ex-
plained Brahmanism to him by remaining silent. And Vashkali said,
“Teach me, O revered one, Brahmanism!’ But the latter remained
quite silent. When now the other for the second or third time asked,
he said, ‘I am indeed teaching you it, but you do not understand it;
this Brahmanism is silence.’’’ (Sankara in the S#tra’s of Vedanta, iii.
2,17). And in the Tatttiviya Upanishad we read (ii. 4): ‘“‘ From

the great joy of knowledge all language and all thought turn away,
unable to reach it.”
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 49

might, he must “ body forth the forms of things un-
known and give them shape.’ Read in this connection
the laboured explanat'on in Plato’s Thecelctus, where
Socrates ultimately admits that we may possess truth
without being able to explain it, but that this is not
knowledge; what knowledge is remains certainly un-
decided at the end (a proof of Plato’s profundity !);
however, in the culminating-point of the dialogue it is
termed “right conception,’ and the remark is made that
we must be able to give a reasoned explanation of right
conception ; we should also read in this connection the
famous passage in the Timeus, where the cosmos is
compared to a “living animal.’”’ It must be conceived
and endowed with shape: that is the secret of the Greek,
from Homer to Archimedes. Plato’s theory of ideas
bears exactly the same relation to metaphysics as De-
mocritus’ theory of atoms to the physical world: they
are creations of a freely creative, shaping power and in
them, as in all works of art, there wells up an inexhaustible
fountain of symbolical truth. Such creations bear the
same relation to material facts as the sun to the flowers.
Hellenic influence has not been an unqualified blessing :
much that we have received from the Greeks still weighs
like a nightmare upon our struggling culture. But the
goodly inheritance which we hold from them has been
first and foremost this flower-compelling sunshine.

ARISTOTLE

It was under the direct influence of Plato that Aristotle,
one of the mightiest sages that the world has ever seen,
shot up into the empyrean. The nature of his intellect
accounts for the fact that in certain respects he de-
veloped as the opposite of Plato: but without Plato
he would never have become a philosopher, at any rate
not a metaphysician. A critical appreciation of this

I D
50 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

great man would take me too far: I could not do it
adequately even if I were to limit myself to the scope
and object of this chapter. I could not, however, pass
him by unnoticed, and I take it for granted that no one
fails to admire the creative power that he revealed in
his logical Organon, his Animal History, his Poetics, &c.
These have been the admiration of all ages. To appro-
priate a remark of Scotus Erigena: it was in the sphere
of naturalium rerum discretio that he achieved unparalleled
results and won the gratitude of the most distant genera-
tions. Aristotle’s greatness lies not in the fact that he was
right—no man of the first rank has made more frequent
or more flagrant mistakes—but in the fact that he
knew no peace, till he had wrought in all spheres of
human life and evolved order out of chaos.* In so far
he is a genuine Hellene. Certainly we have paid dear
for this “order,” Aristotle was less of a poet than
perhaps any of the great philosophers of Greece; Herder
says of him that he was perhaps the driest writer that
ever used a stylus; f he must, I fancy, be “‘ philosopher
enough” even for Professor Zeller; certainly he was
this in a sufficient degree—thanks to his Hellenic creative
power—to sow more persistent error in the world than
any man before or after him. Till a short time ago
he had paralysed the natural sciences at all points;
philosophy and especially metaphysics have not yet
shaken off his yoke; our theology is, if I might call it
so, his natural child. In truth, this great and important
legacy of the old world was a two-edged sword. I shall
return shortly in another connection to Aristotle and
Greek philosophy; here I shall only add that the Greeks
certainly had great need of an Aristotle to lay emphasis

* Eucken says in his essay, Thomas von Aquin und Kant, p 30
(Kantstudien, 1901, vi. p. 12): The intellectual work of Aristotle
is ‘‘an artistic or more accurately speaking a plastic shaping.”

+ Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit, XIII., chap. v,
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 51

upon empiric methods and in all things to recommend
the golden mean ; in their brilliant exuberance of pride
and creative impulse they were inclined to dash upwards
and onwards with thoughtless disregard of the serious
ground of reality, and this in time was bound to have a
baneful influence; it is nevertheless characteristic that
Aristotle, Greek as he was, exercised comparatively little
influence, to begin with, on the development of Greek
intellectual life; the healthy instinct of a people that
rejoiced in creating rebelled against a reaction which was
so fatally violent, and had perhaps a vague feeling that
this pretended empiricist brought with him as his curative
medicine the poison of dogma. Aristotle was, of course,
by profession a doctor—he was a fine example of the
doctor who kills to cure. But this first patient of his
had a will of his own; he preferred to save himself by
flying to the arms of the neo-Platonic quack. But we,
hapless posterity, have inherited as our legacy both
doctor and quack, who drench our healthy bodies with
their drugs. Heaven help us!

NATURAL SCIENCE

One word more about Hellenic science. It is only
natural that the scientific achievements of the Greeks
should hardly possess for us anything more than an
historical interest. But what cannot be indifferent to us
is the perception of the incredible advances which were
made in the correct interpretation of nature when newly
discovered artistic capacities began to develop and exer-
ciseinfluence. Weare involuntarily reminded of Schiller’s
statement that we cannot separate the phantom from the
real without at the same time purging the real of the
phantom.

If there is a sphere in which one might expect less
than nothing from the Greeks, it is that of geography.
What we remember having read in their poems—the
52 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

wanderings of Odysseus and of Io, &c.—seemed to us rather
confused and was rendered still more confusing by contra-
dictory commentaries. Moreover, up to the time ol
Alexander, the Greeks did not travel far. But if we
glance at Dr. Hugo Berger’s Geschichte der wissenschajt-
lichen Erdkunde der Griechen, a strictly scientific work,
we shall be lost in amazement. At school we learn
at most something of Ptolemzus, and his geographical
map strikes us as almost as curious as his heavenly
spheres encased in each other; that, however, is all the
result of a period of decay, of a science wonderfully
perfect, which, however, had become weak in intuition,
the science of a raceless chaos of peoples. Let us, on
the other hand, inquire into the geographical concep-
tions of the genuine Greeks, from Anaximander to
Eratosthenes, and we shall understand Berger’s assertion:
“ The achievements of the remarkably gifted Greek nation
in the sphere of scientific geography are indeed worth
investigating. Even to-day we find their traces at every
step and cannot do without the foundations laid by
them” (i. p. vi). Particularly striking are the compara-
tively widespread knowledge and the healthy concep-
tive power possessed by the ancient Ionians. There
was serious falling off later, due especially to the
influence of ‘‘ the despisers of physics, meteorology and
mathematics, the cautious people, who would believe
only their own eyes or the credible information
gained at first hand by eye-witnesses”’ (i. 139). Still
later, investigators had further to contend with so
deeply rooted scientific prejudices that the voyages of
the “‘ first North Pole explorer,” Pytheas (a contemporary
of Aristotle), with their accurate descriptions of the coasts
of Gaul and Britain, their narratives of the sea of ice,
their decisive observations with regard to the length of
day and night in the northern latitudes were declared
by all scholars of antiquity to be lies (iii. 7, compare the
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 53

opinion of men of to-day, iti. 36). Philipp Paulitschke
in his work, Die geographische Erforschung des afrikan-
ischcn Kontinents (second edition, p. 9), calls attention
to the fact that Herodotus possessed a more accurate
conception of the outlines of Africa than Ptolemzus.
The latter, however, was considered an “ authority.”
Thereby hangs a tale, and it is with genuine regret that
I establish the fact that we have inherited from the
Hellenes not only the results of their ‘* remarkable
ability,” as Berger puts it, but also their mania for
creating ‘‘ authorities’ and believing in them. In this
connection the history of paleontology is specially in-
structive. With the artless simplicity of unspoiled intuitive
power the ancient Greeks had, long before Plato and
Aristotle, noticed the mussels on mountain-tops, and
recognised even the impressions of fishes for what they
are; upon these observations men like Xenophanes
and Empedocles had based theories of historical develop-
ment and geocyclic doctrines. But the authorities de-
clared this view to be absurd ; when the facts multiplied,
they were simply explained away by the grand theory of
vis plastica ;* and it was not till the year 1517 that a
man ventured once more to express the old opinion,
that the mountain-tops once lay beneath the sea: “in
the year of the Reformation, accordingly, after 1500
years, knowledge had reached the point at which it had
stood in classical antiquity.” f fF racastorius’ idea re-
ceived but scant support, and should it be desired to
estimate—it is really very difficult after the advance of
science—how great and venerable a power of truth lay in
the seeing eye of these ancient poets (Xenophanes and
Empedocles were in the first place poets and singers), I
recommend the student to consult the writings of the

* According to Quenstedt this hypothesis is due to Avicenna; but
it is to be traced back to Aristotle and was taught definitely by Theo-
Phrastus (see Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed., i. 20).

¢ Quenstedt, Handbuch der Pelvetaktenkunde, 2nd ed., p. 2.
54 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

free-thinker Voltaire and to see what abuse he hurled at
the paleontologists even as late as the year 1768.* Just
as amusing are the frantic efforts of his scepticism to
resist evidence. Oysters had been found on Mont Cenis:
Voltaire is of opinion that they fell from the hats of Roman
pilgrims! Hippopotamus bones had been dug up not
far from Paris: Voltaire declares wn curieux a eu autrefors
dans son cabinet le squeletie d'un hippopotame! Evidently
scepticism does not suffice to cleara man’ssight.f On the
other hand, the oldest poems provide us with examples
of peculiar discernment. Even in the J. liad, for instance,
Poseidon is called the ‘‘ shaker of the earth,” this god,
that is, water and especially the sea, is always mentioned
as the cause of earthquakes: that is exactly in accord-
ance with the results arrived at by science to-day. How-
ever, I wish merely to point to such features as a contrast
to the ignorance of those heroes of a pretended “‘ age
of enlightenment.’—Much more striking examples of
the freeing of the real from the phantom are met with in
the sphere of astrophysics, especially in the school of
Pythagoras. The theory of the spherical shape of the
earth is found in the earliest adepts, and even a great
deal that is fantastic in the conceptions of these ancients
is rich in instruction, because it contains in a manner
an nuce what afterwards proved to be correct.t And so

* See Des singularités de la Nature, chaps. xii. to xviii., and L’Homme
aux quavante écus, chap. vi., both written in the year 1768. Similar
remarks in his letters (see especially, Lettre sur un écrit anonyme,
19.4.1772).

7 This same Voltaire had the presumption to describe the gteat
astronomical speculations of the Pythagoreans as ‘‘ galimatias,’” on
which the famous astronomist Schiaparelli remarks with justice:
“Such men do not deserve to understand what great speculative power
was necessary to attain to a conception of the spherical form of the
earth, of its free floating in space and its mobility: ideas without
which we should have had neither a Copernicus nor a Kepler, a Galileo
nor a Newton ”’ (see the work mentioned below, p. 16).

t Zeller, Die Philosophie dev Grtechen, sth ed., Pt. I. p. 414 ffi
More technical, but explained with remarkable lucidity in the work of
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 55

in the case of the Pythagoreans, as time went on, to the
theory of the earth as a sphere and the inclination of its
orbit, there was added that of its revolving on its axis, and
that of motion round a central point in space, vouched for
from Philoleus, a contemporary of Democritus, onward ;
a generation later the hypothetical “central fire’? had
been replaced by the sun. Not of course as a philosopher,
but as an astronomer, Aristarchus had at a later time
(about 250 B.c.) founded the heliocentric system upon
clear lines and had undertaken to calculate the distance
from sun and moon, and recognised in the sun (1900 years
before Giordano Bruno) one of the countless fixed stars.*

Schiaparelli, Die Vorldufer des Kopernikus im Altertum (translated
into German from the Italian original by the author and M. Curtze,
published in the Altpreussische Monatsschrift, 1876). ‘‘ We are in a
position to assert that the development of the physical principles of
this school was bound by logical connection of ideas to lead to the theory
of the earth’s motion” (see 5 f.). More details of the ‘‘ really revo-
lutionary view, that it is not the earth that occupies the centre of the
universe,” in the recently published book of Wilhelm Bauer, Der
dlieve Pythagoretsmus (1897), p. 54 ff.64 ff. &c. The essay too of Ludwig
Ideler, Uber das Verhdlinis des Kopernikus zum Altertum in the Museum
fir Altertumswissenschaft, published by Fr. Aug. Wolf, 1810, p. 391 ff.,
is still worth reading.

* “ Aristarchus puts the sun among the number of the fixed stars and
makes the earth move through the apparent track of the sun (that, is the
ecliptic), and declares that it is eclipsed according to its inclination,”
says Plutarch. For this and the other evidences in reference to Aristarchus
compare the above-mentioned book of Schiaparelli (pp. 121 ff. and 219).
This astronomer is moreover convinced that Aristarchus only taught what
was already discovered at the time of Aristotle (p. 117), and here too he
shows how the method adopted bythe Pythagoreans was bound to
lead to the correct solution. Butfor Aristotle and neo-Platonism the
heliocentric system would, even at the time of Christ’s birth, have
been generally accepted ; in truth, the Stagyrite has honestly deserved
his position as official philosopher of the orthodox church! On the
other hand, the story of the Egyptians having contributed something
to the solution of the astrophysical problem has been proved to be
quite unfounded, like so many other Egyptian stories (Schiaparelli,
pp. 105-6). Moreover Copernicus himself tells us in his introduc-
tion dedicated to Pope Paul III.: ‘‘I first found in Cicero that Nicetus
had believed that the earth moved. Afterwards I found also in
Plutarch that some others had likewise been of this opinion: This
was what caused me too to begin to think about the earth’s
mobility.”
56 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXto CENTURY

What imaginative power, what capacity of bodying
forth, as Shakespeare calls it, this presupposes is clearly
seen by later history: Bruno had to pay for his imagi-
native power with his life, Galileo with his freedom ;
it was not till the year 1822 (2000 years after Aristarchus)
that the Roman Church took the work of Copernicus off
the Index and sanctioned the printing of books which
taught that the earth moves, without, however, annulling
or in any way lessening the validity of the Papal bulls,
in which it is forbidden to believe in the motion of the
earth.* We must, moreover, always bear in mind that
it was the Pythagoreans, who were decried as mysta-
gogues, who led up to this brilliant ‘‘ purging the real of
phantom,” and they were supported by the idealist
Plato, particularly towards the end of his life, whereas
the herald of the sole saving grace of induction, Aristotle,
attacked the theory of the motion of the earth with the
whole weight of his empiricism. ‘.The Pythagoreans,”
he writes, in reference to the theory of the earth’s turning
on its axis, which he denied, “do not deduce grounds
and causes from phenomena observed, but endeavour to
make phenomena harmonise with views and assumptions
of their own; they thus attempt to interfere with the
formation of the world” (De Celo, ii. 13). This
contrast should certainly give pause to many of our con-
temporaries ; for we have no lack of natural scientists
who still cling to Aristotle, and in our newest scientific
theories there is still as much stiff-necked dogmatism as
in the Aristotelian and Semitic doctrines grafted upon
the Christian Church.t—The progress of mathematics
and especially of geometry affords us in quite a different

* Cf. Franz Xaver Kraus in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1900, Nr. 14

yt What the English scientist, John Tyndall, in his well-known
speech in Belfast, 1874, said, “ Aristotle put words in the place of
things ; he preached induction, without practising it,” will be con-
sidered by later ages as just as apt for many an Ernst Haeckel of the
nineteenth century. It should also be mentioned that the system of
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 57

form a proof of the life-giving influence of Greek creative
power. Pythagoras is the founder of scientific mathe-
matics in Europe; that he owed his knowledge, especially
the so-called “‘ Pythagorean theorem,” the idea of irra-
tional magnitudes, and—very probably—also his arith-
metic, to the Indians is of course an established fact,*
and with regard to abstract arithmetical calculation,
the so-called “‘ Arabian cyphers ’”’ which we owe to the
Aryan Indians, Cantor says, “ Algebra attained among
the Indians to a height which it has never been able to
reach in Greece.” | But see to what transparent per-
fection the Greeks have brought formal mathematics,
geometry! In the school of Plato was educated Euclid,
whose Elements of Geometry are such a perfect work of
art that it would be exceedingly regrettable if the intro-
duction of simplified and more modern methods of
teaching were to remove such a jewel from the horizon
of educated people. Perhaps I should be expressing my
partiality for mathematics too simply if I confessed that
Euclid’s Elements seem to me almost as fine as Homer’s
Iliad. At any rate I may look upon it as no accident
that the incomparable geometrician was also an enthu-
siastic musician, whose Elements of Music, if we possessed
them in the original form, would perhaps form a worthy
counterpart to his Elements of Geometry. And here I may
recognise the cognate poetical spirit, that power of bodying
forth and of giving an artistic form to conceptions. This
sunbeam will not readily be extinguished. Let me here
make a remark which is of the highest importance for our
subject: it was the almost pure poetry of arithmetical
theory and geometry that caused the Greeks at a later
Tycho de Brahe is also of Hellenic origin; see details in Schiaparelli,
(p. 107 ff. and especially p. 115) ; no possible combination could indeed
escape the richness of this imagination.
* See Leopold von Schroeder: Pythagoras und die Inder, p. 39 ff.

ft Cantor: Vovlesungen tiber Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 511
(quoted from Schroeder, p. 56).
58 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

time to become the founders of scientific mechanics. As
in the case of everything Hellenic so here too the medi-
tation of many minds received shape and living power
in the life-work of one single all-powerful genius: the
“century of mechanics ’’ has, I think, every reason to
venerate Archimedes as its father.

Pusric LIFE

Inasmuch as I am only concerned here with the achieve-
ments and the individuality of the Greeks in so far as they
were important factors in our modern culture and living
elements of the nineteenth century, much must be omitted,
though in connection with what has been said, one would
be tempted to go into more detail. Rohde told us above
that creative art was the unifying force for all Greece.
| Then we saw art—widening gradually to philosophy and
~ science—laying the foundations of a harmony of thinking,
- feeling and knowing. This next spread to the sphere of
public life. The endless care devoted to the development
of beautiful, powerful human frames followed artistic
rules; the poet had created the ideals, which people
henceforth strove to realise. Every one knows how
great importance was attached to music in Greek edu-
cation; even in rough Sparta it was highly honoured
and cultivated. The great statesmen have all a direct
connection with art or philosophy: Thales, the politician,
the practical man, is at the same time lauded as the
first philosopher and the first mathematician and astro-
nomer; Empedocles, the daring rebel, who deals the
death-blow to the supremacy of the aristocracy in his
native city, the inventor of public oratory (as Aristotle
tells us), is also poet, mystic, philosopher, natural in-
vestigator and evolutionist. Solon is essentially a poet
and a singer, Lycurgus was the first to collect the Homeric
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 59

poems and that too ‘in the interests of the State and of
morality.”* Pisistratus is another instance: the creator
of the Theory of Ideas is statesman and reformer; it
was Cimon who prepared for Polygnotus a suitable
sphere of activity, and Pericles did the same for Phidias.
As Hesiod puts it, ‘‘ Justice (Diké) is the maiden daughter
of Zeus’ t and in this observation is contained a definite
philosophy embracing all state relations, a philosophy
which though also religious is mainly artistic ; all litera-
ture, too, even the most abstruse writings of Aristotle,
and even remarks like that of Xenophanes (meant,
indeed, as a reproach) that the Greeks were accustomed
to derive all their culture from Homer,t testify to the
same fact. In Egypt, in Judea, and later in Rome
we see the law-giver laying down the rules of religion
and worship ; among the Teutonic peoples the king decrees
what his people shall believe ;§ in Hellas the reverse
holds good: it is the poet, the ‘‘ creator of the race of
gods,” the poetical philosopher (Anaxagoras, Plato, &c.),
who understands how to lead all men to profound concep-
tions of the divine and the moral. And those men who—in
the period of its greatness—give the land its laws, have
been educated in the school of these same poets and
philosophers. When Herodotus gives each separate book
of his history the name of a Muse, when Plato makes
Socrates deliver his finest speeches only in the most
beautiful spots inhabited by nymphs, and represents
him as closing dialectical discussions with an invocation
to Pan—“ Oh, grant that I may be inwardly beautiful.

* Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, chap. iv.

+ Wovk and Days, 256.

t Fragment 4 (quoted from Flach, Geschichte der griechischen Lyrtk,
fi. p. 419).

Pe cases introduced at the time of the Reformation “‘ cujus
est regio, illius est religio’’ only expresses the old condition of law
as it existed from time immemorial,

“
60 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

and that my outward appearance may be in harmony
with the inner ! ’—-when the oracle at Thespie promises
a “land rich in fruits of the soil” to those who “ obey
the agricultural teaching of the poet Hesiod” *—such
traits (and we meet them at every step) point to an
artistic atmosphere permeating the whole life: the
memory of it has descended to us and coloured many an
ideal of our time.

HIstoRICAL FALSEHOODS

Hitherto I have spoken almost solely of a positive
beneficial inheritance. It would, however, be entirely
one-sided and dishonest to let the matter rest there.
Our life is permeated with Hellenic suggestions and
achievements and I fear that we have adopted the
baneful to a greater extent than the good. If Greek
intellectual achievements have enabled us to enter the
daylight of human life, Greek achievements have, on the
other hand—thanks perhaps to the artistic creative
power of this remarkable people—also played a great part
in casting a mist over the light of day and hiding the sun
behind a jealous mask of clouds. Some items of the
Hellenic inheritance which we have dragged into the
nineteenth century, but which we had been better without,
need not be touched upon until we come to deal with
that century; some other points must, however, be
taken up here. And in the first place let us consider
what lies on the surface of Greek life.

That to-day, for example,—when so much that is
great and important claims our whole attention, when
we have piled up endless treasures of thought, of poetry

* French excavation of the year 1890. (See Peppmiiller: Hesiodos
1896, p. 152.) One should note also such passages as Aristophanes,
Frogs, ls 1037 ff.
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 61

and above all of knowledge, of which the wisest Greeks
had not the faintest idea and to a share of which every
child should have a prescriptive right—that to-day we are
still compelled to spend valuable time learning every
detail of the wretched history of the Greeks, to stuff
our poor brains with endless registers of names of
vainglorious heroes in ades, atos, enes, etton, &c., and,
if possible, wax enthusiastic over the political fate of
these cruel, short-sighted democracies, blinded with
self-love, and based upon slavery and idleness, is indeed
a hard destiny, the blame for which, however, if we do
but reflect, lies not with the Greeks but with our own
shortsightedness.* Certainly the Greeks frequently set

* I said “ cruel ”’ and in fact this trait is one of the most characteristic
of the Hellenes, common to them and the Semites. Humanity,
generosity, pardon were as foreign to them as love of truth. When
they meet these traits for the first time in the Persians, the Greek his-
torians betray an almost embarrassed astonishment: to spare prisoners,
to give a kingly reception to a conquered prince, to entertain and give
presents to envoys of the enemy, instead of killing them (as the Lace-
dzemonians and Athenians did, Herodotus, vii. 113), indulgence to
criminals, generosity even to spies, the assumption that the first duty
of every man is to speak the truth, ingratitude being regarded as a
crime punishable by the State—all this seems to a Herodotus, a Xeno-
phon, almost as ridiculous as the Persian custom not to spit in presence
of others, and other such rules of etiquette (cf. Herodotus i,
133 and 138). How is it possible that in the face of such a mass of
indubitable facts our historians can go on systematically falsifying
history ? Leopold van Ranke, for instance, tells in his Weligeschichte
(Text edition, i. 129) the well-known anecdote of the disgraceful treat-
ment of the corpse of Leonidas, and how Pausanias rejected the proposal
to avenge himself by a similar sin against the corpse of the Persian
commander Mardonius, and continues: ‘‘ This refusal affords food for
endless thought. The contrast between East and West is here ex-
pressed in a manner which henceforth was to remain the tradition.”
And yet the whole of Greek history is filled with the mutilation not
only of corpses, but of living people, torture, and every kind of cruelty,
falsehood and treachery. And thus, in order to get in a high-sounding
empty phrase, to remain true to the old absurd proverb of the contrast
between Orient and Occident (how ridiculous in a spherical world !),
in order to retain cherished prejudices and give them a stronger
hold than ever, one of the} ;first historians of the nineteenth
century simply puts aside all the facts of history—facts concerning
which even the most ignorant man can inform himself in Duncker,
62 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

an example of heroism, though indeed frequently also
of the opposite; but courage is the commonest of all
human virtues, and the constitution of such a State as
the Lacedemonian would lead us rather to conclude
that the Hellenes had to be forced to be brave, than
that they naturally possessed the proud contempt of
death which distinguishes every Gallic circus-fighter,
every Spanish toreador and every Turkish Bashi-bazouk.*
“Greek history,” says Goethe, “has in it little that is
gratifying—besides, that of our own days is really great
and stirring; the battles of Leipzig and Waterloo, for
example, after all throw into the shade Marathon and
others like it. Our own heroes, too, are not behindhand;
the French marshals, and Bliicher and Wellington may
well be put side by side with those of antiquity.” ¢ But
Goethe does not go nearly far enough. The traditional
history of Greece is, in many points, a huge mystification:
we see that more clearly every day; and our modern
teachers—under the influence of a “suggestion” that
has completely paralysed their honesty—have falsified it
worse than the Greeks themselves. With regard to the
battle of Marathon, for example, Herodotus admits quite
honestly that the Greeks were in this battle put to flight,

Geschichte des Altertums ; Gobineau, Histoive des Perses ; Maspero, Les
premieres Mélées des peuples, &c.—and the credulous student is forced
to accept a manifest untruth with regard to the moral character of
the different human races, on the basis of a doubtful anecdote. Such
unscrupulous perfidy can only be explained in the case of such a man
by the supposition of a “suggestion” paralysing all judgment. Asa
matter of fact, from India and Persia we derive the one kind of humanity
and generosity and love of truth, from Judea and Arabia the other
(caused by reaction)—but none from Greece, nor from Rome, that is,
therefore, none from the ‘“‘ Occident.” How far removed Herodotus
is from such designed misrepresentation of history! for, when he has
told of the mutilation of Leonidas, he adds, ‘‘ Such treatment is not
the custom among the Persians. They more than all other nations are
wont to honour brave warriors” (vii. 238).

* Helvétius remarks exquisitely (De VUEsprit, ed. 1772, II. 52):
“La législation de Lycurgue métamorphosait les hommes en héros,”’

f Conversation with Eckermann, Nov. 24, 18244
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 63

where they were opposed by Persians and not Hellenes
(iv. 113) ; how this fact is always explained away by us!
And with what infantile credulity—though we know
quite well how utterly unreliable Greek numbers are—
all our historians still copy from the old stories the
number of 6400 Persian slain and 192 Hoplites who met
their death bravely, but omit to mention what Herodotus
in the same chapter (vi. 117) relates with inimitable
artlessness how an Athenian became blind with fright
in that battle. This ‘“ glorious victory’ was in reality
an unimportant skirmish, in which the Greeks had rather
the worst than the best of it.* The Persians, who had
come to Greece in Ionian ships, not of their own accord,
but because they were invited by the Greeks, returned
in all tranquillity to Ionia with several thousand prisoners
and rich booty, because these ever fickle allies thought the
moment unfavourable (see Herodotus, vi.118).f In the
same way the whole description of the later struggle
between Hellas and the Persian empire is falsified,t
but after all we must not criticise the Greeks too harshly

* Since these lines were written, I have received the well known Eng-
lish Hellenist Professor Mahaffy’s A Survey of Greek Civilisation, 1897, in
which the battle of Marathon is termed ‘‘a very unimportant skirmish.”

¢ See Gobineau: Histoire des Perses, ii. 138-142.

¢ Particularly the famous battle of Salamis, of which one gets a
refreshing description in the above-mentioned work of Count Gobineau,
fi. 205-211): “‘ C’est quand les derniers bataillons de Darriére-garde
de Xerxés eurent disparu dans la direction de la Béotie et que touts
sa flotte fut partie, que les Grecs prirent d’eux-m‘mes et de ce qu’ils
venaient de faire et de ce qu’ils pouvaient en dire l’opinion que la
poésie a si heureusement mise en ceuvre. Encore fallut-il que les
alliés apprissent que la flotte ennemie ne s’était pas arrétée 4 Phalére
pour qu’ils osassent se mettre en mouvement. Ne sachant 0) elle
allait—ils restaient comme éperdus. Ils se hasardérent enfin a sortir
de la baie de Salamine, et se risquérent jusqu’a la hauteur d’Andros.
Cest ce qu’ils appelérent plus tard avoir poursuivi les Perses!
Ils se gardérent cependant d’essayer de les joindre, et rebrous~
sant chemin, ils retournérent chacun dans leurs patries respectives ”’
(p. 208). In another place (ii, 360) Gobineau characterises Greek
history as “la plus élaborée des fictions du plus artiste des
peuples.”
7s

64 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

for this, as the same tendency * has manifested and still
manifests itself among all other nations. However, if
Hellenic history is really to mould the intellect and the
judgment, it would need, one would fancy, to be a true,
just history, grasping events by their deepest roots and
revealing organic connections, not the immortalisation of
half-invented anecdotes and views, which could only be
excused by the bitterness of the struggle for existence, and
the crass ignorance and infatuation of the Greeks,
Glorious indeed is the poetic power by which gifted men
in that land sought to inspire with patriotic heroism a

‘ fickle, faithless, corruptible people inclined to panic, and

—where the discipline was firm enough, as in Sparta—
actually succeeded in doing so. Here too we see art as
the animating and moving power. But that we should
impose as truth upon our children the patriotic lies of
the Greeks, and not merely on our children, but also—
in works like Grote’s—should force them as dogmas
upon the judgment of healthy men and let them become
an influential factor in the politics of the nineteenth
century, is surely an extreme abuse of our Hellenic legacy,
after Juvenal 1800 years ago mockingly had said:
creditur quidquid Grecia mendax audet in historia.
Still worse does it seem to me to force us to admire

* The principal thing is clearly not what is found in learned books,
but what is taught in school, and here I can speak from experience,
for I was first in a French “‘ Lycée,” then in an English ‘‘ college,”
afterwards I received instruction from the teachers of a Swiss private
school, and last of all from a learned Prussian. I testify that in these
various countries even the best certified history, that of the last three
centuries (since the Reformation), is represented in so absolutely different
ways that without exaggerating I may affirm that the principle of
historical instruction is still everywhere in Europe systematic mis-
representation. While the achievements of our own country are
always emphasised, those of others passed over or suppressed, certain
things put always in the brightest light, others left in the deepest
shadow, there is formed a general picture which in many parts differs
only for the subtlest eye from naked lies. The foundation of all genuine
truth : the absolutely disinterested love of justice is almost everywhere
absent ; a proof that we are still barbarians |
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 65

political conditions, which should rather be held up as
an example to be avoided. It is no business of mine
to take any side, either that of Great Greece or of Little
Greece, of Sparta or of Athens, either (with Mitford
and Curtius) that of the nobility, or (with Grote) of the
Demos; where the political characters, individually or
as a class, are so pitiful, no lofty political conditions
could exist. The belief that we even received the idea.
of freedom from the Hellenes is a delusion ; for freedom \
implies patriotism, dignity, sense of duty, self-sacrifice, |
but from the beginning of their history to their sup-”
pression by Rome, the Hellenic States never cease to
call in the enemies of their common fatherland against
their own brothers ; indeed, within the individual States,
as soon as a statesman is removed from power, away
he hurries, it may be to other Hellenes, or to Persia
or to Egypt, later to the Romans, in order to reduce
his own city to ruin with their help. Numerous are
the complaints of the immorality of the Old Testament ;
to me the history of Greece seems just as immoral;
for among the Israelites we find, even in their crimes,
character and perseverance, as well as loyalty to their
own people. It is not so with the Greeks. Even a
Solon goes over at last to Pisistratus, denying the work
of his life, and a Themistocles, the “ hero of Salamis,”
bargains shortly before the battle about the price for
which he would betray Athens, and later actually lives
at the court of Artaxerxes as “‘ declared enemy of the
Greeks,” but rightly regarded by the Persians as a
“crafty Greek serpent’ and of little account; as for
Alcibiades, treachery had become with him so entirely
a life-principle that Plutarch can jokingly say that he
changed colour “ quicker than a chameleon.’ All this
was so much a matter of course with the Hellenes that
their historians do not disturb themselves about it.
Herodotus, for instance. tells us with the greatest tran-
I 5
66 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

quillity how Miltiades forced on the battle of Marathon by
calling the attention of the commander-in-chief to the
fact that the Athenian troops were inclined to go over to
the Persians, and urging him to attack as soon as possible,
that there might not be time to put this “ evil design”
into execution; half an hour later, and the “ heroes of
Marathon”? would have marched with the Persians
against Athens. I remember nothing like this in Jewish
history. In such a soil it is manifest that no admirable
political system could flourish. ‘ “‘ The Greeks,” says
Goethe again, ‘“‘ were friends of freedom, yes, but each
one only of his own freedom; and so in every Greek
there was a tyrant.’’ If any one wishes to make his way
to the light through this primeval forest of prejudices,
phrases and lies, which have grown up luxuriantly in
the course of centuries, I strongly recommend him to
read the monumental work of Julius Schvarcz, Die
Demokratie von Athen, in which a statesman educated
theoretically as well as practically, who is at the same
time a philologist, has shown once for all what importance
is to be attached to this legend. The closing words of
this full and strictly scientific account are: ‘‘ Inductive
political science must now admit that the democracy
of Athens does not deserve the position which the
delusion of centuries has been good enough to assign to
it in the history of mankind ” (p. 589).*

One single trait moreover suffices to characterise the
whole political economy of the Greeks—the fact that
Socrates found it necessary to prove at such length that
to be a statesman one must understand something of
the business of State! He was condemned to death for
preaching this simple elementary truth. ‘The cup of
poison was given purely and simply to the political

* It is the first part (published 1877) of a larger work: Die Demo-

kvatie, the second part of which appeared in two volumes in 1891 and
1898 under the title Die Rémische Massenherrschaft.
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 67

reformer,’ * not to the atheist. These ever-gossiping
Athenians combined in themselves the worst conceit
of an arrogant aristocracy and the passionate spitefulness
of an ignorant impudent rabble. They had at the same
time the fickleness of an Oriental despot. When, shortly
after the death of Socrates, as the story goes, the tragedy
Palamedes was acted, the assembled spectators burst
into tears over the execution of the noble, wise hero;
the tyrannical people lamented its mean act of vengeance.}
Not a jot more did it listen to Aristotle and other wise
men, on the contrary it banished them. And these
wise men! Aristotle is wondrous acute and as a political
philosopher as worthy of our admiration as the great
Hellenes always are, when they rise to artistically philo-
sophical intuition; he, however, played no part as a states-
man, but calmly and contentedly watched the conquests
of Philip, which brought ruin on his native land, but
procured for him the skeletons and skins of rare animals ;
Plato had the success in statesmanship which one would
expect from his fantastic constructions. And even the
real statesmen—a Draco, a Solon, a Lycurgus, yes, even
a Pericles—seem to me, as I said already in the preface
to this chapter, rather clever dilettanti than politicians
who in any sense laid firm foundations. Schiller some-
where characterises Draco as a “beginner” and the
constitution of Lycurgus as “‘schoolboyish.”’ More
decisive is the judgment of the great teacher of Com-
parative History of Law, B. W. Leist: “ The Greek,
without understanding the historical forces that rule the
life of nations, believed himself to be completely master
of the present. Even in his highest aspirations he
looked upon the actual present of the State as an object

* Schvarez, loc. cit. p. 394 ff.

f According to Gomperz, Griechische Denker, ii. 95, this anecdote
is an ‘empty tale”: but in all such inventions, as in the eppuy si muove,
&c., there lives an element of higher truth; they are just the reverse
of ‘ empty.”
68 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

in which the philosopher might freely realise his theory,
taking over from history as a guide only so much as
might suit this theory.” * In this sphere the Greeks
lack all consistency and self-control; no being is more
immoderate than the Hellene, the preacher of moderation
(Sophrosyne) and the “ golden mean ”’ ; we see his various
constitutions sway hither and thither between hyper-
fantastic systems of perfection and purblind prejudice
for the interests of the immediate present. Even
Anacharsis complained, “‘ In the councils of the Greeks it
is the fools who decide.’’ And so it is clear we should seek
to admire and emulate not Greek history in truth, but
Greek historians, not the heroic acts of the Greeks—which
are paralleled everywhere—but the artistic celebration of
their deeds. It is quite unnecessary to talk nonsense
about Occident and Orient, as if ‘‘ man ”’ in the true sense
could arise only in a definite longitude ; the Greeks stood
with one foot in Asia and the other in Europe; most of
their great men are Ionians or Sicilians ; it is ridiculous to
seek to oppose their fictions with the weapons of earnest
scientific method, and to educate our children with
phrases; on the other hand, we shall ever admire and
emulate in Herodotus his grace and naturalness, a higher
veracity, and the victorious eye of the genuine artist.
The Greeks fell, their wretched characteristics ruined
them, their morality was already too old, too subtle and
too corrupt to keep pace with the enlightenment of their
intellect; the Hellenic intellect, however, won a greater
victory than any other intellect has won; by it—and by
it alone—‘‘ man entered into the daylight of life’”’; the
Areedom which the Greek hereby won for mankind was not
‘political freedom—he was and remained a tyrant and a
‘slave-dealer—it was the freedom to shape not merely
instinctively but with conscious creative power—the
freedom to invent as a poet. This is the freedom of

* Graeco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 589, 595, &@«
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 69

which Schiller spoke, a valuable legacy, for which we should
be eternally grateful to the Hellenes, one worthy of a
much higher civilisation than theirs and of a much purer
one than ours.

It has been necessary for me to discuss these matters
as paving the way for a last consideration.

DECLINE OF RELIGION

If we realise the fact that the educationist has the
power to restore dead bodies to life and to force mummies
as models upon an active, industrious generation, then
we must on closer investigation see that others can
do the same thing in a still higher degree, since, among
the most living portions of our Hellenic inheritance we
find a really considerable part of our Church doctrine—not
indeed its bright side, but the deep shade of weird and
stupid superstition, as well as the arid thorns of scho-
lastic sophistry, bereft of all the leaves and blossoms
of poetry. The angels and devils, the fearful conception
of hell, the ghosts of the dead (which in this presumably
enlightened nineteenth century set tables in motion to
such an extent with knocking and turning), the ecstati-
cally religious delirium, the hypostasis of the Creator
and of the Logos, the definition of the Divine, the con-.
ception of the Trinity, in fact the whole basis of our
Dogmatics we owe to a great extent to the Hellenes or at
least to their mediation; at the same time we are in-
debted to them for the sophistical manner of treating
these things: Aristotle with his theory of the Soul and
of the Godhead is the first and greatest of all schoolmen ;
his prophet, Thomas Aquinas, was nominated by the in-
fallible Pope official philosopher of the Catholic Church
towards the end of the nineteenth century (1879); at
the same time a large proportion of the logic-chopping
70 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

free-thinkers, enemies of all metaphysics and pro-
claimers of a new “ religion of reason,” like John Stuart
Mill and David Strauss, &c., based their theories
on Aristotle. Here, as is evident, we have to deal with
a legacy of real living force, and it reminds us that
we should speak with humility of the advances made in
our time.

The matter is an exceedingly complicated one; if in
this whole chapter I have had to be satisfied with mere
allusions, I shall here have to confine myself to hinting
at allusions. And yet in this very matter relations
have to be pointed out, which, so far as I know, have
never been revealed in their proper connection. I wish
to do this with all modesty, and yet with the utmost
precision.

It is the common practice to represent the religious
development of the Hellenes as a popular superstitious
polytheism, which in the consciousness of some pre-
eminent men had gradually transformed itself into a purer
and more spiritualised faith in a single God ;—the human
spirit thus advancing from darkness to ever brighter
light. Our reason loves simplifications: this gradual
soaring of the Greek spirit, till it was ripe for a higher
revelation, is very much in tune with our inborn sluggish-
ness of thought. But this conception is in reality utterly
false and proved to be false: the faith in gods, as we
meet it in Homer, is the most elevated and pure feature
of Greek religion. This religious philosophy, though,
like all things human, compassed and limited in many
ways, was suited to the knowledge, thought and feeling
of a definite stage of civilisation, and yet it was in all
probability as beautiful, noble and free as any of which
we have knowledge. The distinguishing-mark of the
Homeric creed was its intellectual and moral freedom—
indeed, as Rohde says, ‘‘ almost free-thinking ”’; this
religion is the faith acquired through artistic intuition and
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 91

analogy (that is, purely by way of genius) in a cosmos—
an “‘ order of the world,” which is everywhere perceived,”
but which we are never able to think out or comprehend,
because we after all are ourselves elements of this cosmos
—an order which nevertheless reflects itself of necessity
in everything, and which therefore in Art becomes visible
and directly convincing. The conceptions which are
held by the people, and have been produced by the poetical
and symbolising faculty of each simple mind as yet
innocent of dialectics, are here condensed and made
directly visible, and that, too, by lofty minds, which are
still strong enough in faith to possess the most glowing
fervour and at the same time free enough to fashion
according to their own sovereign artistic judgment. This
religion is hostile to all faith in ghosts and spirits, to all
clerical formalism ; everything of the nature of popular
soul-cult and the like which occurs in the Ziad and the
Odyssey is wonderfully cleared, stripped of all that is
terrible, and raised to the eternal truth of something
symbolical; it is equally hostile to’every kind of
sophistry, to all idle inquiries regarding cause and purpose,
to that rationalistic movement, therefore, which has
subsequently shown itself in its true colours as merely
the other side of superstition. So long as these con-
ceptions, which had found their most perfect expression
in Homer and some other great poets, still lived among
the people, the Greek religion possessed an ideal element ;
later (particularly in Alexandria and Rome) it became an
amalgam of Pyrrhonic, satirical, universal scepticism,
gross superstitious belief in magic and sophistical scholas-
ticism. The fine structure was undermined from two
different quarters, by men who appeared to possess little
in common, who, however, later joined hands like brothers,
when the Homeric Parthenon (7.e., “‘ temple of the
Virgin”) had become a heap of ruins within which a
philological ‘‘ stone-polishing workshop”’ had been set
gz FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtwH CENTURY

up: it was these two parties that had found no favour
with Homer, priestly superstition and hypersubtle
hunting after causality.*

The results of anthropological and ethnographic study
allow us, I think, to distinguish between superstition and
religion. Superstition we find everywhere, over the whole
earth, and that too in definite forms which resemble each
other very much in all places and among the most different
races, and which are subject to a demonstrable law of
development ; superstition cannot in reality be eradi-
cated. Religion, on the other hand, as being a collective
image of the order of the world as it hovers before the
imagination, changes very much with times and peoples ;
many races (for instance the Chinese) feel little or no
religious craving : in others the need is very pronounced ;
religion may be metaphysical, materialistic or symbolistic,
but it always appears—even where its external elements
are all borrowed—in a completely new, individual form
according to time and country, and each of its forms is,
as history teaches us, altogether transitory. Religion
has something passive in it; while it lives it reflects a
condition of culture; at the same time it contains arbi-
trary moments of inestimable consequence; how much
freedom was manifested by the Hellenic poets in their
treatment of the material of their faith! To what an
extent did the resolutions of the Council of Trent, as to
what Christendom should believe and should not believe,
depend on diplomatic moves and the fortune of arms!
This cannot be said of superstition ; its might is assailed
in vain by power of Pope and of poets ; it crawls along a
thousand hidden paths, slumbers unconsciously in every

* It matters little that in Homer’s time there may have been no
“philosophers” ; the fact that in his works nothing is ‘‘ explained,”
that not the least attempt at a cosmogony is found, shows the tendency
of his mind with sufficient clearness. Hesiod is already a manifest
reaction, but still too magnificently symbolical to find favour with
any rationalist.
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 73

breast and is every moment ready to burst out into flame ;
it has, as Lippert says, “a tenacity of life which no religion
possesses ’’; * it is at the same time a cement for every
new religion and an enemy in the path of every old one.
Almost every man has doubts about his religion, no one
about his superstition; expelled from the direct con-
sciousness of the so-called ‘‘ educated ”’ classes, it nestles
in the innermost folds of their brains and plays its tricks
there all the more wantonly, as it reveals itself in the
mummery of authentic learning, or of the noisiest free-
thinking. We have had plenty of opportunity ¢ of
observing all this in our century of Notre Dame de Lourdes,
“ Shakers,” phrenology, odic force, spirit photographs,
scientific materialism, and “healing priestcraft,” { &c.
To understand rightly the Hellenic inheritance we must
learn to make a distinction there too. If we do so, our.
eyes will open to the fact that even in Hellas, at the
brilliant epoch of the glorious art-inspired religion, an
undercurrent of superstitions and cults of quite a different
kind had never ceased to flow: at a later period, when |
the Greek spirit began to decline and the belief in gods
was a mere form, it broke out in a flood and united with
the rationalistic scholasticism which had in the meantime
been abundantly fed from various sources, till finally
it presented in pseudo-Semitic neo-Platonism the grinning
caricature of lofty, free intellectual achievements. This
stream of popular belief, restrained in the Dionysian cult,
which through tragedy reached the highest artistic per-
fection, flowed on underground by Delphi and Eleusis ;
the ancient soul-cult, the awe-stricken and reverent remem-

* Christentum, Volksglaube und Volksbrauch, p. 379. In the second
part of this book there is an instructive list of pre-Christian customs
and superstitions still prevalent in Europe.

{ ‘(Even the most civilised nations do not easily shake off their
belief in magic.”—Sir John Lubbock, The Prehistoric Age (German
edition, ii. 278).

t F. A. Lange used the expression, ‘‘ medizinisches Pfaffentum,”
somewhere in his Geschichte des Materialismus.
74 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

brance of the dead formed its first and richest source ; with
this became gradually associated, by inevitable progres-
sion (and in various forms) the belief in the immortality
of the soul: Doubtless the Hellenes had brought the
original stock of their various superstitions from their
former home; but new elements were constantly added,
partly as Semitic * imports from the coasts and islands
of Asia Minor, but with more permanent and disturbing
influence from that North which the Greeks thought
they despised. It was not poets that proclaimed these
sacred ‘“‘ redeeming”? mysteries but Sibyls, Bacchides,
female utterers of Pythian oracles; ecstatic frenzy took
hold of one district after the other, whole nations became
mad, the sons of the heroes who had fought before
Troy whirled round in circles like the Dervishes of to-
day, mothers strangled their children with their own
hands. It was these people, however, who fostered the
real faith in souls, and even the belief in the immortality
of the soul was spread by them from Thrace to Greece.t

* The Semitic peoples in old times do not seem to have believed
in the immortality of the individual soul; but their cults supplied
the Hellene, as soon as he grasped this thought, with weighty stimulus.
The Pheenician divine system of the Cabiri (t.e., the seven powerful ones}
was found by the Greeks on Lemnos, Rhodes and other islands, and
with regard to this Duncker writes in his Geschichte des Altertums, 14,
279, ‘‘ The myth of Melcart and Astarte, of Astarte who was adopted
into the number of these gods, and of Melcart, who finds again the
lost goddess of the moon in the land of darkness and returns from there
with her to new light and life—gave the Greeks occasion to associate
with the secret worship of the Cabiri the conceptions of life after
death, which had been growing among them since the beginning of
the sixth century.”

j We need not be surprised that this belief (according to Herodotus,
iv. 93) was prevalent in the Indo-European race of the Gete and
from there found its way into Greece ; it was an old racial possession ;
it is very striking, on the other hand, that the Hellene at the period of
his greatest strength had lost this belief or rather was quite indifferent
to it. “An everlasting life of the soul is neither asserted nor denied
from the Homeric standpoint. Indeed, this thought does not come
into consideration at all” (Rohde, Psyche, p. 195); a remarkable con-
firmation of Schiller’s assertion that the esthetic man, 7.c., he in whom the
sensual and the moral are not diametrically opposed in aim ‘‘ needs no
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 95

In the mad Bacchantic dance the soul for the first time
[among the Greek people] separated itself from the body
—that same soul about which Aristotle from the stillness
of his study had so much that was edifying to tell us; in
the Dionysian ecstasy man felt himself one with the
immortal gods and concluded that his individual human
soul must also be immortal, a conclusion which Aristotle
and others at a later time attempted ingeniously to
justify.* It seems to me that we are still suffering from
something of this vertigo! And for that reason let us
attempt to come to a sensible conclusion regarding this
legacy which clings so firmly to us.

To this belief in a soul Hellenic poetry as such has con-
tributed nothing ; it reverently adapted itself to the con-
ventional—the ceremonious burial of Patroclus, for in-
stance, who otherwise could not enter on hislast rest—
the performance of the necessary acts of consecration by
Antigone beside the corpse of her brother—and nothing
more. It did unconsciously help to promote the belief in
immortality, by maintaining that the gods must be con-
ceived not indeed as uncreated but, for their greater
glorification, as undying—an idea quite foreign to the
Aryan Indians.f The idea of sempiternity, that is, the

immortality to support and hold him”’ (Letter to Goethe, August 9, 1796).
Whether or not the Getz were Goths and so belonged to the Teutonic
peoples, as Jacob Grimm asserted, does not here much matter ; however,
a full discussion of this interesting question is to be found in Wieters-
heim-Dahn, Geschichte der Vélkerwanderung, i. 597; the result of the in-
vestigation is against Grimm’s view. The story that the Getic King
Zalmoxis learned the doctrine of immortality from Pythagoras is charac-
terised by Rohde as an ‘‘ absurd pragmatical tale”? (Psyche, p. 320).

* On this very important point, the genesis of the belief in immortality
among the Greeks, see especially Rohde, Psyche, p. 296.

t+ Inanold Vedic hymn, which I quoted on p. 35. averse runs, “‘ The
Gods have arisen on this side of creation’; in their capacity as in-
dividuals, however, they too cannot, according to the Indian con-
viction, possess ‘‘sempiternity,” and Cankara says in the Veddnta
Sutra’s, when speaking of the individual gods, “‘ Such words as Indra, &c.,
signify, like the word ‘General,’ only occupation of a definite post,
Whoever therefore occupi.s the post in question bears the title Indra”
(i, 3, 28, ps 170 of Deussen’s translation).
76 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

immortality of an individual who at some time had come
into being, was in consequence familiar to the Greeks as
an attribute of their gods; poetry probably found it
already existing, but at any rate it was first raised to a
definite reality by the power of poetical imagination.
Art had no greater share in it than this’ Art rather
endeavours as far as possible to remove, to temper, to
minimise that “ belief in demons which has everywhere
to be taken as primeval,” * the conception of a “ lower
world,” the story of “islands of the blest ’—in short,
all those elements which, growing up out of the subsoil
of superstition, force themselves on the human imagina-
tion—and all this in order to gain a free, open field for the
given facts of the world and of life, and for their poetically
religious, imaginative treatment. Unlike art, popular
belief, not being satisfied with a religion so lofty and
poetic, preferred the teaching of the barbarous Thracians.
Neither was it accepted by philosophy, which held a
position inferior to such poetical conceptions, until the
day came when it felt itself strong enough to set history
against fable, and detailed knowledge against symbol;
but the stimulus in this direction was not drawn by philo-
sophy from itself nor from the results of empiric science,
which had nowhere dealt with the doctrines of souls,
the entelechies of Aristotle, immortality and the rest;
it was received from the people, partly from Asia (through
Pythagoras), partly from Northern Europe (as Orphic
or Dionysian cult). The theory of a soul separable from
the living body and more or less independent ; the theory
easily deduced therefrom of bodiless and yet living souls
—those, for example, of the dead, which live on as mere
souls, as also of a “‘ soul-possessed”’ divine principle
(quite analogous to the Nous of Anaxagoras, that is, of
power distinct from matter)—furthermore, the theory of

* Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, 1: 39: See also
Tylor.
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 99

the immortality of this soul—all these are, to begin with,
not results of quickened philosophical thought, nor do
they form in any sense an evolutional development, a
glorification of that Hellenic national religion which
had found its highest expression in the poets; it is
rather that people and thinker’ here put themselves in
opposition to poet and religion. And though obeying
different impulses, people and thinker played into each
other’s hands, and together caused the decline and fall
of poetry and religion. And when the crisis thus brought
about was past, the result was that philosophers had
taken the place of artists as the heralds of religion. To
begin with, both poets and philosophers had of course
derived their material from the people; but which of
the two, I ask, has employed it the better and more
wisely ? Which has pointed the way to freedom and
beauty, and which to bondage and ugliness ? Which has
paved the way for healthy empiric science and which has
checked it for almost twenty centuries? In the mean-
time, from quite another direction, from the midst of
a people that possessed neither art nor philosophy, a
religious force had entered the world, so strong that it
could bear, without breaking down, the madness of the
whirling dance that had been elevated to a system of
reason—so full of light that even the dark power of
purely abstract logic could never dim its radiance—a
religious power, qualified by its very origin to promote
civilisation rather than culture; had that power not
arisen, then this supposed elevation to higher ideals
would have ended miserably in ignominy, or rather its
actual wretchedness would never have remained con-
cealed. If any one doubts this, let him read the litera-
ture of the first centuries of our era, when the State-paid,
anti-Christian philosophers entitled their theory of know-
ledge «Theology ” (Plotinus, Proclus, &c.), let him see
how these worthies 1n the leisure hours which remained te
78 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

them after picking Homer to pieces, commenting on Aris-
totle, building up Trinities, and discussing the question
whether God had the attribute of life as well as of being,
and other such subtleties, wandered from one place
to another in order that they might be initiated into
mysteries, or admitted as hierophants into Orphic societies
—the foremost thinkers sunk to the grossest belief in
magic. Or if such reading appals him, let him take up
the witty Heinrich Heine of the second century, Lucian,
and complete the information there given by the more
serious but no less interesting writings of his contemporary
Apuleius *—and then say where there is more religion
to be found and where more superstition, where there is
free, sound, creative human power and where fruitless,
slovenly working of the treadmill in a continual circle.
And yet the men who stand in that Homeric circle seem
to us childishly pious and superstitious, these on the
other hand enlightened thinkers ! f

One more example! We are wont according to old
custom to commend Aristotle more warmly for his
teleological theory of the universe than for anything else,
whereas we reproach Homer with his anthropomorphism.
If we did not suffer from artificially produced atrophy of
the brain, we should be bound to see the absurdity of this.
Teleology, that is, the theory of finality according to the
measure of human reason, is anthropomorphism in its
highest potency. When man can grasp the plan of the
cosmos, when he can say whence the world comes, whither
it goes and what the purpose of each individual thing is,

* See particularly in the eleventh book of the Golden Ass the initiation
into the mysteries of Isis, Osiris, Serapis and the admission into the
association of the Pastophori. Plutarch’s writing On Isis and Osiris
should also be read.

¢ Bussell, The School of Plato, 1896, p. 345, writes of this philosophical
period : ‘‘ The demons monopolise a worship, which cannot be devoted
to a mere idea, and philosophy breathes out its life on the steps of

smoking sacrificial altars and amid the incantations and delusions of
prophecy and magic.”
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 79

then he is really himself God and the whole world is
“human ’’; this is expressly stated by the Orphics and
—Aristotle. But the poet’s attitude is quite different.
Every one quotes, and has done so even from the times
of Heraclitus and down to those of Ranke, the charge
which Xenophanes made against Homer that he forms the
gods like Hellenes, but that the negroes would invent a
black Zeus and horses would think of the gods as horses.
No remark could be more senseless or superficial.* The
reproach is not even correct in fact, since the gods in
Homer appear in all possible forms. As K. Lehrs says
in his fine but unfortunately almost forgotten book,
Ethik und Religion der Griechen (pp. 136-7): “‘ The
Greek gods are by no means images of men, but antitypes.
They are neither cosmic potencies (as the philosophers
first regarded them) nor glorified men! They fre-
quently occur in animal form and only bear as a rule the
human form as being the noblest, most beautiful and
most suitable, but every other form is in itself just as
natural to them.” Incomparably more important, how-
ever, is the fact that in Homer and the other great poets
all teleology is wanting; for undeniable anthropomor-
phism did not appear till this idea did. Why should I
not represent the gods in the image of man? Should I
introduce them into my poem as sheep or beetles? Did
not Raphael and Michael Angelo do the very same thing
as Homer? Has the Christian religion not accepted the
idea that God appeared in human form? Is the Jehovah
of the Israelites not a prototype of the noble and yet
quarrelsome and revengeful Jew? It would surely not
be advisable to recommend to the imagination of the
artist the Aristotelian ‘‘ being without size which thinks

* Giordano Bruno, enraged at this fundamentally wrong and pedanti-
cally narrow judgment, writes: ‘‘ Only tnsensate bestie et veri brutt
would be capable of making such a statement.” (Italienische Schriften,
ed. Lagarde, p. 534). One should compare also M. W. Visser, Die
nicht menschengestaltigen Goiter der Griechen, Leyden, 1903.
80 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

the thing thought.” On the other hand, the poetical
religion of the Greeks does not presume to give information
about the “uncreated”’ and to “explain according to
reason” the future. It gives a picture of the world as in
a hollow mirror and thinks thereby to quicken and to
purify the spirit of man, and nothing more. Lehrs
demonstrates, in the book mentioned above, how the
idea of teleology was introduced by the philosophers,
from Socrates to Cicero, but found no place in
Hellenic poetry. ‘‘ The idea of beautiful order, harmony,
cosmos, which pervades Greek religion, is,” he says
(p. 117), ‘“‘a much higher idea than that of teleology,
which in every respect has something paltry about it.”
To bring the matter quite home to us, I ask, Which is
the anthropomorphist, Homer or Byron? Homer,
whose personal existence could be doubted, or Byron,
who so powerfully grasped the strings of the harp and
attuned the poetry of our century to the melody, in
which Alps and Ocean, Past and Present of the human
race only serve to mirror, and form a frame for the in-
dividual Ego? I should think it almost impossible for
each of us to-day, surrounded as we are by human
actions and permeated with the dim idea of an ordered
Cosmos to remain to so small a degree anthropomorphic,
so very “ objective’ as Homer.

METAPHYSICS

It is essential to distinguish between philosophy and
philosophy, and I think I have above warmly expressed
my admiration for the Hellenic philosophy of the great
epoch, particularly where it appeared as a creative activity
of the human spirit closely related to poetry; in this
respect Plato’s theory of ideas is unsurpassed, while
Aristotle appears to be incomparably great in analysis and
method, but at the same time, as a philosopher in the
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 81

sense given, the real originator of the decay of the
Hellenic spirit. But here as elsewhere we must guard
against over-simplification ; we must not attribute to a
single man what was peculiar to his people and only found
in him its most definite expression. In reality Greek
philosophy from the very beginning contained the germ of
its fatal development later; the inheritance which still
lies heavily upon us goes back almost to Homer’s time.
For it will be found upon reflection, that the old Hylo-
zoists are related to the Neoplatonists: whoever, like.
Thales, without further ado “explains” the world as
having arisen from water, will afterwards equally find an
“explanation ’’ of God; his nearest successor, Anaxi-
mander, establishes as principle the ‘‘ Infinite” (the
Apeiron), the “‘ Unchangeable amid all changes”’: here
in truth we are already in the toils of the most unmitigated
scholasticism and can calmly wait till the wheel of time
sets down on the surface of the earth Ramon Lull and
Thomas Aquinas. The fact that the oldest among the
well-known Greek thinkers believed in the presence of
countless demons, but at the same time from the begin-
ning * attacked the gods of the popular religion and of
the poets—Heraclitus would « gladly have scourged ” f
Homer—serves only to complete the picture. However,
one thing must be added: a man like Anaximander, so
subordinate as a thinker, was a naturalist and theorist of
the first rank, a founder of scientific geography, a pro-
moter of astronomy; all these people are presented to
us as philosophers, but in reality philosophy was for them
something quite apart; surely we should not reckon
the agnosticism of Charles Darwin or the creed of Claude
Bernard among the philosophical achievements of our

* Authenticated at least from Xenophanes and Heraclitus onwards,
t 1 quote from Gomperz: Griechische Denker, i. 50; according to
Zeller’s account so violent an expression would seem unlikely. If I
remember rightly, it is Xenophanes who assigns the words to Heraclitus.

T F
82 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

century? Here is a characteristic example of the many
traditional consecrated confusions; we find the name of
Sankara (certainly one of the greatest metaphysicians
that ever lived) in no history of philosophy, while
on the other hand the worthy olive-farmer Thales
is ever paraded as the “first philosopher.” And,
if the matter be closely investigated, it will be found
that almost all so-called philosophers at the zenith
of Hellenic greatness are in a similar position: so far as
we can judge from contradictory reports, Pythagoras
did not found a philosophic school, but a political,
social, dietetic and religious brotherhood ; Plato himself,
the metaphysician, was a statesman, moralist, practical
reformer; Aristotle was a professional encyclopedist,
and the unity of his philosophy is due much more to
his character than to his forced, half-traditional, con-
tradictory metaphysics. Without therefore under-
estimating in any way the achievements of the Greek
thinkers, we shall yet, I think, be able to assert (and
so put an end to the confusion), that these men have paved
the way for our science (including logic and ethics), and
for our theology, and that they, through their poetically
creative genius, have poured a flood of light upon the
paths which speculation and intellectual investigation
were afterwards to follow; as metaphysicians, in the
real narrower sense of the word, they were, however,
with the sole exception of Plato, comparatively of much
less importance.

That nothing may remain obscure in a matter so
weighty that it strikes into the depths of our life to-day,
{ should like briefly to refer to the fact, that in the person
of the great Leonardo da Vinci we have an example—
closely related to modem thought and feeling—of the
deep gulf which separates poetical from abstract per-
ception, religion from theologising philosophy. Leonardo
brands the intellectual sciences as ‘‘ deceptive” (le
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 83

bugiarde scientie mentali); “all knowledge,” he says,
“is vain and erroneous, unless brought into the world
by sense-experience, the mother of all certainty”;
especially offensive to him are the disputes and proofs re-
garding the entity of God and of the soul : he is of opinion
that ‘‘ our senses revolt against ” these conceptions, con-
sequently we should not let ourselves be deluded : “‘ where
arguments of reason and clear right are wanting, clamour
takes their place ; in the case of things which are certain,
however, this does not happen”; and thus he arrives
at the conclusion: “ dove si grida non é vera scientia,”
where there is clamour there is no genuine knowledge
(Libro di pittura, Part I., Division 33, Heinrich Ludwig’s
edition). This is Leonardo’s theology! Yet it is this
very man—and surely the only one, the greatest not
excepted—who paints a Christ which comes near being
a revelation, “‘ perfect God and perfect man,” as the
Athanasian creed puts it. Here we have close intrinsic

relationship with Homer: all knowledge is derived from |

the experience of sense, and from this the Divine, proved
by no subtleties of reasoning, is formed as free creation,

with popular belief as its basis—something everlastingly |

true. Thanks to special circumstances and particular
mental gifts, thanks above all to the advent of men of
great genius who alone give life, this particular faculty
had become so intensely developed in Greece that the
sciences of experience received a new and greater impulse,
as they did later among us through the influence of

Leonardo, whereas the reaction of philosophising abstrac- :
tion was never able to develop freely and naturally, but '
degenerated either into scholasticism or the clouds of |
tancy. The Hellenic artist awoke to life in an atmosphere —
i which gave him at the same time personal freedom and

the elevating consciousness that he was understood by

all; the Hellenic philosopher (as soon as he trod the path

_ of logical abstraction) had not this gift; on the contrary
84 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

he was hemmed in on all sides, outwardly by custom,
beliefs and civic institutions, inwardly by his whole per-
sonal education, which was principally artistic, by every-
thing that surrounded him during his whole life, by all
impressions which eye and ear conveyed to him ; he was
not free : because of his talent he did achieve great things,
but nothing that satisfied—as his art did—the highest
demands of harmony, truth and universal acceptance.
In the case of Greek art the national element is comparable
to pinions that raise the spirit to lofty heights, where
“all men become brothers,” where the separating gulf of
times and races adds to rather than detracts from the
charm; Hellenic philosophy, on the contrary, is in the
limiting sense of the word fettered to a definite national
life and consequently hemmed in on all sides.*

It is exceedingly difficult with such a view to prevail
against the prejudice of centuries. Even such a man
as Rohde calls the Greeks the “ most fruitful in thought
among nations’ and asserts that their philosophers
‘thought in advance for all mankind” ; t+ Leopold von
Ranke, who has no other epithet for Homeric religion
than “ idolatry ’’ (!) writes as follows: “‘ What Aristotle
says about the distinction between active and passive
reason, only the first of which, however, is the true
one, autonomous and related to God, I should be*inclined
to say was the best thing that could be said about
the human spirit, with the exception of the Revelation
ofthe Bible. We may say the same, if I am not mistaken,
of Plato’s doctrine of the soul.” Ranke tells us further
that the mission of Greek philosophy was to purge the old
faith of its idolatrous element, to unite rational and

* Cf., further, vol. ii. pp. 135 and 364.

+ Psyche, p. 104.

t Weltgeschichte (Text edition), i. 230. This axiom of wisdom
reminds one perilously of the well-known story from the nursery:
“Whom do you love most, papa or mamma ?—Both!” For though
Aristotle starts from Plato, one can hardly imagine anything more
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 85

religious truth; but that the democracy frustrated this
noble design, because it “ held fast to idolatry ’’ (i. 230).*
These examples may suffice, though one could quote many
others. I am convinced that this is all illusion, indeed
baneful illusion, and in essential points the very opposite
of truth. It is not true that the Greeks have thought
in advance for all mankind: before them, at their time
and after them there has been deeper thinking, more
acute and more correct. It is not true that the red-tape
theology of Aristotle ad usum of the mainstays of society
s “the best thing that could be said’: this Jesuitical
scholastic sophistry has been the black plague of philo-
sophy. It is not true that Greek thinkers have purified
the old religion: they have rather attacked in it that
very thing that deserved everlasting admiration, namely,
its free, purely artistic beauty; and while they pretended
to substitute rational for symbolical truth, they in reality
only adopted popular superstition and set it, clad in logical |
rags, upon the throne, from which they—in company
with the mob—had hurled down that poetry which
proclaimed an everlasting truth.

As regards the so-called ‘‘ thinking in advance,”’ it will
suffice to call attention to two circumstances to prove the
erroneous nature of this assertion: in the first place, the
Indians began to think before the Greeks, their thought
was profounder and more consistent, and in their various
systems they have exhausted more possibilities ; in the
second place, our own western European thought only
began on the day when a great man said, “ We must
admit that the philosophy which we have received from

different than their theories of the soul (as well as their whole meta-
physics). How then can both have said ‘“‘ the best thing”? Schopen-
hauer has expressed the matter correctly and concisely, ‘‘ The radical
contrast to Aristotle is Plato.”

* O twenty-fourth century! What sayest thou to this? I for
my part am silent—at least with regard to pcersonalities—and follow
the example of wise Socrates in sacrificing a cock to the idols of my
century |
86 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

the Greeks is childish, or at least that it rather encourages
talk than acts as a creative stimulus.” * To pretend
that Locke, Gassendi, Hume, Descartes, Kant, &c.,
chewed the cud of Greek philosophy is one of the worst
sins of Hellenic megalomania against our new culture.
Pythagoras, the first great Hellenic thinker, offers
a conclusive instance in reference to Hellenic thought.
From his Oriental journeys he brought back all kinds of
knowledge, significant and trifling, from the idea of re-
demption to the conception of the ether and the forbidding
of the eating of beans: all of it was Indian ancestral
property. One doctrine in particular became the central
point of Pythagoreanism, its religious lever, if I may
say so: this was the secret doctrine of the transmigration
of souls. Plato afterwards robbed it of the aureole of
secrecy and gave it a place in public philosophy. But
among the Indians the belief in the transmigration of
souls long before Pythagoras formed the basis of all
ethics; though much divided in politics, religion
and philosophy, and though living in open opposition,
the whole people was united in the belief in the never-
ending series of rebirths. “In India one never finds
the question put, as to whether the soul transmigrates :
it is universally and firmly believed.” + But there was
a class there, a small class, which did not believe in the
transmigration of souls, in so far as they considered it to
be a symbolical conception, a conception which to those
wrapt in the illusions of world-contemplation allegorically
conveys a loftier truth to be grasped more correctly by
deep metaphysical thinking alone: this small class was
(and is to-day) that of the philosophers. ‘‘ The idea of

* Bacon of Verulem: Ivsiauratio Magna, Introduction: ‘Et de
utilitate aperte dicendum est: sapientiam istam, quam a Gracis
potissimum hausimus, pueritiam quandam scientie videri, atque
habere quod proprium est puerorum ; ut ad garriendum prompta, ad
generandum invalida et immatura sit. Controversiarum enim ferax,
operum effceta est.”

{¢ Schroeder, Indiens Litieratuy und Kultur, ps 2524
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 87

the soul transmigrating rests on ignorance, while the
soul in the sense of the highest reality is not transmi-
gratory”’: such is the teaching of the Indian thinker.*
A really “secret doctrine,” such as the Greeks following
Egyptian example loved, the Indians never knew: men
of all castes, even women, could attain to the highest
knowledge ; but these profound sages knew very well
that metaphysical thought requires special faculties and
special development of those faculties; and so they
let the figurative alone. And this figure, this
magnificent conception of the transmigration of souls,
which is perhaps indispensable for morals though
essentially but a popular belief, while in India it was
prevalent among the whole people from the highest to
the lowest with the exception of the thinkers alone,
became in Greece the most sublime “secret doctrine ”
of their first great philosopher, never quite disappeared
from the highest regions of their philosophical views,
and received from Plato the alluring charm of poetical
form. These are the people who are said to have paved
the way for us in thought, “the richest in thought of
nations”! No, the Greeks were no great meta-
physicians.

THEOLOGY

But they have just as little claim to be considered
great moralists and theologians. Here too one example

* Sankara: Stva’s des Vedanta, i: 2, 113 Of course Sankara
lived long after Pythagoras (about the eighth century of our era) but
his teaching is strictly orthodox, he makes no risky assertion which
is not based on old canonical Upanishads. It is clear that an actual
‘transmigration’ was, even at the time of and according to the oldest
Upanishads, for the man who truly had insight, a conception only
serving popular ends. Further proof with regard to this matter will
be found in Sankara in the introduction to the S#tva’s and in i. 1, 4,
but especially in the magnificent passage ii. 1, 22, where the Samsara,
in conjunction with the whole creation, is described as an illusion,
“‘ which like the illusion of partings and separations by birth and death
does not exist in the sense of the highest reality.”
me

‘i

88 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

instead of many. The belief in demons is every-
where current ; the idea of a special intermediate race
of demons (between the gods in heaven and men on earth)
was very probably derived by the Greeks from India (by
way of Persia),* but that does not matter ; in philosophy,
or, as it may be called, in “rational religion,’ these
creatures of superstition were first adopted by Plato.
Rohde writes on this point as follows : ¢ “ Plato is the first
of many to write about a whole intermediate hierarchy of
demons, entrusted with all that is wrought by invisible
powers but seems beneath the dignity of the sublime
gods. Thus the Divine itself is freed from everything
evil and degrading.” So with full consciousness and
for the “rational” and flagrantly anthropomorphic
purpose of “ freeing ’’ God of what seems evil to us men,
that superstition which the Hellenes shared with bushmen
and Australian blacks was adorned with a philosophical
and theological aureole, recommended to the noblest
minds by a noble mind and bequeathed to all future
generations as an inheritance. The fortunate Indians

‘had long before discarded the belief in demons; it

was retained only by the totally uneducated people;
among the Indians the philosopher was bound no
longer to any religious ceremony ; for without denying
their existence, like the superficial Xenophanes, he had
learned to see in the gods symbols of a higher truth not
able to be grasped by the senses—what use then had
such people for demons? Homer, however, it should
be noticed, had been on the same path. It is true that
the hand of Athene stops the hastily raised arm of
Achilles, and Here inspires the hesitating Diomedes with
courage—with such divine freedom does the poet interpret,
inspiring all ages with poetical thoughts—but genuine
* Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, p. 442.

t Ina short summary, Die Religion der Griechen, published in 1895
in the Bayreuther Blatter (also printed separately in 1902).
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY 89

superstition plays a very subordinate part in Homer,
and by his “divine” interpretation he raises it out
of the sphere of real demonism ; his path was sunnier,
more beautiful than that of the Indo-Aryan; instead
of indulging in speculative metaphysics like the latter,
he consecrated the empiric world and thereby guided
mankind to a glorious goal.* Then came Socrates ;—
old, superstitious, advised by Pythian oracles, taught
by priestesses, possessed by demons, and after him Plato
and the others. O Hellenes! if only you had remained
true to the religion of Homer and the artistic culture
which it founded! If you had but trusted your
divine poets, and not listened to your Heraclitus and
Xenophanes, your Socrates and Plato, and all the rest
of them! Alas for us who have for centuries been
plunged into unspeakable sorrow and misery by this
belief in demons, now raised to sacred orthodoxy,
who have been hampered by it in our whole intellectual
development, who even to this day are under the delusions
of the Thracian peasants ! f

SCHOLASTICISM

Not one whit better is that Hellenic thought which follows
neither the path of mysticism nor that of poetical sugges-
tion, but openly links itself to natural science and with the

* See, for example, in Book XXIV. of the Iiad (verse 300 ff.) the
appearance ‘‘ from the right’ of the eagle which presages good. Very
significant are the words of Priam in the same book with regard to
a vision he has seen (verse 220 ff.): ‘‘Had any other of mortal men
bidden me believe it, an interpreter of signs or prophet or sacrificial
priest, I should have called it deceit and turned from it with contempt.”
Magnificent, too, is the conception of “ spirits’? in Hesiod, although
he is much nearer to the popular superstition than Homer (Works
and Days, 124 ff.): ““ They defend the right and hinder deeds of impiety :
everywhere over the earth they wander, hidden in mist, and scatter
blessings ; this is the kingly office which they have received.”

¢ Déllinger calls the ‘‘ systematic belief in demons” one of the
“Danaan gifts of Greek imagining” (Akad. Vortrage, i: 182).
}

proms

90 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

help of philosophy and rational psychology undertakes
to solve the great problems of existence. Here the Greek
spirit at once falls into scholasticism, as already hinted.
“Words, words, nothing but words!” In this case
detailed treatment would unfortunately go far beyond the
scope of this book. But if any one is shy of the higher
philosophy, let him take up a catechism, he will find
plenty of Aristotle in it. Talk of the Divinity with such
a man, and tell him that it ‘‘ did not come into existence
and was not created ; that it has been from all time and
is immortal,” and he will think that you are quoting from
the creed of an cecumenical council, whereas, as a matter
of fact, it is a quotation from Aristotle! And if you
further say to him that God is “‘ an everlasting, perfect,
unconditioned being, gifted with life, but without bulk,
one who in eternal actuality thinks himself, for (this serves
as explanation) thinking becomes objective to itself by
the thinking of the thing thought, so that thinking
and the thing thought become identical,’ the poor man
will fancy that you are reading from Thomas Aquinas
or at least from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but
again it is a quotation from Aristotle.* , The rational
doctrine of God, the rational doctrine of the soul, above
all the doctrine of a purposed order of the world suitable
to human reason, or teleology (through which Aristotle, by
the way, introduced such grotesque errors into his natural
science), that was the inheritance in this sphere! How
many centuries did it take till there came a brave man
who threw this ballast overboard and showed that one

' cannot prove the existence of God, as Aristotle had made

twenty centuries believe :—till a man came who ventured
to write the words, “‘ Neither experience nor conclusions
of reason adequately inform us whether man possesses
a soul (as a substance dwelling in him, distinct from
body and capable of thinking independently of it and

* Metaphysics, Book XII: chap. viii
HELLENIC ART AND PHILOSOPHY oI

therefore a spiritual substance), or whether life may not
rather be a property of matter.” *

But enough. I think I have shown with sufficient
clearness that Hellenic philosophy is only genuinely great
when we take the word in its widest sense, somewhat
in the English sense, according to which a Newton and
a Cuvier, or a Jean Jacques Rousseau and a Goethe are
called ‘ philosophers.”” As soon as the Greek left the
sphere of intuition—right from Thales onward—he
became fatal; he became all the more fatal when he
proceeded to use his incomparable plastic power (which is
so strikingly absent in the metaphysical Indian) in giving
a seductive shape to shadowy chimeras and in emas-
culating and bowdlerising deep conceptions and ideas
that do not lend themselves to any analysis. I do not
blame him because he had mystical tendencies and a
plainly expressed need of metaphysics, but because he
attempted to give shape to mysticism in a way other than
the artistically mythical, and, going blindly past the
central point of all metaphysics (I always naturally except
Plato), tried to solve transcendent questions by prosaic
empirical means. If the Greek had continued to develop
his faculties on the one hand purely poetically, on the
other purely empirically, his influence would have become
an unmixed and inexpressible blessing for mankind ; but,
as it is, that same Greek who in poetry and science had
given us an example of what true creative power can
effect, and so of the way in which the development of man
has taken place, at a later time proved to be a cramping
and retarding element in the: growth of the human
intellect.

CONCLUSION

It may be that these last remarks rather trespass on
_ the province of a later part of my book. But I had to

* Kant: Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde dey Tugendlehve, Part I.,
Ethische Elementarlehve, § 4.
92 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

face the difficulty. Great as has been the influence
which the Hellenic inheritance has exercised upon our
century, as upon those which preceded it, there has
been no little confusion and no lack of misunderstanding
concerning it. In order that the sequel might be under-
stood, it was necessary that the mental condition of the
heirs should be set out as clearly as the many-sided and
complex nature of the inheritance which they received.

No summary is needed. Indeed what I have said
about our rich Hellenic inheritance, which so deeply
penetrates our intellectual life, is of itself a mere summary
—a mere indication. If we were to carry this experiment
further we should arrive at a point where every concrete
idea would become sublimated, where the sinuous lines
of Life would shrivel into mere degrees in a scale, and
there would remain nothing but a geometrical figure—a
construction of the mind—instead of the representation
of that manifold truth which has the gift of uniting in
itself all contradictions. The philosophy of history, even
in the hands of the most distinguished men, such as
Herder for example, has a tendency rather to provoke
contradiction than to encourage the formation of correct
opinions. My object, moreover, is not so far-reaching.
It is no part of my plan to pronounce judgment upon or
to explain historically the spirit of ancient Greece: it
suffices for me to bring home to our consciousness how
boundless is the gift which it has brought us, and how
actively that gift still works upon our poetry, our thought,
our faith, our researches. I could not be exhaustive ;—I
have contented myself with the endeavour to give a
vivid and truthful picture. In so doing I have inflicted
upon my readers some trouble, but this could not be
avoided.
SECOND CHAPTER
ROMAN LAW

Von Jugend auf ist mir Anarchie verdriesslicher
gewesen als der Tod.—GoETHE

DISPOSITION

O define in clear terms what we have inherited

irom Rome, what out of that vast manu-

factory of human destinies still exercises a

living influence, is certainly impossible,

unless we have a clear conception of what Rome was.
Even Roman Law in the narrower sense of the word
(Private Law), which, as every one knows, forms the
chief material on which all juristical minds are to this
day trained, and provides the actual basis even for the
freest, most divergent and more modern systems of law,
cannot be judged in a way that will give a proper estimate
of its peculiar value, if it be simplv regarded as a kind of
lay Bible, a canon, which has taken a permanent place,
hallowed by tens of centuries. If this blind attachment
to Roman legal dicta is the result of a superficial historical
appreciation, the same may be said of the violent reaction
against Roman Law. Whoever studies this law and
its slow tedious development, even if only in general
outlines, will certainly form a different judgment. For
then he will see how the Indo-European races * even
in earliest times possessed certain clearly expressed
* In another place I shall have to recur to the difficult question of
races (see chap. iv.). I shall here only insert a very important remark ;

93
94 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

fundamental legal convictions, which developed in
different ways in the different races, without ever being
able to attain to any full development ; he will see that
they could not do so because no branch could succeed
in founding a free and at the same time a lasting State;
then he will be surprised to perceive how this small nation
of men of strong charactery the Romans, established both
State and Law—the State by every one desiring perma-
nently to establish his own personal right, the Law by
every one possessing the self-control to make the necessary
sacrifices and to be absolutely loyal to the common weal ;
and whoever gains this insight will certainly never
speak except with the greatest reverence of Roman
Law as one of the most valuable possessions of mankind,
At the same time he will certainly perceive that the
highest quality of Roman Law and the one most worthy
of imitation is/its exact suitability to definite conditions
of life. He cannot, however, fail to note that State and
Law—both creations of the “‘ born nation of lawyers ” *

while from various sides the existence of an Aryan race is called in
question, while many philologists doubt the validity of the language
criterion (see Salomon Reinach, L’origine des Aryens) and individual
anthropologists point to the chaotic results of the measuring of skulls
(e.g., Topinard and Ratzel), the investigators in the sphere of history
of law unanimously use the expression Aryans or Indo-Europeans,
because they find a definite conception of law in this group of
linguistically related peoples, who from the beginning and through all
the branchings of a manifold development have fundamentally nothing
in common with certain equally ineradicable legal conceptions pre-
valent among the Semites, Hamites, &c. (See the works of Savigny,
Mommsen, Jhering and Leist.) No measuring of skulls and philo-
logical subtleties can get rid of this great simple fact—a result of
painfully accurate, juristical research—and by it the existence of a
moral Aryanism (in contrast to a moral non-Aryanism) is proved, no
matter how varied are the elements of which the peoples of this group
should be composed.

* Jhering: Entwickelungsgeschichte des vémischen Rechts, p. 81. An
expression which is all the more remarkable as this great authority on
law is wont to deny vigorously that anything is innate in a people;.
he even goes the length in his Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropder
(p: 270) of making the extraordinary statement that the inherited
physical (and with it simultaneously the moral) structure of man—
ROMAN LAW 95

—are here inseparable, and that we cannot understand
either this State or this Law, if we have not a clear
conception of the Roman people and its history. This
is all the more indispensable, as we have inherited from
the Roman idea of State as well as from Roman Private
Law a great deal that still lives to-day—not to speak of
the political relations actually created by the Roman
idea of State, relations to which we owe the very pos-
sibility of our existence to-day as civilised nations.
Hence it may be opportune to ask ourselves, What kind
of people were the Romans? What is their significance
in history? Naturally only a very hasty sketch can be
given here: but it may, I hope, suffice to give us a clear
idea of the political achievements of this great people
in their essential outlines and to characterise with clear-
ness the somewhat complicated nature of the legacy of
politics and of political law that has been handed down
to our century. Then and then only will it be feasible
and profitable to consider our legacy of private law,

Roman HISTORY

One would think that, as the Latin language and the
history of Rome play such an important véle in our schools,
every educated person would at least possess a clear
general conception of the growth and achievements of
the Roman people. But this is not the case, and indeed
it is not possible with the usual methods of instruction.

for this is surely what the term ‘race’ is intended to designate—
has absolutely no influence on his character, but solely the geographical
surroundings, so that the Aryan, if transferred to Mesopotamia, would
eo ipso have become aSemite and vice versd. In comparison with this,
Haeckel’s pseudo-scientific phantasma of different apes, from each of
which a different race of men derives its origin, seems a sensible theory.
Of course one must not forget that Jhering had to contend all his life
against the mystic dogma of an “innate corpus juris,” and that it
is his great achievement to have paved a way for true science in thig
matter; that explains his exaggerations in the opposite direction.
g6 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

Of course every person of culture is, to a certain point,
at home in Roman history: the legendary Romulus,
Numa Pompilius, Brutus, the Horatii and Curiatii, the
Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Cesar, Pompey, Trajan, Dio-
cletian and countless others, are all at least just as familiar
to us (7.2, in regard to names and dates) as our own
great men; a youth who could not give information
about the Second Punic War or confused the different
Scipios would feel just as ashamed as if he could not
explain the advantages of the Roman legions and maniples
over the Macedonian phalanx. One must also admit
that Roman history, as it is usually presented to us, isa
remarkably rich store of interesting anecdotes; but the
knowledge one derives from it is one-sided and absolutely
defective. The whole history of Rome almost assumes
the appearance of a great and cruel sport, played by
politicians and generals, whose pastime it is to conquer
the world, whereby they achieve many marvellous results
in the art of systematic oppression of foreign peoples
and egging on of their own, as well as in the equally
noble art of inventing new stratagems of war and of
putting them into practice with as large herds of human
cattle as possible. There is beyond doubt some truth
in this view. There came a time in Rome when those
who considered themselves aristocrats chose war and
politics as their life-work, instead of taking them up
only in time of necessity. Just as with us a short time
ago, a man of family could only become an officer,
diplomatist or administrative official, so the “‘ upper ten
thousand” in later Rome could enter only three pro-
fessions that did not degrade them socially—ves militaris,
qurts scientia and eloguentia.* And as the world was
still young and the province of science not too large to _
be covered, a man of ab‘lity could master all three; if
in addition he had plenty of money, his qualifications

* Cf. Savigny: Geschichte des rémischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, chap. i
ROMAN LAW 97

for politics were complete. It is only necessary to
read over again the letters of Cicero to see from his
simple confessions, hopelessly entrammelled as he was
in the ideas of his time, and unable to look beyond his
own nose, how mighty Rome and its destinies became the
play-ball of idle dawdlers and how much truth there is in
the assertion that Rome was not made but unmade by
its politicians. Politics have their peculiarities in other
countries as well as in Rome. From Alexander to
Napoleon, one can hardly over-estimate the power of
criminal obstinacy in purely political heroes. A_ brief
discussion of this point is all the more appropriate in
this chapter, as Rome in particular is rightly regarded
as a specifically political State and we may therefore
hope to learn from it how and by whom great and suc-
cessful politics are achieved.

What Gibbon says about kings in general, that “ their
power is most effective in destruction,” is true of almost.
all politicians—as soon as they possess sufficient power. :
Iam not sure that it was not the wise Solon who made
a prosperous development of the Athenian State im-
possible for all time, by doing away with the historically
given composition of the population from various tribes
and introducing an artificial class-division according to
property. This so-called timocracy (honour to him who
has money) comes in, it is true, of its own accord almost
everywhere to a smaller or greater extent, and Solon at
least took the precaution of making duties increase with
increase of wealth ; nevertheless he it was with his consti-
tution that laid the axe to the root, from which—how-
ever painfully—the Athenian State had grown.* A less

* Many will think, but unjustly so, that the constitution of Lycurgus
is still more arbitrary. For Lycurgus does not undermine the foun-
dations provided by historical development; on the contrary, he
strengthens them. The peoples that had migrated, one after another,
into Lacedemonia, formed layers above each other, the latest comers
at the top—and Lycurgus allowed this to remainso. Though the

I G
98 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

important man would not have ventured to make such
a revolutionary change in the natural course of develop-
ment, and that would probably have been a blessing.
And can we form a different opinion of Julius Cesar?
Of the famous generals in the history of the world as
a politician he probably played the greatest part; in the
most widely different spheres (think only of the improve-
ment of the calendar, the undertaking of a universal legal
code, the founding of the African colony) he revealed a
penetrating understanding ; as an organising genius he
would, I think, not have been surpassed by Napoleon,
under equally favourable conditions—and withal he had
the inestimable advantage of being not a foreign con-
dottiere, like Napoleon or Diocletian, but a good genuine
Roman, firmly rooted in his hereditary fatherland, so that
his individual arbitrariness (as in the case of Lycurgus)
would certainly not have erred far from the plumb-line of
what suited hisnation. And yet it is this very man and
no other who bent the tough tree of life of the Roman con-

Pelasgians (Helots) tilled the land, the Achzeans (zepoleo.) engaged in
trade and industry, and the Dorians (Spartiate) waged war and in conse-
quence ruled, that was no artificial division of labour but the confir-
mation of a relationship actually existing. I am also convinced that
life was in Lacedemonia for a long time happier than in any other
part of Greece ; slave-trade was forbidden, the Helots were hereditary
tenants, and though not bedded on roses they yet enjoyed considerable
independence ; the zrepioixo: had freedom to move about, even their
limited military service being frequently relaxed in the interests of their
industries, which were hereditary in the various families; for the
Spartiate, finally, social intercourse was the principle of their whole
life, and in the rooms where they met at their simple meals, there stood re-
splendent one single statue as protecting deity, that of the god of laughter
(Plutarch, Lycurgus, xxxvii.). Lycurgus, however, lays himself open
to the reproach that he tried to fix these existing and so far sound
conditions, and thus robbed the living organism of its necessary
elasticity ; secondly, that on the substantial and strong foundation he
erected a very fantastic structure. Here again we see the theorising
politician, the man who tries to decide by way of reasoning how things
must be, while as a matter of fact the functionof logical reason is to
record and not tocreate. But to the fact that Lycurgus, in spite of every-
thing, took historical data as his starting-point, are due that strength and
endurance which his constitution enjoyed above those of the rest of
Greece.
ROMAN LAW 99

stitution and gave it over to inevitable decay and ruin.
For the remarkable thing in pre-Czsarean Rome is not
that the city had to experience so many violent internal
storms—in the case of a structure so incomparably
elastic that is natural, the clash of interests and the never-
resting ambition of professional politicians saw to that
in Rome as elsewhere—no, what fills us with wonder and
admiration is rather the vitality of this constitution.
Patricians and Plebeians might periodically be at each
other’s throats: yet an invisible power held them firmly
together ; as soon as new conditions were provided for
by a new compromise, the Roman State stood once more
stronger than ever.* Cesar was born in the midst of
one of these severe crises; but perhaps it appears to us
in history worse than all previous ones—both because
it is nearer to us in time, and we are therefore more fully

* The expression “‘ Aristocracy and Plebs,” which Ranke likes to
use for Patricians and Plebeians, is to the layman most misleading.
Niebuhr already objected to the confusion of Plebs and Pébel (rabble).
Patricians and Plebeians are rather like two powers in the one State,
the one certainly privileged politically, the other the reverse in many
ways (at least in former times), both, however, composed of free, inde-
pendent, altogether autonomous yeomen. And for that reason Sallust
can write, even of the oldest times: ‘‘ The highest authority certainly
lay with the Patricians, but the power most assuredly with the
Plebeians”’ (Letters to Cesar, i. 5); we also see the Plebeians from
earliest times play a great part in the State, and their families inter-
marry to a large extent with the Patricians. The uneducated man
among us is therefore quite misled if he receives the idea that in Rome
it was a question of an aristocracy and a proletariat. The peculiarity
and the remarkable vitality of the Roman State had its foundation
in this, that it contained from the first two differentiable parts (which
present in their political efficacy in many points an analogy to Whigs
and Tories, only that here it is a question of ‘‘ born parties ’’), which,
however, had grown up together with the State through exactly the
same interests of property, law and freedom; from this the Romans
derived, internally, continuous freshness of life, and in foreign affairs,
perpetual unswerving unanimity. Of the Plebeian portions of the
army Cato says, ‘‘viri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi”’; they were
indeed free-men, who fought for their own homes and hearths. In
ancient Rome, as a matter of fact, only freeholders could serve in the
army, and Plebeians held the rank of officer equally with Patricians
(see Mommsen: Abriss des vémischen Siaatsrechtes, 1893, p. 258; and
Esmarch: Rémische R_ usgeschichte, 3rd ed., p. 28 ff.).
100 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

informed of it, and because we know the issue which
Cesar brought about. I for my part consider the inter-
pretation which the philosophy of history gives to these
events a pure abstraction. Neither the rough hand of
the impetuous, passionate Plebeian Marius nor the
tiger-like cruelty of the coolly calculating Patrician Sulla
would have inflicted fatal wounds upon the Roman con-
stitution. Even the most critical danger—the freeing
of many thousands of slaves and the bestowing of citizen-
ship on many thousands of those freed-men (and that for
political, immoral reasons)—Rome would soon have
surmounted. Rome possessed the vitality to ennoble
slavery, that is, to give it the definite Roman character.
Only a mighty personality, one of those abnormal heroes
of will, such as the world scarcely produces once in a
thousand years, could ruin such a State. It is said that
Cesar was a saviour of Rome, snatched away too soon,
before he could finish his work: this is false. When thegreat
man arrived with his army on the banks of the Rubicon, he
is said to have hesitatingly commanded a halt and reflected
once more on the far-reaching consequences of his action ;
if he did not cross, he himself would be in danger, if he did
cross the boundary marked by sacred law, he would
involve the whole world (z.e., the Roman State) in danger :
he decided for ambition and against Rome. The anec-
dote may be invented, Cesar at least lets us see no such
inner struggle of conscience in his Czvii War; but the
situation is exactly described thereby. No matter how
great a man may be, he is never free, his past imperatively
prescribes the direction of his present; if once he has
chosen the worse part, he must henceforth do harm,
whether he wills it or not, and though he raise himself to an
autocracy, in the fond hope that he henceforth has it in
his power to devote himself wholly to doing what is good,
he will experience in Fimself that “the might of Kings
is most effective in destruction.” Cesar had written
ROMAN LAW I0I

to Pompey even from Ariminum to the effect that the
interests of the republic were nearer his heart than his
own life ;* and yet Cesar had not long been all-powerful
to do good, when his faithful friend Sallust had to ask
him whether he had really saved or despoiled the re-
public ?¢ At the best he had saved it as Virginius did
his daughter. Pompey, as several contemporary writers
tell us, would allow no one beside him, Cesar no one
over him. Imagine what might have been the result
for Rome if two such men, instead of being politicians,
had acted as the servants of the Fatherland, as had been
Roman custom hitherto!

It is not my business to enter more fully into the
subject briefly sketched here ; my only object has been to
show what a superficial knowledge we have of a people,
if we study only the history of its politicians and
generals. This is particularly the case with Rome.
Whoever studies Rome merely from this point of view,
no matter how industriously he may examine its
history, can certainly arrive at no other result than
did Herder, whose interpretation therefore will remain
classic. To this man of genius Roman history is “ the
history of demons,’’ Rome a ‘robbers’ cave,’’ what
the Romans give to the world “devastating night,”
their “‘ great noble souls, Caesars and Scipios,’”’ spend their
life in murdering, the more men they have slaughtered in
their campaigns, the warmer the praise that is paid
them.{ This is from a certain point of view correct ;
but the investigations of Niebuhr, Duruy and Mommsen
(especially the last), as well as those of the brilliant
historians of law in our century—Savigny, Jhering and
many others—have brought to light another Rome, to
the existence of which Montesquieu had been the first

* Civil War, i. 9. Thoroughly Roman, by the way, to use such a
sommonplace expression at such a time !

t Second Letter to Cesar.

I Ideen zur Geschichte der ALenschhett, Bk. XIV,
102 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

to call attention. Here the important thing was to
discover and put in its right light what the old Roman
historians, intent on celebrating battles, describing con-
spiracies, slandering enemies and flattering politicians
who paid well, had passed by unnoticed or at any rate
had never duly appreciated. A people does not become
what the Romans have become in the history of man-
kind by means of murder and robbery, but in spite of
it; no people produces statesmen and warriors of such
admirably strong character as Rome did, if it does not
itself supply a broad, firm and sound basis for strength
of character. What Herder and so many after him
call Rome can therefore be only a part of Rome, and
indeed not the most important part. The exposition of
Augustine in the fifth book of his De civitate Ded is, in
my judgment, far happier; he calls attention particu-
larly to the absence of greed and selfishness among the
Romans and says that their whole will proclaimed itself
in the one resolution, “‘ either to live free or die bravely”
(aut fortiter emori aut liberos vivere) ; and the great-
ness of the Roman power, as well as its durability, he
ascribes to this moral greatness.

In the general introduction to this book I spoke of
‘anonymous ”’ powers, which shape the life of peoples ;
we have a brilliant example of this in Rome. I believe
we might say without exaggeration that’ all Rome’s
true greatness was such an anonymous “ national great-
ness.” If in the case of the Athenians genius unfolded
itself in the blossom, here it did so in the trunk and the
roots; Rome was of all nations that with the strongest
roots. Hence it was that it defied so many storms, and
the history of the world required almost five hundred
years to uproot the rotten trunk. Hence too, however,
the peculiar grisaille of its history. In the case of
the Roman tree everything went to wood, as the gar-
deners say; it bore few leaves, still fewer blossoms, but
ROMAN LAW 103

the trunk was incomparably strong; by its support
later nations raised themselves aloft. The poet and the
philosopher could not prosper in this atmosphere, this
people loved only those personalities in whom it recog-
nised itself, everything unusual aroused its distrust ;
“whoever wished to be other than his comrades passed
in Rome for a bad citizen.”* The people were right ;
the best statesman for Rome was he who did not move
one hair’s-breadth from what the people as a whole
wished, a man who understood how to open the safety-
valve now here, now there, to meet the growing forces
by the lengthening of pistons and by suitably arranged
centrifugal balls and throttles, till the machine of State
had quasi-automatically increased its size and perfected
its administrative power ; he must be, in short, a reliable
mechanician: that was the ideal politician for this strong,
conscious people whose interests lay entirely in the
practical things of life. As soon as any one overstepped
this limit, he necessarily committed a crime against the
common weal.

Rome, I repeat—for this is the chief point to grasp,
and everything else follows from it—Rome is not the
creation of individual men, but of a whole people; in
contrast to Hellas everything really great is here “‘ anony-
mous ’’; none of its great men approaches the greatness
of the Roman people as a whole. And so what Cicero
says in his Republic (ii. 1) is very correct and worth
taking to heart: ‘‘ The constitution of our State is
superior to that of others for the following reason: in
other places it was individual men who by laws and
institutions founded the constitution, as, for example,
Minos in Crete, Lycurgus in Lacedemonia, in Athens
(where change was frequent) at one time Theseus, at
another Draco, then Solon, Clisthenes and many others ;
on the other hand, our Roman Commonwealth is founded

* Mommsen: Rémische Geschichte, 8th ed., is 244
104 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

not on the genius of a single man but of many men,
nor did the span of a fleeting human life suffice to
establish it, it is the work of centuries and successive
generations.” Even the General in Rome needed only
to give free play to the virtues which his whole army
possessed—patience, endurance, unselfishness, contempt
of death, practical common sense, above all the high
consciousness of civic responsibility—and he was sure
of victory, if not to-day, then to-morrow. Just as the
troops consisted of citizens, their commanders were
magistrates who only temporarily changed the office
of an administrator or councillor and judge for that of
commander-in-chief ; in general too it made little difference
when in the regular routine of office the one official
relieved the other in command; the idea “ soldier”
came into prominence only in the time of decline. It
was not as adventurers but as the most domiciled of
citizens and peasants that the Romans conquered the
world.

Roman IDEALS

The question here forces itself upon us: is it at all
admissible to apply the term conquerors to the Romans ?
Iscarcely think so. The Teutonic peoples, the Arabians
and the Turks were conquerors ; the Romans, on the other
hand, from the day they enter history as an individual,
separate nation are distinguished by their fanatical,
warm-hearted, and, perhaps, narrow-minded love for
their Fatherland ; they are bound to this spot of earth
—not particularly healthy nor uncommonly rich—by
inseverable ties of heart, and what drives them to battle
and gives them their invincible power is first and foremost
the love of home, the desperate resolve to yield up the
independent possession of this soil only with their lives.
That this principle entailed gradual extension of the
State does not prove lust for conquest, it was the natural
ROMAN LAW 105

outcome of a compulsion. Even to-day might is the
most important factor in international law, and we have
seen how in our century the most peaceful of nations,
like Germany, have had unceasingly to increase their
military power, but only in the interests of their indepen-
dence. How much more difficult was the position of
Rome, surrounded by a confused chaos of peoples great
and small—close at hand masses of related races con-
stantly warring against each other, farther afield an ever-
threatening unexplored chaos of barbarians, Asiatics
and Africans! Defence did not suffice; if Rome wished
to enjoy peace, she had to spread the work of organisa-
tion and administration from one land to the other.
Observe the contemporaries of Rome and see what a
failure those small Hellenic States were owing to the lack
of political foresight ; Rome, however, had this quality
as no people before or after. Its leaders did not
act according to theoretical conceptions, as we might
almost be inclined to believe to-day when we see so
strictly logical a development; they rather followed
an almost unerring instinct ; this, however, is the surest
of all compasses—happy he who possesses it! We hear
much of Roman hardness, Roman selfishness, Roman
greed; yes! but was it possible to struggle for inde-
pendence and freedom amid such a world without being
hard? Can we maintain our place in the struggle for
existence without first and foremost thinking of self ?
Is possession not power ? But one fact has been practi-
cally disregarded, yiz., that the unexampled success
of the Romans is not to be looked upon as a result of
hardness, selfishness, greed—these raged all around in
at least as high a degree as among the Romans, and
even to-day no great change has taken place—no, the
successes of the Romans are based on intellectual and
moral superiority. In truth a one-sided superiority ;
but what is not one-sided in this world ?~ And it cannot
be denied that in certain respects the Romans felt more
106 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

intensely and thought more acutely than any other men
at any time, and they were in addition peculiar in this,
that in their case feeling and thinking worked together
and supplemented each other.

I have already mentioned their love of home. That
was a fundamental trait of the old Roman character.
It was not the purely intellectual love of the Hellenes,
bubbling over and rejoicing in song, yet ever prone to
yield to the treacherous suggestions of selfishness ; nor
was it the verbose love of the Jews: we know how very
pathetically the Jews sing of the “ Babylonian captivity,”
but, when sent home full-handed by the magnanimous
Cyrus, prefer to submit to fines and force only the
poorest to return, rather than leave the foreign land
where they are so prosperous; no, in the case of the
Romans it was a true, thoroughly unsentimental love
that knew few words, but was ready for any sacrifice ;
no man and no woman among them ever hesitated to
sacrifice their lives for the Fatherland. How can we
explain so unmeasured an affection? Rome was (in
olden times) not a wealthy city; without crossing the
boundaries of Italy one could see much more fruitful
regions. But what Rome gave and securely established
was a life morally worthy of man. The Romans did not
invent marriage, they did not invent law, they did not
invent the constitutional freedom-giving State; all that
grows out of human nature and is found everywhere in
some form and to some degree ; but what the Aryan races
had conceived under these notions as the bases of all
morality and culture had nowhere been firmly established
till the Romans established it.* Had the Hellenes got too

* For the Aryan peoples in particular, see Leist’s excellent Griico-
ttalienische Rechtsgeschichte (1884) and his Aliarisches Jus civile (1896),
also Jhering’s Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropder. The ethnical investi-
gations of the last years have, however, shown more and more that
marriage, law and State exist in some form everywhere, even among
the savages of least mental develorment. And this must be strongly
emphasised, for the evolution mania and the pseudo-scientific dogma-
ROMAN LAW 107

near Asia? Were they too suddenly civilised ? Had the
Celts, who were by nature endowed with almost as much

tism of our century have brought into most of our popular books
absolutely invented descriptions, which are very difficult to remove
from them, in spite of the sure results of exact research; and
from here these descriptions also force their way into valuable
and serious books. In Lamprecht’s famous Deutsche Geschichte,
vol. i., for instance, we find what is supposed to be a description
of the social conditions of the old Teutonic peoples, sketched
“under the auspices of comparative ethnology’; here we are told of
a time when among these peoples a ‘community of sex limited by
no differences of any kind prevailed, all brothers and sisters were
husbands and wives to each other and all their children brothers and
sisters, &c.”; the first progress from this state, as we are to suppose,
was the establishment of the mother’s right, the so-called Matriarchate—
and so the tale continues for pages ; one fancies one is listening to the
first stuttering of a new mythology. As far as the mother-right is
concerned (z.e., family name and right of inheritance after the mother,
as the fatherhood was always a common one), Jhering has convincingly
shown that even the oldest Aryans, before the breaking off of a Teu-
tonic branch, knew nothing of it (Vorgeschichte, p. 61 ff.), and the very
oldest parts of the Aryan language point already to the ‘‘ supreme
position of the husband and father of the household” (Leist, Grdco-
ual. Rechtsgeschichte, p. 58); that supposition therefore lacks every
scientific basis. [This was meantime confirmed by Otto Schrader,
Reallexicon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1901, p. Xxxiii.] It is
still more important to establish the fact that the ‘‘ comparative ethno-
graphy”? appealed to by Lamprecht has found community of sex
nowhere in the world among human beings. In the year 1896 a small
book appeared which summarises in strictly objective fashion all
the researches that refer to this, Ernst Grosse’s Die Formen der Familie
und die Formen der Wirtschaft, and there we see how the so-called
empirical philosophers, with Herbert Spencer at their head, and the so-
called strictly empirical anthropologists and ethnologists, honoured as
“authorities”? (with praiseworthy exceptions like Lubbock), simply
started from the @ priovi supposition that there must be community
of sex among simpler peoples, since the law of evolution demands it,
and then everywhere discovered facts to confirm this. But more exact
and unprejudiced investigations now prove for one race after the
other that community of sex does not exist there, and Grosse may
put down the apodictic assertion: ‘‘ There is, in fact, no single primi-
tive people whose sexual relations approached a condition of promis-
cuity or even hinted at such a thing. The firmly knit individual
family is by no means a late achievement of civilisation, it exists in
the lowest stages of culture as a rule without exception” (p. 42).
Exact proofs are to,be found in Grosse; besides, all anthropologicat
and ethnological accounts of recent years testify how very much we
have undervalued the so-called savages, how superficially we have
observed and how thoughtlessly we have drawn conclusions about
primitive conditions, of which we know absolutely nothing with surety,
108 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

fire, become so savage in the wild North that they were no
longer able to construct anything, to organise anything,

[Lately Heinrich Schurtz, in his Altersklassen und Mdnnerbunde, etne
Darstellung der Grundformen der Gesellschaft, 1902, has fully shown
that the arguments for promiscuity in early times, which are wont to
be drawn from phenomena of “‘ free love ’’ to-day, are to be interpreted
quite differently, and that, on the contrary, ‘‘ with the most primitive
races marriage, and in connection with it the formation of society on a
purely sexual basis, is more strongly developed” (p. 200).] As this
subject is essentially of the greatest importance and throws a peculiar
and very noteworthy sidelight upon scientific modes of thought and
power of thought in our century, I should like to add one more mstruc-
tive example. The original inhabitants of central Australia are, as is
well known, supposed to belong to the most backward, intellectually,
of all peoples; Lubbock calls them ‘‘ wretched savages, who cannot
count their own fingers, not even the fingers of one hand” (The Pre-
historic Age, Germ. trans., ii. 151). One can imagine with what con-
tempt the traveller Eyre wrote of the ‘‘remarkably peculiar cases
where marriage is forbidden’ in this wretched race, ‘‘ where a man
may not marry a woman who has the same name as he, even though
she be by no means related to him.”’ Strange! And how could these
people come to have such inexplicable caprices when it would have been
their duty, according to the theory of evolution, to have lived in abso-
lute promiscuity ? Since that time two English officials, who lived for
years among these savages and gained their confidence, have given
us a detailed account of them (Royal Society of Victoria, April 1897,
summary in Nature, June 10, 1897), and it appears that their whole
intellectual life, their ‘“‘ conceptive life’? (if I may say so) is so in-
credibly complicated that it is almost impossible for one cf us to
comprehend it. These people, for example, who are supposed not to
be able to count up to five, have a more complicated belief than Plato
with regard to the transmigration of souls, and this faith forms the
basis of their religion. Now as to their marriage laws. In the par-
ticular district spoken of here there lives an ethnically uniform race,
the Aruntas. Every marriage union with strange races is forbidden ;
thereby the race is kept pure. But the extremely baneful effects of
long-continued inbreeding (Lamprecht’s Tevtons would long have
become Cretins before ever they entered into history !) are prevented
by the Australian blacks by the following ingenious system:
they divide (mentally) the whole race into four groups; for simplicity
I designate them abe¢d. A youth from the group @ may only marry
a girl from group d, the male b only the female c, the male ¢ only the
female b, the male d only the female a. The children of a and d form
once more the group b, those of b and c the group a, those of c and b
the group d, those of dandathe groupe. Isimplify very muchand give
only the skeleton, for I fear my European reader would otherwise soon
reach the stage of likewise not being able tocount up tofive. That such
a system imposes important restrictions on the rights of the heart cannot
be denied, but I ask, how could a scientifically trained selector have
hit upon a more ingenious expedient to satisfy the two laws of breeding
ROMAN LAW 109

or to found a State ?* Or was it not rather that blood-
mixtures within the common mother race, and at the
same time the artificial selection necessitated by geo-
graphical and historical conditions tended to produce
abnormal gifts (naturally with accompanying phenomena
of reversion) ?} I do not know. Certain it is, however,
that previous to the Romans there was no sacred, worthy
and at the same time practical regulation of matters

which are established by strict observation, namely, (1) the race must
be kept pure, (2) continuous inbreeding is to be avoided ? (see chap.
iv.). Such a phenomenon calls for reverence and silence. When con-
templating it one gladly keeps silent regarding such systems as those
already mentioned as belonging to the end of the nineteenth century. But
what must we feel when we turn our glance from the extremely laboured
efforts of these worthy Australian Aruntas to Rome and behold here,
in the middle of a frightful world, the sacredness of marriage, the
legal status of the family, the freedom of the head of the household
rising up out of the heart of the people, for it was at a much later
period that it was engraved on bronze tables ?

* Thierry, Mommsen, &c.

{ Till a short time ago it was a favourite practice to represent the
population of Rome as a kind of medley of peoples living side by
side: it was supposed to have borrowed its traditions from Hellenic
units, its administration from Etruscan ones, its law from Sabines, and
its intellect from Samnites, &c. Thus Rome would have in a way beena
mere word, a name, the common designation of an international trysting-
place. This soap-bubble, too, which rose from the brain foam of pale pro-
fessors, has burst, like so many others,in Mommsen’s hands. Facts and
reason both prove the absurdity of such a hypothesis, ‘‘ which attempts
to change the people, which, as few others, has developed its language,
state, and religion purely and popularly, into a confused rubble of
Etruscan, Sabine, Hellenic, and unfortunately even Pelasgic ruins ’”’
(Rom, Gesch., i. 43). The fact, however, that this thoroughly uniform
and peculiar people originated from a crossing of various related races
is undeniable, and Mommsen himself clearly shows this; he admits
two Latin and one Sabellian race ; at a later time all kinds of elements
were added, but only after the Roman national character was firmly
developed so that it assimilated the foreign portion. It would, how-
ever, be ridiculous to ‘‘ assign Rome to the number of mixed peoples ”
(see p. 44). It is quite a different thing to establish the fact that the
most extraordinary and most individual talents and the sturdiest power
are produced by crossing, Athens was a brilliant example, Rome
another, Italy and Spain in the Middle Ages equally so, just as Prussia
and England prove it at the present day (more details in chap. 4). In
this respect the Hellenic myth that the Latins were descended from
Hercules and a Hyperborean maiden is very noteworthy as one of those
incomprehensible traits of innate wisdom; whereas the: desperate
efforts of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (who lived at the time of the
tro FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

relating to marriage and family; no more was there a
rational law resting on a sure foundation capable of being
widened, or a political organisation able to resist the
storms of a chaotic time. Though the simply con-
structed mechanism of the old Roman State might
frequently be awkward in its working and require
thorough repairs, it was yet a splendid structure well
adapted to the time and to its purpose. In Rome, from
the first, the idea of Law had been finely conceived and
finely carried into effect ; moreover its limitations were in
keeping with the conditions. Still more was this the case
with the family. This institution was to be found in
Rome alone—and in a form more beautiful than the
world has ever since seen! Every Roman citizen,
whether Patrician or Plebeian, was lord, yea, king in
his house: his will extended even beyond death by the
unconditional freedom of bequest, and the sanctity of
the last testament; his home was assured against
official interference by more solid rights than ours;
in contrast to the Semitic patriarchate he had intro-
duced the principle of agnation* and thereby swept
entirely aside the interference of mothers-in-law and
women as a whole ; on the other hand, the materfamilias
was honoured, treasured, loved like a queen. Where
was there anything to compare with this in the world
at that time? Outside of civilisation perhaps; inside
it nowhere. And so it was that the Roman loved his
home with such enduring love and gave his heart’s blood
for it. Rome was for him the family and the law, a
rocky eminence of human dignity in the midst of a
surging sea.
birth of Christ) to prove the descent of the Romans from Hellenes,
“as they could not possibly be of barbarian origin,” shows with
touching simplicity how dangerous a conjunction of great learning
with preconceived opinions and conclusions of reason can become !

* The family resting upon relationship to the father alone, so that only
descent from the father’s side by males, and not that from the mother’s

side, establishes relationship at law. Only a marriage contracted in
the right forms produces children who belong to the agnate familys
ROMAN LAW III

Let no one fancy that anything great can be achieved |
in this world unless a purely ideal power is at work. The
idea alone will of course not suffice ; there must also bea
tangible interest, even should it be, as in the case of
the martyrs, an interest pertaining to the other world;
without an additional ideal element the struggle for
gain alone possesses little power of resistance; higher
power of achievement is supplied only by a “ faith,”
and that is what I call an “ideal impulse ’”’ in contrast
to the direct interest of the moment—be that last
possession or anything else whatever. As Dionysius
says of the ancient Romans, ‘ they thought highly of
themselves and could not therefore venture to do anything
unworthy of their ancestors”’ (i. 6); in other words,
they kept before their eyes an ideal of themselves. I
do not mean the word “ ideal’ in the degenerate, vague
sense of the “‘ blue flower’”’ of Romance, but in the sense
of that power which impelled the Hellenic sculptor to
form the god from out the stone, and which taught the
Roman to look upon his freedom, his rights, his union
with a woman in marriage, his union with other men for
the common weal, as something sacred, as the most
valuable gift that life can give. A rock, as I said, not
an Aristophanic Cloud-cuckoo-land. As a dream, the
same feeling existed more or less among all Indo-Euro-
peans: we meet with a certain holy awe and earnestness
in various forms among all the members of this family ;
the persevering power to realise things practically was,
however, given to no one so much as to the Roman. Do
not believe that “robbers ”’ can achieve results such as
the Roman State, to the salvation of the world, achieved.
And when once you have recognised the absurdity of
such a view, search deeper and you will see that these
Romans were unsurpassed as a civilising power, and that
they could only be that because, though they had great
faults and glaring intellectual deficiencies, they yet
possessed high mental and moral qualities,
4

112 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE SEMITES

Mommsen tells (i. 321) of the alliance between the
Babylonians and the Phcenicians to subdue Greece and
Italy, and is of opinion that “at one stroke freedom and
civilisation would have been swept off the face of the
earth.” We should weigh carefully what these words
mean when uttered by a man who commands the whole
field as no one else does; freedom and civilisation (I
should rather have said culture, for how can one deny
civilisation to the Babylonians and Pheenicians, or even
to the Chinese ?) would have been destroyed, blotted
out for ever! And then take up the books which give
a detailed and scientific account of the Phoenician and
Babylonian civilisation, in order to see clearly what
foundation there is for such a far-reaching statement.
It will not be difficult to see what distinguishes a Hellenic
“Colony”? from a Pheenician Factory: and from the
difference between Rome and Carthage we shall readily
understand what an ideal power is, even in the sphere
of the driest, most selfish politics of interest. How
suggestive is that distinction which Jhering (Vorgeschichte,
p. 176) teaches us to draw between the “ commercial
highways’ of the Semites and the “ military roads”
of the Romans: the former the outcome of the tendency
to expansion and possession; the latter the result of
the need of concentrating their power and defending
the homeland. We shall also learn to distinguish between
authentic “‘ robbers,’’ who only civilise in as far as they
understand how to take up and utilise with enviable
intelligence all discoveries that have a practical worth
and to encourage in the interests of their commerce
artificial needs in foreign peoples, but who otherwise
rob even their nearest relations of every human right—
who nowhere organise anything but taxes and absolute
ROMAN LAW 113

slavery, who in general, no matter where they plant their
foot, never seek to rule a country as a whole under system-
atic government, and, being alive only to their commercial
interests, leave everything as barbarous as they find it:
we shall, as I say, learn to distinguish between such
genuine robbers and the Romans, who, in order to retain
the blessings that attend the order reigning in their
midst, are compelled—beginning from that unchang-
ing centre, the home—slowly and surely to extend
their ordering and clearing influence all round; they
never really conquer (when they can help it) ; they spare
and respect every individuality ; but withal they organise
so excellently that people approach them with the prayer
to be allowed to share in the blessings of their system ;*
their own splendid “Roman law’ they generously
make accessible to ever-increasing numbers, and they
at the same time unite the various foreign legal systems,
taking the Roman as a basis, in order gradually to evolve
therefrom a “universal international law.’ This is
surely not how robbers act. Here we have rather to
recognise the first steps towards the permanent establish-
ment of Indo-European ideals of freedom and civilisation.

* One of the last instances are the Jews who (about the year 1) came
to Rome with the urgent request that it should deliver them from
their Semitic sovereigns and make them into a Roman province. It
is well known what gratitude they afterwards showed to Rome, which
ruled them so mildly and generously.

t+ Esmarch, in his Rémische Rechtsgeschichte, 3rd ed., p. 185, writes
as follows on the frequently very vaguely developed and defined jus
gentium ;: ‘‘ This law in the Roman sense is to be regarded neither as
an aggregate of accidentally common clauses, formed from a com-
parison of the laws that were valid among all the nations known to
the Romans, nor as an objectively existing commercial law recog-
nised and adopted by the Roman State; it should be regarded,
according to its essential substance, as a system of order for the
application of private law to international relations, evolved out of
the heart of Roman popular consciousness.’ Within the several
countries the conditions of law were as little changed as possible
by the Romans, one of the surprising proofs of the great respect

which in the period of their true greatness they paid to all indi-
viduality.

1 H
114 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

Livy says with justice : “ It was not only by our weapons
but also by our Roman legislation that we won our
far-reaching influence.”

It is clear that the commonly accepted view of Rome
as the conquering nation above all others is very one-sided.
Indeed even after Rome had broken with its own
traditions, or rather when the Roman people had in fact
disappeared from the earth, and only the idea of it
still hovered over its grave, even then it could not depart
far from this great principle of its life: even the rough
soldier-emperors were unable to break this tradition.
And thus it is that the real military hero—as individual
phenomenon—does not occur at all among the Romans.
I will not make any comparisons with Alexander, Charles
XII. or Napoleon; I ask, however, whether the one
man Hannibal, as an inventive, audacious, arbitrary
prince of war, has not displayed more real genius than
all the Roman imperators taken together.

It need scarcely be stated that Rome fought neither
for a Europe of the future nor in the interests of a far-
‘reaching mission of culture, but simply for itself; but
thanks to this very fact, that it fought for its own interests

‘with the reckless energy of a morally strong people,
it has preserved from sure destruction that “‘ intellectual
development of mankind which depends upon the Indo-
‘Teutonic race.” This is best seen clearly in the most
decisive of all its struggles, that with Carthage. If
Rome’s political development had not been so strictly
logical up till then, if it had not betimes subdued and
disciplined the rest of Italy, the deadly blow to freedom
and civilisation mentioned above would assuredly have
been dealt by the allied Asiatics and Carthaginians.
And how little a single hero can do in the face of such
situations of world-wide historical moment, although he
alone, it may be, has taken a comprehensive view of them,
is shown by the fate of Alexander, who having destroyed
ROMAN LAW 115

Tyre meditated embarking on a campaign against Carthage,
but at his early death left nothing behind but the memory
of his genius. The long-lived Roman people, on the other
hand, was equal to that great task, which it finally summed
up in the monumental sentence, delenda est Carthago.
What laments and moralisings we have had on the
destruction of Carthage by the Romans, from Polybius
to Mommsen! It is refreshing to meet a writer who, like
Bossuet, simply says : ‘‘ Carthage was taken and destroyed
by Scipio, who in this showed himself worthy of his great
ancestor,” without any moral indignation, without the
well-worn phrase that all the suffering which later befell
Rome was a retribution for this misdeed. I am not
writing a history of Rome and do not therefore require to
sit in judgment on the Romans ; but one thing is as clear
as the noonday sun; if the Phcenician people had not
been destroyed, if its survivors had not been deprived
of a rallying-point by the complete destruction of their
last city, and compelled to merge in other nations, man-
kind would never have seen this nineteenth century,
upon which, with all due recognition of our weaknesses
and follies, we yet look back with pride, justified in our
hopes for the future. The least mercy shown to a race
of such unparalleled tenacity as the Semites would have
sufficed to enable the Phcenician nation to rise once more ;
in a Carthage only half-burned the torch of life would have
glimmered beneath the ashes, to burst again into flame as
soon as the Roman Empire began to approach its dis-
solution. We are not yet free of peril from the Arabs,*
who long seriously threatened our existence, and their

* The struggle which in late years raged in Central Africa between
the Congo Free State and the Arabs (without being much heeded in
Europe) is a new chapter in the old war between Semites and Indo-
Europeans for the supremacy of the world. It is only in the last fifty
years that the Arabs have been advancing from the East Coast of
Africa into the interior and almost up to the Atlantic Ocean; the
famous Hamed ben Mohammed ben Juna, called Tippu-Tib, was for
a long time absolute ruler of an immense realm which reached almost
,

116 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

creation, Mohammedanism, is the greatest of all hindrances
to every progress of civilisation, hanging like a sword
of Damocles over our slowly and laboriously rising culture
in Europe, Asia and Africa; the Jews stand morally
so high above all other Semites that one may hardly
name them in conjunction with these (their ancestral
enemies in any case from time immemorial), and yet
we should need to be blind or dishonest, not to con-
fess that: the problem of Judaism in our midst is one
of the most difficult and dangerous questions of the
day; now imagine in addition a Phcenician nation,
holding from the earliest times all harbours in their
possession, monopolising all trade, in possession of the
richest capitals in the world and of an ancestral
national religion (Jews so to speak who had never known
' Prophets) ...! It is no fantastic philosophising on
history but an objectively demonstrable fact that, under
such conditions, that which we to-day call Europe could
never have arisen. Once more I refer to the learned
works on the Pheenicians, but above all, because available
to every one, to the splendid summary in Mommsen’s
Romische Geschichte, Book III. chap. i. ‘ Carthage.”

straight across all Africa with a breadth of about 20 degrees. Count-
less tribes which Livingstone in his time found happy and peace-
loving have since then in some cases been destroyed entirely—since
the slave-trade to foreign parts is the chief occupation of the Arabs
and never, in the history of mankind, was carried on to such an extent
as in the second half of the nineteenth century—in other cases the
natives have undergone a remarkable moral change by contact with
Semitic masters; they have become cannibals, great stupid children
changed to wild beasts. It is, however, noteworthy that the Arabs,
where they found it paid them, have revealed their culture, knowledge
and shrewdness in laying out magnificent stretches of cultivated land,
so that parts of the Congo river district are almost as beautifully
farmed as an Alsatian estate. In Kassongo, the capital of this rich
country, the Belgian troops found magnificent Arabian houses with silk
curtains, bed-covers of satin, splendidly carved furniture, silver ware, &c.;
but the aboriginal inhabitants of this district had in the meantime de-
generated into slaves and cannibals. A real tangible instance of the
difference between civilising and spreading culture. (See especially
Dr. Hinde: The Fall of the Congo Arabs, 1897, p. 6A. 184 ff., &c.)

|
ROMAN LAW 117

The intellectual barrenness of this people was really
horrifying. Although destiny made the Phcenicians
brokers of civilisation, yet this never inspired them to
invent anything whatever ; civilisation remained for them
altogether something absolutely external; of what we call
“culture”’ they had not the least notion, even to the
last: clad in magnificent garments, surrounded by works
of art, in possession of all the knowledge of their time,
they continued as before to practise sorcery, offered
human sacrifices and lived in such a pit of unspeakable
vice that the most degraded Orientals turned in disgust
from them. With regard to their share in the spread
of civilisation Mommsen says: ‘“‘ This they have done
more as the bird scatters the seed * than as the sower
sows the corn. The Pheenicians absolutely lacked
the power, possessed by the Hellenes and even the
Italic peoples, of civilising and assimilating the nations
capable of being educated, with whom they came in
contact. In the sphere of Roman conquest the Iberian
and Celtic languages have disappeared before the Romance
tongue ; the Berbers of Africa speak the same language
to-day as they did at the time of Hanno and the Barcide.
But the Phcenicians like all Aramaic peoples, in contrast
to the Indo-Teutonic, lack above all the impulse to
form States—the brilliait idea of freedom that is self-
governing.” Where the Phcenicians settled, their con-
stitution was, fundamentally, merely a “‘ government
of capitalists, consisting on the one hand of a city mob,
without property, living from hand to mouth, treating
the conquered people in the country districts as mere slave-
cattle without rights, and on the other hand of merchant
princes, plantation-owners and aristocratic’ governors.”
These are the men, this the fatal branch of the Semitic
family, from which we have been saved by the brutal

* Every reader knows by what automatic process the bird unwittingly
contributes to the spread of plant life.
118 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

delenda est Carthago. And even if it should be true that
the Romans in this case listened more than was their
wont to the mean promptings of revenge, perhaps even of
jealousy, all the more am I bound to admire the unerring
certainty of instinct which induced them, even where
they were blinded by evil passions, to strike down that
which any cool, calculating politician gifted with the eye of
the prophet would have been bound to urge them to
destroy for the salvation of mankind.*

A second Roman delenda has for the history of the
world an almost equally inestimable importance: the
delenda est Hierosolyma. Had it not been for this achieve-
ment (which we certainly owe as much to the Jews who
have at all times rebelled against every system of govern-
ment as to the long-suffering Romans) Christianity
would hardly ever have freed itself from Judaism, but

* Mommsen, who feels bound strongly tocondemn the action of the
Romans against Carthage, admits at a later point (v. 623) that it was in
his opinion neither lust of empire nor of possession but fear and jealousy
that prompted it. This very distinction is of importance for our
reasoned view of the part played by Rome in the history of the world.
If in a world which recognises might aloneas the norm of international
law, we can say with certainty of a people that it was not greedy of
possessions or power, it seems to me that we have given it a testimonial
to its moral character which makes it tower high above all contemporary
peoples. As regards ‘‘ fear,” it was thoroughly justified, and it is
surely permitted to think that the Roman senate formed a more
correct judgment of the situation than Mommsen.—The arbitrary
Cesar, of whom even his zealous friend Celius must say that he sacri-
fices the interests of the State to his personal ends, built Carthage again
at a later time. And what did it become? The most notorious pit
of vice in the world, where all whose destiny cast them thither—Romans,
Greeks, Vandals—degenerated to the very marrow of their bones.
Such devastat ng magic was still possessed by the curse which rested
on the spot where Phcenician horrors had reigned supreme for five
hundred years! From its houses of evil repute there arose a mighty
cry of indignation against everything called civilisation: That it bore
Tertullian and Augustine is the only merit that we can attribute to
this shortsighted and shortlived creation of Czsar.—To charac-
terise the nineteenth century, let me quote the opinion of one who is
among its so-called greatest historians. Professor Leopold von
Ranke says: ‘“‘ The Pheenician element has by means of commerce,
colonisation and, finally, also by war, in the main exercised a quicken
ing influence upon the Occident”’ (Weltgeschichte, i, 542).
ROMAN LAW 119

would have remained, in the first instance, a sect among
sects. The might of the religious idea, however, would
have prevailed in the end; as to that there can be no
question: the enormous and increasing spread of the
Jewish Diaspora * before the time of Christ proves it;

* Diaspora is the name given to the widened Jewish community.
Originally the term was applied to those Jews who had preferred
not to return from the Babylonian captivity, because they were better
off there than in their home. Soon there was no prosperous city in the
world without a Jewish community; nothing is more erroneous than the
widespread belief that it was the destruction of Jerusalem that first
scattered the Jews over the world. In Alexandria and its neighbour-
hood alone there were reckoned to be under the first Roman emperors a
million Jews, and Tiberius already recognised the great danger of this
theocratic State in the midst of the legal State. The men ofthe Diaspora
were keen and successful propagandists, and their considerate adoption of
men as ‘‘ half Jews’ under remission of the painful initiatory ceremony,
helped them greatly; in addition, material advantages contributed
to their success, since the Jews pleaded their religion as an excuse for
exemption from military service and a series of other burdensome
civic duties; but the Hebrew missionaries had the greatest success
with women. Now it is a noteworthy fact that this international
community, which contained Hebrews and non-Hebrews, and in
which all shades of faith were represented, from the most bigoted
Pharisaism to open scoffing irreligion, held together like one man
as soon as it was a question of the privileges and interests of the common
Jewry; the Jewish freethinker would not for the world have omitted
to send in his yearly contribution to Jerusalem for the temple-offerings ;
Philo, the famous Neoplatonist, who believed in Jahve as little as in
Jupiter, nevertheless represented the Jewish community of Alexandria
in Rome in favour of the synagogues threatened by Caligula; Poppxa
Sabina, the mistress and later the wife of Nero, though no Hebrew
but a keen member of the Jewish Diaspora, supported the prayers of
the Jewish actor Alityrus, the favourite of Nero, to root out the sect
of the Christians, and thereby became very probably morally respon-
sible for that frightful persecution of the year 64, in which it is said
that the apostles Peter and Paul met their death. The fact that the
Romans, who otherwise at that time could not distinguish Christians
from orthodox Jews, were on this occasion able to do so accurately,
is regarded by Renan as conclusive proof of this charge, which was
made against the Diaspora even in the first century (in Tertullian’s
A pologeticus, chap. xxi., for example, somewhat reserved but yet clear;
see also Renan, L’ Antéchrist, chap. vii.). Newer convincing proofs that
up to Domitian’s time, and so till long after Nero’s death, the Romans
regarded the Christians as a Jewish sect, are to be found in Neumand;
Der vémische Staat und die allgemeine Kirche (1890), pp. 5 ff. andr4 ff. That
Tacitus distinguished clearly between Jews and Christians manifestly
proves nothing in this matter, as he wrote fifty years after Nero’s persecus
120 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

we should therefore have received a Judaism reformed
by Christian influence and ruling the world. Perhaps
the objection may be urged that that has come to pass,
and that it correctly describes our Christian Church.
Certainly, the objection is in part justifiable; no rightly
thinking man will deny the share that Judaism has in it.
But when we see how in earliest times the followers of
Christ demanded the strict observance of the Jewish
“Jaw,” how they, less liberal than the Jews of the Dia-
spora, took into their community no “ heathens ”’ who had
not submitted to the mark of circumcision common to
all Semites; when we think of the struggles which
the Apostle Paul (the Apostle of the heathen) had to
wage till his death with the Jew-Christians, and that
even much later, in the Revelation of St. John (iii. 9) he
and his followers are scorned as being “ of the synagogue
of Satan which say they are Jews and are not, but do
lie”; when we see the authority of Jerusalem and
its temple continue to be simply invincible, even inside
the Pauline Christendom, so long as both actually did
stand intact,* then we cannot doubt that the religion
of the civilised world would have pined under the purely
Jewish primacy of the city of Jerusalem, if Jerusalem
had not been destroyed by the Romans. Ernst Renan,
certainly no enemy of the Jews, has in his Origines du
Christianisme (iv. chap. xx.) eloquently shown what
an “immense danger ”’ would have lain therein.t Still
worse than the commercial monopoly of the Phcenicians
would have been the religious monopoly of the Jews;
under the leaden weight of these born dogmatists and
fanatics all freedom of thought and faith would have

tion and in his narrative transferred the knowledge of a later time toan
earlier. (See, too, in connection with the ‘“‘ Jewish jealousy,” Paul Allard:
Le Christianisme et ? Empive romain de Néron a Théodose (1897), chap. i.)
* Cf. on this, Graetz, Volksth. Geschichte der Juden, i. 653.
+ In his Discours et Conférences, 3rd ed., p. 350, he calls the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem ‘‘ un imniense bonheur.”
ROMAN LAW 12r

disappeared from the world; the flatly materialistic view
of God would have been our religion, pettifoggery our
philosophy. This too is no imaginary picture, only too
many facts speak for it; for what is that rigid, illiberal,
intellectually narrow dogmatising of the Christian Church
—a thing undreamt of by the Aryan—what is that
disgraceful, bloodthirsty fanaticism which runs through
all the ages down to our own nineteenth century, that
curse of hatred that has clung to the religion of love
from the beginning and from which Greeks and Romans,
Indians and Chinese, Persians and Teutonic peoples turn
with horror ? What is it, if not the shadow of that temple,
in which sacrifices were offered to the god of anger and ven-
geance, a dark shadow cast over the youth of the heroic race
“that from out the darkness strives to reach the light ”’ ?

Without Rome it is certain that Europe would have
remained a mere continuation of the Asiatic chaos.
Greece always gravitated towards Asia, till Rome tore
it away. It is the work of Rome that the centre of
gravity of culture has been once and for all removed to
the west, that the Semitic-Asiatic spell has been broken
and at least partly cast aside, that the predominantly
Indo-Teutonic Europe became henceforth the beating
heart and thinking brain of all mankind. While this
State fought for its own practical (but, as we saw, not
unideal) interests without the least regard for others—
often cruelly, always sternly, but seldom ignobly—it has
put the house in readiness, the strong citadel in which
our race, after long aimless wanderings, was to settle down
and organise itself for the salvation of mankind.

For the accomplishment of Rome’s work so many cen-
turies were necessary, and in addition so high a degree of
that unerring, self-willed instinct, which hits the mark,
even where it seems to be going senselessly astray,
doing good even where its will is baneful, that it was
hot the fleeting existence of pre-eminent individuals but
122 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtx CENTURY

the dogged unity of a steel-hardened people, working
almost like a force of nature, that was the right and
only efficacious thing. Hence it is that so-called
“political history,” that history which tries to build
up the life of a people from the biographies of famous
men, the annals of war and diplomatic archives, is
so inappropriate here; it not only distorts, but fails to
reveal in any way those things that are the most essen-
tial. For what we, looking back and philosophising,
regard as the office or vocation of Rome in the history
of the world, is surely nothing else than an expression
for the bird’s-eye view of the character of this people
as a whole. And here we must admit that the politics of
Rome moved in a straight and—as later times have
shown—perfectly correct line, so long as they were not
in the hands of professional politicians. Casar’s period
was the most confused and most productive of evil;
both people and instinct were then dead, but the work
continued to exist, and, embodied with it, the idea of
the work, but it was nowhere capable of being set apart
as a formula and as a law for future actions, for the
simple reason that the work had not been reasoned,
considered and conscious, but unconscious and ac-
complished of necessity.

ROME UNDER THE EMPIRE

After the fall of the true Roman people this idea
—the idea of the Roman State—came again to life in
very different ways in the brains of individuals who were
called to power. Augustus, for example, seems really
to have been of the opinion that he had restored the
Roman republic, otherwise Horace would certainly not
have gone the length of praising him for it. Tiberius,
who transformed ‘the insult to the majesty of the
Roman people,” the crimen majestatis, which was punished
ROMAN LAW 123

even in former times, into quite a new crime, viz., “‘ the
insult to his own Cesarean person,” took thereby a very
great step towards dissipating into a mere idea the actual
free State created by the people of Rome—a step from
which in the nineteenth century we have not yet gone back.
But so firmly was the Roman idea planted in every heart
that a Nero took his own life, because the Senate had
branded him an ‘“‘enemy of the republic.’’ Soon,
however, the proud assembly of Patricians found itself
face to face with men who did not tremble before the
magic words senatus populusque Romanus : the soldiers
chose the bearer of the Roman Imperium; it was not
long before Romans, and Italians as well, were excluded
for ever from this dignity: Spaniards, Gauls, Africans,
Syrians, Goths, Arabs, Illyrians followed one another ;
not one of them probably was even distantly related to
those men who with sure instinct had created the Roman
State. And yet the idea lived on; in the Spaniard
Trajan it even reached a climax of brilliancy. Under
him and his immediate followers it worked so expressly
as an ordering civilising power, resorting to conquest
only where the consolidation of peace unconditionally
demanded it, that we are justified in saying that during
the Antonine century Roman imperialism—which had
lived in the people previously only as an impulse,
not as an end in view—came to be conscious of itself, and
that in a manner which was only possible in the minds
of nobly thinking foreigners, who found themselves face
to face with a strange idea, which they henceforth em-
braced with full objectivity, in order to set it in opera-.
tion with loyalty and understanding.’ This period had
a great influence on all future time; wherever with
noble purpose the idea of a Roman Empire was- again
taken as a starting-point, it was done under the influence
and in imitation of Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius
and Marcus Aurelius. And yet there is a peculiar
124 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

soullessness in this whole period. Here the sway of
understanding is supreme, the heart is dumb; the
passionless mechanism affects even the soul, which does
right not from love but from reason: Marcus
Aurelius’ “‘ Monologues ”’ are the mirror of this attitude
of mind, and the inevitable reaction appears in the
sexual aberrations of his wife Faustina. The root of
Rome, the passionate love of the family, of the home,
was torn out ; not even the famous law against bachelors,
with premiums for children (Lex Julia et Papia Poppza)
could again make marriage popular. Where the heart
does not command, nothing is enduring. And now
other foreigners usurped supreme power, this time men
full of passion but devoid of understanding, African
half-breeds, soldier Emperors, who saw in the Roman State
nothing more thana gigantic barracks, and had no idea why
Rome in particular should be the permanent headquarters.
The second of them, Caracalla, even extended the Roman
franchise to all the inhabitants of the Empire: thereby
Rome ceased to be Rome. For exactly a thousand years
the citizens of Rome (with whom those of the other cities
of Italy and of other specially deserving States had
gradually been put on an equal footing) had enjoyed
certain privileges, but they had gained them by burden-
some responsibility as well as by restless, incomparably
successful, hard work; from now onward Rome was
everywhere, that is, nowhere. Wherever the Emperor
happened to be was the centre of the Roman Empire.
Diocletian transferred his residence to Sirmium, Con-
stantine to Byzantium, and even when a separate
Western Roman Empire arose, the imperial capital
was Ravenna or Milan, Paris, Aachen, Vienna, never
again Rome. The extension of the franchise to all
had another result: there were no longer any citizens.
Caracalla,* the murderous, pseudo-Punic savage, used

* For an understanding of the character of Caracalla and his motives
ROMAN LAW 125

to be commended for his action and even to-day he has
his admirers (see Leopold von Ranke, Weltgeschichte, ii.
195). In reality, however, he had, by cutting the last
thread of historical tradition, 7.e., of historical truth,
destroyed also the last trace of that freedom, the in-
domitable, self-sacrificing and thoroughly ideal power
of which had created the city of Rome and with it Europe.
Political law was, of course, henceforth the same for
all; it was the equality of absolute lawlessness. The
word citizen (ctvis) gave way now to the term subject (sub-
jectus) : all the more remarkable, as the idea of being sub-
ject was as strange to all branches of the Indo-Europeans
as that of supreme kingship, so that we see in this one
transformation of the legal idea the incontestable proof
of Semitic influence (according to Leist, Graco-italische
Rechisgeschichte, pp. 106, 108). The Roman idea cer-
tainly still lived on, but it had concentrated itself or,
so to speak, become merged in one person—the Em-
peror; the privileges of the Romans and their summary

I recommend the little book of Prof. Dr. Rudolf Leonhard, Roms
Vergangenheit und Deutschlands Recht, 1889, pp. 93-99. He shows
in the course of a few pages how this Syrian, ‘‘a descendant of the
Carthaginian human butchers and the countrymen of those priests of
Baal who were wont to throw their enemies into hot ovens”’ (the Jews
did the same; see 2 Samuel, xii. 31), had adopted as his aim in life
the annihilation of Rome and the destruction of the still living remains
of Hellenic culture, and at the same time the flooding of the cultured
European world with the pseudo-Semitic refuse of his home. This
was all done systematically, maliciously and under cover of such
phrases as universal franchise and religion of mankind. Thus in one
single day he succeeded in destroying Rome for ever ; thus unsuspecting
Alexandria, the centre of art and science, became a victim of the raceless,
homeless bestiality that tore down all barriers. Let us never—never for
amoment—forget that the spirit of Caracalla is among us and waiting for
its chance! Instead of repeating by rote the deceptive phrases about
humanity which were the fashion even 1800 years ago in the Semitic
salons in Rome, we should do better to say with Goethe;

Du musst steigen oder sinken,

Du musst herrschen und gewinnen,

Oder dienen und verlieren,

Leiden oder triumphieren,

Amboss oder Hammer sein
126 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

powers had not disappeared from the world, they had
all been delegated to a single man: that is the course
of events from Augustus to Diocletian and Constantine,
The first Cesar had been satisfied with uniting in his
own hands all the most important offices of State,* and
that had been granted to him only for one definite
object limited in respect of time, namely, to restore
legal order in the civilised world (vestauratio orbis) ; within
three centuries things had come to this, that a single
individual was invested not only with all offices but
with all the rights of all the citizens. Just as in early
times (at the time of the first successor to Augustus)
the ‘‘ majesty of the people ” had become the “ majesty ”
of one man, so gradually each and every power, each
and every right passed over to him. Augustus had,
like every other citizen, still given his vote in the Comitia ;
now there sits a monarch on the throne, whom one may
only approach “‘reverentially’’ on one’s knees, and
before him all men are alike, for all, from the foremost
statesman to the lowest peasant, are his subjects. And
while thus the “great king’ and with him all that
belonged to his Court continually increased in riches
and dignity, the rest sank ever lower: the citizen could
no longer even choose his profession ; the peasant, formerly
the free proprietor of his ancestral estate, was the bond-
man of a master and bound to the soil; but death looses
all bonds, and the day came when the tax-collector had
to mark what were formerly the most fertile parts of the
Empire in their papers as agri deserit.

* Augustus was at once: (1) Princeps, that is, first citizen, at that
time really only a title of honour ; (2) Imperator, commander-in-chief ;
(3) tribune of the people for life; (4) Pontifex maximus—the highest
teligious office, an office for life from earliest times; (5) Consul—
not, it is true, for life, but still in continuous possession of consular
power ; (6) likewise of proconsular power which embraced the govern-
ment of all the provinces; and (7) likewise of censorial power, which
embraced the control of morals, the right to appoint and remove from
the list senators, knights, &c.
ROMAN LAW I27

It is not my intention to trace further through
history the idea of the Roman State; something will
still have to be said on this matter in a later chapter;
I shall restrict myself to reminding the reader that a
Roman Empire—in idea a direct continuation of the
old Imperium—legally existed till August 6, 1806,
and that the oldest Roman office, that of Pontifex
maximus, which was held by Numa Pompilius himself,
is still in existence ; the Papal stool is the last remnant
of the old heathen world which has continued to
live to the present day.* If what I have briefly pointed
out is known to all, it has been brought forward in the
hope that I might be able to demonstrate more vividly
and suggestively than could be done by theoretical
analysis the peculiarly complicated form of the political
legacy which our century received from Rome. Here as
elsewhere in this book learned considerations have no
place ; these are to be found in histories of constitutional
law; here I bring forward only general observations,
which are accessible and stimulating to all. In purely
political matters we have inherited from Rome not a simple
idea, not even anything so simple as what is embraced by
the phrase ‘‘ Hellenic art,” however full of meaning that
may be, but on the other hand there has come down to us
a remarkable mixture of possessions of the greatest reality
—civilisation, law, organisation, administration, &c.; and
at the same time of ideas which, though we may not com-
prehend them, are yet all-powerful ; of notions which no
one can fully grasp and which, nevertheless, for good and
for evil, still influence our public life. We certainly
cannot understand our own century thoroughly and
critically, if we have not clear conceptions regarding
this double political legacy.

* Details in voli: ii. chap. viis
128 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

Tue LEGACY OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

Now that we have discussed political matters in
the narrower sense, let us, before passing on to the
consideration of Private Law, cast a glance at the con-
stitutional and ideal legacy in general.

So long as Rome was effectively engaged in positively
creative work—more than five hundred years before Cesar
and then for more than a century in its agony *—it might
seem to us totally destitute of ideas; it only creates,
it does not think. It creates Europe and destroys, as
far as possible, Europe’s nearest and most dangerous
enemies. That is the positive legacy of this time. The
countries, too, which Rome never subdued, as for example
the greatest part of Germany, have received from Rome
all the germs of constitutional order, as the fundamental
condition of every civilisation. Our languages still show
us that all administration goes back to Roman teaching
or suggestion. We live to-day in conditions so securely
established by order that we can scarcely conceive that
it was ever otherwise ; not one among ten thousand of
us has the faintest idea of the organisation of the machine
of State; everything seems to us necessary and natural,
law, morals, religion, even State itself. And yet the
establishment of this, the ordered, secure State, worthy
of free citizens, was—as all history proves—a task extremely
difficult to accomplish ; India had a most noble religion,
Athens perfect art, Babylonia a wondrous civilisation
—everything had been achieved by the founding of
a free and at the same time stable State that guaranteed
conditions of law; for this Herculean task an individual
hero did not suffice, a whole nation of heroes was neces-
sary—each one strong enough to command, each one

* The issue of the Edictum perpeiuum by Hadrian is perhaps the last
great creative benefaction.
ROMAN LAW 129

proud enough to obey, all unanimous, each one standing
up for his own personal right. When I read Roman
history I feel compelled to turn away with horror;
but when I contemplate the two incomparable creations
of this people, the ordered State and private law, I
can only bow in silent reverence before such intellectual
greatness.

But this heroic people died out, and after its complete
extinction there came, as we saw, a second period of
Roman politics. Foreigners occupied the supreme
power and foreign lawyers became the masters of public
law and constitutional law as well as of the incom-
parable private law which had grown like a living
thing, and which they preserved, so to speak, in alcohol,
in the wise conviction that it could not be made more
perfect but at most might degenerate. These advisers
of the crown were mostly natives of Asia Minor, Greeks
and Semites, that is to say, the recognised masters in
the handling of abstractions and in juristic subtleties.
And now there came an episode of the Roman constitu-
tion in which, if nothing absolutely new was invented,
there were many new interpretations, which were sub-
limated to principles, and then crystallised into rigid.
dogmas. The process is very analogous to that described
in the passage dealing with Hellenic art and philosophy.
The Roman republic had been a living organism, in
which the people was constantly and industriously
introducing improvements; the formal question of
leading ‘‘ principles’? had never arisen, the present
had never wished to hold the future in bondage.
That went so far that the highest officials of the law-
court, the pretors, nominated for a year, each issued on
his entry into office a so-called “ pretorian edict,” in
which he published the principles which he intended to
follow in his administration of the law; and thus it
became possible to adapt the existing code to changing

I I
130 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

times and conditions. Similarly everything in this
State was elastic, everything remained in touch with the
needs of life. But exactly as the poetical inspirations
of the Greek philosophers and their mystical interpreta-
tions of the Inscrutable had been transformed in Helleno-
Semitic Alexandria to dogmas of faith, so here State and
law were changed to dogmas, and pretty much by the
same people. We have inherited these dogmas, and
it is important that we should know whence they come
and how they arose.

For example, our idea of the monarch is derived neither
from the Teutonic nations, nor from the Oriental despots,
but from the learned Jurists who were in the service
of the Illyrian shepherd Diocletian, of the Illyrian cow-
boy Galerius and of the Illyrian swineherd Maximinus,
and is a direct parody—if the truth must be told—
of the greatest State-ideas of Rome. ‘“‘ The State-idea
among the Romans,” writes Mommsen, “ rests upon the
ideal transmission of the individual’s capacity for action
to the whole body of citizens, the populus, and upon the
submission on the part of each physical member of the
community of his individual will to this universal will.
The repression of individual independence in favour
of the collective will is the criterion of a constitutional
community.” * To picture to oneself what is implied
by this “transmission,” this “repression of individual
independence,” one must recall to memory the un-
controllable, individual love of freedom characteristic
of each Roman. Of the oldest legal monument of the
Romans, the famous twelve bronze tables (450 B.C.),
Esmarch says, ‘‘ The most pregnant expressions in these
tables are the guarantees of the autocracy of the private
rights of Roman citizens,’ + and when three hundred
and fifty years later the first detailed system of law was

* I quote from the abridged edition of his Roman Constitutional
Law in Binding’s Systematisches Handbuch dey deutschen Rechtswissen-
Schaft, p. 81 ff.

{ Romische Rechtsgeschichte, 3rd ed., p. 218.
ROMAN LAW 131

compiled and written down, all the storms of the inter-
vening period had caused no difference in this one
point.* Asa free self-governing man the Roman accord-
ingly transmits to the collective will, whose spontaneous
member he is, as much of his freedom as is necessary
for the defence of that freedom. «The collective will is
now in itself, if one is permitted to apply to it an
expression of Roman private law, a fiction of constitutional
law. Representation is in fact required for it. The
action of will of the one man who represents it in
the special case is equivalent constitutionally to the.
action of the collective will. The constitutional act of
will in Rome is always the act of one man, since will and
action in themselves are inseparable; collective action
by majority of votes is from the Roman point of view
a contradictio in adjecto.”’ In every clause of this Roman’
constitutional law one sees a nation of strong, free men:
the representation of the common cause, that is, of
the State, is entrusted for a definite time to individual
men (consuls, pretors, censors); they have absolutely
plenary power and bear full responsibility. In case
of need this conferring of absolute power goes so far
that the citizens nominate a dictator, all in the
interest of the common weal and in order that the
freedom of each individual may remain unimpaired.—
Now the later emperors, or rather their advisers, did not,
as one might have expected, overthrow this constitu-
tional idea; no, they made it the legal foundation for
monarchical autocracy,a thing unprecedented in history.
Elsewhere despots had ruled as the sons of gods, as
for instance in Egypt and even at the present day in
Japan—others, in former times and to-day, as repre-
sentatives of God (I need only mention the Jewish kings
and the Khalifs)—others again by the so-called jus
gladii, the right of the sword. But the soldiers who

* Certain limitations of the freedom of leaving property by will
formed certainly a first indication of future times.
132 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

had usurped what had once been the Roman Empire
founded their claims to rule as absolute autocrats upon
Roman constitutionallaw! They had not in their opinion
usurped the power like a Greek tyrant and overthrown
the constitutional order ; on the contrary, the all-powerful
monarch was the flower, the perfection of the whole
legal development of Rome: this the Oriental jurists
had by their subtlety contrived tv establish. With the
help of the transmission theory just explained, the trick
had been accomplished—in the main as follows. One of
. the main pillars of Roman constitutional law is that no
enactment has the force of law, if it is not approved by the
people. Under the first emperors appearances were still
maintained in this respect. “But after Caracalla “‘ Rome”
had come to mean the whole civilised world. And now
all rights of the people were ‘‘ transmitted ” to the Senate
to simplify the issuing of new laws, &c. In the Corpus
juris it stands thus: ‘As the Roman people has grown
to such an extent that it would be difficult to call it
together to one spot for the purpose of approving laws,
it was held to be right to consult the Senate instead of the
people.” As we now speak of a Viceroy, so the Senate
was called henceforth vice populi. The approval of
the Senate too had become purely a matter of form—
once in possession of so beautiful an abstract principle,
there was no stopping half-way; and sothe text continues:
“but that also which it pleases the Prince to decree has
the power of law, for the people has transmitted to him
its whole plenitude of power and all its rights.” * We

* Secs. 5 and 6, J. de juve naturali, i. 2. The last words of the
second excerpt I have had to translate somewhat freely. The original
is: ‘ omne suum imperium et potestatem”’; how difficult it is to give these
words the exact legal sense of ancient Rome can be seen in Mommsen,
p. 85. Imperium means originally “utterance of the will of the
community’; hence the bearer of this absolute will was called im-
peratoy ; more limited and defining rather the sphere of private law is
potestas. Therefore I have translated them by plenitude of power and
tights (German Machtjiille and Rechte), and think I have thereby
expressed the sense.
ROMAN LAW 133

have here accordingly the strictly legal derivation of an
absolute monarchy and that too in the way in which it
certainly could be developed from the Roman constitution
alone—with its rejection of the principle of majority and
with its system of transmitting supreme power to individual
men.* And this Roman “ principate,’’ as it is called,
for the title of King was borne by no Cesar, forms to the
present day the basis of all European kingships. By the
introduction of constitutionalism, but still more by
the manipulation of the law there is at present in many
countries a movement back to the free standpoint
of the ancient Romans; but everywhere ‘‘ monarchical
rule” is still in principle what the legal authorities of the
fallen Roman State had made it, an institution which
stands in direct contradiction to the true spirit of genuine
Rome. The army is not even at the present day the
army of the people, defending the home of that people, it
is everywhere (even in England) called the army of the
king ; the officials are not appointed and invested with
authority by the collective will, they are servants of the
king. That is all Roman, but, as has been said, Roman of
the cowboy, shepherd and swineherdage. I unfortunately
cannot go into greater detail here, but must refer my
readers to the classical works of Savigny, Geschichte
des vomischen Rechtes ti Mittelalter, and Sybel, Entste-
hung des deuischen Konigiuins, as also to Schulte, Deutsche
Reichs- und Rechtsgeschichte. Among us the absolute
monarchy has everywhere arisen through contact with
the Roman Empire. Formerly the Teutonic Kings
had everywhere limited rights; the touchstone of high
treason was either not recognised as a crime or punished
simply by a “wergild’’ (Sybel, 2nd ed., p. 352); the
nomination of counts as officials of the king does not

* As a not unimportant fact, I may be allowed to mention that
rule by majority is just as little Teutonic or Greek as it was Roman,
(See Leist, Grdco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 129, 133 ff., 727.]
134 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

occur till the conquest of Roman lands, in fact there
is a long period in which the Teutonic kings have greater
authority over their Roman subjects than over their
free Franks (Savigny, I., chap. iv. div. 3).—Above all
the idea of a subject, the Roman subjectus, is a legacy
which still clings fast to us, and which should let us see
very clearly what to this day connects us with the Roman
Empire at the time of its fail, and how muchstill separates
us from the genuine heroic people of Rome.

In all this I have no wish to moralise in the interests
of any tendency. The old Roman forms of government
would not have been applicable to new conditions and
new men ; indeed they no longer sufficed even for Rome
itself when once it had extended its boundaries. Add to
this that Christianity had arisen, making the suppression
of slavery an obvious command. All that made a strong
kingdom a necessity. But for the kings, slavery would
never have been abolished in Europe, the nobles would
never have set their slaves free, they would rather have
made free-born men their bondmen. The strengthening
of the kingly office has everywhere for a thousand years
been the first condition of the strengthening of an ordered
state of society and civic freedom, and even to-day there
is probably no country in Europe where an absolutely free
plebiscite would proclaim as the will of the people any
other form of government than the monarchical. Public
consciousness, too, is penetrating through the decep-
tive veils which sophists and pettifoggers have hung
round it; and is recognising the genuine legal meaning
of the King, namely, the old Roman view of the first official
of State; glorified by that sacred element which finds
a not unsuitable mystical expression in the words,
“Dy the Grace of God.” Many things which we have
noticed around us in the nineteenth century justify us in
believing that without a kingship and without a special
grace of God we could not, even to-day, rule ourselves.
ROMAN LAW 135

For that possibly not only the virtues but also the faults
of the Romans, and above all their excessive intellectual
sobriety, were necessary.

However that may be, we see that the legacy of poli-
tical and constitutional law which Rome has given us
forms a complicated and confused mass, and that princi-
pally for two reasons: first of all, because Rome, in-
stead of flourishing like Athens for a short time and
then disappearing altogether, lived on for 2500 years, first
as a world-ruling State, later as a mighty State-idea,
whereby what had been a single impulse broke up
into a whole series, which frequently neutralised each
other ; in the second place, because the work of an incom-
parably energetic, Indo-European race was revised ‘and
manipulated by the subtlest minds of the West-Asiatic
mixed races, this again leading to the obliteration of
unity of character.

I hope that these brief allusions with regard to the
extraordinarily complicated conditions of universal his-
tory have sufficed to guide the reader. For clear think-
ing and lucid conception it is above all indispensable to
separate rightly and to connect rightly. This has been
my endeavour, and to this I must needs confine myself.

JURISPRUDENCE AS A TECHNICAL ART

Besides this legacy which we have more or less un-
consciously carried along with us, we Europeans possess
an inheritance from Rome that has become more than
any other inheritance from antiquity an essential ele-
ment in our life and science, viz., Roman law. By that
we have to understand public law (jus publicum) and
Private law (jus privatum).* To write about this is an

* That the public law of the Romans has not exercised upon us
moderns the same influence as the private does not justify us in leaving
it unmentioned, since a model of private law could not come into
existence without an excellent public law.
136 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

easy task, inasmuch as this law is available to us in a
very late codification, that of the Emperor Justinian,
dating from the middle of the sixth century a.D. Besides,
the efforts of jurists and historians have succeeded in
tracing far back the growth of this law, and in recent
years they have even been able on the one hand to demon-
strate the connection of its origins with old Aryan law,
and on the other to follow its fate in the various countries
of Europe through centuries of vague ferment up to the
present day. Here we have accordingly definite and
clearly sifted material, and a legal expert can easily
prove how much Roman law is contained in the law-
books of our States to-day; it must also be easy for
him to prove that the thorough knowledge of Roman
law will for indefinite ages remain the canon of all strictly
juridical thought. Here too in the Roman legacy we
have to distinguish between two things: actual legal
tenets, which have stood for centuries and to some
extent are still valid, and besides this a treasure of ideas
and methods. The legal expert can explain all this
easily, but only when he is speaking to those who know
law. Now I am no authority on law (though I have
industriously and lovingly studied its fundamental
primciples and the general course of its history), nor
am I entitled to suppose that my readers are informed
on the subject ; my task is therefore different and quite
clearly defined by the purpose of this book. It is only
from a summary and universally human standpoint
that I can venture briefly to indicate in what sense
Roman law was in the history of the Indo-European
nations a factor of such unparalleled significance that
it has remained a part of our culture to the present day.

Why is it utterly impossible to speak of jurisprudence
except to an audience equipped with a large store of
technical juristical knowledge ? This preliminary ques-
tion will lead us at once to the heart of our subject, and
ROMAN LAW 137

will point the way to a perhaps not detailed, but at any
rate accurate, analysis of what the Romans have accom-
plished in this department.

Law is a technical subject : that is the whole answer.
Like medicine, it is neither pure science nor pure art ;
and while every science in its results and every art by
the impression which it makes can be communicated
to all and so is in its essentialities common property,
a technical subject remains accessible only to the ex-
pert. Cicero indeed compares jurisprudence with as-
tronomy and geometry and expresses the opinion that
“all these studies are in pursuit of the truth,’’* but
this is a perfect example of a logically false comparison.
For astronomy and geometry investigate actual, fixed,
unchangeable conditions, some outside of, others inside
the mind,f whereas legal decisions are derived first
of all from the observation of variable, contradictory
and ever undefinable tendencies, habits, customs and
opinions, and jurisprudence as a discipline must accord-
ing to the nature of things confine itself to the subject
before it, formulating it more definitely, expressing it
more exactly, making it more intelligible by compari-
son, and—above all—classifying it accurately by the
finest analysis and adapting it to practical needs. Law
is, like the State, a human, artificial creation, a new
systematic arrangement of the conditions arising out of
the nature of man and his social instincts. - The progress
of jurisprudence does not imply by any means an increase
of knowledge (which must surely be the object of science),
but merely a perfecting of the technical art; that is,
however, a great deal and may presuppose high gifts.
An abundant material is thus consistently and with

* De Officiis, i. 6:

+ I say this without any metaphysical arriéve-pensée ; whether
mathematical conceptions are judgments @ priori (as Kant asserts) or

not, every one will admit that geometry is the purely formal activity
of the mind, in contrast to the investigation of the heavens,
138 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtn CENTURY

increasing skill employed by the human will in working
out the life-purpose of man.

I shall introduce a comparison to make this clearer.

How conditional and, consequently, how little to the
purpose would be the statement that the God who formed
iron also caused the smithy to be built! In a certain
sense the remark would be undeniably correct : without
definite tendencies which impelled him to search further
and further, without definite capacities for invention and
manipulation, man would never have attained to the
working of iron; he did live long on the earth before he
reached that stage. By acuteness and patience he at last
succeeded : he learnt how to make the hard metal pliant
and serviceable to himself. But here we have clearly not
to deal with the discovery of any eternal truth, as in the
case of astronomy and every genuine science, but on the
one hand with patience and skill, on the other hand with
suitability to practical purposes ; in short, working iron
is no science but, in the true sense of the Greek word,
a technique, 7.¢.,a matter of skill. And the conditions
of this technique, since they depend on the human will
(showing their relationship with art), vary with the times,
with the tendencies and the habits of races, just as
on the other hand they are influenced by the progress of
knowledge (showing their relationship with science). In the
nineteenth century, for example, the working of iron has
passed through great changes which would have been
inconceivable but for the progress of chemistry, physics,
mechanics and mathematics; a practical art may thus
demand manifold scientific knowledge from those who
pursue it—but it does not for all that cease to be a prac-
tical art. And because it is a practical art, it can be
learned by any one, however poor his mental endow-
ments, provided only he has some skill, whereas on the
other hand it is a dead letter even for the more gifted of
men if he has not made himself familiar with its methods
ROMAN LAW 139

For while science and art contain something which is
of interest to every intelligent person, an applied art
is merely a method, a procedure, a manipulation, some-
thing artificial and not artistic, an application of
knowledge, not really knowledge itself, a power, yet not
a creative power, and so only that which is produced by
it, #.¢. the finished object, in which there is nothing
technical left, can claim universal interest.

It is exactly the same with jurisprudence, with this one
difference, that the material here to be worked up is
purely intellectual. In principle jurisprudence is and
remains an applied art, and many an almost ineradicable
misunderstanding would have been avoided if the legal
authorities had not lost sight of this simple funda-
mental truth. From Cicero to the present day* excellent
jurists have only too often looked upon it as their duty
to claim for their branch of study the designation
“science,” cost what it might; they seem to fear that
they will be degraded if their claims are held to be absurd.
Naturally people will continue to speak of a “science
of law’; but only in the derived sense; the mass
of the material on law, history of law, &c., is so gigantic
that it, so to speak, forms a little world for itself, in
which research is made and this research is called science
(Wissenschaft),” But this is obviously an improper
use of the word. The root “‘ vid’’ denotes in Sanscrit
to find; if language is not to pale into colourless am-
biguity, we must see to it that a knowing (Wissen) always
denotes a finding. Now a finding presupposes two
things: in the first place, an object which is and exists
before we find it ; and secondly, the fact that this object
has not yet been found and discovered ; neither of the
two things can be said of jurisprudence; for ‘f law”
does not exist till men make it, nor does it exist as a sub-
ject outside of our consciousness ; besides, the science

* See, for example, Holland; Jurisprudence, 6th ed., p. 5.
140 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

of law does not reveal or find anything but itself. Andso
those ancient authorities were perfectly right who, instead
of speaking of juris scientia, preferred to say juris notitia,
juris peritia, juris prudeniia, that is, practically, knowledge,
skill, experience in the manipulation of law.

NATURAL Law

This difference is of far-reaching importance. For it
is only when we have recognised what law essentially
is, that we can follow its history intelligently and com-
prehend the decisive importance of Rome in the develop-
ment of this applied art. Now and now only can we
not merely cut but untie that Gordian knot, the ques-
tion of natural law. This great question, which has
been the subject of dispute for centuries, arises solely and
simply from a misunderstanding of the nature of law;
whether we answer it by yes or no does not help us out of
the maze. Cicero, in the confused manner peculiar to him,
has used all sorts of oratorical flourishes on this subject ;
at one time he writes: in order to explain law, one must
investigate the nature of man—there he seemed to be
on the right track; immediately after he says that
law is a “sublime reason”’ which exists outside of us
and is “implanted in us”; then again we hear that
law “‘ arises out of the nature of things’; finally, that
it was “born simultaneously with God, older than
mankind.” * I do not know why these quibbling
platitudes are quoted everywhere; I do so merely lest
I should be reproached with having heedlessly passed
by so famous a fount of wisdom; however, I would
draw the reader’s attention to Mommsen’s verdict:
“Cicero was a journalist in the worst sense of the term,
over-rich in words, as he himself confesses, and beyond
all imagination poor in thoughts.”t It was worse when

* De legibus, i. 5 and 6, ii. 4, &c) f Rémische Geschichte, iii. 620!
ROMAN LAW Y4T

their Asiatic love of dogmatism and stickling for prin-
ciple induced the really important legal teachers of the
so-called ‘classical jurisprudence” to formulate clearly
the quite un-Roman idea of a natural law and to intro-
duce it systematically. / Ulpian calls natural law that
* which is common to animals and men.” A monstrous
thought! Not merely in art is man a free creator,
in law too he proves himself a magnificent inventor,
an incomparably skilled, thoughtful workman, the
forger of his own fate. Roman law is as characteristic
a creation of the one individual human spirit as Hellenic
art. What would be said of me if I were to speak of a
“natural art’ and then tried to draw an analogy, how-
ever far-fetched, between the spontaneous chirping of a
bird and a tragedy of Sophocles? Because the jurists
form a technical guild, many of them have for centuries
talked nonsense like this without the world noticing
it. Gaius, another classical authority whom the Jews
claim as their countryman and who, history tells
us, was “not deep but very popular,” gives a less
extravagant but equally invalid definition of natural
law: he identifies it with the so-called jus gentium,
that is, with the “‘ common law”’ which grew out of the
legal codes of the various races of the Roman provinces ;
in ambiguous words he explains that this law was common
to “all nations of the earth’’: a fearful assertion,
since the jus gentium is just as much the work of Rome
as its own jus civile and represents only the result of the
systematising activity of Roman jurisprudence amidst
the confusion of contradictory and antagonistic codes.*
The very existence of the jus gentium beside and in
contrast to the Roman jus civile, as well as the confused
history of the origin of this ‘‘ Law of nations,” should
have made clear to the dullest eye that there is not one
law but many ; also that law is not an entity, which can be

* See p. 113.
142 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

scientifically investigated, but a product of human skill,

which can be viewed and carried out in very different
ways. But the ghost of natural Jaw still merrily haunts
certain brains ; for example, legal theorists, as far apart
as Hobbes and Rousseau, agree in this one idea; but
the greatest achievement was the famous Hugo Grotius’
division in natural, historical, and divine law, which
makes one ask whether then the divine law was un-
natural? or the natural a work of the devil? It
needed the brilliant intellect and the outspoken im-
pertinence of a Voltaire to venture to write: “Rien ne
contribue peut-étre plus 4 rendre un esprit faux, obscur,
confus, incertain, que la lecture de Grotius et de Pufen-
dorf.”’* In the nineteenth century, however, this pale
abstraction has been sharply attacked; the historians
of law, and with them the brilliant theorist Jhering,
have dealt the finishing blow. For this all that was
really necessary was to understand that law is an
applied art.

Considered from this point of view it is easy to com-
prehend that in reality the idea “natural law” (jus
nature) contains a flagrant contradictio in adjecto. As
soon as a legal agreement is come to among men—it does
not at all need to be written, a convention silent or by
word of mouth is in principle the same thing as a bulky
civil code of law—for the state of nature has ceased;
but if the pure natural impulse still prevails, eo ipso
there is no law. For even if men in a natural state
were to live together in association, no matter how mild
and humane they might be towards one another, there
would be no law, no jus; there would be just as little
law as if the brutal power of the fist were the decisive
factor with them. Law is a regulation of the relations
of an individual to others, artificially arranged and
enforced upon him by the community. It is an em-

* Dictionnaire philosophique. J.J. Rousseau, too, calls Grotius “ un
enfant, et qui pis est, un enfant de mauvaise foi’? (Emile, v.J.
ROMAN LAW 143

v

ployment o1 these instincts which impel man to live
together in societies, and, at the same time, of that
necessity which forces him nolens volens to unite with
his like: love and fear, friendship and enmity. If
we read in the dogmatic metaphysicians, “ Law is
the abstract expression of the general will, existing
of its own accord and for its own benefit,”’* we feel
that we are getting air instead of bread to eat; when
the great Kant says, “Law is the essence of the
conditions under which the arbitrary will of the
one can be harmonised with that of the other accord-
ing to a universal law of freedom,’ we must at
once see that this is the definition of an ideal, the
definition of a possible or at least thinkable state
of law, but not an all-embracing definition of law in
general, as it presents itself to us; besides, it contains
a dangerous error. It is indeed a fallacy to suppose
arbitrary will in the soul of the individual and then to
construe law into a reaction against it; rather every in-
dividual manifestly acts according to the necessity of his
nature, and the element of arbitrariness only comes in
with the measures whereby this natural action is re-
stricted ; it is not the natural man that is arbitrary, it is
theman oflaw. If we wished to attempt a definition with
Kant’s ideas as basis, we should have to say: Law is the
essence of the arbitrary conditions, which are introduced
into a human society, in order that the necessary action
of one man may be counterbalanced by the necessary
action of another and so harmonised as to give as large an
amount of freedom as possible. The simplest formulation
of the idea would be as follows : Arbitrariness in place of
instinct in the relations of men to men is law. And by
way of explanation it would have to be added that the
non plus ultra of arbitrariness consists in declaring an
arbitrarily established form (for punishment, buying,

* Hegel, Propddeutik, Kursus i. § 26:
t Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde dey Rechislehve Hinleitung, § B.
144 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

marriage, testaments, &c.,) to be henceforth and for
ever unchangeable, so that all actions thereby covered
are invalid and have no legal support, whenever the
prescribed form is not observed. Law is accordingly
the lasting rule of definite arbitrary relations between
men. Moreover, it is unnecessary to enter into specu-
lations with regard to quite unknown prehistoric times,
in order to see jus in simple forms, where this central
element of arbitrariness clearly appears; we need only
to look at the inhabitants of the Congo State to-day.
Every little tribe has its chief; he alone decides
matters of law and his decision is irrevocable. The legal
disputes which occupy him are under such simple con-
ditions of a very simple nature ; they have to deal mostly
with crimes against life and property; the penalty is
death, seldom slavery; if the chief by motion of hand
has given his decision against the accused, the latter is
hacked into a hundred pieces by the bystanders and
then eaten. The ideas of law therefore are very ele-
mentary on the Congo; and yet the idea of law is there;
the natural man, that is, the man acting instinctively,
would himself kill the supposed murderer or thief ; here
he does not do that, the criminal is dragged to the place
of assembly and judged. Similarly the chief decides
disputes of inheritance and the regulation of boundaries.
The unlimited arbitrary power of the chief is accordingly
the ‘“‘ law ”’ of the land, it is the cement by which society
is held together, instead of falling to pieces in a lawless
condition of nature.* The progress of law lies in the
practical development and the ethical clarification of
this arbitrary element.t

* I have no doubt that there, too, certain rules are rendered sacred
by custom and binding also on the chief, but legally he is quite free;
only the fear of being roasted and eaten himself can restrain him from
any arbitrary procedure.

+ In reference to law as a “living power,” as the product of “ the
creative thoughts of great individualities,” in contrast to all the dog-
matics of the supposed law of nature, read the interesting lecture of
ROMAN LAW 145

~ Roman Law

I think we have now sufficient material to enable us
without technical discussions, and at the same time
without phrase-making, to understand the special merits
of the Roman people in regard to law, or at least the
special character of those merits. The nature of
our legacy will at the same time be exactly
characterised.

If law is not an inborn principle ncr an exact science
capable of investigation, but a useful adaptation of
human capabilities to the building up of a society fitted
for civilisation, then it is clear from the first that there
will be and must be codes of law varying very much in
value. Fundamentally a law will be influenced princi-
pally by two forces from which it will receive its character-
istic colouring : first, by the moral character of the people
in whose midst it comes into force, and, secondly, by the
analytical acuteness of that people. By the happy union
of both—a union occurring only once in the history of the
world—the Roman people found themselves in a position
to build up a legal code of great perfection.* Mere
egoism, the greed of possession, will never suffice to found

Prof. Eugen Ehrlich, Freie Rechtsfindung und frete Rechtswissenschaft,
Leipzig, 1903.

* The assertion that history constantly repeats itself belongs to
the countless untruths which are in circulation as wisdom among the
“ nonocentists.” Never in history—as far as our knowledge goes—
has anything repeated itself, never! Where is the repetition of Athens
and Sparta? of Rome? of Egypt? Where has the second Alexander
flourished ? where a second Homer? Neither nations nor their great
men return again. And so mankind does not become wiser by ‘‘ expe-
rience’”’; the past offers it no paradigm for the present to form its
judgment; it is made worse or better, wiser or more foolish, simply by the
influences that are brought to bear on its intellect and character,
Gutzkow’s Ben Akiba was fundamentally wrong in his famous remark,
“*Allhas occurred before”! Suchanassas he himself never lived before,
and, it isto be hoped, will never appear again. And even if this were so,
it would only be the repetition of the individual who under new circum.
stances would commit new follies for our amusement,

I K
146 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

a lasting code of law; we have rather learned from the
Romans that the inviolable respect for the claims of others
‘to freedom and possession is the moral foundation upon
which alone we can build for all time.,’ One of the most
important authorities on the Roman law and people, Karl
Esmarch, writes: “‘ The conscience of the Italian Aryans
in regard to right and wrong is strong and unadulterated ;
in self-control and, when necessary, self-sacrifice, that
virtue of theirs which springs from inner impulse and
is supported by a most profound inner nature reaches
its culmination.” Because he knew how to rule himself
the Roman was qualified to rule the world and to develop
a strong idea of the State; by the fact that he could
sacrifice his own interests to the universal weal, he proved
his capacity to establish valid principles in regard to the
rights of private property and of individual freedom.
But these high moral qualities had to be supported by ex-
ceptional intellectual qualities, The Romans, quite insig-
nificant in philosophy, were the greatest masters in the
abstraction of firm principles from the experiences of
life—a mastery which becomes specially remarkable
when we compare other nations with them, as; for example,
the Athenians, who, though marvellously gifted, and
delighting in legal quarrels and sophistical law riddles,
never were anything but blunderers in this branch of
thought.* This peculiar capacity, to elevate definite
practical relations to clearly defined principles implies
a great intellectual achievement ; for the first time order
and lucidity of arrangement were brought into social con-
ditions, just as language, by the formation of abstract
collective words, had made higher systematic thinking
possible. It is no longer a question of vague instincts
nor of obscure and changing conceptions of justice and
injustice ; all relations stand definitely grouped before our

* Cf. Leist, Graco-italische Rechisgeschichte, p. 694, and for the
following quotation, p. 682.
ROMAN LAW 147

eyes, and these relations are to be regulated by the in-
vention of new legal rules or the further development
of those already existing. And since life gradually
widens experience, or itself assumes more complicated
forms, the Roman acuteness little by little inside the
individual ‘‘ groups ”’ discovers the ‘‘ species.’’ ‘‘ In point
of fine, carefully pondered ideas of right, Roman law
is and will remain the permanent teacher of the civilised
world,” says Professor Leist, the very man who has done
more than any other to prove that the Universities
should give up the present one-sided Roman standpoint
of history of law and should teach students to recognise
Roman law as a link in the chain, as one of the steps
“which the Aryan mind has mounted in the clearing up
of legal conceptions.”” The more carefully we study
the numerous attempts at legislation previous to and
contemporary with the Roman, the more we recognise
what incomparable services were rendered by Roman law
and realise that it did not fall from heaven but was the
creation of the intellects of grand and sturdy men. One
thing must not be overlooked: in addition to the quali-
ties of self-control, of abstraction, and the finest analysis,
the Roman possessed a special gift of plastic shaping. Here
appears their relationship to Hellenism, which we seek in
vain elsewhere. The Roman too is an artist of mighty crea-
tive power—an artist in the clear, plastic shaping of the
complicated machine of State. No theorist in the world
could have thought out such an organism of State, which
perhaps should rather be pointed to as a work of art
than as a work of reason. He is still more an artist in
the plastic working out of his conceptions of law.
Highly characteristic too is the manner in which the
Roman strives to give visible expression to his artistically
moulded conceptions even in legal actions, everywhere
“to give an outward expression to the inner diversity,
to bring what is inward, so to speak, to the sur-
148 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XI Xt CENTURY

face.” * Here we have a decidedly artistic instinct, the
outcome of specifically Indo-European tendencies. In
this artistic element too lies the magic power of the Roman
legacy ; that is the indestructible and ever incompar-
able part of it.

On one point indeed we must be quite clear ;—
Roman law is just as incomparable and inimitable as
Hellenic art. Our ridiculous Germanomania will make no
change in that. People tell marvels about a‘‘ German
law,” supposed to have been stolen from us by the intro-
duction of the Roman; but there never was a German
law, but merely a chaos of rude contradictory laws, a
special one for each tribe. It is also absolutely in-
accurate to speak of “‘ adopting’? Roman law between
the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries; for the
Teutonic peoples have “adopted” continuously from
the time when they first came into contact with the
Roman Empire. Burgundians and East Goths as
early as the fifth century of the Christian era (or at the
very beginning of the sixth) introduced modified (cor-
rupted) forms of Roman law,f and the oldest sources of
Saxon, Frankish, Bavarian and Alemannic law, &c., are
so interlarded with Latin words and _ half-understood
principles, that the need of a reasoned codification of
law is only too apparent. One might well relegate
German law as an ideal to the future, but to seek it in
the past is hypocritical twaddle.t Another hindrance

* For examples, read the splendid chapter Plastik des Rechtes
in Jhering’s Geist des rdmischen Rechtes,§ 23. Of the modern
undramatic life of law, Jhering says: ‘‘ One would have liked to give
law, instead of a sword, a quill as its attribute, for the feathers were
scarcely more necessary to the bird than to it, except that in the case
of law the attribute produced the opposite effects and speed stood
in converse relation to the amount of feathers employed.”

+ Savigny, Geschichte des vémischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, chap. i.

+ I know no more conclusive proof of the original incapacity of the
Teutonic peoples to judge acutely in questions of law than that such

a man as Otto the Great could not decide, otherwise than by a duel,
the fundamental question whether descendants should inherit or not;
ROMAN LAW 14g

to the proper estimation of Roman law is due to the
frenzy produced by the dogma of evolution, which has
led to such confusion of thought in the nineteenth century.
The feeling for the Individual, the established view that
the Individual alone has everlasting importance, has been
seriously injured by it. Although the only effective
powers that history reveals are absolutely individualised
nations and great personalities that never recur, the
theory of evolution leads to the idea that capacities and
beginnings were everywhere identical and that essentially
analogous structures must ‘“‘ develop” from these same
germs.. The fact that this never happens and that
Roman law, for example, came into being once for all, does
not disturb our dogmatists in theleast. With this is con
nected the further conception of unceasing proyress
towards “ perfection,’ in consequence of which our law
must as a matter of course surpass the Roman, because
it is later, and yet nature never offers an example of
development taking place in anything living without
entailing a corresponding loss.* Our civilisation stands
high above the Roman; in respect of the vividness of
our legal sense, on the other hand, an educated man
of the nineteenth century can certainly not come up
to a Roman peasant of the year 500 B.c. No one who
has any thinking power and knowledge will dispute
that. I said in relation to law, not to justice. When
Leist writes, ‘The unprejudiced inquirer will not find
that the present age as compared with the Roman
has made such glorious advance in the practice or even
in the knowledge of real justice,” {| he makes a remark
well worth taking to heart; but I quote these words

this judgment of Heaven was then adopted as a piece of law for goud
by a pactum sempiternum! (See Grimm, Rechtsalterbimer, 3rd ea.,
P. 471.) 5

* The detailed proof that the ideas of a progress and decline of
humanity have no concrete significance will be found in the ninth
chapter. + Graco-ttalische Rechtsgeschichie, p: 4413
150 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

to make it clear that I do not here speak of justice, but
of law, and to ensure that the difference between the
two may be obvious. . Our noble conception of the duties of
humanity points, I am sure, to more enlightened ideas with
regard to justice; the legal sense is, however, quite a
different thing and is neither proved nor promoted even
by the possession of the most perfect and yet imported
systems of law.

To understand how incomparable was the achievement
of the Romans, one circumstance must certainly not
be overlooked: the Justinian corpus jurts with which
we are familiar is only the embalmed corpse of Roman
law.* For centuries skilled legal authorities kept in it
a semblance of life by galvanic means; now all civilised
nations have worked out a law of their own; but this
would not have been possible without the Roman, we
all lack the necessary talent. A single observation
will suffice to show the cleft between the Romans and
ourselves: Roman law of the real heroic period was
firm as a rock but nevertheless incredibly elastic—
“incredibly,” I mean, to our modern, timid con-
ceptions, for we have taken everything from that law,
except its living character. The Roman law was
always “in a state of growth,” and capable, thanks to
certain brilliant contrivances, of adapting itself to the
changing needs of the times. The law, which in the
fifth century B.c. was in its general outlines engraved in
bronze tables by the decemvirs nominated for that
purpose, was not a new and improvised code, nor one
which from that time forth was immutable, but was more
or less a codification of already existing laws which
had grown up historically; the Romans knew how to
invent ways and means to keep it even then from crys-

* Francis Bacon points out how inferior the corpus juris of
Justinian is to the genuine Roman law, and blames so “ dark an age”
for taking the liberty of laying hands upon the work of so “ brilliant an
age” in order to improve it. (See the dedication of the Law Tracts.j
ROMAN LAW ISI

tallising. In dealing with the Twelve Tables, for ex-
ample, the officials did good service by their acumen
in “interpreting ”’—not with the object of twisting the
statutes to suit some special purpose, but of adapting
them half-automatically to wider conditions; brilliant
inventions—as, for example, that of the legal “fiction,”
by which means were found (if I may express myself
as a layman) of putting to use existing legal norms to
forestall others that were not yet existent—and constitu-
tional arrangements, like those of the Pretors, by
which a place was assured to that law of custom which
is so necessary in a living organism, till the best law
has been provided by practice, arrangements by means of
which the jus gentium also gradually developed in close
touch with the narrower Roman jus civile—all these things
brought about a fresh pulsating life in law—a life which
no one can appreciate unless he has studied law, inasmuch
as we have nothing of the kind, absolutely nothing.*
Moreover, in order to estimate the gulf between us and
the Romans, we must remember that real scholarly
and trained jurists did not come into existence till the
end of the republic, and that this splendid, and in most
parts most delicately chiselled product of legal applied
art is the work of peasants and rude warriors. The
reader should try to make clear to an average phil-
istine of the present day the juristical difference between
property and possession, to bring home to him that a
thief is the legal possessor of the stolen object, and as
such enjoys legal protection for his possession, as does
also the pawnbroker and the hereditary landlord; he
will not succeed, I know it from experience; I pur-
posely choose this as a simple example. The Roman
peasant, on the other hand, who could neither read

* Especially of the year’s edicts of the Pretors. Leist says that they
had become ‘‘ the principal moment in the finer development of Roman

law” {2s quoted above, p. 622).
‘

152 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtw CENTURY

nor write, knew all this quite accurately five hundred
years before Christ.* He certainly did not know much
more, but his law he knew and employed with as exact
knowledge as he did his plough or his oxen; and by
knowing it and thinking about it,f by striving to obtain
for himself, his possessions, and his relatives an ever
firmer and more definite legal protection, he built up that
legal structure, under which at a later time other races
found shelter in stormy days, and which we at the
present day with more or less success, with more or
less changes, seek to extend, finish and perfect. No people
but the Romans could of themselves have created and
built it up, for nowhere else was there present the necessary
conjunction of qualities of character and of intellect, and
this law had to be lived before it was thought, before
the arrival of those worthies who could tell us so much
that was edifying in regard to a “natural law,” and
thought it comparable to the geometry which the scholar
puzzles out in his lonely room.

In later times Hellenes and Semites have rendered great
services as dogmatists and advocates, Italians as teachers
of law, Frenchmen as systematisers, Germans as historians ;
in none of the races mentioned, however, could one have
4ound the soil that could bring that tree to maturity. In
the case of the Semites, for instance, the moral subsoil
was wanting, in the case of the Germans acumen. The
Semites have great moral qualities, but not those from
which a law for civilised nations could have been de-
veloped. For the disregard of the legal claims and the
freedom of others is a feature that ever reappears in all
races strongly imbued with Semitic blood. Already
in ancient Babylon they had a finely worked out law of
commerce and obligations; but even in this limited

* See the clear distinction between property and possession in
Table VII., clause 11.
{ In Cicero’s time every boy still learned the Twelve Tables by heart.
ROMAN LAW 153

branch nothing was done to suppress the frightful exaction
of usury, and as for safeguarding personal rights, that
of freedom, for instance, no one ever even thought of it.*
But even under more favourable circumstances, for
instance, among the Jews, there is not even the beginning
of a genuine formation of law; strange as that may
appear, a single glance at the legal clauses of the greatest
Jewish thinker, Spinoza, solves the riddle. In his
Political Tractate (ii. 4 and 8) we meet “ The right of
each one is in proportion to his power.”” Here we might
of course imagine that it was merely a question of es-
tablishing actual relations, for this second chapter bears
the title “On Natural Law.’’t However, in his Ethics
(Part IV., Supplement, 8) we find in black and white;
“According to the highest law of nature every man
has unlimited power to do that which in his opinion
will be in his interest’: and in the treatise On True
Freedom we find the words: ‘‘To obtain that which
we demand for our salvation and our peace, we need
no other principle than this, to lay to heart what is
for our own interests.” {| That it does not disconcert
so honest a man to build up a pure theory of morals
upon such foundations is the finest testimony to his
inborn casuistical gifts; but it proves that Roman
law could never have grown on Jewish soil. No, there

* Compare the very minute information in Jhering’s Vorgeschichet
dey Indoeuvopder, p. 233 ff. The usual rate of interest in Babylon was
20 to 25 percent. Jhering asserts that interest was a Babylonian, a
Semitic (not a Sumarian) invention; he says, ‘‘ all other peoples owe
their acquaintance with it to the Babylonians.” Honour to whom
honour is due! Also the subtlest form of interest, for instance, the
favourite plan of lending money without interest, by immediately
taking it from the capital, was well known in ancient Babylon, even
before Homer had begun to write verses. When, then, shall we be
spared the old fiction that it was only inrecent centuries that the Semites
were forced by the persecution of Christians to become usurers ?

+ How astonished Cicero and Seneca, Scevola and Papinian would
have been at such a conception of natural law !

t The resemblance between the principles (not the conclusions) of
Spinoza and of Nietzsche is striking enough to claim our attention.
154 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

would have been at the most a simplified code, such as
King Tippu Tib, for instance, may use on the Congo.*
It was only on the foundation of a law invented and
worked out in detail by Indo-Europeans that the Jew
could display his astonishing juristical abilities.—The
drawbacks in the case of the German lie in quite a different
direction. Self-sacrifice, the impulse ‘‘to build from
within outwards,” the emphasising of the ethical moment,
the unswerving love of freedom, in short, all the requisite
moral qualities they would have possessed in abund-
- ance;—not the intellectual ones. Acumen was never a
‘national possession of the Teutons; that is so manifest
that it requires no proof. Schopenhauer asserts that
“the real national characteristic of the German is dull-
wittedness (Schwerfalligkeit).’ Moreover, the peculiar
gifts of the Germans are a hindrance in the formation of
law—his incomparable fancy (in contrast to the flat
empiricism of the Roman imagination), the creative
passion of his mind (in contrast to the cool sobriety of the
Roman), his scientific depth (in contrast to the practical
political tendencies of the born legal race), his lively sense
of fairness (in social relations always a weak reed in
comparison with the strictly legal attitude of the Roman).
No, this people could never have brought the applied art

* A few years ago I met in society an educated Jew, an owner of
petroleum wells and a member of the notorious petroleum-ring. No
argument could convince the honest man, who would not have harmed
a fly, how morally condemnable such a ring was; his constant answer
was, “I can, and therefore I may!”’ Spinoza word for word, as one
can see.—This brings up the grave question as to whether in Teutonic
countries men of Jewish race should be appointed judges. Without
any passion or prejudice, without doubting the knowledge and the
spotless honour of those in question, one ought to ask oneself, on the
ground of historical and ethical data, whether it should be taken for
granted that these men are capable of completely assimilating a con-
ception of law which is so thoroughly in opposition to their natural
tendencies ; whether they really understand and feel this law which
they use so masterfully. Whoever has come to recognise the clearly
marked individuality of the various races of mankind can bring up
such a question in all seriousness and without any ill-will.
ROMAN LAW 155

of law to high perfection; it resembles too closely
the Indo-Aryans, whose “‘ complete lack of the juristical
power of distinguishing ” is demonstrated by Jhering in
his Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropaer, § 15.

THE FaMILy

I should like to introduce another national comparison
with regard to the formation of law, that between the
Hellenes and the Romans. It reveals the essence of
Roman law, the one point to which I may call special
attention in this book. At the same time it will make
us feel how deeply our civilisation is indebted to the
Roman legacy. My discussion will be brief, and though
it deals with the simple beginnings of the remote past,
it will also introduce us to the burning questions of the
immediate present.

Every educated person knows that the Greeks were not
only great politicians but at the same time great theorists
in law. The “lawsuit about the shadow of the ass” *
is an ancient Attic witticism, which satirises excellently
the love of this thoughtless, litigious people for actions
at law. I recall too the Wasps of Aristophanes with
the heartrending prayers of Philocleon when shut in
by his son: “Let me out, let me out—to judge!”
But we should look further around. Homer has a
court scene represented on the shield of Achilles (Iliad,
Xvili. 497 ff.), Plato’s largest works are on politics and
the theory of law (the Republic and the Laws), Aristotle’s
Rhetoric is in parts simply a handbook for advocates
beginning their profession ; notice, for example, how in
chap. xv. of the first book he expounds a detailed theory
of deceptive sophistry for hedge-lawyers, gives them

* An Athenian hires an ass to carry his baggage to Megara. At
a resting-place he sits down in the shadow of it; the driver will not
permit this without extra payment, as he had hired the ass but not
its shadow.
156 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

hints how to twist the law to the advantage of their
clients, and advises them to let their clients swear false
oaths in court, whenever it is to their advantage.* . . .
We see that, except in Sparta (where according to
Plutarch’s assurance there were absolutely no cases),
the Hellenic atmosphere was charged with questions
of law. The Romans, always ready to recognise the
merits of others, had, from time immemorial, recourse
to the Greeks, particularly to the Athenians, for advice
in the development of their law. Even when they
were about to fix their fundamental legal principles
(in the Twelve Tables) for the first time, they sent a
commission to Greece, and in the final editing of this
earliest monument, an Ephesian, Hermodorus, who was
banished from his native city, is said to have been of
considerable service. Time made no change in this.
The great authorities on law, a Mucius Scevola, a Servius
Sulpicius, have a thorough knowledge of Hellenic legal
enactments; Cicero, and all that this name stands
for, derives his obscure remarks on divine justice,
natural law, &c., from Greek philosophers: in the
pseudo-Platonic Minos he might have read that law
is the discovery of an objective thing, not a human
invention, and from Aristotle he quotes the words, “ The
universal law, because it is the natural law, never changes,
but the written law, on the other hand, often does.” f
In the later period of the imperial decay, when the

* This belongs, according to the great pk*losopher, to “‘ the means
of persuasion that lie outside of art.”

+ Up to the present day one finds this passage quoted in juristical
works, but with little justification, as Aristotle is here giving merely
a rhetorical trick for use in court and on the next page teaches the
use of the opposite assertion. Still less to the point is the passage from
the Nicomachean Ethics, v. 7, which culminates in the sentence, ‘‘ Law
is the mean between a certain advantage and a certain disadvantage.”
How great does Democritus show himself here as always when he
says, with that clear insight characteristic of him, that “laws are the

fruits of human thinking in contrast to the things of nature” (Diogenes
Laertius, ix. 45).
ROMAN LAW 187

Roman people had disappeared from the face of the
earth, the so-called “classical jurisprudence’’ was
founded and put into shape almost entirely by Greeks
more or less of Semitic descent. There is a remarkable
want of information with regard to the antecedents and
history of the most famous teachers of law in the later
Roman ages; all of a sudden they appear in office and
dignity, no one knowing whence they have come.* But
at the beginning of the Imperial rule with its inevitable
influence upon the life of law the passionate struggle
between Labeo, the irrepressible, free old plebeian, and
Capito the upstart, who is striving for wealth and honour,
is truly pathetic; it is the struggle for organic free de-
velopment in opposition to the faith in authority and
dogma. And dogma conquered in the legal sphere
as in that of religion—But in the meantime, as we
have said, the practical Romans had learned a great
deal in Greece, especially from Solon, who had, as a
builder of States, achieved little that lasted, but accom-
plished all the more in the sphere of law. Whether
Solon was the originator of written legislation and
the momentous principle of actiones (the division of
suits according to definite principles), or whether he
merely systematised and fixed them—I know not: at
any rate both are derived from Athens.f This I mention
only as an instance of the great importance of Greece in
the development of Romanlaw. Later, when all Hellenic
countries were under Roman administration, the Greek
cities contributed most to the formation of the jus gentium
and in that way to the perfecting of Roman law.
Here we may ask, how is it that the Hellenes, so
superior intellectually to the Romans, created nothing

* With regard to the predominantly Semitic and Syrian race-
connection of the later codifiers and embalmers of the Roman law,
for whom we have shown too much admiration, see p. 91 ff. of the

address of Leonhard quoted on p. 125.
{ Leist, Grdco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 585.
158 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

in the branch of knowledge that was lasting or perfect,
but shared in the great civilising work of the formation
of law solely through the medium of the Romans ?

A single but fatal mistake was at the bottom of it:
the Roman started from the family, on which basis he
erected State and law; the Greek; on the other hand;
took as his starting-point the State, his ideal being always
the organisation of the “ polis,” while family and law re-
mained subordinate. All Greek history and literature
prove the correctness of this assertion, and the fact that
the greatest Hellene of post-Homeric times, Plato, con-
sidered the complete abolition of the family in the upper
classes a desirable aim, shows to what fatal confusions
such a fundamental error must in time lead. With per-
fect right Giordano Bruno says (I forget where), “ The very
smallest mistake in the way in which a thing is attacked
leads finally to the very greatest erroneous discrepancies ;
thus the most trifling mistake in the ramification of
thought can growasan acorn doesintoanoak.” * And
this was not «the very smallest mistake’’ but a very great
one. Herein lies all the misery of the Hellenic peoples ;
here we have to seek the reason of their inability to de-
velop either State or Law in a lasting and ideal manner.
If we take up a careful individual account, for example
Aristotle’s book The Athenian Constitution, discovered
a few years ago, this succession of constitutions, all
different and all breathing an essentially different spirit;
makes us giddy: the pre-Draconian, those of Draco,
Solon, Cleisthenes, Aristeides, Pericles, the Four Hun-
dred, &c. &c., all within two hundred and fifty years!
Such a state of things would have been impossible where
there existed a firmly knit family life. Without that it was
easy for the Greeks to arrive at that characteristically

* The above words are perhaps from one of the very free translations
by Kuhlenbeck. In Bruno’s De Immenso et Innumerabilibus 1 found
the following remark (Bk. II. chap.ij: {{Parvus error in principio,
magnus in fine est.”
ROMAN LAW 159

unhistorical view of theirs, that law was a subject for
free speculation; and so they lost all feeling for the
fact that in order to live, law must grow out of actual
conditions.* And how striking it is that even the most
important questions of family law are regarded as sub-
ordinate, that Solon, for example, the most prominent
Athenian as a lawyer, leaves the law of inheritance
so obscure, that it is left to the caprice of the law-
courts to interpret it (Aristotle, as above, division IX).

—With Rome it was different. The strong tendency to >

discipline here finds its first expression in the firm organi-
sation of the family. The sons remain under the control
of the father, not merely till their fourteenth year, as
in Greece, but till the death of the father; by the ex-
clusion of relationship on the mother’s side, by the
legal recognition of the unlimited power of the pater-
familias, even in regard to the life and death of his children,
(although his son might have risen in the meantime to
the highest offices in the State), by the greatest freedom
and the most accurate individual enactments in reference
to the law of wills and legacies, by the strictest protection
of all the father’s rights of property and legal claims (for
he alone possessed a right to property and was a persona
sui juris, t.e., a person with full rights at law)—by these
things and many more the family became in Rome an
impregnably firm, indissoluble unity, and it is essen-
tially to this that we are indebted for the particular
form of the Roman State and Roman law. One can
easily imagine how such a strict conception of the family
must affect the whole life, the morals of the men, the
character of the children, the anxiety to retain and to
bequeath what had been acquired, the love of country,
which did not need to be artificially nourished, as in

* J. Jacques Rousseau makes an excellent remark in this connection :
“Si quelquefois les lois influent sur les moeurs, c’est quand elles en
tirent leur force” (Ledire a d’ Alembert).
160 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtTH CENTURY

Greece: for the citizen fought for what was assured to
him for ever, he fought for his sacred home, for the future
of his children, for peace and order.

MARRIAGE

The intimate conception of marriage and the position of
women in society are naturally connected with all this.
Here we have evidently the positive element in the forma-
tion of the Roman family, that which could not be fixed
by law but which on the contrary determined the forms of
law. Among old Aryans marriage was already regarded
asa “‘ divine institution,’ and when the young wife crossed
the threshold of her new home she was received with the
cry, ‘‘Come into the house of thy husband, that thou
mayest be called mistress; be therein as one who com-
mands!’’* In this very point, Greeks and Romans,
otherwise so manifoldly related, differed from one another.
In Homer’s time we certainly see the woman highly re-
spected by the Greeks, and the comrade of the man ; but
the Ionians who emigrated to Asia Minor took strange
wives, “‘ who did not venture to call the Greek husband by
his name, but addressed him as master—this degeneration
of the Asiatic Ionians has reacted on Athens.’ The
Roman, on the other hand; regarded his wife as his com-
panion and equal, his life’s mate, one who shared every-
thing, divine as well as human, with him. The wife has,
however, this position in Rome not because she is wife, but
because she is a woman, 7.e., because of the respect which
' the Roman pays to the female sex as such. In all rela-

tions where the natural difference of sex does not make a
distinction necessary, the Roman puts woman on an
equality with himself. There is no more convincing
proof of this than the old Roman law of inheritance,

* Zimmer, Indisches Leben, p. 313 ff.
? Etfried Maller, Doriey, and ed., i. 78, ii, 282 (quoted from Leist).
ROMAN LAW 161

which makes absolutely no difference between the two
sexes: the daughter receives exactly the same as the
son, the kinswoman the same as the kinsman; if there
are no children, the widow receives the whole inheritance
and excludes the male line ; the sister does the same when
there is no widow. We must be acquainted with the
slighting treatment to which the female sex is subjected in
the laws of so many other nations to understand the signi-
ficance of this point ; in Greece, for instance, the nearer
male relation excluded the wife altogether, and the
lot of a daughter was indeed lamentable, the nearest
male relation having the power to take her from her
husband.* The Roman wife was honoured in her house
as princess, princeps fanila@,and the Roman law speaks
of the matronarum sanctitas, the sacredness of wives who
are blessed with children. Children who in any way
sinned against their parents fell under the ban of gods
and men; no penalty was enacted for the murder of a
father, because, as Plutarch tells us, this crime was con-
sidered unthinkable—in fact it was more thaa five
hundred years before a case of parricide occurred.f
To form a right conception of this old Roman family,
we must keep one other fact in view: that in Roman

* Jhering: Entwickelungsgeschichte des vimischen Rechtes, p. 55:
Among the Teutons it was no better. ‘‘ The right of inheritance is in
the oldest German laws either restricted or denied to women altogether,”
says Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertiimer, 3rd ed. p. 407. The con-
cessions gradually granted are to be traced to Roman influence. Where
this was little or not at all felt, the German legal books, even in the
Middle Ages, still show the ‘‘complete inequality of women.’”’ In the
extreme North, in Scandinavia and in oldest Frisia, a woman could
inherit nothing at all, neither movable nor fixed property; ‘the
man enters into inheritance, the woman leaves it.’”’ Not till the thir-
teenth century did women receive a limited right of inheritance (Grimm,
Pp. 473). These are the conditions of law to which the Germanomaniacs
longingly desire to return !

+ (Romulus, xxix.) It may be mentioned by way of contrast that
it was the custom among the Germans till the introduction of Chris-
tianity (among the Wends even till the seventeenth century) to kill
old weak parents! (See Grimm; Rechtsaltertiimer, pp. 486-90.)

{ L
162 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXto CENTURY

life the sacred element, that is, the reverence for divine
commands, played a great part. While the pater-
familias was, according to human law, an absolute despot
in his house, the divine command forbade him to abuse
this power.* The home was indeed a sanctuary, the
hearth comparable to an altar ; and while it is somewhat
revolting to our feelings to-day to hear that parents in
very great poverty sometimes sold their children as
slaves, yet all histories of law give one the firm impression
that any cruelty, according to ideas of that age, towards
wife or children was almost or quite unknown. Indeed
at law the wife is in relation to her husband fliz loco
(equal to a daughter) in relation to her own children
sorovis loco (equal to a sister): but this is done in the
interests of the unity of the family, and in order that,
in constitutional as well as in private law relations, the
family may appear as a sharply defined, autonomous,
organic entity, represented at law by a single person,
not as a more or less firm conglomerate of merely indi-
vidual fragments. We have already seen in the political
part of this chapter that the Roman loved to transmit
power to single individuals, confident that from freedom
united to responsibility, both focussed, so to speak, in
a personality conscious of its individuality, moderate,
and at the same time energetic and wise action would
result. It is the same principle that prevails here.
Later this family life degenerated ; cunning means were
invented to bring into usage substitutes for genuine
marriage, in order that the wife should no longer come
into the legal power of the husband ; “ marriage became
a money matter like everything else; not in order to
found families, but to improve shattered fortunes by means
of dowries, were marriages contracted, and existing ones

* Besides he was subject to the censorial power, as much for too
great strictness in the exercise of his paternal rights as for carelessness
therein ; see Jher ng; Geist des romischen Rechtes, § 32.
ROMAN LAW 163

dissolved, in order to form new unions’”’;* but in spite
of this Publius Syrus could in Czsar’s time still express
the Roman conception of marriage by the line:

Pevenne animus conjugium, non corpus facit.

The soul, not the body, makes marriage eternal.

WoMAN

This is the central point of Roman law; the contrast
with Greece (and with Germany) gives us an idea of the
importance of such an organic central point. Here too
the Roman proves himself far from unideal, though he
is absolutely without sentiment and almost painfully de-
void of phantasy. Indeed, his “idea” is so strong, that
what he really in his heart desired never again altogether
disappeared. We have already seen in the preceding
section that ideas are immortal, and though the Roman
State was destroyed, yet the idea of it lived on through
the centuries, a still powerful influence ; at the end of the
nineteenth century four mighty monarchs of Europe
still bear the title of Cesar, and the idea of ves publica
is still moulding the greatest State of the new world.
But Roman law does not live on merely as a Justinian
mummy or a technical secret, revealed only to members
of the craft; no, I believe that the life-giving germ
from which that law had fundamentally grown was never
totally destroyed, but continues to live on among us as a
most valuable possession, in spite of the darkness of dis-
gracefully wicked centuries and the disintegrating ferment
that followed them. We still talk of the sacredness of the
family ; any one who, like certain Socialists, denies it is
struck from the list of politicians capable of forming a
judgment, and even those who are not pious Catholics will
a hundred times rather become reconciled to the concep-

* Esmarch; Romische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 317.
164 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

tion that marriage is a religious sacrament (as it indeed
was in ancient Rome; the Pontificate in this as in so
much else being directly based on old Roman Pontifical
law and proving itself the last official representative of
Heathendom), than admit that marriage is, as the
learned Anarchist leader Elisée Reclus elegantly says,
“merely legal prostitution.” That we feel thus is
a Roman legacy. The high position of woman too,
which makes our civilisation rank far above the
Hellenic and the various degenerate Semitic and
Asiatic types, is not, as Schopenhauer and so many
others have taught, a “ Christian-Teutonic,’” but a
Roman creation. As far as one can judge, the old
Teutons cannot have treated their women particularly
well ; here Roman influence appears to have first brought
about a change; the oldest German lawbooks are, in
reference to the legal position of the wife, full of phrases
taken literally from Roman law (see Grimm: Deutsche
Rechisaltertimer, II. chap.i., B. 7 and ff.). It was the
work of the Romans to give woman a firm, secure, legal
position in Europe. The “fair sex’? was indeed first
glorified in song by Germans, Italians, French, English
and Spaniards ; the Roman people had not thought of
that.* “But I ask, whether without the keen penetra-
tion and sense of justice, above all without the incom-
parable State-building instinct of the Romans, we should
ever have advanced so far as to take woman into our
_ political system as our life’s comrade and the corner-
stone of the family? I think I may answer a decided
no. Christianity in no wise signifies a strengthening of the
idea of the family. On the contrary, its real essence
is to destroy all political and legal bonds and make every
single individual rely upon himself. And it was from

* I speak of the true, chaste woman; for the adulteress and the
courtesan were loudly celebrated by the most popular of degenerate
Rome’s poets, Catullus and Virgil especially.
ROMAN LAW 168

the Christian Emperor Constantine, who annulled the
sovereignty of the paterfamilias, that the Roman family
in fact received its death-blow. Christianity, moreover,
being derived from Judaism, is from the first an anarchic,
anti-political power. That the Catholic Church followed
a different road and became a political power of the
greatest magnitude, is to be attributed simply to the
fact that it denied the clear teaching of Christ and adopted
instead the Roman State-idea—though it was only the
idea of the degenerate Roman State. The Church did
more than any other power for the maintenance of
Roman law; * Pope Gregory IX., for instance, aspired
solely to the title of a “ Justinian of the Church ”’ ; this
recognition of his juristical services lay nearer his
heart than sanctification. Though the motives that
impelled the Church and the Kings to retain and forcibly
introduce Roman law in its degenerate Byzantine form
were not particularly noble ones, yet that could not
prevent many very noble Roman thoughts from being
saved at the same time. And just as the tradition of |
Roman law never died, so, too, the Roman conception
of the dignity of woman and of the political importance —
of the family never quite disappeared from the conscious-
ness of men. For several centuries (here as in so many
things the thirteenth century is with Petrus Lombardus
the almost exact border-line) we have come nearer and
nearer to the old Roman conception, particularly since
the Council of Trent and Martin Luther simultaneously
emphasised the sacredness of marriage. That this
approach is in many respects a purely ideal one does
not matter; a perfectly new civilisation cannot too
thoroughly free itself from old forms ; as it is, we pour far
too much new wine into old bottles ; but I do not think

* See particularly Savigny: Geschichte des vémischen Rechtes im
Mittelalter, chaps. iii. xv. xxii., &c.
{ Bryce: The Holy Roman Empire, p. 131 of the French edition,
166 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

that any unprejudiced man will deny that the Roman
family is one of the most glorious achievements of the
human mind, one of those heights which cannot be scaled
twice, and to which the most distant generations will
look up in admiration, making sure at the same time
that they themselves are not straying too far from the
right path. In every study of the nineteenth century,
e.g., when discussing the burning question of the emanci-
pation of women or when forming an opinion with regard
to those socialistic theories which, in contrast to Rome,
culminate in the formula, ‘‘No family, all State,” the
contemplation of this lofty height will be of invaluable
service.

POETRY AND LANGUAGE

I have attempted a somewhat difficult task—that of
speaking untechnically ona technical subject. I have had
to confine myself to proving the peculiar fitness of the
Romans for bringing to perfection this practical art ; what
I have tried to emphasise as their most far-reaching
achievement for human society—the strong legal establish-
ment of the family—is, as will have been noticed, similar
in essence to the original impelling force from which the
technical mastery had gradually grown up. All that
lies between, that is, the whole real practical art,
had to be neglected, and equally all discussion of the
advantages and disadvantages of the preponderating
influence of Roman law in the nineteenth century
in its purely technical connection. And _ without
needing to tread upon such dangerous quicksands,
there are plenty of suggestive considerations for us
laymen.

I have intentionally confined myself to politics and
law. What did not come down to us as a legacy does not
fall within the scope of this book, and many things that
have been preserved to us, as, for example, the works of
ROMAN LAW 167

Latin poets, claim the attention of the scholar and the
dilettante, but do not form a living part of our life. To
put Greek and Latin poetry together and call them
“classical literature’ is a proof of incredible barba-
rism in taste and of a regrettable ignorance of the
essence and value of the art of genius. Whenever
Roman poetry attempts the sublime, as in Virgil and
Ovid, it clings with a correct sense of its own hopeless
unoriginality as slavishly as possible to Hellenic models.
As Treitschke says, “‘ Roman literature is Greek literature
written in Latin.”* What are our unhappy boys to
think when in the forenoon the Iiad of the greatest
poetical genius of all times is expounded to them and in
the afternoon that servile epic the eid, written by
imperial command—both as classical models? The
genuine and the false, the glorious, free creation arising
out of the greatest creative necessity and the finely
formed technique in the service of gold and dilettantism,
genius and talent, presented as two flowers from the
same stem, differing but little! As long as that pale
abstraction, the idea of ‘‘ classical literature,” lives on
among us as dogma, so long will the night of the chaos
of races overshadow us, so long will our schools be steril-
ising institutions destroying every creative impulse.
Hellenic poetry was a beginning—a dawn—it created
a people, it lavished upon them all that the highest
beauty can impart to make life sacred, all that poetry
can do to elevate hapless, tortured human souls and to
fill them with a feeling of invisible friendly powers—
and this fount of life wells on and never again dries up:
one century after the other is refreshed by it, one people
after another draws from its waters the power of inspira-
tion to create beauty themselves; for genius is like
God : it indeed reveals itself at a definite time and under

* With regard to the great Lucretius as an exception, see the note
On p. 35%
168 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

distinct conditions, but in its essence it is free from con-
ditions ; what becomes a fetter to others is the material
out of which it makes for itself pinions, it rises out of time
and time’s death-shadow, and passes in all the glow of life
into eternity. In Rome, on the other hand, one may
boldly assert, genius was altogether forbidden. Rome
has no poetry till it begins to decline. It is not till the
night sets in, when the Roman people is no longer there
to hear, that the singers of Rome raise their voices ; they
are night flutterers ; they write for the boudoirs of lasci-
vious ladies, for the amusement of men of the world and
for the court. Although Hellenes were close neighbours
and from the earliest times scattered the seeds of Hellenic
art, philosophy and science (for all culture in Rome was
from the first of Greek origin), not a single grain took root.
Five hundred years before the birth of Christ the Romans
sent to Athens, to glean accurate information regarding
Greek law; their ambassadors met Aschylus in the
fulness of his powers and Sophocles already active as 2
creative artist; what an artistic splendour must have
sprung up in the all-vigorous Rome after such contact,
if even the slightest talent had been there! But it did
not. As Memmsen says, “The development of the arts
of the Muse in Latium was rather a drying up than a
growing up.” The Latins until their decline had no word
for poet, the idea was strange to them !—If now their
poets were without exception devoid of genius, wherein
lay the importance of those among them who, like Horace
and Juvenal, have always excited the admiration of the
linguistic artists? Manifestly, as with everything that
comes from Rome, their importance lay in their art.
The Romans were great builders—of sewers and aque-
ducts ; * magnificent painters—of room-decorations ; great

* And yet not inventors even here; see Hueppe’s investigations
into the waterworks of the ancient Greeks, Rassenhygiene der Griechen-

P- 37-
ROMAN LAW 169

manufacturers—of objects belonging to the industrial
arts; in their circuses, masters of the art of fighting
fought for money and professional charioteers drove
on the racecourse. The Roman could be a virtuoso,
not an artist; all virtuosity interested him, but no
art. The poems of Horace are technical masterpieces.
Apart from their historically picturesque interest as
descriptions of a life that has vanished, the virtuosity
alone in these poems attracts us. The “ wisdom of
life,’ some one suggests by way of reproach? Yes,
if such a matter-of-fact and prosaic wisdom were not
better anywhere else than in the fairy realm of art, the
wide-open, childlike eyes of which proclaim from every
Hellenic work of poetry quite a different wisdom from that
which occurs to Horace and his friends between cheese
and dessert. One of the most truly poetical natures that
ever lived, Byron, says of Horace :
It is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verses

What kind of art is that which speaks to the intelligence,
never to the heart ? It can only be an artificial work, an
applied art ; if it came from the heart it would go to the
heart. In truth we still stand in this matter under French
tutelage as the French stand under Syrian-Jewish
(Boileau—pseudo-Longinus) ; and though little of this in-
heritance has come into modern life, we should cast it off
once for all in favour of our own poets in words and music,
divinely inspired men, whose works tower high as the
heavens above all that shot up in unhealthy haste like
etiolated plants without root and without sap on the
Tuins of fallen Rome.*

* Of the very considerable literature which fin the last years has
been written on this question, and with which I have but little acquaint-
ance, I recommend especially the small work of Prof. Albert Heintze,
Latein und Deutsch, 1902, which is written with as much knowledge
as it is to the point and devoid of passion.
170 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

In the hands of the specialist, t.e., of the philologist,
Latin poetry will be as surely and suitably preserved as
the corpus juris in those of the investigators of law.
If, however, the Latin tongue is to be retained at all
costs as the universal trainer of the mind (instead of
teaching Greek alone but more thoroughly), then let it
be seen at work where it accomplishes wonders, where
it, in accordance with the particular tendency of the
Roman people and with its historical development,
does what no other language ever did or will be able to
do—in the plastic moulding of legal notions. People
say that the Latin language educates the logical sense ;
I will believe it, although I cannot help remarking that
it was this very language in which during the scholastic
centuries, in spite of all logic, more nonsense was written
than in any other at any time; but whereby has the
Latin language acquired a character of such concise-
ness and definiteness? By the fact that it was built
up solely as the language of business, administration
and law. This the most unpoetical of all languages is
a magnificent monument of the momentous struggle of
free men to obtain a sure code of law. Let our boys see
it at work here. The great law-teachers of Rome have
eo tpso written the finest Latin; that, and not verse-
writing, was the busines*of the language ; the faultlessly
transparent formatior of sentences, which shut out every
possibility of miscunstruction, was an important instru-
ment of juristical applied art. From the study of law
alone Cicero has taken his qualities of style. Mommsen
says even of the oldest documents of the language of
business and law that they were distinguished by “ acu-
men and definiteness,’”’ * and philologists are of opinion
that in the language of Papinian, one of the last great
teachers of law (in the time of Marcus Aurelius), we have
“the culmination of the capacity always to find the

* Romische Geschichte, i. 471«
1
f

[

ROMAN LAW 171

expression which fully answers to the depth and clearness
of the thought ” ; his sentences, they say, stand as though
chiselled out of marble: ‘‘ not a word too much, not one
too few, every word in the absolutely right place, thus
rendering, as far as this is feasible with language, every
ambiguity impossible.” * Intercourse with such men
would indeed be a valuable addition to our education.
And it seems to me that when every Roman boy knew the
Twelve Tables by heart, it would be appropriate and
intellectually beneficial to our youths to leave school not
merely as stupid, learned subject, but with some accurate
conceptions of private and constitutional law, thinking
not merely according to formal logic, but also reasonably
and practically, and steeled against all empty raving
about ‘‘German law”’ and such-like. In the meantime,
because of the position we take up in reference to the
Latin language, this legacy is badly administered and
consequently of but little profit.

SUMMARY

We men of the nineteenth century should not be what
we are if a rich legacy from these two cultures, the
Hellenic and the Roman, had not come down to us.
And so we cannot in the least judge what we truly are,
and confess with modesty how little that is, if we do not
form a quite clear conception of the nature of these
inheritances. I hope that my endeavours in this direction
will not have been quite fruitless and I hope also that
the reader will especially have noticed that the legacy
of Rome is utterly and fundamentally different from
that of Greece.

In Hellas the personality of genius had been the decisive
factor: whether on this side or on that of the Adriatic
and the Agean Seas, the Greeks were great so long as they

* Esmarch; Rémische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 400.
172 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTDRY

possessed great men. In Rome, on the other hand, there
were only great individualities in so far and so long as
the people was great, and it was great as long as it phy-
sically and morally remained genuinely Roman. Rome
is the extreme example of a great corporate national
power, which works unconsciously but all the more
surely. For that reason, however, it is less attractive
than Hellas, and hence what Rome did for our civilisation
is seldom justly estimated. And yet Rome commands
our admiration and gratitude; its gifts were moral, not
intellectual; but by this very fact it was capable of
achieving great things. Not the death of a Leonidas
could save Europe from the Asiatic peril, upholding
man’s dignity with man’s freedom, and handing it over to
future ages to cultivate in peace and consolidate; this
could only be accomplished by a long-dived State, unbend-
ing and inexorably consistent in its politics. But neither
theory nor fanaticism nor speculation could create this
long-lived State; it had to be rooted in the character
of the citizen. This character was hard and self-seeking,
but great by reason of its high sense of duty, by its
capacity for making sacrifices and by its devotion to the
family. The Roman, by erecting amidst the chaos of con-
temporary attempts at State-building a strong and solid
State of his own, provided a model for all ages to come.
By bringing his law to a technical perfection previously un-
known, he laid the foundations of jurisprudence for all
mankind. By following his natural inclination and
making the family the centre of State and law, by, in
fact, almost assigning extravagant importance to this
conception, he raised woman to equality with man and
transformed the union of the sexes into the sacredness
of marriage. While our artistic and scientific culture
is in many essential points derived from Greece, our
social culture leads us back to Rome. I am not speaking
ROMAN LAW 173

here of material civilisation, which is derived from many
countries and epochs and especially from the inventive
industry of recent centuries, but of the secure moral
foundations of a dignified social life; the laying of
these was a great work of culture.
THIRD CHAPTER
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST

By the virtue of One all have been truly saved.
MAHABHARATA!

INTRODUCTORY

EFORE our eyes there stands a vision, distinct,
incomparable. This picture which we behold
is the inheritance which we have received from
our Fathers. Without an accurate appreciation

of this vision, we cannot measure and rightly judge the
historical significance of Christianity. The converse, on
the other hand, does not hold good, for the figure of Jesus
Christ has, by the historical development of the Churches,
been dimmed and relegated to the background, rather
than unveiled to the clear sight of our eyes. To look
upon this Figure solely by the light of a church doctrine,
narrowed both in respect of place and of time, is volun-
tarily to put on blinkers and to narrow our view of the
eternally Divine. The vision of Christ, moreover, is
hardly touched upon by the dogmas of the Church.
They are all so abstract that they afford nothing upon
which either our understanding or our feelings can lay
hold. We may apply to them in general what an artless
witness, St. Augustine, said of the Dogma of the Trinity:
' “But we speak of three Persons, not because we fancy
‘ that in so doing we have uttered something, but simply
174
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 175

because we cannot be silent.”* Surely we are guilty
of no outrage upon due reverence if we say, it is not the
Churches that constitute the might of Christianity, for
that might is drawn solely from the fountain head from
which the churches themselves derive all their power—
the contemplation of the Son of Man upon the Cross.

Let us therefore separate the vision of Christ upon
earth from the whole history of Christianity.

What after all are our nineteen centuries for the con-
scious acceptance of such an experience—for the trans-
formation which forces itself through all the strata of
humanity by the power of a fundamentally new aspect
of life’s problems * We should remember that more
than two thousand years were needed before the structure
of the Kosmos, capable as it is of mathematical proof
and of demonstration to the senses, became the fixed,
common possession of human knowledge. Is not the
understanding with its gift of sight and its infallible
formula of 2 x2=4 easier to mould than the heart, blind
and ever befooled by self-seeking ? Here is 5 a man born

 

ception of the moral significance of man, the whole

philosophy of life, undergoes a complete “transformation

—through which the relation of the individual to him-
self, to the rest of mankind, and to the nature by which

he is surrounded, is of is of necessity illuminated by a new

and hitherto unsuspected light, so that all motives of
action, all ideals, all heart’s-desires and, hopes must be

ea? Se SS ee

 

tions. Is it to be believed that this can be the work of a
few centuries? Is it to be believed that this can be
brought about by misunderstandings and lies, by political
intrigues and cecumenical councils, at the word of com-
mand of kings maddened by ambition, or of greedy priests,

* “Dictum est tamen tres persone, non ut aliquid diceretur, sed
ne taceretur.”’"—De Trinitate, V. chap. ix.
176 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

by three thousand volumes of scholastic disputations,
by the fanatical faith of narrow-minded peasants and
the noble zeal of a small number of superior persons, by
war, murder and the stake, by civic codes of law and
social intolerance? For my part I disclaim any such
belief.. I believe that we are still far, very far, from
the moment when the transforming might of the vision of
Christ will make itself felt to its utmost extent by civi-
‘ lised mankind. Even if our churches in their present
‘form should come to an end, the idea of Christianity would
only stand out with all the more force. In the ninth
chapter I shall show how our new Teuton philosophy is
pushing in that direction. Even now, Christianity is not
yet firm upon its childish feet: its maturity is hardly
dawning upon our dim vision. Who knows but a day
may come when the bloody church-history of the first
eighteen centuries of our era may be looked upon as the
history of the infantile diseases of Christianity ?

In considering the vision of Christ, then, let us not
allow our judgment to be darkened by any historical
delusions, or by the ephemeral views of our century.
We may be sure that up to the present we have only
entered upon the smallest portion of this same inherit-
ance, and if we wish to know what is its significance
for all of us, be we Christians or Jews, believers or un-
believers, whether we are conscious of our privilege or
not—then must we in the first place stop our ears against
the chaos of creeds and of blasphemies which beshame
humanity, and in the next place raise our eyes up to the
most incomparable vision of all times.

In this section I shall be forced critically to glance at
much that forms the intellectual foundation of various
religions. But just as I leave untouched that which is
hidden in the Holy of Holies of my own heart, so I hope
to steer clear of giving offence to any other sensible
man, It is as easy to separate the historic vision of
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 179

Christ from all the supernatural significance which
dwells in it as it must be to treat Physics upon a purely
material basis without imagining that in so doing we
have dethroned Metaphysics.

Christ indeed can hardly be spoken of without now and
again crossing the boundary ; still belief, as such, need
not be touched, and if I as historian proceed logically
and convincingly, I can bear with any refutation which
the reader may bring forward as a question of feeling,
as apart from understanding. With this consciousness
I shall speak as frankly in the following chapters as I
have done in those which have gone before.

THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE

The religious faith of more than two-thirds of all
the inhabitants of the earth to-day starts from the
life on earth of two men, Christ and Buddha, men
who lived only a few centuries ago. We have historical
proofs of their having actually existed, and that the
traditions regarding them, though containing much
that is fabulous and uncertain, obscure and contradictory,
nevertheless give us a faithful picture of the main
features of their real lives. Even apart from this sure
result of the scientific investigations of the nineteenth
century,* men of acute and sound judgment will never
have doubted the actual existence of these great moral
heroes: for although the historical and chronological
material regarding them is extremely scanty and imper-
fect, yet their moral and intellectual individuality stands
out so clearly and brilliantly before our eyes, and this
individuality is so incomparable, that it could not be

* The existence of Christ was denied even in the second century
of our era, and Buddha till twenty-five years ago was regarded by many
theologians as a mythical figure. See, for example, the books of Sénart
and Kern.

J M
178 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

an invention of the imagination. The imagination of
man is very narrowly circumscribed ; the creative mind
can work only with given facts: it was men that Homer
had to enthrone on Olympus, for even his imagination
could not transcend the impassable boundary of what
he saw and experienced; the very fact that he makes
his gods so very human, that he does not permit his
imagination to soar to the realm of the Extraordinary and
Inconceivable (because never seen), that he rather keeps
it in subjection, in order to employ its undivided force
to create what will be poetical and visible, is one of a
thousand proofs, and not the least important one, that
intellectually he was a great man. We are not capable
of inventing even a plant or animal form; when we try
it, the most we do is to put together a monstrosity com-
posed of fragments of all kinds of creatures known to us.
Nature, however, the inexhaustibly inventive, shows us
a new thing whenever it so pleases her; and this new
thing is for our consciousness henceforth just as inde-
structible as it formerly was undiscoverable. The figure
of Buddha, much less that of Jesus Christ, could not be
invented by any human poetical power, neither that of
an individual nor that of a whole people; nowhere can
we discover even the slightest approach to such a thing.
Neither poets, nor philosophers, nor prophets have been
able even in their dreams to conceive such a phenomenon.
Plato is certainly often mentioned in connection with
Jesus Christ; there are whole books on the supposed
relation between the two; it is said that the Greek
philosopher was a forerunner who proclaimed the new
gospel. In reality, however, the great Plato is a quite
irreligious genius, a metaphysician and_ politician,
an investigator and am aristocrat. And Socrates!
The clever author of grammar and logic, the honest
preacher of a morality for philistines, the noble gossip
of the Athenian gymnasia,—is he not in every respect
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 179

the direct contrast to the divine proclaimer of a Heaven
of them “‘ that are poor in spirit’’? In India it was the
same: the figure of a Buddha was not anticipated nor
conjured up by the magic of men’s longing. All such
assertions belong to the wide province of that delusive-
historic philosophy which constructs after the event. If
Christ and Christianity had been an historical necessity,
as the neoscholastic Hegel asserts, and Pfleiderer and
others would have us believe to-day, we should inevitably
have seen not one Christ but a thousand Christs arise ;
I should really like to know in what century a Jesus
would not have been just as “‘ necessary ’”’ as our daily
bread ?* Let us therefore discard these views that are
tinged with the paleness of abstraction. The only
effect they have is to obscure the one decisive and
pregnant thing, namely, the importance of the living,
individual, incomparable personality. One is ever and
anon forced to quote Goethe’s great saying :

Héchtes Glick der Erdenkinder
Ist nur die Persénlichkeit !

The circumstances in which the personality is placed—
a knowledge of its general conditions in respect of
time and space—will certainly contribute very much
towards making it clearly understood. Such a knowledge
will enable us to distinguish between the important and

* Hegel in his Philosophie dev Geschichte, Th. III., A. 3, chap. fi., says
about Christ: ‘‘ He was born as this one man, in abstract subjectivity,
but so that conversely finiteness is only the form of his appearance,
the essence and content of which is rather infiniteness and absolute
being-for-self. . . . The nature of God, to be pure spirit, becomes in
the Christian religion manifest to man. But what is the spirit? It
is the One, the unchanging infinity, the pure identity, which in the
second place separates itself from itself, as its second self, as the being-
for-itself and being-in-itself in opposition to the Universal. But this
separation is annulled by this, that the atomistic subjectivity, as the
simple relativity to itself, is itselt the Universal, Identical with itself.”
What willfuture centuries say to this clatter of words ? For two-thirds
of the nineteenth it was considered the highest wisdom.
180 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

the unimportant, between the characteristically individual
and the locally conventional. It will, in short, give us an
increasingly clearer view of the personality. But to
explain it, to try to show it as a logical necessity, is an
idle, foolish task ; every figure—even that of a beetle—
is to the human understanding a “‘ wonder”; the human
personality is, however, the mystertum magnum of life,
and the more a great personality is stripped by criticism
of all legendary rags and tatters, and the more success-
ful that criticism is in representing each step in its career
as something fore-ordained in the nature of things,
the more incomprehensible the mystery becomes. This
indeed is the final result of the criticism to which the
life of Jesus has been submitted in the nineteenth cen-
tury. This century has been called an irreligious one;
but never yet, since the first Christian centuries, has
the interest of mankind concentrated so passionately
around the person of Jesus Christ as in the last seventy
years ; the works of Darwin, however widespread they
were, were not bought to one-tenth the extent of those
of Strauss and Renan. And the result of it all is, that
the actual earthly life of Jesus Christ has become more
and more concrete, and we have been compelled to recog-
nise more and more distinctly that the origin of the
Christian religion is fundamentally to be traced to the
absolutely unexampled impression which this one person-
ality had made and left upon those who knew Him. So
it is that to-day this revelation stands before our eyes
more definite and for that very reason more unfathomable
than ever.

This is the first point to be established. It is in
accordance with the whole tendency of our times, that
we can grow enthusiastic only in regard to what is con-
crete and living. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century it was different ; the Romantic movement threw
its shadows on all sides, and so it had become fashionable
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 181

to explain everything “ mythically.” In the year 1835
David Strauss, following the example proffered on all
sides, presented as a key to the gospels “ the idea of the
myth ’’!* Every one now recognises that this so-called
key was nothing more than a new, mistily vague para-
phrase of a still-unsolved problem, and that not an
“idea,” but only an actually lived existence, only the »
unique impression of a personality, whose like the world
had never before known, supplies the “key” to the.
origin of Christianity. The greater the amount of
such useless ballast that was manifest on the one hand in
the shape of pseudo-mythical (or rather pseudo-historical)
legend-making, on the other in the form of philosophically
dogmatic speculation, the greater is the power of life
and resistance that must be attributed to the original
impelling and creating force The most modern, strictly
philological criticism has proved the unexpected antiquity
of the gospels and the extensive authenticity of the
manuscripts which we possess ; we have now succeeded

in tracing, almost step for step, the very earliest records

* See first edition, i. 72 ff., and the popular edition (ninth) p. 191 ff.
Strauss never had the least notion what a myth is, what mythology
means, how it is produced by the confusion and mingling of popular
myths, poetry andlegends. That, however, isanother story. Posterity
will really not be able to understand the reception given to such dreary
productions as those of Strauss: they are learned, but destitute of all
deeper insight and of any trace of genius. Just as bees and ants
Tequire in their communities whole cohorts of sexless workers, so it
seems as if we human beings could not get along without the industry
and the widespread but ephemeral influence of such minds, marked with
the stamp of sterility, as flourished in such profusion about the middle of
the nineteenth century. The progress of historico-critical research on
the one hand, and on the other the increasing tendency to direct attention
not to the theological and subordinate, but to that which is living and
decisive, causes one to look upon the mythological standpoint of Strauss
as so unintelligent that one cannot turn over the leaves of this honest
man’s writings without yawning. And yet one must admit that such
men as he and Renan (two concave mirrors which distort all lines, the
one by lengthening, the other by broadening) have accomplished an
important work—by drawing the attention of thousands to the great
miracle of the fact of Christ and thus creating a public for profounder
thinkers and wiser men.
182. FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

of Christianity in a strictly historical manner.* But all
this when considered from the universal human stand-
point is of much less importance than the one fact, that
in consequence of these researches the figure of the one
Divine Man has been brought into relief, so that the
unbeliever as well as the believer is bound to recognise
it as the centre and source of Christianity, taking the
word in the most comprehensive sense possible.

BuDDHA AND CHRIST

A few pages back I placed Buddha and Christ in jux-
taposition. The kernel of the religious conceptions of
all the more gifted races of mankind (with the two ex-
ceptions of the small family of the Jews on the one hand
and their antipodes the Brahman Indians on the other)
has been for the past few thousand years not the need
for an explanation of the world, nor mythological Nature-
symbolism, nor meditative transcendentalism, but the
experience of great characters. The delusion of a
“ rational religion ’’ still haunts us ; occasionally too in
recent years there has been talk of a “‘ replacing of religion
by something higher,” and on the hilltops of certain
German districts new “worshippers of Wotan”’ have
offered up sacrifice at the time of the solstice ; but none
of these movements have exercised the slightest influence
upon the world. For ideas are immortal—I have said so
already and shall have to repeat it constantly—and
in such figures as Buddha and Christ an idea—that
is, a definite conception of human existence—acquires
such a living bodily form, becomes so thoroughly an ex-
perience of life, is placed so clearly before the eyes of all
men, that it cannever more disappear from their conscious-

* Later there came a dark period upon which light has still to be
thrown.
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 183

ness. Many aman may never have seen the Crucified One
with his eyes; many a man may constantly have passed
this revelation carelessly by; thousands of men, even
among ourselves, lack what one might call the inner sense
to perceive Christ at all; on the other hand, having
once seen Jesus Christ—even if it be with half-veiled
eyes—we cannot forget Him; it does not lie within
our power to remove the object of experience from our
minds. We are not Christians because we were brought
up in this or in that Church, because we want to be
Christians ; if we are Christians, it is because we cannot
help it, because neither the chaotic bustle of life nor the
delirium of selfishness, nor artificial training of thought
can dispel the vision of the Man of Sorrow when once
it has been seen. On the evening before His death, when
His Apostles were questioning Him as to the significance
of one of His actions, He replied, ““I have given you an
example.” That is the meaning not only of the one
action but of His whole life and death. Even so strict an
ecclesiastic as Martin Luther writes: ‘‘ The example of
our Lord Jesus Christ is at the same time a sacrament,
it is strong in us, it does not, like the examples of the
fathers, merely teach, no, it also effects what it teaches,
it gives life, resurrection and redemption from death.”
The power of Buddha over the world rests on similar foun-
dations. The true source of all religion is, I repeat, in the
case of the great majority of living people not a doctrine
butalife. Itisa different question, of course, how far we,
with our weak capability, can or cannot follow the ex-
ample; the ideal is there, clear, unmistakable, and for
centuries it has been moulding with incomparable power
the thoughts and actions of men, even of unbelievers.

I shall return to this point later in another connection.
If I have introduced Buddha here, where only the figure
of Christ concerns me, I have done so for this reason,
that nothing shows up a figure so well as comparison,
184 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

The comparison, however, must be an appropriate one,
and I do not know any other than Buddha in the his-
tory of the world whom we could compare with Christ.
Both are characterised by their divine earnestness ;
they have in common the longing to point out to all
mankind the way of redemption; they have both in-
comparably magnetic personalities. And yet if one
places these two figures side by side, it can only be to em-
phasise the contrast and not to draw a parallel between
them. Christ and Buddha are opposites. What unites
them is their sublimity of character. From that source
have sprung lives of unsurpassed loveliness, lives which
wielded an influence such as the world had never before
experienced. Otherwise they differ almost in every
point, and the neo-Buddhism which has been paraded
during recent years in certain social circles in Europe
—in the closest relation, it is said, to Christianity and
even going beyond it—is but a new proof of the wide-
spread superficiality of thought among us. For Buddha’s
life and thought present a direct contrast to the thought
and life of Christ : they form what the logician calls the
“‘antithesis,’’ what to the natural scientist is the “‘ opposite
pole.”

BuDDHA

Buddha represents the senile decay of a culture which
has reached the limit of its possibilities. A Prince,
highly educated, gifted with a rich fulness of power,
recognises the vanity of that education and that power.
He professes what to the rest of the world seems to be
the Highest, but with the vision of truth before him,
this possession melts away to nothing. Indian culture,
the outcome of the meditative contemplation incident
to a pastoral life, had thrown itself with all the weight
of its lofty gifts into the development of the one attribute
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 185

peculiar to mankind—Reason with the power of com-
bination: so it came to pass that connection with the
surrounding world—childlike observation with its practical
adaptation to business—languished, at any rate among
the men of higher culture. Everything was syste-
matically directed to the development of the power of
thought: every educated youth knew by heart, word
for word, a whole literature charged with matter so
subtle that even to this day few Europeans are capable
of following it: even geometry, the most abstract of all
methods of representing the concrete world, was too obvious
for the Indians, and so they came instead to revel in an
arithmetic which goes beyond all possibility of presentation:
the man who questioned himself as to his aim in life,
the man who had been gifted by nature with the desire
to strive for some highest goal, found on the one side a
religious system in which symbolism had grown to such
mad dimensions that it needed some thirty years to
find oneself at home in it, and on the other side a philo-
sophy leading up to heights so giddy that whoso wished
to climb the last rungs of this heavenly ladder must take
refuge from the world for ever in the deep silence of the
primeval forest. Clearly here the eye and the heart
had lost their rights. Like the scorching simoom of the
desert, the spirit of abstraction had swept with withering
force over all other gifts of this rich human nature. The
senses indeed still lived—desires of tropical heat: but
on the other side was the negation of the whole world of
sense: between these nothing, no compromise, only war,
war between human perception and human nature,
between thought and being. And so Buddha must hate
what he loved ; children, parents, wife, all that is beauti-
ful and joyous—for what were these but veils darkening
perception, bonds chaining him to a dream-life of lies
and desire ? and what had he to do with all the wisdom
of the Brahmans? Sacrificial ceremonies which no
186 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

human being understood, and which the priests them-
selves explained as being purely symbolical and to the
initiated futile:—beyond this a redemption by per-
ception accessible to scarcely one man in a hundred
thousand. Thus it was that Buddha not only cast away
from him his kingdom and his knowledge, but tore
from his heart all that bound him as man to man, all
love, all hope: at one blow he destroyed the religion
of his fathers, drove their gods from the temple of the
world, and rejected as a vain phantom even that most
sublime conception of Indian metaphysics, that of a one
and only God, indescribable, unthinkable, having no part
in space or time, and therefore inaccessible to thought,
and yet by thought dimly imagined. There is nothing in
life but suffering, this was Buddha’s experience and con-
sequently his teaching. The one object worth striving
for is ‘‘redemption from suffering.’ This redemption

_ is death, the entering into annihilation. But to every

Indian the transmigration of souls, that is the eternal

. reincarnation of the same individual, was believed in

as a manifest fact, not even to be called in question.

‘Death then, in its ordinary shape, cannot give re-

demption : it is the gift of that death only upon which
no reincarnation follows: and this redeeming death can
only be attained in one way, namely, that man shall

| have died during his life and therefore of his own free
' will: that is to say, that he shall have cut off and annihi-

lated all that ties him to life, all love, all hope, all desire,
all possession ; in short, as we should say with Schopen-
hauer, that he shall have denied the will to live. If man
lives in this wise, if while yet alive he makes himself into
a moving corpse, then can the reaper Death harvest no
seed for a reincarnation.. A living Death! that is the

_essence of Buddhism! We may describe Buddhism

as the lived suicide. It is suicide in its highest poten-
tiality : for Buddha lives solely and only to die, to be
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 187

dead definitely and beyond recall, to enter into Nirvana
—extinction.*

CHRIST

What greater contrast could there be to this figure
than that of Christ, whose death signifies entrance into
eternal life? Christ perceives divine Providence in the
whole world ; not a sparrow falls to the ground, not a hair
on the head of aman can be injured, without the permis-
sion of the Heavenly Father. And far from hating this
earthly existence, which is lived by the will and under
the eye of God, Christ praises it as the entry into eternity,
as the narrow gate through which we pass into the
Kingdom of God. And this Kingdom of God, what is it ?
A Nirvana? a Dream-Paradise? a future reward for
deeds done here below? Christ gives the answer in one
word, which has undoubtedly been authentically handed
down to us, for it had never been uttered before, and no
one of His disciples evidently understood it, much less
invented it; indeed, this eagle thought flashed so far
in front of the slow unfolding of human knowledge that
even to the present day few have seen the meaning of it
—as I said before, Christianity is still in its infancy—
Christ’s answer was, “‘ The Kingdom of God cometh not
with observation : neither shall they say, Lo here or lo
there. For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”
This is what Christ himself calls the “mystery”; it
cannot be expressed in words, it cannot be defined; and
ever and ever again the Saviour endeavours to bring home

* T have translated das nichts by extinction, which is the rendering
of Nirvana by Rhys Davids. He says: ‘‘ What thenis Nirvana, which
means simply going out, extinction’’; and then he goes on to say that
it ought to be translated ‘‘Holiness.’’ But that will not do here,
nor is it altogether incapable of being argued. Extinction gives
Chamberlain’s meaning better than ‘‘ nothingness,” which is not quite
satisfactory. Perhaps ‘‘ Holy Extinction’’ comes near to the Buddhist
conception. The idea of Rhys Davids would thus not be lost. (Trans
lator’s Note.)
188 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

His great message of salvation by means of parables: the
Kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed in the
field, ‘‘ the least of all seeds,’ but if it is tended by the
husbandman, it grows to a tree, “so that the birds of
the air come and lodge under its branches ” ; the Kingdom
of God is like the leaven among the flour, if the housewife
take but a little, it leavens the whole lump; but the
following figure speaks most plainly: “the Kingdom
of God is like unto a treasure hid in a field.” * That
the field means the world, Christ expressly says (see
Matthew xiii. 38); in this world, that is, in this life,
the treasure lies concealed; the Kingdom of God is
buried within us! That is the “‘ mystery of the Kingdom
of God,” as Christ says; at the same time it is the secret
of His own life, thesecret of His personality. An estrange-
ment from life, as in the case of Buddha, is not to be
found in Christ, there is, however, a ‘“‘conversion”’ of the
direction of life, if I may so call it, as, for example, when
Christ says to His disciples, ‘‘ Verily I say unto you,
Except ye be converted, ye shall not enter into the King-
dom of God.”+ At a later period this so easily grasped
“conversion” received—perhaps from a strange hand—
the more mystical expression, “‘ Except a man be bom
again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” The words
do not matter, what is important is the conception
underlying them, and this conception stands out lumi-
nously clear, because it gives form to the whole life of

* The expression Uranos or “ Kingdom of Heaven” occurs only in
Matthew and is certainly not the right translation into Greek of any
expression used by Christ. The other evangelists always say ‘‘ Kingdom
of God.” (Cf. my collection of the Worte Christi, large edition,
p. 260, small edition, p. 279, and for more learned and definite explana-
tion see H. H. Wendt’s Lehre Jesu, 1886, pp. 48 and 58.)

j The emphasis clearly does not lie on the additional clause ‘‘ and
become as little children”; this is rather an explanation of the
conversion. What is it that distinguishes children? Unalloyed joy
in life and the unspoilt powez of throwing a glamour over it by their
temperaments.
4

Christ. Here we do not find a doctrine like that of Buddha
with a logical arithmetical development ; nor is there,
as has so frequently been asserted by the superficial,
any organic connection with Jewish wisdom: read
the words of Jesus Sirach, who is most frequently com-
pared with Christ, and ask yourselves whether that
is ‘Spirit of the same Spirit’’? Sirach speaks like a
Jewish Marcus Aurelius and even his finest sayings, such
as “Seek wisdom until death, and God will fight for
you,” or, “‘ The heart of the fool lies upon his tongue, but
the tongue of the wise man dwells within his heart,” are as
a sound from another world when put beside the sayings
of Christ: ‘‘ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
the earth; biessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for
I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest
unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is
light.” No one had ever spoken like that before, and
no one has spoken so since. These words of Christ have,
however, as we can see, never the character of a doctrine,
but just as the tone of a voice supplements by a mysteri-
ous inexpressible something—which is the most per-
sonal element in the personality—what we already
know about a man from his features and his actions,
so do we seem to hear in them his voice ; what he exactly
said we do not know, but an unmistakable, unforgettable
tone strikes our ear and from our ear enters our heart.
And then we open our eyes and see this figure, this life.
Down through the ages we hear the words, ‘‘ Learn of
me,’ and we understand what they mean: to be
as Christ was, to live as Christ lived, to die as Christ
died, that is the Kingdom of God, that is eternal life.
In the nineteenth century, the ideas of pessimism
and negation of the will, which have become so common,
have been frequently applied to Christ ; but though they
fit Buddha and certain features of the Christian churches
190 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXto CENTURY

and their dogmas, Christ’s life is their denial. If the
Kingdom of God dwells in us, if it is embraced in this
life like a hidden treasure, what becomes of the sense of
pessimism ? * How can man be a wretch born only for
grief, if the divinity lies in his breast ? How can this
world be the worst of all possible worlds (see Schopen-
hauer: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. ii. chap.
xlvi.) if it contains Heaven? For Christ these were all
delusive fallacies; woe to you, He said of the learned,
‘* who shut up the Kingdom of God against men ; for ye
neither go in yourselves neither suffer ye them that would
enter to goin,” and He praised God that He had “re-
vealed to babes and sucklings what He had hidden from the
wise and prudent ”’; Christ, as one of the greatest men of
the nineteenth century has said, was “‘not wise, but
divine”’;} that is a mighty difference; and because He
was divine, Christ did not turn away from life, but to life,
This is eloquently vouched for by the impression which
Christ made and left upon those who knew Him ; they
call Him the tree of life, the bread of life, the water of
life, the light of life, the light of the world, a light from
above sent to lighten those that sit in darkness and in
the shadow of death; Christ is for them the rock, the
foundation upon which we are to build our lives, &c.
&c. Everything is positive, constructive, affirmative.
Whether Christ really brought the dead to life may be
doubted by any one who will; but such a one must
estimate all the more highly the life-giving impression
which radiated from this figure, for wherever Christ went
people believed that they saw the dead come to life and
the sick rise healed from their beds. Everywhere He
sought out the suffering, the poor, those laden with sorrow,

* I need scarcely say that I take the word pessimism, which is
capable of such a variety of interpretations, in the popular, superficial
sense of a moral frame of mind, not a philosophical cognition.

+ Diderot also, to whom one cannot attribute orthodox faith, savs
in the Encyclopédie : ‘‘ Christ ne fut point un philosophe, ce ful un Dieu.”
-

and bidding them “ weep not,” consoled them with words
of life. From inner Asia came the idea of flight from
the world to the cloister. Buddhism had not in truth in-
vented it, but gave it its greatest impulse. Christianity,
too, imitated it later, closely following the Egyptian
example. This idea had already advanced to the very
neighbourhood of the Galilean; yet where does one
find Christ preaching monastic doctrines of seclusion
from the world? Many founders of religion have im-
posed penance in respect of food upon themselves and
their disciples ; not so Christ ; He emphasises particularly
that He had not fasted like John, but had so lived that
men called Him a “glutton and a winebibber.’”’ All the
following expressions which we know so well from the
Bible—that the thoughts of men are vain, that the life
of man is vanity, he passes away like a shadow, the
work of man is vain, all is vanity—come from the Old,
not from the New Testament. Indeed such words as
those, for example, of the preacher Solomon, ‘‘ One gene-
ration passeth away and another generation cometh, but
the earth abideth for ever,” are derived from a view of
life which is directly contrary to that of Christ ; because
according to the latter Heaven and earth pass away,
while the human breast conceals in its depths the only
thing that is everlasting. It is true that Jesus Christ
offers the example of an absolute renunciation of much
that makes up the life of the greater proportion of man-
kind ; but it is done for the sake of life ; this renunciation
is the ‘conversion ’? which, we are told, leads to the
Kingdom of Heaven, and it is not outward but purely
inward. What Buddha eaches is, so to speak, a phy-
sical process, it is the actual extinction of the physical
and intellectual being ; whoever wishes to be redeemed
must take the three vows of chastity, poverty and obe-
dience. In the case of Christ we find nothing similar:
He attends marriages, He declares wedlock to be a holy
192 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

ordinance of God, and even the errors of the flesh he
judges so leniently that He Himself has not a word of
condemnation for the adulteress ; He indeed speaks of
wealth as rendering the ‘“‘ conversion ”’ of the will more
difficult—as, for example, when He says that it is more
difficult for a rich man to enter into that kingdom of God
which lies within us than for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle, but He immediately adds—and this is
the characteristic and decisive part—‘“‘ the things which
are impossible with men are possible with God.” This
is again one of those passages which cannot be invention,
for nowhere in the whole world do we find anything
like it. There had been enough and to spare of diatribes
against wealth before (one need only read the Jewish
Prophets), they were repeated later (read, for instance,
the Epistle of James, chap. 11.; according to Christ, how-
ever, wealth is a mere accessory, the possession of which
may or may not be a hindrance, for the one thing which
concerns Him is the inner and spiritual conversion.
And this it was that, in dealing with this very case,
by far the greatest of the Apostles amplified so beau-
tifully ; for while Christ had advised the rich young
man, ‘‘ Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor,”
Paul completes the saying by the remark, “‘ and though
I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and have not
charity it profiteth me nothing.’ The Buddhist who is
steering for death may be satisfied with poverty, chastity,
and obedience ; he who chooses life has other things to
think of.

And here it is necessary to call attention to one more
point, in which the living essence of Christ’s personality
and example manifests itself freshly and convincingly ;
I refer to His combativeness. The sayings of Christ on
humility and patience, His exhortation that we should
love our enemies and bless those that curse us, find almost
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 193

exact parallels in the sayings of Buddha ; but they spring
from quite a different motive. For Buddha every injustice,
endured is an extinction, for Christ it is a means of ad-:
vancing the new view of life: “ Blessed are they which
are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the’
Kingdom of God ” (that kingdom which lies hidden like a
treasure in the field of life). But if we pass to the inner
being, if that one fundamental question of the direction of
will is brought up, then we hear words of quite a different
kind: “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on
earth? I tell you, Nay, but rather division! For from
henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, two
against three, and three against two. . . . For Iam come
to stir up the son against his father, and the daughter
against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against the
mother-in-law ; and the man’s enemies shall be they of
his own household.” Not peace but the sword: that isa
voice to which we cannot shut our ears, if we wish to
understand the revelation of Christ. The life of Jesus
Christ is an open declaration of war, not against the forms
of civilisation, culture and religion, which He found around
Him—He observes the Jewish law of religion and teaches
us to give to Cesar what is Cesar’s—but certainly against
the inner spirit of mankind, against the motives which
underlie their actions, against the goal which they set
for themselves in the future life and in the present.
The coming of Christ signifies, from the point of view
of the world’s history, the coming of a new human species.
Linneus distinguished as many human species as there
are colours of skin; but a new colouring of the will goes
really deeper into the organism than a difference in the
pigment of the epidermis! And the Lord of this new
human species, the ‘new Adam,” as the Scripture
so well describes Him, will have no compromise; He
puts the choice: God or mammon. Whoever chooses
I . N
194 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

conversion, whoever obeys the warning of Christ, ‘“‘ Follow
me! ”’ must also when necessary leave father and mother,
wife and child; but he does not leave them, like the
flisciples of Buddha, to find death, but to find life. Here
is no room for pity: whom we have lost we have lost,
and with the ancient hardness of the heroic spirit not
a tear is shed over those who are gone: “‘ Let the dead
bury their dead.’’ Not every one is capable of under-
standing the word of Christ, He in fact tells us, “ Many
are called but few are chosen,’”’ and here again Paul has
given drastic expression to this fact: “ The preaching
of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness ; but unto
us which are saved it is the power of God.” So far as
outward forms go Christ has no preferences, but where
the direction of the will is concerned, whether it is directed
to the Eternal or the Temporal, whether it advances or
hinders the unfolding of that immeasurable power of
life in the heart of man, whether it aims at the quickening
of that ‘‘ Kingdom of God within us”’ or, on the other
hand, scatters for ever the one treasure of ‘‘ them that are
chosen ’’—there is with Him no question of tolerance and
never can be. In this very connection much has been
done since the eighteenth century to rob the sublime
countenance of the Son of Man of all its mighty features,
We have had represented to us as Christianity a strange
delusive picture of boundless tolerance, of universally
gentle passivity, a kind of milk-and-water religion ; in the
last few years we have actually witnessed ‘“‘ intercon-
fessional religious congresses,’’ where all the priests of the
world shake hands as brothers, and many Christians wel-
come this as particularly ‘‘ Christlike.” It may be ecclesi-
astical, it may be right and good, but Christ would never
have sent an apostle to such a congress. Either the word
of the Cross is “foolishness” or it is “a divine power”;
between the two Christ himself has torn open the yawning
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 195

gulf of “ division,” and, to prevent any possibility of its
being bridged, has drawn the flaming “‘ sword.” Who-
ever understands the revelation of Christ cannot be sur-
prised. The tolerance of Christ is that of a spirit which
soars high as Heaven above all forms that divide the
world ; a combination of these forms could not have the
slightest importance for Him—that would mean only the
rise of a new form; He, on the other hand, considers only
the “spirit and the truth.” And when Christ teaches,
“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to
him the other also, and if any man will take away thy coat
let him have thy cloak also”’—a doctrine to which His
example on the Cross gave everlasting significance—who
does not understand that this is closely related to what
follows, ‘“‘ Love your enemies, do good to them that
hate you,” and that here that inner “ conversion ’”’ is
expressed, not passively, but in the highest possible
form of living action? If I offer the impudent striker
my left cheek, I do not do so for his sake; if I love
my enemy and show him kindness, it is not for his
sake; after the conversion of the will it is simply in-
evitable and therefore I do it. The old law, an eye for
an eye, hatred for hatred, is just as natural a reflex action
as that which causes the legs of a dead frog to kick when
the nerves are stimulated. Insooth it must be a “‘ new
Adam ” who has gained such complete mastery over his
‘old Adam ” that he does not obey this impulse. How-
ever, it is not merely self-control—for if Buddha forms
the one opposite pole to Christ, the Stoic forms the other ;
but that conversion of the will, that entry into the hidden
kingdom of God, that being born again, which makes up
the sum of Christ’s example, demands a complete
conversion of the feelings. This, in fact, is the new thing.
‘Till Christ blood-vengeance was the sacred law of all
"men of the most different races; but from the Cross there
196 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

came the cry, “‘ Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do!’’ Whoever takes the divine voice
of pity for weak humanitarianism has not understood
a single feature of the advent of Christ. The voice which
here speaks comes from that Kingdom of God which is
within us; pain and death have lost their power over
it; they affect him who is born again just as little as
the stroke on the cheek or the theft of the coat ; every-
thing that drives, constrains and compels the human
half-ape — selfishness, superstition, prejudice, envy,
hatred—breaks on such a will as this like sea-foam
on a granite cliff; in face of death Christ scarcely notices
His own pain and tribulation, He sees only that men are
crucifying what is divine in them, and they are treading
under foot the seed of the Kingdom of God and scattering
the “ treasure in the field,” and thus it is that, full of pity,
He calls out, ‘‘ They know not what they do!” Search
the history of the world and you will not find a word to
equal this for sublime pride. Here speaks a discernment
that has penetrated farther than the Indian mind, here
speaks at the same time the strongest will, the surest
consciousness of self.

Just as we children of a modern age have discovered
in the whole world a power which before only from
time to time flashed forth in fleeting clouds as the light-
ning, a power hidden, invisible, perceived by no sense,
to be explained by no hypothesis, but all-present and
almighty, and in the same way as we are driven to trace
the complete transformation of our outward conditions of
ife to this power—so Christ pointed to a hidden power in
the unfathomed and unfathomable depths of the human
heart, a power capable of completely transforming
man, capable of making a sorrow-trodden wretch mighty
and blessed. The lightning had hitherto been only
a destroyer ; the power which it taught us to discover is
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 107

now the servant of peaceful work and comfort; in
tike manner the human will, from the beginning of time
the seed of all the misfortune and misery that descended
upon the human race, was henceforth to minister te
the new birth of this race, to the rise of a new humar.
species. Hence, as I have pointed out in the intro-
duction to this book, the incomparable significance of
the life of Christ for the world’s history. No political
revolution can compare with it.

From the point of view of universal history we have
every reason to put the achievement of Christ on a parallel
with the achievements of the Hellenes. In the first
chapter I have described in how far Homer, Democritus,
Plato, &c. &c. are to be considered as real ‘‘ creators,”
and I added, “then and then only is a new creature
born, then only does the macrocosm contain a micro-
cosm. The only thing that deserves to be called
culture is the daughter of such creative freedom.’’** What
Greece did for the intellect, Christ did for the moral life:
man had not a moral culture till He gave it. I should
rather say, the possibility of a moral culture; for the
motive power of culture is that inner, creative process, the
voluntary masterful conversion of the will, and this very
motive power was with rare exceptions quite overlooked ;
Christianity became an essentially historical religion,
and at the altars of its churches all the superstitions of
antiquity and of Judaism found a consecrated place of
refuge. Yet we have in the revelation of Christ the one
foundation of all moral culture, and the moral culture of
our nations is greater or smaller in proportion to the
extent to which his personality is able more or less clearly
to prevail.

It is in this connection that we can with truth assert
that the appearance of Christ upon earth has divided

© See p. 250
198 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

mankind into two classes. It created for the first time
true nobility, and indeed true nobility of birth, for only
he who is chosen can be a Christian. But at the same
time it sowed in the hearts of the chosen the seed of new
_ and bitter suffering: it separated them from father and
mother, it made them lonely wanderers among men who
‘did not understand them, it stamped them as martyrs.
And who after all is really master? Who has entirely
conquered his slavish instincts? Discord from now
onward rent the individual soul. And now that the
individual, who hitherto in the tumultuous struggle of
life had scarcely attained to a consciousness of his ‘‘ Ego,”
was awakened to an unexpectedly high conception of his
dignity, inner significance and power, how often was his
heart bound to fail him in the consciousness of his weak-
ness and unworthiness? Now and now only did life
become truly tragical. This was brought about by
man’s own free act in rising against his animal nature.
“From a perfect pupil of nature man became an imper-
fect moral being, from a good instrument a bad artist,”
says Schiller. But man will no longer be an instrument ;
and as Homer had created gods such as he wished them,
so now man rebelled against the moral tyranny of nature
and created a sublime morality such as he desired; he
would no longer obey blind impulses, beautifully con-
strained and restricted as they might be by legal para-
graphs; his own law of morals would henceforth be his
only standard. In Christ man awakens to consciousness
of his moral calling, but thereby at the same time to the
necessity of an inner struggle that is reckoned in tens
of centuries. Under the heading Philosophy in the ninth
chapter (vol. ii.), I shall show that after an anti-Christian
reaction lasting for many centuries we have with Kant
returned again to exactly the same path. The humani-
tarian Deists of the eighteenth century who turned
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 199

“ee

away from Christ thought the proper course was a “ re-
turn to nature’: on the contrary, it is emancipation
from nature, without which we can achieve nothing,
but which we are determined to make subject to our-
selves. In Art and Philosophy man becomes conscious
of himself, in contrast to nature, as an intellectual being ;
in marriage and law he becomes conscious of himself as
a social being, in Christ as a moral being. He throws
down the gauntlet for a fight in which there is no place for
humility ; whoever will follow Christ requires above all
courage, courage in its purest form, that inner courage,
which is steeled and hardened anew every day, which
proves itself not merely in the intoxicating clash of battle,
but in bearing and enduring, and in the silent, soundless
struggle of every hour in the individual breast. The ex-
ample is given. For in the advent of Christ we find the
grandest example of heroism. Moral heroism is in Him
so sublime that the much-extolled physical courage of
heroes seems as nothing; certain it is that only heroic
souls—only “‘ masters ’’—can in the true sense of the word
be Christians. And when Christ says, ‘‘ I am meek,” we
well understand that this is the meekness of the hero
sure of victory ; and when He says, “‘ I am lowly of heart,”
we know that this is not the humility of the slave, but
the humility of the master, who from the fulness of his
power bows down to the weak.

On one occasion when Jesus was addressed not simply
as Lord or Master, but as ‘‘ good master,” He rejected
the appellation: ‘‘ Why callest thou Me good: there
is none good.” This should make us think, and should
convince us that it is a mistaken view of Christ which
forces His heavenly goodness, His humility and long-
suffering, into the foreground of His character; they
do not form its basis, but are like fragrant flowers on a
strong stem. What was the basis of the world-power of
200 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIX1H CENTURY

Buddha? Not his doctrine, but his example, his heroic
achievement; it was the revelation of an almost super-
natural will-power which held and still holds millions
in its spell. But in Christ a still higher will revealed
itself; He did not need to flee from the world; He did
not avoid the beautiful, He praised the use of the
costly—which His disciples called “‘ prodigality’’; He
did not retire to the wilderness, from the wilderness He
came and entered into life, a victor, who had a message
of good news to proclaim—not death, but redemption!
I said that Buddha represented the senile decay of a
culture which had strayed into wrong paths: Christ, on
the other hand, represents the morning of a new day;
He won from the old human nature a new youth, and thus
became the God of the young, vigorous Indo-Europeans,
and under the sign of His cross there slowly arose upon
the ruins of the old world a new culture—a culture
at which we have still to toil long and laboriously until
some day in the distant future it may deserve the appella-
tion “ Christ-like.”

 

THE GALILEANS

Were I to follow my own inclination, I should close
this chapter here. But it is necessary in the interest of
many points to be discussed later to consider the person-
ality of Christ not only in its pure isolated individuality
but also in its relation to its surroundings. Otherwise
there are many important phenomena in the past and the
present which remain incomprehensible. It is by no
means a matter of indifference whether by close analysis
we have formed exact ideas as to what in this figure
is Jewish and what is not. On this point there has
been from the beginning of the Christian era to the
present day and from the lowest depths of the intellectual
world to its greatest heights, enormous confusion. Not
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 20L

merely was so sublime a figure not easy for any one to com-
prehend and to contemplate in its organic relations to
the contemporary world, but everything concurred to
dim and falsify its true features: Jewish religious idio-
syncrasy, Syrian mysticism, Egyptian asceticism, Hellenic
metaphysics, soon too Roman traditions of State and
Pontifex, as also the superstitions of the barbarians ;
every form of misunderstanding and stupidity had a
share in the work. In the nineteenth century many
have devoted themselves to the unravelling of this
tangle, but, so far as I know, no one has succeeded in
separating from the mass of facts the few essential points
and putting them clearly before the eyes of all. In fact
even honest learning does not protect us against prejudice
and partiality. We shall here try, unfortunately indeed
without the specialist’s knowledge, but also without
prejudice, to find out how far Christ belonged to His
sufroundings and employed their forms for viewing
things, how far He differed from them and rose high
as the heavens above them; only in this way can we
free His ‘personality from all accidental circumstances
and show its full autonomous dignity.

Let us therefore first ask ourselves, was Christ a Jew
by race?

The question seems at the first glance somewhat
childish. In the presence of such a personality peculiari-
ties of race shrink into nothingness. An Isaiah, however
much he may tower above his contemporaries, remains a
thorough Jew; not a word did he utter that did not
spring from the history and spirit of his people; even
where he mercilessly exposes and condemns what is
characteristically Jewish, he proves himself—especially

in this—the Jew; im the case of Christ there is not a ~~

trace of this. Take again Homer! He awakens the
Hellenic people for the first time to consciousness of
itself; to be able to do that, he had to harbour in his
202 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

own bosom the quintessence of all Hellenism. But
where is the people, which, awakened by Christ to life,
has gained for itself the precious right—of calling Christ
its own? Certainly not in Judea!—To the believer
Jesus is the Son of God, not of a human being ; for the
unbeliever it will be difficult to find a formula to charac-
terise so briefly and yet so expressively the undeniable
fact of this incomparable and inexplicable personality.
After all there are phenomena which cannot be placed
in the complex of our intellectual conceptions without
asymbol. So much in regard to the question of principle,
and in order to remove from myself all suspicion of
being taken in tow by that superficial “historical”
school, which undertakes to explain the inexplicable.
It is another matter to seek to gain all possible informa-
tion regarding the historical surroundings of a personality
for the simple purpose of obtaining a clearer and better
view of it. If we do attempt this, the answer to the
question, Was Christ a Jew? is by no means a simple
one. Tn.religion and education 1 He was so undoubtedly ;
in race—in the narrower and real sense of the word “ Jew”
—most probably nots" © Pree et
The name Galilee (from Gelil haggoyim) means “‘ district
of the heathen.”’ It seems that this part of the country,
so far removed from the intellectual centre, had never
kept itself altogether pure, even in the earliest times
when Israel was still strong and united, and it had served
as home for the tribes Naphtali and Zebulon. Of the
tribe Naphtali we are told that it was from the first
“of very mixed origin,’ and while the non-Israelitic
aborigines continued to dwell in the whole of Palestine
as before, this was the case “‘ nowhere in so great a degree
as in the northern districts.”’* There was, however,

* Wellhausen: Isvaelitische und jidische Geschichie, 3rd ed., 1897,
pp. 16 and 74. €f. too, Judges, i. 30 and 33, and further on in this
book, chap. v.

EEE
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 203

another additional circumstance. While the rest of
Palestine remained, owing to its geographical position,
isolated as it were from the world, there was, even at
the time when the Israelites took possession of the land,
a road leading from the lake of Gennesareth to Damascus,
and from that point Tyre and Sidon were more acces-
sible than Jerusalem. Thus we find that Solomon ceded
a considerable part of this district of the heathen
(as it was already called, 1 Kings, ix. 11), with twenty
cities to the King of Tyre in payment of his deliveries
of cedar- and pine-trees, as well as for the one hundred
and twenty hundredweights of gold which the latter
had contributed towards the building of the temple; so
little interest had the King of Judea in this land, half
inhabited as it was by heathens. The Tyrian King Hiram
must in fact have found it sparsely populated, as he
profited by the opportunity to settle various icreign tribes
in Galilee.* Then came, as every one knows, the division
into two kingdoms, and since that time, that is,/ since
about a thousand years before Christ (!) only now and
again, and then but for a short time, had there been any
comparatively close political connection between Galilee
and Judea, and it is only this, not community of religious —
faith, that furthers a fusion of races. In Christ’s time,
too, Galilee was politically quite separate from Judea, so
that it stood to the latter in the relation “‘ of a foreign
country ’’+ In the meantime, however, something had
happened, which must have destroyed almost completely

* Graetz: Volkstiimliche Geschichte der Juden, i. 88.

t Ibid, i. 567. Galilee and Perea had together a tetrarch who ruled
independently, while Judea, Samaria and Idumea were under a Roman
procurator. Graetz adds at this point, ‘‘ Owing to the enmity of
the Samaritans whose land lay like a wedge between Judea and
Galilee and round [sic] both, there was all the less intercourse between
the two separated districts.” I have here for simplicity refrained
from mentioning the further fact that we have no right to ideptify
the genuine “‘ Israelites’ of the North with the real “ Jews” of the
South; but c/. chap. v.
204 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

for all time the Israelitish character of this northern dis-
trict : seven hundred and twenty years before Christ (that
“is about one hundred and fifty years before the
Babylonian captivity of the Jews) the northern kingdom
of Israel was laid waste by the Assyrians, and its
population—it is said to a man, at all events toa
_large extent—deported into different and distant parts
of the Empire, where it soon fused with the rest of the
inhabitants and in consequence completely disappeared.*
At the same time strange races from remote districts
‘.were transported to Palestine to settle there. The
authorities indeed suppose (without being able to vouch
for it) that a considerable portion of the former mixed
Israelitish population had remained in the land ; at any
rate this remnant did not keep apart from the strangers,
but became merged in the medley of races.f The fate
of these districts was consequently quite different from
that of Judea. For when the Judeans at a later time
were also led into captivity, their land remained so to
speak empty, inhabited only by a few peasants who more-
over belonged to the country, so that when they returned
from the Babylonian captivity, during which they had
kept their race pure, they were able without difficulty to
maintain that purity. Galilee, on the other hand, and

* So completely disappeared that many theologians, who had
leisure, puzzled their brains even in the nineteenth century to discover
what had become of the Israelites, as they could not believe that
five-sixths of the people to whom Jehovah had promised the whole
world should have simply vanished off the face of the earth. An
ingenious brain actually arrived at the conclusion that the ten tribes
believed to be lost were the English of to-day! He was not at a loss
for the moral of this discovery either: in this way the British possess
by right five-sixths of the whole earth; the remaining sixth the
Jews. Cf. H. L.: Lost Isvael, where ave they to be found ? (Edinburgh,
6th ed., 1877). In this pamphlet another work is named, Wilsos,
Our Israelitish Origin. There are, according to these authorities,
honest Anglo-Saxons who have traced their genealogy back to Moses!

{ Robertson Smith: The Prophets of Israel (1895), p. 153, informs us
to what an extent ‘the distinguishing character of the Israelitish
nation was lost.”
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 205

the neighbouring districts had, as already mentioned, been
systematically colonised by the Assyrians, and, as it
appears from the Biblical account, from very different
parts of that gigantic empire, among others from the
northerly mountainous Syria. Then in the centuries
before the birth of Christ many Phcenicians and Greeks
had also migrated thither.* This last fact would lead one
to assume that purely Aryan blood also was transplanted
thither; at any rate it is certain that a promiscuous
mixture of the most different races took place, and that
the foreigners in all probability settled in largest numbers
in the more accessible and at the same time more fertile
Galilee. The Old Testament itself tells with artless sim-
plicity how these strangers originally came to be ac-
quainted with the worship of Jehovah (2 Kings, xvii.
24 ff.): in the depopulated land beasts of prey multi-
plied; this plague was held to be the vengeance of the
neglected “‘God of the Land” (verse 26); but there
was no one who knew how the latter should be worshipped ;
and so the colonists sent to the King of Assyria and begged
for an Israelitish priest from the captivity, and he came and
“taught them the manner of the God of the land.” In
this way the inhabitants of Northern Palestine, from
Samaria downward, ‘became Jews in faith, even those of
them who had not a drop of Israelitish blood in their veins.
In later times many genuine Jews may certainly have
settled there; but probably only as strangers in the
larger cities, for one of the most admirable characteristics
of the Jews—particularly since their return from captivity
where the clearly circumscribed term “ Jew’ first
appears as the designation of a religion (see Zechariah,
viii. 23)—was their care to keep the race pure; marriage
between Jew and Galilean was unthinkable. However,

* Albert Réville: Jésus de Nazareth, i. 416. One should remember
also that Alexander the Great had peopled neighbouring Samaria
with Macedonians after the revolt of the year 311.
206 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtx# CENTURY

even these Jewish elements in the midst of the strange
population were completely removed from Galilee not
very long before the birth of Christ! It was Simon
Tharsi, one of the Maccabeans, who, after a successfy]
campaign in Galilee against the Syrians, “ gathered
together the Jews who lived there and bade them em-
grate and settle bag and baggage in Judea.”* More-
over the prejudice against Galilee remained so strong
among the Jews that, when Herod Antipas during
Christ’s youth had built the city of Tiberias and tried to
get Jews to settle there, neither promises nor threats
were of any avail.t There is, accordingly, as we see, not
the slightest foundation for the supposition that Christ’s
parents were of Jewish descent.

In the further course of historical development an
event took place which has many parallels in history:
among the inhabitants of the more southerly Samaria
(which directly bordered on Judea)—a people which beyond
doubt was much more closely related to the real Jews
by blood and intercourse than the Galileans were—the
North-Israelitish tradition of hatred and jealousy of the
Jews was kept up; the Samaritans did not recognise
the ecclesiastical supremacy of Jerusalem and were
therefore, as being ‘‘ heterodox,” so hated by the Jews
that no kind of intercourse with them was permitted:
not even a piece of bread could the faithful take from
their hand ; that was considered as great a sin as eating
pork.t The Galileans, on the other hand, who were to
the Jews simply “ foreigners,” and as such of course
despised and excluded from many religious observances,
were yet strictly orthodox and frequently fanatical

* Graetz, as above, i: 400. See also 1 Maccabees, v. 23.

+ Graetz, as above, i. 568. Compare Josephus, Book XVIIL,
shap. iii.

t Quoted by Renan from the Mishna: s. Vie de Jésus, 231d
edition, p. 242.
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 207

“Jews.” To see in that a proof of descent is absurd.
It is just the same as if one were to identify the genuinely
Slav population of Bosnia or the purest Indo-Aryans
of Afghanistan ethnologically with the “ Turks,’ because
they are strict Mohammedans, much more pious and
fanatical than the genuine Osmans. The term Jew
1s applicable to a definite, remarkably pure race, and only
in a secondary and very inexact sense to the members
of a religious community. It is moreover far from correct
to identify the term “ Jew” with the term ‘ Semite,”’
as has so frequently been done of late years; the national
character of the Arabs, for instance, is quite different
from that of the Jews. I return to this point in the
fifth chapter; in the meantime, I must point out that
the national character of the Galileans was essentially
different from that of the Jews. Open any history
of the Jews that you will, that of Ewald or Graetz or
Renan, everywhere you will find that in character the
Galileans present a direct contrast to the rest of the
inhabitants of Palestine ; they are described as hot-heads,
energetic idealists, men of action. In the long struggles
with Rome, before and after the time of Christ, the
Galileans are mostly the ringleaders—an element which
death alone could overcome. While the great colonies
of genuine Jews in Rome and Alexandria lived on ex-
cellent terms with the heathen Empire, where they
enjoyed great prosperity as interpreters of dreams,*
dealers in second-hand goods, pedlars, money-lenders,
actors, law-agents, merchants, teachers, &c., in distant
Galilee Hezekiah ventured, even in the lifetime of Cesar,
to raise the standard of religious revolt. He was followed
by the famous Judas the Galilean with the motto, “ God
alone is master, death does not matter, freedom is all
* Juvenal says:

Aere minuto
Qualiacunque voles Judzi somnia vendunt : i J
208 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

in all!’”’* In Galilee was formed the Sicarian party
(¢.e., men of the knife), not unlike the Indian Thugs
of to-day; their most influential leader, the Galilean
Menaham, in Nero’s time destroyed the Roman garri-
son of Jerusalem, and as a reward the Jews themselves
executed him, under the pretext that he wished to pro-
claim himself the Messias; the sons of Judas also were
crucified as politically dangerous revolutionaries (and
that too by a Jewish procurator); John of Giscala,
a city on the extreme northern boundary of Galilee,
headed the desperate defence of Jerusalem against Titus
—and the series of Galilean heroes was completed by
Eleazar, who years after the destruction of Jerusalem
maintained with a small troop a fortified position in the
mountains, where he and his followers, when the last hope
was lost, killed first their wives and children and then
themselves.t In these things, as every one will probably
admit, a peculiar, distinct national character reveals
itself. There are many reports too of the special beauty
of the women of Galilee; moreover, the Christians
_ of the first centuries speak of their great kindness, and
contrast their friendliness to those of a different faith
with the haughty contemptuous treatment they met with
at the hands of genuine Jewesses. Their peculiar national
character unmistakably betrayed itself in another way,
viz., their language. In Judea and the neighbouring
lands Aramaic was spoken at the time of Christ ; Hebrew
was already a dead language, preserved only in the sacred
writings. We are now informed that the Galileans
spoke so peculiar and strange a dialect of Aramaic that
one recognised them from the first word ; “ thy language
betrayeth thee’ the servants of the High Priest cry to

* Mommsen, Romische Geschichte, v. 515:

+ Later, too, the inhabitants of Galilee were a peculiar race distin-
guished for strength and courage, as is proved by their taking part
in the campaign under the Persian Scharbarza and in the taking of
Jerusalem in the year 614,
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 209

Peter.* The acquisition of Hebrew is said to have been
utterly impossible to them, the gutturals especially
presenting insuperable difficulties, so that they could
not be allowed, for example, to pray before the people,
as their “wretched accent made every one laugh.’’f
This fact points to a physical difference in the form
of the larynx and would alone lead us to suppose that a
strong admixture of non-Semitic blood had taken place ;
for the profusion of gutturals and facility in using them
are features common to all Semites.f

I have thought it necessary to enter with some fulness
into this question—-was Christ a Jew in race ?-—because
in not a single work have I found the facts that pertain
to it clearly put together. Even in an objectively
scientific work like that of Albert Réville,§ which is
influenced by no theological motives—Réville is the
well-known Professor of Comparative Religions at the
Collége de France—the ward Jew is sometimes used to
signify the Jewish race, sometimes the Jewish religion.

* As a matter of fact sufficient evidence af the difference between
the Galileans and the real Jews could be gathered from the gospels.
In John especially “the Jews” are always spoken of as something
alien, and Jews on their part exclaim, ‘‘Out of Galilee ariseth no
prophet’’ (7, 52). :

+ Cf., for example, Graetz, as above, i. 975; With regard to
the peculiarity of the speech of the Galileans and their incapacity to
pronounce the Semitic gutturals properly, see Renan : Langues sémitiques,
5th ed., p. 230.

+ See, for example, the comparative table in Max Miller: Sctence
of Language, 9th ed., p. 169, and in each separate volume of the
Sacred Books of the East. The Sanscrit language has only six genuine
“ gutturals,” the Hebrew ten; most striking, however, is the difference
in the guttural aspirate h, for which the Indo-Teutonic languages from
time immemorial have known only one sound, the Semitic, on the other
hand, five different sounds. Again, we find in Sanscrit seven different
lingual consonants, in Hebrew only two. How exceedingly difficult
it is for such inherited linguistic marks of race to disappear alto-
gether is well known to us all through the example of the Jews
living among us; a perfect mastery of the lingual sounds is just as
impossible for them as the mastery of the gutturals for us.

§ Jésus de Nazareth, études critiques sur les antécédents de l'histoire
évangélique et la vie de Jésus, vol. ile 18975

1 oO
210 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

We read, for example (i. 416), ‘“‘ Galilee was chiefly in-
habited by Jews, but Syrian, Phcenician and Greek
heathens also made their home there.” Here accordingly
Jew means one who worships the God of the land of Judea,
no matter of what race he may claim to be. On the very
next page, however, he speaks of an ‘“‘ Aryan race,” in
opposition to a “‘ Jewish nation”; here consequently
Jew denotes a definite, limited race which has kept itself
pure for centuries. And now follows the profound re-
mark: \“ The question whether Christ is of Aryan descent
‘\isidle. A man belongs to the nation in whose midst he
. has grown up.” This is what people called “science” in
the year of grace 1896! To think that at the close of the
nineteenth century a professor could still be ignorant that
‘the form of the head and the structure of the brain
exercise quite decisive influence upon the form and
structure of the thoughts, so that the influence of the
surroundings, however great it may be estimated to be,
is yet by this initial fact of the physical tendencies con-
fined to definite capacities and possibilities, in other words,
has definite paths marked out for it to follow! To think
that he could fail to know that the shape of the skull in
particular is one of those characteristics which are in-
herited with ineradicable persistency, so that races are
distinguished by craniological measurements, and, in the
case of mixed races, the original elements which occur
by atavism become still manifest to the investigator !
He could believe that the so-called soul has its abode
outside the body, and leads the latter like a puppet by the
nose. O Middle Ages! when will your night leave us?
When will men understand that form is not an unim-
portant accident, a mere chance, but an expression of
the innermost being? that in this very point the two
worlds, the inner and the outer, the visible and the invi-
-» sible, touch ? ‘I have spoken of the human personality ae
| the mysterium magnum of existence ; now this inscrutable

uo wonder shows itself in its visible fort to the eye and
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 2IIr

the investigating understanding. And exactly as the
possible forms of a building are determined and limited
inessential points by the nature of the building material,
so the possible form of a human being, his inner and his
outer, are defined in decisively essential points by the
inherited material of which this new personality is
composed. It certainly may happen that too much
importance is attached to the idea of race: we detract
thereby from the autonomy of personality and run the
risk of undervaluing the great power of ideas; besides,
this whole question of race is infinitely more complicated
than the layman imagines; it belongs wholly to the
sphere of anthropological anatomy and cannot be solved
by any dicta of the authorities on language and history.
Yet it will not do simply to put race aside as a negligible
quantity; still less will it do to proclaim anything
directly false about race and to let such an historical lie
erystallise into an indisputable dogma. Whoever makes
the assertion that Christ was a Jew is either ignorant
or insincere: ignorant when he confuses religion and
race, insincere when he knows the history of Galilee
and partly conceals, partly distorts the very entangled facts
in favour of his religious prejudices or, it may be, to
curry favour with the Jews.* The probability that Christ
was no Jew, that He had not a drop of genuinely Jewish

* How is one, for example, to explain the fact that Renan, who in
his Vie de Jésus, published in 1863, says it is impossible even to make
suppositions about the race to which Christ by blood belonged (see
chap. ii.),in the fifth volume of his Histoive du Peuple d’Isvaél, finished
in 1891, makes the categorical assertion, ‘‘ Jésus était un Juif,” and
attacks with unwonted bitterness those who dare doubt the fact ?
Is it to be supposed that the Alidance Isvaélite, with which Renan was
so closely connected in the last years of his life, had not had something
to do with this? In the nineteenth century we have heard so much
fine talk about the freedom of speech, the freedom of science, &c.; in
reality, however, we have been worse enslaved than in the eighteenth
century; for in addition to the tyrants who have really never been
disarmed, new and worse ones have arisen. The former tyranny could,
with all its bitter injustice, strengthen the character: the new, which
is a tyranny proceeding from and aiming at money, degrades to the
lowest depth of bondage.
212 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

blood in his veins, is so great that it is almost equivalent
toacertainty. To what race did He belong? This is a
question that cannot be answered at all. Since the
land lay between Phcenicia and Syria, which in its south-
western portion was strongly imbued with Semitic blood,
and in addition had never been quite cleared of its former
mixed-Israelitish (but at no time Jewish) population, the
probability of a descent principally Semitic is very great.
‘But whoever has even casually glanced at the race-babel
of the Assyrian empire* and then learns that colonists
from all parts of this empire settled in that former home
of Israel, will be baffled by the question. It is indeed
possible that in some of these groups of colonists there
prevailed a tradition of marrying among themselves, where-
by a tribe would have kept itself pure; that this, how-
ever, should have been kept up more than five hundred
years is almost unthinkable ; the very conversion to the
Jewish faith had gradually obliterated those tribal differ-
ences which at first had been maintained by religious
customs brought from their old homes (2 Kings, xvii,
29). We hear that in later times Greeks too migrated
thither ; in any case they belonged to the poorest classes,
and accepted immediately the ‘‘ god of the country”!
Only one assertion can therefore be made on a sound
historical basis: in that whole region there was only one
single pure race, a race which by painfully scrupulous
measures. protected itself from all mingling with other
nations—the Jewish; that Jesus Christ did not belong
to it can be regarded as certain. Every further state-
ment is hypothetical.

This result, though essentially negative, is of great
value; it means an important cox*tibution to the right
knowledge of the personality of Christ, and at the same
time to the understanding of its effectiveness up to the
present day as well as to the disentanglement of the

* Cf; Hugo Winckler: Die Volker Vordevasiens, 1900.
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 213

wildly confused clue of contradictory ideas and false
conceptions, which has wound itself around the simple,
transparent truth. It is time to go deeper. The out-
ward connection is less important than the inner; now
and now only do we come to the decisive question :
how far does Christ as a moral fact belong to Judaism
and how far does He not? To fix this once for all, we
shall have to make a series of important distinctions,
for which I beg the fullest attention of the reader.

RELIGION

Christ is, quite generally—indeed, perhaps universally (
—represented as the perfecter of Judaism, that is to say,’ :
of the religious ideas of the Jews.* Even the orthodox
Jews, though they cannot exactly honour Him as the
perfecter, behold in Him an offshoot from their tree and
proudly regard all Christianity as an appendix to Judaism.
That, I am firmly convinced, is a mistake; it is an
‘Inherited delusion, one of those opinions that we drink
in with our mother’s milk and about which in consequence
the free-thinker never comes to his senses any more than
the strictly orthodox Churchman. Certainly Christ stood
in direct relation to Judaism, and the influence of Juda-
ism, in the first place upon the moulding of His person-
ality and in a still higher degree upon the development
and history of Christianity is so great, definite and essen-
tial, that every attempt to deny it must lead to nonsensical
results ; but this influence is only in the smallest degree
a religious one. Therein lies the heart of the error.

We are accustomed to regard the Jewish people as the
religious people above all others: as a matter of fact in

* The great legal authority Jhering is a praiseworthy exception.
In his Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropder, p. 300, he says: ‘“‘ The doctrine
of Christ did not spring from his native soil, Christianity is rather an

Overcoming of Judaism; there is even in his origin something of the
Aryan in Christ.”
214 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

comparison with the Indo-European races it is quite stunted
in its religious growth. In this respect what Darwin calls
“arrest of development” has taken place in the case of
the Jews, an arrest of the growth of the faculties, a dying
in the bud. Moreover'all the branches of the Semitic
stem, though otherwise rich in talents, were extra-
ordinarily poor in religious instinct; this is the “ hard-
heartedness” of which the more important men among
them constantly complain.* How different the Aryan!
Even the oldest documents (which go back far beyond
fhe Jewish) present him to us as earnestly following a
*ague impulse which forces him to investigate in his
wa heart. He is joyous, full of animal spirits, ambitious,
“thoughtless, he drinks and gambles, he hunts and robs;
but suddenly he begins to think: the great riddle of
existence holds him absolutely spellbound, not, how-
ever, as a purely rationalistic problem—whence is this
world ? whence came 1? questions to which a purely
logical and therefore unsatisfactory answer would re-
quire to be given—but as a direct compelling need of
life. Not to understand, but to be, that is the point to
which he is impelled. Not the past with its litany of
cause and effect, but the present, the everlasting present
holds his astonished mind spellbound. And he feels
that it is only when he has bridged the gulf between
himself and all that surrounds him, when he recognises
himself—the one thing that he directly knows—in every
phenomenon and finds again every phenomenon in
himself, when he has, so to speak, put the world and
himself in harmony, that he can hope to listen with his
own ear to the weaving of the everlasting work and
hear in his own heart the mysterious music of existence.
And in order that he may find this harmony, he utters
* ‘The Semites have much superstition, but little religion,” says

Robertson Smith, one of the greatest authorities. (See The Prophets
of Israel, p. 33.)
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 215

his own song, tries it in all tones, practises all melodies ;
then he listens with reverence. And not unanswered
is his call: he hears mysterious voices; all nature be-
comes alive, everything in her that is related to man begins
to stir. He sinks in reverence upon his knees, does not
fancy that he is wise, does not believe that he knows the
origin and finality of the world, yet has faint forebodings
of a loftier vocation, discovers in himself the germ of
immeasurable destinies, “the seed of immortality.”
This is, however, no mere dream, but a living conviction,
a faith, and like everything living, it in its turn begets life,
The heroes of his race and his holy men he sees as “ super-
men” (as Goethe says) hovering high above the earth;
he wills to be like them, for he too is impelled onward
and upward, and now he knows from what a deep inner
well they drew the strength to be great. Now this
glance into the unfathomable depths of his own soul,
this longing to soar upwards, this is religion. Religion
has primarily nothing to do either with superstition or
with morals; it is a state of mind. And because the
religious man is in direct contact with a world beyond
reason, he is thinker and poet: he appears consciously as
a creator; he toils unremittingly at the noble Sisyphus
work of giving visible shape to the Invisible, of making
the Unthinkable capable of being thought ;* wenever find
with him a hard and fast chronological cosmogony and
theogony, he has inherited too lively a feeling of the Infinite
for that ; his conceptions remain in flux and never grow
rigid ; old ones are replaced by new ; gods, honoured in
one century, are in another scarcely known by name.
Yet the great facts of knowledge, once firmly acquired, are

 

* Herder says well, ‘“‘ Man alone is in opposition to himself and the
earth ; for the most fully developed creature among all her organisations
is at the same time the least developed in his own new capacity. ...
He represents therefore two worlds at once and this causes the apparent
duplicity of his being.”’—Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit, Teil I.,
Buch V., Abschnitt 6.
216 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtnH CENTURY

never again lost, and more than all that fundamental
truth which the Rigveda centuries and centuries before
Christ tried thus to express, ‘‘ The root of existence,
the wise found in the heart ”—a conviction which in the
nineteenth century has been almost identically expressed
by Goethe :

*Ist nicht der Kern der Natur
Menschen im Herzen?

That is religion !—Now this very tendency, this state of
mind, ‘this instinct, ‘“‘ to seek the core of nature
in the heart,” the Jews lack to a startling degree.
They are born rationalists. Reason is strong in them,
the will enormously developed, their imaginative and
—creative powers, on the other hand, peculiarly limited.
Their scanty mythically religious conceptions, indeed
even their commandments, customs and ordinances of
worship, they borrowed without exception from abroad,
they reduced everything to a minimum t+ which they
‘kept rigidly unaltered; the creative element, the real
‘inner life is almost totally wanting in them ; at the best
it bears, in relation to the infinitely rich religious life
of the Aryans, which includes all the highest thought
and poetical invention of these peoples, like the lingual
sounds referred to above, a ratio of 2 to 7. Consider
what a luxuriant growth of magnificent religious concep-
tions and ideas, and in addition, what art and philosophy,
thanks to the Greeks and Teutonic races, sprang up
upon the soil of Christianity and then ask with what
images and thoughts the so-called religious nation of
the Jews has in the same space of time enriched mankind !
Spinoza’s Geometric Ethics (a false, still-born adaptation
of a brilliant and pregnant thought of Descartes) seems
to me in reality the most cruel mockery of the Talmud

* Is not the core of nature
In the heart of man?

¢ For details, see chap. vi
&

THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 21g

morality and has in any case still less to do with religion
than the Ten Commandments of Moses, which were prob-
ably derived from Egypt.* No, the power of Judaism
which commands respect lies in quite another sphere; I
shall speak of it immediately.

But how then was it possible to let our judgment |
be so befogged as to consider the Jews a religious —
people ?

In the first place it was the Jews themselves, who from
time immemorial assured us with the greatest vehemence
and volubility, that they were “‘God’s people”; even
a free-thinking Jew like the philosopher Philo makes
the bold assertion that the Israelites alone were “ men
in the true sense”; the good stupid Indo-Teutonic
peoples believed them. But how difficult it became for
them to do so is proved by the course of history and the
statements of all their most important men. This
credulity was only rendered possible by the Christian
interpreters of the Script making the whole history of
Judah a Theodicy, in which the crucifixion of Christ forms
the culminating point. Even Schiller (Die Sendung Moses)
seems to think that Providence broke up the Jewish nation,
as soon as it had accomplished the work given it to
do! Here the authorities overlooked the telling fact that
Judaism paid not the slightest attention to the existence
of Christ, that the oldest Jewish historians do not once
mention His name; and to this has now to be added the
fact that this peculiar people after two thousand years
still lives and manifests great prosperity ; never, not even
in Alexandria, has the lot of the Jews been so bright as
itisto-day. Finally a third prejudice, derived fundament-'
ally from the philosophic workshops of Greece, had some
influence ; according to it monotheism, 7.¢., the idea of a
single inseparable God, was supposed to be the symptom

* See chap. cxxv. of the Book of the Dead:
ft Quoted by Graetz, as above, i. 634, without indication of the passage,
218 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

of a higher religion; that is altogether a rationalistic
conclusion ; arithmetic has nothing to do with religion ;
monotheism can signify an impoverishment as well as an
ennobling of religious life. Besides, two objections may
be urged against this fatal prejudice, which has con-
tributed perhaps more than anything else to the delusion
of a religious superiority of the Jews; in the first place,
the fact that the Jews, as long as they formed a nation

_and their religion still possessed a spark of fresh life,
were not monotheists but polytheists, for whom every

little land and every little tribe had its own God ; secondly,
that the Indo-Europeans by purely religious ways had
attained to conceptions of an individual Divinity that were
infinitely more sublime than the painfully stunted idea
which the Jews had formed of the Creator of the world.*

* I do not require to adduce evidence of the polytheism of the
Jews; one finds it in every scientific work and besides on every other
page of the Old Testament; see chap. v. Even in the Psalms “all
the Gods” are called upon to worship Jehovah; Jehovah is only in so
far the ‘‘one God” for later Jews, as the Jews (as Philo just told us) are
“‘the only men in the real sense.” Robertson Smith, whose History of
the Semites is regarded as a scientific and fundamental book, testifies
that monotheism did not proceed from an original religious tendency
of the Semitic spirit, but is essentially a political result !! (See p. 74
of the work quoted.)—With regard to the monotheism of the Indo-
Europeans I make the following brief remarks. The Brahman of the
Indian philosophers is beyond doubt the greatest religious thought
ever conceived ; with regard to the pure monotheism of the Persians we
can obtain information in Darmesteter (The Zend-Avesta, I. lxxxii. ff.);
the Greek had however been on the same path, as Ernst Curtius testifies,
“TI have learned much that is new, particularly what a strong-
hold of the monotheistic view of God Olympia was and what a moral
world-power the Zeus of Phidias has been’ (Letter to Gelzer of Jan.
I, 1896, published in the Deutsche Revue, 1897, p. 241). Besides we can
refer here to the best of all witnesses. The Apostle Paul says (Romans,
i. 21): ‘‘The Romans knew that there is one God”; and the church-
father Augustine shows, in the eleventh chapter of the 4th book of
his De civitate Dez, that according to the views of the educated Romans
of his time, the magni doctores paganorum, Jupiter was the one and only
God, while the other divinities only demonstrated some of his “‘ virtutes.”
Augustine employed the view which was already prevalent, to make
it clear to the heathens that it would be no trouble for them to adopt
the belief in a single God and to give up the others. Hee si ita sint,
quid perderent si unum Deum colerent prudentiore compendio? (the
*-segste

THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 210

I shall have repeated occasion to return to these
questions, particularly in the sections dealing with the
entry of the Jews into western history and with the
origin of the Christian Church. Jn the meantime I hope
I have succeeded in removing to some extent the pre-
conceived opinion of the special religiousness of Juda-
ism. I think the reader of the orthodox Christian
Neander will henceforth shake his head sceptically when
he finds the assertion that the advent of Christ forms the
{central point’ of the religious life of the Jews, that

recommendation to believe in a single God “ because it simplifies
matters’ is a touching feature of the golden childhood of the Christian
Church !):; And what Augustine demonstrates in the case of the
educated heathen, Tertullian asserts of the uneducated people in
general. ‘‘ Everybody,” he says, ‘‘ believes only in a single God, and
one never hears the Gods invoked in the plural, but only as ‘ Great
God’! ‘Good God’! ‘As God will’! ‘God be with you’! ‘God
bless you’!” This Tertullian regards as the evidence of a funda-
mentally monotheistic soul: ‘‘O testimonium anime naturaliter
Christiane !”” (A pologeticus, xvii). [Giordano Bruno in his Spaccio
de la bestia trionfante, ed. Lagarde, p. 532, has some beautiful remarks
on the monotheism of the ancients.]—In order that in a matter of
such significance nothing may remain obscure, I must add that Curtius,
Paul, Augustine and Tertullian are all four labouring under a thorough
delusion, when they see in these things a proof of monotheism in the
sense of Semitic materialism ; their judgment is here dimmed by the
influence of Christian ideas. Theconception ‘‘ the Divine’”’ which we see
da the Sanscrit neuter Brahman and in the Greek neuter Qéov, as well
as in the German neuter Gott, which only at a later time in consequence
of Christian influence was regarded as a masculine (see Kluge’s Ety-
mologisches Woérterbuch), cannot be identified at all with the persona}
world-creator of the Jews. In this case one can say of all the Aryans
who are not influenced by the Semitic spirit what Professor Erwin
Rohde proves for the Hellenes: ‘‘ The view that the Greeks had a
tendency to monotheism (in the Jewish sense) is based on a wrong
interpretation. : . . It is not a unity of the divine person, but a
uniformity of divine entity, a divinity living uniformly in many
Gods, something universally divine in the presence of which the
Greek stands when he enters into religious contact with the Gods’’
(Die Religion dey Griechen in the Bayreuther Blatter, 1895, p: 213)}4
Very characteristic are the words of Luther in this connection, ‘‘ In
creation and in works (to reckon from without to the creature) we
Christians are at one with the Turks; for we say too that there is not
more than one single God. But we say, this is not enough, that we
only believe that there is one single God.”
e
220 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

“in the whole organism of this religion and people’s
history it was of inner necessity determined,” &c. &c.*
As for the oratorical flourishes of the free-thinker
Renan: Le Christianisme est le chef-d’euvre du juda-
tsme, sa gloire, le résumé de son évolution.... Jésus
est tout entier dans Isaie, &c.,t he will smile over them
with just a shade of indignation; and I fear he will
burst into Homeric laughter when the orthodox Jew
Graetz assures him that the teaching of Christ is the
“old Jewish doctrine in a new dress,” that “ the time
had now come when the fundamental truths of Judaism
. .. the wealth of lofty thoughts concerning God and
a holy life for the individual and the community should
flow in upon the emptiness of the rest of the world, filling
it with a rich endowment.’’t

* Allgemeine Geschichte dey christlichen Religion, 4th ed. i. 46.

t Histotve du Peuple d’Isvaél, v. 415, ii. 539, &c. The enormity of
the assertion in regard to Isaiah becomes clear from the fact that Renan
himself describes and praises this prophet as a “‘ littérateur”’ anda
“‘journaliste,”’ and that he proves in detail what a purely political
rile this important man played. ‘‘ Not a line from his pen, which
was not in the service of a question of the day or an interest of the
moment’? (ii. 481). And we are to believe that in this very man the
whole personality of Jesus Christ is inherent? It is quite as un-
justifiable (unfortunately in others as well as in Renan) to quote single
verses from Isaiah, to make it appear as if Judaism had aimed at a
universal religion. Thus xlix. 6, is quoted, where Jehovah says to
Israel, ‘I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou
mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth,” and nothing is said
of the fact that in the course of the chapter the explanation is given
that the Gentiles shall become the slaves of the Jews and their Kings and
Princesses shall ‘‘ bow down to them with their face toward the earth”
and “lick up the dust of their feet.’ And this we are to regard as a
sublime universal religion! Exactly the same is the case with the
constantly quoted chapter lx. where we find first the words, ‘‘ The
Gentiles shall come to thy light,’ but afterwards with an honesty for
which one is thankful, ‘‘ The nation and kingdom that will not serve
thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted’’! More-
ever the Gentiles are told in this passage to bring all their gold and
treasures to Jerusalem, for the Jews shall ‘‘ inherit the land for ever.”
To think of any one venturing to put such political pamphleteering
on a parallel with the teaching of Christ !

+t As above, i. 570. It has often been asserted that the Jews have
little sense of humour: that seems to be true, at least of individuals ;
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 221

CHRIST NOT A JEW

Whoever wishes to see the revelation of Christ must
passionately tear this darkest of veils from his eyes. His ,
advent is not the perfecting of the Jewish religion but its »
negation. It was in the very place where feelings played
the least part in religious conceptions that a new
religious ideal appeared, which—unlike the other great
attempts further to explain the inner life, by thoughts or
by images—laid the whole burthen of this “ life in spirit
and in truth’? upon the feelings. The relation to the
Jewish religion could at most be regarded as a reaction ;
the feelings are, as we have said, the fountain head of all
genuine religion ; this spring which the Jews had well-
nigh choked with their formalism and hard-hearted
rationalism Christ opened up. Few things let us see so
deeply into the divine heart of Christ as His attitude
towards the Jewish religious ordinances. He observed
them, but without zeal and without laying any stress
upon them; at best they are but a vessel, which, holding
nothing, would remain empty; and as soon as an ordi-
nance bars His road, He breaks it without the least scruple,
but at the same time calmly and without anger: for
what has all this to do with religion? ‘‘ Man* is Lord

just imagine the “‘ wealth”’ of these crassly ignorant unimaginative scribes
and the “‘ emptiness” of the Hellenes! Graetz has not much regard for
the personality of Christ; the highest appreciation to which he deigns to
rise is as follows: ‘‘ Jesus may also have possessed a sympathetic nature
that won hearts, whereby His words could make an impression”? (i. 576).
The learned Professor of Breslau regards the crucifixion as the result
of a ‘“‘ misunderstanding.”” With regard to the Jews who afterwards
went over to Christianity Graetz is of opinion that it was done for
their material advantages and because the belief in the Crucified One
“was taken into the bargain as something unessential” (ii. 30). Is
that still true? We knew from the Old Testament that the covenant
with Jehovah was a contract with obligations on both sides, but what
can be “ bargained”’ in regard to Christ I cannot understand.

* The following information about the expression ‘“‘son of man”
is important: ‘‘ The Messianic interpretation of the expression ‘son
222 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

also of the Sabbath”’ : for the Jew Jehovah alone had been
Lord—man his slave. With regard to the Jewish laws in
relation to food (so important a point in their religion
that the quarrel with regard to its obligatoriness continued
on into the early Christian times) Christ says: ‘‘ Not that
which goeth into the mouth defileth a man but that
which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
For those things which proceed out of the mouth come
forth from the heart: and they defile the man.’”’* In
this connection consider too how Christ uses Holy
Scripture. He speaks of it with reverence but without
fanaticism. It is indeed very remarkable how He makes
Scripture serve His purpose; over it too He feels Himself
“Lord ” and transforms it, when necessary, into its oppo-
site. His doctrine is that the “ whole law and the pro-
phets ’”? may be summed up in the one command: Love
God and thy neighbour. That sounds almost like sublime
irony, especially when we consider that Christ on this
occasion never once mentions ‘‘ the fear of God,” which
(and not the love of God) forms the basis of the whole
Jewish religion. ‘‘ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom,” sings the Psalmist. ‘‘ Hide thee in the dust
for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty,”
Isaiah calls to the Israelites, and even Jeremiah seemed
to have forgotten that there is a law according to which
man “shall love God with all his heart, with all his
soul, with all his strength, and with all his mind,’’t
of man’ originated from the Greek translators of the Gospel. As
Jesus spoke Aramaic, He said not 6 vids réuv dvOpmmov but barnascha,
But that means man and nothing more; the Arameans had no other
expression for the idea” (Wellhausen: Isvaelitische und jidische
Geschichte, 3rd ed. p. 381).

* “Tf man is impure, he is so because he speaks what is untrue,”
said the sacrificial ordinances of the Aryan Indians, one thousand year
before Christ (Satapatha-Brahmana), Ist verse of the 1st division of
the 1st book.

+ In the fifth book of Moses (Deuteronomy vi. 5) are to be found

words similar to these quoted from Christ’s sayings (from Matthew
xxii. 37), but—we must look at the context! Before the command-
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 223

and had represented Jehovah as,saying to His people, “I
will put my fearin their hearts that they shall not depart
from me; they shall fear me for ever”’ ; it is only when the
Jews fear Him that He “will not turn away from them
to do them good,” &c. We find that Christ also fre-
quently changes the meaning of the words of Scripture
in a similar manner. Now if we see on the one hand a
God of mercy and on the other a hard-hearted Jehovah,*
on the one hand the doctrine which teaches us to love our
“heavenly Father” with all our heart and on the other
“servants,” who are enjoined “ to fear the lord” as their

ment to love (to our mind a peculiar conception—to love by command)
stands as the first and most important commandment (verse 2), ‘‘ Thou
shalt fear the Lord, thy God, to keep all his statutes and his command-
ments’ ; the commandment to love is only one among other command-
ments which the Jew shall observe and immediately after it comes the
reward for this love (verse 10 ff.): ‘‘I shall give thee great and goodly
cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things
which thou filledst not, and wells digged which thou diggedst not,
vineyards and olive-trees, which thou plantedst not, &c.”” That kind
of love may be compared to the love which underlies so many marriages
at the present day! In any case the “ love of one’s neighbour ”’ would
appear in a peculiar light, if one did not know that according to the
Jewish law only the Jew is a‘ neighbour ” of the Jew; asis expressed
in the same place, chap. vii. 16, ‘‘ Thou shalt consume all the peoples
which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee!’’ This commentary to the
commandment to ‘love one’s neighbour ” makes every further remark
superfluous. But in order that no one may be in doubt as to what the
Jews later meant by the command to love God with the whole heart,
T shall quote the commentary of the Talmud (Jomah, Div. 8) to that
part of the law, Deuteronomy, vi. 5: ‘‘ The teaching of this is: thy
behaviour shall be such that the name of God shall be loved through you;
man shall in fact occupy himself with the study of Holy Scripture and
of the Mishna and have intercourse with learned and wise men; his
language shall be gentle, his other conduct proper, and in commerce
and business with his fellow men he shall strive after honesty and
uprightness. What will people then say? Hail to this man who has
devoted himself to the study of the sacred doctrine!’’ In the book
Sota of the Jerusalem Talmud [v. 5) one finds a somewhat more
reasonable but no less prosaic commentary.—This is the orthodox
Jewish interpretation of the commandment, “ Thou shalt love the
Lord with all thy heart”?! Is it not the most unworthy playing with
words to assert that Christ taught the same doctrine as the Thora?

* The orthodox Jew Montefiore, Religion of the Ancient Hebrews
(1893), p. 442, admits that the thought, ‘‘ God is love,”’ does not occur
in any purely Hebrew work of any time.
224 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

first duty,* we may well ask what meaning can there be
in characterising the one personal philosophy as the work,
as the perfection of the other? This is sophistry, not
truth. Christ himself has said in plain words, ‘ Who-
éver is not with me is against me”’ ; no fact in the world
is so completely against Him as the Jewish religion,
indeed the whole Jewish conception of religion—from
earliest times to the present day.
And yet the Jewish religion has in this connection formed
a fine soil, better than any other, for the growth of a new
religious ideal, that is, for a new conception of God.
What meant poverty for others became in fact for
Christ a source of the richest gifts. For example, the
' fearful, to us almost inconceivable, dreariness of Jewish
life—without art, without philosophy, without science
—from which the more gifted Jews fled in crowds to
foreign parts, was an absolutely indispensable element
‘for his simple, holy life. The Jewish life offered almost
nothing—nothing but the family life—to the feelings of
the individual. And thus the richest mind that ever
lived could sink into itself, and find nourishment only
in its own inmost depths. “Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Perhaps
it was only in these dreary surroundings that it was
possible to discover that conversion of will as the first
step towards a new ideal of mankind; only here where
the “ Lord of hosts ” ruled without pity, that the heavenly
presentiment God is love could be elevated to a certainty.
The following is, however, the most important point
in this discussion.
The peculiar mentai characteristic of the Jews, their
* Montefiore and others dispute the statement that the relation of
Israel to Jehovah was that of servants to their master, but Scripture
says so clearly in many places, e.g., Leviticus xxv. 55: ‘‘ The children
of Israel are servants, they are my servants whom I brought forth out

of the land of Egypt,” and the literal translation of the Hebrew text
would be slave! (Cf. the literal translation by Louis Segond.)

7
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 425

lack of imagination, brought about by the tyrannical
predominance of the will, had led them to a strange
abstract materialism. Being materialists, the Jews »
were most prone, like all Semites, to crass idolatry ; we
see them ever and anon setting up images and bowing
down before them ; the moral struggle which their great
men for centuries waged against it is an heroic page in
the history of the human power of will. But the will
which was not balanced by imagination shot as usual
far beyond the mark; every image, in fact frequently
everything that is at all the “ work of hands,’ contains
for the Jew of the Old Testament the danger of becoming
a worshipped idol Not even the coins may bear a
human head or en allegorical figure, not even the flags
anemblem. And so all non-Jews are to the Jews “‘ worship-
pers of idols.” And from this fact again arose, by the way,
a Christian misconception which was not dissipated till
the last years of the nineteenth century, and then only
for the specialist, not for the mass of the educated. As
a matter of fact, the Semites are probably the only
people in the whole earth who ever were and could be
genuine idolators. In no branch of the Indo-European ~
family has there ever been idolatry. The unmixed
Aryan Indians, as also the Eranians, had never either
image or temple; they would have been incapable even
of understanding the crassly materialistic sediment
of Semitic idolatry in the Jewish ark of the covenant
with its Egyptian sphinxes; neither the Teutons nor
the Celts nor the Slavs worshipped images. And where
did the Hellenic Zeus live ? Where Athene? In poetry,
in the imagination, up in cloud-capped Olympus, but
never in this or that temple. In honour of the god
Phidias created his immortal work, in honour of the gods
the numerous little images were made which adorned
every house and filled it with the living conception of
higher beings. To the Jew, however, that seemed
I P
226 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtx CENTURY

idolatry! The will being with them predominant, they
regarded each thing only from the point of view of its
utility ; it was incomprehensible to them that a man
should put anything beautiful before his eyes, to elevate
and console himself therewith, to provide food for his
mind, to awaken his religious sense. Similarly, too, the
Christians have at a later time looked upon images of
Buddha as idols: but the Buddhists recognise no God,
much less an idol; these statues served as a stimulus to
contemplation and alienation from the world. Indeed
ethnologers have lately been beginning to question
the possibility of there ever being a people so primitive
as to worship so-called fetishes as idols. Formerly this
was simply taken for granted; nowit is being found in
more and more cases that these children of nature attach
the most complicated symbolical conceptions to their
fetishes. It seems as if the Semites were the only human
race that had succeeded in making golden calves, iron
serpents, &c., and then worshipping them.* And as the
Israelites even at that time were much more highly
developed than the Australasian negroes of to-day, we
conclude that such aberrations on their part must be put
down not to immaturity of judgment, but to some one-
sidedness of their intellect: this onesidedness was the
enormous predominance of will. The will as such lacks
not merely all imagination, but all reflection ; to it only
one thing is natural, to precipitate itself upon, and to grasp
the present. Andso for no people was it so difficult as it
was for the people of Israel, to rise to a high conception
of the Divine, and for none was it so hard to keep this
conception pure. But strength is steeled in the fray:
the most unreligious people in the world created in its
need the foundation of a new and most sublime conception

* It is searsely necessary io call the reader’s attention to the fac}
that the Egyptian and Syrian forms of worship from which the Jews
took the idea of the ox and the serpent were purely symbolicaly
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 2297

of God, which has become the common property of all
civilised mankind. For on this foundation Christ built ;
He could do so, thanks to that “‘abstract materialism’ ;
which He found around Him. Elsewhere religions were |
choked by the richness of their mythologies ; here there |
was no mythology at all. Elsewhere every god possessed
so distinct a physiognomy, had been made by poetry and
the plastic arts so thoroughly individual, that no one
could have changed him over night; or, on the other
hand (as is the case with Brahman in India) the
conception of him had been gradually so sublimated
that nothing remained from which to create a new living
form. Neither of these two things had happened with
the Jews: Jehovah was in truth a remarkably concrete,
indeed an altogether historical conception, and in so
far a much more tangible figure than the imaginative
Aryan had ever possessed; at the same time it was for-
bidden to represent Him either by image or word.* Hence
the religious genius of mankind found here a tabula rasa.
Christ required to destroy the historical Jehovah just
as little as the Jewish “law’’; neither the one nor the
other has an immediate relation to real religion ; but just
as He in point of fact by that inner “ conversion’ trans-
formed the so-called law into a fundamentally new law, so
He used the concrete abstraction of the Jewish God
in order to give the world a quite new conception of God.
We speak of anthropomorphism! Can then man act
and think otherwise than as an anthropos? This new
conception of the Godhead differed, however, from other
sublime intuitions in this, that the image was created not
with the brilliant colours of symbolism nor with the etch-
ing-needle of thought, but was caught as it were on a mirror

* When at a very late period the Jews could not quite resist the
impulse to presentation, they sought to conceal the want of imagi-
native power by Oriental verbiage. We can see an example of it in
chap. i. of Ezekiel.
228 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

in the innermost mind, and became henceforth a direct
individual experience to every one that had eyes to see.—
Certain it is that this new ideal could not have been set up
in any other place than where the conception of God had
been fanatically clung to, and yet left totally undeveloped.

Hitherto we have directed our attention to what
separates or at least distinguishes Christ from Judaism ;
it would be one-sided to leave it at thatalone. His fate
and the main tendency of His thought are both closely
connected with genuine Jewish life and character. He
towers above His surroundings, but yet He belongs to them.
Here we have to consider especially two fundamental
features of the Jewish national character: the historical

_ view of religion and the predominance of the will. These
_two features are, as we shall immediately see, genetically

related. The former has strongly influenced Christ’s life
and His memory after death ; in the latter is rooted His
doctrine of morals. A study of these two points will
throw light on many of the deepest and most difficult
questions in the history of Christianity, as well as on many
of the inexplicable inner contradictions of our religious
tendencies up to the present day.

HIstoRIcAL RELIGION

Of the many Semitic peoples one only, and that one
politically one of the smallest and weakest, has main-
tained itself as a national unity; this small nation has
defied all storms and stands to-day a unique fact among
men—without fatherland, without a supreme head,
scattered all over the world, enrolled among the most
different nationalities, and yet united and conscious of
unity. This miracleis the work of a book, the Thora, with
all that has been added to it by way of supplement up to
the present day. But this book must be regarded as
evidence of a peculiar national soul, which at a critical
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 229

moment was guided in this direction by individual emi-
nent and far-seeing men. In the next chapter but one I
shall have to enter more fully into the origin and import-
ance of these canonical writings. Inthe meantime, I shall
merely call attention to the fact that the Old Testament is
a purely historical work. If we leave out of account a
few late and altogether unessential additions (like the so-
called Proverbs of Solomon), every sentence of these books
is historical ; the whole legislation too which they contain
is based on history, or has at least a chronological connec-
tion with the events described: ‘‘ The Lord spake unto
Moses,” Aaron’s burnt-offering is accepted by the Lord,
Aaron’s sons are killed during the proclamation of the
law, &c. &c.; and if it is a question of inventing some-
thing, the narrator either links it on to a fictitious story,
as in the book of Jod, or to a daring falsification of history,
as in the book of Esther. By this predominance of the
chronological element the Bible differs from all other
known sacred books. The religion it contains is an ele-
ment in the historical narrative and not vice versdé ; its
moral commandments do not grow with inherent neces-
sity out of the depths of the human heart, they are
“laws,’”’ which were promulgated under definite conditions
on fixed days, and which can be repealed at any time.
Compare for a moment the Aryan Indians; they often
stumbled upon questions concerning the origin of the
world, the whence and the whither, but these were not
essential to the uplifting of their souls to God; this
question concerning causes has nothing to do with their
religion : indeed, far from attaching importance to it, the
hymnists exclaim almost ironically :

Who hath perceived from whence creation comes ?
He who in Heaven’s light upon it looks,

He who has made or has not made it all,

He knows it! Or does he too know it not ? *

Goethe, who is often called the “‘ great Heathen,” but
* Rigveda, x. 129, 7«
230 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

ce

who might with greater justice be termed the “ great
Aryan,” gave expression to exactly the same view when
he said, ‘‘ Animated inquiry into cause does great harm.”
Similarly the German natural scientist of to-day says,
“In the Infinite no new end and no beginning can be
sought. However far back we set the origin, the question
still remains open as to the first of the first, the beginning
of the beginning.” * The Jew felt quite differently.
He knew as accurately about the creation of the world as
do the wild Indians of South America or the Australian
blacks to-day. That, however, was not due—as is the
case with these—to want of enlightenment, but to the
fact that the Aryan shepherd’s profound, melancholy
' mark of interrogation was never allowed a place in
_ Jewish literature ; his tyrannous will forbade it, and it
5 y yee the same will that immediately silenced by fanatical
\ dogmatism the scepticism that could not fail to assert
| itself among so gifted a people (see the Koheleth, or Book
of the Preacher). Whoever would completely possess
the “to-day”? must also grasp the “yesterday”
out of which it grew. Materialism suffers shipwreck
as soon as it is not consistent; the Jew was taught
that by his unerring instinct; and just as accurately
as our materialists know tc Jay how thinking arises out
of the motion of atoms, did he know how God had created
the world and made man fromaclod of earth. Creation,
however, is the least thing of all; the Jew took the myths
with which he became acquainted on his journeys,
stripped them as far as possible of everything mytho-
logical and pruned them down to concrete historical
events.f But then, and not till then, came his master-
piece : from the scanty material common to all Semites {
* Adolf Bastian, the eminent ethnologist, in his work: Das Bestan-

dige in den Menschenrassen (1868), p. 28.
t+ “Les mythologies étrangéres se transforment entre les mains des

Sémites en récits platement historiques’’ (Renan, Isvaél, i. 49).
¢ Cf. the history of creation by the Phoenician Sanchuniathon.
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 231

the Jew constructed a whole history of the world of which
he made himself the centre; and from this moment,
that is, the moment when Jehovah makes the covenant
with Abraham, the fate of Israel forms the history of the
world, indeed, the history of the whole cosmos, the one
thing about which the Creator of the world troubles
himself. It is as if the circles always became narrower ;
at last only the central point remains—the “‘ Ego,” the
will has prevailed. That indeed was not the work of
a day; it came about gradually; genuine Judaism,
that is, the Old Testament in its present form, shaped
and established itself only after the return of the Jews
from the Babylonian captivity.* And now what formerly
had been effected with unconscious genius was applied
and perfected consciously : the union of the past and the
future with the present in such a way that each individual
moment formed a centre on the perfectly straight path,
which the Jewish people had to follow and from which it
henceforth could not deviate either to right or to left.
In the past divine miracles in favour of the Jews and in
the future expectation of the Messiah and world-empire :
these were the two mutually complementary elements of
this view of history. The passing moment received a
peculiarly living importance from the fact that it was seen
growing out of the past, as reward or punishment, and
that it was believed to have been exactly foretold in
prophecies. By this the future itself acquired unex-
ampled reality: it seemed to be something tangible.
Even should countless promises and prophecies not
come true,f that could always be easily explained. Will
looks not too close, but what it holds it does not let go,

* See chap.v. Inorder to give a fixed point and to reveal drastically
the differences of mental tendencies, I] may mention that this was
about three hundred years after Homer, scarcely a century before
Herodotuss

{ For example, the promise to Abraham in reference to Canaan,
“To thee ijl I give it, and to thy seed for ever.”
232 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

even ifit be but a phantom ; the less the past had given the
richer appeared the future ; and so much was possessed in
black and white (particularly in the legend of the Exodus),
that doubt could not arise. The so-called Jewish “ literal
adherence to creed ”’ is surely quite a different thing from
the dogmatic faith of the Christians: it is not a faith
in abstract inconceivable mysteries and in all kinds of
mythological conceptions, but something quite concrete
and historical. The relation of the Jews to their God is
from the first political.* Jehovah promises them the
empire of the world—under certain conditions; and
their historical work is such a marvel of ingenious structure
that the Jews see their past in the most glowing colours,
and everywhere perceive the protecting hand of God
extended over His chosen people, “‘over the only men in
the true sense of the word’; and this in spite of the fact
that theirs has been the most wretched and pitiful fate
as a people that the annals of the world can show; for
only once under David and Solomon did they enjoy half
a century of relative prosperity and settled conditions :
thus they possess on all hands proofs of the truth of
their faith, and from this they draw the assurance
that what was promised to Abraham many centuries
before will one day take place in all its fulness. But
the divine promise was, as I have said, dependent upon
conditions. Men could not move about in the house,
could not eat and drink or walk in the fields, without
thinking of hundreds of commandments, upon the ful-
filment of which the fate of the nation depended. As the
Psalmist sings of the Jew (Psalm i. 2) :
He placeth his delight

Upon God’s law, and meditates
On his law day and night.t

* See Rob. Smith! The Prophets of Israel, pp. 70 and 133:

t In the Sippurim, a collection of Jewish popular sagas and stories,
it is frequently mentioned that the ordinary uneducated Jew has 613
commandments to learn by heart. But the Talmud teaches 13,600
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 233

Every few years each of us throws a voting-paper into
the box ; otherwise we do not know or hardly know that
our life is of national importance; but the Jew could
never forget that. His God had promised him, ‘‘ No
people shall withstand thee, till thou destroyest it,” but
immediately added, ‘“‘ All the commandments which I
command thee, thou shalt keep!’”’ God was thus always
present to consciousness. Practically everything but
material possession was forbidden to the Jew; his mind
therefore was directed to property alone; and it was to
God that he had to look for the possession of that pro-
perty.—The man who has never brought home to himself
the conditions here hastily sketched will have difficulty
in realising what unanticipated vividness the conception
of God acquired under these conditions. The Jew could
not indeed represent Jehovah by images; but His working,
His daily intervention in the destiny of the world was,
so to speak, a matter of experience; the whole nation
indeed lived upon it; to meditate upon it was their one
intellectual occupation (if not in the Diaspora, at least
in Palestine).

It was in these surroundings that Christ grew up;
beyond them He never stepped. Thanks to this peculiar
historical sense of the Jews He awoke to consciousness
as far as possible from the all-embracing Aryan cult of
nature and its confession tat-tvam-asi (that thou art also),
in the focus of real anthropomorphism, where all
creation was but for man, and all men but for this one
chosen people, that is, He awoke in the direct presence
of God and Divine Providence. He found here what He
would have found nowhere else in the world: a complete
scaffolding ready for Him, within which His entirely new
conception of God and of religion could be built up. After
Jesus had lived, nothing remained of the genuinely Jewish

laws, obedience to which is divine command! (See Dr. Emanuel
Schreiber: Der Talmud vom Standpunkte des modernen Judentums.
234 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

idea; now that the temple was built the scaffolding
could be removed. But it had served its purpose,
and the building would have been unthinkable without
it. The God to whom we pray to give us our daily bread
could only be thought of where a God had promised to
man the things of this world; men could only pray for
forgiveness of sins to Him who had issued definite com-
mandments.—I almost fear, however, that if I here
enter into details I may be misunderstood ; it is enough
if I have succeeded in giving a general conception of the
very peculiar atmosphere of Judea, for that will enable us
to discern that this most ideal religion would not possess
the same life-power if it had not been built upon the
most real, the most materialistic—yes, assuredly the
most materialistic—religion in the world. It is this
and not its supposed higher religiosity that has made
Judaism a religious power of world-wide importance.

The matter becomes still clearer whenever we consider
the influence of this historical faith upon the fate of
Christ.

The most powerful personality can be influential only
when it is understood. This understanding may be very
incomplete, it may indeed frequently be direct mis-
understanding, but some community of feeling and
thought must form the link of connection between the
lonely genius and the masses. The thousands that
listened to the Sermon on the Mount certainly did not
understand Christ ; how could that have been possible ?
They were a poor people, downtrodden and oppressed
by continual war and discord, systematically stupefied
by their priests; but the power of his word awakened
in the heart of the more gifted among them an echo
which it would have been impossible to awaken in any
other part of the world: was this to be the Messiah,
the promised redeemer from their misery and wretchedness ?
What immeasurable power lay in the possibility of such
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 235

a conception! At once the homely, fleeting present
was linked to the remotest past and the most indubitable
future, and thereby the present received everlasting
importance. It does not matter that the Messiah, whom
the Jews expected, had not the character which we
Indo-Europeans attach to this conception*; the idea

* Even so orthodox an investigator as Stanton admits that the
Jewish idea of the Messiah was altogether political (see The Jewish and
the Christian Messiah, 1886, pp. 122f.,128, &c.). It is well known that
theology has occupied itself much of late years with the history of the
conceptions of the Messiah. The principal result of the investigation
for us laymen is the proof that the Christians, misled by what were
specifically Galilean and Samarian heterodoxies, supplanted the Jewish
conception of the coming of the Messiah by a view which the Jews
never really held. The Jews who were learned in Scripture were
always indignant at the strained interpretations of the Old Prophets ;
now even the Christians admit that the Prophets before the exile (and
these are the greatest) knew nothing of the expectation of a Messiah
(see, for example, the latest summary account, that of Paul Volz: Die
vorexilische Jahveprophetie und der Messias, 1897) ; the Old Testament
does not even know the word, and one of the most important theologists
of our time, Paul de Lagarde (Deutsche Schriften, p. 53), calls attention
to the fact that the expression mdschiach is not of Hebrew origin at all,
but was borrowed at a late time from Assyria or Babylon. It is
particularly noteworthy also that this expectation of the Messiah
wherever it existed was constantly taking different forms; in one case
a second King David was to come, in another the idea was one only
of Jewish world-empire in general, then again it is God himself with
his heavenly judgment ‘‘ who will put an end at once to those who
have hitherto held sway and give the people of Israel power for ever,
an all-embracing empire, in which the just of former times who rise
again shall take part, while the rebellious are condemned to everlast-
ing shame” (cf. Karl Miller: Kirchengeschichte, i. 15); other Jews
again dispute whether the Messiah will be a Ben-David or a Ben-Joseph ;
many believe there would be two of them, others are of the opinion
that he would be born in the Roman Diaspora; but nowhere and at
no time do we find the idea of a suffering Messiah, who by his death
tedeems us (see Stanton, pp. 122-124). The best, the most cultured
and pious Jews have never entertained such apocalyptic delusions.
In the Talmud (Sabbath, Part 6) we read, “‘ Between the present time
and the Messianic there is no difference except that the pressure, under
which Israel pines till then, will cease.’’ (Contrast with this the
frightful confusion and complete puerility of the Messianic conceptions
in the Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud.) I think that with these
remarks I have touched the root of the matter: in the case of an abso-
\utely historical religion, like the Jewish, the sure possession of the
future is just as imperative a necessity as the sure possession of the
236 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

was there, the belief founded on history that at any
moment a saviour could and must appear from Heaven.
In no other part of the earth could a single man have
this conception, full of misunderstandings as it was,
of the world-wide importance of Christ. The Saviour
would have remained a man among men. And in so
far I think that the thousands who soon afterwards cried,
“ Crucify him, crucify him,’”’ showed just as much under-
standing as those who had piously listened to the Sermon
on the Mount. Pilate, at other times a hard, cruel judge,
could find no fault in Christ ;* in Hellas and in Rome
He would have been honoured as a holyman. But the
Jew lived only in history, to him the “heathen” idea
of morality and sanctity was strange, since he knew
only a “law,” and moreover obeyed this law for quite
practical reasons, namely, to stay the wrath of God and to
make sure of his future, and so he judged a phenomenon
like the revelation of Christ from a purely historical
standpoint, and became justly filled with fury, when
the promised kingdom, to win which he had suffered
and endured for centuries—for the sake of possessing
which he had separated himself from all people upon
the earth, and had become hated and despised of all—
when this kingdom, in which he hoped to see all nations
in fetters and all princes upon their knees “ licking the
dust,” was all at once transformed from an earthly
kingdom into one “not of this world.” Jehovah had
often promised his people that he would “not betray”
them; but to the Jews this was bound to appear be-

past; from the earliest times we see this thought of the future in-
spiring the Jews and it still inspires them; this unimaginative
people gave its expectations various forms, according to the varying
influences of surroundings, essential only is the firm ineradicable con-
viction that the Jews should one day rule the world. This is in fact
an element of their character, the visible bodying-forth of their
innermost nature. It is their substitute for mythology.

* Tertullian makes the charmingly simple remark: “ Pilate was
already at heart a Christian ” (A pologeticus xxi.).
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 237

trayal. They executed not one only but many, because
they were held to be, or gave themselves out to be, the
promised Messiah. And rightly too, for the belief in the
future was just as much a pillar of the popular idea as the
belief m the past. And now, to crown all, this Galilean
heterodoxy! To plant the flag of idealism on this
ancient consecrated seat of the most obstinate materialism!
To transform, as if by magic, the God of vengeance and _
of war into a God of love and peace! To teach the
stormy will, that stretched out both hands for all the
gold of the world, that it should throw away what it pos-
sessed and seek the hidden treasure in its own heart! . .

The Jewish Sanhedrim had seen farther than Pilate (and
than many thousands of Christian theologists). Not,
indeed, with full consciousness, but with that unerring
instinct, which pure race gives, it seized Him who under-
mined the historical basis of Jewish life, by teaching,
“Take no heed for the morrow, ‘vho in each one of His
words and deeds transformed Judaism into its antithesis,
and did not release Him till He had breathed Hislast. And
thus only, by death, was destiny fulfilled and the example
given. No new faith could be established by doctrines ;
there was at that time no lack of noble and wise teachers
of ethics, but none has had any power over men; a
life had to be lived and this life had immediately to receive
its place in the great enduring history of the world as a
fact of universal moment. Only Jewish surroundings
suited these conditions. And just as the life of Christ
could only be lived by the help of Judaism, although it
was its negation, so too the young Christian Church
developed a series of ancient Aryan conceptions—of sin,
redemption, rebirth, grace, &c. (things till then and
afterwards quite unknown to the Jews)—and gave them
a clear and visible form, by introducing them into the
Jewish historical scheme.* No one will ever succeed

* The msth of the fall of man stands indeed at the beginning of the
first book of Moses, but is clearly borrowed. since the Jews never
238 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

in quite freeing the revelation of Christ from this Jewish
groundwork ; it was tried in the first centuries of the
Christian era, but without success, since the thousand
features in which the personality had revealed its in-
dividuality became thereby blurred, and nothing but an
abstraction remained behind.*

WILL IN THE SEMITIC RACE

Still profounder is the influence of the second trait of
character.

We have seen that what I call the historical instinct
of the Jews rests above all upon the possession of an
abnormally developed will. The will in the case of the
Jew attains such superiority that it enthrals and tyrannises
over all other faculties. And so it is that we find on the
one hand extraordinary achievements, which would be
almost impossible for other men, and on the other, peculiar
limitations. However that may be, it is certain that
we see this very predominance of will in Christ at all
times: frequently un-Jewish in His individual utterances,
quite Jewish, in so far as the will is almost solely empha-
sised. This feature is like a branching of veins that goes
deep and spreads far: we find it in every word, in every

understood it and did not employ it in their system. He who does
not transgress the law is, in their eyes, free from sin. Just as little
has their expectation of a Messiah to do with our conception of re-
demption. S¢e, further, chap. v. and vol ii. chap. vii.

* That is the tendency of gnosticism as a whole; this movement finds
its most carefully pondered and noblest expression, as far as I can
venture to express an opinion, in Marcion (middle of the second century),
who was more filled with the absolutely new in the Christian ideal than
perhaps any religious teacher since his time; but in just such a case
one sees how fatal it is to ignore historical data. (See any Church
History. On the other hand I must warn the student that the three
lines which Professor Ranke devotes to this really great man (Welt-
geschichte, ii. 171) contain not a single word of what should have been
said on this point.) [For a knowledge of Marcion and gnosticism as a
whole Mead’s Fragments of a Faith Forgotten may be recommended.]}
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 239

single conception. By a comparison I hope to make my
meaning clear and comprehensible.

Consider the Hellenic conception of the Divine and
the Human and of their relation to one another. Some
Gods fight for Troy, others for the Achzans; while I
propitiate one part of the Divine I estrange the other ;
life is a battle, a game, the noblest may fall, the most
miserable gain the victory; morality is in a way a
personal affair, man is lord of his own heart but not of
his destiny; there is no Providence that protects,
punishes and rewards. The Gods themselves are in fact
not free; Zeus himself must yield to fate. Herodotus
says, “Even a God cannot escape what is destined for
him.”’” A nation which produces the flad will in a later
age produce great investigators of nature and great
thinkers. For he who looks at nature with open eyes -
which are not blinded by selfishness will discover every-
where in it the rule of law; the presence of law in the
moral sphere is fate for the artist—predestination for the
philosopher. For the faithful observer of nature the
idea of arbitrariness is, to begin with, simply impossible ;
do what he will, he cannot make up his mind to impute
it even to a God. This philosophical view has been
beautifully expressed by Here in Goethe’s fragment,
Achillets :

Willkir bleibet ewig verhasst den Géttern und Menschen,
Wenn sie in Thaten sich zeigt, auch nur in Worten sich kundgiebtd
Denn so hoch wir auch stehen, so ist der ewigen Gétter
Ewigste Themis * allein, und diese muss dauern und walten.t

* Themis has degenerated in modern times to an allegory of im-
partial jurisdiction, that is, of an altogether arbitrary agreement, and
she is appropriately represented with veiled eyes; while mythology
lived, she represented the rule of law in all nature, and the old artists
gave her particularly large, wide-open eyes.

+ Arbitrariness remains ever hateful to gods and men, when it
reveals itself in deeds or even in words only. For however high we
may stand, the eternal Themis of the eternal Gods alone is, and she
must lastingly hold sway.
oa

240 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXto CENTURY

On the other hand, the Jewish Jehovah can be described
as the incarnation of arbitrariness. Certainly this divine
conception appears to us in the Psalms and in Isaiah in
altogether sublime form ; it is also—fpr the chosen people
—a source of high and serious morality. But what
Jehovahis, Heis, because He wills to beso; Hestands above
all nature, above every law, the absolute, unlimited auto-
crat. If it pleases Him to choose out from mankind a
small people and to show His favour to it alone, He does
so; if He wishes to vex it, He sends it into slavery; if
he, on the other hand, wishes to give it houses which it
has not built and vineyards which it has not planted,
He does so and destroys the innocent possessors ; there
is no Themis. So too the divine legislatio.. Beside
moral commands which breathe to some extent high
morality and humanity, there stand commands which are
directly immoral and inhuman ; * others again determine
most trivial points: what one may eat and may not
eat, how one shall wash, &c., in short, everywhere ab-
solute arbitrariness. He who sees deeper will not fail
to note in this the relationship between the old Semitic
idolatry and the belief in Jehovah. Considered from the
Indo-European standpoint, Jehovah would in reality
be called rather an idealised idol, or, if we prefer it, an
anti-idol, than a god. And yet this conception of God
contains something which could not, any more than
arbitrariness, be derived from observation of natuie,
namely, the idea of a Providence. According to Renan,
“the exaggerated belief in a special Providence is the
basis of the whole Jewish religion.’”’*t Moreover, with

* Besides the countless raids involving wholesale slaughter divinely
commanded, in which ‘‘ the heads of the children”’ are to be ‘‘ dashed
against the stones,’ note the cases where command is given to attack
with felonious intent ‘‘the brother, companion, and neighbour”
(Exodus xxxii. 27), and the disgusting commands such as in Ezekiel
vs 12-15:

{ Histotve du peuple d’Isvaél, iis ps 3:
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 24

this freedom of God another freedom is closely con-
nected, that of the human will. The liberum arbitrium is
decidedly a Semitic conception and in its full develop-
ment a specifically Jewish one; it is inseparably bound
up with the particular idea of God.* Freedom of will
implies nothing less than “‘ ever repeated acts of creation ”’ ;
carefully considered it will be clear that this supposition
(as soon as it has to do with the world of phenomena) con-
tradicts not merely all physical science, but also all meta-
physics, and means a negation of every transcendent re-
ligion. Here cognition and will stand in strict opposition.
Now wherever we find limitations of this idea of
freedom—in Augustine, Luther, Voltaire, Kant, Goethe
—we can be sure that an Indo-European reaction
against the Semitic spirit is taking place. So, for example,
when Calderon in the Great Zenobia lets the wild autocratic
Aurelian mock him

who called the will free,

For — though ore must certainly be on one’s guard
against misusing such formulary simplifications—one can
still make the assertion that the idea of necessity is in all
Indo-European races particularly strongly marked, and
is met with again and again in the most different spheres ;
it points to high power of cognition free from passion ;
on the other hand, the idea of arbitrariness, that is, of an

* We can trace in every history of Judaism with what very logical
fanaticism the Rabbis still champion the unconditioned and not
merely metaphysically meant freedom of will: Diderot says: ‘ Les
Juifs sont si jaloux de cette liberté @indifférence, quils s’imaginent quit
est impossible de penser suv cette matiéve autrement qu’eux.” And how
closely this idea is connected with the freedom of God and with Provi-
dence becomes clear from the commotion which arose when Maimo-
nides wished to limit divine Providence to mankind and maintained
that every leaf was not moved by it nor every worm created by its
will—Of the so-called ‘‘fundamental doctrines’’ of the famous
Talmudist Rabbi Akiba the two first are as follow: (1) Everything is
supervised by the Providence of God ; (2) Freedom of will is stipulated
(Hirsch Graetz; Gnosticismus und Judentum, 1846, p. 91).

I Q
242 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

unlimited sway of will, is specifically characteristic of

the Jew; he reveals an intelligence which in com-
_/ parison with his will-power is very limited. It is
not a question here of abstract generalisations, but of
\ actual characteristics, which we can still daily observe ;

in the one case intellect is predominant, in the other
‘| the will.

Let me give a tangible example from the present,
I knew a Jewish scholar, who, as the competition in his
branch prevented him from earning much money, became
a manufacturer of soap, and that, too, with great success ;
but when at a later time foreign competition once
more took the ground from beneath his feet, all at once,
though ripe in years, he became dramatic poet and
Man of Letters and made a fortune at it. There was no
question of universal genius in his case; he was of
moderate intellectual abilities and devoid of all origin-
ality ; but with this intellect the will achieved whatever
it wished.

The abnormally developed will of the Semites can lead
to two extremes: either to rigidity, as in the case of
Mohammed, where the idea of the unlimited divine
caprice is predominant ; or, as is the case with the Jews,
to phenomenal elasticity, which is produced by the
conception of their own human arbitrariness. To the
Indo-European both paths are closed. In nature he
observes everywhere the rule of law, and of himself
he knows that he can only achieve his highest when he
obeys inner need. Of course his will, too, can achieve
the heroic, but only when his cognition has grasped some
idea—teligious, artistic, philosophic, or one which aims
at conquest, command, enrichment, perhaps crime; at

- any rate, in his case the will obeys, it does not command.
Therefore it is that a moderately gifted Indo-European is
so peculiarly characterless in comparison with the most
poorly gifted Jew. Of ourselves, we should certainly
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 243

never have arrived at the conception of a free almighty
God and of what may be called an “‘ arbitrary Providence,”
a Providence, that is, which can decree something in one
way, and then in answer to prayers or from other motives
decide in a contrary direction.* We do not find that, out-
side of Judaism, man ever came to the conception of a quite
intimate and continual personal relation between God
and mankind—to the conception of a God who would al-
most seem to be there only for the sake of man. In truth
the old Indo-Aryan Gods are benevolent, friendly, we
might almost say genial powers; man is their child, not
their slave; he approaches them without fear; when
sacrificing he “‘ grasps the right hand of God’”’; f the
want of humility in presence of God has indeed filled
many a one with horror: yet as we have seen nowhere
do we find the conception of capricious autocracy. And
with this goes hand in hand remarkable infidelity ; now
this, now that God is worshipped, or, if the Divine is
viewed as a unified principle, then the one school has this
idea of it, the other that (I remind the reader of the six
great philosophically religious systems of India, all six of
which passed as orthodox); the brain in fact works irre-
sistibly on, producing new images and new shapes, the
Infinite is its home, freedom its element and creative
power its joy. Just consider the beginning of the follow-
ing hymn from the Rigveda (6, 9) :
My ear is opened and my eye alert,
The light awakes within my heart!

My spirit flies to search in distant realms:
What shall I say ? of what shall my verse sing ?

* In the case of the Indo-Europeans the Gods are never “creators
of the world”; where the Divine is viewed as creator, as in the case
of the Brahman of the Indians, that refers to a freely metaphysical
cognition, not to an historicaland mechanical process, as in Genesis i.;
in other cases the Gods are viewed as originating ‘‘ on this side of
creation,” their birth and death are spoken of.

f Oldenbexg: Die Religion des Veda, p. 310.
244 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtxa CENTURY

and compare it with the first verses of any Psalm, for
instance, the 76th :

In Judah is God known: His name is great in Israel.
In Salem also is His tabernacle, and His dwelling-place in Sion.

We see what an important element of faith the will is.
While the Aryan, rich in cognition, “ flies to search in
distant realms,” the strong-willed Jew makes God pitch
His tent once for all in his own midst. The power of
his will to live has not only forged for the Jew an anchor
of faith, which holds him fast to the ground of historical
tradition, but it has also inspired him with unshakable

confidence in a personal, directly present God, who is

‘almighty to give and to destroy; and it has brought

him, the man, into a moral relation to this God, in that
God in His all-powerfulness issued commands, which man
is free to follow or neglect.*

THE PROPHET

There is another matter which must not be omitted
in this connection: the one-sided predominance of the
will makes the chronicles of the Jewish people in general

* If this were the place for it, I should gladly prove in greater detail
that this Jewish conception of the almighty God who rules as free
Providence inevitably determines the historical view of this God
and that every genuine Aryan mind revolts again and again
against this. This has caused, for instance, the whole tragic mental life
of Peter Abelard: in spite of the most intense longing for orthodoxy,
he cannot adapt his spirit to the religious materialism of the Jews.
Ever and anon, for example, he comes to the conclusion that God
does what he does of necessity (and here he could refer for support
to the earlier writings of Augustine, espécially his De [bevo avbitrio) ;
this is intellectual anti-Semitism in the highest degree! He denies
also every action, every motion in the case of God; the working of
God is for him the coming to pass of an everlasting determination of
will: “‘ with God there is no sequence of time.” (See A. Hausrath;
Petey Abelavd, p. 201.) With this Providence disappears.—However,
what is the use of seeking for learned proofs? The noble Don
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 245

dreary and ugly; and yet in this atmosphere there
grew up a series of important men, whose peculiar great-
ness makes it impossible to compare them with other
intellectual heroes. In the introduction to this division
I have already spoken of those ‘“‘ disavowers”’ of the
Jewish character, who themselves remained the while
such out and out Jews, from the crown of their heads
to the soles of their feet, that they contributed more than
anything else to the growth of the most rigid Hebraism ;
in chap. v. I shall return to them; only so much must
here be said : these men, in grasping religious materialism
by its most abstract side, raised it morally to a very great
height ; their work has paved the way historically in
essential points for Christ’s view of the relation between
God and man. Moreover, an important feature, which is
essentially rooted in Judaism, shows itself most clearly
in them: the historical religion of this people lays em-
phasis not upon the individual, but upon the whole nation ;
the individual can benefit or injure the whole community,
but otherwise he is of little moment ; from this resulted
of necessity a markedly socialistic feature which the
Prophets often powerfully express. The individual who
attains to prosperity and wealth, while his brothers
starve, falls under the ban of God. While Christ in one
way represents exactly the opposite principle, namely,
that of extreme individualism, the redeeming of the
individual by regeneration, His life and His teaching, on
the other hand, point unmistakably to a condition of
things which can only be realised by having all things
common. The communism of “one flock and one
shepherd ” is certainly different from the entirely politi-
cally coloured, theocratic communism of the Prophets ;

Quixote explains with pathetic simplicity to his faithful Sancho, “ for
God there is no past and no future, all is present ’’ (Book IX. chap.
viii.): hereby the immortal Cervantes expresses briefly and correctly
. the unhistorical standpoint ~f all non-Semites.
246 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

but here again the basis is solely and characteristically
Jewish.

CHRIST A JEW

Whatever one may be inclined to think of these various
Jewish conceptions, no one will deny their greatness,
or their capacity to exercise an almost inestimable in-
fluence upon the moulding of the life of mankind. Nor
will any one deny that the belief in divine almightiness,
in divine Providence and in the freedom of the human
will,* as well as the almost exclusive emphasising of the
moral nature of men and their equality before God
(‘‘the last shall be first’’) are essential elements of the
personality of Christ. Far more than the fact that He
starts from the Prophets, far more than His respect for
Jewish legal enactments, do these fundamental views
show us that Christ belonged morally to the Jews. Indeed,
when we penetrate farther to that central point in
Christ’s teaching, to that “‘ conversion of the will,” then
we must recognise—as I have already hinted at the be-
ginning of this chapter in the comparison with Buddha
—that here is something Jewish in contrast to the Aryan
negation of the will. The latter isa fruit of perception, of
too great perception ; Christ, on the other hand, addresses
Himself to men, in whom the will—not the thought, is
supreme; what He sees around Him is the insatiable,
ever-covetous Jewish will that is always stretching out
both hands; He recognises the might of this will and
commands it—not to be silent, but to take a new direc-
tion. Here we must say, Christ is a Jew, and He can
only be understood when we have learned to grasp
critically these peculiarly Jewish views which He found
and made His own.

* The latter, however, as 1t appears, with important limitations,

noe the Aryan idea of grace more than once clearly appears in Christ’s
words,
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 247

I said just now that Christ belonged ‘‘ morally ” to
the Jews. This somewhat ambiguous word “ moral”
must here be taken in a narrow sense. For it is just
in the moral application of these conceptions of God’s al-
mightiness and providence, of the direct relations between
man and God following therefrom, and of the employ-
ment of the free human will, that the Saviour departed
in toto from the doctrines of Judaism; that is clear to
every one, and I have, moreover, sought to emphasise
it in what has gone before; but the conceptions them-
selves, the frame into which the moral personality fitted
itself, and out of which it cannot be moved, the un-
questioning acceptance of these premisses regarding
God and man, which by no means belong to the human
mind as a matter of course but are, on the contrary, the
absolutely individual achievement of a definite people
in the course of an historical development which lasted
for centuries: this is the Jewish element in Christ. In
the chapters on Hellenic Art and Roman Law I have
already called attention to the power of ideas; here
again we have a brilliant example of it. Whoever
lived in the Jewish intellectual world was bound to
come under the influence of Jewish ideas. And though
He brought to the world an entirely new message, though
His life was like the dawn of a new morn, though His
personality was so divinely great that it revealed to us
a power in the human breast, capable—if it ever should
be fully realised—of completely changing humanity : yet
the personality, the life and the message were none the
less chained to the fundamental ideas of Judaism; only
in these could they reveal, exercise and proclaim them-
selves,
248 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

I hope I have attained my purpose. Proceeding from
the consideration of the personality in its individual,
autonomous import, I have gradually widened the circle,
to reveal the threads of life which connect it with its
surroundings. In this a certain amplification was un-
avoidable ; the sole subject of this book, the foundations
of the nineteenth century, I have nevertheless not lost
sight of for a single moment. For how could I,
an individual, venture to approach that age either as
chronicler or encyclopedist ? May the Muses keep me
from such madness! On the other hand, I shall attempt
to trace as far as possible the leading ideas, the moulding
thoughts of our age; but these ideas do not fall from
Heaven, they link on to the past; new wine is very often
indeed poured into old bottles, and very old, sour wine,
which nobody would taste, if he knew its origin, into
quite new ones ; and as a matter of fact the curse of con-
fusion weighs heavily upon a culture born so late as ours,
especially in an age of breathless haste, where men have
to learn too much to be able to think much. If we wish
to become clear about ourselves, we must, above all,
be quite clear about the fundamental thoughts and
conceptions which we have inherited from our ancestors.
I hope I have brought it home to the reader how very
complex is the Hellenic legacy, how peculiarly contra-
dictory the Roman, but at the same time how profoundly
they affect our life and thought to-day. Now we have
seen that even the advent of Christ, on the threshold
between the old and the new age, does not present itself
to our distant eye in so simple a form that we can easily
free it from the labyrinth of prejudices, falsehoods and
errors. And yet nothing is more necessary than to see this
revelation of Christ clearly in the light of truth. For—
THE REVELATION OF CHRIST 249

however unworthy we may show ourselves of this—our
whole culture, thank God, still stands under the sign of
the Cross upon Golgotha. We do see this Cross; but
who sees the Crucified One? Yet He, and He alone is
the living well of all Christianity, of the intolerantly,
dogmatic as well as of that which gives itself out to be
quite unbelieving. In later ages it will be an eloquent
testimony to the childishness of our judgment that we
have ever doubted it, and that the nineteenth century
has reared itself on books, which demonstrated that
Christianity originated by chance, at haphazard, as a
“mythological paroxysm,” as a ‘‘ dialectical antithesis,”
as a necessary result of Judaism, and I know not what
else. The importance of genius cannot be reckoned high
enough : who ventures to estimate the influence of Homer
upon the mind of man? But Christ was still greater,
And like the everlasting ‘‘ hearth-fire’’ of the Aryans,
so the torch of truth which He kindled for us can
never be extinguished; though at times a shadow of
night may wrap manhood far and wide in the folds of
darkness, yet all that is wanted is one single glowing
heart, in order that thousands and millions may once
more blaze under the bright light of day.... Here,
however, we can and must ask with Christ, ‘‘ But if
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness ?”? Even the origin of the Christian Church
leads us into the profoundest gloom, and its further history
gives us rather the impression of a groping about in
darkness than of clear seeing in the sunlight. How then
shall we be able to distinguish what in so-called Chris-
tianity is spirit of Christ’s spirit, and what, on the other
hand, is imported from Hellenic, Jewish, Roman and
Egyptian sources, if we have never come to see this
revelation of Christ in its sublime simplicity? How
shall we speak about what is Christian in our present con-
fessions, in our literatures and arts, in our philosophy
250 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

and politics, in our social instrtutions and ideals, how
shall we separate what is Christian from what is anti-
Christian, and be able with certainty to decide, what in the
movements of the nineteenth century can be traced back
to Christ and what not, or in how far it is Christian,
whether merely in the form or also in the content, or per-
haps in content, 7.¢., in its general tendency, but not with
regard to the characteristically Jewish form—how shall
we, above all, be able to sift and separate from the “‘ bread
of life” this specifically Jewish element which is so
threateningly perilous to our spirit, if the revelation of
Christ does not stand conspicuously before our eyes in its
general outlines, and if we are not able clearly to dis-
tinguish in this image the purely personal from its
historical conditions. This is certainly a most important
and indispensable foundation for the formation of our
judgments and appreciations.

To pave, to some modest degree, the way for that
result has been the purpose of this chapter.
DIVISION II
THE HERS

Der hohe Sinn, das Rihmliche
Von dem Gerihmten rejn zu unterscheiden
GoETHE.

INTRODUCTORY

HO were the heirs of antiquity? This

question is at least as important as that

concerning the legacy itself and, if possible,

more difficult to answer. For it introduces us
to the study of race problems, which science during the
last quarter of a century,so far from solving, has rather
revealed in all their intricacy. And yet all true compre-
hension of the nineteenth century depends on the clear
answering of this question. Here, then, we must be at
once daring and cautious if we are to remember the
warning of the preface, and steer safely between the
Scylla of a science almost unattainable, and so far most
problematic in its results, and the Charybdis of unstable
and baseless generalisations. Necessity compels us to
make the bold attempt.

THE CHAOS

Rome had transterred the centre of gravity of civilisation
tothe West. This proved to be one of those unconsciously
251
252 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

accomplistied acts of world-wide importance which no
power can undo. The West of Europe, remote from
Asia, was to be the focus of all further civilisation and
culture. But that happened only gradually. At first
it was politics alone which turned ever more and more
towards the West and North; intellectually Rome
itself long remained very dependent upon the former
centre of culture in the East. In the first centuries of
‘our era, with the exception of Rome itself, only what lies
‘ South and East of it is intellectually of any importance;
Alexandria, Ephesus, Antioch, in fact all Syria, then
Greece with Byzantium, as well as Carthage and the other
towns of ancient Africa, are the districts where the legacy
was taken up and long administered, and the inhabitants
of these places then handed it on to later times and other
races. And these very countries were at that time, like
Rome itself, no longer inhabited by a definite people,
but by an inextricable confusion of the most different
races and peoples. It was achaos. And this chaos did
not by any means disappear at a later time. In many
places this chaotic element was pressed back by the
advance of pure races, in others it fell out of the list
of those that count through its own weakness and want
of character, yet for all that it has beyond doubt main-
tained itself in the South and East; moreover fresh
influx of blood has frequently given it new strength.
That is a first point of far-reaching importance. Con-
sider, for example, that all the foundations for the struc-
ture of historical Christianity were laid and built up by
this mongrel population! With the exception of some
Greeks, all of whom, however, with Origenes at their
head, disseminated highly unorthodox, directly anti-
Jewish doctrines which had no success,* one can scarcely
even conjecture to what nationality any of the Church

* Origenes, for example, was confessedly a pessimist (in the meta-
physical sense of the word), by which in itself he proved his Indo
European descent; he saw suffering everywhere in the world and cor
THE HEIRS 253

fathers actually belonged.“ The same may be said
of the corpus juris; here, too, it was the Chaos (accord-
ing to Hellenic ideas the mother of Erebus and Nox,
of darkness and night), to which the task fell of per-
fecting and transforming the living work of a living
people to an international dogma. Under the same in-
fluence, art ever more and more lost its personal, freely
creative power and became transformed into an hierati-
cally formulary exercise, while the lofty, philosophical
speculation of the Hellenes was displaced by its carica-
ture, the cabalistic phantoms of demiurges, angels and
daemons—conceptions which could not be designated
by a higher name than “airy materialism.”* We must
therefore, to begin with, turn our attention to this Chaos
of Peoples.

THE JEws

Out of the midst of the chaos towers, like a sharply
defined rock amid the formless ocean, one single people, a
numerically insignificant people—the Jews. This one
race has established as its guiding principle the purity
of the blood ; it alone possesses, therefore, physiognomy
and character. If we contemplate the southern and
eastern centres of culture in the world-empire in its down-

cluded from that that its chief end was not the enjoyment of a god-
given happiness but the prevention of an evil (compare Christ’s chief
doctrine, that of the ‘‘ conversion of will,” cf. p. 188). Augustine, the
African mestizo, found it easy to refute him ; he appealed to the first
chapter of the first book of the Jewish Thora, to prove beyond dispute
that everything is good and that ‘‘ the world exists for no other reason
than because it has been pleasing to a good God to create the absolutely
good.” (See the very instructive discussion in the De civitate
Dei, xi. 23.) Augustine triumphantly introduces another argument
in this place: if Origenes were right, then the most sinful creatures
would have the heaviest bodies and devils would be visible, but devils
have airy, invisible shapes, and so, &c. Thus thoughts that arose in
the Chaos prevailed over metaphysical religion. (The same arguments
are to be found, word for word, in the Fuhrer der Ivvenden of the Jew
Maimuni.)
* Birger calls it Luftiges Gesindel (airy rabble) in his Lenores
254 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

fall, and let no sympathies er antipathies pervert our
judgment, we must confess that the Jews were at that time
the only people deserving respect. We may well apply
to them the words of Goethe, “‘ the faith broad, narrow
the thought.” In comparison with Rome and still
more so with Hellas their intellectual horizon appears
so narrow, their mental capacities so limited, that we
seem to have before us an entirely new type of being;
but the narrowness and want of originality in thought
are fully counterbalanced by the power of faith, a faith
which might be very simply defined as “ faith in self.” -----

g And since this faith in self included faith in a higher
being, it did not lack ethical significance. However
poor the Jewish “law”? may appear, when compared with
the religious creations of the various Indo-European
peoples, it possessed a unique advantage in the fallen
Roman Empire of that time: it was, in fact, a law;
a law which men humbly obeyed, and this very obedience
was bound to be of great ethical import in a world of
such lawlessness.{ Here, as everywhere, we shall find
that the influente of the Jews—for good and for evil—
lies in their character, not in their intellectual achieve:
ments.* Certain historians of the nineteenth century,
even men so intellectually pre-eminent as Count Gobineau,
have supported the view that Judaism has always had
merely a disintegrating influence upon all peoples./ I
cannot share this conviction. In truth, where the Jews
become very numerous in a strange land, they may
make it their object to fulfil the promises of their Pro-
phets and with the best will and conscience to ‘‘ consume
the strange peoples”; did they not say of themselves,
even in the lifetime of Moses, that they were “‘like locusts”?
However, we must distinguish between Judaism and the
Jews and admit that Judaism as an idea is one of the

“"most conservative ideas in the world. The idea of
physical race-unity and race-purity, which is the very

* See p. 238 fu
THE HEIRS 255

essence of Judaism, signifies the recognition of a funda-
mental physiological fact of life; wherever we observe
life, from the hyphomycetes to the noble horse, we see the
importance of “race”; Judaism made this law of nature
sacred. And this is the reason why it triumphantly pre-
vailed at that critical moment in the history of the
world, when a rich legacy was waiting in vain for worthy
heirs 7 It did not further, but rather put a stop to,
universal disintegrationg The Jewish dogma was like a
sharp acid which is poured into a liquid which is being
decomposed in order to clear it and keep it from further
decomposition. Though this acid may not be to the
taste of every one, yet it has played so decisive a part in
the history of the epoch of culture to which we belong
that we ought to be grateful to the giver: instead of
being indignant about it, we shall do better to inform
ourselves thoroughly concerning the significance of this
“entrance of the Jews into the history of the West,” an
event which in any case exercised inestimable influence
upon our whole culture, and which has not yet reached
its full growth.

Another word of explanation. I am speaking of Jews,
not of Semites in general ; not because I fail to recognise
the part played by the latter in the history of the world,
but because my task is limited both in respect of time and
space. Indeed for many centuries other branches of the
Semitic race had founded powerful kingdoms on the
South and East coasts of the Mediterranean and had
established commercial depots as far as the coasts of the
Atlantic Ocean ; doubtless they had also been stimulative
in other ways, and had spread knowledge and accomplish-
ments of many kinds; but nowhere had there been a
close intellectual connection between them and the other
inhabitants of future Europe. The Jews first brought
this about, not by the millions of Jews who lived in the
Diaspora, but first and foremost by the Christian idea.
It was only when the Jews crucified Christ that they
256 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

unconsciously broke the spell which had hitherto isolated
them in the pride of ignorance.—At a later time, indeed,
a Semitic flood swept once more across the European,
Asiatic and African world, a flood such as, but for the
destruction of Carthage by Rome, would have swept
over Europe a thousand years before, with results which
would have been decisive and permanent.* But here,
too, the Semitic idea—“‘ faith wide, narrow the thought ”
—proved itself more powerful than its bearers; the
Arabs were gradually thrown back and, in contrast to
the Jews, not one of them remained on European soil ;
but where their abstract idolatry t had obtained a foot-
hold all possibility of a culture disappeared ; the Semitic
dogma of materialism, which in this case and in contrast
to Christianity had kept itself free of all Aryan admixtures,
deprived noble human races of all soul, and excluded
them for ever from the ‘‘ race that strives to reach the
light.’”—Of the Semites only the Jews, as we see, have
positively furthered our culture and also shared, as far
as their extremely assimilative nature permitted them,
in the legacy of antiquity.

THE TEUTONIC RACES

The entrance of the Teutonic races into the history
of the world forms the counterpart to the spread of this
diminutive and yet so influential people. There, too, we
see what pure race signifies, at the same time, however,
what variety of races is—that great natural principle of
many-sidedness, and of dissimilarity of mental gifts,
which shallow, venal, ignorant babblers of the present
day would fain deny, slavish souls sprung from the
chaos of peoples, who feel at ease only in a confused
atmosphere of characterlessness and absence of individue
ality. To this day these two powers—Jews and Teutonic

* See p. 115; t See p. 240.
THE HEIRS 257

races—stand, wherever the recent spread of the Chaos
has not blurred their features, now as friendly, now as
hostile, but always as alien forces face to face.

In this book I understand by “‘ Teutonic peoples” the .
different North-European races, which appear in history as
Celts, Teutons (Germanen) and Slavs, and from whom—
mostly by indeterminable mingling—the peoples of
modern Europe are descended. It is certain that they
belonged originally to a single family, as I shall prove in
the sixth chapter; but the Teuton in. the narrowerTaci-
tean sense of the word has proved himself so intellectually,
morally and physically pre-eminent among his kins-
men, that we are entitled to make his name summarily
represent the whole family. The Teuton is the soul of
our culture. Europe of to-day, with its many branches
over the whole world, represents the chequered result
of an infinitely manifold mingling of races: what binds
us all together and makes an organic unity of us is

“Teutonic”? blood. If we look around, we see that the +

importance of each nation as a living power to-day is
dependent upon the proportion of genuinely Teutonic
blood in its population. Only | Teutons sit on the thrones~
of Europe.—What preceded in the history of the world
we may regard as Prolegomena ; true history, the history
which still controls the rhythm of our hearts and
circulates in our veins, inspiring us to new hope and
new creation, begins at the moment when the Teuton
with his masterful hand lays his grip upon the legacy of
antiquity.
FOURTH CHAPTER
THE CHAOS

So viel ist wohl mit Wahrscheinlichkeit zu urteilen: dass
die Vermischung der Stamme, welche nach und nach die
Charaktere ausléscht, dem Menschengeschlecht, alles vorge-
blichen Philanthropismus ungeachtet, nicht zutraglich sei.
IMMANUEL Kant.

SCIENTIFIC CONFUSION

HE remarks which I made in the introduction

to the second division will suffice as a general

preface to this chapter on the chaos of peoples

in the dying Roman Empire; they explain to
what time and what countries I refer in speaking of the
“chaos of peoples.” Here, as elsewhere, I presuppose
historical knowledge, at least in general outline, and as
T should not like to write a single line in this whole book
which did not originate from the need of comprehending
and of judging the nineteenth century better, I think I
should use the subject before us especially to discuss and
answer the important question: Is nation, is race a mere
word? Isit the case, as the ethnographer Ratzel asserts,
that the fusion of all mankind should be kept before us
as our “aim and duty, hope and wish”? Or do we
not rather deduce from the example of Hellas and Rome,
on the one hand, and of the pseudo-Roman empire on
the other, as well as from many other examples in history,
that man can only attain his zenith within those limits
in which sharply defined, individualistic national types
are produced? Is the present condition of things in

258
THE CHAOS 259

Europe with its many fully formed idioms, each with its
own peculiar poetry and literature, each the expression of
a definite, characteristic national soul—is this state of
things really a retrograde step in comparison with the
time, when Latin and Greek, as a kind of twin Volapuk,
formed a bond of union between all those Roman subjects
who had no fatherland to call their own? Is community
of blood nothing ? Can community of memory and of
faith be replaced by abstract ideals ? Above all, is the
question one to be settled by each as he pleases, is there
no clearly distinguishable natural law, according to which
we must fit our judgment? Do not the biological
sciences teach us that in the whole animal and vegetable
kingdoms pre-eminently noble races—that is, races
endowed with exceptional strength and vitality—are
produced only under definite conditions, which restrict
the begetting of new individuals ? Is it not possible,
in view of all these human and non-human phenomena,
to find a clear answer to the question, What is race ?
And shaH we not be able, from the consciousness of
what race is, to say at once what the absence of definite
races must mean for history ? When we look at those
direct heirs of the great legacy, these questions force
themselves upon us. Let us in the first place discuss
races quite generally ; then, and then only, shall we be
able to discuss with advantage the conditions prevailing
in this special case, their importance in the course of his-
tory, and consequently in the nineteenth century.

There is perhaps no question about which such absolute
ignorance prevails among highly cultured, indeed learned,
men, as the question of the essence and the significance
of the idea of “race.” What are pure races? Whence
do they come? Have they any historical importance ?
Is the idea to be taken in a broad or a narrow sense?
Do we know anything on the subject or not? What is the
relation of the ideas of race and of nation to one another ?

,
260 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

I confess that all I have ever read or heard on this sub-
ject has been disconnected and contradictory: some
specialists among the natural investigators form an
exception, but even they very rarely apply their clear
and detailed knowledge to the human race. Not a
year passes without our being assured at international con-
gresses, by authoritative national economists, ministers,
bishops, natural scientists, that there is no difference and
no inequality between nations. Teutons, who em-
phasise the importance of race-relationship, Jews, who
do not feel at ease among us and long to get back to
their Asiatic home, are by none so slightingly and scorn-
fully spoken of as by men ofscience. Professor Virchow,
for instance, says * that the stirrings of consciousness of
race among us are only to be explained by the “ loss of
sound common sense’’: moreover, that it is “all a riddle
to us, and no one knows what it really means in this age of
equal rights.” Nevertheless, this learned man closes his
address with the expression of a desire for “ beautiful
¢C self-dependent personalities.” As if all history were not
‘there to show us how personality and race are most
_ closely connected, how the nature of the personality is
‘determined by the nature of its race, and the power of
‘the personality dependent upon certain conditions of
its blood! And as if the scientific rearing of animals and
A piants did not afford us an extremely rich and reliable
material, whereby we may become acquainted not only
with the conditions but with the importance of “‘ race’’!
Are the so-called (and rightly so-called) “ noble” animal
races, the draught-horses of Limousin, the American
trotter, the Irish hunter, the absolutely reliable sporting

* Dey Ubergang aus dem philosophischen in das naturwissenschaftliche
Zeitalter, Rektoratsrede, 1893, p. 30. I choose this example from
hundreds, since Virchow, being one of the most ardent anthropologists
and ethnographers of the nineteenth century, and in addition, a man
of great learning and experience, ought to have been well informed
oa the subject.
THE CHAOS 261

dogs, produced by chance and promiscuity? Do we get
them by giving the animals equality of rights, by throwing
the same food to them and whipping them with the same
whip? No, they are produced by artificial selection and
strict maintenance of the purity of the race. Horses
and especially dogs give us every chance of observing that
the intellectual gifts go hand in hand with the physical ;
this is specially true of the moral qualities: a
mongrel is frequently very clever, but never reliable ;
morally he is always a weed. Continual promiscuity
between two pre-eminent animal races leads without
exception to the destruction of the pre-eminent character-
istics of both.* Why should the human race form an
exception ? 4A father of the Church might imagine that
it does, but is it becoming in a renowned natural investi-
gator to throw the weight of his great influence into the
scile of medieval ignorance and superstition? Truly
one could wish that these scientific authorities of ours,
who are so utterly lacking in philosophy, had followed a
course of logic under Thomas Aquinas; it could only be
beneficial to them.” In spite of the broad common founda-
tion/'the human races are, in reality, as different from
one another in character, qualities, and above all, in the
degree of their individual capacities, as greyhound, bull-
dog, poodle and Newfoundland dog.” Inequality is a
state towards which nature inclines in all spheres ; nothing
extraordinary is produced without “specialisation ”’ ;
in the case of men, as of animals, it is this specialisation
that produces noble races; history and ethnology reveal
this secret to the dullest eye. Has not every genuine
race its own glorious, incomparable physiognomy ?
How could Hellenic art have arisen without Hellenes ?

* See especially Darwin’s Plants and Animals under Domestication,
chaps. xv. xix. ‘‘ Free crossing obliterates characters.” For the
“superstitious care with which the Arabs keep their horses pure bred”

see interesting details in Gibbon’s Roman Empire, chap.50. See alse
Burton’s Mecca, chap. xxix.
262 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

How quickly has the jealous hostility between the different
cities of the small country of Greece given each part its
sharply defined individuality within its own family type!
How quickly this was blurred again, when Macedonians
and Romans with their levelling hand swept over the
land! And how everything which had given an ever-
lasting significance to the word “ Hellenic” gradually
disappeared when from North, East and West new
bands of unrelated peoples kept flocking to the country
and mingled with genuine Hellenes! The equality,
before which Professor Virchow bows the knee, was now
there, all walls were razed to the ground, all boundaries
became meaningless; the philosophy, too, with which
Virchow in the same lecture breaks so keen a lance, was
destroyed, and its place taken by the very soundest
“‘common sense”; but the beautiful Hellenic personality,
but for which all of us would to-day be merely more or
less civilised barbarians, had disappeared, disappeared
for ever. ‘‘ Crossing obliterates characters.”

If the men who should be the most competent to pro-
nounce an opinion on the essence and significance of
Race show such an incredible lack of judgment—if in
dealing with a subject where wide experience is necessary
for sure perception, they bring to bear upon it nothing
but hollow political phrases—how can we wonder that
the unlearned should talk nonsense even when their
instinct points out the true path? For the subject has
in these days aroused interest in widely various strata of
society, and where the learned refuse to teach, the un-
learned must shift for themselves. When in the fifties
Count Gobineau published his brilliant work on the
inequality of the races of mankind, it passed unnoticed:
no one seemed to know what it all meant. Like poor
Virchow men stood puzzled before a riddle. Now that
the Century has come to an end things have changed:
the more passionate, more impulsive element in the
THE CHAOS 263

nations pays great and direct attention to this question.
But in what a maze of contradiction, errors and delusions
public opinion moves! Notice how Gobineau bases his
account—so astonishingly rich in intuitive ideas which
have later been verified and in historical knowledge—
upon the dogmatic supposition that the world was
peopled by Shem, Ham and Japhet. Such a gaping void
in capacity of judgment in the author suffices, in spite
of all his documentary support, to relegate his work to
the hybrid class of scientific phantasmagorias.’ With
this is connected Gobineau’s further fantastic idea, that
the originally “‘ pure ”’ noble races crossed with each other
in the course of history, and with every crossing became
irrevocably less pure and less noble. From this we
must of necessity derive a hopelessly pessimistic view
of the future of the human race. But this supposition
rests upon total ignorance of the physiological importance
of what we have to understand by “race.” A noble
race does not fall from Heaven, it becomes noble gradu-
ally, just like fruit-trees, and this gradual process can
begin anew at any moment, as soon as accident of geo-
graphy and history or a fixed plan (as in the case of the
Jews) creates the conditions. We meet similar absurdities
at every step. We have, for example, a powerful Anti-
Semitic movement: are we to consider the Jews as identical
with the rest of the Semites ? Have not the Jews by their
very development made themselves a peculiar, pure
race profoundly different from the others? Is it certain
that an important crossing did not precede the birth
of this people? And what is an Aryan? We hear so
many and so definite pronouncements on this head.
We contrast the Aryan with the “ Semite,” by whom we
ordinarily understand “the Jew” and nothing more,
and that is at least a thoroughly concrete conception based
upon experience. But what kind of man is the Aryan ?
What concrete conception does he correspond to? Only
264 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

‘he who knows nothing of ethnography can give a definite
— answer to this question. As soon as we do not limit this
expression to the Indo-Eranians who are doubtless inter-
related, we get into the sphere of uncertain hypotheses.*
The peoples whom we have learned to classify together as
_~‘‘ Aryans” differ physically very much from each other ;
they reveal the most different structure of skull, also
different colour of skin, eyes and hair ; and even granted
that there was «nce a common ancestral Indo-European
race, what evidence can we offer against the daily in-
creasing sum of facts which make it probable that other
absolutely unrelated types have also been from time
immemorial richly represented in our so-called Aryan
nations of to-day, so that we can never apply the term
“Aryan”? to a whole people, but, at most, to single
individuals ? Relationship of language is no conclusive
proof of community of blood; the theory of the im-
migration of the so-called Indo-Europeans from Asia,
which rests upon very slight grounds, encounters the
grave difficulty that investigators are finding more and
_ More reason to believe that the population which we are
accustomed to call Indo-European was settled in Europe
from time immemorial;+ for the opposite hypothesis

* Even with this very qualified statement, derived from the best
books I know, I seem to have presupposed more than science
can with certainty assert; for I read in a specialised treatise, Les
Aryens au nord et au sud de l’Hindou-Kousch, by Charles de Ujfalvi
(Paris, 1896, p. 15), ‘‘ Le terme d’aryen est de pure convention; les
peuples éraniens au nord et les tribus hindoues au sud du Caucase
indien, different absolument comme type et descendent, sans aucun
doute, de deux races différentes.”

+ G. Schrader (Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte}, who has studied
the question more from the linguistic standpoint, comes to the con-
clusion, “It is proved that the Indo-Teutonic peoples were settled in
Europe at a very ancient period”; Johannes Ranke (Der Mensch)
is of opinion that it is now an established fact that at least a great
part of the population of Europe were Aryans as early as the stone
age; and Virchow, whose authority is all the greater in the sphere
of anthropology because he shows unconditional respect for facts and,
THE CHAOS 265

of a colonisation of India from Europe there are not the
slightest grounds ... in short, this question is what
miners call “‘swimming land”; he who knows the
danger sets foot on it as little as possible. The more we
study the specialists, the less certain we become. It was
originally the philologists who established the collective
idea ‘“‘ Aryans,” Then came the anatomical anthro-
pologists; the inadmissibility of conclusions drawn
from mere philology was demonstrated, and now skull-
measuring began; craniometry became a_ profession,
and it did provide a mass of extremely interesting material ;
lately, however, the same fate is overtaking this so-called
“somatic anthropology’ that formerly overtook phil-
ology: ethnographers have begun to travel and to make
scientifically systematic observations from living man,
and in this way have been able to prove that the measur-
ing of bones by no means deserves the importance that
was wont to be attached to it; one of the greatest of
Virchow’s pupils has become convinced that the idea
of solving problems of ethnology by the measurement
of skulls is fruitless.* All these advances have been
made in the second half of the nineteenth century ;
who knows what will be taught about ‘ Aryans” fT
in the year 1950? At present, at any rate, the
layman can say nothing on the subject. If he turns
up one of the well-known authorities, he will be told that
the Aryans “are an invention of the study and not a

unlike Huxley and many others, builds no Darwinian castles in the air,
says that from anatomical discoveries one may assert that ‘‘ the
oldest troglodytes of Europe were of Aryan descent!’ (quoted from
Ranke, Der Mensch, fi. 578):

* Ehrenreich:  <Anthropologische Studien tiber die « Urbewohner
Brasiliens, 1897:

t+ When I use the word Aryan in this book, I take it in the sense
of the original Sanscrit ‘“‘ arya,” which means “ belonging to the
friends,” without binding myself to any hypothesis: The relationship
in thought and feeling signifies in any case an homogeneousness. (/.
the note on p. 93.
266 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

primeval people,” * if he seeks information from another,
he receives the answer that the common characteristics
of the Indo-Europeans, from the Atlantic Ocean to India,
suffice to put the actual blood-relationship beyond all
doubt.f

T hope I have clearly illustrated in these two paragraphs
the great confusion which is prevalent among us to-day
in regard to the idea “‘ race.” This confusion is not neces-
sary, that is, with practical, active men who belong to
life as we do. And it is unnecessary for this reason, that
we, in order to interpret the lessons of history and to com-
prehend our present age in connection therewith, do not
in any way need to seek for hidden origins and causes.
In the former division I have already quoted the words

* R. Hartmann: Die Negritier (1876), p.185. Similarly Luschan and
many investigators. Salomon Reinach, for instance, writes in L’ Origine
des Aryens, 1892, p. 90: “‘ Parler d’une race aryenne d’il y a trois
mille ans, c’est émettre une hypothése gratuite: en parler comme si
elle existait aujourd’hui, c’est dire tout simplement une absurdité.”

} Friedrich Ratzel, Johannes Ranke, Paul Ehrenreich, &c., in fact
the more modern, widely travelled ethnographers. But they hold the
view with many variations, since the relationship does not neces-
sarily rest upon common origin, but might have been produced by
crossing. Ratzel, for instance, who in one place positively asserts the
uniformity of the whole Indo-European race (Littevarisches Centralblatt,
1897, p. 1295), says in another (Vélkerhkunde, 1895, ii. 751), ‘‘ the sup-
position that all these peoples have a uniform origin is not necessary
or probable.’’—It is worth remarking that even those who deny the
fact of an Aryan race still constantly speak of it; they cannot do
without it as a ‘‘ working hypothesis.” Even Reinach, after proving
that there never was an Aryan race, speaks in an unguarded moment
(loc. cit. p. 98) of the “common origin of the Semites and the Aryans.”
Ujfalvi, quoted above, has after profound study arrived at the opposite
conclusion and believes in a “‘ grande famille aryenne.’’ In fact anthro-
pologists, ethnographers and even historians, theologians, philologists
and legal authorities find the idea ‘Aryan’? more and more indis-
pensable every year. And yet if one of us makes even the most cautious
and strictly limited use of the conception, he is scorned and slandered
by academic scribes and nameless newspaper reviewers. May the
reader of this book trust science more than the official simplifiers and
Jevellers and the professional anti-Aryan confusion-makers. Though it
were proved that there never was an Aryan race in the past, yet we
desire that in the future there may be one. That is the decisive stand-
point for men for action,
THE CHAOS 267

of Goethe, «Animated inquiry into cause does great harm.”
What is clear to every eye suffices, if not for science, at |
least for life. Science must, of course, ever wander on
its thorny but fascinating path; it is like a mountain
climber, who every moment imagines that he will reach
the highest peak, but soon discovers behind it a higher
one still. But life is only indirectly interested in these ..
changing hypotheses. One of the most fatal errors of
our time is that which impels us to give too great weight
in our judgments to the so-called “results ’’ of science.
Knowledge can certainly have an illuminating effect ;
but it is not always so, and especially for this reason, that
knowledge always stands upon tottering feet. For how
can intelligent men doubt but that much which we
think we know to-day will be laughed at as crass
ignorance, one hundred, two hundred, five hundred
years hence? Many facts may, indeed, be looked
upon to-day as finally established; but new knowledge
places these same facts in quite a new light, unites
them to figures never thought of before, or changes
their perspective; to regulate our judgments by the
contemporary state of science may be compared to an
artist’s viewing the world through a transparent, ever-
changing kaleidoscope, instead of with the naked eye.
Pure science (in contrast to industrial science) is a
noble plaything ; its great intellectual and moral worth
rests in no small degree upon the fact that it is not
“useful ’; in this respect it is quite analogous to art,
it signifies the application of thought to the outward
world ; and since nature is inexhaustibly rich, she thereby
ever brings new material to the mind, enriches its inventory
of conceptions and gives the imagination a new dream-
world to replace the gradually fading old one.* Life, ;

* The physical scientist Lichtenberg makes a similar remark: ‘‘ The i
teaching of nature is, for me at least, a kind of sinking fund for religion,
when overbold reason falls into debt’ (Fragmentarische Bemerkungen
tiber physthalische Gegenstande, 15).
268 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

on the other hand, purely as such, is something different
from systematic knowledge, something much more
stable, more firmly founded, more comprehensive ; it
is in fact the essence of all reality, whereas even
the most precise science represents the thinned, gener-
alised, no longer direct reality. Here I understand
by “life” what is otherwise also called “ nature,”
a3 when, for instance, modern medicine teaches us
that nature encourages by means of fever the change of
matter and defends man against the illness which has
seized him. Nature is in fact what we call ‘‘ automatic,”
its roots go very much deeper than knowledge will ever
who as thinking, well-informed, boldly dreaming and’
investigating beings are certainly just such integral parts
of nature as all other beings and things, and as our own
bodies—may entrust ourselves to this nature—to this
“‘life”"—with great confidence. Though science leaves
us in the lurch at many points, though she, fickle as a
modern parliamentarian, laughs to-day at what she
yesterday taught as everlasting truth, let this not lead us
astray; what we require for life, we shall certainly
learn. On the whole science is a splendid but somewhat
dangerous friend; she is a great juggler and easily
leads the mind astray into wild sentimentality ; science
and art are like the steeds attached to Plato’s car of the
soul; “‘sound common sense” (whose loss Professor
Virchow lamented) proves its worth not least of all in
pulling the reins tight and not permitting these noble
animals to bolt with its natural, sound judgment. The
very fact that we are living beings gives us an infinitely
rich and unfailing capacity of hitting upon the right
thing, even without learning, wherever it is necessary.
Whoever simply and with open mind questions nature—
the ‘mother’ as the old myths called her—can be sure
of being answered, as a mother answers her son, not
THE CHAOS 269

always in blameless logic, but correctly in the main,
intelligibly and with a sure instinct for the best interests
of the son. So is it, too, in regard to the question of the
significance of race: one of the most vital, perhaps the
most vital, questions that can confront man.

IMPORTANCE OF RACE

Nothing is so convincing as the consciousness of the
possession of Race. The man who belongs to a distinct,
pure racé, néver 1osés the sensé of it. The guardian angel
of his lineage is ever at his side;supporting him where ‘he
loses his foothold, warning him like the Socratic Daemon
where he is in danger of going astray, compelling obedience,
and forcing him to undertakings which, deeming them
impossible, he would never have dared to attempt.
Weak and erring like all that is human, a man of this
stamp recognises himself, as others recognise him, by
the sureness of his character, and by the fact that his
actions are marked by a certain simple and peculiar
greatness, which finds its explanation in his distinctly
typical and super-personal qualities. Race lifts a man_
above himself: it endows him with -extraordinary—I
might_almost_Say_ 7 Supernatural—powers, So entirely does
it distinguish him from the individual who springs from
the chaotic jumble of peoples drawn from all parts
of the world: and should this man of pure origin be
perchance gifted above his fellows, then the fact of Race
strengthens and elevates him on every hand, and he
becomes a genius towering over the rest of mankind, not
because he has been thrown upon the earth like a flaming
meteor by a freak of nature, but because he soars heaven-
ward like some strong and stately tree, nourished by
thousands and thousands of roots—no solitary individual,
but the living sum of untold souls striving for the same
goal. He who has eyes to see at once detects Race in
270 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

animals. It shows itself in the whole habit of the beast,
and proclaims itself in a hundred peculiarities which defy
analysis: nay more, it proves itself by achievements,
tor its possession invariably leads to something excessive
and out of the common—even to that which is exaggerated
and not free from bias. Goethe’s dictum, “only that
which is extravagant (iiberschwanglich) makes greatness,”
is well known.* That is the very quality which a
thoroughbred race reared from superior materials bestows
upon its individual descendants—something “‘ extrava-
gant ’’—and, indeed, what we learn from every race-
horse, every thoroughbred fox-terrier, every Cochin
China fowl, is the very lesson which the history of man-
kind so eloquently teaches us! Is not the Greek in the
fulness of his glory an unparalleled example of this
“extravagance’’? And do we not see this “ extrava-
gance”’ first make its appearance when immigration
from the North has ceased, and the various strong breeds
of men, isolated on the peninsula once for all, begin to
fuse into a new race, brighter and more brilliant, where,
as in Athens, the racial blood flows from many sources—
simpler and more resisting where, as in Lacedemon, even
this mixture of blood had been barred out. Is the race
not as it were extinguished, as soon as fate wrests the
land from its proud exclusiveness and incorporates it in
a greater whole? | Does not Rome teach us the same

* Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehve, the part dealing with
Newton’s personality.

¢ It is well known that it was but gradually extinguished, and that
in spite of a political situation, which must assuredly have brought
speedy destruction on everything Hellenic, had not race qualities
here had a decisive influence. Till late in the Christian era Athens
remained the centre of intellectual life for mankind; Alexandria
was more talked of, the strong Semitic contingent saw to that; but
any one who wished to study in earnest travelled to Athens, till
Christian narrow-mindedness for ever closed the schools there in the
year 529, and we learn that as late as this even the man of the people
was distinguished in Athens ‘ by the liveliness of his intellect, the
correctness of his language and the sureness of his taste” (Gibbon,
THE CHAOS 271

lesson ? Has not in this case also a special mixture of
blood produced an absolutely new race,* similar in quali-
ties and capacities to no later one, endowed with exuberant
power? And does not victory in this case effect what
disaster did in that, but only much more quickly ? Like *
a cataract the stream of strange blood overflooded the
almost depopulated Rome and at once the Romans *
ceased to be. Would one small tribe from among all
the Semites have become a world-embracing power had
it not made “ purity of race” its inflexible fundamental
law? In days when so much nonsense is talked con-
cerning this question, let Disraeli teach us that the
whole significance of Judaism lies in its purity of race,
that this alone gives it power and duration, and just as
it has outlived the people of antiquity, so, thanks to its
knowledge of this law of nature, will it outlive the con-
stantly mingling races of to-day.

What is the use of detailed scientific investigations
as to whether there are distinguishable races ? whether
race has a worth ? how this is possible? andsoon. We
turn the tables and say: it is evident that there are such
traces: it is a fact of direct experience that the quality of
the race is of vital importance ; your province is only
to find out the how and the wherefore, not to deny the
facts themselves in order to indulge your ignorance.
One of the greatest ethnologists of the present “day,
chap. xl.): There is in George Finlay’s book, Medieval Greece, chap.
i., a complete and very interesting and clear account of the gradual
destruction of the Hellenic race by foreign immigration. One after
the other colonies of Roman soldiers from all parts of the Empire,
then Celts, Teutonic peoples, Slavonians, Bulgarians, Wallachians,
Albanesians, &c., had moved into the country and mixed with the
original population. The Zaconians, who were numerous even in the
fifteenth century, but have now almost died out, are said to be the
only pure Hellenes.

* Cf. p. 109, note.

{ See the novels Tancred and Coningsby. In the latter Sidonia says}

“ Race is everything ; there is no other truth. And every race must <¢
fall which carelessly suuers its blood to become mixed.”
272 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XI Xt CENTURY

Adolf Bastian, testifies that, ‘‘ what we see in history
is not a transformation, a passing of one race into another,
but entirely new and perfect creations, which the ever-
youthful productivity of nature sends forth from the
invisible realm of Hades.” * Whoever travels the short
distance between Calais and Dover, feels almost as if he
had reached a different planet, so great is the difference
between the English and French, despite their many
points of relationship. The observer can also see from this
instance the value of purer “inbreeding.” England is
practically cut off by its insular position: the last
(not very extensive) invasion took place 800 years ago;
‘since then only a few thousands from the Netherlands,
jand later a few thousand Huguenots have crossed over
i(all of the same origin), and thus has been reared that
|race which at the present moment_is unquestionably the
_|strongest in | Europe
‘Direct experience, however, offers us a series of quite
different observations on race, all of which may gradually
contribute to the extension of our knowledge as well as
to its definiteness. In contrast to the new, growing, Anglo-
Saxon race, look, for instance, at the Sephardim, the so-
called “‘ Spanish Jews”; here we find how a genuine
race can by purity keep itself noble for centuries and
tens of centuries, but at the same time how very necessary
it is to distinguish between the nobly reared portions of a
nation and the rest. In England, Holland and Italy
there are still genuine Sephardim but very few, since

* Das Bestaéndige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweite ihrer
Verdnderlichkeit, 1868, p. 26.

+ Mention should also be made of Japan, where likewise a
felicitous crossing and afterwards insular isolation have contributed
to the production of a very remarkable race, much stronger and
(within the Mongoloid sphere of possibility) much more profoundly
endowed than most Europeans imagine. Perhaps the only books in
which one gets to know the Japanese soul are those of Lafcadio
Hearn: Kokoro, Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life ; Gleanings
in Buddha Fields, and others.
THE CHAOS 273

they can scarcely any longer avoid crossing with the
Ashkenazim (the so-called ‘German Jews’’). Thus,
for example, the Montefiores of the present generation
have all without exception married German Jewesses.
But every one who has travelled in the East of Europe,
where the genuine Sephardim still as far as possible avoid
all intercourse with German Jews, for whom they have
an almost comical repugnance, will agree with me when
I say that it is only when one sees these men and has
intercourse with them that one begins to comprehend
the significance of Judaism in the history of the world.
This is nobility in the fullest sense of the word, genuine
nobility of race! Beautiful figures, noble heads, dignity
in speech and bearing. The type is Semitic in the same
sense as that of certain noble Syrians and Arabs. That
out of the midst of such people Prophets and Psalmists
could arise—that I understood at the first glance, which I
honestly confess that I had never succeeded in doing when
I gazed, however carefully, on the many hundred young
Jews—“ Bochers ’’—of the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.
When we study the Sacred Books of the Jews we see
further that the conversion of this monopolytheistic
people to the ever sublime (though according to our
ideas mechanical and materialistic) conception of a true
cosmic monotheism was not the work of the community,
but of a mere fraction of the people; indeed this minority
had to wage a continuous warfare against the majority,
and was compelled to enforce the acceptance of its more
exalted view of life by means of the highest Power to
which man is heir, the might of personality. As for the
rest of the people, unless the Prophets were guilty of
gross exaggeration, they convey the impression of a
singularly vulgar crowd, devoid of every higher aim, the
rich hard and unbelieving, the poor fickle and ever
possessed by the longing to throw themselves into the
arms of the wretchedest and filthiest idolatry. The

I 8
274 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

course of Jewish history has provided for a peculiar
artificial selection of the morally higher section: by
banishments, by continual withdrawals to the Diaspora
—a result of the poverty and oppressed condition of
the land—only the most faithful (of the better classes)
remained behind, and these abhorred every marriage
contract—even with Jews!—in which both parties
could not show an absolutely pure descent from one of the
tribes of Israel and prove their strict orthodoxy beyond
all doubt.* There remained then no great choice; for
the nearest neighbours, the Samaritans, were heterodox,
and in the remoter parts of the land, except in the case of
the Levites who kept apart, the population was to a large
extent much mixed. In this way race was here pro-
duced. And when at last the final dispersion of the Jews
came, all or almost all of these sole genuine Jews were
taken to Spain. The shrewd Romans in fact knew well
how to draw distinctions, and so they removed these
dangerous fanatics, these proud men, whose very glance
made the masses obey, from their Eastern home to the
farthest West,f while, on the other hand, they did not
disturb the Jewish people outside of the narrower Judea
more than the Jews of the Diaspora.t—Here, again,
we have a most interesting object-lesson on the origin
and worth of “race”! *For of all the men whom we
are wont to characterise as Jews, relatively few are
descended from these great genuine Hebrews, they are
rather the descendants of the Jews of the Diaspora,

* Natural children are not at all taken into the community by
orthodox Jews. Among the Sephardim of East Europe to-day, a girl who
is known to have gone wrong is immediately taken by the pleni-
potentiaries of the community to a strange land and provided for
there ; neither she nor her child can venture ever to let anything be
heard of them, they are regarded as dead. Thus they provide against
blind love introducing strange blood into the tribe.

+ See Graetz, as above, chap. ix., on The Period of the Diaspora.

¢ In Tiberias, for example, there was a Rabbi’s school which for
centuries set the fashion. (Regarding the ennobling of the Sephardim
by Gothic blood, see below.)
THE CHAOS 275

Jews who did not take part in the last great struggles,
who, indeed, to some extent did not even live through
the Maccabean age; these and the poor country people
who were left behind in Palestine, and who later in
Christian ages were banished or fled, are the ancestors
of “our Jews” of to-day. Now whoever wishes to
see with his own eyes what noble race is, and what it
is not, should send for the poorest of the Sephardim from
Salonici or Sarajevo (great wealth is very rare among
them, for they are men of stainless honour) and put him
side by side with any Ashkenazim financier ; then will he
perceive the difference between the nobility which race
bestows and that conferred by a monarch.*

THE FIvE CARDINAL LAws

It would be easy to multiply examples. But I think
that we now have all the material that is necessary for a
systematic analysis of our knowledge regarding race, from
which we may then derive the cardinal principles of a
conscious and appropriate judgment. We are not
reasoning from hypothetical conditions in the remote
past to possible results, but arguing from sure facts back
to their direct causes. The inequality of gifts even in
what are manifestly related races is evident; “it js,
morédver, equally’ evident to every one who- observes
more closély that here and there, for a shortér of a longer
time, one tribe does not’ only distinguish itself from the

  

* The Goths, who in a later age went over to Mohammedanism
in great crowds, and became its noblest and most fanatical protagonists,
are said to have at an earlier period adopted Judaism in great numbers,
and a learned specialist of Vienna University assures me that the
moral and intellectual as well as the physical superiority of the so-
called “ Spanish”? and ‘‘ Portuguese”? Jews is to be explained rather
by this rich influx of Teutonic blood than by that breeding which I
have singled out to emphasise, and the importance of which he too
would not incline to underestimate. Whether this view is justifiable
or not may remain an open question,
276 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

others, but is easily pre-eminent among them because
there is something beyond the common in its gifts and
capabilities. That this is due to racial breeding I have
tried to illustrate graphically by the preceding examples.
The results deducible from these examples (and they
can be multiplied to any extent) enable us to affirm that
the. origin of such noble races is dependent upon five
natural laws. ee ee

(x) The first and fundamental condition is undoubtedly
the presence of excellent material. Where there is
nothing, the king has no rights. But iflam asked, Whence
comes this material ? I must answer, I know not, I am
as ignorant in this matter as if I were the greatest of all
scholars and I refer the questioner to the words of the
great world-seer of the nineteenth century, Goethe,
«What no longer originates, we cannot conceive as
originating, What has originated we do not compre-
hend.” As far back as our glance can reach, we see
human beings, we see that they differ essentially in their
gifts and that some show more vigorous powers of growth
than others. Only one thing can be asserted without
leaving the basis of historical observation: a high
state of excellence is only attained gradually and under
particular circumstances, it is only forced activity that
can bring it about; under other circumstances it may
completely degenerate. The struggle which means
destruction for the fundamentally weak race steels the
_strong ; the same struggle, moreover, by eliminating the
weaker elements, tends still further to strengthen the
strong. Around the childhood of great races, as we
observe, even in the case of the metaphysical Indians,
the storm of war always rages.

(2) But the presence of excellent human material is
not enough to give birth to the “ extravagant’”’; such
races as the Greeks, the Romans, the Franks, the Swabians,
the Italians and Spaniards in the period of their splendour,
THE CHAOS 277

the Moors, the English, such abnormal phenomena as the
Aryan Indians and the Jews only spring from continued
inbreeding. They arise and they pass away before our
eyes. Inbreeding means the producing of descendants
exclusively in the circle of the related tribesmen, with
the avoidance of all foreign mixture of blood. Of this
I have already given striking examples.

(3) But inbreeding pur et simple does not suffice:
along with it there must be selection, or, as the specialists
say, “‘ artificial J selection.” We understand this law
best when we study “the principles of artificial breeding
in the animal and vegetable worlds ; Ishould recommend
every one to do so, for there are few things which so
enrich our conceptions of the plastic possibilities of life.*
When one has come to understand what miracles are
performed by selection, how a racehorse or a Dachshund
or a choice chrysanthemum is gradually produced by
the careful elimination of everything that is of indifferent
quality, one will recognise that the same phenomenon
is found in the human race, although of course it can
never be seen with the same clearness and definiteness
as in the other spheres. I have already advanced the
example of the Jews; the exposure of weak infants is
another point and was in any case one of the most bene- »
ficial laws of the Greeks, Romans and Teutonic peoples ;
hard times, which only the strong man and the hardy
woman can survive, have a similar effect.f

(4) There is another fundamental law hitherto little
heeded, which seems to me quite clear from history, just
as it is a fact of experience in the breeding of animals:

* The literature is very great: for simplicity, comprehensibility
and many-sidedness I recommend to every layman especially Darwin’s
Animals and Plants under Domestication. In the Origin of Species
the same subject is treated rather briefly and with too much bias.

¢ Jhering demonstrates with particular clearness that the epocn
of the migrations, which lasted for many centuries, necessarily had
upon the Teutonic peoples the effect of an ever more and more
ennobling artificial selection (Vorgeschichte, p. 462 f.).
278 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

the origin of extraordinary races is, without exception,
preceded by ai mixtiize “Of blood. “Ae that -acnts Thinker
Emerson, says: “‘ we are piqued with pure descent, but
nature loves inoculation.” Of the Aryan Indians of
course we can say nothing as regards this, their previous
history being hidden in the misty distance of time; on the
other hand, with regard to the Jews, Hellenes and Romans
the facts are perfectly clear, and they are no less so in
regard to all the nations of Europe which have dis-
tinguished themselves by their national achievements
and by the production of a great number of individuals
of ‘extravagant’ endowments. With regard to the
Jews I refer the reader to the following chapter, as
regards the Hellenes, Romans and English I have often
pointed to this fact; * nevertheless, I would urge the
reader not to grudge the labour of carefully reading
in Curtius and Mommsen those chapters at the beginning
which, on account of the many names and the con-
fusion of detail, are usually rather glanced through
than studied. There has never been so thorough and
successful a mixture as in Greece: with the old common
stock as basis there have gradually sprung up in the
valleys, separated by mountains or seas, character-
istically different tribes, composed here of huntsmen,
there of peaceful farmers, in other parts of seafarers, &c.;
among these differentiated elements we find a mixing
and crossing, so fine that a human brain selecting
artificially could not have reasoned the matter out more
perfectly. In the first place we have migrations from
East to West, later from West to East over the A’gean Sea ;
fm the meantime, however, the tribes of the extreme North
(in the first place the Dorians) advanced to the extreme
South, forcing many of the noblest who would not
submit to bondage from the South to that North from
which they themselves had just come, or over the sea to

* See especially pp. 109, 272, 286 and 293,
THE CHAOS 279

the islands and the Hellenic coast of Asia. But every one
of these shiftings meant mixture of blood. Thus, for
example, the Dorians did not all move to the Peloponnese,
portions of them remained at every stopping-place in their
slow wanderings and there fused with the former popu-
lation. Indeed, these same original Dorians, whose special
unity is such an apparent characteristic, knew in the old
times that they were composed of three different stems,
one of which moreover was called “‘ Pamphyle,” that is,
“the stem of people of various descent.” The most
exuberant talent showed itself where the crossing had been
happiest—in New Ionia and in Attica. In New Ionia
“Greeks came to Greeks, Ionians returned to their old
home, but they came so transformed that from the
new union of what was originally related, a thoroughly
national development, much improved, rich, and in
its results absolutely new, began in the old Jonian land.”
But most instructive is the history of the development
of the Attic and particularly of the Athenian people.
In Attica (just as in Arcadia, but nowhere else) the
original Pelasgic population remained; it ‘“‘ was never
driven out by the power of the stranger.’’ But the
coastland that belonged to the Archipelago invited
immigration; and this came from every side; and
while the alien Phceenicians only founded commercial
stations on the neighbouring islands, the related Greeks
pressed on into the interior from this side and that
side of the sea, and gradually mingled with the former
inhabitants. Now came the time of the already men-
tioned Dorian migrations and the great and lasting
changes; Attica alone was spared; and thither fled
many from all directions, from Bceotia, Achza, Mes-
senia, Argos and Agina, &c.; but these new immi-
grants did not represent whole populations; in the
great majority of cases they were chosen men, men of
illustrious, often of royal birth. By their influx the one
280 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

small land became exceptionally rich in genuine, pure
nobility. Then and then only, that is, after a varied
crossing, arose that Athens to which humanity owes a
greater debt than could ever be reckoned up.*—The least
reflection will show that the same law holds gdod in the
case of Germans, French, Italians and Spaniards. The
individual Teutonic tribes, for example, are like purely
brutal forces of nature, till they begin to mingle with
one another; consider how Burgundy, which is rich in
great men, owes its peculiar population to a thorough
crossing of the Teutonic and the Romance elements,
and develops its characteristic individuality by long-
continued political isolation ; f the Franks grow to their
full strength and give the world a new type of humanity
where they mingle with the Teutonic tribes who preceded
them and with Gallo-Romans, or where they, as in
Franconia, form the exact point of union of the most
diverse German and Slavonic elements; Swabia, the
home of Mozart and Schiller, is inhabited by a half-
Celtic race; Saxony, which has given Germany so many

of its greatest men, 1, contains a a population quickened

almost | _throughout | by a “Mixture” = Slee ‘blood ;

how a nation of recent pee which the
eee es

* See Curtius: Griechische Geschic'te, i. 4, andii. 1 and 2. Count
Gobineau asserts that the extraordinary intellectual and above all
artistic talent of the Greeks is to be explained by an infiltration of
Semitic blood: this shows to what senseless views one is forced by
fundamental hypotheses which are false, artificial and contrary to
history and natural observation.

+ This thorough crossing was caused by the fact that the Bur-
gundians settled individually over the whole land and each of them
became the “ hospes” of a former inhabitant, of whose cultivated
land he received two-thirds, and of his buildings and garden a half,
while woods and pastures remained common property. Now though
there might not be much sympathy between the new-comer and the
old possessor, yet they lived side by side and were solidly united in
disputes about boundaries and such-like questions of property ; thus
crossing could not be long deferred. (Cf. especially Savigny, Geschichte
des vomischen Rechts im Mittelalter, chap. v. div. 1.)
THE CHAOS 28r

mixture-of blood was~still-more thorough, has raised
_itself by its pre-eminent power to become the léader-of—
the whole German Empire ?—It cannot of coursé be my
task to give a detailed proof of what is here simply pointed
out; but as I am advocating especially the great im-
portance of purely-bred races, I desire particularly to
emphasise the necessity, or at least the advantage, of
mixture of blood and that not merely to meet the ob-
jection of oné-sidedness and bias a priori, but because it
is my conviction that the advocates of this theory have
injured it very much by disregarding the important
law of crossing. They get then to the mystical con-
ception ofa race pure in itself, which is an airy abstrac-
tion that retards instead of furthering.. Neither history
nor experimental biology has anything to say for such
a view. The race of English thoroughbreds has been
produced by the crossing of Arabian stallions with
ordinary, but of course specially chosen, English mares, .
followed by inbreeding, yet in such a way that later
crossing between varieties not far removed, or even with
Arabians, is advisable from time to time; one of the
noblest creatures that nature possesses, the so-called
“ genuine’? Newfoundland dog, originated from the
crossing of the Eskimo dog and a French hound; in
consequence of the isolated position of Newfoundland,
it became by constant inbreeding fixed and “ pure,”
it was then brought to Europe by fanciers and raised to
the highest perfection by artificial selection —Many of
my readers may be amused at my constant references to
the breeding of animals. But it is certain that the laws
of life are great simple laws, embracing and moulding
everything that lives; we have no reason to look upon
the human race as an exception; and as we are un-
fortunately not in a position to make experiments in this
matter with human beings, we must seek counsel from the

experiments made with plants and animals —But I cannot
282 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

close my discussion of the fourth law without emphasising
another side of this law of crossing ; continued inbreeding
within a narrow circle, what one might call “ close
- breeding,” leads in time to degeneration and particularly
to sterility. Countless experiences in animal breeding
prove that. Sometimes in such a case a single crossing,
applied, for example, only to single members of a pack
of hounds, will suffice to strengthen the weakened race
and restore its productivity. In the case of men the at-
traction of Passion provides sufficiently for this quicken-
ing, so that it is only in the highest circles of the nobility
and in some royal houses * that we observe increasing
mental and physical degeneration in consequence of
“close breeding.’’f

The slightest increase of remoteness in the degree of
relationship of those marrying (even within the strict
limits of the same type) suffices to give all the great
advantages of inbreeding and to prevent its disadvantages.
Surely it is manifest that here we have the revelation of
a mysterious Law of Life, a Law of Life so urgent that
in the vegetable kingdom—where fructification within
one and the same blossom seems at the first glance
the natural and unavoidable thing—there are in most
cases the most complicated arrangements to hinder this
and at the same time to see that the pollen, when not
borne by the wind, is carried by insects from the one
individual flower to the other.t When we perceive

* See the facts in Haeckel: Natiirliche Schédpfungsgeschichte (lect. 8)
Still more detail in a book by P. Jacoby, which I have unfortunately
not before me, his Ltudes sur la sélection dans ses rapports avec I’ hérédité
chez Vhomme.

+ In this connection too we have the well-known evil results of
marriage between near relatives: the organs of sense (in fact the
whole nervous system) and the sexual organs suffer most frequently
from this. (See George H. Darwin’s lectures, Die Ehen zwischen
Geschwisterkindern und thre Folgen, Leipzig, 1876.)

t I should recommend the large number of people who unfortunately

still keep aloof from natural science, to read carefully Christian Konrad
Sprengel’s Das entdechie Geherninis der Natur im Bau und in der Befrucht-
THE CHAOS 283

what is so evidently a fundamental law of nature, we
are led to suppose that it is not by mere chance that
pre-eminent races have sprung from an original fusing
of different stems, such as we have observed in history ;
the historical facts rather provide still further proof for
the view that ,mixture of blood supplies particularly
favourable physiological “conditions for thé — origi’ of-—
noble races.”

~(5) A fifth law must also be mentioned, although it is
restrictive and explanatory rather than contributive of
any new element to the question of race. Only quite
definite, limited mixtures of blood contribute towards
the ennoblement of a race, or, it may be, the origin - ofa
new oné. Héré-again the cléarest and least ambiguous
examples are furnished by animal breeding. The mixture
of blood must be strictly limited as regards time, and
it must, in addition, be appropriate; not all and any
crossings, but only definite ones can form the basis of
ennoblement. By time-limitation I mean that the
influx of new blood must take place as quickly as possible --
and then cease; continual crossing ruins the strongest
race. To take an extreme example, the most famous
ung der Blumen, 1793. The whole German nation ought to be proud of
this work : since 1893 there has been a facsimile reprint of it (Mayer and
Miller, Berlin) and it can beread byany layman. Of more recent publi-
cations Hermann Miller’s Alpenblumen, thre Befruchtung durch Insekten
und thre Anpassungen an dieselben (Engelmann, 1881) is specially
stimulating, clear by reason of the many illustrations, and complete.
A summary account, which includes plants other than European, is
found in the same author’s Blumen und Insekten in Trewendt’s
Encyklopadie dey Naturwissenschaften. There are certainly few specu-
lations that introduce us so directly to the most mysterious wonders
of nature as this revelation of the mutual relations of the plant and
animal worlds. What are all our knowledge and hypotheses in com-
parison with such phenomena? ‘They teach us to observe faithfully
and to be satisfied with the circle of things attainable. (During the
printing of this book Knuth’s Handbuch dey Bliitenbiologie, published
by Engelmann, began to appear.)

* For this question of the mixture of blood indispensable to the

origin of pre-eminently gifted races Reibmayr’s book, Inzucht und
Vermischung beim Menschen, 1897, should be consulted,
284. FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

pack of greyhounds in England was crossed once only
with bulldogs, whereby it gained in courage and endurance,
but further experiments prove that when such a crossing
is continued, the characters of both races disappear and
quite characterless mongrels remain behind.* ' Crossing
obliterates characters. The limitation to definitely ap-
propriate crossings means that only certain crossings,
not all, ennoble. There are crossings which, far from
having an ennobling influence, ruin both races, and
moreover, it frequently happens that the definite, valuable
characters of two different types cannot fuse at all;
in the latter case some of the descendants take after
the one parent, others after the other, but naturally
with mingled characteristics, or again, genuine real
mongrels may appear, creatures whose bodies give the
impression of being screwed together from parts that do
not fit, and whose intellectual qualities correspond exactly
to the physical.t Here too it should be remarked that
the union of mongrel with mongrel brings about with
startling rapidity the total destruction of all and every
pre-eminent quality of race. / It is therefore an entirely
mistaken idea that mixture of blood between different
stems invariably ennobles the race, and adds new qualities
to the old.. It does so only with the strictest limitations
and under rare and definite conditions ; as a rule mixture
of blood leads to degeneration. One thing is perfectly
clear: that the crossing of two very different types
contributes to the formation of a noble race only when
it takes place very seldom and is followed by strict
inbreeding (as in the case of the English thoroughbred
and the Newfoundland dog); in all other cases crossing
is a success only when it takes place between those closely
related, t.e., between those that belong to the same funda-

* Darwin, Animals and Plants, chap. xv:
+ For this too there are numerous examples in Darwin. As regards
dogs in particular, examples will occur to every one.
THE CHAOS 285

mental type.—Here too no one who knows the detailed
results of animal breeding can doubt that the history
of mankind before us and around us obeys the same
law. Naturally, it does not appear with the same clear-
ness in the one case as in the other; we are not in a
position to shut in a number of human beings and make
experiments with them for several generations; more-
over, while the horse excels in swiftness, the dog in
remarkable and plastic flexibility of body, man excels
in mind: here all his vigour is concentrated, here too,
therefore, is concentrated all his variability, and it is
just these differences in character and intelligence that
are not visible to the eye.* But history has carried out
experiments on a large scale, and every one whose eye
is not blinded by details, but has learned to survey great
complexes, every one who studies the soul-life of nations,
will discover any amount of proofs of the law here
mentioned. While, for example, the “extravagantly”
gifted Attics and the uniquely shrewd and strong
Roman race are produced by the fusion of several stems,
they are nevertheless nearly related and noble, pure
stems, and these elements are then, by the formation of
States, isolated for centuries, so that they have time to
amalgamate into a new solid unity ; when, on the other
hand, these States are thrown open to every stranger, the
race is ruined, in Athens slowly, because owing to the
political situation there was not much to get there, and
the mixing in consequence only took place gradually

* We must, however, not overlook the fact that, if we could make
experiments in breeding with men, very great differences in physique
also could certainly be achieved in regard to size, hair, proportions, &c.
Place a dwarf from the primeval forest of the Middle Congo, little more
than 3 feet high, the whole body covered with hair, beside a Prussian
Grenadier of the Guards: one will see what plastic possibilities
slumber in the human body.—As far as the dog is concerned, we
must remember also that the various breeds “‘ certainly originate from
more than one wild species”’ (Claus, Zoologie, 4th edit. ii. 458) ; hence
its almost alarming polymorphism,
286 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

and then for the most part with Indo-European peoples,*
in Rome with frightful rapidity, after Marius and Sulla
had, by murdering the flower of the genuine Roman
youth, dammed the source of noble blood and at the
same time, by the freeing of slaves, brought into the
nation perfect floods of African and Asiatic blood, thus
transforming Rome into the cloaca gentium, the trysting-
place of all the mongrels of the world.t We observe the
same on all sides. We see the English race arising out
of a mutual fusion of separated but closely related
Teutonic tribes; the Norman invasion provides in this
case the last brilliant touch; on the other hand, geo-
graphical and historical conditions have so wrought
that the somewhat more distantly related Celts remained
by themselves, and even to-day only gradually mingle
with the ruling race. How manifestly stimulating and
refreshing, even to the present day, is the influence of
the immigration of French Huguenots into Berlin! They
were alien enough to enrich the life there with new
elements and related enough to produce with their Prussian
hosts not “mongrels that seem screwed together” but
men of strong character and rare gifts. To see the
opposite, we need only look over to South America.
Where is there a more pitiful sight than that of the
mestizo States there? The so-called savages of Central
Australia lead a much more harmonious, dignified and,
let us say, more “holy” life than these unhappy Peru-
vians, Paraguayans, &c., mongrels from two and often
more than two incongruous races, from two cultures

* It is very instructive to observe, on the other hand, that the
Hellenes in Ionia, who were subject to every kind of mongrel crossing,
disappeared much more quickly.

+ Long before me Gibbon had recognised the physical degeneration
of the Roman race as the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire;
now that is more fully demonstrated by O. Seeck in his Geschichte
der Unterganges der antiken Welt. It was only the immigration of the
vigorous Teutonic peoples that kept the chaotic empire artificially
alive for a few centuries longer.
THE CHAOS 287

with nothing in common, from two stages of development,
too different in age and form to be able to form a marriage
union—children of an unnatural incest. Any one who
earnestly desires to know what race signifies can learn
much from the example of these States ; let him but con-
sult the statistics, he will find the most different relations
between the pure European or pure Indian population and
the half-caste, and he will see that relative degeneration
goes exactly hand in hand with the mixture of blood.
I take the two extreme examples, Chile and Peru. In
Chile, the only one of these States * that can make a
modest claim to true culture and that can also point
to comparatively well-ordered political conditions, about
30 per cent. of the inhabitants are still of pure Spanish
origin, and this third is sufficient to check moral dis-
integration.j On the other hand, in Peru, which, as
is well known, gave the first example to the other re-
publics of a total moral and material bankruptcy, there
are almost no Europeans of pure race left; with the
exception of the still uncivilised Indians in the interior
the whole population consists of Cholos, Musties, Fusties,
Tercerones, Quarterones, &c., crossings between Indians
and Spaniards, between Indians and Negroes, Spaniards
and Negroes, further between the different races and
those mestizos or crosses of the mestizo species among
each other; in recent years many thousands of Chinese
have been added . . . here we see the promiscuity longed
for by Ratzel and Virchow in progress, and we observe
what the result is! Of course it is an extreme example,
but all the more instructive. If the enormous force of
surrounding civilisation did not artificially support such
a State on all sides, if by any chance it were isolated and
left to itself, it would in ashort time fall a prey to total

* In Portugese Brazil the conditions are essentially different.

+ According to Albrecht Wirth, Volkstum und Weltmacht in der
Geschichte, 1901, p. 159, the Chilians also derive advantage from the
fact that their Indians—the Araucani—are of particularly noble race.
288 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtnH CENTURY

barbarism—not human, but bestial barbarism. All these
States are moving towards a similar fate.*—Here too I
leave it to the reader to think over the matter and to
collect evidence with regard to this fifth law, which shows
us thatlevery crossing is a dangerous matter and can
only help to ennoble the race when definite conditions
are observed, as also that many possible crossings are
absolutely detrimental and destructive} once the eyes
of the reader are opened, he will find~everywhere both
in the past and in the present proofs of this law as well as
of the other four.f

These then are the five principles which seem to me
to be fundamental: / the quality of the material, in-
breeding, artificial selection, the necessity of crossings,
the necessity of strictly limiting these crossings both in
respect of choice and of time.; From these principles
we further deduce “the Conclusion that the origin of a
very noble human race depends among other aes

it is these that unconsciously bring about-the ennobling
of the original material, the in-breeding and the artificial
selection, it is these too—when a happy star shines over
the birthplace of a new people—that produce happy
tribal marriages and prevent the prostitution of the noble
in the arms of the ignoble. The fact that there was a
time in the nineteenth century when learned investigators,
with Buckle at their head, could assert that geographical
conditions produced the races, we may now appropriately

* As is well known, very similar conditions prevail in the Spanish
colonies. The island of Porto Rico forms the sole exception: here the
native Caribbees were exterminated, and the result is a pure Indo-
European population, distinguished for industry, shrewdness and love
of order: a striking example of the significance of race!

t Inhis book Altersklassen und Mannerb nde (p. 23), Heinrich Schurtz
comes to the conclusion that, ‘‘ Successful crossings are possible and
advantageous only within a certain sphere of relationship. If the
relationship is too close, really near blood-relationship, sickly tendencies
are not counterbalanced but increased ; if it is too remote, no felicitous
mixing of the qualities is possible.”
THE CHAOS 289

mention with the scant honour of a paraleipsis ; for that
doctrine is a blow in the face of all history and all ob-
servation. On the other hand, every single one of the
laws enumerated, and in addition the examples of Rome,
Greece, England, Judea and South America in particular,
let us see so clearly in how far the historical and geo-
graphical conditions not only contribute to the origin
and the decline of a race but are actually decisive factors
therein, that I can refrain from further discussion of the
matter.*

OTHER INFLUENCES

Is the question of race now exhausted ? Far from it!
These biological problems are remarkably complex.
They embrace, for example, the still so mysterious subject
of heredity, in regard to the fundamental principles of which
the most important specialists are more at variance every
day.} Besides, many other circumstances which profounder
study reveals would have to be taken into account.
Nature is in fact inexhaustible ; however deep we sink
the plummet, we never reach the bottom. Whoever
would make a study of these matters must not, for
example, overlook the fact that small numbers of foreign
elements are wont in a short time to be entirely absorbed
by a strong race, but that there is, as the chemists say, a
definite capacity, a definite power of absorption, beyond

* If, for example, the climate of Attica had been the decisive thing,
as is often asserted, it would be impossible to understand why the
genius of its inhabitants was produced only under certain racial con-
ditions and disappeared for ever with the removal of these conditions ;
on the other hand, the importance of the geographical and historical
conditions becomes quite clear, when we observe that they isolated
Attica for centuries from the ceaseless changes brought about by the
migrations, but at the same time contributed to the influx of a
select, noble population from different but related tribes, which mingled
to form a new race.

t+ The reader will find an interesting summary of the different
opinions of modern times in Friedrich Rohde’s Entstehung und Vererbung
individueller Eigenschaften, 1895.

I T
290 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

which a loss of the purity of the blood, revealed by the
diminution of the characteristic qualities, is involved.
We have an instance of this in Italy, where the proudly
passionate and brilliant families of strong Teutons, who
had kept their blood pure till the fourteenth century,
later gradually mingled with absolutely mongrel Italians
and Italiots and so entirely disappeared (see chaps. vi.
and ix.): crossing obliterates characters. The careful
observer will further notice that in crossings between
human stems, which are not closely related, the relative
generative power is a factor which can prevail after
centuries and gradually bring about the decline of the
nobler portion of a mixed people, because in fact this
generative power often stands in inverse relation to the
nobility of the race.* In Europe at the present day we

* Professor August Forel, the well-known psychiatrist, has made
interesting studies in the United States and the West Indian islands, on
the victory of intellectually inferior races over higher ones because
of their greater virility, ‘‘ Though the brain of the negro is weaker
than that of the white, yet his generative power and the predomin-
ance of his qualities in the descendants are all greater than those
of the whites. The white race isolates itself (therefore) from them
more and more strictly, not only in sexual but in all relations, because it
has at last recognised that crossing means its own destruction.” Forel
shows by numerous examples how impossible it is for the negro to
assimilate our civilisation more than skin-deep, and how so soon as
he is left to himself he everywhere degenerates into the ‘‘ most absolute
primitive African savagery.” (For more detail on this subject, see
the interesting book of Hesketh Pritchard, Where Black rules White,
Hayti, 1900; any one who has been reared on phrases of the
equality of mankind, &c., will shudder when he learns how matters
really stand so soon as the blacks in a State get the upper hand.)
And Forel, who as scientist is educated in the dogma of the one,
everywhere equal, humanity, comes to the conclusion: ‘‘Even for
their own good the blacks must be treated as what they are, an abso-
lutely subordinate, inferior, lower type of men, incapable themselves of
culture. That must once for all be clearly and openly stated.’ (See the
account of his journey in Harden’s Zukunft, February 17, 1900.)—For
this question of race-crossings and the constant victory of the inferior
race over the superior, see also the work of Ferdinand Hueppe, which
is equally rich in facts and perceptions, Uber die modernen Kolonisations-
bestrebungen und die Anpassungsmiglichkeit der Europder an die Tropen
(Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1901). In Australia, for example,
a process of sifting is quietly but very quickly going on, whereby the tall
THE CHAOS 291

have an example of this: the short round skulls are
constantly increasing in numbers and so gradually super-
seding the narrow “ dolichocephali,” of which, according
to the unanimous testimony of excavated tombs, almost
the whole of the genuine old Teutonic, Slavonic and
Celtic races consisted ; in this we see the growing pre-
dominance of an alien race which had been conquered by
the Indo-Teutonic (to-day it is mostly called “‘ Turanic”’),
and which by animal force gradually overpowers the
mentally superior race.* In this connection too perhaps
should be mentioned the peculiar fact that dark eyes
are becoming so much more prevalent than grey and
blue, because in marriages between people with differently
coloured eyes the dark are almost without exception
much more frequently represented in the descendants
than the light.

If I were minded to follow up this argument it would
land us in one of the thorniest branches of modern science,
This, however, is absolutely unnecessary for my purpose.
Without troublirg myself about any definition, I have
given a picture of Race as it is exhibited in the individual
character, in the mighty achievements of genius, in the
most brilliant pages of the history of man: in the next

fair Teuton—so strongly represented in the English blood—is dis-
appearing, while the added element of the homo alpinus is gaining the
upper hand.

* There is a clear and simple summary in Johannes Ranke, Der
Mensch, ii: 296 ff. The discussion of all these questions in Topinard’s
L’ Anthropologie, Part II.,is more thorough, but for that reason much
more difficult to follow. It is remarkable that the latter only uses
the word “‘race’’ to denote a hypothetical entity, the actual existence
of which at any time cannot be proved. Ji n’ya plus de races pures.
Who seeks to prove that there ever were any in this a priori sense of
anthropological presuppositions? Pure animal races are obtained
only by breeding and on the fundamental basis of crossing ; why
should the opposite hold of men ?—Besides, this whole “ Turanic ”
hypothesis is, like all these things, still very much of an airy abstraction.
See further details in chap. vi.

+ Alphonse de Candolle: Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis
deux Siécles, 2° éd,, p. 5764
292 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

place I have called attention to the most important con-
ditions which scientific observation has pointed out as
laying the foundation for the origin of noble races. That
the introduction of contrary conditions must be followed
by degeneration, or at any rate by the retarding of the
development of noble qualities, seems to be in the highest
degree probable, and might be proved in many ways by
reference both to the past and the present. I have
purposely exercised caution and self-restraint. In such
labyrinthine tangles the narrowest path is the safest.
The only task which I have proposed to myself has been
_ to call into being a really vivid representation of what
Race is, of what it has meant for mankind in the past
and still means in the present.,

THE NaTION

There is one point which I have not expressly formu-
lated, but it is self-evident from all that I have said;
the conception of Race has nothing in it unless we take
it in the narrowest and not in the widest sense: if we
follow the usual custom and use the word to denote far
remote hypothetical races, it ends by becoming little
more than a colourless synonym for “ mankind ’”’—
possibly including the long-tailed and short-tailed apes:
Race only has a meaning when it relates to the experiences
of the past and the events of the present.

‘Here we.begin to understand what nation signifes
for race.| It is almost always the nation, as a political
e structure, that creates the conditions for the formation

of race or at least leads to the highest and most individual
* activities of race. Wherever, as in India, nations are
not formed, the stock of strength that has been gathered
by race decays. But the confusion which prevails
with regard to the idea of race hinders even the most
learned from understanding this great significance of
THE CHAOS 203.

nations, whereby they are at the same time prevented
from understanding the fundamental facts of history.
For, in fact, what is it that our historians to-day teach
us concerning the relation of race to nation ?

I take up any book by chance—Renan’s discourse, What
is a Nation? In hundreds of others we find the same
doctrines. The thesis is clearly formulated by Renan:
“The fact of race,’ he writes, “ originally of decisive
importance, loses significance every day.” * On what
does he base this assertion ? ’/ By pointing to the fact that
the most capable nations of Europe are of mixed blood.”
What a mass of delusive conclusions this one sentence
contains, what incapacity to be taught by what is evident .
to the eye! ’ Nature and history do not furnish a single
“example of pre-eminently noble races with individual
physiognomies, which were not produced by crossing :
and now we are to believe that a nation of such distinct
individuality as the English does not represent a race,
because it originated from a mixture of Anglo-Saxon,
Danish and Norman blood (stems moreover that were
closely related)! I am to deny the clearest evidence
which shows me that the Englishman is at least as markedly
unique a being as the Greek and the Roman of the most
brilliant epochs, and that in favour of an arbitrary,
eternally indemonstrable abstraction, in favour of the
presupposed, original ‘‘ pure race.” Two pages before,
Renan himself had stated on the basis of anthropological
discoveries that among the oldest Aryans, Semites,
Turanians (les groubes aryen primitif, sémitique primiti},
touranien primitif) one finds men of very different build
of body, some with long, others with short skulls, so
that they too had possessed no common “ physiological
unity.” What delusions will not arise, as soon as man
seeks for supposed “ origins”?! Again and again I must

* Renan: Discours et Confévences, 3° éd., ps 297, “Le fait de la
face, capital 4 l’origine, va donc toujours perdant de sen importance.”
294 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

quote Goethe’s great remark: “‘ Animated inquiry into

' cause does infinite harm.” Instead of taking the given

fact, the discoverable as it is, and contenting ourselves
with the knowledge of the nearest, demonstrable con-
_ ditions, we ever and again fancy we must start from
absolutely hypothetical causes and suppositions lying as
far back as possible, and to these we sacrifice without
hesitation that which is present and beyond doubt. That
is what our “ empiricists”’ are like. That they do not see
further than their own noses, we gladly believe from their
own confession, but unfortunately they do not see even so
far, but run up against solid facts and complain then about
the said facts, not about their own shortsightedness.
What kind of thing is this originally “ piysiologically
uniform race” of which Renan speaks ?.Probably a
near relation of Haeckel’s human apes. And in favour
of this hypothetical beast I am to deny that the English
people, the Prussians, the Spaniards have a definite and
absolutely individual character! Renan misses physio-
logical unity : does he not comprehend that physiological
unity is brought about by marriage ? Who then tells him
that the hypothetical aboriginal Aryans were not also the
_Tesult of gradual development ? We know nothing about
it: but what we do know entitles us to suppose it from
analogy. There were among them narrow heads and
broad ones: who knows but this crossing was necessary
to produce one very noble race? The common English
horse and the Arabian horse (which doubtless was pro-
duced originally by some crossing) were also “ physio-
logically ’’ very different, and yet from their union was
produced in the course of time the most physiologically
uniform and noblest race of animals in the world, the
English thoroughbred. Now the great scholar Renan
sees the English human thoroughbred, so to speak, arising
before his eyes : the ages of history are before him. What
does he deduce therefrom ? Hesays: since the English-
THE CHAOS 295

man of to-day is neither the Celt of Cesar’s time nor the
Anglo-Saxon of Hengist, nor the Dane of Knut, nor the
Norman of the Conqueror, but the outcome of a crossing
of all four, one cannot speak of an English race at all.
That is to say because the English race, like every other
race of which we have any knowledge, has grown his-
torically, because it is something peculiar and absolutely
new, therefore it does not exist! In truth, nothing beats
the logic of the scholar !

Was ihr nicht rechnet
Glaubt ihr, sei nicht wahr.*
Our opinion concerning the importance of nationality in
the formation of race must be quite different. The Roman
Empire in the imperial period was the materialisation of
the anti-national principle; 'this principle led to race-
lessness and simultaneously to intellectual and moral
chaos; mankind was only rescued from this chaos by
the more and more decisive development of the oppo-
site or national principle.{/ Political nationality has
not always played the same 7é/e in the production of
individual races as it has in our modern culture; I
need only refer to India, Greece and the Israelites;
but the problem was nowhere solved so beautifully,
successfully and as it appears so lastingly, as by the
Teutonic peoples. As though conjured up out of the soil
there arose in this small corner of Europe a number of
absolutely new, differentiated national organisms. Renan
is of opinion that race existed only in the old “ polis,’’
because it was only there that the numerical limitation
had permitted community of blood; this is absolutely
false; one need only reckon back a few centuries, and
every one has a hundred thousand ancestors ; what, there-
fore, in the narrow circle of Athens took place in a com-

* What you do not reckon,
You fancy, is not true.

¢ This forms the subject of the eighth chapter (vol. ii.)i
296 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

paratively short time, namely, the physiological union,
took place in our case in the course of several centuries
and is still continued. Race formation, far from de-
creasing in our nations, must daily increase. The longer
a definite group of countries remains politically united,
the closer does the “ physiological unity” which is
demanded become, and the more quickly and thoroughly
does it assimilate strange elements. Our anthropologists
and historians simply presuppose that in their hypo-
thetical primitive races the specific distinguishing charac-
teristics were highly developed, but that they are now
progressively decreasing; there is consequently, they
aver, a movement from original complexity to increasing
simplicity. This supposition is contrary to all experience,
which rather teaches us that individualisation is a result
of growing differentiation and separation. The whole
science of biology contradicts the supposition that an
organic creature first appears with clearly marked
characteristics, which then gradually disappear; it
actually forces us to the very opposite hypothesis that
the early human race was a variable, comparatively
colourless aggregate, from which the individual types
_ have developed with increasing divergence and increas-
‘ ingly distinct individuality; a hypothesis which all
history confirmsr The sound and normal evolution of
man is therefore not from race to racelessness but on the
contrary from racelessness to ever clearer distinctness of
race. The enrichment of life by new individualities
seems everywhere to be one of the highest laws of in-
scrutable nature. Now here in the case of man the nation
plays a most important part, because it almost always
brings about crossing, followed by inbreeding. All
Europe proves this. Renan shows how many Slavs
have united with the Teutonic peoples, and asks some-
what sneeringly whether we have any right to call the
Germans of to-day ‘‘ Teutonic”: well, we need not

J
THE CHAOS 297

quarrel about names in such a case—what the Germans
are to-day Renan has been able to learn in the year
1870; he has been taught it too by the German
specialists, to whose industry he owes nine-tenths of his
knowledge. That is the valuable result of the creation
of race by nation-building. And since race is not a
mere word, but an organic living thing, it follows as a
matter of course that it never remains stationary; it
is ennobled or it degenerates, it develops in this or that
direction and lets this or that quality decay. This is a
law of all individual life. But the firm national union
is the surest protection against going astray: it signifies
common memory, common hope, common intellectual
nourishment ; it fixes firmly the existing bond of blood
and impels us to make it ever closer.

THE HERO

Just as important as the clear comprehension of the
organic relation of race to nation is that of the organic
relation of race to its quintessence, the hero or genius.
We are apt to fancy we must choose between hero-
worship and the opposite. But the one as well as the
other testifies to poverty of insight. What I have
said in the general introduction need not be repeated ;
but here, where the question of race is in the forefront,
this problem takes a particularly clear form, and with
some power of intuition we must surely perceive that the
influence of intellectually pre-eminent units in a race, like
the human, the individuality of which depends upon the
development of its intellectual faculties, is immeasurable,
for good and for evil; these units are the feet that
carry and the hands that mould, they are the countenance
on which we others gaze, they are the eye which beholds
the rest of the world in a definite way and then commu.
nicates what it has seen to the rest of the organism.
298 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

But they are produced by the whole corporation ; they
can arise only from its vital action, only in it and from it
do they gain importance. What is the use of the hand
if it does not grow out of a strong arm as part and parcel of
it? What is the use of the eye if the radiant forms which
it has seen are not reflected in a dark, almost amorphous
brain mass lying behind it ? Phenomena only gain sig-
nificance when they are united to other phenomena. The
richer the blood that courses invisibly through the veins, the
more luxuriant will be the blossoms of life that spring forth.
The assertion that Homer created Greece is indeed
literally true, but remains onesided and misleading as
long as we do not add: only an incomparable people,
only a quite definite, ennobled race could produce this
man, only a race in which the seeing and shaping eye
had been “extravagantly’’ developed.* Without Homer
Greece would not have become Greece, without the
Hellenes Homer would never have been born. It was the
same race which gave birth to the great seer of forms that
produced the inventive seer of figures, Euclid, the lynx-
eyed arranger of ideas, Aristotle, the man who first per-
ceived the system of the cosmos, Aristarchus, and so on ad
infinitum. Nature is not so simple as scholastic wisdom
fancies: if great personality is our “ most precious gift,”
communal greatness is the only soil on which it can grow.
It is the whole race, for instance, that creates the language,
and therewith at the same time definite artistic, philo-
sophical, religious, in fact even practical possibilities, but
also insuperable limitations. No philosopher could ever
arise on Hebrew soil, because the spirit of the Hebrew
language makes the interpretation of metaphysical
thoughts absolutely impossible; for the same reason no
Semitic people could possess a mythology in the same sense

* Any one who wants to gain a vivid conception of the extraordinary
strength of these races, capable of serving as basis for a Homer, should
read the description of the strongholds of Tiryns and Mycenz from the
Atridean time, as they still stand to-day after tens of centuries,
THE CHAOS 299

as the Indians and the Teutonic peoples. “One sees what
definite paths are marked out even for the greatest men
by the common achievements of the whole race.*, But
it is not a question of language alone. Homer had to find
the myths in existence in order to be able to mould them
into shape; Shakespeare put upon the stage the history
which the English people had made; Bach and Beet-
hoven spring from races which had attracted the attention
of the ancients by their singing. And Mohammed ?
Could he have made the Arabs a world-power, had they
not as one of the purest bred races in the world possessed
definite ‘‘ extravagant” qualities? But for the new
Prussian race, could the Great Elector have begun, the
Great Frederick have extended, and the Great William
have completed the structure which is now United
Germany ?

TuE RAcELESS CHAOS

The first task set us in this chapter is now fulfilled ;
we have got a clear concrete idea of what race is and what
it signifies for mankind ; we have seen too, from some
examples of the present time, how fatal the absence of
race, that is, the chaos of unindividualised, speciesless
human agglomerates, is. Any one who perceives this and
ponders over it will gradually realise what it signifies for
our Teutonic culture that the inherited culture of antiquity,
which at important points still not only forms the founda-
tions but also the walls of the structure, was not trans-
mitted to us by a definite people but by a nationless
mixture without physiognomy, in which mongrels held
the whip-hand, namely, by the racial chaos of the decaying -
Roman Empire. Our whole intellectual development
is still under the curse of this unfortunate intermediate

* According to Renan (Israél, i. 102) the Hebrew language is
utterly incapable of expressing a philosophical thought, a mythological
conception, the feeling of the Infinite, the emotions of the human soul
or even pure observation of nature,
300 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

stage; it is this that supplied weapons to the anti-national,
anti-racial powers even in the nineteenth century.

Even before Julius Cesar, the Chaos begins to appear ;
through Caracalla it is elevated to the official principle
of the Roman Empire.* Throughout the whole extent
of the Empire there was thorough mixing of blood, but
in such a way that,real bastardising, that is, the crossing
of unrelated or of noble and ignoble races occurred
almost wholly in the most southern and eastern parts,
‘where the Semites met the Indo-Europeans—that is to
say, in the capitals Rome and Constantinople, along the
whole north coast of Africa (as well as on the coasts of
Spain and Gaul), above all in Egypt, Syria and Asia
Minor.

It is as easy as it is important to form an idea of the
area of this complicated geographical condition. The
Danube and the Rhine almost meet at their source.
The two river-districts fit so closely into each other
that there is, it is said, in the neighbourhood of the
Albula Pass a small lake, which when there is high water
flows on the one side into the Albula and the Rhine, on
the other into the Inn and the Danube. Now if we follow
the courses of these rivers, up the Rhine from the mouth
of the old Rhine near Leyden and down the Danube
till it falls into the Black Sea, we get an unbroken line
crossing the Continent from north-west to south-east ;
this, roughly speaking, forms the northern boundary of the
Roman Empire for a long period of time; except in parts
of Dacia (the Roumania of to-day) the Romans never
asserted themselves for long north and east of this line.T

* See p. 124:

+ The Roman fortified boundary did indeed include a considerable
portion north of the Danube and east of the Rhine, because the limes
branched off westwards above Regensberg, came near Stuttgart, then
north again till it met the Maine west of Wirzburg. But this tithe-
land, as it was called, was not colonised by Italians, but, as Tacitus

tells us, by ‘‘the most fickle of the Gauls” (Cf. Wietersheim,
Voélkerwanderung, i. 161 ff.}.
THE CHAOS Zor

This line divides Europe (if we include the African and
Asian possessions of Rome) into two almost equal parts.
In the south the great transfusion of blood (as the doctors
call the injecting of strange blood into an organism)
took place. If Maspero in his history of the peoples of
the Classical East entitles one volume “ The First Chaos
of Races,” then we may well speak here of a second chaos.
In Britain, in Rhetia, in the extreme north of Gaul, &c., it
seems indeed that in spite of the Roman sway there was
no thorough fusion; in the rest of Gaul too, as well as
in Spain, the newly imported elements from Rome had
at least several centuries of comparative isolation to
mingle with the former inhabitants before other elements
came, a circumstance which rendered possible the for-
mation of a new and very characteristic race, the Gallo-
Roman. In the south-east, on the other hand, and
especially in all centres of culture (which, as already
pointed out, all lay in the south and the east), there
was a medley all the more fundamentally pernicious in
that those who came in streams from the Levant
were themselves nothing but half-castes. For example,
we must not imagine that the Syrians of that time
were a definite nation, a people, a race: they were
rather a motley agglomeration of pseudo-Hittite, pseudo-
Semitic, | pseudo-Hellenic, pseudo-Persian, pseudo-
Scythian mongrels. What the French call un charme
troublant—superficial cleverness combined with a peculiar
sort of beauty—is often the characteristic of the half-
caste ; one can observe this daily at the present day in
cities like Vienna, where people of all nations meet ; but
the peculiar unsteadiness, the small power of resistance,
the want of character, in short, the moral degeneracy of
these people is equally marked. I name the Syrian
‘because I prefer examples to wordy enumerations; he
was the very pattern of the bastard sundered from all
national relationship, and for that very reason, up to the
302 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

time of the Teutonic invasion, and even later, he played a
leading part. We find Syrians upon the imperial throne ;
Caracalla belongs to them, and Heliogabalus, that monster
robed in silk and gold, tricked out like a dancing girl, was
imported direct from Syria; we find them im all ad-
ministrative offices and prefectures; they, like their
counterpart, the African mongrels, have great influence
in the codification of the Law and an absolute casting-
vote in the constitution of the universal Roman Church.
Let us look more closely at one of these men ; we shall
in that way gain a lively picture of the civilised fraction
of the Empire of that day with its pushing culture-
mongers, and at the same time obtain an insight into the
soul of the Chaos of Peoples.

Lucian

Every one, I fancy, knows the author Lucian, at least
by name; his exceptional talents force him upon our
notice. Born on the banks of the Euphrates, not far
from the first spurs of the Tauric mountain range (in
which energetic races of Indo-European descent still
lived), in addition to the Syrian patois, the boy begins to
learn to murder Greek. Having shown a talent for
drawing and sculpture he is apprenticed to a sculptor, but
only after a family council has been held to decide how
the boy may as speedily as possible make a fortune.
During his whole life, in spite of the amount of his
subsequent wealth, this desire for money remains the
guiding star—no, that is too fine an expression—the
driving impulse of this gifted Syrian; in his Nigrinus
he admits with enviable frankness that money and fame
are the things dearest to him in the world, and even as
an old man he writes expressly, that he accepts the high
official position offered by the Gladiator-Emperor
Commodus for the sake of the money. But in art he
THE CHAOS 303

makes no progress. In a famous book The Dream,*
which, however, as far as I know, is not appreciated
according to its true purport by any historian, Lucian tells
us why he gave up art and preferred to become a jurist
and belles-lettrist. In a dream two women had appeared
to him: the one “ looked like work,’ had hard hands,
her dress covered over and over with plaster; the other
was elegantly dressed and stood calmly there; the one
was Art, the other—he who does not know will never
guess, the other was—Culture.f Poor Art tries to inspire
her new disciple with zeal by the example of Phidias
and Polycletus, of Myron and Praxiteles, but in vain ;
for Culture proves convincingly that Art is an “ ignoble
occupation”; that the artist remains the whole day
bent over his work in a dirty smockfrock, like a slave ;
even Phidias was only “a common workman,” who
“lived from the toil of his hands ”’; whoever, on the other
hand, chooses Culture instead of Art, has the prospect
of riches and high offices, and when he goes for a walk
in the street, the people will nudge each other and
say, “See, there goes that famous man!” ft Quickly
making up his mind Lucian sprang to his feet: “I left
the ugly toilsome life and went over to Culture.” To-day
sculptor, to-morrow advocate; he who is born without
a definite calling can choose any; § whoever seeks gold
and fame does not need to look aloft and runs no risk
of falling into the well, like the hero of the German fairy

* Not to be confused with the Dream of the Shoemaker Micyllus:

t Greek word wadeia German Bildung; so the best translators,
It is not a question of the education of children, and ‘Science”
would imply too much. The possible objection that the first woman
does not introduce herself as ‘‘Art’”’? simply, but as the “Art of
cutting Herme’’ may be met by the rejoinder that later she is
described as réyvy and that the appeal to Phidias and other artists
admits no doubt about the intention.

¢~ The faint echo we have heard in the nineteenth century; ‘* When
the best names are named, mine too will be mentioned (Heine),

§ Cf. Ds 2424
304 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

tale. Do not imagine that The Dream is a satire; Lucian
gave it as a lecture in his native town, when he visited it
later, honoured and wealthy; he himself tells us that
he set up his life as an example to the youth of Samosata.
Such men, otherwise so clever, never understand what a
bitter satire their fate is on the life of the really great ;
how otherwise could a Heine have placed himself on the
same plane as a Goethe? Lucian had chosen Culture,
and to acquire it he went to Antioch. Athens was indeed
still the great high school of knowledge and taste, but
was considered old-fashioned ; Syrian Antioch and the
so-called ‘‘ Hellenic’ Ephesus, which nevertheless was
even in the second century thoroughly saturated with
alien elements, offered much greater attractions to the cos-
mopolitan youth of the Roman Empire. There Lucian
studied law and eloquence. But to him as an intelligent
man the abuse of the Greek language by his teachers was
painful; he guessed the value of a pure style and moved
to Athens. It is characteristic that he ventured after
a short spell of study to appear there as advocate and
orator ; in the meantime he had learned everything, except
propriety ; the Athenians taught him this, they laughed
at the “barbarian” with his pedantic tags of strange
culture and thereby gave him a valuable hint; he dis-
appeared to a place where taste was not so indispensable,
to Marseilles. This seaport of the Phcenician Diaspora
had just received by the arrival of thousands of Jews from
Palestine such a clearly marked character that it was
simply called “ the city of the Jews” ; but Gauls, Romans,
Spaniards, Ligurians, all conceivable races met there. Here,
in New Athens, as the inhabitants, with a delicate recog-
nition of their own intellectual worth, called it, Lucian
lived for many years and became a rich man ; he gave up
the profession of advocate, for which he would have needed
to learn Latin thoroughly ; besides, there was great com-
petition, and even in Antioch he had not had great success
THE CHAOS 305

as a pleader; what these mushroom plutocrats chiefly
wanted was Culture, modern Culture and rules of eti-
quette. Had not “Culture” been Lucian’s ideal, his
dream? Had he not studied in Antioch and “ spoken
openly ” even in Athens? Accordingly he gave lectures ;
but the listeners did not laugh at him, as in Athens, but
paid any entrance fee that he cared to ask. Besides, he
travelled over all Gaul as professional orator, at that time
a very profitable business: to-day commemorating the
virtues of a dead person, whom he had never seen in life,
to-morrow taking part in the celebration of a religious
festival that was given in honour of some local Gallo-
Roman divinity, whose name a Syrian could not even
pronounce. Any one who wishes to get an idea of this
oratory should look at the Florida of Apuleius, a con-
temporary but African mestizo ; * this is a collection of
shorter and longer oratorical passages written for effect,
to be put into any speech whatever, in order that the
audience might think it a sudden inspiration, and be
startled and carried away by the great knowledge, wit
and pathos of the orator; there it is all in stock: the
profound, the pointed, the clever anecdote, the devoutly
submissive, the proud claims of freedom, even the
excuse for being unprepared and the thanks for the
statues that might be offered to the orator as a surprise !
Just such things are pictures of a man and not of a man
only, but of a whole Culture or, to use Lucian’s word,
of a whole zaidsta. Any one who has seen Prince
Bismarck in one of his great speeches struggling to
express himself will understand what I mean.—When
forty years of age Lucian turned his back on Gaul; to
settle in a definite place, to link his life perpetually
with that of any country never occurs to him; besides

* Apuleius boasts expressly of his mixed origin. He too studied
in Syria and Egypt and travelled in Greece, hence had practically
the same educational course as Lucian.

I U
306 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

there were no nations; if Lucian returns for a short
visit to his native place it is not from heartlonging
but, as he himself honestly confesses, to show his rich
garments to those who knew him when poor.* Then
he settles in Athens for a considerable period, but keeps
silent this time and industriously studies philosophy
and science in the honest endeavour to find at last what
lies concealed behind this lauded Hellenic culture.
That this man, who for twenty years had taught “ Hel-
lenic culture”? and gained riches and honour from it,
suddenly notices that he never understood even the
elements of this culture, is an almost pathetic trait
and a proof of exceptional gifts. For that reason I
have chosen him in particular. In his writings one finds,
alongside of puns and many good jokes and in addition
to fine narrative, many a sharp and sometimes pathetic
remark. But what could be the result of this study?
Little or nothing. We men are not pieces in a game
of draughts; there was just as little possibility of
becoming a different person by learned instruction in
Athens as there is to-day of becoming a “ beautiful
personality ”’ in Berlin, as Professor Virchow hopes from
the influence of the University there—if one is not
already such at matriculation. With nothing is a man’s
knowledge so intimately bound up as with his Being, in
other words, with his definite individuality, his definite
organisation. Plato expressed the opinion that knowledge
was remembrance; modern biology gives the word
a slightly different interpretation but agrees with the
philosopher. In a perfectly significant sense we can say
that each man can only know, what heis. Lucian himself

* The Fliegende Bldttey of 1896 has a picture which shows
a Counsellor of Commerce and his wife just entering their
carriage :

“She : Where shall we drive to to-day ?

" He: Of course through the town; to make the people envy us!'!

That is exactly the same stage of ‘culture,
THE CHAOS 307

felt that all that he had learned and taught hitherto was
mere tinsel—matters of fact, not the soul from which
these facts grow: the covering but without the body, the
shell but without the kernel. And when at last he under-
stood this and broke the shell, what did he find? Nothing.
Of course nothing Nature has first to produce the
kernel, the shell is a later accrescence; the body must
be born before it can be clothed ; the hero’s heart must
beat before heroic deeds can be achieved. The only
kernel Lucian could find was himself; as soon as he
tore from his body the rags of Roman Law and Hellenic
poetry, he revealed a clever Syrian mestizo, a bastard
born of fifty unrecorded crossings, the man who, with
the unerring instinct of youth, had despised Phidias
as a workman, and had chosen the career that with
the least possible trouble would earn for him most money
and the applause of the vulgar herd. All the philo-
logists in the world may assure me that Lucian’s remarks
about religion and philosophy are profound, that he
was a daring opponent of superstition, &c., I shall never
believe it. Lucian was utterly incapable of knowing
what religion and philosophy are. In many of his
writings he enumerates all possible “systems” one
after another; for example, in Icavomenippus, in the
Selling of Philosophical Characters, &c.; it is always
only the most superficial element that he comprehends,
the formal motive power, without which the utterance
of a thought is not possible, but which in truth must
not be confused with the thought itself. So, too, in
regard to religion. Aristophanes had scoffed as Voltaire
did in later days ; but the satire of both these men had its
origin in a positive, constructive thought, and everywhere
one sees the flash of fanatical love for the people of the
homeland, for the firm, definite, related community,
which embraced and supported each one of them with its
traditions, its faith and its great men; Lucian, on the
308 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

other hand, scoffs like Heine,* he has no noble aim, no
profound conviction, no thorough understanding; he
drifts about aimlessly like a wreck on the ocean, nowhere
at home, not without noble impulses, but without any
definite object to which he might devote himself, learned,
but yet one of those monsters of learning who, Calderor

Savs,
know everything and understand nothing.

But one thing he understood and therein lies tor us his
whole importance as a writer; he understood the spirit
that he resembled, namely, the totally bastardised, de-
praved and degenerate world around him ; he pictures it
and scourges it, as only one who himself belonged to it

_ could, one who knew its motives and methods from his

own experience. Here the kernel was not lacking. Hence

his delightful satires on the Homeric critics, on the learned
professions which were rotten to the core, on religious
swindlers, on puffed-up, rude and ignorant millionaires,
on medical quacks, &c. Here his talent and his know-
ledge of the world together contributed to the accom-
plishment of great things.—And in order that my
description may not be incomplete, I may add that
the second stay in Athens, if it did not teach Lucian
the meaning of mythology, or of metaphysics, or of the
heroic character, yet became for him a new source of
money-making. Here he turned his attention industriously
to authorship, wrote his Conversations of the Gods, his
Conversations of the Dead, in all probability most of
his best things. He invented a light form of dialogue
(for which he gave himself the title of “ Prometheus
the author’ !); at bottom they are good feuilletons, of
the kind which the philistine to this day likes to read in

* The one fault in this second comparison is that Heine did belong
to a definite people and in consequence possessed a more definite
physiognomy.
THE CHAOS 309

the morning with his coffee. They brought him in con-
siderable sums of money, when he began to travel again
and delivered them in public as lectures. But this
fashion also passed, or perhaps with age he had tired
of a vagabond life. He discarded the one legacy, Hellenic
art and philosophy, and turned to the other—Roman
Law; he became State Advocate (as some say) or
President of the Court (as others say) in Egypt and died
in this office.

I think that a single career such as this shows us, more
clearly than many a learned exposition, what the mental
chaos was, which at that time lay sheltered beneath the
uniform mantle of the tyrannical Roman Empire. We
cannot say of a man like Lucian that he was im-
moral; no, what we learn from such an example is that
morality and arbitrariness are two contradictory ideas.
Men who do not inherit definite ideals with their blood ‘
are neither moral nor immoral, they are simply “ without =
morals.’’ If I may be allowed to use a current phrase
to explain my meaning, I should say they are neither
good nor bad, equally they are neither beautiful nor
ugly, deep nor shallow. The individual in fact cannot |
make for himself an ideal of life and a moral law; these .
very things can only exist as a gradual growth. For
this reason it was very wise of Lucian, in spite of his
talent, to give up in time his idea of emulating Phidias.
He could become an orator for the Massillians, and a
President of Court for the Egyptians, even, if you will,
a feuilletonist for all time, but an artist or a thinker never.

AUGUSTINE

We may be met by the objection that out of the old
Chaos of Peoples there arose men of great importance,
whose influence has made itself felt upon succeeding
generations, until this day, in a far more penetrating

vt
310 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

sense. This presents no difficulty for the irrefutable
acceptance of the importance of race to humanity. ‘In
the midst of a chaos single individuals may still be of
perfectly pure race, or they may at least belong prin-
cipally to one definite race. Such a man, for example;
as Ambrosius must surely be of genuine, noble descent,
of that strong race which had made Rome great; I
cannot indeed prove it, for in the confusion of those
times history is unable to furnish exact information as
' to the pedigree of any man of importance. At the same
time no one can prove the contrary, so the personality
- of the individual must decide the question. Moreover,
it must not be overlooked that, unless crossing without
plan or method goes on with wild recklessness, the
qualities of a dominant race will remain conspicuous for
generations, though maybe in a much weakened con-
dition, and that they are capable of flashing up again as
atavism in single individuals. The breeding of animals
furnishes numerous examples of this. Take a piece of
paper and sketch a genealogical tree; we shall see that,
as soon as we go back only four generations, an individual
has already thirty ancestors, whose blood flows in his
veins. If we now suppose two races A and B, such a
table will clearly show how very different the hybridisation
in the case of a crossing of peoples must be, from the full
hybrid directly composed of A and B to the individual
of whose sixteen ancestors only one was a hybrid.
Besides, experience daily teaches us that exceptionally
gifted and beautiful human beings are frequently pro-
duced by crossing; it is, however, as I have said, not
a question of the individual only, but of his relation to
other individuals, to a uniform complex; if this single
mongrel enters into a definite race-centre, he may have
a very quickening effect upon it; if he falls among a
mere heap of beings, he is, like Lucian, only a stick among
sticks, not a branch on a living tree, The immeasurable
THE CHAOS 3IZ

power of ideas must also be reckoned with. They are
indeed misconstrued, mishandled and abused by ille-
gitimate successors—as we saw in the case of pseudo-
Roman law and Platonic philosophy—but they continue
to have a formative influence. What was it if not the
death-agony of the old genuine imperial idea that held:
together this agglomeration of peoples till the strong
Dietrich of Berne came to set them free? Whence did
those men of the chaos derive their thoughts and their
religion? Not from themselves, but only from Jews
and Hellenes. And so all that held them together, all
upon which their very existence depended, was drawn
from the inheritance of noble races. Take any of the
greatest men of the chaotic period, for example the
venerable Augustine, distinguished alike by temperament
and ability. To be unbiased, let us leave our own
purely religious standpoint and ask ourselves whether
there was not a hopeless chaos in the brain of this eminent
man? In the world of his imagination we find the
Jewish belief in Jehovah, the mythology of Greece,
Alexandrine Neoplatonism, Romish priestcraft, the Paul-
ine conception of God, and the contemplation of the
Crucified Lord, all jumbled together in heterogeneous con-
fusion. Augustine has to reject, in deference to Hebraic
materialism, many incomparably loftier religious thoughts
—loftier because pure and genuinely racial thoughts—
which Origenes held, but at the same time he introduces
into theology as ‘predestination the ancient Aryan con-
ception of necessity, whereby the old dogma of all Judaism,
the unconditional arbitrariness of will, goes to the wall.*

* Augustine is indeed extremely cautions; he says, for example,
vf the prescience of God and the contradictory view, the free will of
man: ‘‘ We embrace both convictions, we confess to both, truly
and honestly; to the one that we may believe rightly, to the other
that we may live rightly” (2llud, wt bene credamus ; hoc, ut bene
vivamus) ; cf: De Civ. Dei, v. 10. With this is closely connected
that further question, whether God himself is free or stands under
the law; the intellect inclines clearly in the case of Augustine ta

t
312 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

He spends twelve years writing a book against the
heathen gods, but himself believes in their existence in
so tangible and fetichist a sense as no cultured Greek
for a thousand years before him; he looks upon them
in fact as daemons and therefore creations of God; but
one must not, he thinks, regard them as creators (“ im-
mundos spiritus esse et perniciosa daemonia, vel certe
creatuvas non Creatorem, veritas Christiana convincit’’).
In his chief work, De Civitate Det, Augustine disputes
in chapter after chapter with his countryman Apuleius
regarding the nature of the daemons and other good and
bad spirits, endeavouring, if not to deny their existence,
at least to reduce them to an unimportant and un-
influential element and thus to replace crass super-
stition by genuine religion ; nevertheless, he inclines in
all earnest to the belief that Apuleius himself was changed
by the unguent of the Thessalian witch into an ass, and this
is all the more comical to us, because Apuleius, although
he wrote a great deal about daemons, never thought of
representing this transformation as an actual occurrence
when he wrote his novel, The Metamorphoses or the Golden
Ass.* I cannot of course enter more fully into this
matter here, that would take me too far ; it would deserve
a whole book to itself; and yet the detailed characterisa-
tion of the intellectual condition of the noble among
these sons of the chaos would be the right complement
to the sketch of the frivolous Lucian.f We should see
the latter view, his dogmatic creed to the former. Is an action bad
because God has forbidden it, or had heto forbid it because it is bad ?
In his Contva Mendacium, chap. xv., Augustine takes the second alter-
native; in other writings the former.

* This story seems to have been in vogue at the time; for Lucian
too has a Lucius or the Enchanted Ass, which looks indeed as if it
were translated from fragments of the Apuleian one. Augustine says
of the transformation “aut finxit, aut indicavit,”” but he clearly inclines
to the latter view.

+ The irreconcilable contradictions in the religious thought and

feeling of Augustine are fully discussed in the seventh chapter (vol. ii.)
and the gap here left is thus to some extent filled.
THE CHAOS 313

that everywhere the equilibrium is disturbed. In Lucian |
the unfettered intellect is uppermost and lack of moral |
strength ruins the finest qualities ; in Augustine, character .
wrestles with intellect in a tussle of doubtful issue, and |
does not rest until intellect is thrown and put in fetters.

Such were the men who handed down to us the legacy
of antiquity. ‘‘ We are like shipwrecked sailors thrown
on the shore by the wild breakers,’’ Ambrosius exclaims
in pain. Philosophy and law, ideas of State, freedom,
human dignity passed through their hands; it was they
who raised to the dignity of acknowledged dogmas
the superstition (belief in daemons, witchcraft, &c.) which
formerly was found only among the most ignorant scum
of the population ; it was they who forged a new religion
out of the most incompatible elements, who gave to the
world the gift of the Roman Church, a kind of changeling
born of the Roman imperial idea; at the same time it
was they who with the fanaticism of the weak destroyed
everything beautiful belonging to the past on which
they could lay their hands, every memory of great
generations. Hatred and disdain of every great achieve-
ment of the pure races were taught; a Lucian scoffs
at the great thinkers, an Augustine reviles the heroes
of Rome’s heroic age, a Tertullian calls Homer “ a liar.”
As soon as the orthodox emperors—Constantius, Theo-
dosius, and others—ascend the throne (without exceptions
mongrels in race, the great Diocletian being the last
Emperor of pure blood *) the systematic destruction of
all the monuments of antiquity begins. At the same
time is introduced the deliberate lie that is supposed to
further truth : such eminent Church fathers as Hieronymus
and Chrysostomus encourage the pia fraus, the pious
deception ; immediately upon this follows the foundation
of the might and right of the Roman see, not by courage
and conquest, but by the colossal forgery of documents.

* Cf. also what is said on p. 129 f.
314 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtw CENTURY

Even so respectable an historian as Eusebius has the
simplicity worthy of a better cause to confess that he
remodels history wherever he sees the opportunity of
furthering ‘‘ the good cause.”” In very truth this chaos
which arose out of race fusion and the universal craze for
anti-nationalism is an appalling spectacle !

ASCETIC DELUSION

Perhaps the fact has never yet been pointed out—l
at least know of no book where it is—that the epidemic
of asceticism which broke out at that time was directly
connected with the feeling of disgust for that frightful

- condition of the world ; some would fain see in it an
unexampled religious awakening, ‘others a _ religious
disease; but that is interpreting the facts allegorically,
for religion and asceticism are not necessarily connected.
Nothing in the example of Christ could encourage as-
ceticism ; the early Christians knew it not; two hundred
years after Christ Tertullian still wrote: ‘‘ We Christians
are not like the Brahmans and Gymnosophists of India,
we do not live in forests or in banishment from the society
of men: we feel that we owe God the Lord and Creator
thanks for everything and we forbid the enjoyment of
none of his works ; we only practise moderation in order
that we may not enjoy these things more than is good
for us or makea bad use of them ” (A pologeticus, chap. xlii.).
Why now did un-Christian asceticism all at once enter
into Christianity ? I for my part believe that we have
here to deal with physical reasons. Even before the
birth of Christ asceticism had taken its rise in the
altogether bastardised Syria and Egypt; wherever
blood was most mixed, it had taken a firm hold.
Pachomius, the founder of the first Christian cloister,
the author of the first monkish rule, is a servant of
Serapis from Upper Egypt, who transferred to Christianity

ot fethnet
we

“}

  
THE CHAOS 315

what he had learned in the societies of the fasting and
self-chastising ascetics of Serapis.* Any one who still
possessed a spark of noble impulse in that world of
the unnational chaos was bound in fact to be disgusted
with himself. Nowhere, where sound conditions pre-
vailed, has unconditional asceticism been preached ; on
the contrary, the ancient peoples—Aryans, Semites,
Mongolians—led by a marvellous instinct, are at one
in regarding the begetting of children as one of the
most sacred duties; whoever died without a son was
laden witha curse. In Ancient India, of course, there were
ascetics; but they might not disappear into the solitude of
the forest till the son of their son was born; here the
intention and fundamental idea are almost diametrically
opposed to the asceticism of the Syrian Christians.
ITo-day we understand this; for we see that only one
thing contributes to the ennobling of man: the beget-
ting of pure races, the founding of definite nations. | To
beget sons, sons of the right kind, is without question
the most sacred duty of the individual towards society ;
whatever else he may achieve, nothing will have such
a lasting and indelible influence as the contribution to
the increasing ennoblement of the race./ From the
limited, false standpoint of Gobineau it certainly does not
much matter, for we can only decline and fall sooner or
later; still less correct are they who appear to contra-
dict him, but adopt the same hypothetical acceptation of
aboriginal pure nations ; but any one who understands how
noble races are in reality produced, knows that they can
arise again at any moment; that depends on us; here
nature has clearly pointed out to us a great duty. Those
men of the chaos therefore, who considered begetting a sin,
and complete abstinence therefrom the highest of all
virtues, committed a crime against the most sacred law
of nature, they tried to prevent all good, noble men
* Ch Otto Zéckler: skese und Ménchium, 1897, i. 193 ff.
‘

316 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XI Xt CENTURY

and women from leaving descendants, thus promoting
the increase of the evil only, which meant of course that
they did their best to bring about the deterioration of
the human race. A Schopenhauer may joyfully collect
from the Church fathers their pronouncements against
marriage and see therein a confirmation of his pessimism ;
for me the connection is quite different: this sudden
horror of the most natural impulses of man, their trans-
formation from the most sacred duty to the most dis-
graceful sin, has a deeper foundation in those incompre-
hensible sources of our existence, where the physical and
the metaphysical are not yet separated. After wars
and pestilences, statistics tell us, births increase to an
abnormal degree—nature helps herself; in that chaos
which threatened all culture with eternal destruction,
the births had to be retarded as much as possible; with
horror the noble turned away from that world of sin,
buried themselves in the deserts or in the caves of the
hills, perched themselves on high pillars, chastised them-
selves and did penance. Childless they passed away.*
Even where human society is in a state of disintegration,
we see in fact a great connection; what each man by him-
self thinks and does always admits of a double inter-
pretation—the subjective or individual, and the objective
interpretation in relation to the world at large.

“In the fourth century the Roman Empire numbered hundreds
of thousands of monks and nuns. It was not unusual for an abbot
to have 10,000 monks in one cloister and in the year 373 the one single
Egyptian town Oxyrynchus had 20,000 nuns and 10,000 monks! Now
consider the total numbers of the population of that time, and it will be
clear what a great influence this ascetic epidemic must have had

upon the non-multiplication of the bastard races. (See further details
in Lecky’s History of European Morals, 11th ed: ii. 105 ff.)'
THE CHAOS 317

SACREDNESS OF PuRE RACE

Here we touch upon a deep scientific fact; we are
touching upon the revelation of the most im-
portant secret of all human history. Every one
comprehends that man can in the true sense of the
word only become “‘man”’ in connection with others.
Many, too, have grasped the meaning of Jean Paul’s
profound remark, which I prefixed as motto to a former
chapter, that “only through man does man enter
into the light of day’’; few, however, have realised
the fact that this attainment of manhood—this entry
into the light of life—depends in degree upon definite
organic conditions, conditions which in old days were
observed instinctively and unconsciously, but which,
now that owing to the increase of knowledge and the
development of thought the impulses of instinct have
lost their power, it becomes our duty consciously to
recognise and respect. / This study of the Roman Chaos
of Peoples teaches us that race, and nationality which
renders possible the formation of race, possess a significance
which is not only physical and intellectual but also
moral. Here there is before us something which we can
characterise as a sacred law, the sacred law in accordance
with which we enter upon the rights and duties of man-
hood: a “law,” since it is found everywhere in nature,
“sacred,” in so far as it is left to our free will to ennoble
ourselves or to degenerate as we please. This law teaches
us to look upon the physical constitution as the basis of
all that ennobles./ For what is the moral apart from
the physical? What would a soul be without body ?
I do not know. If our breast conceals something that
is immortal, if we men reach with our thoughts to
something transcendent, which we, like the blind, touch
with longing hands without ever being able to see it,

-_
318 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

if our heart is the battlefield between the finite and the
infinite, then the constitution of this body—breast,
brain, heart—must be of immeasurable consequence.
“However the great dark background of things may in
truth be constituted, the entrance to it is open to us only
in this poor life of ours, and so even our ephemeral actions
contain this earnest, deep, and inevitable significance,”’

‘says Solon in the beautiful dialogue of Heinrich von Stein.*

“Only in this life!’’ But wherewith do we live if not
with our body? Indeed, we do not need to look forth
into any world beyond (which will appear problematic to
many people), as Solon does in the passage quoted; the
entrance even to this earthly life is solely and only open
to us through our body and this life will be for us poor
or rich, ugly or beautiful, insipid or precious, according
to the constitution of this our one, all-embracing organ
of life. I have already shown from examples taken
from methodical animal breeding and from human
history how race arises and is gradually ennobled, also
how it degenerates ; what then is this race if not a col-
lective term for a number of individual bodies? It is
no arbitrary idea, no abstraction; these individualities

are linked with one another by an invisible but abso-

lutely real power resting upon material facts. Of course
the race consists of individuals; but the individual
himself can only attain to the full and noblest develop-
ment of his qualities within definite conditions which
are embraced in the word “race.” This is based upon
a simple law, but it points simultaneously in two direc-
tions. All organic nature, vegetable as well as animal,
proves that the choice of the two parents is of decisive
influence upon the individual that is born; but besides
this it proves that the principle prevailing here is a col-
lective and progressive one, because in the first place a
common parent-stock must gradually be formed, from

* Helden und Welt: dramatische Bilder (Chemnitz, 1883)s
THE CHAOS 319

which then, similarly step by step, are produced in-
dividuals who are on an average superior to those outside
such a union, and among these again numerous individuals
with really transcendent qualities. That is a fact of
nature, just in the same sense as any other, but here, as in
all phenomena of life, we are far from being able to analyse |
and explain it. Now what must not be lost sight of in
the case of the human race is the circumstance that the
moral and intellectual qualities are of preponderating
importance. That is why in men any want of organic
racial consistency, or fitness in the parent stock, means
above all things a lack of all moral and intellectual
coherence. The man who starts from nowhence reaches
nowhither. The individual life is too short to be able to
fix the eye on a goal and to reach it. The life of a whole
people, too, would be too short if unity of race did not
stamp it with a definite, limited character, if the trans-
cendent splendour of many-sided and varying gifts were
not concentrated by unity of stem, which permits a
gradual ripening, a gradual development in definite
directions, and finally enables the most gifted individual
to live for a super-individual purpose.

Race, as it arises and maintains itself in space and
time, might be compared to the so-called range of power
ofamagnet. Ifamagnet be brought near to a heap of iron
filings, they assume definite directions, so that a figure
is formed with a clearly marked centre, from which lines
radiate in all directions; the nearer we bring the magnet
the more distinct and more mathematical does the figure
become; very few pieces have placed themselves in
exactly the same direction, but all have united into a
practical and at the same time ideal unity by the posses-
sion of a common centre, and by the fact that the relative
position of each individual to all the others is not arbi-
trary but obedient to a fixed law. It has ceased to be a
heap, it has become a form. In the same way a human
320 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

race, a genuine nation, is distinguished from a mere
congeries of men. The character of the race becoming
snore and more pronounced by pure breeding is like
the approach of the magnet. The individual members
of the nation may have evet > different qualities, the
direction of their activities may be utterly divergent, yet

together they form a moulded unity, and the power—
or let us say rather the importance—of every individual
is multiplied a thousandfold by his organic connection
with countless others.

I have shown above how Lucian with all his gifts
absolutely squandered his life; I have shown Augustine
helplessly swaying to and fro like a pendulum between
the loftiest thoughts and the crassest and silliest super-
stition : such men as these, cut off from all racial belongings,
mongrels among mongrels, are in a position almost as
unnatural as a hapless ant, carried and set down ten miles
from its own nest. The ant, however, would suffer at
least only through outward circumstances, but these
men are by their own inner constitution barred from all
genuine community of life.

‘The consideration of these facts teaches us that whatever
may be our opinion as to the causa finalis of existence, man
cannot fulfil his highest destiny as an isolated individual,
as a mere exchangeable pawn, but only as a portion of
an organic whole, as a member of a specific race.¥

THE TEUTONIC PEOPLES

There is no doubt about it! The raceless and nationless
chaos of the late Roman Empire was a pernicious and
fatal condition, a sin against nature. Only one ray of
light shone over that degenerate world. ‘It came from

- the north. Ex septentrione Lux! If we take up a map,
the Europe of the fourth century certainly seems at the

* «The individuals and the whole are identical,” the Indian
thinkers had taught (see Garbe’s Sdmkhya-Philosophie, p. 158).
THE CHAOS 321

first glance to be more or less in a state of chaos even north
of the Imperial boundary; we see quite a number of
races established side by side, incessantly forcing their
way in different directions: the Alemanni, the Marco-
manni, the Saxons, the Franks, the Burgundians, the
, Goths, the Vandals, the Slavs, the Huns and many others.
“But it is only the political relations that are chaotic ;
there; the nations are genuine, pure-bred races, men |
who carry with them their nobility as their only posses- -
sion wherever destiny drives them. In one of the next
chapters I shall have to speak of them. In the meantime
I should like merely to warn those whose reading is less
wide, against the idea that the “ barbarians’ suddenly
“Dproke into” the highly civilised Roman Empire.
This view, which is widespread among the superficially
educated, is just as little in accordance with the facts as
the further view that the “ night of the Middle Ages ” came
down upon men because of this inroad of the barbarians.

It is this historical lie which veils the annihilating
influence of that nationless time, and which turns into
a destroyer the deliverer, the slayer of the laidly worm.
For centuries the Teutons had been forcing their way
into the Roman Empire, and though they often came
as foes, they ended by becoming the sole principle of
life and of might. Their gradual penetration into
the Imperium, their gradual rise to a decisive power
had taken place little by little just as their gradual
civilisation had done; * already in the fourth century
one could count numerous colonies of soldiers from
entirely different Teutonic tribes (Batavians, Franks,
Suevians, &c.) in the whole European extent of the

* Hermann is a Roman cavalier, speaks Latin fluently and has
thoroughly studied the Roman art of administration. So, too,
most of the Teutonic princes. Their troops, too, were at home in
the whole Roman empire and so acquainted with the customs of so-

called civilised men, long before they immigrated with all their goods
and chattels into these lands.

I x
—

322 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

Roman Empire; * in Spain, in Gaul, in Italy, in Thrace,
indeed often even in Asia Minor, it is Teutons in the main
that finally fight against Teutons. It was Teutonic
peoples that so often heroically warded off the Asiatic
peril from the Eastern Empire; it was Teutonic peoples
that on the Catalaunian fields saved the Western Empire
from being laid waste by the Huns. Early in the third
century a bold Gothic shepherd had been already pro-
claimed Emperor. One need only look at the map of the
end of the fifth century to see at once what a uniquely
beneficent moulding power had here begun to assert
itself. Very noteworthy too is the difference which
reveals itself here in a hundred ways, between the innate
decency, taste and intuition of rough but pure, noble
races and the mental barbarism of civilised mestizos.
Theodosius, his tools (the Christian fanatics) and his
successors had done their best to destroy the monuments
of art ; on the other hand, the first care of Theodoric, the
Eastern Goth, was to take strong measures for the protec-
tion and restoration of the Roman monuments. This man
could not write, to sign hisname he had to use a metal
stencil, but the Beautiful, which the bastard souls in
their ‘Culture,’ in their hunting after offices and dis-
tinctions, in their greed of gold had passed by unheeded,
the Beautiful, which to the nobler souls among the Chaos
of Peoples was a hateful work of the devil, the Goth at
once knew how to appreciate; the sculptures of Rome
excited his admiration to such a degree that he appointed
a special official to protect them. Religious toleration,
too, appeared for a time wherever the still unspoiled
Teuton became master. Soon also there came upon the
scene the great Christian missionaries from the highlands
of the north, men who convinced not by means of “ pious
lies ” but by the purity of their hearts.

It is nothing but a false conception of the Middle Ages,

® See Gobineau: Inequality of the Human Races, Bk. VI. chap. *
THE CHAOS 323

in conjunction with ignorance as to the significance of
race, which is responsible for the regrettable delusion
that the entry upon the scene of the rough Teutons
meant the falling of a pall of night over Europe. It is
inconceivable that such hallucinations should be so long-
lived. If we wish to know to what lengths the bastard
culture of the Empire might have led, we must study the
history, the science and the literature of the later Byzan-
tium, a study to which our historians are devoting
themselves to-day with a patience worthy of a better
subject. It is a sorry spectacle. The capture of the
Western Roman Empire by the Barbarians, on the
contrary, works like the command of the Bible, ‘‘ Let there
be Light.” It is admitted that its influence was mainly in
the direction of politics rather than of civilisation; and
a difficult task it was—one that is even now not wholly
accomplished. But was it a small matter? Whence
does Europe draw its physiognomy and its significance—
whence its intellectual and moral preponderance, if not
from the foundation and development of Nations?
This work was in very truth the redemption from chaos.
If we are something to-day—if we may hope perhaps some
day to become something more—we owe it in the first
instance to that political upheaval which, after long
preparation, began in the fifth century, and from which
were born in the fulness of time new noble races, new
beautiful languages, and a new culture entitling us to
nourish the keenest hopes for the future. Dietrich of
Berne, the strong wise man, the unlearned friend of art
and science, the tolerant representative of Freedom of
Conscience in the midst of a world in which Christians
were tearing one another to pieces like hyenas, was as
it were a pledge that Day might once more break upon
this poor earth. In the time of wild struggle that fol-
lowed, during that fever by means of which alone Euro-
pean humanity could recover and awaken from the hideous
324 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIiXtu CENTURY

dream of the degenerate curse-laden centuries of a chaos
with a veneer of order to a fresh, healthy, stormily
pulsing national life—in such a time learning and art
and the tinsel of a so-called civilisation might well be
- almost forgotten, but this, we may swear, did not mean
Night, but the breaking of a new Day. It is hard to say
what authority the scribblers have for honouring only
their own weapons. Our European world is first and
foremost the work not of philosophers and book-writers
and painters, but of the great Teuton Princes, the work
. of warriors and statesmen. The progress of development—
obviously the political development out of which our
modern nations have sprung—is the one fundamental
and decisive matter. We must not, however, overlook
the fact that to these true and noble men we equally owe
everything else that is worth possessing. Every one of
those centuries, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, pro-
duced great scholars; but the men who protected and
. encouraged them were the Princes. It is the fashion to
say that it was the Church that was the saviour of science
and of culture; that is only true in a restricted sense.
As I shall show in the next division of the first part of
this book, we must not look upon the Early Christian
Church as a simple, uniform organism, not even within
the limits of the Roman union in Western Europe; the
centralisation and obedience to Rome which we have
lived to see to-day, were in earlier centuries absolutely
unknown. We must admit that almost all learning and
art were the property of the Church; her cloisters and
schools were the retreats and nurseries in which in those
rough times peaceful intellectual work sought refuge;
but the entry into the Church as monk or secular priest
meant little more than being accepted into a privileged
and specially protected class, which imposed upon the
favoured individual hardly any return in the way of
special duties. Until the thirteenth century every educated
THE CHAOS 328

man, every teacher and student, every physician and
professor of jurisprudence belonged to the clergy: but
this was a matter of pure formality, founded exclu-
sively upon certain legal conditions ; and it was out of
this very class, that is, out of the men who best knew the
Church, that every revolution against her arose—it was
the Universities that became the high-schools of national
emancipation. The Princes protected the Church, the
learned clerics on the contrary attacked her. That is
the reason why the Church waged unceasing war against
the great intellects which, that they might work in peace,
had sought refuge with her ; had she had her way, science
and culture would never again have been fledged. But
the same Princes who protected the Church also pro-
tected the scholars whom #she persecuted. No later
than the ninth century there arose in the far north (out
of the schools of England, which even in those early days
were rich in important men) the great Scotus Erigena :
the Church did all that she could to extinguish this
brilliant light, but Charles the Bald, the same man who
was supposed to have sent great tribute to the Pope of
Rome, stretched his princely hand over Scotus; when
this became insufficient, Alfred bade him to England
where he raised the school of Oxford to a pinnacle of
success, till he was stabbed to death by monks at the
bidding of the central government of the Church. From
the ninth century to the nineteenth, from the murder
of Scotus to the issue of the Syllabus, it has been the
same story. A final judgment shows the intellectual
renaissance to be the work of Race in opposition to the
universal Church which knows no Race, the work of the
Teuton’s thirst for knowledge, of the Teuton’s national
struggle for freedom. Great men in uninterrupted
succession have arisen from the bosom of the Catholic
Church; men to whom, as we must acknowledge, the
peculiar catholic order of thought with its all-embracing
326 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

greatness, its harmonious structure, its symbolical
wealth and beauty has given birth, making them greater
than they could have become without it; but the Church
of Rome, purely as such, that is to say, as an organised
secular theocracy, has always behaved as the daughter
of the fallen Empire, as the last representative of the
universal, anti-national Principle. Charlemagne by
himself did more for the diffusion of education and
knowledge than all the monks in the world. He caused
a complete collection to be made of the national poetry
of the Teutons. The Church destroyed it. I spoke a
little while ago of Alfred. What Prince of the Church,
what schoolman, ever did so much for the awakening
of new intellectual powers, for the clearing up of living
idioms, for the encouragement of national consciousness
(so necessary at that time), as this one Prince? The
most important recent historian of England has summed
up the personality of this great Teuton in the one sen-
tence: “‘ Alfred was in truth an artist.’’** Where, in the
Chaos of Peoples, was the man of whom the same could be
said ? In those so-called dark centuries the farther we
travel northward, that is to say, the farther from the
focus of a baleful “culture,” and the purer the races
with which we meet, the more activity do we find in the
intellectual life. A literature of the noblest character,
side by side with a freedom and order worthy of the
_ dignity of man, develops itself from the ninth to the
thirteenth century in the far-away republic of Iceland;
in the same way, in remote England, during the seventh,
eighth and ninth centuries we find a true popular poetry
flourishing as it seldom has done since.t The passionate
love of music which then came to light touches us as
though we heard the beating of the wings of a guardian
angel sent down from heaven, an angel heralding the

* Green: History of the English People, Bk. I. c. iii.
¢ Olive F. Emerson; History of the English Language, p. 54
THE CHAOS 327
&

future. When we hear King Alfred taking part in the
songs of his chosen choir—when a century later we see
the passionate scholar and statesman Dunstan never,
whether on horseback or in the Council Chamber, parted
from his harp: then we call to mind the old Grecian
legend that Harmonia was the daughter of Ares the God
of War. Fighting, in lieu of a sham order, was what our
wild ancestors brought with them, but at the same time
they brought creative power instead of dreary barrenness.
And as a matter of fact in all the more important Princes
of that time we find a specially developed power of
imagination: they were essentially fashioners. We should
be perfectly justified were we to compare what Charle-
magne was and did at the end of the eighth and beginning
of the ninth centuries, with what Goethe did at the end
of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth cen-
turies. Both rode a tilt against the Powers of Chaos,
both were artists ; both “‘ avowed themselves as belonging
to the race which out of darkness is striving to reach the
light.”

No! and a thousand times no! The annihilation of
that monstrosity, a State without a nation, of that empty
form, of that soulless congeries of humanity, that union
of mongrels bound together only by a community of taxes
and superstitions, not by a common origin and a com-
mon heart-beat, of that crime against the race of mankind
which we have summed up in the definition “ Chaos of
Peoples ’—that does not mean the falling darkness of
night, but the salvation of a great inheritance from
unworthy hands, the dawn of a new day.

Yet even to this hour we have not succeeded in purging
our blood of all the poisons of that Chaos. In wide
domains the Chaos ended by retaining the upper hand.
Wherever the Teuton had not a sufficient majority
physically to dominate the rest of the inhabitants by
assimilation, as, for instance, in the south, there the
328 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

chaotic element asserted itself more and more. We
have but to look at our present position to see where
power exists and where it is wanting, and how this depends
upon the composition of races. I am not aware whether
any one has already observed with what peculiar exactitude
the modern boundary of the universal Church of Rome
corresponds with what I have pointed out as the general
boundary of the Roman Imperium, and consequently of
the chaotic mongreldom. To the east I admit that the
line does not hold good, because here in Servia, Bosnia,
&c., the Slavonic invaders of the eighth century and the
Bulgarians annihilated everything foreign; in few
districts of modern Europe is Race so uncontaminated,
and the pure Slavs have never accepted the Church of
Rome. In other places too there have been encroach-
ments on both sides of the old boundary-line, but these
have been unimportant, and moreover easily explained
by political relations. On the whole the agreement is
sufficiently striking to give rise to serious thought:
Spain, Italy, Gaul, the Rhenish provinces, and the
countries south of the Danube! It is still morning, and
the powers of darkness are ever stretching out their
polypus arms, clinging to us with their powers of suction
in a hundred places, and trying to drag us back into the
Night out of which we were striving to escape. We can
arrive at a judgment upon these apparently confused,
but really transparent, conditions, not so much by
poring over the details of chronicles, as by obtaining a
clear insight into the fundamental historical facts which
IT have set out in this chapter.
FIFTH CHAPTER

THE ENTRANCE OF THE JEWS INTO
THE HISTORY OF THE WEST

“Let us forget whence we spring. No more talk of ‘ Ger-
man,’ or of ‘ Portuguese’ Jews. Though scattered over the
earth we are nevertheless a single people.’’—RaBBI SALOMON
LipMANN-CERFBERR in the opening speech delivered on July
26, 1806, at the meeting preparatory to the Synedrium of 1807
which Napoleon called together.

THE JEWISH QUESTION

AD I been writing a hundred years ago, I should
hardly have felt compelled at this point to
devote a special chapter to the entrance of the
Jews into Western history. Of course theshare

they had in the rise of Christianity, on account of the peculiar
and absolutely un-Aryan spirit which they instilled into it,
would have deserved our full attention, as well as also the
economic part which they played in all Christian countries ;
but an occasional mention of these things would have
sufficed ; anything more would have been superfluous.
Herder wrote at that time: “ Jewish history takes up
more room in our history and more attention than it prob-
ably deserves in itself.” * In the meantime, however,
a great change has taken place: the Jews play in
Europe, and wherever European influence extends, a
different part to-day from that which they played a
hundred years ago ; as Viktor Hehn expresses it, we live

* Von den deutsch-orientalischen Dichtern, Dir. 2.
329
330 FOUNDATIONS,OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

to-day ina “‘fasserted itself we may think~ what we
like about the at our present \he~Jews, their present
history actually here jt ig wor 4ich room in our own history

_.that we Cannot possibly refuse to notice them. Herder

in spite of his outspoken humanism had expressed the
opinion that “ the Jewish people is and remains in Europe
an Asiatic people alien to our part of the world, bound
to that old law which it received in a distant climate, and
which according to its own confession it cannot do away
with.” ¢ Quite correct. But this alien people, ever-
lastingly alien, because—as Herder well remarks—
it is indissolubly bound to an alien law that is hostile
to all other peoples—this alien people has become

i precisely in the course of the nineteenth century a dis-

_ proportionately important and in many spheres actually

dominant constituent of our life. Even a hundred years
ago that same witness had sadly to confess that the
“ruder nations of Europe” were “ willing slaves of
Jewish usury ’’; to-day he could say the same of by far
the greatest part of the civilised world. The possession of
money in itself is, however, of least account ; our govern-
ments, our law, our science, our commerce, our literature,
our art... practically all branches of our life have
become more or less willing slaves of the Jews, and drag the
feudal fetter if not yet on two, atleast on one leg. In the
meantime the “alien’”’ element emphasised by Herder
has become more and more prominent ; a hundred years
ago it was rather indistinctly and vaguely felt; now it
has asserted and proved itself, and so forced itself on the
attention of even the most inattentive. The Indo-
European, moved by ideal motives, opened the gates in

* Gedanken tiber Goethe, 31d ed. p. 40. The passage as it stands
reads, ‘‘ From the day of Goethe’s death, the 22nd March, 1832, Borne
dated the freedom of Germany. In reality, however, one epoch
was with that day closed and the Jewish age in which we live
began.”

{t Bekehrung dey Juden. Abschnitt 7 of the Untersuchungen des
vergangenen Jahrhunderts zur Beforderung eines geistigen Reiches.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 331

friendship: the Jew rushed in like an enemy, stormed all]
positions and planted the flag of his, to us, alien nature—
I will not say on the ruins, but on the breaches of our
genuine individuality.

Are we for that reason to revile the Jews ? That would.
be as ignoble as it is unworthy and senseless. The Jews)
deserve admiration, for they have acted with absolute .
consistency according to the logic and truth of their)
own individuality, and never for a moment have they al-
lowed themselves to forget the sacredness of physical laws
because of foolish humanitarian day-dreams which they
shared only when such a policy was to their advantage.
Consider with what mastery they use the law of blood
to extend their power: the principal stem remains
spotless, not a drop of strange blood comes in; as it
stands in the Thora, ‘‘ A bastard shall not enter into the
congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation
shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord”
(Deuteronomy xxiii. 2); in the meantime, however,
thousands of side branches are cut off and employed to
infect the Indo-Europeans with Jewish blood. If that
were to go on for a few centuries, there would be in Europe
only one single people of pure race, that of theJews, all the
rest would be a herd of pseudo-Hebraic mestizos, a people
beyond all doubt degenerate physically, mentally and
morally. For even the great friend of the Jews, Ernest
Renan, admits, “‘ Je suis le premier a reconnaitre que la
vace sémitique, comparée a@ la race indo-européenne, repreé-
sente véellement une combinaison inférieure de la nature
humaine.” * And in one of his best but unfortunately
little-known writings he says again, “ L’épouvantable
simplicité de Vesprit sémitique rétrécit le cerveau humain,
le ferme a toute idée délicate, d tout sentiment fin, a toute

* Histoire génévale et systeme comparé des langues sémitiques, 5° éd.

p. 4. It will make little difference to this view when I show, as I shall
do immediately, that the Jews are not pure Semites but half Syrians,
332 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

vecherche vationelle, pour le mettre en face d’une éternelle
tautologie : Dieu est Dieu.” ; * and he demonstrates that
culture could have no future unless Christian religion
should move farther away from the spirit of Judaism and
the “‘ Indo-European genius ” assert itself more and more
in every domain. That mixture then undoubtedly sig-
'nifies a degeneration: degeneration of the Jew, whose
character is much too alien, firm and strong to be quick-
~~ened and ennobled by Teutonic blood, degeneration of the
European who can naturally only lose by crossing with an
“inferior type’’—or, as I should prefer to say, with so
_.different a type. While the mixture is taking place, the
great chief stem of the pure unmixed Jews remains
unimpaired. When Napoleon, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, dissatisfied that the Jews, in spite of
their emancipation, should remain in proud isolation, angry
with them for continuing to devour with their shameful
usury the whole of his Alsace, although every career
was now open to them, sent an ultimatum to the council
of their elders demanding the unreserved fusion of the
Jews with the rest of the nation—the delegates of the
French Jews adopted all the articles prescribed but one,
namely, that which aimed at absolute freedom of marriage
with Christians. Their daughters might marry outside
the Israelite people, but not their sons; the dictator
of Europe had to yield.| This is the admirable law by
which real Judaism was founded. Indeed, the law in its
strictest form forbids marriage altogether between Jews
and non-Jews; in Deuteronomy vii. 3, we read, “ Thy
daughter thou shalt not give unto his son nor his daughter
shalt thou take unto thy son”’; but, asa rule, emphasis
is laid only on the last clause; for example, in Exodus

* Dela part des peuples sémitiques dans V histoire de la civilisation, p. 39.

t In the second book I shall find it necessary to give more details
concerning this famous synedrium and its casuistic distinction between
religious and civil law—a distinction which neither Talmud nor Thora
recognises,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 333

xxxiv. 16, the sons alone are forbidden to take strange
daughters, not the daughters to take strange sons, and
in Nehemiah xiii., after both sides have been forbidden
to marry outside the race, only the marriage of a son with
a foreign wife is described as a “sin against God.” That
is also a perfectly correct view. By the marriage of a
daughter with a Goy, the purity of the Jewish stem is
in no way altered, while this stem thereby gets a footing
in the strange camp; on the other hand, the marriage of
a son with a Goya “ makes the holy seed common ”’ as
the book of Ezva ix. 2, drastically expresses it.* The
possible conversion of the Goya to Judaism would not
help matters: the idea of such a conversion was rightly
quite strange to the older law—for the question is one of
physical conditions of descent—but the newer law says,
with enviable discernment: “ Proselytes are as injurious
to Judaism as ulcers to a sound body.” Thus was the
Jewish race kept pure in the past and it is still kept so:
daughters of the house of Rothschild have married barons,
counts, dukes, princes, they submit to baptism without
demur ; no son has ever married a European ; if he did
so he would have to leave the house of his fathers and
the community of his people.t

* In the new literal translation of Professor Louis Segond the passage
reads, ‘‘the sacred race defiled by mixture with strange peoples’”’; in
the translation of De Wette it is, “‘ they have mingled the holy seed
with the peoples of the earth.”

y+ From the Talmud, according to Déllinger, Vortradye i. 237. In
another place the Talmud calls the proselytes a “‘ burden.” (See the
Jew Philippson : Isvaelitische Religionslehre, 1861, ii. 189.)

+t How pure the Jewish race still is, has been shown by Virchow’s
great anthropological examination of all the school children of Germany ;
Ranke gives details in his book, Der Mensch, 2nd ed. ii. 293: ‘‘ The
purer the race, the smaller is the number of mixed forms. In this
connection it is certainly a very important fact that the smallest number
of mixed forms was found among the Jews, whereby their decided isola-
tion as a race from the Teutonic peoples, among which they live, is
shown most clearly.’-—-Measurements in America have, according to the
American Anthropologist, vol. iv., in the meantime led to the conviction
that there too the Jewish race ‘‘has kept itself absolutely pure.”
(Quoted from the Politisch-anthropologische Revue, 1904, March, p, 1003.)
334. FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXru CENTURY

These details are somewhat premature; they really
belong to a later portion of the book; but my object
has been at once and by the shortest way to meet the
objection—which unfortunately is still to be expected
from many sides—that there is no “‘ Jewish question,”
from which would follow that the entrance of the Jews
into our history had no significance. Others, again, talk
of religion: it is a question, they say, of religious differ-
ences only. Whoever says this overlooks the fact that
there would be no Jewish religion if there were no Jewish
nation. But there is one. The Jewish nomocracy
(that is, rule of the law) unites the Jews, no matter how
scattered they may be over all the lands of the world,
into a firm, uniform and absolutely political organism,
in which community of blood testifies to a common past
and gives a guarantee for a common future. Though it
has many elements not purely Jewish in the narrower sense
of the word, yet the power of this blood, united with the in-
comparable power of the Jewish idea, is so great that these
alien elements have long ago been assimilated ; for nearly
two thousand years have passed since the time when the
Jews gave up their temporary inclination to proselytising.
Of course, I must, as I showed in the preceding chapter,
distinguish between Jews of noble and of less noble birth ;
but what binds together the incompatible parts is (apart
from gradual fusing) the tenacity of life which their
national idea possesses. This national idea culminates in
‘the unshakable confidence in the universal empire of the
Jews, which Jehovah promised. ‘“ Simple people who have
been born Christians”? (as Auerbach expresses it in his
sketch of Spinoza’s life) fancy that the Jews have given up
that hope, but they are very wrong ; for ‘‘ the existence
of Judaism depends upon the clinging to the Messianic
hope,” as one of the very moderate and liberal Jews lately
wrote.* The whole Jewish religion is in fact founded on

* Skreinka: Entwickelungsgeschichte dey judischen Dogmen, p. 75
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 335

thishope. The Jewish faith in God, that which can and may
be called “religion ”’ in their case, for it has become since
the source of a fine morality, is a part of this national
idea, not vice versd. To assert that there is a Jewish
religion but no Jewish nation is simply nonsense.*

The entry of the Jews into the history of the West
signifies therefore beyond doubt the entrance of a definite
element, quite different from and in a way opposed to all
European races, an element which remained essentially
the same, while the nations of Europe went through the
most various phases ; inthe course of a hard and often cruel
history it never had the weakness to entertain proposals
of fraternity, but, possessed as it was of its national idea,
its national past, and its national future, felt and still
feels all contact with others as a pollution ; thanks also
to the certainty of its instinct, which springs from strict
uniformity of national feeling, it has always been able to

* At the Jewish congress held in Bas:s in 1898, Dr. Mandelstam,
Professor in the University of Kiev, said in the chief speech of the sitting
of August 29, ‘“‘ The Jews energetically reject the idea of fusion with the
other nationalities and cling firmly to their historical hope, 7.¢., of world
empire’? (from a report of one who took part in the congress in Le
Temps, Sept. 2, 1898). The Vienna newspapers of July 30 and 31,
IgOI, report a speech on Zionism which the Vienna Rabbi, Dr. Leopold
Kahn, delivered in a room of the orthodox Jewish school in Pressburg,
In this speech Dr. Kahn made the following admission: “the Jew
will never be able to assimilate himself ; he will never adopt the customs
and ways of other peoples. The Jew remains Jew under all circum-
stances. Every assimilation is purely exterior.” Words well worth
laying to heart! In the Festschrift zum 70: Geburtstage A. Berliner’s,
1903, Dr. B. Felsenthal publishes a series of Jewish Theses in which he
supports with all his energy the thesis that Jewry is a people, not a
religion, ‘‘ Judaism is a special stem, and every Jew is born into this
stem.’ This stem is, according to him, “‘ one of the ethnically purest
peoples that exist.’ Felsenthal reckons that from Theodosius to the
year 1800, ‘‘ perhaps not quite 300 non-Semites were adopted into the
Jewish race,’’ and it is characteristic that he denies proselytes the right
of looking upon themselves as full-blooded Jews. ‘‘The Jewish
people, the Jewish stem is the given fact, the constant thing, the
necessary substratum, the substantial kernel. The Jewish religion is
something attached to this kernel, a quality—an accident, as it is called
in the language of the philosophical schools.) I quote from the special
impression, made by Itzkowski, Berlin. ~
336 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

exercise a powerful influence upon others, while the Jews
themselves have been influenced but skin-deep by our intel-
lectual and cultural development. To characterise this most
peculiar situation from the standpoint of the European,
we must repeat the words of Herder: the Jewish people
is and remains alien to our part of the world ; from the
standpoint of the Jew the same fact is formulated some-
what differently ; we know from a former chapter how
the great free-thinking philosopher Philo put it: “ only
the Israelites are men in the true sense of the word.” *
What the Jew here says in the intolerant tone of racial
pride was more politely expressed by Goethe, when he
disputed the community of descent of Jews and Indo-
Europeans, no matter how far back the origin was put:
* We will not dispute with the chosen people the honour
of its descent from Adam. We others, however, have
certainly had other ancestors as well.” f

Tue “ ALIEN PEOPLE”

These considerations make it our right and our duty to
look upon the Jew in our midst as a peculiar and, in fact,
alien element. Outwardly his inheritance was the same as
ours ; inwardly it was not so: he inherited quite a dif-
ferent spirit. One single trait is all that is necessary to
reveal in an almost alarming manner to our conscious-
ness the yawning gulf which here separates soul from soul :
the revelation of Christ has no significance for the Jew!
I do not here speak of pious orthodoxy at all. But read,
for example, in Diderot, the notorious free-thinker, the
wonderful words on the Crucified One, see how Diderot
represents man in his greatest sorrow turning to the

* See p. 217.

+t Conversations with Eckerimann, October 7, 1828. Giordano Brunc
made a similar assertion, viz., that only the Jews were descended from

Adam and Eve, the rest of mankind were of much older origin. (See
Lo spaccio della bestia trionfante.)
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 337

Divine One, and makes us feel that the Christian religion
is the only religion in the world. ‘‘ Quelle profonde
sagesse 11 y a dans ce que Vaveugle philosophie appelle la
folie de la croix! Dans Vétat ow 7’ étais, de quot m’aurait
serut Vimage d'un legislateur heureux et comblé de gloire ?
Je voyais l'innocent, le flanc percé, le front couronné d’épines,
les mains et les pieds percés de clous, et expivant dans les
souffrances ; et je me disais: Voila mon Dieu, et jose me
plaindre!’’ I have searched through a whole library of
Jewish books in the expectation of finding similar words
—naturally not belief in the divinity of Christ, nor the
idea of redemption, but the purely human feeling for
the greatness of a suffering saviour—but in vain. A
Jew who feels that is in fact no longer a Jew, but a
denier of Judaism. And while we find even in Moham-
med’s Kovan at least a vague conception of the im-
portance of Christ and profound reverence for His per-
sonality, a cultured, leading Jew of the [nineteenth
century calls Christ “the new birth with the death-
mask,” which inflicted new and painful wounds upon
the Jewish people ; he cannot see anything else in Him.*
In view of the cross he assures us that “‘ the Jews do
not require this convulsive emotion for their spiritual
improvement,” and adds, “particularly not among
the middle classes of the inhabitants of the cities.”
His comprehension goes no further. In a book, repub-
lished in 1880 (!), by a Spanish Jew (Mose de Leon) Jesus
Christ is called a ‘‘ dead dog ”’ that lies “ buried in a dung-
hill.”” Besides, the Jews have taken care to issue in the
latter part of the nineteenth century several editions
(naturally in Hebrew) of the so-called ‘‘ censured passages ””’
from the Talmud, those passages usually omitted in
which Christ is exposed to our scorn and hatred as a
“fool,” “ sorcerer,’’ “ profane person,” “‘idolater,” “ dog,”’
“ bastard,’ “ child of lust,” &c.; so, too, his sublime

* Graetz: Volkstiimliche Geschichte dey Juden, i. 591
338 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

mother.* We certainly do the Jews no injustice when we
say that the revelation of Christ is simply something in-
comprehensible and hateful to them. Although he
apparently sprang from their midst, he embodies never-
_ theless the negation of their whole nature—a matter in
which the Jews are far more sensitive than we. This
clear demonstration of the deep cleft that separates
us Europeans from the Jew is by no means given in
order to let religious prejudice with its dangerous bias
settle the matter, but because I think that the percep-
tion of two so fundamentally different natures reveals a
real gulf; it is well to look once into this gulf, so that on
other occasions, where the two sides seem likely to unite
each other, we may not be blind to the deep abyss which
separates them.

When we understand what a chasm there is between
us we are forced to a further conclusion. The Jew does
not understand us, that is certain ; can we hope to under-
stand him, to do him justice? Perhaps, if we are really
intellectually and morally superior to him, as Renan
insisted in the passage quoted above, and as other perhaps
more reliable scholars have likewise said.f But we should

* See Laible: Jesus Christus im Talmud, p. 2 ff. (Schriften des
Institutum Judaicum in Berlin, No. 10; in the supplement the original
Hebrew texts are given.) This absolutely impartial scholar, who is,
moreover, a friend of the Jews, says: ‘‘ The hatred and scorn of the
Jews was always directed in the first place against the person of Jesus”
(p. 25). ‘‘ The Jesus-hatred of the Jews is a firmly established fact,
but they want to show it as little as possible” (p. 3). Hatred of
Christ is described by the same scholar as the ‘‘ most national trait
of Judaism” (p. 86); he says, ‘‘at the approach of Christianity the
Jews were seized ever and again with a fury and hatred that were
akin to madness” (p. 72). Even to-day no orthodox Jew may use
the name of Christ either in speech or in writing (pp. 3 and 32); the
most common cryptonyms are “ the bastard,” ‘“‘ the hanged,’ often, too,
“ Bileam.”

+ See especially the famous passage in Lassen’s Indische Alter-
tumskunde, where the great Orientalist proves in detail his view that
the Indo-European race is ‘‘ more highly and more fully gifted,” that

in it alone there is ‘“‘ perfect symmetry of all mental powers,” (See i.
414, of the 1847 edition.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 339

then have to judge him from the lofty heights of our
superiority, not from the low depths of hatred and
superstition, and still less from the swampy shallows of
misunderstanding in which our religious teachers have
been wading for the last two thousand years. It is
surely an evident injustice to ascribe to the Jew thoughts
which he never had, to glorify him as the possessor of
the most sublime religious intuitions, which were per-
haps more alien to him than to any one else in the world,
and at best are to be found only in the hearts of a few
scattered individuals as a cry of revolt against the special
hardness of heart of this people—and then to condemn
him for being to-day quite different from what he should
be according to such fictitious conceptions. It is not only
unfair, but as regards publicfeeling, regrettably misleading ;
for through his connection with our religious life—a con-
nection which is entirely fictitious—his head seems enve-
loped in a kind of nimbus, and then we are greatly incensed
when we find no holy person under this sham halo.
We expect more of the Jews than of ourselves, who are
merely the children of the heathen. But the Jewish testi-
mony is very different and more correct ; it leads us to
expect so little that every noble trait discovered later
and every explanation found for Jewish failings gives us
genuine pleasure. Jehovah, for instance, is never tired
of explaining, “‘I have seen this people and behold it is
a stiff-necked people,’ * and Jeremiah gives such a
characterisation of the moral constitution of the Jews
that Monsieur Edouard Drumont could not wish it to
be more richly coloured, “ And they will deceive every
one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they
have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary them-
selves to commit iniquity.” f Little wonder, after
this description, that Jeremiah calls the Jews fan

* Exodus xxxil: 9, Xxxiv. 9 ; Deuteronomy ix. 13, &C
¢ ix. 5.
340 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

assembly of treacherous men,” and knows only one
desire, ‘‘Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place
of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and
go from them.” For our incredible ignorance of the
’ Jewish nature we are ourselves solely to blame; never
did a people give so comprehensive and honest a picture
‘of its own personality as the Hebrew has done in his
‘Bible, a picture which (so far as I can judge from frag-
ments) is made more complete by the Talmud, though in
faded colours. Without, therefore, denying that it must
be very difficult for us who are “‘ descended from other
ancestors”? to form a correct judgment of the “alien
Asiatic people,’’ we must clearly see that the Jews from
time immemorial have done their best to inform the
unprejudiced about themselves, a circumstance which
entitles us to hope that we may gain a thorough know-
ledge of their nature. As a matter of fact, the events
which take place before our eyes should be sufficient for
that. Is it possible to read the daily papers without
becoming acquainted with Jewish ways of thinking,
Jewish taste, Jewish morals, Jewish aims ? A few annual
volumes of the Archives isvaélites teach us in fact more
than a whole anti-Semitic library, and indeed not only
about the less admirable, but also about the excellent
qualities of the Jewish character. But here, in this chapter,
I shall leave the present out ofaccount. If we are to form
a practical and true judgment concerning the significance
of the Jewas joint-heir and fellow-worker in the nineteenth
century, we must above all become clear as to what he
is. From what a man is by nature follows of strict neces-
sity what he will do under certain conditions; the philo-
sopher says: operart sequitur esse; an old German
proverb expresses the same thing in a more homely way,
{‘ Only what a man is, can one get out of him.”.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 341

HISTORICAL BIRD’S-EYE VIEW

Pure history in this case does not bring us either quickly
or surely to our goal, and besides it is not my task to
furnish a history of the Jews. As in other chapters, so
here too I have a horror of copying what has been written
before. Every one, of course, knows how and when the
Jews entered into Western history : first by the Diaspora,
then by being scattered. Their changing fortunes in
various lands and times are likewise no secret to us,
although, indeed, much that we know is absolutely
untrue, and of much that we ought to know we are en-
tirely ignorant. But I do not need to tell any one that
throughout the Christian centuries the Jews played an
important though at times circumscribed réle. Even
in the earliest Western Gothic times they understood how to
acquire influence and power as slave-dealers and financial
agents. Though they were not everywhere, as they
were among the Spanish Moors, powerful Ministers of
State, who, following the example of Mardochai, filled
the most lucrative posts with “their many brothers,”
though they did not attain everywhere, as they did in
Catholic Spain, to the rank of Bishop and Archbishop,*
yet their influence was always and everywhere great.
The Babenberg princes as early as the thirteenth century
set their successors the example of letting Jews manage
the finances of their States and honouring these ad-
ministrators with titles of distinction; f the great Pope
Innocent III. gave important posts at his Court to
Jews;t the knights of France had to pledge their

* See the book of the Jew, David Mocatta, The Jews in Spain and
Portugal, where a detailed account is given of how there were in Spain
“generations and generations of secret Jews who mingled with all
classes of society and were in possession of every post in the State
and especially in the Church!”

¢ Graetz, ii. 503.

¢ Israel Abrahams: Jewish Life in the Middle Agesi
342 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

goods with the Jews, in order to be able to take part in
the Crusades;* Rudolf von Habsburg favoured the
Jews in every way; he vindicated them “as servants
of his imperial exchequer,” and by freeing them from
being subject to ordinary justice he made it very difficult
indeed for any action brought against them to be carried
through; + in short, what I call the entrance of the
Jews into Western history has never ceased to make
itself felt at all times and places. If any one were
qualified to study history for the sole purpose of dis-
entangling the question of Jewish influence, he would,
I think, bring to light some unexpected facts. Without
this detailed study the fact of this influence can only be
established clearly and beyond doubt where the Jews
were in considerable numbers. In the second century, for
example, the Jews on the island of Cyprus are more
numerous than the other inhabitants; they resolve to
found a national State and with this intent follow the
procedure known from the Old Testament: they slay
in one day all the other inhabitants, 240,000 in number ;
and in order that this island State may not be without
support on the mainland, they at thesame time slay the
220,000 non-Jewish inhabitants of Cyrene.t In Spain they
pursue the same policy with greater caution and astonish-
ing perseverance. Under the rule of that thoroughly
Western Gothic king, who had showered benefits on
them, they invite their kinsmen, the Arabs, to come over
from Africa, and, not out of any ill-feeling, but simply be-
cause they hope to profit thereby, they betray their noble
protector ; under the Kalifs they then acquire gradually
an even larger share in the government; “ they con-
centrated,” their great supporter the historian Heman
writes, “the intellectual and the material powers al-

* André Réville: Les payans au Moyen-Age, 1896, p. 3.

t See among others Realis: Die Juden und die Judenstadt in Wien,
1846, p. 18, &e:

$ Mommsen: Rém. Gesch., v. 543.
' JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 343

4

together in their own hands”; the prosperous Moorish
State was, it is true, thereby intellectually and materially
tuined: but this was a matter of indifference to the
Jews, as they had already obtained as firm a footing in
the Christian State of the Spaniards which was destined
to take the place of the Moorish one. ‘‘ The movable
wealth of the land was here absolutely in their power ;
the heritable property they made gradually theirs
by usury and the purchase of mortgaged estates of
nobles. From the offices of Secretary of State and
Minister of Finance downwards all the offices which had
to do with taxes and money were in Jewish hands.
Through usury almost all Aragon was mortgaged to
them. In the cities they formed the majority of the
wealthy population.” * But here, as elsewhere, they
were not always shrewd ; they had employed their power
to obtain all kinds of privileges; for example, the oath
of a single Jew sufficed to prove debt claims against
Christians (the same was the case in the Archduchy of
Austria and in many places), while the testimony of a
Christian against a Jew had no weight before a tribunal,
and so on; these privileges they abused so outrageously
that the people finally revolted. The same would prob-
ably have happened in Germany if the Church and in-
telligent statesmen had not put a stop to the evil in time.
Charlemagne had written to Italy for Jews to manage his
finances; soon, as farmers of taxes, they secured for them-
selves wealth and influence in every direction, and used
these to get important concessions for their people, such as
commercial privileges, less severe punishment for crime
and the like; the whole population was even forced to
make Sunday their market day, as Saturday, the custo-
mary market day, did not suit the Jews because it was

* Heman: Die historische Weltstellung der Juden, 1882, p. 24 ff.
For a somewhat differently tinged account which, however, in actual
facts is entirely at one with this, see Graetz! Volksth. Gesch. d. Juden,

iis 344 ff
344 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

their Sabbath ; it was at that time fashionable for courtiers |
to visit the synagogues! But the reaction set in soon and}
strongly, and not only, as the historians are wont ty
represent it, as the result of priestly agitation—such
_ things belong to the shell, not to the kernel of history—-
' but in the first place because the Teuton is in fact just as
’ much a born merchant and industrialist as he is a born
warrior, and because, as soon as the growth of cities
_awakened these instincts in him, he saw the game of his
‘unfair rival, and, full of violent indignation, demanded his
removal. And so, if such were the purpose of this chapter,
we could trace the ebb and flow of Jewish influence
to the present day, when all the wars of the nineteenth
century are so peculiarly connected with Jewish financial
operations, from Napoleon’s Russian campaign and
Nathan Rothschild’s 7éve of spectator at the Battle of
Waterloo to the consulting of the Bleichréders on the
German side and of Alphonse Rothschild on the French
side at the peace transactions of the year 1871, and to
the ‘“‘Commune,” which from the beginning was looked
upon by all intelligent people as a Jewish-Napoleonic
machination.

ConsENSUS INGENIORUM

Now this political and social influence of the Jews has

: been very variously judged, but the greatest politicians of
\_all times have regarded it as pernicious. Cicero, for ex-
ample (no great politician but an experienced statesman),
displays a genuine fear of the Jews; where a legal trans-
action encroaches on their interest, he speaks so low that
only the judges hear him, for he is well aware, as he says,
that all the Jews hold together and that they know how
to ruin the one who opposes them ; while he thunders the
most vehement charges against Greeks, against Romans,
against the most powerful men of his time, he advises
caution in dealing with the Jews; they are to him an
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 345

uncanny power and he passes with the greatest haste
over that city of “suspicion and slander,” Jerusalem :
such was the opinion of a Cicero during the consulate of
a Julius Cesar!* Even before the destruction of Jeru-
salem the Emperor Tiberius, who was, according to many
historians, the best ruler that the Roman Imperium
ever possessed, recognised 4 national danger in the immi-
gration of the Jews. Even Frederick the Second, the
Hohenstauffen, certainly one of the most brilliant men
that ever wore a crown or carried a sword, a more free-
thinking man than any monarch of the nineteenth cen-
tury, an enthusiastic admirer of the East and a generous
supporter of Hebrew scholars, nevertheless held it to
be his duty, contrary to the custom of his contem-
poraries, to debar the Jews from all public offices, and
pointed warningly to the fact that wherever the Jews
are admitted to power, they abuse it; the very same
doctrine was taught by the other great Frederick the
Second, the Hohenzollern, who gave universal freedom,
but not tothe Jews; similar were the words of Bismarck,
while he still could speak openly, in the Landtag (1847)
and the great historian Mommsen speaks of Judaism as
of a “State inside the State.”—As regards the social
influence in particular, I will only quote two wise and
fair authorities, whose judgment cannot be suspected
even by the Jews, namely, Herder and Goethe. The
former says, ‘ A ministry, in which the Jew is supreme,
a household, in which a Jew has the key of the wardrobe
and the management of the finances, a department or
commissariat, in which Jews do the principal business . . .
are Pontine marshes that cannot be drained’’; and he
expresses the opinion that the presence of an indefinite
number of Jews is so pernicious to the welfare of a
European State, that we “dare not be influenced by
general humane principles’’; it is a national question,

* See the Defence of Lucius Flaccus, xxviiis
346 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

and it is the duty of every State to decide “ how
many of this alien people can be tolerated without
injury to the true citizens?’ * Goethe goes still deeper :
** How should we let the Jews share in our highest culture,
when they deny its origin and source?’”’ And he be.
came “ violently enraged ” when the law of 1823 permitted
marriage between Jews and Germans, prophesying the
‘worst and most frightful consequences,’ particularly
the “ undermining of all moral feelings” and declaring
that the bribery of the “ all-powerful Rothschild ” must
be the cause of this “ folly.” = Goethe and Herder have
exactly the same opinion as the great Hohenstauffen,
the great Hohenzollern, and all great men before and after
them: without superstitiously reproaching the Jews
with their peculiar individuality, they consider them an
actual danger to our civilisation and our culture; they
would not give them an active part in our life. We
cannot proceed with our discussion and simply pass
over such a consensus ingentorum. For to these well-
weighed, serious judgments derived from the fulness of
experience and the insight of the greatest intellects we
have nothing to oppose but the empty phrases of the
droits de Vhomme—a parliamentary clap-trap.f

* Adrastea: Bekehrung dey Juden.

+ Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahve, iii. 11,and the conversation with
von Miller on September 23, 1823.

t I have intentionally limited my quotations. But I cannot refrain
from defending in a note the great Voltaire against the almost established
myth that he was altogether favourable and as superficial in his humani-
tarian judgment of the influence of the Jews upon cur culture, as is the
modern fashion. Even Jews of such broad culture as James Darmesteter
(Peuple Juif, 2° éd. p. 17) print the name Voltaire in thick type and
represent him as one of the intellectual originators of their emancipa-
tion. The opposite is true; more than once Voltaire advises that the
Jews be sent back to Palestine. Voltaire is one of the authors whom I
know best, because I prefer interesting books to wearisome ones, and
J think I could easily collect a hundred quotations of a most aggressive
nature against the Jews. In the essay of the Dictionnaive Philosophique
(end of Section 1) he says: “‘ Vous ne trowvevez dans les Juifs qu'un
peuple ignorant et barbare, qui joint depuis longtemps la plus sordide
avarice a la plus détestable superstition et ala plus invincible haine pour
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 347

PRINCES AND NOBILITY

On the other hand, it is certain and must be carefully
observed that, if the Jews are responsible for many a
shocking historical development, for the fall of many
heroic, powerful peoples, still greater is the responsibility
of those Europeans who have always from the most
base motives encouraged, protected and fostered the
disintegrating activity of the Jews, and these are primarily
the Princes and the nobility—and that too from the
first century of our era to the present day. Open
the history of any European nation you like wherever
the Jews are numerous and begin to realise their strength,
you will always hear bitter complaints against them
from the people, from the commercial classes, from
the circles of the learned and the poets; everywhere
and at all times it is the Princes and the nobility that
protect them: the Princes because they need money
for their wars, the nobility because they live extravagantly,

tous les peuples qui les tolévent et qui les enrichissent.” In Dieu et les
hommes (chap. x.) he calls the Jews ‘‘ La plus haissable et la plus honteuse
des petites nations.”” Enough has surely been said to make his attitude
clear! But this opinion should have all the more force, since Voltaire
himself in many long treatises has made a thorough study of Jewish
history and the Jewish character (so thorough that he who has been
decried as a “superficial dilettante” is occasionally quoted to-day
by a scholar of the first rank like Wellhausen). And so it is note-
worthy when he writes (Essai suy les Meurs, chap. xlu.): ‘‘ La nation
juive ose étaler une haine irvéconciliable contre toutes les nations, elle se
révolte coniva tous les maitres ; toujours superstitieuse, toujours avide
du bien @ autrut, toujours bavbare—rampante dans le malheur et insolente
dans la prospévité.”.: His judgment of their mental qualities is brief
and apodeictic, “ Les Juifs n'ont jamais rien inventé”’ (La défence de
mon oncle, chap. vii.), and in the Essaz sur les Meurs he shows in several
chapters that the Jews had always learned from other nations but had
never taught others anything; even their music, which is generally
praised, Voltaire cannot endure: ‘“‘ Retournez en Judée le plus tét que
vous pourrez . . ; vous y exécutertez a plaisir dans votre détestable jargon
votre détestable musique’? (6™¢ lettre du Dictionnaive). He explains
elsewhere this remarkable mental sterility of the Jews by their in.
ordinate lust for money: ‘‘ L’argent fut objet de leur conduite dans tous
348 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

Edmund Burke* tells us, for example, of William the
Conqueror that, as the income from “talliage”’ and all
kinds of other oppressive taxes did not satisfy him, he from
time to time either confiscated the notes of hand of the Jews
or forced them to hand them over for next to nothing,
and, as almost the whole Anglo-Norman nobility of the
eleventh century was under the thumb of Jewish usury,
the King himself became the pitiless creditor of his most
illustrious subjects. In the meantime he protected the
Jews and gave them privileges of various kinds. This one
example may stand for thousands and thousands.f If then

les temps" (Dieu et les hommes, xxix.), Voltaire scoffs at the Jews
in a hundred places; for instance, in Zadig (chap. x.), where the
Jew utters a solemn prayer of thankfulness to God for a successful
piece of fraud ; the most biting satire against the Jews that exists is
beyond doubt the treatise Un Chrétien contre six Juifs. And yet in all
these utterances there was a certain reserve, as they were destined for
publication ; on the other hand, in a letter to the Chevalier de Lisle
on December 15, 1773 (thatis, at the end of his life, not in the heat of
youth), he could speak his opinion freely}: ‘‘ Que ces déprépucés d’Israél
se disent de la tribu de Naphthali ou d’Issachar, cela est fort peu important ;
tls wen sont pas moins les plus grands gueux qui atent jamais soutllé la
face du globe.” Evidently this fiery Frenchman had just the same to
say of the Jewsas any fanatical Bishop ; he differs at most in the addi-
tion which he occasionally makes to his bitterest attacks, “‘ I] ne faut
pourtant pas les braler.”’ There isa further difference in the fact that
it is a humane, tolerant and learned man that utters this very sharp
judgment. But how, in a man of such open mind, can we explain
the existence of a view so pitilessly one-sided and so ruthlessly in-
tolerant, a view which in its utter lack of moderation compares very
unfavourably with the words of the German sages quoted above? Our
age could learn much here, if it wished to! For we see that the
Gallic love of equality and freedom is not based upon love of justice
nor respect for the individual; and we may draw the further conclu-
sion ; understanding is not got from principles, and universal humanity
does not ensure the possibility of living together in dignified peace,
it is only the frank recognition of what separates our own kind and
our own interests from those of others that can make us just towards
an alien nature and alien interests.

* An Abridgment of English History, iti. 2.

} The famous economist Dr. W. Cunningham, in his book The Growth
of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages
(3rd ed., 1896, p. 201), compares the activity of the Jews in England
from the tenth century onward to a sponge, which sucks up all the wealth
of the land and thereby hinders all economic development. Interesting,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 349

the Jews have exercised a great and historically baneful
influence, it is to no small degree due to the complicity
of these Princes and nobles who so shamefully persecuted
and at the same time utilised the Jews. And in fact
this lasts until the nineteenth century : Count Mirabeau was
in closest touch with the Jews even before the Revolution,*
Count Talleyrand, in opposition to the delegates from
the middle classes, supported in the Constituante their
unconditional emancipation ; Napoleon protected them,
when after such a short time bitter complaints and en-
treaties for protection against them were sent in to the
Government from all France, and he did so although he
himself had exclaimed in the Council of State, ‘‘ These
Jews are locusts and caterpillars, they devour my France!”
—he needed their money. Prince Dalberg sold to the
Frankfort Jews, in defiance of the united citizens, the
full civic rights for half a million Gulden (1811), the
Hardenbergs and Metternichs at the Vienna Congress
fell into the snare of the Rothschild bank, and, in op-
position to the votes of all the representatives of the
Bund, they supported the interests of the Jews to
the disadvantage of the Germans and finally gained
their point, in fact, the two most conservative States
which they represented were the first to raise to hereditary
nobility—an honour which was never conferred on
honest and deserving Jews—those members of the

too, is the proof that even at this early period the Government did
everything in its power to make the Jews take up decent trades and
honest work and thereby at the same time amalgamate with the rest of
the population, but all to no purpose.

* With regard to Mirabeau’s being influenced by ‘‘ the shrewd
women of the Jews” (as Gentz says) and his connection with essentially
Jewish secret societies, see besides Graetz, Volks. Geschichte der Juden
(iii. 600, 610 ff.), particularly L’Abbé Lémann, L’entrée des Isvaélites
dans la société francaise, iii. chap. 7; as converted Jew this author
understands what others do not, and at the same time he tells what
Jewish authors keep secret. The important thing in Mirabeau’s case
was probably that from youth he was deeply in debt to the Jews
(Carlyle: Essay on Mirabeau).
350 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XI Xta CENTURY

‘alien Asiatic people” who, in the years of general
suffering and misery, had by the vilest means acquired
immense wealth.* If then the Jews were for us pernicious
neighbours, justice requires us to admit that they acted
according to the nature of their instincts and gifts, and
showed at the same time a really admirable example of
loyalty to self, to their own nation and to the faith of
' their fathers; the tempters and the traitors were not
the Jews but we ourselves. We were the criminal
abettors of the Jews, and it is so to-day, as it was in the
past; and we were false to that which the lowest in-
habitant of the Ghetto considered sacred, the purity of
inherited blood; that, too, was formerly the case, and
to-day it is more so than ever. The Christian Church
alone of all the great powers seems to have acted on
the whole justly and wisely (of course we must dis-
count the Bishops who were really secular Princes, as
well as some of the Popes). The Church has kept the
Jews in check, treated them as aliens, but at the same
time protected them from persecution. Every seemingly
“ecclesiastical’’ persecution has its source really in
economic conditions that have become unbearable; we
see that nowhere more clearly than in Spain. To-day,
when public opinion is so fearfully misled by the active,
irreconcilable antagonism of the Jews, especially to every
manifestation of the Christian faith, it may be well to
remind the reader that the last act of the preparatory
meeting to the first Synedrium summoned in our times,
that of 1807, was a spontaneous utterance of thanks to
the ministers of the various Christian Churches for the
protection extended to them throughout the centuries.f

* This is, of course, an old custom of Princes, by which not only
the Jews but others also profit; Martin Luther even had to write:
“The Princes have thieves hanged, who have stolen a Gulden or half
a one, and yet make transactions with those who rob everybody and
steal more than all others” (Von Kaufhandlung und Wucher).

+ Diogéne Tama: Collection des actes de l’ Assemblée des Isvaéthites de
France et du voyaume @’ Italie (Paris, 1807, pp. 327, 328; the author isa
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 351

INNER CONTACT

Here we must end these hastily sketched historical frag-
ments. They show that “the entrance of the Jews”
has exercised a large, and in many ways an undoubtedly
fatal, influence upon the course of European history
since the first century. But that tells us little about
the Jew himself; the fact that the North American
Indian dies out from contact with the Indo-European
does not prove that the latter is evil and pernicious ;
that the Jew injures or benefits us is a judgment which
is conditional in too many ways to permit of our forming
a true estimate of his nature. In fact, for nineteen
centuries the Jew has had not merely an outer relation-
ship with our culture as a more or less welcome guest,
but also an inner contact. As Kant rightly says, the
preservation of Judaism is primarily the work of Christi-
anity.* From its midst—if not from its stem and
its spirit—Jesus Christ and the earliest members of the
Christian Church arose. Jewish history, Jewish con-
ceptions, Jewish thought and poetry became important
elements in our mental life. It cannot be right to separate
the outward friction entirely from the inner penetration.
If we had not ceremoniously adopted the Jew into our
family circle, he would no more have found a home

Jew and was Secretary of the Jewish deputy of Bouches-du-Rhéne,
M. Constantini). After a detailed proof the document closes with the
following: ‘‘ Les députts israélites arvétent: Que lVexpression de ces
sentiments sera consignée dans le procés-verbal de ce jour pour qu'elle
demeuve &@ jamais comme un témoignage authentique de la gratitude des
Isvatlites de cette Assemblée pour les bienfatts que les générations qui les
ont précédés ont recus des ecclésiastiques des divers pays d@’Europe.” The
proposal was moved by Mr. Isaac Samuel Avigdor, representative of
the Jews of the Alpes-Maritimes. Tama adds that the speech of
Avigdor was received with applause and its insertion in the minutes
tn extenso adopted.—The Jewish historians of to-day do not saya
word concerning this important event. Not only Graetz passes it
over in silence, but Bédarride also in his Les Jui/s en France, 1859,
although he seems as if he were reporting in full from the minutes;
* Die Religion, general note to third chapter.
352 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

among us than the Saracen or the other wrecks of half-
Semitic peoples who saved their existence—but not
their individuality—by unconditional amalgamation
with the nations of South Europe. The Jew, however,
was proof against this; though now and then one of
them might be dragged to the stake, the very fact that
they had crucified Jesus Christ surrounded them with
a solemn, awe-inspiring nimbus. And while the people
were thus fascinated, the scholars and holy men spent
their days and nights in studying the books of the Hebrews:
struck down by the commands of Jewish shepherds
like Amos and Micah, the monuments of an art, whose
like the world has never since seen, fell to the ground;
through the scorn of Jewish priests science sank into
contempt ; Olympus and Walhalla became depopulated,
because the Jews so wished it; Jehovah, who had
said to the Israelites, ‘‘ Ye are my people and I am
your God,” now became the God of the Indo-Europeans ;
from the Jews we adopted the fatal doctrine of uncon-
ditional religious intolerance. But at the same time we
adopted very great and sublime spiritual impulses;
we were taught by prophets, who preached such strict and
pure morals as could have been found nowhere else save
on the distant shores of India; we became acquainted
with such a living and life-moulding faith in a higher
divine power that it inevitably changed our spirit and
gave it a new direction. Though Christ was the master-
builder, we got the architecture from the Jews. Isaiah,
Jeremiah, the Psalmists became, and still are, living powers
in our spiritual life.

WHO Is THE JEW?

And now, when this inner contact is beginning to
grow weaker, while the outer friction referred to above
is being daily more felt, now, when he cannot any longer
JEWS ENTER INTO W iSTERN HISTORY 353

rid ourselves of the presence of Jews, it is not sufficient
for us to know that almost all pre-eminent and free
men, from Tiberius to Bismarck, have looked upon
the presence of the Jew in our midst as a social and
political danger, we must be in a position to form defi-
nite judgments on the basis of adequate knowledge of
facts and to act accordingly. There have been published
Anti-Semitic catechisms, in which opinions of well-known
men have been collected in hundreds; but apart from
the fact that many a remark when taken apart from the
context does not give quite fairly the intention of the
writer, and that out of many others it is merely ignorant
blind prejudice that speaks, a single opinion of our
own is manifestly worth more than two hundred quota-
tions. Moreover I do not know how we can form a come
petent judgment, if we do not learn to take a higher stand-
point than that of political considerations, and I do not
know how we can arrive at this standpoint except through
history, not, however, modern history—for there we
should be judge and suitor at the same time—but
through the history of the growth of the Jewish people.
There is no lack of documents; in the nineteenth cen-
tury especially they have been tested, critically sifted
and historically classified by the devoted work of learned
men, mostly Germans, but also distinguished French-
men, Dutchmen and Englishmen; much remains to
be done, but enough has already been accomplished to
enable us to survey clearly and surely in its general
features one of the most remarkable pages of human
history. This Jew, who appears so eternally unchange-
able, so constant, as Goethe says, really grew into what
he is, grew slowly, even artificially. And of a surety
he will pass away like all that has grown. This fact
already brings him nearer to us as a human being.
What a “‘ Semite’”’ is, no one can tell. A hundred years
ago science thought it knew what it meant; Semites
I z
354 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XiXtx CENTURY

were the sons of Shem; now the answer becomes more
and more vague; it was thought that the criterion of
language was decisive: a very great error! The idea
«‘Semite ’’ indeed remains indispensable because it em-
braces collectively a many-sided complex of historical
phenomena; but there is absolutely no sure boundary-
line; at the periphery this ethnographical conception
merges into others. Finally ‘“‘Semite”’ remains as the
name of an original race, like “‘ Aryan,” one of those
counters without which one could not make oneself
understood, but which one must beware of accepting
as good coin. The real genuine coins are those em-
pirically given, historically developed national individual-
ities, of which I have spoken in the former chapter, such
individualities as the Jews for example. Race is not
an original phenomenon, it is produced; physiologically
by characteristic mixture of blood, followed by in-
breeding; psychically by the influence which long-
lasting historical and geographical conditions exercise
upon that special, specific, physiological foundation.*
Ii we wish then (and I think that must be the principal
task of this chapter) to ask the Jew: Who art thou?
we must first try to discover whether there was not a
definite mixture of blood underlying the fact of this so
clearly marked race, and then—if the answer is in the
affirmative—trace how the peculiar soul, which thus
was produced, differentiated itself more and more.
Nowhere can we trace this process as we can in the Jew:
for the whole national history of the Jews is like a con-
tinuous process of elimination; the character of the
Jewish people ever becomes more individual, more
outspoken, more simple; finally there remains in a
way nothing of the whole being but the central skele-
ton; the slowly ripened fruit is robbed of its downy,
fresh-coloured covering and of its juicy flesh, for these
* Cf. p. 288. For the Semites, see also p. 361.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 355

might become spotted and worm-eaten; the stony
kernel alone remains, shrivelled and dry, it is true, but
defying time. However, as I have pointed out, this was
not always the case. That which has been transferred
from the sacred books of the Hebrews to the Christian
religion does not come down from the senility of real
Judaism, but partly from the youth of the much wider
and more imaginative “ Israelite ”’ people, partly from the
mature years of the Judean, just after he had separated
from Israel and when he had not yet proudly isolated
himself from the other nations of the earth. The Jew
whom we now know and see at work has become Jew
gradually ; not, however, as pseudo-history would have
us believe, in the course of the Christian Middle Ages, but
on his national soil, in the course of his independent his-
tory; the Jew moulded his own destiny ; in Jerusalem
stood the first Ghetto, the high wall which separated the
orthodox and the pure-born from the Goyim, and pre-
vented the latter from entering the real city. Neither
Jacob, nor Solomon, nor Isaiah would recognise his
posterity in Rabbi Akiba (the great scribe of the Talmud)
much less in Baron Hirsch or the diamond king Barnato.*

Let us therefore try by the shortest way, ze, by
the greatest possible simplification, to make plain the
essential features of this peculiar national soul, as it
gradually became more clearly and one-sidedly developed.
This needs no great learning; for to the question: Who

* For the Messianic period the dream of the later Jews (in contrast
to the more free-thinking Israelites of former centuries) was to keep
strangers out of Jerusalem altogether: read Joel iii.12; and as
this very late prophet—from the Hellenic period—says at the same
time that God will always dwell in Jerusalem and only in Jerusalem,
this command means the banishment of all peoples from God’s presence.
Such was the tolerance of the Jews !—It is only logical that most of the
Rabbis excluded all non-Jews from a future world, while others endured
them there as a despised throng (see Tractate Gittin, fol. 57a of the
Babylonian Talmud, and Weber, System der altsynagogalen paldstinis-

chen Theologie, p. 372, from Laible) ; the comical thing is the assertion
of the Jews to-day that their religion is the “ religion of humanity |"
356 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

art thou? the Jew himself, as I have said, and his
ancestor the Israelite have given from the first the
clearest of answers: then we have the mass of scientific
‘ work, from Ewald to Wellhausen and Ramsay, from
De Wette and Reuss to Duhm and Cheyne; we have
only to make out the sum total, as the practical man
needs it, who, in the midst of the stormy bustle of the
world, wishes to be able to base his judgment upon
definite ascertained facts.

I have only two more remarks to make; about method
pure and simple. Having already, particularly in the
chapter on the Revelation of Christ, discussed the Jew in
detail and as this theme will probably come up again,
I may here confine myself to the central question and
refer the reader for much information on other points
to what has been said or will be said elsewhere in my
book. As regards the authors consulted, I could not
help using, in addition to the Bible and some thoroughly
competent modern Jewish writers, also some scholars
who are not Jews; this was quite necessary for our
knowledge of the prophets and the correct interpretation
of historical events; but these scholars, even the most
free-thinking of them, are all men who display great—
perhaps exaggerated—admiration of the Jewish nation,
at least in its earlier form, and who are all inclined to
look upon this people as in some sense a “ chosen ”’ one,
so far as religion isconcerned. I have, however, in the
interests of the exposition entirely disregarded those
writers who are avowedly Anti-Semitic.

SYSTEMATIC ARRANGEMENT OF THE
INVESTIGATION

There is one point—in my opinion a very important
one—upon which the science of the last years has shed
a good deal of light, namely, the anthropogeny of the
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 357

Israelites, that is, the history of the physical development
of this special national race. Of course here, as every-
where, there is a past which is closed to our knowledge,
and beyond doubt much that daring archeologists have
felt and guessed with the feelers of their wonderfully
trained instinct rather than seen with their own eyes,
will yet be essentially corrected by newer investigations
and discoveries. But that makes no difference to
us here. The important thing—the great, solid achieve-
ment of history—is, first, the fact that the Israelite
people represents the product of manifold mixing, and
that, too, not between related races (as the ancient
Greeks, or the English of to-day) but between types
that morally and physically are absolutely distinct ; and
secondly, the fact that genuine Semitic blood (if this make-
shift word is to have a sense at all) makes up, I suppose,
hardly the half of this mixture. These are certain results
of exact anatomical anthropology and of historical in-
vestigation, two branches ¢* knowledge which here extend
to each other a helping hand. A third point completes
those just named ; for it we are indebted to the critical
endeavours of Biblical archeology, which has at last
thrown light upon the very complicated chronology of
the books of the Old Testament, which belong to entirely
different centuries and were put together quite arbitrarily,
though not without a plan: these teach us that the
teal Jew is not to be identified with the Israelite in the
wider sense of the word, that the house of Judah, even
at the time of its settling in Palestine, was through
blood-mixture and character distinct in several points
from the house of Joseph (which embraced the other
tribes) : the Judean stood in fact in a kind of intellectual
dependence upon the Josephite, and only at a relatively
late time, after the violent separation from his brothers,
did he begin to go his own way, the way that led to
Judaism, and which very soon afterwards by the elevation
388 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtx CENTURY

of inbreeding to a religious principle isolated him from the
whole world. The Jew can be called an Israelite in so
far as he is an offshoot of that family; the Israelites,
on the other hand, even those of the tribe of Judah, were
not Jews ; the Jew began to develop only after the more
powerful tribes of the North had been destroyed by the
Assyrians. In order to ascertain who the Jew is, we
have therefore first of all to establish who the Israelite was
and then to ask how the Israelite of the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin became a Jew. And here we must be careful
how we use our sources of information. For it was only
after the Babylonian captivity that the specifically
Jewish character was artificially brought into the Bible,
by whole books being invented and ascribed to Moses
and frequently by the introduction in verse after verse
of interpolations and corrections which obliterated the
wider views of old Israel and replaced them by the narrow
Jerusalemic cult of Jehovah, giving the impression that
this cult had existed from time immemorial and had been
directly ordained by God. This has long prevented us
from clearly understanding the gradual and perfectly
human historical development of the Jewish national
character. Now at last light has been thrown on this
sphere too. Here also we cansay: we hold in our hand
a sure and lasting result of scientific investigation.
Whether later investigations prove this or that sentence
of the Hexateuch, which to-day is ascribed to the
«‘jahvistic’’ text, to belong to the “ elohistic,” or
to have been inserted by the later “ editor,” whether
a definite utterance was made by Isaiah himself or
by the so-called second Isaiah—all these are certainly
important questions, but their solution will never in
any way alter the established fact that real Judaism,
with the special Jehovah faith and the exclusive pre-
dominance of priestly law, is due to a demonstrable
and very peculiar historical sequence of events and to
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 359

the active intervention of certain far-sighted and clear-
headed men.

These three facts form the essential basis of all know-
ledge of the Jewish character ; they must not remain the
possession of a learned minority but must be incorporated
in the consciousness of all educated people. I repeat
them in preciser form :

(1) The Israelite people has arisen from the crossing
of quite different human types ;

(2) The Semitic element may well have been the
stronger morally, but physically it contributed scarcely
one-half to the composition of the new ethnological
individuality ; it is therefore wrong shortly to call the
Israelites «‘ Semites,” for the part played by the various
human types in the formation of the Israelite race
demands a quantitative and qualitative analysis ;

(3) The real Jew only developed in the course of
centuries by gradual physical separation from the rest
of the Israelite family, as also by progressive development
of certain mental qualities and systematic starving
of others; he is not the result of a normal national life,
but in a way an artificial product, produced by a
priestly caste, which forced, with the help of alien rulers,
a priestly legislation and a priestly faith upon a people
that did not want them.

This furnishes us with the arrangement of the following
discussion. I shall first of all consult history and an-
thropology, in order that we may learn from what races
the new Israelite race (as the foundation of the Jewish) was
descended ; then the part played by these various human
types must be analysed with regard to their physical
and particularly their moral significance, and here our
attention must be directed especially to their religious
views: for the basis of Judaism is the faith which it
teaches and we cannot judge the Jew correctly either in
history or in our midst, if we are not quite clear about
360 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

his religion ; last of all I shall try to show how under the
indluence of remarkable historical events specific Judaism
was established and stamped for ever with its peculiar
and incomparable individuality. In this way we shall
perhaps attain the object of this chapter, as I have de-
fined it; for the Jewish race—though later at certain
times it adopted not a few alien elements—remained on
the whole purer than any other, and the Jewish nation
has been from the first an essentially ‘“ ideal’’ one, that
is, one resting on faith in a definite national idea, not
on the possession of a free State of its own, nor on com-
munal life and work on the soil of that State: and this
idea is the same to-day as it was two thousand years ago.
Now race and ideal make up the personality of the
human being ; they answer the question : Who art thou ?

ORIGIN OF THE ISRAELITE

~The Israelites * sprang from the crossing of three

(perhaps even four) different human types: the Semitic,
the Syrian (or, more correctly, Hittite) and the Indo-
European. Possibly Turanian blood, or, as it is more
frequently called in Germany, Sumero-Accadian blood,
also flowed in the veins of the original ancestors.

In order that the reader may clearly understand how
this crossing took place, I must first give a brief historical
sketch. It will freshen the memory in regard to familiar
facts and help to make the history of the origin of the
Jewish race comprehensible.

Although the term ‘‘ Semite,” as applied to a pure
autonomous race existing since the beginning of time,

* And not they only but also their relatives, the Ammonites, the
Moabites and the Edomites. These four make up the family of the
“ Hebrews,” a name usually—but wrongly—applied to the Israelites
alone or sometimes even to the Jews. See Wellhausen : Israclitische
und qjidische Geschichte, 3rd ed. p. 7. To the same family belong

likewise the Midianites and the Ishmaelites (Maspero: Histoive_ancienne,
1895, ii. 65.)
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 361

a special creation of God, so to speak, is certainly a mere
abstraction, yet it is not so hazardous as the word
« Aryan”: for there still exists to-day a people which
is supposed to represent the pure, untarnished type of
the primeval Semite, viz., the Bedouin of the Arabian
desert.* Let us discard the hazy Semite and confine our-
selves to the Bedouin of flesh and blood. It is supposed,
and there are good grounds for the supposition, that some
thousands of years before Christ, human beings, very
closely resembling the Bedouins of to-day, migrated from
Arabia in an almost unbroken stream to east and north
into the land of the two rivers. Arabia is healthy, so
its population increases ; its soil is extremely poor, so a
portion of its inhabitants must seek sustenance elsewhere.
It seems that sometimes great migratory hordes composed
of armed men had thus wandered forth ; in such cases the
surplus population had been cast out with irresistible
force from their home, and left as conquerors upon the
neighbouring countries; in other cases single families
with their herds wandered peacefully over the indefinitely
marked boundary from one grazing-place to another:
if they did not at once turn off to the west, as many
of them did, it might happen that they advanced as far as
the Euphrates and so, following the stream, worked their
way intothenorth. In historical times (under the Romans
and subsequent to Mohammed) we have memorable
instances of this summary manner of getting rid of super-
fluous population ; ¢ in the great civilised States between

* This seems to be unanimously asserted by all writers. I have
quoted Burckhardt inthe course of thischapter. Here I shall only refer
to a more modern, universally recognised authority—W. Robertson
Smith. In his Religion of the Semites (1894, p. 8) he says : “It can be
taken for granted that the Arabs of the desert have from time imme-
morial been an unmixed race.’”’ The same author points out that it is
inadmissible to put the Babylonians, Phcenicians, &c., down as
“Semites”: the only established fact is the relationship of the
languages, and all these so-called “‘ Semitic” nations have sprung from
a decided mixture of blood.

t The last example was in the end of the nineteenth century, when the
362 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

the Tigris and the Euphrates, Semitisation was also the
work of great, though more peaceful, masses. Wherever,
in fact, as in Babylonian Accadia, the Semites came into
contact with a ripe, strong, self-reliant culture, they pre-
vailed over it by fusion with the people—a process which
in the case of the Babylonians we can now trace almost
step by step.* The Beni Israel, on the other hand,
emigrated as simple shepherds in small groups and had,
in order to secure the safety of their cattle, to avoid all
warlike operations, of which their small number would
have rendered them incapable in any case.f The Bible
narrative naturally gives us only the faint reflection of
primeval oral traditions concerning the earliest wander-
ings of this Bedouin family; they are in addition much
falsified by the misconceptions, theories and purposes
of late-born scribes; still there is no reason to doubt
the correctness of the general details given, all the less
so as they contain nothing that is improbable. Every-
thing is indeed much abbreviated: whole families have
dwindled into a single person (a universal Semitic custom,
“such as we find only in the case of the Semites,” says
Wellhausen) ; other pretended ancestors are simply the
names of the places in the neighbourhood of which the
Israelites had long stayed; movements which required
several generations to accomplish are accredited to a

Arabs, who from time immemorial had migrated not only to north and
east, but also to west and south, completely devastated a great part
of Central Africa. Immense kingdoms, which in the year 1880 were
densely populated and entirely under cultivation, have since become
a desert. Stanley tells us of a single Arab chieftain who laid waste
a region of two thousand square miles! (See the books of Stanley,
Wissman, Hinde, &c.,and the short summary in Ratzel: Vélkerkunde,
2nd ed. ii. 430.) Cf. also p. 115, note.

* See Hummel, Sayce, Budge and Maspero with regard to the lost
race of the Accadians or Sumerians, the creators of the magnificent
Babylonian culture, and their gradual Semitisation.

To complete and correct what follows, see the interesting and excel-
Isnt book of Carl Steuernagel: Die Einwanderung der tsraelitischen
S/émme in Kanaan, Berlin, 1901.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 36:2

single individual. This need of simplifying the complex,
of pressing together what lies far apart, is just as natural
to this people as it is to the poet who consciously creates.
Thus, for example, the Bible represents Abraham, when
already a married man, as emigrating from the district
of Ur, on the lower course of the Euphrates, to northern
Mesopotamia, at the foot of the Armenian mountain
range, to that Paddan-Aram, of which the book of Genes@s
so often speaks and which lies beyond the Euphrates,
between it and the tributary Khabur, in a straight line
about 375 miles, but following the valley and the line oi
grazing-tracts at least 937 miles from Ur (cf. the map or
p. 365); but more than that, this same Abraham is saic
to have moved later from Paddan-Aram towards the
south-west, to the land of Canaan, from there to Egypi
and finally (for I leave his shorter journeys out of account}
from Egypt to Canaan again and all this accompaniec
by so numerous herds of cattle that he was forced, ir
order to find sufficient grazing land for them, to separate
from his nearest relatives (Genesis xili.). In spite of this
compression the old Hebrew tradition contains all we
require to know, particularly in places where the oldest
tradition is before us in almost unfalsified form, anc
Biblical criticism already gives us full information witk
regard to it.* From this tradition we learn that the
Bedouin family in question first of all wandered intc
the valley of the southern Euphrates and stayed a con.
siderable time in the neighbourhood of the city of Ur
This city lay to the south of the great river and formec
the farthest outpost of Chaldea. Here for the first time
the nomads came into touch with civilisation. The
shepherds could not indeed enter into this district itself
since magnificent cities and a highly developed agriculture
required every inch of ground available, but here they

* Cf; especially Gunkel’s Handkommentar zuy Genesis, 1901 (now
published in a second improved edition).
364 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

received imperishable impressions and instruction (to
which I shall refer later); it was here too that they
first became acquainted with such names as Abraham
and Sarah, which their love of punning make them trans-
late later into Hebrew (Genesis xvii. 1-6). They could
not stay long in the vicinity of such high culture, or
perhaps they were pushed forward by sons of the desert
who were pressing on behind. And thus we see them
moving ever farther and farther towards the north,*
to the then sparsely populated Paddan-Aram,f where
they must have stayed for a long time—at the very least
for several centuries. When, howeyer, the pasture of
Mesopotamia was no longer sufficient for the increased
number of human beings and cattle, a portion of them
moved from that north-eastern corner of Syria, Paddan-
Aram, to the south-western corner nearest Egypt, to
Canaan, where they were hospitably received by a settled
agricultural people and received permission to pasture
their herds on the mountains. But Paddan-Aram lived
long in the memory of the descendants of Abraham as
their genuine home. Jehovah himself calls Paddan-Aram
Abraham’s “‘ country ”’ (Genesis xii. 1), and the mythical
Abraham still speaks, long after he has settled in Canaan,
with longing of his distant ‘‘ country ’? and sends messen-
gers to his “‘land”’ (Genesis xxiv. 4 and 7), in order to
get in touch again with the relatives who had remained

* The direction was marked out for them ; from Ur they could choose
no other course; for the wilderness runs for several hundred miles
parallel to the Euphrates, only a small stretch of watered land separating
the two; but suddenly, exactly at the 35th degree, the wilderness
ceases and the land of Syria opens up to west, south and north. Syria
stretches southwards to Egypt, westwards to the Mediterranean Sea,
northwards to the Taurus, in the east it is bounded to-day by the
Euphrates, but according to former conditions and ideas it embraced
Mesopotamia, which lies beyond the middle Euphrates, and here the
children of Abraham had their home for centuries.

+ At a later time Mesopotamia was for long an artificially-watered
and consequently richly-cultivated region; in former times, however,
it was, as it is to-day, a poor land, where only nomadic shepherds
could find a living (cf. Maspero: Histoive ancienne, i. 5635
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 365

there. And thus the sons of Abraham, although already
settled in Canaan, remained half Mesopotamians during
all the long years which have been compressed and
represented under the pseudo-mythical names Isaac

   

MEDITERRANEAN

SKETCH-MAP

and Jacob; it is a perpetual coming and going; the
southern branch feeling that it belongs to one principal
northern stem.* But the moment came when they had
to move farther towards the south; in dry years the
pastures of Canaan were no longer sufficient, and perhaps

* This period, during which ‘‘ Father Jacob developed into the people
of Israel,’ Wellhausen describes as an interval of several centuries’
duration (Isvaelitische und judische Geschichte, p. 11).
366 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

too the Canaanites felt the burden of their increasing
numbers; so at the time when the friendly half-Semitic
Hyksos were in power, they wandered away to the land
of Goshen, belonging to Egypt. It was this long stay
in Egypt * that first broke off all connection between
them and their kinsmen, so that, when the Israelites once
more returned to Palestine, they still recognised the
Moabites, Edomites and the other Hebrews as distant
blood-relations, but felt for them no longer love but
hatred and contempt, a state of feeling which received
a refreshingly artless expression in the genealogies of
the Bible, according to which some of these races owe
their origin to incest, while others are descended from
harlots.

We can only speak of Israelites in the historical sense
of the word from the moment when, as a not very nume-
tous, but yet firmly united people, they forcibly took
possession of Canaan on their flight from Egypt, and
founded there a State that experienced many different
but mostly very sad strokes of fortune, but which, in
spite of the fact that it lay (like the rest of Syria)
between hammer and anvil, that is, between warring
“great Powers,” continued to stand as an independent
kingdom for almost seven hundred years. We must
emphasise the fact that these Israelites were not very
numerous ; it is important from an historical as well as
from an anthropological point of view; for to this circum-
stance we must ascribe the fact that the former and
really domiciled inhabitants of Canaan (a mixture of

* According to Genesis xv. four hundred years, which is naturally
not to be taken literally but simply as an expression for an almost
unthinkably long time. The number forty was among the Hebrews
the expression for an indefinitely large number, four hundred a fortiori.
Renan is of opinion that the stay of the Israelites in Egypt did not
last more than one hundred years and that only the Josephites
(probably only very distant relations with a strong mixture of
Egyptian blood) were settled there for very long (Histoire du peuple
@ Israél, 13° 6d. i. pp. 112, 141, 142).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 367

Hittites and Indo-European Amorites) were never
destroyed and always formed and even still form the
stock of the population.* The mingling of races, of
which I shall immediately speak, and which had begun
as soon as the Israelites entered Syrian territory, cone
tinued in the autonomous State of Israel, that is, in
Palestine, and came to a sudden stop only after the
Babylonian exile, and that in Judea alone, by the intro-
duction of a new law. The fact that the Jews at a later
time separated as an ethnological unity from the rest of
the Israelites is purely and simply due to this, that the
inhabitants of Judea by energetic enactments at last put
a stop to the continual fusion (see Ezra ix. and x.).

The reader who would like further information on this
matter may supplement the knowledge he has derived
from this hasty sketch by consulting Wellhausen’s concise
Isvaehitische und judische Geschichte, Stade’s Geschichte des
Volkes Israel, Renan’s detailed and yet lightly written
Histoive du peuple d’ Israel, and Maspero’s comprehensive
and luminous Histoire ancienne des peuples de Orient
classique ; | in the meantime my sketch may suffice to
show the origin of the Israelites in broad outline
and to impress upon the memory in the simplest form
the seemingly complicated facts of the case. I shall
now attempt to show how the original, purely Semitic

* Sayce: The Races of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. pp. 76,113. ‘‘ The
Roman drove the Jew out of the land that his fathers had conquered ;
the Jews, on the other hand, had never succeeded in driving out the
genuine possessors of Canaan.... The Jew held Jerusalem and
Hebron, as well as the surrounding cities and villages, otherwise (even
in Judea itself) he formed only a fraction of the population. As soon
as the Jew was removed, for example, at the time of the Babylonian
exile or after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the original
population, freed from the pressure, increased . .. and the Jewish
colonies in Palestine are to-day just as much foreigners as the German
colonies there.”

+ I name only the latest, most important and most reliable books,
written by real scholars but accessible to the unlearned. Of the

older ones Duncker’s Geschichte des Altertums also remains unsurpassed
in many respects for the history of Israel,
368 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

emigrant became by crossing first of all a Hebrew and
then an Israelite.

THE GENUINE SEMITE

The preceding historical sketch shows us a Bedouin
family as the starting-point.* Let us first of all establish
the one fact : this pure Semite, the original emigrant from
the deserts of Arabia, is and remains the impelling power,
the principle of life, the soul of the new ethnical unity of
the Israelites which arose out of manifold crossing. No
matter how much, in consequence not only of their destiny
but above all of crossing with absolutely different human
types, his descendants might differ in course of time
morally and physically from the original Bedouin, yet
in many points, good as well as bad, he remained their
spiritus vector. Of the two or three souls which had their
home in the breast of the later Israelites, this was the
most obtrusive and long-lived. However, we can only
congratulate this Bedouin family on their crossing, for any
change in the manner of living is said to have a very bad
effect on the high qualities of the genuine and purely
Semitic nomads. The learned Sayce, one of the greatest
advocates of the Jews at the present day, writes: “If
the Bedouin of the desert chooses a settled life, he, as a
rule, unites in himself all the vices of the nomad and of the

* Asa matter of fact the current opinion is that the Semite and even
that purest Bedouin type are the most absolute mongrels imaginable,
the product of a cross between negro and white man! Gobineau
preached this doctrine fifty years ago, and was laughed at; to-day his
opinion is the orthodox one; Ranke defines it thus in his Volkerkunde
(ii. 399): ‘‘ The Semites belong to the mulatto class, a transition stage
between black and white.”’ But I think that caution is here neces-
sary. What is taking place before our eyes is not warranted to
strengthen the belief that from mulattoes there could spring a firm,
unchangeable type that would survive the storms of time: quicksand
is not more fickle and changeable than this half-caste; here, then,
in defiance of all experience we should have to suppose that the unthink-

able, the unexampled had taken place in the case of the Bedouins,
(Cf., too, August Forel’s remarks, 1900).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 369

peasant. Lazy, deceitful, cruel, greedy, cowardly, he is
rightly regarded by all nations as the scum of mankind.” *
But long before they settled down, this Bedouin family,
the Beni Israel, had fortunately escaped such a cruel
fate by manifold crossing with non-Semites.

We saw that the original Bedouin family first stayed
for a considerable time on the Southern Euphrates in the
neighbourhood of the city of Ur: did crossing take place
at this stage? It has been asserted that it did. And
since fairly genuine Sumero-Accadians presumably formed
the basis of the population of the Babylonian Empire at
that time—for the Semites had merely annexed this State
and its high civilisation without performing either the
mental work or the manual f—it is assumed that the stock
of Abraham was quickened by Sumero-Accadian blood.
The occurrence of such strange names as Abraham (this
was the name of the first legendary founder and king of
Ur among the Sumerians) has given weight to this view,
as also the fragments of half-understood Turanian f
wisdom and mythology, of which the first chapters of
Genesis are composed. But such assumptions are purely
hypothetical and hence, to begin with, hardly merit serious
consideration. Not even probability speaks for this
view. The poor shepherds had hardly touched the hem
of civilisation, what people then would have entered into
family relations with them? And as regards the adoption
of such meagre cosmogonic conceptions as we find in
the Bible, intercourse with other Hebrews is sufficient
to explain that; for the mythology, the science and the
culture of the Sumerians (in which we still share, thanks

* The Races of the Old Testament, p. 106.

} See especially Sayce: Assyria, p. 24 ff., and Social Life among
the Assyrians and Babylonians ; also Winckler: Die Vélker Vorderasiens
(1900), p. 8.

{ The word ‘‘ Turanian ” has escaped my pen, because many autho
regard the Sumero-Accadians as Turanians. See Hommel: Gesch,
Babyloniens und Assyriens, pp. 125, 244 f

I 2A
370 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtx# CENTURY

to the idea of creation and of the fall of man, the division
of the week and the year, the foundation of geometry,
and the invention of writing) had spread far and wide;
Egypt was their pupil,* and the Semite, incapable of
such deep intuition as the Egyptian, had long ago, before
the Beni Israel began their wanderings, adopted as much
of Egyptian culture as seemed advantageous and practical
and had, as active mediators, spread it wherever they
went. The crossing with Sumero-Accadians is therefore
just as improbable as it is unproved.

We are, however, on sure ground, as soon as the emi-
grants move to north and west. For now they are in
the heart of Syria and they never again leave it (except at
the time of their short stay on the borders of Egypt).
Here, in Syria, our purely Semitic Bedouin family has
been changed by crossing, here its members became
Hebrews by mingling with an absolutely different type,
the Syrian—as so many a Bedouin colony before and after
them. At a later period part of the family was forced
to emigrate from Mesopotamia, which lay in the north-
east corner, to Canaan, in the extreme south-west,
where similar race-moulding influences, to which quite
new ones were also added, asserted themselves in a still
more definite way. It was only here, in Canaan, that the
Abrahamide Hebrews changed gradually into genuine
Israelites. To this very Canaan the Israelites, now
increased in numbers, returned as conquerors, after
their sojourn in Egypt ; and here they received, in addi-
tion to alien blood, a new culture, which transformed
them from nomads into settled farmers and city-dwellers.

We can, therefore, without making any mistake,
distinguish two anthropogenetic spheres of influence,
which successively came into prominence, a more general
one, provided by the entrance into Syria and in particular

* See Hommel: Der babylonische Ursprung der adgyptischen Kultur
(1892).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 371

by the long stay in Mesopotamia, in regard to which we
have no very definite historical dates, but which we may
and must deduce from the known ethnological facts ;
in the second place, a more particular Canaanite influence,
which we can prove from the detailed testimony of the
Bible. Let us discuss first the more general sphere of
influence and then the more particular one.

THE SYRIAN

If we turn up a text-book of geography or an encyclo-
pedia, we shall find it stated that the present population
of Syria is ‘‘to the greatest extent Semitic.” This is
false; just as false as the statement we find in the
same sources, that the Armenians are “ Aryans.”” Here
again we see the widespread confusion of language and
race; we should, on the same footing, logically have to
maintain that the negroes of the United States were
Anglo-Saxons. Scientific anthropology has in recent
years, by thorough investigation of an enormous amount
of material, irrefutably proved that from the most remote
times to which prehistoric discoveries reach back, the main
population of Syria has been formed from a type which
is absolutely different, physically and morally, from the
Semitic, as it is from everything which we are wont to
comprise under the term “‘ Aryan’; and this applies not
to the population of Syria alone, but also to that of all
Asia Minor and the extensive region which we call
Armenia at the present day. There are races which have
an inborn tendency to restless wandering (e.g., the Bedouin,
the Laplander, &c.), others which possess a rare power
of expansion (¢.g., the Teutonic races); but this in-
habitant of Syria and Asia Minor seems to have been
distinguished and still to be distinguished by his obstinate
attachment to his native soil and the invincible power
of his physical constancy. His original home was the
372, FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

trysting-place of nations, he himself almost always
being vanquished, and the great battles of the world
being fought over him-—yet he survived them all and
his blood asserted itself to such an extent that the Syrian
Semite of to-day should be called Semite in language
rather than in race, and the so-called Aryan Armenian,
of Phrygian origin, has perhaps not Io per cent. of Indo-
European blood in his veins. On the other hand, the
so-called “‘ Syrian ” of to-day, the Jew and the Armenian
can hardly be distinguished from one another, and this
is easily explained, since the primal race which unites
all three makes them daily more and more like each other,
We may most appropriately apply a quotation from
Schiller’s Braut von Messina to this Syrian stem :

Die fremden Eroberer kommen und gehen;
Wir gehorchen, aber wir bleiben stehen.

Now the people which enters history at a later time under
the name of Israelites was subject to this powerful ethnical
influence for many centuries, at least for over ten centuries.
That is what I called the general sphere of influence by
which our genuine Semitic Bedouin family became a
group of the so-called “ Hebrews.’’ Hebrews are, in
fact, a cross between Semite and Syrian. It must not be
thought that the nomad shepherds immediately crossed
with the strange race, the process was rather as follows:
on the one hand they found a considerable number of
half and quarter Hebrews, who formed the point of
connection; on the other hand they doubtless subdued
the original inhabitants (as the predominance of the
Semitic languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, &c., proves) and
begot sons and daughters with their Syrian slaves; later
(in half-historical times) we see them voluntarily inter-
marrying with the independent families of the alien
people, and this had beyond doubt been for centuries
the custom. However, no matter what theories we
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 373

may hold about the process of fusion, certain it is that
it did take place.

To be able to speak of that other Syrian type it would
be convenient to have a name for him. Hommel, the
well-known Munich scholar, calls him the Alarodian ; *
he thinks he may ascribe to him considerable expansion _
even over Southern Europe and finds him in the Iberians
and Basques of to-day. But the layman must be very
discreet in his use of such hypotheses ; before this book is
printed, the Alarodians may have been thrown among
the scrap-iron of science. The example of the French
zoologist and anthropologist, G. de Lapouge, is worthy of
imitation ; he does not trouble himself about history and
origin, but gives names to the various physical types
according to the Linnean method, such as Homo europeus,
Homo A fer, Homo contractus, &c. So far as formation of skull
is concerned, this type from Asia Minor would correspond
pretty exactly to Lapouge’s Homo alpinus ; + but here
we may safely and simply call him Homo syriacus, the
primeval inhabitant of Syria. And just as we found a
point of support for the Semitic type in the Bedouin, so
we find in the Hittite tribe a peculiarly characteristic
representative of the Syrian type, and moreover the one
with which the Israelites in Palestine were closely con-
nected; it no longer, of course, exists among us asa
national individuality, but it is daily becoming better
known from history and from manifold surviving repre-
sentations.t This Syrian type is distinguished by the
prevalence of a particular anatomical characteristic

* He takes the name from a tribe mentioned by Herodotus as living
at the foot of Mount Ararat.

t Lapouge: La dépopulation de la France, Revue d’ Anthropologie,
1888, p. 79. F. von Luschan has definitely pointed out the resemblance
of the Syrian to the Savoyard.

{ A summary of our knowledge of the Hittites will be found in
Winckler’s Die Vélkey Vorderasiens, 1900, p. 18 ff. The expression
“ Hittite’ in this book signifies the same to me as the x to «4 mathe-
matician in a properly stated but not yet numerically solved equation
374. FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

he is round-headed, or, as the natural scientists say,
“‘brachycephalous,” that is, with a short skull, the
breadth of which is nearly equal to the length.*
The Bedouin, on the other hand, and also every
Semite whose blood is not strongly mixed with
foreign elements, is decidedly ‘“‘ dolichocephalic,”
‘Long, narrow heads,” writes von Luschan, “are a

 

SHORT SKULL (brachycephalous) LONG SKULL (dolichocephalous)
(After de Mortillet)

striking characteristic of the Bedouin to-day, and we
should have to claim the same for the oldest Arabs were
it not proved from numerous illustrations on the old
Egyptian monuments fortunately preserved.” Naturally
there is more than this one anatomical criterion; corre-
sponding to the round head there is the thick-set body;

* The skull is regarded as particularly long when the relation of
breadth to length is not over 75 to 100, particularly short when it is
80 or more. When I studied anthropology with Carl Vogt, all the
students were measured craniometrically ; in the case of one the rare
telation of 92 to 100 was established, that is, his head was almost quite
round; he was an Armenian, a typical representative of the Syrian
type of skull.

+ F. v. Luschan: Die anthyopologische Steltung dey Juden (Lecture
delivered in the General Meeting of the German Anthropological Society
pf the year 1892). This lecture is to be found in the Correspondenablat.
of the Society for 1892, Nos. 9 and 10. It summarises extensive
researches and I shall often quote from it further on.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 375

it is the expression of a complete and peculiar physio-
logical character. But the skull is the most convenient
part of the skeleton for making comparative studies
regarding extinct races, and it is also the most expres-
sive, and no matter how endless the variation in the
individuals, it maintains the typical forms with great
constancy. But the Hittite had another and much
more striking anatomical distinguishing feature, a very

 

HITTITES

 

ephemeral one, it is true, since cartilage and not bone
went to form it, but it has been splendidly preserved
in pictures and so is well known to us to-day—the nose.
The so-called ‘‘ Jewish nose” is a Hittite legacy. The
genuine Arab, the pure Bedouin, has usually “a short,
small nose little bent” (I quote von Luschan and refer
to the illustrations given) and even when the nose is
more of the eagle type, it never possesses an “ extin-
guisher”” (as Philip von Zesen, the language-reformer,
called it) of the specific, unmistakable Jewish and Arme-
nian form. Now by continuous crossing with the round-
headed type of the alien people the Israelite has gradually
lost his narrow, long Bedouin head, receiving as com-
pensation the so-called Jewish nose. Certainly the long
head still occurred, maintaining itself especially among
the nobler families; even among the Jews of to-day
we find a small percentage of genuine long heads;
but the long head disappeared more and more. The
376 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

nose alone is no reliable proof of Jewish descent;
the reason is clear; this Syrian legacy is common
to all peoples who have Syrian blood in their veins,
In the case of this anthropological discovery we have
to do with no hypothetical assertions, such as too
frequently occur in theological and critical or historical
works ; it is the sure result of thorough scientific investiga-
tion of a sufficiently large material; * this material

 

TRUE BEDOUIN OF THE PRESENT Day f

extends from a very ancient time down to the present,
and is excellently supported by the numerous representa-
tions found in Egypt and Syria, and gradually assigned
to their proper period. Wecan ina way trace the process
by which the Israelite “became Jew” by the Egyptian
monuments, although, in fact, even in the oldest of them
(which do not go far back into Israelite history, since it
was only in Solomon’s time that the Jewish people became
known beyond their borders) there is little of the genuine
Semitic type revealed. Genuine Hittites and_half-
Hittites are here represented as Israelite soldiers; only
the leaders (see, for instance, the so-called portrait of

* Von Luschan’s Mittetlungen of the year 1892 have 60,000 measurt-
ments to support them.

{ From a photograph in Ratzel’s Vélkerkunde. The other typical
pictures are from well-known reliefs on Egyptian monuments.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 377

King Rehoboam, Solomon’s son) remind us of Bedouin
types, but even they sometimes rather resemble good
European countenances.

With these last remarks we pass from the general
prehistoric sphere of influence to that of Canaan,
which likewise continued for over a thousand years
and provides us with plenty of sure facts to go upon.
For before the Hebrew Israelites had the honour of

 

AMORITISH ISRAELITE (portrait of a son of Solomon)

being immortalised by the art of Egyptian painters,
they had moved from Mesopotamia to Canaan. We must
distinguish between their first appearance in Canaan
and their second: in the former case they remained
there as nomadic shepherds on the best terms with the
rightful inhabitants of the cities and the owners of the
tracts under cultivation ; in the second case they entered
the country as conquerors. In the former case, in fact,
they were not numerous, in the second they were a whole
nation. However uncertain and disputed many historical
details still may be, one fact is certain: when they
entered the land first the Israelites found the Hittites
living there, those Hittites who formed a most important
stem of the Homo syriacus. Abraham says to the in-
habitants of Hebron, to the “ children of Heth,” as he
expressly calls them: ‘ I am a stranger and a sojourner
378 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

with you” (Genesis xxili. 4), and he begs, as only a
stranger on suffrance could beg, a “ burying-place”
for his wife Sarah. Isaac’s eldest son, Esau, has only
daughters of Heth as his wives (Genesis xxvi. 34); the
younger son, Jacob, is sent to distant Mesopotamia,
that he may take a Hebrew woman as his wife, and from
this we must conclude that there was none in Palestine,
no Hebrew girl at least, who would as regards wealth have
been a suitable match for him. Isaac would not have
insisted upon it, a well-to-do Hittite would have pleased
him, but Rebecca, his Mesopotamian wife, had no
love for her Hittite daughters-in-law, the wives of Esau,
and said she would rather die than let any more such
come into the house (Genesis xxvii. 46). Among the sons
of Jacob it is again specially mentioned of Judah that he
married Hittite wives (1 Chronicles ii. 3). These popular
tales are a source of historical information; we see that
the Israelites had a clear recollection of having, as a
very limited number of shepherds, lived among a strange,
cultured and friendly people that dwelt in cities; the
rich elders of the race could indulge in the luxury of
sending for wives for their sons from their former home ;
but these sons themselves like to follow their direct
inclination rather than the principle of exclusiveness :
they married the maidens whom they saw around them—
unless they were such heartless mercenary match-makers
as Jacob; the poorer classes, of course, selected wives
where they found them. In addition there was the
begetting of children with slave girls. Of Jacob’s twelve
sons, for instance, four are the sons of slave girls and they
enjoy the same rights as the others.—All this refers to
the earliest contact with the Hittites of Canaan which
the Bible mentions. Now there followed, according to
legend, the long stay on the borders of Egypt, in the
land of Goshen. But here, too, the Israelites were sur-
rounded by Hittites. For the ‘Hittites extended to the
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 379

borders of Egypt, where at that time their kinsmen,
the Hyksos, held the sceptre; the city of Tanis, which
was the rallying-point for the Israelites in Goshen, was
essentially a Hittite city; from the earliest times it had
been in the closest contact with Hebron; when the
Israelites moved with their flocks from Hebron to the
district of Tanis, they accordingly remained in the same
ethnical surroundings.* And when they afterwards
returned to Canaan as conquerors, they, indeed, gradually
overthrew the Canaanites, who consisted mostly of Hit-
tites, but they also, for the first time, entered into close
intercourse with them. For, as I insisted above,
the Canaanite did not disappear. We need only read
the first chapter of the Book of Judges to see what Well-
hausen too attests: “The Israelites did not conquer
the former population systematically, but made their
way among them... it is impossible to speak of
a complete conquest of the land of Palestine.” And
with regard to the manner in which this alien non-
Semitic blood permeated the Hebrew blood more and
more, the same author says, “‘ The most important event
in the period of Judges took place fairly quietly, namely,
the fusion of the new Israelite population of the land
with the old population. The Israelites of the time of
the Kings had a strong Canaanite admixture in their
blood; they were by no means pure descendants of
those who once had immigrated from Egypt... . If
the Israelites had destroyed the old settled inhabitants,
they would have made a desert of the land and robbed
themselves of the prize of victory. By sparing them
and, as it were, grafting themselves upon them, they
grew into their culture. They made themselves at
home in houses which they had not built, in fields and
gardens which they had not laid out and cultivated.
Everywhere, like lucky heirs, they reaped the fruits of

* Cf. Renan: Israél i. chap. 10.
380 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

the labour of their predecessors. Thus they themselves
underwent an inner transformation fraught with many
consequences; they grew quickly into a cultured people.”’ *
At an earlier time, in Hebron or Tanis, the Israelites
had learned from the Hittites the art of writing; t now
they learned from them how to cultivate crops and vines,
how to build and to manage cities—in short, through them
they became a civilised people; and through them also
they became for the first time a State. Never could the
various tribes, living as they did in constant jealousy,
in suspicious isolation, have formed themselves into a
unity but for the Canaanite element, the cement of the
State. And what is more, their religious conceptions, too,
received their special colouring and organisation from the
Canaanites: Baal, the God of agriculture and of peaceful
work, coalesced with Jehovah, the God of armies and of
raids. We see how much Baal was honoured among the
Israelites (in spite of later corrections on the part of the
Jews) from facts such as this, that the first Israelite hero
on the soil of Palestine is called Jerubbaal,t and, moreover,
takes to wife a Hittite : that the first King, Saul, calls one
of his sons Ishbaal, David one of his Baaliada, Jonathan
his only son Meribbaal, &c. The Israelite borrowed from
the Canaanite the whole tradition of Prophets, as also the
whole outward cult and the tradition of the sacred places.§
I need not discuss in detail what every one can find in the
Bible (sometimes certainly obscured by so many strange-
sounding names that one needs an expert guide), namely,
the great part played by the Hittites and by their relatives
the Philistines in the history of Israel. Till the fusion

* Isvael. u. jad. Geschichte, 3rd ed. pp. 37, 46 and 48,

t Renan: Isvaél i. 136.

$} A fact which the later edition of the Bible sought to conceal
(Judges vi. 32) while the older editors thought nothing of it (1 Samuel
xii, 11j.

§ Cf. Wellhausen, as above, pp. 45 f., 102 f.; concerning the sacred
places see his Prolegcsnena zur Geschichte Israels, 4th ed. p. 18 f.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 381

has far advanced and the difference in names had dis-
appeared, we find them everywhere, particularly among
the best soldiers; and how many details in this con-
nection must have disappeared after the later editing of
the Bible by the Jews, who endeavoured to cut out all
that was alien to them and to introduce the fiction of a
pure descent from Abraham! David’s bodyguard is
composed if not wholly yet to a great extent of men who
do not belong to Israel; Hittites and Gittites hold im-
portant posts as officers; the bulk of the soldiers were
Cerethites and Pelethites, Philistines and all other kinds
of aliens, partly Syrian, partly almost purely European,
some of Hellenic race.* David, in fact, won the throne
only by the help of the Philistines—and probably as their
vassal; t he even did everything in his power to en-
courage the fusion of the Israelites with their neighbours,
and himself set the example by marrying women of
Syrian and Indo-European descent.

THE AMORITES

Since the word “ Indo-European” has slipped from
my pen I must here dwell upon a fact which I have as yet
scarcely mentioned. The Canaanites consisted principally,
but not solely, of Hittites ; the Amorites lived in close
connection with them, but they were often settled in
separate districts, and thus kept their race relatively
pure. These Amorites were tall, fair, blue-eyed men
of ruddy complexion; they were “from the north,”
that is, from Europe; the Egyptians, therefore, called

* There were also Arabs, Hebrews from non-Israelite stems, Arameans
and all kinds of pseudo-Semitic aliens. As there are said to have been
1,300,000 men in Israel and Judah capable of bearing arms according
to the (certainly very false) popular account (2 Samuel xxiv.}, we
get the impression that the Israelites themselves were not very warlike.

See especially Renan: Isvaél ii. livre 3, chap. i.
} Wellhausen: Israelitisce und judische Geschichte (3 Ausg.\, p. 58.
382 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

them Tamehu, the ‘North men,” and moreover they
seem, though this is of course problematic, not to have
reached Palestine very long before the return of the
Israelites from Egypt.* To the east of the Jordan
they had founded mighty kingdoms with which the
Israelites later had to wage many wars; another portion
had entered Palestine and lived there in the closest friend-
ship with the Hittites ; + others had joined the Philistines,
and that in such large numbers, increased perhaps by
direct immigration from the purely Hellenic West, that
many historians have regarded the | Philistines as pre-
dominantly Aryan-European.{ | These, « our own kinsfolk,
are those children of Anak, the “ men of great stature”

who inspired the Israelites with such terror, when
the latter first secretly entered Southern Palestine on a
scouting expedition (Numbers xiii.) ; to them belonged the
brave Goliath, who challenges the Israelites to a knightly
combat but is killed by the treacherously slung stone ; §
to them belong those ‘‘ Rephaims” who carry gigantic
spears and heavy mail of iron (1 Samuel xvii. 5 ff.,
2 Samuel xxi. 16 ff.). And while the Bible relates in

* The fact that the book of Genesis (xiv. 13) represents Abraham as
already living in peaceful alliance with three Amorites in the plain
of Hebron has naturally no claim to historical validity.

t+ See especially Sayce: The Races of the Old Testament, p: 110 ff.

¢ Cf: Renan: Isvaél ii. livre 3, chap. 3. For the Hellenic origin
of a considerable proportion of the Philistines and the introduction of
a number of Greek words through them into Hebrew, see Renan:
Isvaél,i. p. 157 note, and Maspero, ii. p. 698: As a matter of fact the
question of the origin of the Philistines and Amorites is still very
hotly debated; we can calmly leave the dispute to historians and
theologians ; the anthropological results are results of exact science,
and philology must follow them, not vice versd. Certain it 1s that the
Amorites and at least a portion of the Philistines were tall, fair,
blue-eyed dolichocephali: thus they belong to the type homo euro-
pe@eus. That is sufficient for us laymen.

§ The legend which ascribes this cowardly act to David is a late
interpretation; the original account is given in 2 Samuel xxi. 19
(cf. Stade: Geschichte des Volkes Isvael i. 225 ff.}. It is important
to know this when forming an estimate of David’s character: See
p. 3852
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 383

great detail the heroic deeds of the Israelites against these
tall fair men, it could not, on the other hand, conceal
the fact that it was from them (the still very savage pure
Indo-European tribe of the Gittites) that David drew his
best and most reliable soldiers. It was only by the
Philistines that the Philistines were conquered, only by
the Amorites the Amorites. The Gittites, for example,
were not conquered by David, but followed him of their
own accord (2 Samuel xv. 19 ff.) from their love of war ;

 

AMURITS

their leader, Ittai, was appointed commander of a third
of the Israelite army (2 Samuel xviii. 2). Of this
* Aryan corps,” as he calls it, Renan says: “It was as
brave as the Arabian but excelled it in reliability ; to
establish anything permanently its support was necessary.
... It was this that frustrated the treacherous plans
of Absalom, of Sebah, of Adonijah; it was this that
saved the threatened throne of Solomon . . . it supplied
the cement of the Israelite kingdom.” * But these men
were not only brave and faithful soldiers, but also builders
of cities ; their cities were the best built and the strongest
(Deuteronomy i. 28) ; | one of them in particular became

* Renan: Isvaél ii. 30-32.

t Sayce (Races of the Old Testament, p. 112) gives an account of

Flinders Petrie’s recent excavations of Amorite cities with walls 2}
metres thick,
384 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

world-famous: not far from Hebron, the chief city of
their Hittite friends, the Amorites founded a new city,
Jerusalem. The King of Jerusalem who marches against
Joshua is an Amorite (Joshua x. 5), and even though the
narrative says that he was defeated and slain with all the
other kings, one must take that and the whole book of
Joshua cum grano salis; for the conquest of Palestine
in reality cost the Israelites a great deal of trouble, and
was accomplished only very slowly and by the help of
foreigners ; * lat any rate the city of Jerusalem was till
David’s time an Amorite city,\ mixed with much Hittite
blood, a mixed population which the Bible calls Jebusites,
but it remained free from Israelites ; fit was only in the
eighth year of his reign that David with his alien mer-
cenaries won this fortress and, because of its strength,
chose it as his residence.) But the Amorite-Hittite
population continued to bé “of importance by reason ot
their numbers and position; David has to buy ground
from a well-to-do Amorite, to erect an altar thereon
(2 Samuel xxiv. 18 ff.), and it is with a Gittite, one of his
most trusted leaders, that he deposits the sacred ark of
the covenant, after he has transferred it to Jerusalem
(2 Samuel iv. 10). Thus, too, the prophet Ezekiel
represents God as calling to the city of Jerusalem: “ Thy
birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy
father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite!”
(Ezekiel xvi. 3). And then he reproaches the Israelite
inhabitants with mixing with these alien elements:
“Thou playedst the harlot and pouredst out thy
fornications on every one that passed by” (Ezekiel

* See especially Wellhausen’s Prolegomena, in many passages.

+ In Joshua xv. 63 we read: ‘“‘ As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out; the
Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this
day.”

$ Wellhausen proves (Prolegomena, p. 43) that Obededom was really,
as the passage quoted says, a Gittite and not a Levite, as the later
version gives it (1 Chronicles xvi. 18}.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 385

xvi. I5)—a piece of simplicity on the part of the
pious Jew, since the great men of his race had not beer
sparing with the example, and he himself, as a Jerusa-
lemite, was the child of this threefold crossing ; Ezekiel,
the real inventor of specific Judaism, had already before
his mind that paradoxical idea of a Jew of pure race, which
is a contradictio im adjecto. The Judean, in fact, had
adopted more Amorite blood than any other Israelite,
and that for the simple reason that the Amorites were
pretty numerous in the south of Palestine, the districts
of Simeon, Judah and Benjamin, whereas they were less
numerous in the north. The Egyptian monuments,
on which the various peoples are most characteristically
represented, prove incontestably that at the time of
Solomon and his successors the inhabitants of Southern
Israel, especially the leaders of the army, weredistinguished
by the predominance of the clearly marked Amorite,
that is Indo-European, type. '

Indeed it has been sometimes questioned whether ~
David himself was not half or three-quarters Amorite.
The Bible emphasises in several places his fairness,
and, as Virchow has proved by countless statistics, “‘ the
skin with all that belongs to it is even more constant than
the skull”; now fair complexion and light hair never
occurred among the Hebrews and the members of the
Syrian group, these characteristics of the European
being first brought into the land by the Amorites and
the Hellenes; that is why David’s fairness was so
striking.* In these circumstances it is probably not

* Luther had translated the passages in question (2 Samuel xvi. 12,
xvii. 42) by the word ‘‘ brownish”; Genesius, on the other hand, in his
dictionary translates the Hebrew word by “red,” and while admitting
that it usually refers to the hair, he takes great pains to prove that David
must have been black-haired and that ‘“‘red’”’ here refers to the com-
plexion (in the 1899 edition this apologetic attempt is dropped); the
best scientific translators to-day look upon the word as meaning
“fair-haired,” and it seems pretty certain that David was distinctly
fair-haired.

I 2B
386 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

too daring to suppose that a shepherd born in Bethlehem
(that is, in the district most thickly populated by
Amorites) may have had an Amorite mother. His cha-
racter, its great faults as well as its fascinating qualities,
his daring, his spirit of adventure, his carelessness, his
‘fanciful nature, distinguish David, it seems to me, from
all the heroes of Israel; equally so his endeavour to
organise the kingdom and to unite the scattered tribes
into one whole, which drew upon him the hatred of the
Israelites. His outspoken predilection for the Philis-
tines, too, among whom he had gladly served as a soldier
(see, for example, 2 Samuel xxi. 3), is a striking feature,
as also the remarkable fact, pointed out by Renan (Jsrail,
ii. 35), that he treated the Philistines generously in war,
but the Hebrew peoples with frightful cruelty, as though
they were repugnant to him. Should there be any
truth in this supposition, Solomon could hardly be called
an Israelite; for it is very unlikely that his mother
Bathsheba, the wife of the Hittite Uriah, was an Israelite.*
Thus we should have an explanation of the peculiar
incompatibility between Solomon’s nature and aims
and the character of Israel and Judah. Renan says it
openly: “Salomon wentendait rien a la vraie vocation
de sa vace’’;+ he was a stranger with all a stranger’s
wishes and a stranger’s aims in the midst of the people
he thought to make great. And thus this short period
of splendour in the history of the Israelite people—David,
Solomon—would in reality be nothing else but an
“episode” brought about by the exultant strength of
an entirely different blood, but soon crushed by the
unbending will of the Syro-Semite, who was not inclined
to follow in those paths, nor indeed capable of doing so.

* Renan: Isyaéb ii. 974 { Ibid. iis 174
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 387

COMPARATIVE NUMBERS

Concerning that which I previously termed the special
sphere of influence, we. possess, as can be seen, sufficient

historical material. [f my purpose were not limited ~

to describing the origin of the Jews I might add a great
deal more—for example, that the tribe of Joseph, the
most gifted and energetic of all Israelites from whom are
descended Joshua, Samuel, Jerubbaal, &c., and the
great dynasty of the Omrides, were half-Egyptians, as
Genesis xli. 45 tells us with the brevity of such folk-
lore, in that Joseph marries the daughter of a priest from
Heliopolis, who bears him Ephraim and Manasseh ...
but this fact is of little or no importance in fixing the
Jewish line of descent ; for marriages between the different
tribes of Israel were made almost impossible by law, and
were particularly improbable owing to the persistent
antipathy of the children of Joseph to those of Judah.
It is just as unnecessary to speak of their contact with
many other Hebrew families. The later admixture of
negro blood with the Jewish’ in the Diaspora of Alexandria
—of which many a man of Jewish persuasion at this day
offers living proof—is also a matter of little importance.
What I have said is detailed enough to enable every one
to picture to himself the anthropogeny of the Jew in its
broad outlines. We have seen that there cannot be the
least doubt that the historical Israelite, from whom the
real “ Jew”’ later separated himself, is the product of a
mixture... He even enters history as a half-caste, namely,
as a Hebrew; this Hebrew then contracts marriages with
alien non-Semitic women: first of all with the Hittites,
a special stem of the widespread and clearly marked homo
syriacus ,; in the second place with the tall, fair, blue-
eyed Amorites from the Indo-European group. Now
this historical testimony is confirmed in an irrefutable
manner by that of science. F. von Luschan thus sum-

1

4
iw

388 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

marises the evidence in the paper already quoted: “‘ The
Jews are descended, first from real Semites, secondly
from Aryan Amorites, thirdly and chiefly from the
descendants of the old Hittites. These are the three
most important elements in the Jew, and in comparison
other mixtures are of very little account.” This diagnosis
—let it be noted—refers to the Jews at the time when they
were separated from Israel, and it is equally applicable
to-day; the measurements have been made on old
material and on the very newest, and that with the result
that the various adoptions of aliens (Spaniards, Southern
French, &c.) into Judaism, on which feuilletonists and
unctuous moralists are wont to lay much emphasis, have
remained absolutely without influence; a race so cha-
racteristically composed and then kept so strictly pure
immediately absorbs such drops of water.

The first point is thus settled : {the Israelite people is
descended from the crossing of absolutely different
human types.) The second point, in which the relation of
the different races to each other has to be discussed, will
require only one paragraph as far as pure statistics are
concerned; but what would be the use of figures if
they did not give us distinct conceptions ? That would
be purely and simply the x, y, z of elementary algebra;
the problem is correctly solved, but does not mean any-
thing, as all the figures are unknown; the quality
of the different races will therefore detain our attention
longer than the quantity.

Now as far as the quantitative composition of the
Israelite blood is concerned, we must not forget that
even 60,000 measurements are little in comparison with
the millions that have lived in the course of centuries;
it would be wrong to apply them to the single individual ;
statistics of masses cannot lift even the hem of the veil
which envelops the personality. Nevertheless, we should
also remember that beyond the individuality of the person
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 389

there is \the individuality of the whole people | and
numbers can be much better applied to this more abstract
personality. I cannot tell simply from the race of an
individual what he will do in a definite case; ‘but I can,
for example, with great certainty prophesy how a large
number of Italians, as a collective body, or an equal
number of Norwegians will act in a definite case) For
our knowledge of the character of a people anthropological
figures are therefore of real value. Now these figures
give the following results with regard to the Jews (of
former times and to-day, in east and in west) ; 50 per
cent. show clear evidence of belonging to the type homo
syriacus (short heads, characteristic, so-called ‘‘ Jewish ”’
noses, inclination to stoutness, &c.); only 5 per cent.
have the features and the anatomical structure of the
genuine Semite (the Bedouin of the desert) ; in the case
of ro per cent. we find a colour of skin and hair, often
too of complexion, which points to the Amorite of
Indo-European descent ; 35 per cent. represent indefinable
mixed forms, something of the nature of Lombroso’s

“combined photographs,” where countenances occur
in which the one feature contradicts the other: skulls
which are neither long like those of the genuine Semite,
nor half-long like those of the Amorite, nor round like
those of the Syrian, noses which are neither Hittite, nor
Aryan, nor Semitic, or, again, the Syrian nose, but without
the head that belongs to it, and so on ad infinitum.
The chief result of this anatomical survey is that the
Jewish race is in truth a permanent but at the same time
a mongrel race which always retains this mongrel character.
In the former chapter I have tried to make clear the
difference between mixed and mongrel races. All histori-
cally great races and nations have been produced by
mixing ; but wherever the difference of type is too great
to be bridged over, then we have mongrels. That is
the case here. The crossing between Bedouin and Syrian
390 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

was—from an anatomical point of view—probably worse
than that between Spaniard and South American Indian,
And to this was added later the ferment of a European-
Aryan element i

CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN AGAINST RACE

It is very proper to lay strong emphasis on this; for
such a process, however oy, it may go on,

\“ ‘is an incestuous crime against nature ; } Vit can only be

7

followed by a miserable or a tragical fate. The rest of the
Hebrews, and with them the “Josephites, had a wretched
end; like the families of the more important pseudo-
Semitic mestizos (the Phcenicians, Babylonians, &c.)
they disappeared and left no trace behind; the Jew,
on the other hand, chose the tragic fate; that proves his
greatness, and that zs his greatness. I shall soon return
to this theme, since this resolve on his part means the
founding of Judaism; I shall only add one remark,
for it is appropriate here and has never yet, so far as I

~ know, been made, namely, that this deep consciousness of
sin, which weighed upon * the Jewish nation in its heroic

vs

days, and which has found pathetic expression in the
words of its chosen men, is rooted in these physical
relations. Naturally the intelligence, and the vanity
which is common to us all, explained it quite differently,
but the instinct went deeper than the understanding,
and as soon as the destruction of the Israelites and their

own captivity had awakened the conscience of the Jew,

his first act was to put an end to that incest (as I called

- it above, using the very word of Ezekiel) by the strict
_ prohibition of every crossing, even with nearly related

tribes. An inexplicable contradiction has been found
in the fact that it was the Jews who brought into our

* “Since the exile the consciousness of sin was (in the case of the
Jews), so to say, permanent,” says Wellhausen in his Prolegomena,

qth ed p. 431.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 391

bright world the ever-threatening conception of sin,
and that they nevertheless understand by sin something
quite different from us. Sin is for them a national thing,
whereas the individual is “ just ’? when he does not trans-
gress the “law”; * redemption is not the moral redemp-
tion of the individuai, but the redemption of the State ; T
that is difficult for us to understand. But there is
something more: the sin unconsciously committed is
the same to the Jew as a conscious sin; { “ the notion
of sin has for the Jew no necessary reference to the
conscience of the sinner, it does not necessarily involve
the conception of a moral badness, but points to a legal
responsibility.” § Montefiore also expressly declares that
according to the view of the postexilic legislators “sin was
looked upon not as a contamination of the individual
soul, but as a pollution of the physical purity, a disturb-
ance of that untroubled purity of the land and its in-
habitants which is the one condition under which God
can continue to dwell among His people and in His sanc-
tuary”’ (p. 326). Wellhausen expresses himself thus:
“Tn the case of the Jews . . . there is no inner connection
between the good man and that which is good ; the action
of the hands and the desire of the heart are severed.’’|
I am, as I said, convinced that the key to this remarkable
and contradictory conception is to be found in the history

of the physical growth of this people : (their existence is <

* See Matthew xix. 20. The Jew Graetz even to-day approves fully
of the utterance of the rich man and shows that the demand “to repent
of his sins’’ has no meaning for the Jew (Volkstiimliche Geschichte der
Juden i. 577).

t+ W. Robertson Smith: The Prophets of Isvael and theiv Place wn
History, 1895, p. 247.

{ Ibid. p.102; Montefiore: Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, 2nd ed.
P. 558 (supplement by Rabbi Schechter).

§ W. Robertson Smith: The Prophets of Isvael and their Place in
History, p. 103. In another place he writes: “Sin istothe Hebrew
every action that puts a man in the wrong with one who has the power
to punish him for it”’ (p. 246).

U Zsvael, und judische Geschichte, 3rd ed. p. 3808

a
392 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

sin, their existence is a crime against the holy laws of
life ;\this, at any rate, is felt by the Jew himself in the
moments when destiny knocks heavily at his door. Not
the individual but the whole people had to be washed
clean, and not of a conscious but of an unconscious crime ;
and that is impossible, ‘‘ though thou wash thee with
nitre, and take thee much soap,” as Jeremiah (ii. 22)
says to his people. ‘ And in order to wipe out the irre-
trievable past, in order to fuse that past with the present,
in which wisdom and the power of will should set a limit
to sin and make a place for purity—the whole Jewish
L--history from the beginning had to be “falsified, and the
Jews represented as a people chosen above all other
peoples by God and of stainlessly pure race, protected by
Draconian laws against every crossing. Those who
brought that about were not liars, as has probably been
supposed, but men who acted under the pressure of that
necessity which alone raises us above ourselves and makes
us ignorant instruments of mighty dispensations of fate.*
If anything is calculated to free us from the blindness of
our times and the phrase-making of our authorities +

* The words of Jeremiah, ‘‘ The pen of the Scribes is in vain” (viii.
8), have been applied to the then recent introduction of Deuteronomy
and to the recasting and extension of the so-called Law of Moses (of
the existence of which none of the Prophets had known anything).
This is the view of the orthodox Jew Montefiore (Religion of the
Ancient Hebrews, 201, 202), and is probably correct.

+ Herr von Luschan also, as one can perceive from the conclusion of
his work on the ethnographical position of the Jews which is so valuable
from a statistical point of view, sees our salvation in the complete
amalgamation and fusion of the various human races. One cannot
believe one’s eyes and ears when these men of the school of Virchow
pass from facts to thoughts. The whole history of mankind shows
us that progress is conditioned by differentiation and individualisation ;
we find life and activity only where clearly marked national personalities
stand side by side opposed to each other (as in Europe to-day), the best

qualities degenerate under the influence of uniformity of race (as in
China), the crossing of incompatible types leads, as we see in all organic

spheres, to sterility and monstrosity . . . and yet ‘“‘amalgamation”’
is to be our ideal! Do they not see that uniformity and chaos are the
same ?

“Ich liebte mir dafiir das Ewigleere |”
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 393

and to open our eyes to the law of nature, that great
peoples result only from the ennoblement of the race and
that this can only take place under definite conditions,
the neglect of which brings in its train degeneration and
sterility, it is the sight of this sublimely planned and
desperate struggle of the Jews who had become conscious
of their racial sin.

Homo SyYRIACUS

If we now return to racial statistics, we find ourselves
face to face with a difficult theme; we may measure
skulls and count noses, but how do these results reveal
themselves in the inner nature of the Jew? We hold
the bone of the skull in the hand, it is what Carlyle calls
“a hard fact.” This skull, indeed, symbolises a whole
world ; any one with the skill to weigh the mass of it
rightly, and to interpret its lines in their mutual relations,
could tell us much about the individual: he would see
possibilities of which the race in question becomes conscious
only after generations, and recognise limitations which
separate one man from the other from the very first.
On looking at the two skulls on p. 374, the long one and
the round one, we seem to see two microcosms. But
the power of interpretation is denied us; we judge men
by their deeds, that is really indirectly and according
to a fragmentary method, for these deeds are determined
only by definite circumstances. Everything remains
piecework here. Now the protoplasm of a one-celled
alga is such an extremely complicated structure that the
chemists do not yet know how many atoms they must
suppose in the molecule, and how they can unite them
under a symbolical formula that is at all acceptable;
who would presume to find the formula for a human being
or a whole people? The following characterisation of
the Hittites, the Amorites and the Semites can only
serve to give a very general conception.
394 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

= On the Egyptian pictures the Hittites’ look anything
but intelligent. The exaggerated “Jewish” nose is
continued upwards by a retreating brow and downwards
by a still more retreating chin.* Perhaps the homo
syriacus was not really distinguished by the possession of
great and brilliant gifts; I cannot say that he has given
any signs of it in modern times in places where he is
supposed to predominate. But he unquestionably pos-
sessed good qualities. That his race predominated
and still predominates in the various crossings shows
great physical power. Moreover, he possessed corre-
sponding endurance and diligence. To judge from the
few pictures he must also have been shrewd, in fact
_~ extremely cunning (which of course has nothing to do
with brilliant intellect, on the contrary). His history,
too, shows him to be shrewd: he has known how to rule
and how to submit to an alien power where the conditions
were favourable. He put barren districts under culti-
vation, and when the population increased, he built
cities and was such a capable merchant that in the Bible
the same word served to denote merchant and Canaanite,
That he could face death bravely is proved by the long
struggle with Egypt ¢ and the occurrence of such characters
_as Uriah.t A feature of kindliness is evident in all the
otherwise very different portraits. We can form a
vivid mental picture of how these men—equally remote

* Sce especially the figures on a Hittite monument near Aintab (Sayce:
Hittites, p. 62), and the types from Egyptian monuments on p. 375.

+ The Hittites seem for a long time to have ruled all Syria and prob-
ably all Asia Minor; their power was as great as that of Egypt in its
splendour (see Wright: Empive of the Hittites, 1886; and Sayce: The
Hittites, 1892). But one should be cautious, for the Hittite script is
not yet deciphered, and though Hittite physiognomy, dress, art and
writing form a definite idea for science, the history of this people, of
whom nothing was known a few years ago, is still to a large extent wrapt
in mystery.

¢ See (2 Samuel xi.) in what a noble, manly way Uriah acts.
This stern undemonstrative devotion to duty presents an agreeable
contrast to David’s criminal levity.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 395

from symbolical mythology and from fanatical Bedouin
delusion—could introduce that simple cult, which the
Israelites found in Palestine and adopted—the festival
of the vintage (it was New Year also to them, and the
Jews later called it the Feast of the Tabernacle), the festival
of spring (Easter, transformed later by the Jews into
Passover) with the offering of the first-born of cattle and
sheep, the festival of the finished harvest (Pentecost,
called by the Jews “‘ Festival of the Weeks ’”’), nothing but
joyful festivals of a long-settled agricultural people, not
those of a nomadic race, festivals without any deeper
connection with the spiritual |i life of man, a simple nature-
religion such as may have suited and still certainly would
suit simple, industrious and “ tolerably honest ” people.*
As we find human sacrifice only where (as in Phcenicia)
the Semitic element strongly predominated,f we may
assume that a Semitic and not a Hittite custom reveals
itself in the cases where the Canaanite service of Baal
permits such horrors at the festival: they are, however,
exceptional and probably occur only when alien princesses
have come by marriage into the land.t .. Onthe whole
the Hittites give us the impression of a respectable

* Cf. the details in Wellhausen: Isvael. und jiid. Geschichte, chap. vi.
In spite of the later careful expurgation we find still here and there
in the Thora mention of this joyful nature-cult, as, for example, the
festival of the vintage in the house of God at Sichem (Judges ix. 27).
See, too, how the ark of the covenant is brought by David to Jerusalem

“amid joy and exultation,” with music, song and dance (2 Samuel
vi. 12-15).

¢ Von Luschan has, by numerous measurements, established the
fact that the Phoenician type ‘‘ was closely related to the Arabian.”

t Concerning the much more complicated cult in the former capital
of the Hittite kingdom, Carchemish (Mabog), see Sayce: The Hittites,
chap. vi. But I consider Lucian, whom he quotes, a very late and
unreliable witness. On the other hand, it is interesting to see how far
the lack of imagination went in the case of the Hebrews. Even in
the laying out of the Jewish temple, of the outer and inner court, of
the curtain before the Holy of Holies, as also the privilege of the High
Priest to enter this place: all these (said to have been dictated by

God to Moses on Mount Sinai) are exact imitations of the primeval
Hittite cult,
396 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

—mMediocrity with great vitality rather than of any special
capacity for extraordinary achievements, they possess
more endurance than power. Goethe says somewhere
that there is no greatness without something extravagant ;

4. according to this definition of Goethe the Hittites can
hardly lay claim to greatness.

Homo EUROPEUS

On the other hand, in the Amorites—“ tall as cedars
“and strong as oaks’ (Amos ii. 9), with their bold chal-
lenges, their unbridled love of adventure, their insane
loyalty even to death towards alien, self-imposed masters,

2 their thick city walls, from which they loved to make
' forays in the mountains,—the element of extravagance
seems to me to be peculiarly characteristic. It was a

wild, cruel extravagance, but capable of the very highest
things. We seem to catch a glimpse of quite another
being when on the Egyptian monuments among the
countless number of physiognomies we suddenly see
before us this free, frank, open countenance so full

~ —~of character and intelligence. Like the eye of genius
amid the common throng of men, so these features appear

to us amid the mass of cunning and bad, stupid and

evil countenances, amid this whole riffraff of Babylonians,
Hebrews, Hittites, Nubians and all the rest of them.

O homo europeus! how couldst thou stray among such
company? Yes, thou seemst to me like an eye that
looks into a divine transcendental world. And fain
would I call to thee: follow not the advice of the learned
anthropologists, do not amalgamate with that crowd,
mingle not with the Asiatic rabble, obey the great poet

of thy race, remain true to thyself . . . but I am 3000
years too late. The Hittite remained, the Amorite
disappeared. This is one among the many differences
between noble and ignoble: nobility is more difficult to

q
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 397

maintain. Though giants in form these men are never-
theless very delicate in their inner organisation. No
people degenerates so quickly as Lapouge’s homo euro-
peus; how rapidly, for instance, the Greeks became
barbarians, in Syvos, Parthos, igyptos degenerarunt, as
Livy himself testifies (38, 17, 11). He completely loses
his peculiar qualities, that which is his alone he seems
incapable of giving to others, the others do not possess
the vessel to hold it ; he, on the other hand, possesses
a fatal capacity of assimilating all thatisalien. People,
it is true, talk to-day of the fair-haired Syrians, we hear
too that 10 per cent. of the Jews are fair ; but Virchow has
told us that skin and hair endure longer than the skull,
and it is probable that the skull would last longer than
the brain; I do not know, but I really believe that the
Indo-European left in Asia, as elsewhere, beyond the
memory of his deeds, little more than skin and hair. I
have looked for him in the Talmud, but in vain.*

HoMO ARABICUS

It seems to me very difficult to say anything about the
third of this group, the genuine Semite ; for it is charac-
teristic of this homo arabicus not to enter into or influence
human history until he has ceased to be a genuine Semite.
So long as he remains in his wilderness (and for his peace
and greatness of soul he should always remain there),
he really does not belong to history at all; it is also
very difficult, indeed wellnigh impossible, to get definite

* Yet one Teuton actually occurs there (Tractate Schabbeth, vi. 8,
fol. 23a 0f the Jerusalem Talmud). He is the slave of aJew. Ordered
to accompany home Rabbi Hila, a friend of his master, he saved him
from death by inducing a mad dog that rushed at the latter to attack
himself, and he was fatally bitten. But this loyalty does not induce
the pious Jew to utter one word of admiration or thanks. He merely
quotes Isaiah xliii. 4: ‘“ Since thou wast precious, O Israel, in my sight,
thou hast been honourable, and T have loved thee: therefore I will
give men for thee and people for thy life.’’
398 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

particulars concerning him there; we merely hear that
he is brave, hospitable, pious, also revengeful and cruel
—these are mere elements of character, there is nothing
to give us a clue to his intellectual gifts. Burckhardt,
ee ae

who travelled for years in Arabia, represents the Bedouin
as absolutely dormant intellectually, so long as love or
war does not stretch the slack bow—and then he at once
goes to extremes.* But if he breaks into the civilised
world, it is to murder and burn, as under Abu Bekr and
Omar, or to-day in Central Africa.t As soon as he has
laid waste everything far and wide, the genuine Semite
disappears, we hear nothing more of him; wherever
he appears in the history of civilisation crossing has in
the meantime taken place—for no type seems to mix
more quickly and more successfully than that which
has sprung from a compulsory inbreeding of thousands
of years’ duration. The noble Moor of Spain is anything
but a pure Arab of the desert, he is half a Berber (from
the Aryan family) and his veins are so full of Gothic blood
that even at the present day noble inhabitants of Morocco
can trace their descent back to Teutonic ancestors.
That is why Harun-al-Raschid’s reign is such a bright
moment in a dark, sad history, because the pure Persian
family of the Barmecides, which remained true to the
Iranian religion of Zarathustra,t stands by the side of the
Khalif as a civilising and refining influence. Not a single
one of the so-called “Semitic” civilised States of
antiquity is purely Semitic,—no, not one: neither

* Beduinen und Wahaby, Weimar, 1831.

t+ Note how the famous Moorish historian of the fourteenth century,
Mohammed Ibn Khaldun, considered by many the founder of scientific
history and himself half Arab, speaks: ‘‘ Cast your eyes around,
look at all lands, which have been conquered by the inhabitants of
Ara>ia since the earliest times! The civilisation and population dis-
appeared, the soil itself seemed to change and become unfruitful at
their touch” (Prolegomena zur Weltgeschichte) 2nd Part;, 1 quote

from Robert Flint: History of the Philosophy of History, 1893, p. 166.
t Renan: L’islamisme et la science (Diserurs et Conférences, 3° édd

Pp: 382).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 399

the Babylonian nor the Assyrian nor the Phceenician.
History tells us so and anthropology supports the state-
ment. We still hear ‘ wonders and fairy tales’ about
the rich blessing poured upon us by this civilising work of
the so-called Semites: but when we look more closely we
always find that the genuine Semitic is simply “ grafted”
upon the really creative element (as Wellhausen said of
the Israelites), and so it is very difficult to decide how
much and what in particular is to be ascribed to the
Semite as such, and what, on the other hand, to his
host.* We know to-day, for example, that the Semites
did not invent writing with letters any more than they
did the so-called “Arabian ciphers”; it is from the
Hittites that the pretended “‘ Phoenician ” or ‘‘ Semitic”

* See Jhering’s suggestive but very fanciful Vorgeschichte der Indo-
europdey, in which the author characterises the whole Babylonian
culture as Semitic, although he admits that the Semites ‘‘ took it over ”’”
and although he points out that the Sumero-Accadians were an influential
and vigorous force even in late times (pp. 133, 243, &c.). So, too, von
Luschan in the essay mentioned, where he takes the trouble at the end to
blow the trumpet of the ‘“‘ Semites ”’ although in the same lecture he has
already proved that the most famous Semitic peoples had but little
Semitic blood in their veins. .. . Ologicofthescientists! And finally
he dishes up the old story of how Arabian science flourished luxuriantly
in Spain and what it meant for us—a tale the foolishness of which no
other than Renan had exposed years ago. ‘‘ The Semitic spirit,” he
writes, “is fundamentally antiphilosophical and antiscientific . . . there
is much talk of an Arabian science and an Arabian philosophy, and
certainly the Arabs were our teachers during one or two centuries ;
but that was the case simply because the original Hellenic writings were
yet undiscovered. This whole Arabian science and philosophy was
nothing but a wretched translation of Hellenic thought and knowledge.
As soon as authentic Greece stepped forth from the shadow, these poor
products fell into nothing, and it is not without reason that all the
authorities on the Renaissance undertake a real crusade against them.
Moreover we find on closer examination that this Arabian science was
in no respect Arabian. Not only was its basis purely Hellenic, but
among those who devoted their energies to the introduction and
spread of knowledge, there was not a single genuine Semite ; they were
Spaniards and (in Bagdad) Persians, who made use of the prevailing
Arabian tongue. It is exactly the same with the philosophical part
ascribed to the Jews in the Middle Ages; they translated from foreign
tongues, nothing more. Jewish philosophy is Arabian philosophy ;
not a single new thought is added. One page of Roger Bacon possesses
%

400 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

writing * is derived, and “the legend of the handing
down of the alphabet to the Aryans by the Phcenicians
is now discarded for good,” since much older letters have
been found than the oldest pseudo-Semitic ones—letters
which prove the existence of a “ primitive Aryan-Euro-
pean script, which only at a later period was somewhat
influenced, in the east, by the Asiatic writings.|—We
see, on the other hand, that where the Semitic will pre-
vailed in the pure sphere of religion (not of property)
it forced and commanded mental sterility: we see it in
the Jews after the Babylonian captivity (for the victory
of the religious party is unquestionably a victory of the
Semitic element) and we see it in Mohammedanism.
*« Jewish life was, after the exile, devoid of all intellectual
and mental interests except the religious . . . the typical
iJew interested himself neither in politics, literature,
philosophy nor art... . The Bible really formed his
whole literature, and its study was his only mental and

more scientific value than the whole of this borrowed Jewish wisdom,
which we must, of course, respect, but which is absolutely devoid of
originality.” (De la part des peuples sémitiques dans Vhistoive de la
civilisation, éd. 1875, p. 22ff.). Renan treats the same subject in
more detail in his lecture of the year 1883: L’tslamisme et la science :
“Not only are these thinkers and scholars not of Arabian descent,”
he says there, “‘ but the tendency of their minds is altogether non-
Arabian.”

* Renan: Isvaél, i. 134 ff.

t Professor Hueppe: Zur Rassen- und Sozialhygiene dey Griechen,
1897, p. 26. All authorities at the present day admit that the so-
called ‘‘ Pheenician ”’ letters were not the invention of Semitic genius:
Halévy supposes an Egyptian origin, Hommel (with more probability)
a Babylonian, that is Sumarian, origin. Delitzsch thinks that the
Syrian half-Semites had formed their alphabet by the fusion of two
different ones, the Babylonian and the Egyptian; the last investi-
gator of this matter, however, arrives at the conclusion that the alphabet
is altogether an invention of the Europeans, and was first brought to
Asia by the Hellenic Myceneans (see H. Kluge: Die Schrift der Myhkenier,
1897). With regard to the Mycenean letters which have now become
quite well known, a reliable authority, Salomon Reinach, writes (L’An-
thropologie, 1902, xiii. 34): Une chose est certaine: c'est que Vécriture
linéaire des tablettes ne dévive ni de l’ Assyrie ni de l’ Egypte, qu'elle pré-
sente un cavactéve nettement européen, quelle offre comme une tmage
anticipée de Vépigraphie hellénique.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY gor

intellectual interest’; this is written by an unprejudiced
critic, the Jewish scholar C. G. Montefiore (pp. 419 and
543). An equally reliable witness, Hirsch Graetz, quotes
a remark of Rabbi Akiba: ‘‘ Whoever devotes himself
to reading exoteric writings (that is, to any study but the
sacred Jewish Thora) has lost his right to future life.” *
The Mishna teaches, “to have one’s son taught Greek
science is as accursed as to engage in the breeding of
swine.” f That the Hittites, who form, as we have seen,
the half of the Jewish blood, always protested against
such doctrines and devoted their attention by preference
to everything “‘ exoteric,” is a different matter ; Lam here
trying to define the “Semite” ;only. As regards the
sterilising influence of the most genuine Semitic religion,
the Mohammedan, it is too obvious to require proof.
We stand here then, to begin with, before a mass of
negative and very few positive facts; any one who is not
content with phrases will find it difficult to get a clear
conception of the personality of the genuine Semite, and
yet for our purpose the answering of the question, Who
is the Jew? is so important that we must strive to get
that conception. Let us call the learned to our aid!
If I consult the work of the most eminent and conse-
quently most reliable of all ethnographists in Germany,
Oskar Peschel, I shall find no answer to this question ;
he was a prudent man. Ratzel writes as follows:
The Semite has greater intensity, or, so to say, one-
sidedness of religious feeling than either the Hamite or
the Indo-Teuton; violence, exclusiveness, in short
anaticsm is his distinguishing-mark ; religious extrava- '~
gance including human sacrifices, are nowhere so wide-
spread as in his midst; the general of the Mahdi even
* Gnosticismus und Judentum (Krotoschin, 1846, p. 99). The mean-
ing of the word “‘ exoteric,’’ which is not quite clear in this connection,
is explained when we compare other passages, where, for example, the

reading of Greek poets is called an ‘' exoteric ’’ occupation (p. 62).
¢t Quoted from Renan: L’Orvigine du Christianisme, i. 35.

5 2c
See

402 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtw CENTURY

in 1883 had prisoners roasted alive in ovens; the Semite
is individualistic, he cling; more to family and religion
than to the State; since he is not a good soldier, foreign
mercenaries had to win his victories for him; in the
oldest times the Semite may have done great things for
science, but it is possible that these achievements are of
foreign origin—later at any rate he does nat accomplish
much in this sphere, his best work being ‘n religion.*
This characterisation seems to me to be very unsatis-
factory and scrappy; it says very little, and besides is
in certain respects false. It is all very fine to roast one’s
enemies in ovens—from China to the artistic Netherlands
of the sixteenth century where do we not find cruelty ?>—
but to see in that a “ higher intensity of religious feeling ”’
is silly, especially when one places the Semite in this
respect above the profoundly religious and wonderfully
creative Egyptian, and also above the Indo-Teuton,
whose religious literature is by far the greatest in the
world, and whose “ religious feeling’’ has from time
immemorial revealed itself in the fact that thousands
and millions of human existences were dedicated and
sacrificed to religion alone. When the Brahman, in one
of the oldest Upanishads (at least 800 or 1000 years
before Christ +) teaches that man should regard every
inhalation and exhalation by day and by night as a
continual sacrifice to God,t does that not represent “ the
greatest intensity of religious feeling’ that the world
has ever known? And what is the meaning of the
phrase, the Semite is individualistic? As far as we
can judge, wherever religion came under Semitic influence,

* Voélkerkunde, ii. 391 ; summarised from Ratzel’s own words.

+ Cf. Leopold von Schroder: Indiens Litteratur und Kultur (1887},
2oth Lecture.

+ Kaushitaki-Upanishad, ii. 5: Deussen, the greatest living authority,
gives the tollowing gloss to this passage: The Brahman means, “ Reli-
gion shall not consist in outward worship but in devoting one’s whole
life with every breath to its service” (Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda,

P- 32).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 403

it differed from the Indo-Teutonic (and East-Asiatic)
creed in becoming national. The individual, except as
member of the community, shrunk almost to a negligible
quantity (cf. p. 245); and the pseudo-Semitic States have,
without exception, deprived the individual of all freedom,
Ut seems to me that there is more individualism among
Teutonic | than among Semitic peoples; at any rate
the assertion that the Semite is individualistic could
only be made with many qualifications. Much more
profound are the remarks of that thorough scholar
Christian Lassen, who knew more of souls than of skulls.
Although his characterisation of the Semite dates from
the fourth decade of last century, when the half-Semites
were not yet clearly distinguished from the genuine stem,
he seizes upon points which reveal the intellectual kernel
of the Semitic personality. He writes: “‘ The Semitic
way of looking at things is subjective and egoistical.
His poetry is lyrical, hence subjective, his soul pours out
its joys and sorrows, its love and hatred, its admiration
and its contempt; ... the epic, in which the Ego of
the poet steps into the background, he cannot success-
fully treat, still less the drama, which demands from
the poet a still greater abandonment of the personal
standpoint.” * Nor does philosophy belong to the
Semites; they have adopted, or rather, only the Arabs

* Is this individualism after all? Certainly, but in a quite different
sense from the case of the Indo-Teuton. In the case of the Semite,
as we see from Lassen’s remarks, the individual stands, so to speak,
in his own way, hence his achievements are only collective. In the case
of Greek and Teuton, each work bears the stamp of a definite personality,
of an individual. Fr. von Schack holds exactly the same view as
Lassen: ‘‘ The whole creative activity of the Arabs bears a subjective
character, Everywhere it is preferably their own “ soul-life ” that they
express. They draw into it the things of the outer world, and show but
little inclination to look straight at reality, and so to represent nature
in sharp and definite outlines, or to study the individuality of others,
thus representing men and conditions of life in a concrete manner.
Accordingly those forms of poetry which demand abandonment of

the Ego and imaginative power are least congenial to them ” (Poesie und
Kunst der Araber, i: 99}

ue
404 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

have, the philosophy of the Indo-Teutons. Their views and
conceptions occupy their minds too much to allow them
to rise sufficiently out of themselves to grasp pure thought,
and to separate the more general and the necessary
from their own individuality and its contingencies.* “In
his religion the Semite is selfish and exclusive ; Jehovah
is merely the God of the Hebrews, and they acknowledge
no other than him: all other Gods are absolutely false
and have neither share nor part in the truth; Allah
wishes to be not only the God of the Arabs, but to conquer
the whole world, and his nature is as egoistic as that
of Jehovah; he, too, denies every iota of truth to all
other Gods, but it is of no use to acknowledge Allah,
unless you serve him under the exclusive form which
proclaims Mohammed his prophet. According to their
doctrine the Semites were bound to be intolerant and
inclined to fanaticism, as also to stubborn Clinging to
their religious law. oe appears most pronounced
in the case of the Indo-Teutonic peoples ; this tolerance
is the result of greater freedom of thought, which does
not bind itself exclusively to mere form. . . . The qualities
of the Semitic spirit, the passionate temperament, the
stubborn will, the firm belief in exclusive justification,
their whole egoistical nature—were bound to make their
possessors in the highest degree capable of great ana
daring deeds.’ | Lassen then proceeds to discuss the
pseudo-Semitic States, with regard to which he says that
these magnificently planned structures all went to ruin
because “here, too, the intractable arbitrariness of the

* Concerning science in particular, Grau writes in his well-knowa
philo-Semitic work, Semiten und Indogermanen (2nd ed. p. 33): ‘‘ The
Hebrews, like all Semites, are much too subjective to allow the pure
impulse of knowledge to become a power in them. Natural science,
in the objective sense which it has among the Indo-Teutons, viz.,
that nature should retain her own essence and character, while man is
merely her interpreter, is unknown to the Hebrew.’”’ On p. 50 Grau
says: ‘‘ Everything objective is strange to the Hebrew.”

4 Indische Altertumskunde (ed, 1847), is 414-416.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 405

stubborn selfish will interfered as a hindering power.’ *
From this characterisation we have really learned some-
thing, almost everything indeed, but the facts must be
polished and pointed before a clear and transparent
conception enters our consciousness. I shall try to do
this. Lassen shows us that the will is the predominant *~~
power in the soul of the Semite ; ‘it is at the root of all
his actions. This will ‘impels, but it also retards. It
makes its possessor capable of great and daring deeds:
Gt stands in his way wherever the spirit soars to a loftier “~~
activity.; The result is a character that is passionate
and eag she for great deeds, coupled with an intellect:
which is by no means adequate to this impulse, since.
it can never unfold itself by reason of the impetuousness
of the will. In this being the will is at the head, the
mind stands next, and lowest of all the understanding.
Lassen especially emphasises the egoism of the Semite, —
he repeatedly refers to it. In his poetry, his philosophy,
his religion, his politics, everywhere he sees an “‘ egoistica]
nature’ at work. That is an unavoidable consequence
of that hierarchy of qualities. Selfishness is rooted in ~
will; the only things that can keep it from excess are
the gifts of feeling and understanding—a warm heart,
profound knowledge of the system of the universe, artistic-
creative work, the noble thirst after knowledge. But,
as Lassen hints, as soon as the stormy will with its selfish-
ness predominates, even beautiful qualities remain un-
developed : religion degenerates into fanaticism, thinking
becomes magic or caprice, art expresses only the love

* Itis interesting and important to note how the organ of the mind—
language—is suited to and expresses this special Semitic type. Renan
writes: ‘‘ A quiver full of steel arrows, a firmly wound cable, an iron
trumpet, whose few strident notes rend the air: that is the Hebrew
language. This language is incapable of expressing a philosophical
thought, a scientific result, a doubt, or even the feeling of the In-
finite. It can say butlittle, but what it does say is like the blow of the

hammer on the anvil” (Isvael i. 102). Is that not the language of
stubborn will ?
406 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

and the hatred of the moment, it is expression but not
creation, science becomes industry.

This Semite would seem, then, to be the right counter-
part to the Hittite; in the case of the one we have the
beautiful harmony of a nature developed on all sides
with moderation, tenacious constancy of will united with
prudence and a genial view of life ; in the other we finda
leaning towards the _Immoderate and the Arbitrary, a
character in which the balance is disturbed, one in which
the most necessary and at the same time the most dan-
gerous gift of man—the will—has been abnormally
developed. ) Those who do not t believe that the so-called
“races ”’ fell ready-made from heaven, who refuse, like
me, to pay heed to the delusion of supposed primeval
beginnings (since growth is only a phase of existence, not
vice versa), will probably surmise that this unexampled
development of the one quality with the corresponding
neglect of the others is the result of a life in the desert for
thousands of years, during which the intellect was starved
and the feelings confined to a narrow circle, while the
will—the will of this individual who had to stand entirely
on his own feet, who though in the midst of the unbroken
silence of nature was surrounded day and night by foes
and danger—was bound to demand all the sap of the body
for its service, and constantly to strain to the utmost the
powers of the intellect. Be that as it may, such a cha-
racter has assuredly in it the possibility of true greatness.
The extravagance which we missed in the Hittite is here
present. And as a matter of fact now that we have
carried the analysis to the inner being of the Semite, we
:are able to lay our finger on the only point where great-
ness can be expected : clearly only in the sphere of will
and _in_all those achievements which result from the
predominance df will over other qualities. That Tbn
Khaldun who asserts that “the Semite is is utterly in-
capable of establishing anything permanent,” praises as
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 407

incomparable the simplicity of his needs (lack of imagi-
nation), the instinct which makes him cling to his family
and separates him from others (impoverished feelings),
the ease with which he can be exalted by a prophet to
the delirium of ecstasy, obeying the divine command
in deep humility (bad judgment in consequence of the
non-development of the reasoning faculty). In this
sentence I have commented on each assertion of Ibn
Khaldun, but my motive has been in no way to under-
value the merits of contentedness, loyalty to family, and
obedience to God, but merely to show how each one of
the qualities named means the triumph of the power of
will. The important thing, however, is to distinguish—
this is, in fact, altogether the most important task of the
thinker; and to understand rightly what a genuine
Semite is, we must comprehend that the contentedness
of an Omar, for whom nothing in the world has any
interest, is not the same thing as that of an Immanuel
Kant, who desires no outward gifts simply because his
all-embracing mind possesses the whole world ; that loyalty
to one’s own blood is something quite different from the
loyalty of the Amorites, for example, to their self-imposed
master—the one is simply an instinctive expansion of
the egoistical circle of the will, the other a free, personal
decision of the individual, a kind of lived poetry; above
all we must, or rather we ought to, learn (I dare not
hope to live to see it) to distinguish between true religion
and an insane belief in some God, and also not to confuse
monolatry with monotheism. That does not at all
prevent us from acknowledging the specifically Semitic
greatness. Though Mohammedanism may be the worst
of all religions, as Schopenhauer asserts, who can repress

a thrill of almost uncanny admiration when he sees a \

Mohammedan go to his death as calmly as if he were
going for a walk? And this power of the Semitic will
is so great that it forces itself, as in the case mentioned,

1
}

\
408 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

upon peoples who have not a drop of Arab blood in their
veins. By contact with this will man becomes trans-
formed ; there is in it such a power of suggestion that it
fascinates us as the eye of the serpent does the bird, and
at its command we seem to lose the power of song and
flight. And thus it was that the Semite became a power
of the first moment in the history of the world. Like a
' blind power of nature—for the will is blind—he hurled
‘himself upon other races; he disappeared in them,
they took him in; it was obvious what these races
had given him, not what he had given them; for what
‘he gave possessed no physiognomy, no form, it was only
‘will: an increased energy which often impelled to great
‘achievements, an excitability difficult to control, and
an unquenchable thirst after possession which often led
to destruction, in short, a definite direction of will;
wherever he settled, the Semite had, to begin with, only
adopted and assimilated what he found, but he had
changed the character of the people.

Homo JUDZUS

Cursory as may have been this attempt to illustrate
clearly some distinguishing characteristics of the Hittites,
the Amorites and the Semites, I believe that it will con-
tribute to a sensible and true discernment of the Israelite
and Jewish character. We must in any case approach
such a task with modesty and self-effacement. At any
rate clear pictures of living men and their deeds will
give a more vivid conception than figures, though figures
are better than phrases. But with every step we must
become more cautious, and if we look back at those
figures, we shall not be inclined to “construct” the
Israelite from percentages of Semites, Amorites and
Hittites, somewhat as the cook makes a pudding from
a recipe; that would be childish folly. But that dis-
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 409

cussion of the matter brings many points more humanly
home to us. Whatever, for instance, in a national
character is inexplicable contradiction—and the Jewish
people is fuller of contradictions than any other—confuses
us to begin with, often indeed distresses us; but this
impression passes away when we know. the organic cause
of the contradiction. Thus it is at once apparent that

from the crossing of Hebrews and Hittites contradictory -

tendencies must result ; for while the Hebrews physically
grafted themselves upon the Hittites, they were in-
oculated with a culture which morally and intellectually
did not belong to them, which had not sprung naturally
from their own need, from an inventive richness of their
own mind ; it was taking possession in contrast to original
possession. ‘As a matter of fact the Hebrews obtained
a real title to this culture by adopting the blood of the
creative Hittites and becoming Israelites ;) but by this
very act contrast and inner discord were henceforth
assured. The two types were fundamentally too different
to amalgamate completely, and this became evident
especially in the contrast between Judah and Israel
which soon manifested itself; for in the north the
Syrian was predominant and the crossing had been much
more rapid and thorough; * in the south, on the other
hand, the Amorites were more numerous, and an almost
constant infiltration of genuine Semitic blood from
Arabia continued. What here took place between tribe
and tribe repeated itself inside the narrower unity: so
long as Jerusalem stood, those of weak faith and the
worldly-minded continually withdrew; they fled from
the home of strict law and unadorned life. The same
phenomenon is seen to-day, but not so clearly. I think
that without straining a point we may fairly say that
we can trace here the lasting influence of the homo

* The Hittites were more numerous in the north, the Amorites in
the south. (See Sayce: Hittites, pp. 13 and 17.)

&

~
4
ie

410 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

syriacus on the one hand, and of the homo arabicus on the
other.

I leave it to the reader to make further observations
of this kind on the contributions of the various types to
the formation of this particular human race, and turn my
attention at once to the most vital point<the influence

of the Semitic spirit upon Oa ee That is clearly the

essential question, if we are to understand the origin and
character of Judaism; and while the special business
talent is perhaps rather a Hittite than a Semitic legacy,
in the sphere of religion the Semitic element probably
strongly predominates.* I prefer to discuss this matter
at once, and from the general standpoint, rather than
later, when the Jewish religion as a_ particular
phenomenon will occupy our attention; for the wider
horizon will give us a broader view, and if we ask ourselves
how the special Semitic spirit, the predominant feature
of which we now know to be Will, everywhere and of

* In regard to business aptitude a proof is given us by the Armenians,
in whose veins there is much more “ alarodic,” that is, Syrian blood
(about 80 per cent. according to a communication by letter from
Professor Hueppe), but apart from that only Indo-European, Phrygian
and not Semitic blood, and who—without the characteristic ‘‘ Jewish
nose,” the Hittite legacy—show the same greed, the same business
cunning and the same passionate fondness for usury as the Jews,
but all to a much higher degree, so that there is a proverb in the Levant
that an Armenian is a match for three Jews. In David Hogarth’s book,
A Wandering Scholar in the Levant (1896, p. 147 ff.), we find interesting
details concerning the character of the Armenians, especially their
genius for intrigue and incitement. It is true that Burckhardt in his
famous book, Uber die Beduinen und Wahaby (Weimar, 1831), represents
the genuine Semites, too, as evil, over-cunning business people. ‘In
their private dealings the Arabs cheat each other as much as possible,”
he says, “‘ they practise usury, too, whenever they have an opportunity”
(p. 149, 154). But after Burckhardt had lived longer among the
Bedouins he somewhat modified his judgment, and while admitting
that ‘‘ greed of gain’ is one of their chief characteristics, declared that
the inclination to cheating originated from their contact with the cities
and the thieving population settled there (p. 292). Whoever lies has
lost his honour among them (296) and Burckhardt can assert that
“with all their faults the Bedouins are one of the noblest nations with
which I ever had occasion to be acquainted ”’ (288).—In regard to this
not unimportant question the recent experiences of the French in
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 412

necessity affects the religious sentiment of peoples, the
answer to that question will enlighten us regarding the
case in hand, and will in addition considerably facilitate
the task we have set ourselves in the further course of
this work. For it is a question of a power which is still
at work in our midst, and which presumably will make
itself felt in future, distant centuries—a power which we
cannot fathom by the exclusive consideration of limited,
specific Judaism.

EXcursus ON SEMITIC RELIGION

I have said that the Semite changed the character of
nations. The change of character is most evident in the
sphere of religion. While in other spheres it is difficult
to define the share of the specifically Semitic spirit in
mixed races, here we clearly and unmistakably see its
influence ; for here its tyrannical will extends to cosmic
dimensions and changes ‘the whole view of “ religion.”
Schopenhauer says in one place: “‘ Religion is the meta-
physics of the people.” Now consider what kind of
religion men can have whose most outstanding cha-
racteristic is the absolute lack of every metaphysical
emotion, every philosophical capacity!* This one
sentence expresses the profound contrast between Semite
and Indo-European. It would be inexplicable how one
could see in the Semite the religious man xar’ éédyqv, if
Algiers are of interest: the Kabyles gladly return to civilisation,
whereas the pure Arabian stems have little inclination thereto and
demand from the world freedom and nothing more; they reveal them-
selves as an element absolutely hostile to culture. They prefer to give
tather than to sell, to steal than to bargain, they prefer licence to any
law. In all these points the contrast to the Hittites, as we see them in
history, is very striking. The immoderate will of the Semites, their
greed of gain, of which Burckhardt speaks, will have quickened very
much the Syrian talent for business, nevertheless this capacity seems
to be a Syrian, not a Semitic legacy.

* Renan: Histoive des langues sémitiques, p. 18, ‘‘L’abstraction est
inconnue dans les langues sémitiques, la métaphysique impossible,”

| em
412 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

we were not still living in the dense mist of inherited
historical prejudices and superstition; it is certain at
any rate that wherever Semitic influence penetrated,
the conception of religion underwent a great change.*
For everywhere else in the whole world, even among
' savage peoples, religion is interwoven with the mysterious.
Plato says that in the other world the soul “ will be
initiated into a mystery, which one may name the perfect
bliss.” Jesus Christ says of the doctrine which is the
essence of His religion, that it is a “mystery.” t What
here has been most sublimely expressed, we find in all
stages of the human hierarchy except among the Semites.
Schopenhauer calls this, from his standpoint as a philo-
sopher, “‘ metaphysics’’; we may, I think, simply say
that in the world of feeling as of thought man every-
where meets inexplicable contradictions ; this attracts his
attention, and he begins to have a feeling that his under-
standing is only adequate to a portion of existence,
that what his five senses convey to him and what his
combinative logic constructs therefrom neither exhaust
the essence of the world outside himself nor his own
being ; he conjectures that besides the perceptible cosmos
there is an imperceptible, besides the thinkable an un-
thinkable; the simple world extends and becomes a
“double kingdom.’’§ The sight of death itself points
to an unknown world, and birth seems to him like
a message from the same realm. At every step we see
only “‘miracles’’; the greatest wonders for us are our-
selves. How simply the savage wonders and everywhere
suspects the existence of another world is from travellers’
accounts well known to us ; of Goethe, on the other hand,
perhaps the most finely organised brain that humanity
has produced, Carlyle says: ‘‘ Before his eye lies the
whole world extended and transparent, as though melted

* Seep. 213ff.  t Phaedrus, 250. } Seep. 1874
§ Faust, Second Part, Act i., last words of Faust.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 413

to glass, but on every side surrounded by wonders, every-
thing Natural being in truth a Supernatural’; * and
Voltaire, the so-called scoffer, closes his scientific re-
searches with the words: “ Pour peu qu’on creuse, on
trouve un abéime infint.”’ And so all mankind from the
highest to the lowest are agreed: the living feeling of a
great world-secret, the vague realisation that the natural
is “supernatural,” is common to all; it unites the
Australian negro to a Goethe and a Newton. The Semite
alone stands apart. Of the Arab of the desert Renan
says: ‘No one in the world has so little inclination to
mysticism, no one is more averse to contemplation and
devotion. God is the creator of the world, he has made it,

-

lL

that is sufficient to him as an explanation.f This is pure ‘-

materialism in contrast to what other men call religion,
by Which they all understand ‘“‘ something unthinkable
and inexpressible.”” Thus Montefiore can proudly say of
the religion of his fathers, in which the Semitic impulse
has found its highest and most perfect form, that it
contains nothing esoteric, not the least inner incompre-
hensibility; and that hence this religion, which knows;
neither superstition nor secret, has become the teacher of
nations.[ The same Jewish author is never tired of
pointing out with admiration that the Semites never
knew anything of the Fall, of justification by faith, of
redemption, of grace;§ by this he merely shows that
they have scarcely any idea of what the rest of the world
calls religion. In Dr. Ludwig Philippson’s Israelitische
Religionslehre (Leipzig, 1861), an orthodox Jewish work

* In the essay Goethe’s Works, towards the end.

+ Lislamisme et la science, p. 380. Here there is evidently an
intellectual want, as Renan elsewhere admits when he writes: ‘“ The
Semitic people almost totally lack the questioning thirst after know-
ledge; nothing excites their wonder” (Langues sémitiques, p. 10)s
According to Hume the lack of wonder is the characteristic token of
inferior intellectual power.

t Cf. Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 160.
§ Pp. 514, 524, 544, and many other places.

i
|

,

414 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

dedicated to the “future of the Israelite religion,” we
find, as one of the three ‘‘ distinguishing features” of
this religion, the sentence, “ The Israelite religion has
and knows no secrets, no mysteries ”’ (i. 34). Renan, too,
in a moment of reckless honesty, admits that ‘the
Semitic faith (monotheism) is in reality the product of a
human race whose religious needs are very few. It
signifies a minimum of religion.” * An important and
true remark which has only failed to have effect because
Renan did not show in how far and for what compelling
reasons the Semite, who is famed for the glow of his faith,
yet possesses a minimum of true religion. The explana-
tion is easy for us : .where understanding and imagination
‘are under the yoke of blind will, there cannot and must
not be any miracle, anything unreachable, any “ path
into the untrodden, and the not-to-be-trodden,” } nothing
which the hand cannot grasp and the moment (even if it
‘be but as a clearly conceivable hope) cannot possess.
Even such a great mind as the second Isaiah looks upon
religious faith as something which is based on empiric
foundation and which can be tested, as it were, by a Tegal
process : ‘‘ Let the people bring forth their witnesses that
they may be justified; or let them hear and say, It is
truth” (xlii.9). We read exactly the same in the second
Sura of the Koran: ‘‘ Call your witnesses if you speak the
truth.’ The Jewish teacher Philippson, mentioned
above, tells in detail how the Jew “‘ believes solely what

“he has seen with his eyes,” a “ blind faith ” being unknown

to him; and in a long note he quotes all the passages in
the Bible where “ faith in God ”’ is mentioned, and asserts
that this expression occurs without exception only where

* Nouvelles considérations suy les peuples sémitiques (Journal astatique,
1859, p. 254). Also Robertson Smith (The Prophets of Israel, p. 33)
testifies that the genuine Semite has ‘“‘ little religion.”

} Or as the Brihaddvanyaka-Upanishad renders the same conception,
“the path of the universe, which one has to follow, to get from the
part into the whole universe” (1, 4, 7}.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 415

“visible proofs have gone before.”* It is always, | ._

therefore, a question of outward experience, not of inner 3
the conceptions are always thoroughly concrete, material ;
as Montefiore assures us, even in the advanced Jewish
religion there is nothing which the dullest might not
immediately understand and fathom to its uttermost
depth ; as soon as a man has a feeling of a mystery, as
soon as he, for instance, supposes that there can be any-
thing symbolical in the history of the creation, he is a
heretic and a gallows-bird.f Even the utterly materialised
history of creation given in the book of Genesis is so
manifestly alien and borrowed that it remains totally
isolated amid the Israelitish tradition and without actual
connection with it.{ The will in fact gives little rope to
the understanding and the imagination. So it is that
the Semite who has begun to doubt at once becomes an
atheist ; there is in any case no secret, no mystery:
if Allah is not the creator, then must matter be; as an
explanation of the world there is scarcely the shadow of
a difference between the two views, for in the case of
neither does the Semite feel himself in the presence of an
inexplicable riddle, a superhuman mystery.

But if we wish to appreciate the influence of Semiticism
upon religion, it will not suffice to speak of understanding
and non-understanding, of feeling and non-feeling of the
mystery ; we must remember also the creative influence
of the imagination, that ‘“‘all-uniting heavenly com-
panion,” as Noyalis calls it. Imagination is the hand-
maid of religion, she is the great mediator; born, as
Shakespeare says, of the wedlock of head and heart,
she moves on the frontier of the ‘‘ double kingdom” of

* Philippson : Isvaelitische Religionslehre, i. 35 ff.

+ See, for example, in Graetz, Gnosticismus und Judentum, the
passage on Ben Soma.

{ Fully discussed by Renan: Langues sémitiques, p. 482 ff. See, too,

the note on p. 485 and my quotation from Darmesteter, p. 421, note,
Ct,, too, the introduction to the 4th ed. of this book.

y
416 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

Goethe and so unites the one half to the other: her forms
signify more than what the eye alone can see in them, her
words proclaim more than the ear alone can hear. She
has not the power to open up that which is closed, but
she raises before us the mystery of mysteries and con-
vinces our eyes that its veil cannot be raised. Symbolism,
as the necessary language of the unspeakable mystery of
the world, is her work. Plato calls this language a
swimming-board that bears us down the stream of life ;
it is as widespread as the feeling of this mystery, its
vocabulary as varied as the stages of culture and the
climates. Thus the inhabitants of the Samoan Islands
have represented symbolically to themselves the inex-
plicable and yet directly felt mystery of the omnipresence
of God in the following manner. They represent the
body of their God Saveasiuleo as composed of two sepa-
rable parts; the upper, humanly shaped part (the real
God) dwells in ‘‘ the home of spirits’ among the dead,
the under part is an immensely long structure like a sea-
serpent that winds itself round all the islands of the great
sea, and pays attention to the doings of men.* It is
indeed a long way from such a comparatively crude
conception to the idea of the omnipresence of God held
by Christian theology ; and it is still further removed
from the transcendental idealism which is a Sankara’s
conception of the same mystery, yet I can find no funda-
mental difference. Moreover we see from many examples
how this occupation of the imagination with religious
conceptions everywhere gradually leads to very clear
ideas. Tylor, the cautious and reliable scholar, asserts
that there is probably on the whole African continent,
from the Hottentots to the Berbers, not a single tribe
which does not believe in a supreme deity, and he shows
how this faith gradually arises out of simple animism.
But most of them, as, for example, the negroes of the

* E.B. Tylor: The Beginnings of Culture, Germ. ed., 1873, II. 309,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 417

Gold Coast, think it beneath the dignity of the great spirit
of the world to busy himself with the trifling affairs of
the world; it is seldom, according to them, that he
intervenes. Another tribe, that of the Yorubas
(negroes of the Slave coast, at a perceptibly higher stage
of civilisation), teaches that ‘‘ no one can directly approach
God, but God has appointed intercessors and mediators
between himself and the human race. Sacrifice is not
offered to God, because he needs nothing ; on the other
hand, the mediators, who are very like men, delight in
presents of sheep, pigeons and other things.’ * That
seems to me a very high kind of ‘‘ popular metaphysics,”’

a religion which deserves all respect. On the other hand,
we know how the richest mythology in the world, that
of the Indian Aryans, in the very oldest hymns (before i
the immigration to India) teaches that “‘ the many Gods\, , _..
are a single being that is worshipped under different
names,” t and how this mythology afterwards led to the
sublimest conception of the one God in Brahman, in fact
to a wonderfully sublime though at the same time one-
sided and consequently inferior religion ; we further know
how from the same root sprang the ever-blossoming garden
of the Hellenic Olympus and the admirable ethical teach-
ing of the Avesta and of Zoroaster; we know, finally,
how all these things, together with the metaphysical Le
speculations pertaining thereto and the ever-active
necessity of our inborn creative impulse, saved Christianity —-
from the fate of becoming a mere annex of Judaism, how
they give it mythical (i.¢., inexhaustible) significance and
charm, how they quickened it with the deepest symbols
of the Indo-European mind, and made it a sacred vessel
for the secrets of the human heart and the human brain,

a pathway into “the untrodden and the not-to-be-

* Tylor, pp. 348, 3

t Rigveda, i. oe ma (quoted from Barth, Religions de l’Inde.
P: 23).

I 20D
418 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

trodden,” a “ pathway of the universe.” * There can
therefore be no doubt of the importance of the part
which imagination plays in religion. Can we say that
the Semite possesses no imagination? All such un-
qualified statements are false; although the necessary
brevity of the written thought often forces us to adopt
this form, we may well presuppose that the reader auto-
matically supplies the necessary correction. The Semite
is a human being like others ; it is merely a question of
degrees of difference, which, however, in this case, thanks
to the extreme character of this human type, come very
near to the borderland of Affirmation and Negation, of
the To be or the Not to be. All who have any claim at
all to speak, testify unanimously that lack—or let us say
 poverty—of imagination is a fundamental trait of the
Semite. I have already given weighty proofs, ¢.g., the
evidence of Lassen, and I could add many more, but the
question is not worth further discussion: Mohamme-
danism and Judaism are sufficient proofs ; what we hear
of the Bedouins f shows us only the beginning of this
poverty. As Renan happily remarks: “le sémite a
Vimagination comprimante,” that is, his imagination
narrows, limits, confines; a great thought, a deeply
symbolical image returns from his brain small and thin,
“ flattened,” robbed of its far-reaching significance. “In
the hands of the Semites the mythologies which they
borrowed from strange peoples became flat historical
narratives.” { Wellhausen says: “‘ The fading of the
~ myths is synonymous with their Hebraising.Ӥ And
not only did the Semites possess little creative imagina-
tion, but they also systematically checked every tendency
in that direction. Just as man must not wonder and
think, so, too, he must not form any conception of things
invisible: Every attempt to conceive the superhuman

* Concerning mythology in Christianity, see vol. ii. chap. vii.
t See p. 427. t Renan: Israél, i. 49, 77, 784
§ Prolegomena,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 419

is idolatry ; the Saveasiuleo of the Samoans is an idol, the
Sistine Madonna of Raphael is an idol, the symbol of the
Cross is an idol.* I shall not repeat what I have said ina
former chapter on this subject, but ask the reader to
look at it again (p. 224 f.). I have there tried to make
it clear why the Semite had to hold this view, how his
zeal and the particular nature of his faith, springing as it
did from the Will, forced it upon him ; I pointed also to
the fact that the Semite, wherever he defied this law of
his nature, as in Pheenicia, became himself the most
horrible, and perhaps the only genuine idolater humanity
has ever known. (For while the Indian taught the nega-
tion of will, and Christ its ‘‘ conversion,” religion is fot
the Semite the idolisation of his will, its most glowing,
immoderate and fanatical assertion.) If he had not this
faith, which makes him the protagonist of fanatical in-
tolerance and at the same time a paragon among sufferers,
he would have no religion, or hardly any; hence the
ever-repeated warning of his legislators against ‘“‘ molten
gods.”

From these details the following conclusions, to begin
with, may be drawn: ‘the Semite banishes from religion
contemplative wonder, every feeling of a superhuman |
mystery, and he banishes likewise creative fancy; of
these he admits only the indispensable minimum, that
“minimum of religion ’’ of which Renan spoke. Where-
ever, therefore, Semitic influence makes itself felt, whether
by physical crossing (as in the case of the Jews) or by
the mere force of ideas (as in Christianity) we shall meet
with these two characteristic endeavours. We can
express both by one single word—materialism. Schopen-
hauer, one of the greatest thinkers that ever lived, whose
thought, moreover, possessed unexampled symbolical
plasticity—unequalled even by Plato—so that his

* That the Cross is to be regarded as the same thing as the
idols of Heathendom is said expressly by Professor Graetz : Volksttim-
liche Geschichte dey Juden, ii. 218.
fee

\
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420 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

philosophy seems in many ways related to religion, has
as metaphysician given this definition: ‘“‘ matter is the
~ mere visibility of will . . . what in appearance, that is,
for the conception, is matter, is in itself will.”’* I shall
not enter into metaphysics here, nor shall I champion
Schopenhauer’s speculative symbolism ; but it is striking
that in the sphere of purely empiric psychology an analo-
( gous relation unavoidably asserts itself. Where the will
‘has enslaved the questioning understanding and the
‘imagination, there can be no other view of life and no
(other philosophy than the materialistic. I do not use
the word in a depreciatory sense. I do not deny the

advantages of materialism, I do not dispute that it can, .

be harmonised with morals; I simply state a fact. Pure
materialism is the religious doctrine of the Arab
Mohammed, as are also the transitory processes of his
revelations from God, and his paradise with eating and
drinking and beautiful houris; pure materialism is the
bargain which Jacob enters into with Jehovah (Genesis
XXviii. 20-22), in which he makes five conditions, or,
as the Jurist would say, stipulations, and then concludes :
as thou doest this, so thou shalt be my God. The whole
history of creation in Genesis—which, it appears, all
Hebrews, all Syrian and Babylonian Semites possessed
in similar form f—is pure materialism; it was not
so originally ; it was the mythical and symbolical con-
ception of an imaginative people (probably the Sumero-
Accadians), but, as Renan has taught us, the myth be-
comes in the hands of the Semite an historical chronicle.t

* Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 2 vol., Book II. chap. xxiv.
In no connection with this, but nevertheless interesting as a reflection
of the same discernment is the doctrine of the Samkhya philosophy (the
rationalistic system of the Brahman Indians), according to which
willing is not a mental but a physical function. (Cf. Garbe: Die Sdm
khya-Philosophie, p. 251.)

+ Cf. Gunkel: Handkommentar zur Genesis, p. xli. ff.

{ The pre-eminent imagination of the Sumero-Accadians is obvious
from their scientific achievements, moreover their language is said to
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 421

Of all the deep ideas which thoughtful and reflective
minds had breathed into this story in their own wonderful
way, the Semites perceived nothing, so absolutely nothing ©

that the\Jews, for example, first acquired the conception ~
of an evil s] spirit, opposed to the good, through Zoroaster
during the Babylonian captivity; till then they had
regarded the serpent of their bible just as a serpent ! *
Why talk of their ignorance of an evil principle, when in
spite of their book of Genesis, chaps. i. and ii., the idea even
of a God, creator of heaven and earth, was quite unknown
to the Israelites till the Babylonian captivity ? The
thought appears for the first time in the so-called second
Isaiah (see chaps. xl. to Ivi. of the book of Isaiah). The

testify to a special tendency to abstraction, for it is richer in abstract ideas
than in nomina concreta (see Delitzsch : Die Entstehung des altesten Schrift-
systems, 1898, p. 118). A more direct contrast to the Semitic nature
cannot be imagined; we can easily fancy what a degradation the
Sumerian theories of the creation may have suffered under Israelite hands.
But it becomes ever more probable that this whole mythology is per-
meated with old Aryan conceptions, to which, for example, the tree of
life, the flood, the Godhead in water (hence baptism), the stories of the
temptation belong. Professor Otto Franke (Kénigsberg) writes in the
Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1901, No. 44, col. 2763 : ‘‘ Such passages in the
Semitic tradition always stand isolated and in strange surroundings,
but form organic links in whole Aryan systems of thought: they are
often bare and artificial in their Semitic setting, whereas in the Aryan
they spring forth like foaming streams from full and sparkling
springs.”

* Cf. Montefiore, p. 453. How deeply rooted in the organism of
the Semite this incapacity is we see from the fact that a man like James
Darmesteter, one of the most frequently named Orientalists of the nine-
teenth century, a man of universal knowledge, could in the year of grace
1882 write: ‘‘ The biblical cosmogony, hastily borrowed from an alien
source, and all its stories of apples and serpents, concerning which
the generations of Christians have passed sleepless nights, have
never caused our Israelite scholars the slightest uneasiness or occupied
their thoughts.”’ All his knowledge could not enable this absolutely
free-thinking Jew—‘‘an honest Jew,’’ as Shakespeare would have
said—to understand any more profoundly ; and thus we may well smile
when he tells us, after he has finished with the apples, that the cross
is already “rotten” and Christianity an “abortive” religion. When
we behold such utter want of intelligence the yawning gulf reveals
itself to ovr eyes! (Sce Coup d’@il sur Vhistotve du peuple juif,

p. 19 £3
422 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

conception was still strange to the real Isaiah, as also to
Jeremiah.* The fantastically scientific ideas in Genesis
concerning the origin of the organic world, the profound
myth of the fall of man, the theory of the development
of man up to the first organisation of society .. . all
that became “history,” and thereby it at the same time
lost all significance as religious myth; for the myth is
elastic, inexhaustible, whereas here a simple chronicle
of facts, an enumeration of events, lies before us.f That
is materialism. (Wherever the Semitic spirit has breathed,
we shall meet with this materialism. )(Elsewhere in the
whole world religion is an idealistic impulse ;) Schopen-
hauer called it ‘“‘ popular metaphysics’; I should rather
call it popular idealism ; in the case of the Semites, too,
we observe this wistful awakening of a feeling of the
superhuman (read the life of Mohammed), but the im-
perious will immediately lays hold of every symbol,
every profound divination of reflective thought, and
transforms them into hard empirical facts. {And thus
it is that with this view of religion only practical ends are
pursued, no ideal ones.) It is to provide for prosperity
in this world, and aims particularly at power and wealth,
it is moreover to provide for happiness in the future
world (where the idea of immortality is present—an idea
introduced into the Israelite faith from the Persian and into
the Arabian from Christianity). Downright materialism !
as the comparison with the Saveasiuleo of the Samoans
and the great world-spirit of the Yorubas has shown.

This then would be a negative influence of Judaism
upon all religion: infection with fundamental views of
a materialistic kind. Now we must consider the positive
influence, which usually is the only one to be taken into

* Even the Jewish scholar Montefiore explicitly admits this : Religion
of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 269. Further detail on p. 425.

{ For further details concerning the Bible as an historical work and

ts significance as such for the Jewish people, see the chapter on “ The
Revelation of Christ,” p. 228 f. and further on, p. 486,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 423

account. I think we may assert without qualification
that nowhere in the whole world is there to be found a
faith like that of the Semites, so glowing, so unreserved,
so unshakeable. Without them we might perhaps not
have possessed the idea of religious faith, of fides, at all.
The German word Glaube is very ambiguous; funda-
mentally it is almost as near doubt as conviction, the
original meaning is merely to approve (gutheissen).*
When we go to the Latin we are no better off, for in truth
fides means trust and nothing more;t the bona fides
of legal agreements shows the word in its original signifi-
cance, the latter fides salvifica is a makeshift. Charac-
teristically, in Sanscrit also the word ¢vaddhd, faith, is
distinguished from the Semitic “‘ faith ”’ by the colourless-
ness and uncertainty of its significance; we get the
impression, which is strengthened when we carefully
survey the events of history, that we have here to deal
with two different things.f It may frequently happen
that an increase of the quantity altogether alters the
quality §; that seems to be the case here too. The
genuinely Semitic faith can be destroyed by nothing, can
be injured by nothing ; it resists every experience, every
evidence. Here Will triumphs, and in fact—this should
be noted, for here we have the psychological explanation
of this remarkable phenomenon—it triumphs not merely
because of its uncommon strength, but at the same time
in consequence of the impoverishment of the understand-
ing and the imagination: opposed to a minimum of reli-
gion we find a maximum of unconditional, unshakeable
capacity of faith, of need of faith that stretches out like

* Kluge : Etymologisches Wérterbuch.

t Similarly the Greek rioris.

+ Craddhd denotes “ trust, confidence, faith, also fidelity, honesty,”
the verb Crad-dh4, “‘ to trust, to consider true.” But the idea has
something vague and colourless about it, and above all we must care-
fully note the fact that the word Cvaddhd plays a very unimportant

part in the life of this pre-eminently religious people.
§ See p. 23.
ere

424 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

an avaricious hand—a faith that will and must give to
the believer the whole world as his own, but to him
personally and alone, to the exclusion of all others. It
is characteristic of the absolutism of this “ faith-will”
(if I may coin the phrase) that originally every tribe,
every little group of the Semites has its own God. The
Semite would never wish to share with another ; his will
is unconditional, he alone must possess all; and his faith
is as boundless as his will: these two expressions are for
him almost synonymous. (Religion does not appear to
be present, so to speak, for its own sake, but as a means to
an end, as an instrument, to widen as much as possible
the sphere of what can be attained by Will.* ) The view
that the Semite from the first was monotheist, to which
Renan’s famous phrase ‘‘/e désert est monothéiste”’ Tf had
contributed a good deal, has long ago been proved erro-
neous ; ¢ we see each little tribe of the Hebrews in posses-
sion of its own God, who exercises power only over this
tribe and inside this stretch of land. If any one leaves
the circle of the family and enters a new region, he comes
under the jurisdiction of another God; that is surely
not monotheism. § “I consider the idea of divine unity

* Many authors testify that even to-day the genuine Bedouins do not
in reality acknowledge the cosmopolitical God of the Koran. Robertson
Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 71, hints that Mohammedanism is
in a way a religion of the cities in contrast to the religion of the desert,
Similarly Burckhardt : Beduinen, p. 156.

¢ Langues sémitiques, 6d. 1878, p. 6. These words were originally
uttered by Renan in 1855,

t Cf. Robertson Smith : Religion of the Semites, ed: 1894, p: 75 f. It
is well known what zealous polytheists many pseudo-Semitic nations
were; of course, that does not justify one in drawing conclusions in
regard to the pure Semites. In the introduction to the first edition of
his Langues sémitiques Renan has laid great stress on this reservation,
which is scarcely ever observed.

§ David, when driven by Saul from Palestine, cannot do otherwise
than serve strange gods on strange soil (1 Samuel xxvi. 19); cf. with
this particularly Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel (ed. 1895, p. 44)
and the list of characteristic passages, which reveal the same conception,

in Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 4th ed. p. 22. The polytheism appears
in a particularly simple fashion in Moses’ song of praise, ‘‘ Who is like
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 425

to be altogether un-Semitic—to be, in fact, anti-Semitic, .-~
for this reason, that it can only arise from speculation :
in the over-plentiful material which the imagination has
heaped out, thought brings about order, and thus arrives
at the conception of unity; here, on the other hand,
there is neither imagination nor speculation but only
history and will: from these the one cosmic world-
spirit of the Indians, Persians, Hellenes and Christians
could never originate, any more than the “one only”
God of the Egyptians.* It can be proved that the
idea of the one God of the world only entered Judaism
at a very late postexilic period, and beyond all doubt
under foreign and especially Persian influence; if we
wished to be very exact, we should have to say: this idea
never really obtained, for to this day, as three thousand
years ago, ‘Jehovah is not the God of the cosmic universe
but the God of the Jews} he has only destroyed the other
Gods, consumed them, as he will one day consume other
nations, with the exception of those who shall serve the
Jews as slaves.f That is really not monotheism but, as > ©
I have already remarked, unvarnished monolatry. é

unto Thee, O Lord, among the Gods ?” (Exodus xvi 11] In the much
later Deuteronomy a distinction is drawn between Jehovah and the
“strange gods” as quite homonymous beings (xxxii. 12) and it is only on
very solemn occasions that the former is addressed as ‘‘ God of all
Gods” (x. 17). Even in the time of the Maccabees (more than five
hundred years later) we meet the same expression ‘‘ God of all Gods ”
in the book of Daniel, xi. 36, and find in Jesus Sirach the conception
of “subordinate deities’? who are appointed by Jehovah to rule
over the different peoples (Jes. Sv. xvii. 17).

* There is much needless dispute regarding Egyptian monotheism,
for it cannot be doubted, when one reads in The Book of the Dead:
‘Thou art the one, the God from the very beginnings of time, the heir
of immortality, self-produced and self-born ; thou didst create the earth
and make men... .” (Introductory hymn to Ra; see the complete
translation of the Book of the Dead from the Theban text by E. A. W.
Budge, 1898.) Budge calls attention to the fact (p. xcviii.) that the
formula in Deuteronomy iv. 4, ‘‘ The Lord, our God, is one Lord” isa
literal imitation of the Egyptian:

{ See, for example, the Apokalypse of Baruch (lxxii.J, a famous
Jewish work belonging to the end of the first century after Christ :

The men of all nations shall be subject to Israel, but those who have

Lb-~-
426 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

On the other hand, this consideration teaches us what
peculiar and important truth lay in the over-generalised
remarks of Renan ; as so often, he had seen rightly, but
analysed most superficially. He wrote: “(The desert is
monotheistic ;} the sublimity of its immeasurable mono-
tony first revealed to man the conception of the Infinite.”
How false everything is that follows the semicolon in
this sentence is proved by Renan’s own remarks in
another passage, where he shows that the Semitic lan-
guages are “incapable of expressing the feeling of the
Infinite’ (see p. 299). In the dark primeval woods of
India the feeling of the Infinite had attained such an
intensity that man felt his own Ego merge into the All,

| whereas the inhabitant of the sun-parched desert, blinded
by the excess of light, lost the power of his eyes and saw
‘ [aotiee but himself; far from feeling the Infinite that
reveals itself to us only in the night or in the million
voices of thronging life, he felt lonely—lonely and yet en-
dangered, lonely yet hardly capable of finding the barest
subsistence, utterly incapable of doing so if a second
family should desire to join his own. This life was a
struggle, a struggle in which only unfeeling egoism could
exist. While the Indian, quite lost in thought, had only
to stretch out his hand to the trees to still his hunger, the
Bedouin was day and night on the alert, and had

ruled over you shall be destroyed with the sword” (quoted from
Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, p. 316). We see how
merely national this supposed creator of Heaven and earth has
remained. Montefiore also admits this when he writes, ‘ Jehovah had
certainly gradually come to be the one God of the world, but this God
remained still Jehovah. Though he had become the absolute ruler of
the universe, he did not cease to be the God of Israel” (p. 422).
Robertson Smith, one of the first authorities of the day in these
questions, interprets Isaiah ii. as a prophecy that Jehovah will
gradually make himself God of all humanity through the ach..owledg-
ment of his virtues as a ruler. Hence we find even in the most
sublime phases of the Semitic conception of religion, even where God
is spoken of, the predominance of the purely historical, flagrantly
anthropomorphic, unconditionally materialistic standpoint.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 427

something else to do than to think of the Infinite—for
which he was, moreover, so absolutely devoid of capacity
and gifts that his language did not offer him the least
help in that direction. On the other hand, we can under-
stand perfectly well how the monotonous poverty of the
surroundings could lead to unexampled poverty of mytho-
logical conceptions ; for man is quite incapable of feeding
his imagination from his own resources ; it is, as Shake-
speare says, “born in the eye’”’; where the eye is offered
nothing but monotony, the " imagination fades and
withers.* And we can also easily understand how such
surroundings would tend to develop that absolutely
egoistic monotheism, where the one God is not the great
spirit that presides over the world, as in the case of the
poor negroes of the slave-coast, but a hard task-master,
who is there only for me the one—that is, for me and my
children—who, when I blindly devote myself to him,
gives me lands which I have not planted, full of oil and
wine, houses which I have not built, and wells which J
have not sunk—all those glorious things which I have
seen only occasionally from a distance, when, impelled
by hunger, I have left the desert and gone on a foray ;
and all these men who revel there in work and wealth—
and with joyful song and dance and fat offerings worship
Gods who give them all these riches, I will sacrifice to
my God of the desert and overturn their altars ; only my

God shall henceforth be God, I alone will be master in ‘
the world! This is the monotheism of the desert ; it

arises not from the idea of the Infinite but from the poverty
of ideas of a poor, hungry, greedy man whose range for

thought hardly rises above the conception that possession -

and power would be the highest bliss.
To make quite clear the very profound change of

* Burckhardt, who lived for years in Arabia, testifies that the mono-
tony of the desert life and the lack of all occupation lie like an unbear-
able burden upon the mind and finally quite paralyse it (Beduinen
und Wahaby, p. 286).
x

428 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

sentiment that is wrought in the human mind by this
Semitic view of faith, I cannot do better than quote

Goethe. His words are cited everywhere: “‘ The real
‘ and only and most profound theme in the history of
~\ the world and of men, to which all other themes are sub-

' ordinate, is the conflict between belief and unbelief.” *

\. But more important is the following passage in the fourth

book of Wahrheit und Dichtung : “‘ The universal, natural
religion really requires no faith; for the conviction that
a great, creative, ordering and guiding Being is, as it
were, concealed behind nature, in order to make itself
comprehensible to us, forces itself upon every one, and
even should a man occasionally let go the thread of
this faith which guides him through life, he will neverthe-
less be able to pick it up again at any time and place. It
is quite a different matter with the particular religion
which tells us that this great Being takes under his care,
by preference and choice, a single individual, a tribe, a
people, a country. This religion is founded on faith,
which must be unshakeable if it is not to be destroyed
altogether. Every doubt about such a religion is fatal
to it. We may return to conviction but not to faith.”
This process of reasoning brings us on to the right track ;
it enables us to say exactly what the Semite has in this
case given to the world, or, if we will, forced upon it.
An important question, for in this is contained his world-
affecting significance as an influence upon others, and in
this, too, lies at the present day the particular strength
of Judaism, which Herder and so many other great
minds felt as “ alien.’ Goethe has clearly recognised the
essential point and also hinted, but unfortunately not
in such detail that every one may see it as he does; for
he distinguishes between a natural religion and another
which is therefore unnatural. Now according to Goethe’s
way of thinking, the contrast to the natural is the arbi-

* Noten zum Westdstlichen Divan (Israel in the Desert).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 429

trary, that in which Will is the “ arbiter,’ that in
which Will—not pure understanding, and not the
undimmed natural instinct—has decisive influence. And
hereby he not only points out to us that there are essential
differences between religions, so essential that the same
word can mean two different things, but he tells us at
the same time how this difference is fundamentally
explicable—that the religion which he contrasts with the
natural is, in fact, the religion of Will. On the other
hand, the use of the word Glaube (faith) by him is
vague and confusing ; he has tried to simplify too much.
Goethe says, “ The natural religion really needs no faith,’’
but in the non-Semitic religions there is really more
of that which is believed than in the Semitic ; the material
of faith is richer; and Glaube is expressly demanded
by them. What is the truth in this matter ? The nature
of faith is in the two cases just as different as the nature
of religion; to the word “religion”? Goethe in the
passage quoted gives two significations, to the word
Glaube only one, hence the misunderstanding. In reality
we nowhere find religion without faith; certainly with-
out faith in the specifically Semitic sense, but not
without faith of some kind. Faith is everywhere the
invisible soul, religion the visible body. We must there-
fore proceed further if we wish to develop Goethe’s utter-
ance until it becomes quite clear. I shall take an illustra-
tion.

So far as I know, dogmatism and the idea of revelation
are nowhere so developed as among the Aryan Brahmans ;
yet the result in their case is quite other than in that of
the Semites. The sa.red Vedas of the Indians were
looked upon as divine revelation; every word of theirs
was for all matters of faith authoritative and indisput-
able—and in spite of this, from this one complex of
scripts, everywhere recognised as infallible, there sprang
no fewer than six entirely different systems of philo=
430 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

sophy,*—systems in which (as is characteristic of the
Indian spirit) philosophy and religion grow up inseparably
connected, so that the view of the nature of the Godhead,
of the relation of the individual to it, of the importance
of redemption, &c., is very different in the different
systems; whereby, of course, not only the philosophy,
but above all the religion of the believer is influenced.
And all these doctrines, which frequently contradict
each other in important points, were, nevertheless,
regarded as orthodox, the one as much as the other.
They all were based on the same scripts, originated in
other words from the same fundamental mythological
images of the hymns, and all gave evidence of the same
reverence for the deep speculations in the precepts of the
cult and in the Upanishads. That was sufficient. There
were no historical dates, no chronicle of the creation and
of generations, in which men should blindly believe; for
anything of that kind was meant from the first merely
as an image, a symbol. Thus, for example, the strictly
orthodox commentator of the sacred writings, Sankara,
says in regard to various images and speculations applied
to the Creation: ‘‘ The script has no intention to instruct
us in regard to the extension of the world which began
with Creation, because it is neither visible, nor any-
where said, or even thinkable, that anything that is of
importance for man depends upon this.” + In the same
way, each one was free to think as he pleased of the rela-
tion between spirit and matter. The monist was just as
orthodox as the dualist, the idealist as the materialist.
One comprehends how, with such a conception of religion
and faith, “‘in India at all times the most absolute

* There were more, but the others can be classified under the six
great systems.

{ The Sitva’s des Vedanta. (Deussens’ translation). "Who does not
here think of the great remark of Goethe : ‘‘ Animated inquiry into cause
does great harm!” (see pp. 230 and 267). Carlyle in his essay on
Diderot well remarks, ‘“‘ Every religious faith, which goes back to
origins, is fruitless, inefficient and impossible.”
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 431

freedom of thought has prevailed’ *—I mean, how it
was possible to let orthodoxy and unhampered meta-
physical speculation exist side by side. But no! we
who to-day live under the influence of the Semitic view
of faith, find it very difficult to harmonise these concep-
tions—the acknowledged infallibility of sacred books
of religion and at the same time the most absolute freedom
of thought! But we should also note the following care-
fully, for hereby alone will this illustration be instructive

in regard to the nature of faith. Life was much more ,
religious in India that it ever was among us, even in the *

ecclesiastical age, and the Indian religion as such has
borne quite different fruits from Judaism, for example,
where religion (as a Jewish author assured us) banished
from life science, art, literature, in fact, everything but
faith and obedience.f For the enormous intellectual
activity of the Indian people, whose poetical literature
alone surpasses in extent the whole classical literature of
Greece and Italy together, is rooted in their faith ; their
most important achievements, even in remote spheres,
radiate from their profound religious feeling. An ex-
ample. Panini’s Grammar of the Sanscrit Language,
written two thousand five hundred years ago, and as
the culmination of a long, scientific development reaching
back for centuries, is recognised as the greatest philo-
logical achievement of mankind. Regarding it Benfey
writes: ‘‘No language of the world can show such a
complete grammar ; not even the German, in spite of the
remarkable works of the Grimms.’’ Georg von dex
Gabelentz says in his Sprachwissenschaft (2nd ed., 1g01,

* Richard Garbe : Die Sdmkhya-Philosophie, p. 1218

t Seep. 400. Spinoza too, who in each of his thoughts is so thorough
a Jew and anti-Aryan, writes, ‘‘ Fidet scopus nthil est preter obedientiam
et pietatem” (Tract. theol.-pol., chap. xiv.); that religion can be a
creative element of life is a conception which remained quite incompre-
hensible to this brain.

+ Max Miller: Indien tn seiney weltgeschichilichen Bedeutung (1884)
p. 684

“
432 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

p- 22), “ Panini’s wonderful work is the only really
complete grammar which any language possesses”;
Panini still forms the corner-stone of his science. What,
we may ask, was it that spurred on the Indian thinkers
to these high scientific achievements? The longing to
awaken to new life the sacred songs of the Rigveda,
which in the course of centuries had almost ceased to be
understood. It was, as Benfey testifies, no simple aimless
enthusiasm for science as science, but deep religious
sentiment which gave them strength for the undertaking.*
Their eminent achievements in the sphere of mathematics
—we know that the Indian Aryans are the inventors of
the so-called ‘‘ Arabian ciphers ’—have their origin in
religion. The solution of the well-known geometrical
problem which gives Pythagoras his title to fame, the
Indians had in long past ages discovered, automatically,
as a necessary consequence of the measurements pre-
scribed for sacrificial ceremonies ; here, in these religious
calculations, we have the germs of a clear knowledge of
irrational quantities, and later of the higher algebra, the
theory of numbers, &c.t In what sense, therefore, can
Goethe say of a religion which informed the whole public
life, and at the same time had such an influence upon
mind and imagination, that it really needed no faith?
Am I not right in asserting that in that passage from
Goethe the word “ Faith ”’ refers to two different things
—two things as different as the beings whose souls they
reflect ? Goethe, in fact, holds the Semitic view, and
according to this view (in contrast to the Indian) religious
belief refers solely to historical dates and material facts.
Here God is known from historically certified manifesta-
tions, not postulated from inner experience, not found
out from the contemplation of nature, and not created
by the power of the imagination ; here everything is even
simpler than Ernst Haeckel’s history of creation. The

* Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft (1869), pp. 77, 55e
t Cf. Schroeder: Pythagoras und die Inder, chap. iii.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 433

one thing that is necessary 1s blind faith, and in this faith
is concentrated the whole power of great leading spirits
and of the responsible shepherds of the people: punish-
ments on the one hand, promises on the other; in addi-
tion, historical proofs and preternatural miracles. As a
contrast to every unadulterated Semitic creed take the
so-called apostolic confession of the Christian Church !
Half of the clauses refer to mysteries that cannot be
represented, and of which the theologians themselves say,
“ The layman cannot understand them ”’; but in reality
it is so little a question of understanding in the logical
and comprehensible meaning of the word, that from this
one short creed there have been derived the most diverse
and most contradictory doctrines.* And now take the
Athanasian symbolism! Here the material of religious
faith consists of the most abstract speculations of the
human brain. How could faith in the Semitic sense
comprehend ideas to which not one man in a million
can attach the faintest conception? Jesus Christ Him-
self said, when children were brought to Him, “Of such
is the Kingdom of Heaven,” but He nevertheless added
in the same passage: ‘All men cannot receive this
saying, save they to whom it is given. He that is able
to receive it, let him receive it? (Matthew xix. II, 12).f
The Semite is quite different, and hence also his form of
faith is different. Even the simple sentence, ‘‘ I believe
in God, Creator of Heaven and Earth,” forms no
part of his creed; this circumstance is only casually
mentioned in the Koran, and scarcely thrice mentioned
in the whole sacred writings of the Jews. On the other
hand, the first commandment of Moses is, ““I am the
Lord, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt!”
The faith at once attaches itself, as one sees, to historical

* Cf. Harnack; Dogmengeschichte (Grundriss, 2nd ed.), p. 63 f.

f In the Syrian translation of the oldest text it runs thus, 'f Every
one who has the power,” so that there is no doubt about the meaning.
(See Adalbert Merx’ translation of the palimpsest, 1897.)

1 2E
434 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

facts, which the people regard as authenticated, and
never does it rise above the level of the ordinary eye.
As Montefiore has taught us, there are no mysteries in
the Jewish religion (see p. 413 f.). When we, therefore,
speak of the incomparable power of the Semitic faith,
we must not overlook the fact that this faith refers to
an extremely scanty and limited material, that it inten-
tionally leaves out of account the great wonder of the
world, and that by the imposition of a law (in the
juristical sense of the word), it also reduces the inner life
of the heart to a minimum—whoever obeys the law is
without sin, he need trouble his head no further ; regene-
ration, grace, redemption, &c., do not exist. Thus we
begin to see that this strong faith presupposes as counter-
condition a minimum of the first condition of faith, a
minimum of religion. Moses Mendelssohn has expressed
this truth intelligently and honestly: ‘ Judaism is not
revealed religion, but revealed legislation.” *

“The Semite has really little religion,” Robertson
Smith, the greatest authority on the Semitic religion, says
with a sigh. “ Yes, but much faith,” answers Goethe.
And Renan supplies the commentary: “ The mind of the
Semite can embrace extremely little, but this little it
embraces with great power.” ¢ I think, however, that
we are beginning to distinguish better between faith
and faith, between religion and religion, than did Smith,
Goethe and Renan; we shall soon get to the root of the
matter. To make the matter thoroughly clear, I must
once more contrast the Semite and the Indian.

The Aryan Indian can stand as an example of the
extreme contrast to the Semite—a contrast, however,
which clearly reveals itself in all peoples that are devoid
of Semite blood, even in the Australian negroes, and which

* Rettung dey Juden, 1872; (I quote from Graetz: Volks: Gesch,
fii, 578).
+ Langues sématiques, ps 11
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 435

slumbers in the hearts of all of us. The mind of the
Hindoo embraces an extraordinary amount—too much
for his earthly happiness ; his feelings are tender and full
of sympathy, his sense pious, his thought metaphysically
the deepest in the world, his imagination as luxuriant as
his primeval forests, as bold as the world’s loftiest moun
tain peak, to which his eye is ever drawn upwards. But
two things he entirely lacks ; he has no historical sense at
all. This people has produced everything, but no history
of its own career—not the trace of a chronicle. That is
the first want. The second is the capacity to regulate his
imagination, for want of which the Indian, as hyper-
idealist, loses the right sense of proportion for the things of
this world, and—although there is no one who fears death
less—loses at the same time his position as energetic
moulder of the world’s history. He is not materialist
enough. Far from considering himself, with Semitic
pride, the ‘‘ one man in the real sense of the word,” he
looks upon humanity as a phase of life like other phases,
and teaches as the basis of all wisdom and religion the tat
tvam asi: that thou too art, 7.¢., man shall recognise his
own self in everything living. Here we certainly are far
removed from the little chosen people, in whose favour
the creation of the cosmos was undertaken, for whose ad-
vantage alone the rest of humanity lives and suffers ; and
it is at once clear that the divinity, or divinities, as it may
be, of these Indians will not be such as one can carry about
in an ark of the covenant, or can imagine as present in a
stone. Even the éat tvam asi itself points to a cosmic
religion, and a cosmic religion again implies—in
contrast toa national faith—a direct relation between the
individual and the divinely'superhuman. What a difference
there must have been in the meaning which religion and
faith had for this Aryan Indian and for the Semite. ‘In
reality no faith,” says the German sage, and the French-
man echoes with the superficiality of parody: “The
436 FOUNDATIONS OF THE X1Xt# CENTURY

Indo-European peoples have never regarded their faith
as the absolute truth.” * Ah no! this is surely not
possible, and it is splendidly contradicted by the life of
the Brahmins. For the Indo-Aryans, too, “ bring
forward their witnesses,” though not quite in the same
sense as the second Isaiah and Mohammed meant. When
the Aryan bids farewell to wife, child and children’s
children, in order to devote the last years of his life—
void of all possessions, living on herbs, naked, in the
loneliness of his forests—to pious contemplation and
the redemption of his soul; when he digs his grave with
his own hands and on the approach of death lays himself
down in it to die, with folded hands, resigned and
happy ; f—can one say then that “in reality he has no
faith’? that he “does not look upon his faith as the
truth’? It boots not to dispute over words, but at
any rate this man possesses religion, and, as it seems to me,
a maximum of religion. In his youth he became ac-
quainted with the most luxuriant mythology ; all nature
was to his childlike eye alive, inspired ; in it there dwelt
great friendly forms ft which constantly gave fresh scope
to his fancy, even being urged to further flights by the
new hymns which ceaselessly broke upon his ear. As
Carlyle said of Goethe, this Hindoo youth saw himself
“surrounded by wonders, everything natural in truth

* Renan: Langues sématiques, p. 7:

+ Even to-day one comes upon fresh graves of this kind in the
depths of the woods.’ Without convulsion or struggle these holy men
pass from time into eternity, so that when one sees their corpses one
might think that the hand of love had put their limbs aright and closed
their eyes. (According to oral communications and sketches from
nature.) One can see how living and unchanged, because springing
from an inner soil that always remains the same, old Aryan religion
even to-day is, from Max Miller’s life-history of a holy man of Brahman
family who died as recently as 1886, Ramakrishna, his Life and Sayings,
1898.

+ Oldenberg (Religion des Veda) testifies that the gods of the Aryan
Indians, in contrast to others, were bright, true, friendly forms, without
malice, cruelty and perfidy (pp. 30, 92, 302, &c.).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 437

supernatural.” The first years of manhood brought some-
thing new; his mind was exercised and strengthened by
the most difficult problems, and an all-embracing sym-
bolism was taught him by the contemplation that attached
to the sacrificial ceremonies—a symbolism which almost
goes beyond our modern powers of conception,* the chief
features of which we can, however, clearly deduce from
their wonderful effect. As his mind ripened he began
more and more to realise, not merely that those mytho-
logical forms possessed existence in his brain only, had a
meaning only for his special, limited human spirit—
in other words, were symbols of a something which the
reason could not reach—but also that his whole life, the
world that served him as a stage, the actors that moved
upon this stage, the thoughts that he thought, the love
that intoxicated him, the duties he fulfilled, were to be
regarded as mere symbols; he did not deny the reality
of these things, but he denied that their significance was
exhausted by the empirically perceptible: “‘On the
standpoint of the highest reality, all empirical activity
has no existence,’’ say the sacred writings of the Hindoos +
—a fact to which Goethe has given immortal expression
when he says :
Alles Vergangliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis.

And the more deeply this conviction settled in his con-
sciousness, the higher rose the conception of the signi-
ficance of his individual life; this life at once received a cos-
micimportance. For the script had taught him that ‘ only
unity is in the highest sense real, complexity is but a
cleft gaping out of false perception.’”’ The good works,

* Oldenberg, Religion des Veda: ‘ The details of sacrifice appealed
to the Hindoos as representing analogous facts in the universe which
were united to them by a mystical tie.’? We find proofs of this on
every page of the Satapatha-Brdhmana, that remarkable code of sacra
ficial ceremonies.

t Cankara: Veddntasitra’s II. 1, 14 (also for the following quotation).
438 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

which formerly appeared to him as part of the divine
command had lost all value; henceforth only the in-
most purpose, that is to say the inner life, every move-
ment of the mental faculties, every throb of the heart,
was regarded as important. If the Semitic law looked
to results, not to intention, here we have the other ex-
treme: all idea of result was excluded and moreover a
matter of indifference. The important thing was to bring
to perfection the highest act of creation in the reformation
of man’s own soul; not to chastise—that would be petty
—but to transform the slightest stirrings of foolish
personal longing, till the One was merged in the All.
This was ‘‘ redemption.” But do not fancy that we have
to see in this only a philosophical process ; it was a deeply
religious one, for the strength of the individual was not
sufficient. The Sanscrit word for the highest and only
God is Brahma, #.e., “‘ prayer’; only by grace could man
have a share in redemption, and before he could attain
such grace by fervent prayer a man must have proved
himself worthy of it by a pious life. This point once
reached, then the individual no longer believed that he
lived and died for himself alone but for the whole world;
hence the feeling of all-embracing responsibility. The one
stood for all: his actions, which the delusion of the past
seemed to leave to the almost insignificant decision of his
own Will, were now of everlasting importance; for just
as the natural is in truth supernatural, so the moment in-
cludes eternity and is but its symbol. This was looked
upon by the Aryan Indians as religion, this is what they
understood by faith.

By this contrast I hope to have made clear the peculiar
and distinctive nature of the Semitic view of religion and
faith; I think I have shown wherein lay that great
power which inspired so many daring deeds, so many
self-sacrificing thoughts; also what were its limitations.
Nothing more is necessary here; the historical import-
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 439

ance which this power and these limitations attained is
well known. One would almost be inclined to risk the
paradox ; religion and faith mutually exclude each other,
or at least, when the one increases the other decreases.
But that would be playing with words, since religion and
faith manifestly have for the Semite a different meaning
from that which they have for other men. The matter
becomes especially intricate where we meet not the pure
Semite or, as in the case of the Jews, the strong one-sided
predominance of the Semitic will, but Merely an infiltra-
tion of the Semitic spirit as in our own European history
since the beginning of the Christian era. That gives rise
to an almost inextricable confusion of ideas, and for that
reason I have had to discuss the theme in considerable
detail; for the entrance of the Jews into Western history
derived its chief significance from the fact that the Chris-
tian Church was founded on a Semitic basis, and that the
ideas of “faith” and ‘“‘religion’’ were introduced in
their Semitic sense into a religion which was fundamentally
and also through the life of Christ the direct uncon-
ditional negation of the Semitic view, and which besides,
by its further mythological and philosophical develop-
ment became altogether Indo-European and un-Semitic.
It is impossible to calculate the influence of Judaism
upon our whole history from its beginnings to the present
day unless we are quite clear in regard to these funda-
mental ideas “‘religion’’ and “‘faith.’’ I confess that
I have not seen a work, no matter of what kind, which
has succeeded in making this even approximately plain ;
in most cases the problem is not even felt as such. An
abstract definition of religion is of little use, it does
not clear our judgment; nor are the learned and
extremely interesting researches on the origin of religion
and its evolution of any value for our present purpose.
It is of more importance to see with our eyes what
Semitic; especially Jewish; religion is, and what are its
440 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

distinguishing marks; we shall then realise how
much of the Semitic has entered our own thought. For
the character of this religion at once reveals to us the
nature of its influence; and as, on the other hand,
force of will is peculiarly characteristic of the Semite,
we may expect that this influence will be great. / Mate-
tialism in philosophy, prominence given to the historical
motive power as opposed to the ideal, strong emphasis
laid upon “‘ justice ’’ in the secular sense of the word, that
is, of legal and moral conduct and justification by works,
in contrast to every attempt at spiritual conversion and
| to redemption by metaphysical perception or divine
\ grace,* the limitation of the imagination, the forbidding
‘of freedom of thought, deep-rooted intolerance towards
‘other religions, red-hot fanaticism—these are things
‘that we must expect to meet everywhere to a greater or
less extent where Semitic blood or Semitic ideas have
gained a footing. We shall meet them frequently in the
course of this book, even in the most modern and ad-
vanced views of the nineteenth century; for instance,
in the teaching of Socialism. As far as intolerance in par-
ticular is concerned—this absolutely new element in the
life of the Indo-European peoples—I shall postpone what
I have to say about the “ entrance of the Jews ”’ in this
connection to the next chapter but one, where we shall
see that the earliest Christians in eloquent language
demanded unconditional religious freedom, while those
of a later period took from the Old Testament the divine
commandment of intolerance.
* Zoroaster gives powerful expression to the Indo-European view in
contrast to the Semitic in the following passage: ‘‘ Secular justice,

you miser! you form the whole religion of evil spirits and are the
destruction of the religion of God” (Dinkard VII. 4. 14).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 441

IsRAEL AND JUDAH

And now I again take up the thread where we left off
our discussion of the relation of the various types in
the blood of the Israelites and the possible influence of
these mixtures upon their character (omitting the reli-
gious question just discussed). After all that I have said,
it is clear that so far as religion was concerned the Semitic
element was bound in time to prevail over the Hittite ;
but this victory was gained slowly and with difficulty,
and, in fact, only in the south, 7.e., in Judea (Judah and
Benjamin), where a frequent influx of fresh Arabian (2.e.,
pure Semitic) blood may also have been of some influence.*
In Israel (¢.e., in the north of the land) the old Syrian cult
remained in honour till the last—the feasts on the heights,
the pilgrimages to sacred places, the images of Baal, &c. ; f
even Elijah, who as a prophet was so strict in regard to
“strange Gods,” had not the slightest objection to the
worship of the golden calves ; he defended only the “ God
in Israel”? against the strange Gods imported by the
daughters of Phoenician kings. From Israel itself Judaism
would never have sprung. All the more necessary is it
that we should now become acquainted with the Jewish
idea—the specifically Jewish in contrast to that of the
people of Israel. And so I now pass to the third point,
namely, that the real Jew only developed in the course of
centuries by gradual physical separation from the rest
of the Israelite family, as also by progressive development
of some mental qualities and systematic starving of
others; he is not the result of a normal national life,
but, so to speak, an artificial product—the product of a
priestly caste which, with the help of alien priests, forced

* Robertson Smith (The Prophets of Isvael) lays great stress on this
(p. 28); see also Wellhausen: Prolegomena.

t For details see Wellhausen and Robertson Smith (e.g., The
Prophets of Isvael, pp. 63, 96).
442 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

upon the people against its will a priestly legislation and
a priestly faith as having been given by God (359).

Hurried as my sketch has been, and although for
the sake of simplification I have passed over many
facts in silence, I think that the reader has received
a fairly vivid, and in its essential elements accurate con-
ception of the mixtum compositum from which the Israelite
people sprang ; he has also noticed that the mixed blood
in the south of the country, where Judah and Benjamin
lay,* was, from the very first moment of the arrival in
Palestine, partly subject to exceptional modifying in-
fluences, that is to say, the Semitic element in the south
was constantly reinforced by new arrivals. Probably
this difference was of older standing. From the
beginning we see the great strong tribes of the Josephites,
Ephraim and Manasseh, round which most of the other
tribes grouped themselves like a family, looking upon
Judaht with a certain contempt, or even with distrust.
The emigration to Egypt and the conquest of Palestine
take place under the leadership of the Josephites ; Moses
belongs to them, not to Judah (if he was not altogether
an un-Semitic Egyptian); Joshua belongs to them,

* The borders of Judah and Judea (to which since David’s time
Benjamin also belonged) have changed very much in the course of time:
the whole southern part was joined to Idumea after the exile; on the
other hand, the district was, later, extended somewhat towards the
north into the former Ephraimite territory by the annexations of
Judas Maccabzus.

+ Even in the Old Testament in the later time there is a clear dis-
tinction between Judah and Israel: ‘‘ Then I cut asunder mine other
staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah
and Israel” (Zechariah xi. 14; see, too, 1 Sam. xviii. 16); fre-
quently Israel (that is, the ten tribes besides Judah and Benjamin)
is simply called ‘‘ the house of Joseph” in contrast to the “‘ house
of Judah”’ (thus Zechariah x. 6). 7

+ Renan says: “‘ II faut considérer Moise presque comme un Egyptien”
(Israél, i. 220); his name is said to be of Egyptian and not Hebrew
origin (p. 160). So too Kuenen: National Religions and Universal
Religions, 1882, p. 315. According to Egyptian tradition he is a
renegade priest from Heliopolis, called Osarsyph (see Maspero: Histotve
ancienne ii. 449). To-day, as a reaction from former exaggerations,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 443

also Jerubbaal ; in fact, all the men of importance, in-
duding Samuel. Judah plays in former times so modest
a part that this tribe is not mentioned in the triumphal
song of Deborah. Like Simeon and Levi, Judah was
almost destroyed when it entered Palestine, so that it was
hardly taken into account ; of the three branches of which
it consisted one only remained, and it was only by amalga-
mation with the settled Hittites and Amorites that Judah
gradually received a new lease of life and strength.*
With David it steps into the forefront, but only for a
time, and that after the Benjaminite Saul, from the
closely related tribe of Ephraim, had shifted the centre
of influence somewhat towards the south. Immediately
after Solomon’s death the Kings of Judah fell into a kind
of vassal relationship to those of Israel—at least
they were their forced and subordinate allies. But here
it is a question not merely of political jealousy—that
would not deserve our attention—but of a profound
difference in talent and in moral nature, a difference
which is emphasised in all historical works and which
forms the foundation, and a most important one, for the
later so peculiar and anti-Israelite development of
Judaism. In after times, seven centuries before Christ,
Judah was practically isolated and separated from Israel
for ever by the carrying off of the latter into captivity ;
Judah, however, retained from its brother an intellectual
legacy—the history of the people, the bases of its political
organisation, of its religion, of its cult, of its law, of its
poetry. All this, that is to say, every creative element, is
jt is fashionable to deny every Egyptian influence on the Israelite
cult; this question can only be settled by specialists, particularly
in so far as it affects ceremonial, priestly dress, &c.; but we who are
not scholars must be struck by the fact that the cardinal virtues of
the Egyptian—chastity, pity, justice, humility (see Chantepie de la
Saussaye :) Religionsgeschichte i. 305)—which do not at all agree with
those of the Canaanites, are the very virtues to which the Mosaic law

attaches most importance.
* Wellhausen : Die Komposttion des Hexateuchs, 2nd ed. pp. 320, 355/
444 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

essentially Israelite work, not the work of Judah. Now,
however, Judah alone remained behind and worked up
this material in its own way. From this—this activity of
the sons of Judah, hitherto like minors under the care of
guardians and now suddenly left to themselves—grew
Judaism ; and as a natural process from Judaism grew
the Jew.

All authors are unanimous in laying stress upon the
intellectual superiority of the house of Joseph; I will
quote only one. Robertson Smith writes: “It was the
northern kingdom that upheld the standard of Israel.
Its whole history is more interesting and richer in heroic
elements; its struggles, its calamities, and its glories
were cast into a larger mould . .. if the life of the
north was more troubled, it was also larger and more
intense. Ephraim took the lead in literature and religion
as well as in politics. It was in Ephraim far more than
in Judah that the traditions of the past were held sacred,
and at the same time it was there that the religious develop-
ment took place which led the way to new problems and
so to the arising of the Prophets. So long as the northern
kingdom endured, Judah was content to learn from it
for good or for evil. It would be easy to show in detail
that every great wave of life and thought in Ephraim
awakened an enfeebled echo in the southern kingdom.’’*
All the history that the old Testament contains prior to
the exile, up to David’s time, and much that is later,
comes from Israel, not from Judah. In order to prove
that, I should have to analyse in some detail the results
of Biblical criticism, and this would take me too far;
the layman will find the clearest and briefest summary
in Renan’s Isvael, Book IV., chaps. ii. and iii.; the
critical works of Dillmann, Wellhausen, &c., offer much

* The Prophets of Isvael, p. 192. “ere in a clear manner we havea
summary of what the same scholar and others have elsewhere proved
jn details
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 4.5

more detail and therefore profounder insight, if he will
take the trouble to read them. The ‘‘ Book of the
Wars of the Lord,” as it is called in Numbers xxi. 14,
and other lost sources, from which not only the historical
parts of the Hexateuch, but also the books of Samuel,
of the Kings, &c., were later composed, originated in
the house of Joseph and celebrate its glory. Wherever
the tribe of Judah is mentioned, it is manifestly done
with the intention to disparage it ; for instance, in Genests
xxxvii., where Judah alone hits upon the base idea of
selling Joseph for money, and still more in the following
chapter, where this tribe from the first is represented as
devoid of morality and as the children of incest, the
history of the chaste Joseph following as a contrast.
This I give merely as an example. The religious law, too,
in its great and fundamental features is derived from
Israel, not from Judah. There has been much discussion
with regard to the Ten Commandments, especially since
Goethe’s discovery—which Wellhausen has rescued from
oblivion and scientifically perfected—that the original
Ten Commandments (Exodus xxxiv.) had quite a different
purport from those which were interpolated at a later
time and which referred merely to matters of the cult.*
It is sufficient for us to know that the later decalogue in
Exodus xx., which has found a place in the Christian
catechism, is, in the opinion of so learned and orthodox
a Rabbias Solomon Schechter, the work of a priest from
the northern kingdom, and not from Judea, a man whomay
have lived in the ninth century—that is, at least a hundred
or a hundred and fifty years after Solomon, at the time of
the great dynasty of the Omrides.f This fact is not merely
interesting but even amusing; for the later purely

* Goethe: Zwo wichtige, bisher unerérterte biblische Fragen, zum
evsten Mal griindlich beantwortet. Eyste Frage: Was stund auf den
Tafeln des Bundes ?

+ See Schechter’s Appendix to Montefiore: Religion of the Ancient
Hebrews, p. 557.
446 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

Jewish editors of the sacred books have given themselves
all imaginable trouble to represent the Israelite kingdom
as apostate and heathen, whereas it now appears that
the foundations of the religious law originate from this
tabooed kingdom and not from pious Judah. For the
accurate definition of what is specifically Jewish it is
important to know this: the Jew has never distinguished
himself by creative power, even in the limited sphere of
religious legislation; indeed, what is most his own is
borrowed. For even the great prophetic movement,
which, well considered, is the only manifestation of the
Hebrew intellect which possesses enduring worth,
originated in the north. Elijah, in many respects the
most remarkable and most imaginative personality
in the whole Israelite history, exercised his influence
there only. The accounts of Elijah are so scanty that
many look upon him as a mythological personage,*
but I agree with Wellhausen in thinking that this is
historically impossible, for Elijah is the man who sets
the stone rolling, the inventor in a way of the true re-
ligion of Jehovah, the great mind which has a vague
feeling, though not a clear idea, of the monotheistic
essence of that worship. Here a great personality is at
work, and to work it must have lived. Of special interest
is the one exact piece of information which we possess
regarding him; according to it he was not an Israelite,
but a “settler with half rights” from the other side of
the Jordan, from the farthest boundaries of the land—
a man, therefore, in whose veins in all probability almost
pure Arabian blood must have flowed.f This is interest-
ing, for it shows the genuine Semitic element at work,
trying to save its religious ideal, which in the south by the
eclecticism of such half-Amorites as David and Amorite-

* See especially Renan: Isvaél ii. 282 f:
t See especially Graetz: Geschichte der Juden i, 113; also Maspero-
Histoive ancienrs ii. 784-
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 447

Hittites as Solomon, and in the north by the secular
tolerance of the predominantly Canaanite population, had
been seriously threatened. In the north alone, which was
favoured by its situation, and the inhabitants of which
probably were distinguished by greater industry and
talent for commerce, there was already prosperity, and
with it luxury and the taste for art had developed ; one
of the sins with which Amos reproaches the Israelites
is that ‘they make songs like David.’’ Against this
the anti-civilising spirit of the more genuine Semite
rebelled. The noble-minded man felt instinctively and
powerfully the incompatibility between the alien culture
and the mental qualities of his people ; he saw before his
feet the pit open, into which in truth all mongrel Semitic
kingdoms had quickly sunk and left no trace behind, and,
fearless as the Bedouin, he prepared for the struggle.
From Elijah onwards this prophetic movement is like a
healthy, dry desert wind, which, coming from afar, withers
up the blossoms of idleness—but at the same time the
buds of beauty and of art. Elisha, too, the successor of
Elijah, has his home in Ephraim. Now, however, appears
the first great prophet, whose words we still possess. I
say “ great,’”’ though because of the fewness of his writings
he is reckoned among the minor prophets ; for Amos is,
in point of depth of religious thought and acuteness of
political insight, equal to the greatest. This prophet is
said to have been born in Judea, but this is doubted by
many (e.g., by Graetz)*; at any rate, he knows the
country of Joseph as w-il as if it were his home, and his
warnings are directed solely to this tribe. The next
great “‘lesser’’ prophet, Hosea, likewise a unique per-
sonality, is an Ephraimite; he, too, is bound up with
the destiny of the one house of Joseph; with all his

* Many modern authorities too (e.g., Cheyne) have since proved that

the famous passage ‘‘ The Lord will roar from Zion’ (Amos i. 2) ig
a late Jewish interpolations
448 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

heart he devotes himself to his beloved people, and, as
is the manner of prophets, he prophesies many things
which did not take place—the saving of Israel by almighty
Jehovah and the everlasting rule of this people. Here
the series closes, here ends the influence of Israel upon
Judah ; for presumably in the lifetime of Hosea—at any
rate soon after his death—the whole northern people
was carried off into captivity by the Assyrians and
nevermore returned.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEW

It was only now—that is, from the year 721 before
Christ—that the true Jew could begin to develop; up
till then, as we have just seen, Judah had politically,
socially, and religiously been forced to follow the lead
of the much more talented Israel ; now this tribe stood
alone, on its own feet. The situation was alarming.
With horror and trembling the Jews witnessed the fate
of their brothers, who robbed themselves of their only pro-
tection ; now the circle of enemies closed in around this small
land ; how could it exist in opposition to world-empires ?
First it existed as the willing vassal of the Assyrians and
enjoyed their protection against its nearest oppressors
the inhabitants of Damascus; then it took advantage
of the death-struggle of its mighty protector, in order
to make itself free from him; it intrigued with Egypt,
but became again reconciled with the Chaldeans, the new
lords of Asia Minor, by the payment of heavy indemnity
and the ceding of certainlands .. imshort, the kingdom
dragged on its somewhat miserable existence for a hun-
dred and twenty years more, till, at last, on the occasion
of a new revolt, Nebuchadnezzar lost all patience and
bore off the king and 10,000 of the most distinguished
personages in captivity to Babylon. Eleven years later,
when they persisted in their intrigues, he destroyed
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 449

Jerusalem and the temple and had the rest of the free-
men of Judea with their families carried off to Babylonia ;
some of them, among whom was Jeremiah, fled to Egypt
and founded the Diaspora there. After sixty more yearsa
portion of the exiles returned, but only a portion; the
majority of the wealthier preferred to remain in Babylon.
It was more than a century before the small colony
that returned home—which included a comparatively
large number of priests and Levites—organised itself in
Jerusalem and the neighbouring very much shrunken
Jewish district, and once more built up the temple and
the walls of their city; but for the gracious protection
of the Persian monarchs and the gifts of those Jews
who had quickly grown rich in exile they would never
have succeeded in their task. There were thus once
more a Jerusalem and a Judea, but from this time
onwards there was never again an independent Jewish
state.*

Thus the development of the Judean into the real Jew
took place under the influence of definite historical
conditions. One is wont to say that history repeats
itself ; it never does.f The Jew is a unique phenomenon,
to which no parallel can be offered. Without definite
historical conditions he would, however, not have become
what he did become ; the particular ethnological mixture
out of which he arose, and his further history to the
isolation from Israel, would not have produced the
abnormal phenomenon of Judaism had not a series of
remarkable circumstances favoured this special develop-
ment. These circumstances are easy to enumerate ;
they are five in number, and, like the wheels of a well-

* It was only with the help of the Syrians that the Maccabees
obtained the chief power, and the princes too who sprang from them
and belonged to the Hasmonian house have only acquired now and
then an appearance of independence amid the confusion which pre-
ceded the supremacy of Rome.

t See p. 145, note.

1 2F
450 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

made watch, fit into each ‘other—the sudden isolation,
' the hundred years in which they might develop their
individuality, the breaking off of all historical local
tradition owing to the exile, the renewing of old asso-
ciations by a generation born abroad, the condition of
political dependence in which the Judeans thenceforth
lived. A few remarks on these five influences, which
followed each other successively, will make the growth
of Judaism absolutely clear to us.

(x1) The men of Judah had as tm statu pupillari
been wont to receive all inspiration from the older,
stronger and cleverer brother; now all at once they
stood alone, in possession of a tradition which was prob-
ably only fragmentary, and compelled henceforth to order
their intellectual development themselves. It was a
sudden powerful movement, which could have but one
kind of reaction, a violent and by no means harmonious
one.

(2) If the Assyrians had immediately invaded Judah
and scattered the inhabitants, these would unquestionably

_have vanished as completely as the Israelites. But the
\ Judeans were spared for more than a century, and that
in a position which actually compelled them to use to
the utmost the last suggestion which they had received
from Israel, namely, that which their prophets Amos
and Hosea had given them—moral conversion, humility
before God, confidence in His almighty power. That
was in truth their last anchor of hope; victory by force
‘over the world-power that was drawing near was out of
‘the question. But the Judeans took a purely materialistic
view of the sublime doctrine of Amos. In their need they
even went so far as madly to think that Jerusalem, as
‘the dwelling-place of Jehovah, was impregnable.* Sen-
sible people of course shook their heads sceptically, but
when the army of Sennacherib, after laying waste the
* See Isaiah, chap. xxxvii., particularly the verses 33-374
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 451

surrounding land and beginning the siege of Jerusalem,
suddenly had to retire, then the Prophets were in the
right ; a pestilence had broken out in the camp, said
the one; inner dissension, said the other, caused the
retreat ;* it did not matter, on that morning of the
year 702 B.C. upon which the inhabitants of Jerusalem
no longer saw the host of Sennacherib underneath their
walls, the Jew was born, and with him the Jehovah
whom we know from the Bible. That day was the turning-
point in the history of Judah. Even the foreign peoples
saw in the saving of Jerusalem a divine miracle. All at
once the Prophets who had hitherto been despised and
persecuted—Isaiah and Micah—became the heroes of
the day; the king had to join their party and begin to
purify the land from strange gods. The faith in the
providence of Jehovah, the confident belief that all
prosperity depended upon passive obedience to his
commands, that every national calamity came as a trial
or punishment, the unshakeable conviction that Judah
was the chosen people of God, while the other nations
stood far below it—in fact, the whole complex of con-
ceptions which was to form the soul of Judaism—now
came into existence, developed rapidly from germs which
under normal circumstances would never have produced
such results, giving great power of resistance but on the
other hand choking much that was sensible, sound and
natural until it became a fixed idea. Now for the first
time were written the momentous words: ‘Only the
Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he
chose their seed after them, even you above all people,
as it is this day” (Deut. x. 15). From the year 7or to
the year 586, when Jerusalem was destroyed, the Jews

* Cf. Cheyne: Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, p. 231 f. It is
interesting to learn from Assyrian accounts that Jerusalem was de-
fended by an army of Arabian mercenaries; Judah had been distin-
guished from time immemorial for its lack of military capacity.
452 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

had more than a hundred years to develop this idea,
The Prophets and Priests, who now had their oppor-
tunity, made good use of their time. In spite of the
liberal reaction of Manasseh, they succeeded first in banish-
ing the other gods and then in introducing by a stroke
of genius the mad idea that Jehovah could be worshipped
in Jerusalem alone, for which reason Josiah destroyed
the “high places”’ and all the other most holy altars
of the people, killed most of the Levites of these sanc-
tuarles which were said to have been founded by the
Patriarchs and consecrated by divine manifestations, while
the rest he made into subordinate servants of the house
of God in Jerusalem; now there was but one God,
one altar, one High Priest; the world was richer by
the idea (though not yet by the word) Church; the
foundation of the present Roman church, with its in-
fallible head, was laid. In order to bring this about,
they had to have recourse to a clever fraud, the pattern
of many later ones. In the year 622, when the Temple
was being repaired, a “book of law” was said to be
“found’’;* that it was only then written, there can
to-day be not the slightest doubt. Deuteronomy or the
fifth book of Moses (“a quite superfluous expansion of
the Ten Commandments,” as Luther called it) was meant
to introduce a rule of the priesthood, such as had never
existed in Israel or Judah, and to form the legal (and
at the same time, as always with the Hebrews, the his-
torical) foundation of the justification of Jerusalem
alone—an idea which, as long as the northern kingdom,
Israel, stood, never could have been entertained, and
which had been quite strange even to Isaiah, in spite of
all his fanatical patriotism and love for Jerusalem. This

* 2 Kings xxii.

+ R. Smith: Prophets of Isvael, p.438. In Deuteronomy the founda-
tion of real Judaism is laid. It forms the central point of the New

Testament in its present form: ‘‘ and that is the standpoint from which
we can and must push our inquiries backwards and forwards if we are to
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 453

was all done, not with an evil intention to deceive, but
in order henceforth to keep pure the cult of the Saviour
God Jehovah, and at the same time as the beginning of
a moral regeneration. There, for example, appears for
the first time, shyly and guardedly, the commandment
that we should love God the Lord; at the same time this
book contained the fanatically dogmatic assertion that
the Jews alone were the people of God, and along with
this came for the first time the prohibition of mixed
matriages, as also the commandment to “‘destroy”’ all
“heathens”? wherever Jews dwell, and to stone to
death every Jew, man or woman, who is not orthodox
(xvii. 5); two witnesses were to be sufficient to justify
the death sentence: the world was richer by the idea
of religious intolerance. How new this course of thought
was to the people, and under what particular circum-
stance alone it could obtain a hold—namely, amidst
hourly danger and after the wonderful saving of Jeru-
salem from the hands of Sennacherib—is shown by the
ever-repeated formula: “The Lord hath commanded
that we should fear him, that it may be well with us
all the days of our life, as it is to-day.” Frightful punish-
ments on the one hand, boundless promises on the other
and, in addition, the constant enumeration of the wonders
which Jehovah had done on behalf of Israel—these are
the methods of conviction employed by the book of
Deuteronomy, the first independent work of the Judeans
in the sphere of religion.* Sublime this religious motive
is not; this I must assert in spite of all Jewish and
Christian commentators ; yet when grasped by a fanatical

have any prospect of rightly understanding the rest,’’ said Reuss
many years ago in his fundamental Geschichte des Alien Testaments,
§ 286,

* Chapter xxviii. (which is certainly postexilic) contains the blessings,
“and thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command
thee this day,’”” and then the curses, more than a hundred in number,
containing all the horrors which a sickly imagination can picture to
itself, ‘‘ for God will rejoice over you to destroy you.”
454 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

faith it is an incomparably powerful one. And hence-
forth all efforts are directed towards strengthening this
faith, and once more the CheunStantes are favourable to
those efforts.

(3) One would have thought that the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Captivity would have shaken their trust
in Jehovah; but the finishing blow did not come all at
once, and the inspiring strength of such a faith as Jere-
miah’s had ample time to attune itself to new con-
ditions. In the meantime, among the great ones of the
kingdom, moral regeneration had quickly turned into
the opposite ; they did evil without fear. But Jeremiah
saw the future otherwise ; in the Babylonian this prophet
saw the scourge of God, sent to punish Judah for its
sins ; just as salvation had proceeded from the love of
Jehovah to his chosen people, so was the present chastise-
ment love; and so Jeremiah, in contradiction to Isaiah,
prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, and for this he
was persecuted as a traitor and hireling of the Baby-
lonians. But the Prophet was once more right, the
shrewd men of the world wrong; for the latter relied
this time upon Jehovah; had they not been taught
for a century that Jerusalem was impregnable? And
when now destruction came, they said: “ Behold the
prophet has spoken true; that is the hand of Jehovah.”
It is easy to understand the great importance of the
Captivity for the further development and strengthening
of this delusive conception. Without the banishment the
* true yet so wonderfully artificial Judaism would never
have survived. The kings Hezekiah, Josiah and Zede-
kiah had been able to overturn the altars and cut down
the sacred trees, but the people clung to its old sanc-
tuaries; now all at once it was torn away from
every tradition. The sixty years’ sojourn in the Baby-
lonian kingdom cut, so to speak, the thread of history
in two. Not aman who had left the land of his fathers at
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 455

an age when he could form his own judgment, ever
came back. When a single individual leaves his
fatherland for fifty years—aye, even for twenty—he re-
turns home to relations and friends as a stranger among
strangers; he is unable to accommodate himself once
more to the special organic law of the individual growth
of this particular people, especially if he has left
his fatherland in early youth. In this case a whole
nation left its historical home; those who returned
later had been born and brought up, almost without
exception, in the foreign land; there was, perhaps, not
one who consciously remembered Judea. And mean-
while, in Babylon, while the blessed connection with the
past (the relation of child to mother) was broken off,
the embittered zealots among the exiled were brooding
over their fate and making resolves which they could
never have thought of in the land of their home.* It was
in the captivity that specific Judaism had its foundation,
and this was brought about by Ezekiel, a priest of the
family of the High Priest; hence it is that Judaism
has from the very beginning borne the stamp of the
Captivity. Its faith is not the faith of a healthy, free
people that is fighting for its existence in honest rivalry ;
it breathes impotence and thirst for vengeance, and
seeks to blind men to the misery of the moment by fore-
casting an impossible future. The book of Ezekiel is
the most frightful in the Bible; by its employment of
extreme means—horrible threats and the most atrocious
promises—this narrow-minded, abstractly formalistic,
but noble and patriotic spirit | wished to save the much-

* With regard to the incalculably great influence of Babylon upon
all Jewish thought from the first one finds the fullest information in
Eberhard Schrader’s book, Die Ketlinschriften und das Alte Testament,
3rd _ed., revised by Zimmern and Winckler, 1903; a short summary
is found in Winckler’s Die politische Entwickelung Babylonien und
Assyriens, p. 17 f.

+ Splendidly described in chap. xii. of Duhm’s Theologie der Propheten.
Eduard Meyer says in the Enisteiung des Judentums, p. 219, ‘* Ezekiel
456 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

shaken faith of his brothers, and with it the nation,
Up to his time in Israel religion had been, as in Rome,
Greece, Egypt, a fact among other facts of the national
life, and a priesthood a part of the national organisa-
tion. Ezekiel said: ‘‘ No, Israel is not in the world,
to toil and wage war like other peoples, to do work
and to think, but to be the sanctuary of Jehovah; let
it observe Jehovah’s law, and all will be given to it.” The
State was now to be replaced by the rule of the religious
law, the so-called nomocracy. Even Deuteronomy had
admitted that other peoples had other gods; Amos,
as an isolated great mind, had had a vague feeling of the
existence of a cosmic god, who was something more than
the political deus ex machina of a special little nation:
Ezekiel now united both views and invented therefrom
the Jehovah of Judaism, monotheism in a frightful,
distorted form. Of a surety Jehovah is the only and
almighty God, but He lives merely for His own glory ;
sympathetically gracious towards the Jews (for through
them He will proclaim His glory and show His power
under the condition that they devote themselves solely
to His service), but to all other peoples of the earth He is
a cruel God, who will visit them with “ pestilence and
blood,” in order that ‘‘He may become glorious, sacred
and known”! All these other peoples are to be de-
stroyed, and Jehovah commands His prophets to call
together the birds and the animals of the world “ that
they may eat the flesh of the strong and drink the blood
of princes.” Besides this, the book contains the sketch
of the organisation of a hierarchy and of a new straight-
jacket of worship—just the things in regard to which a
prophet living in exile could indulge his imagination,
was manifestly quite an honest nature, but narrow-minded, and
moreover he had grown up in the narrow views of the priesthood, not
to be named in the same breath with the great figures, with whom

he, by the donning of a very threadbare prophet’s mantle, ventured
to put himself side by side.”
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 457

as he could not have done had he stood in the midst of a
national life, where every new statute would have had
to contend with custom and tradition. But not long
after Ezekiel’s death the noble Persian king Cyrus con-
quered the Babylonian Empire. With the simplicity
of the inexperienced Indo-European he permitted the
return of the Jews and gave them a subsidy for the
rebuilding of the temple. Under the protection of
Aryan tolerance the hearth was erected from which, for
tens of centuries a curse to all that is noblest and an
everlasting disgrace to Christianity, Semitic intolerance
was to spread like a poison over the whole earth. Who-
ever wishes to give a clear answer to the question, Who
is the Jew? must never forget the one fact, that the
Jew, thanks to Ezekiel, is the teacher of all intolerance,
of all fanaticism in faith, and of all murder for the sake
of religion; that he only appealed to toleration where
he felt himself oppressed, that he himself, on the other
hand, never practised it nor dared to practise it, for his
law forbade it as it forbids it to-day and will forbid it
to-morrow.

(4) Ezekiel had dreamt, but by the return from cap-
tivity his dream became a reality; his book—not the
history of Israel, not the voices of the great prophets—
was henceforth the ideal according to which Judaism
was organised. And this again could only take place
thanks to the circumstance that the historical process
began with a new generation, in which even the language
of the fathers was forgotten and only the Priests still
understood it.* It was simply due to the coincidence

* Soon after this, more than four hundred years before Christ, the
Hebrew language died out altogether (Paschal: Vélkerkunde, 2nd ed.
P- 532); its adoption once more many centuries later was artificial
and with the object of separating the Jews from their hosts in Europe.
In consequence we find such strange things happen, as for instance
that the French citizens of ‘‘ Jewish belief ’’ can only fill their voting
papers in Hebrew, an achievement of which Judas Maccabzus would
have been incapable! The absolute lack of feeling for language among
458 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

of such unusual circumstances that something became
now possible of which the history of the world gives no
second example; that a few clever and determined
men could force an absolutely fictitious, artificially
thought out, and exceedingly complicated history of
religion and culture upon a whole people under the
guise of time-hallowed tradition. The process is quite
different from that of the Christian councils, where it
was decided that man must believe this and that, on
the ground that it was eternal truth. Dogma in our
sense of the word is foreign to the Jew ; for the material-
istic view which prevails wherever the Semitic spirit
rules even if only, as here, as spivitus rector, every con-
viction must rest on an historical basis. And thus the
new Jehovah-faith, the new rules for the temple-cult,
the many new religious laws,* were introduced as his-
torical things which had been ordained by God of old
and had since then been constantly observed except by
apostate sinners. The beginning was made by Deuter-
onomy before the Captivity ; but that had only been a
timid attempt, and, in fact, not a very successful one in
presence of the still vigorous popular consciousness. Now
the situation was quite changed. In the first place the
Captivity had, as I have already said, cut the historical
thread, and secondly, the exiles who returned consisted
chiefly of two classes: on the one hand of the poorest,
most ignorant and dependent of the people, on the other
of Priests and Levites.t The richer more worldly in-
clined Jews had preferred to remain in the foreign land ;
they felt themselves more comfortable there than in

the Jews to-day is explained by the fact that they are at home in no
language—for a dead language cannot receive new life by command—
and the Hebrew idiom is just as much abused by them as any other.

* Law and religion, one should never forget, are to the Jew synonymous
(see Moses Mendelssohn).

+ Cf. Wellhausen: Israel. und jtid. Geschichte, p. 159. The same
author writes in his Prolegomena, p. 28: ‘‘ From the exile the nation
did not return, but a religious sect only.”
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 459

their own community, but they remained (at least the
majority remained) Jews—partly, doubtless, because
this faith suited them; partly because of the privi-
leges which they knew how to assure to themselves every-
where, among the first of which was exemption from
military service.* It is easy to see how the priesthood
now had both these elements in its hand—the ignorant

* From the standpoint of the philosophy of historywe should certainly
explain this peculiar preference of the Jews for a more or less
parasitic condition, by their long dependence upon Israel. It is at any
rate very noteworthy that the Judeans did not wait for the Captivity
(still less for the so-called scattering) to show their preference for
this life. In a number of cities on the banks of the Tigris and the
Euphrates Israelite seals of older epochs have been found, and already
at the time of Sennacherib, t.e., a hundred years before the first de-
struction of Jerusalem, the greatest banking house in Babylon was
Jewish ; this firm, ‘‘ Egibi brothers,’’ is said to have occupied in the
East a position similar to that of the Rothschilds in Europe. (Cf.
Sayce: Assyria, tts Princes, Priests and People, p. 138.) Ihope we shall
hear no more of the nursery tale that the Jews ‘“‘ by nature” are
peasants and only became usurers in spite of themselves during the
Middle Ages, because they were cut off from every other occupation ;
if we read the prophets carefully we shall see how often they
complain of usury, which serves the rich as a means of ruining
the peasants; we should call to mind the famous passage in the
Talmud ; ‘‘ Whoever has 100 Gulden in commerce can eat flesh every
day and drink wine ; whoever has 100 Gulden in agriculture must eat
herbs and vegetables, and also dig, be wakeful and in addition make
enemies. . . . But we are created that we may serve God; is it then
not right that we should nourish ourselves without pain ?’’ (Herder,
from whom I quote the passage, adds, “‘ Without pain certainly! but
not by fraud and cunning,” Advastea v. 7). We should also read
Nehemiah, chap. v., and see how, when the Jews neglected everything
to build the destroyed temple again, the councillors and priests took
advantage of the solemn moment to practise usury and to sweep in
the “fields, vineyards, olive-groves and houses” of their poorer
comrades among the people. Nothingin the Aryan Medes is sostrange
to the Jews as the fact that they do not “regard silver nor delight
in gold” (Isaiah xiii., 17); and among the most fearful curses with
which Jehovah threatens his people in case of disobedience there is one
which says (Deut. xxviii): ‘‘ that the Jew will no longer lend money
to the stranger’?! We should remember, too, that in the book of
Tobias (about a hundred years before Christ) an angel is sent from
Heaven to enforce the payment of the gold which is invested in the
neighbouring countries at compound interest (chaps. v, and ix.). It should
be mentioned in this connection that already at the time of Solomon
the Jews were the horse-copers of all Syria (Sayce: Huttites, p. 13),
460 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

colonists who were bound by no tradition, and the edu-
cated members of the Diaspora, who were, however, far
removed from the one centre of the cult. And thus the
priesthood set up the artificial structure: Deuteronomy
was completed (especially by the first eleven so effective
historical chapters), then the so-called “ priestly code ”
was made (the whole book of Leviticus, three-fourths of
Numbers, the half of Exodus and about eleven chapters of
Genesis)* ; besides, the historical books of the Old Testa-
ment were collected from various sources and put to-
gether in the form in which they have come down to us,
naturally only after those sources had been revised, ex-
punged and interpolated in order to push the new hiero-
cracy and the new faith in Jehovah together with the new
“Jaw,’”’ under which the poor Jews were henceforth to
groan. This, however, was a work which was beyond
the standard of education at the time, so that contradic-
tions burst forth at all corners and we can see pious caprice
at work through the gaps that are left.t This Thora (z.e.,
Law”) was then gradually completed by selections
from the partly very old didactic literature and by care-
fully worked up collections of the prophetic books, en-
riched by as many vaticinia ex eventibus as possible, but so
stupidly edited that it is only with the most unspeakable
difficulty that we can find out the intention of the

* Cf. Montefiore: Ancient Hebrews, pi 315, and for the detailed
analytic enumeration, Driver: Introduction to the Literature of the Old
Testament (1892), p. 150 (printed in Montefiore’s book, p. 354).

¢ The old Christians knew very well that the Old Testament was
a late and revised piece of work. Thus, for example, in his answer
to the twenty-first question of Heloise, Abelard refers to the Church
historian Beda, who at the beginning of the eighth century wrote as
follows: ‘‘ Ipse Esdvas, qui non solum legem, sed etiam, ut communis
majorum fama est, omnem sacr@ scripture seriem, prout sibt videbatur
legentibus sufficere, vescripsit ; + +’? Thus the most modern “ Biblical
criticism,’ which is so opposed by the Protestant as well as by the
Catholic orthodox theologians, has been promoted simply by thescientific
confirmation of a fact which a thousand years ago was common property
and to which not even the most pious soul took exception.
REE EE SA ry, I ID EES SE NOS. Ame Mea eieoee meg, Newer Sete: RN EE nee
Still, long after the time of Ezra, according to Jewish
tradition, a collegium of a hundred and twenty scribes,
the “great synagogue,” worked at the completion and
revision of the canon; the two books of Chronicles,
for instance, were written two hundred years later,
‘“‘after the fall of the Persian Empire, out of the
midst of Judaism.” * I shall have to return immedi-
ately to this religion of Ezekiel; but first I shall dis-
cuss the fifth and last historical condition, without
which it would never have been able, in spite of all
that had gone before, to obtain a footing.

(5) After the Babylonian captivity the Jews never
again formed an independent nation. Herder has rightly
dwelt upon one profound influence that this fact must
have exercised upon the character of the people: “‘ The
Jewish people was spoiled in its education because it
never attained to the ripeness of political culture on
its own soil, and consequently never to the real feeling
of honour and freedom.” It is impossible to assert
that at first the Jew was organically wanting in the sense
of honour and freedom; his fate, too, would perhaps
not have sufficed to produce such a complete atrophy
of these precious qualities had not that faith been added
which robbed the individual of every freedom and also
completely rooted out the “true feeling of honour”
by refusing to concede honour to other and higher nations.
But the people of the tribe of Judah would never have

* Wellhausen: Prolegomena, p.170. A simple exposition of the
growth of the Old Testament, after the manner of Wellhausen’s Israel.
und jud. Geschichte, is unknown to me. The fundamental work of
Eduard Reuss, Gesch. der hl. Schriften alten Testaments, is planned and
written for scholars, and Zittel, Die Entstehung der Bibel in Reclam’s
series does not at all correspond to the title and does not satisfy even

modest claims, however much interesting matter the book otherwise

contains.
t Ideen zuy Geschichte dey Menschhest, P. III. Bk. 12, Div. 3.
462 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

allowed this faith to be forced upon them if its political
impotence, as a small vassal State endured on suffer-
ance, had not delivered it over bound hand and foot
to its religious teachers. Such short episodes of half
independence as that under Simon Maccabeus only
suffice to show that on entering into the sphere of practi-
cal life this faith, as genuine popular faith, must needs have
undergone profound modifications ; for the Maccabees
originally sprang into prosperity because they (the children
of distant Modin, in what was formerly the Ephraimite
mountains) broke one of the strictest laws, that of the
Sabbath.* How impossible it would have been to enforce
this priestly faith, this priestly cult, this priestly law
upon an independent people, we see from the fact that
it was difficult enough even under the given conditions, and
would not have succeeded but for the vigorous support
of the kings of Babylon. For though the Jews had been
cut off from all traditions, yet neither their neighbours
nor that original and genuinely Canaanite population
which had been left behind in considerable numbers in
Judea met with the same fate. And thus in the first
period after the return they began to form’ connections
again on all sides. The Hittite-Amorite peasants wished,
as worshippers of Jehovah, to take part in the sacrifice
as before; they did not feel, and would not admit, that
Jehovah, the God of their own land, should henceforth
be the monopoly of the Jews; on the other hand, the
well-to-do among those Israelites who returned con-
tracted marriages with the neighbouring peoples, not
minding whether these worshipped Milkom, Moloch
or Baal; just as in our days the nobility, however
Anti-Semitic, like to marry Jewesses, so the members
of the high priestly “caste considered marriage with
an Ammonite or an Edomite “conformable to their
rank,” provided the maiden had sufficient money. How
* Maccabees ii: 414
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 463

under such conditions could the faith, as Ezekiel taught
it, have been imparted and the new law with its countless
prescriptions have become the rule of life? The un-
natural product of an overheated priestly brain would
within a generation have been consigned ad patres. But
the Jews did not form an independent State. They had
returned to Jerusalem under the leadership of a half-
Persian agent, who undoubtedly had definite instructions
to support the priests and on the other hand to put
down every movement of political ambition. As soon as
the religious party saw the work which had just begun
endangered by the events just mentioned, they sent to
Babylon for help. In the first place reinforcements
consisting of priests and scribes were sent; those
were chosen who, with Ezra—‘ the clever scribe ’—at
their head, wished to set up the Thora; they brought
with them also kingly edicts and money.* But even
this did not suffice ; a man of action was needed, and so
the cup-bearer of King Artaxerxes, Nehemiah, was
despatched to Jerusalem, armed with dictatorial power.
Energetic measures were at once taken. Those worshippers
of Jehovah who did not belong officially to the Jewish
people were rejected “with horror”; not faith but
genealogy was henceforth to be the decisive thing; all
Jews who had married non-Jewesses must get a divorce
or emigrate; in the book of Leviticus the law was in-
serted: ‘“‘I have severed you from other people that
ye should be mine” (xx. 26). Henceforth no Jew was

* Ezra brought from the king in money alone £250,000! The
authenticity, or at least essential authenticity, of the Persian docu-
ments quoted by Ezra has in spite of the views of Wellhausen and
others finally been proved by Eduard Meyer: Die Entstehung des
Judentums (1896), pp. 1-71. This settles one of the most important
questions in history. Any one who has read the little but very complete
book of Meyer will understand his conclusions: ‘‘ Judaism originated
in the name of the Persian king and by the authority of his Empire,
and thus the effects of the Empire of the Achemenides extend with
great power, a3 almost nothing else, directly into our present age.”
464 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

to marry outside his people, under penalty of death;
every man who married a foreign woman committed
a sin against God.” * Nehemiah also built high walls
round Jerusalem and put strong gates at the entrances;
then he forbade the stranger to enter, that the people
“might be purified from everything foreign.” Well-
hausen rightly says: “Ezra and Nehemiah became, by
the grace of King Artaxerxes, the definite constructors of
Judaism.” ¢ What Ezekiel founded they completed ;
they forced Judaism on the Jew.

These, then, are in my opinion the five historical
motive powers by which Judaism was rendered possible
and furthered. I shall summarise them once more, to
impress them on the memory; the unexpected, sudden
separation from the more gifted Israel ; the continuance
for a hundred years of the tiny State threatened on all
sides, which could hope for help only from a superhuman
power; the rending of the historical thread and of all
local traditions by the carrying-off of the whole people
from their home into a foreign land ; the reviving of these
associations under a generation which was born abroad
and hardly understood the language of their fathers ;
the condition of political dependence which henceforth
existed, and to which the priesthood owed its dominating
power.

When Ezra for the first time read to the assembled.
people from the new law, which was to be the “law of
Moses,” then “all the people wept when they heard the
words of the law”; this is the account of Nehemiah, and
we can believe it. But it did not help them, for great
Jehovah, ‘‘ powerful and fearful,” had commanded it ; {
and now the so-called ‘“‘ Old Covenant ” was renewed,

* Nehemiah xiii. 27. C}. the beginning of this chapter, p. 333.

+ Israel. u. jid. Gesch., 3rd ed. p. 173.

t According to the Talmud, Jehovah occupies himself on Sunday
with reading the Thora! (Wellhausen: J«r. Gesch., p. 297; Montefiore,

Pp. 461).
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 465

but this time in writing, like a notary’s contract. Every
priest, Levite, and influential man in the country put
his seal under it, also every scribe; they and all other
men, “with their wives, sons and daughters,” had to
“bind themselves by oath to walk in the law of God
that is given by Moses, the servant of God.” * This
was now the ‘‘ New Covenant.” It is probably the first
and last time that in this way a religion originated in
the world! Fortunately, religious instinct still lived
among the people, from the midst of which a short time
before a Jeremiah and a second Isaiah had arisen. Human
nature does not permit itself to be stamped out and dis-
torted without leaving a trace behind, but in this case
all that was possible in that way had been done; and if
in consequence the Jews became generally unpopular, the
reason is solely to be sought in this artificially constructed
and mechanically enforced faith, which gradually grew into
an ineradicable national idea and destroyed in the Jewish
heart the purely human legacy which is common to us
all. In the Canaanite-Israelite nature-cult, quickened
by Semitic seriousness and Amorite idealism, there must
have been many germs promising the finest blossoms ;
how otherwise should we be able to trace such a develop-
ment as that which, starting from the orgiastic dance
around the image of the calf, still common in all Israel
and Judah before the Captivity, leads up to the God of
Amos, who “ despises feast-days ’’ and ‘‘ has no pleasure
in burnt-offerings ” (v. 21, 22), and to the second Isaiah,
who considered every temple building unworthy of God,
to whom sacrifice and incense are “a horror,’ and who
writes the almost Hindoo words: ‘“ He that killeth an
ox is as if he slew a man ” (Isaiah lxvi. 1-3). But hence-
forth all development was broken off. And as I must a
thousand times repeat—for no one says it, and it is the
only thing that has to be said—the only thing that makes
* See Nehemiah, chaps: viii.-xi
I 26
466 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

the position of the Jews among us children of the nine-
teenth century comprehensible—this so-called reform
of Ezra, which in reality signifies the foundation of
Judaism, this reform which became only possible through
the coincidence of the five historical conditions enume-
rated, does not betoken a stage in religious develop-
ment, but is a violent reaction from every development ;
it leaves the tree standing, but cuts away all roots from
below it ; now it may stand and wither, supported by the
13,600 neatly cut stakes of the law, that it may not fall.
When, therefore, so important a scholar as Delitzsch
writes, “‘ The Thora shows how the Mosaic law continued
for a thousand years to develop in the consciousness and
practice of Israel,’ we must offer the objection that the
Thora on the contrary does everything which it can to
mask the process of development which had hitherto
taken place ; that it does not hesitate to utter any lie in
order to represent the law as absolutely stationary, and
fixed since time immemorial, that it gives even such
manifest absurdities as the story of the Tabernacle and
its arrangement ; and we must assert that the Thora is
directed not only against the so-called “idolatry ” (from
which the whole Israelite cult proceeded), but just as
much against the free spirit of genuine religion which
had begun to stir in the Prophets. Not one of these
great men—neither Elijah nor Amos, nor Hosea, nor
Micah, nor Isaiah, nor Jeremiah, nor the second Isaiah
—would have put his seal on that document of the New
Covenant—otherwise he would have had to deny his own
words.

THE PROPHETS

I must pause a moment to discuss the Prophets just
mentioned. For it is particularly from the contrast
between what they aimed at and sought and the teachings
of the Jerusalemite hierocrats that it becomes clear to
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 467

what an extent the Jew was made Jew, artificially made (so
to speak) by the conscious, calculated religious politics of
individual men and individual associations, and in opposi-
tion to all organic development. It is necessary to emphasise
this in order to judge aright the Israelite character, which
in a way was founded in Judaism. In the New Covenant
the observances of the cult have the first place; the
word “sanctity,” which occurs so often, signifies in the
first place absolutely nothing but the strict observance of
all ordinances; * purity of heart is hardly considered, t
‘‘ purity of skin and cleanness of vessels are more import-
ant,” as Reuss says with some exaggeration, and in the
midst of these observances stands as the most sacred of all
—an extraordinarily complicated sacrificial ritual.§ A more
flagrant departure from the prophetic teaching is scarcely
thinkable. Let us see. Hosea had represented God as
saying, ‘‘ I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the know-
ledge of God more than burnt-offerings ” (vi. 6). Amos
I have just quoted (p. 465). Micah writes: ‘‘ Wherewith
shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the
high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves of a year old ? (vi. 6). He hath showed thee,
O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk
humbly with thy God?” (vi. 8). Isaiah expresses
exactly the same thing, but in greater detail, and asif by
a miracle we have a saying of his preserved, in which he

* Montefiore‘ Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 2361

t+ Robertson Smith: Prophets of Israel, p. 424.

t Geschichte der heiligen Schriften Alten Testaments, § 379:

§ Whoever wishes to form an idea of this should read, in addition
to the books of Leviticus, Numbers, &c., the eleven tractates of the
sacrificial ordinances (Kodaschim) in the Babylonian Island (the
Haggadian portions form the fourth volume of the only reliable trans-
lation, that of Winsche). One cannot assert that the Jews have got
rid of this ritual since the destruction of Jerusalem, for they still
study it, and certain things, as killing according to their rites, belong

to it, for which reason an animal killed by a non-Jew is carrion to
the Jew (see Treatise Chullin, fol. 136),
468 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

says, “‘God wishes not for the Sabbath” and “ your new
moons and appointed feasts my soul hateth!” The
people should rather occupy itself with other things,
“learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (i. 13-17).
Jeremiah, in the impetuous manner characteristic of him,
goes still further; he places himself in the doorway of
the temple of Jerusalem and cries out to those that
enter: “Trust ye not in lying words, saying, Here is the
temple of the Lord! Here is the temple of the Lord!
But amend your ways and your doings; execute
judgment between a man and his neighbour; oppress
not the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, and
shed not innocent blood in this place” (¢.e., do not
sacrifice) (vii. 4-6). Jeremiah even wishes to hear no
more of the sacred old ark of the covenant, “‘ neither
shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember
it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be
done any more” (iii. 16). In the Psalms, too, we read:
“For thou desirest not sacrifice; thou delightest not
in burnt-offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit! A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou
wilt not despise ” (li. 18-19).* That all these utterances
are followed by fanatical and national ones, as “ Jeru-
salem is God’s throne and all other gods are idols,” &c.,
shows a narrowness appropriate to the time,t but does
not annul the fact that all these men aimed at a progressive
simplification of the cult and, like the Yoruba negroes
on the Slave coast (see p. 417), declared the sacrifice of
food to be senseless, and demanded the abolition, if
possible, of every service in the temple, like that great
unknown ¢ who represents God as saying, “‘ The Heaven

* See also xl. 7 and li 13.
+ It has been proved that almost all these passages are interpolations

of a later time.
t See Cheyne’s Introduction to the Book of Isatah (1895), and Duhm’s
Jesaia (1892), for information about the writer of chaps. xl-lv. of the
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 469

is my throne and the earth is my footstool; where is
the house that ye build unto me? Or what is the place of
my rest? .. . but to this man will I look, even to him
who is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my
word ” (Ixvi. 1, 2). The contrast to the commandments
of the Thora which were soon afterwards introduced
could hardly be greater. The whole tendency of the
Prophets, as we see, is directed to inculcating the piety
of the heart ; not he who sacrifices, but he who does good,
not he who observes the Sabbath, but he who protects
the oppressed, is in their opinion good.. One must also
notice that in the case of the Prophets nationalism nowhere
(except in the later interpolations) has the dogmatic and
inhuman character of the later official faith. Amos, a
noble man whom the great synagogue has cruelly used,
makes perhaps the only humorous remark which the
whole literature of the Bible contains: ‘‘ Are ye not as
children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel ?
said the Lord” (ix. 7). And he expresses the opinion
that just as God led the Israelites out of Egypt, so He
brought the Philistines out of Caphthor and the Syrians
out of Kir. Micah writes with the same tolerance:
“For all people will walk, every one, in the name of his
God, and we will walk in the name of our God ” (iv. 5).
The second Isaiah, the only real and conscious monotheist,
simply says : “ God of the whole earth He shall be called ””
(liv. 5). Here too, therefore, a direction is clearly marked
out, which later was violently departed from. But at
the same time that promising tendency, those longings
and attempts to find a less historical and more genuine

Book of Isaiah, usually designated the Second Isaiah or Deutero-
Isaiah, the only one who now and again reminds one of Christ and
whose name the Jews, in characteristic fashion, forgot as soon as he
died, though in all other cases they follow genealogy till the hundreth
generation. The second Isaiah wrote during the second half of the
exile, hence a century and a half later than the historical Isaiah.
Cheyne is of opinion that chaps. lvi.-Ixvi,, which are mostly ascribed
to the second Isaiah, were really writtea by a still later author.
470 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

religion—a religion of the individual soul in contrast
to faith in national destinies—were nipped in the bud;
naturally this tendency sprang up anew again and again
in many individual hearts, but it could not inspire
with life the organism which the priestly code had para-
lysed, there was no longer room for development,
And yet Jeremiah had made important steps in this
direction ; he (or some other in his name) had represented
God as saying, “‘I the Lord search the heart, I try the
reins, even to give to every man according to his ways”
(xvii. Io). Yes, in absolute contrast to the Judaic
justification by works, which the Roman Catholic Church
adopted from the Jews, we seem to see a faint glimmer
of the conception of grace when Jeremiah fervently cries
out, “‘ Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed! Save me,
and I shall be saved!” (xvii. 14.) And with the second
Isaiah’s beautiful verse, in which God says, “‘ My thoughts
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”
we stand on the threshold of a transcendental mystery
where the true religion of the Indian and of Jesus Christ
begins. With what justice does the theologian Duhm
say that the writers of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel, and
with them Judaism, to the present day, stand “in point
of religion and morals far beneath Jeremiah!” *

But it seems to me more than doubtful whether the
common Semitic qualities, which reveal themselves in

* Duhm: Die Theologie des Propheten, p. 251. Jeremiah’s divina-
tion of grace disappeared immediately, never to return again; even the
noblest, most talented Jews, like Jesus Sirach, teach that ‘‘ whoever
knows the law is virtuous’’; God has created man and then “ left
him to his own counsel”; from this we can logically draw as conclusion
the doctrine of absolute freedom of will, destitute of all divine assistance :
“Before man stand life and death, he can choose what he will; . .
if thou wilt, thou canst keep the law”’ (see, for example, Ecclesiasticus
xv. 12-15). The Essenes alone form an exception, for according to
Josephus they taught the doctrine of predestination (Jud. Altertimer,
s20); this sect, however, was never recognised but persecuted, and

presumably counted few real Jews among its number ; it isan ephemeral
thing without influence,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 471

these pre-eminent men, would have produced much
religion in our sense of the word ; for as these quotations
(with the exception of the two last) prove, it is always
morals that the Prophets oppose to cult, not a new or
reformed ideal of religion.* The Israelite prophets (in
addition to whom we must reckon some Psalmists) are
great by their moral greatness, not by creative power ;
in this they reveal themselves as essentially Semites—in
whom the will is always supreme—and their influence
in the purely religious sphere is to a great extent
merely a reaction from the Canaanite cult ascribed to
Moses, and introduced nothing in its place. But to
believe that one can take from the people one cult
without replacing it by another shows but little
insight into the human character; just as little as it
testifies to religious understanding, when the Prophets
imagined that faith in a God who had never been con-
ceived and never represented, who revealed himself only
in political events, and who must be served with good
deeds and humility alone, could satisfy even the most
modest demands of the imagination. It was in fact
through the sublimity of prophetic feeling, through the
passionate glow of prophetic words, that one of those
materialistic Syro-Semitic peoples, poor in religious con-
ceptions, first received the revelation of the gulf between
God and man, and now this gulf yawned threateningly,
and not the slightest attempt was made to bridge it over.
And yet what constitutes the essence of religion if not the
bridging over of this gulf? All else is philosophy or
morals. We are consequently justified in calling the

* This is still truer of such later phenomena as Jesus Sirach, who,
generally speaking, are content with giving very wise, noble rules of
life: one must not strive after riches, but generosity, not knowledge,
but wisdom, &c. (xxix, xxxi., &c.). The only attempt (and it was
owing to Greek influence) on the part of the Jewish spirit to attain
to the metaphysical, had a poor ending: the so-called “ preacher
Solomon” has no better advice to give than that we should think of
to-day and enjoy our works—" all is vanity |"
472 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

mythology of Greece a religion, for by furnishing con-
ceptions it brings us nearer the Divine.* © Not the thought
of a God, who has created heaven and earth, but the para-
clete hovering between Him and me, represents the essen-
tial purport of all religion. Mohammed is scarcely less
than Allah, and Christ is God himself, descended upon
the earth. And here we must admit that Isaiah, who
placarded his prophecies at the street corners ; Jeremiah,
the acutest politician of his time; the second Isaiah, the
venerable, lovable figure from the Babylonian captivity ;
and Amos, the landed proprietor, who saw a national
danger in the corruption of the leading grades of society ;
Hosea, who considered the priests even more dangerous ;
Micah, the Socialist Democratic peasant, who wishes to wipe
out cities (except Jerusalem) from the face of the earth ;—
these are splendid men, in whom we note with delight
how strong in faith and at the same time generous, how
noble, how vigorously the Israelite spirit moved before
it was bound hand and foot, yet they are by no means
religious geniuses. If they had had that power which
they did not possess, their people would have been spared
their bitter fate; the people would not have needed
to weep “ when it heard the words of the law.”

THE RaBBIs

-~ What the Prophets had failed to accomplish was

achieved by the priests and scribes. They arranged the
connection between God and man by fixing an invented
but exact historical tradition, by the retention and
further development of the sacrificial service and above
all by the so-called “law,” that is, by hundreds of

* It is not unimportant to note here how much more insight into
the essence of religious need is shown by a Socrates, who taught
that not the sacrifice and its costliness pleased the gods, but the
innermost feelings of the sacrificer, though he at the same time con-

sidered the offering of the usual sacrifices a3 @ duty (*enophon: Memo-
rabilia js 3), Similarly Jesus Christ,
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 473

directions which hedged in every step of a man the
whole day long, and continually accompanied him through
all seasons—in the field, at home, asleep and awake,
eating and drinking. According to the Talmud tradi-
tion, in the days of mourning for the death of Moses
three thousand such ordinances were forgotten; * that
marks the tendency. The manifest purpose was to keep
the thought of God continually alive among the people,
and at the same time the thought that they were the
chosen of God and of faith in their own future. The
object was noble enough, as every one who judges im-
partially must admit, and it may well be that this Dra-
conian rule had a more moral life as its result, and that
thousands of good souls lived contented and happy in
the fulfilment of the law; and yet what happened here
was a stroke of violence against nature. It is contrary
to nature to hem in every step of a man; contrary to
nature to plague a whole people with priestly subtleties, f
and to forbid it all healthy, free, intellectual nourishment ;
contrary to nature to teach pride, hatred and isolation
as the bases of our moral relations to our fellow-men ;
contrary to nature to transfer all our efforts from the
present to the future. To establish Judaism, a religion
was killed, and then mummified. =,

Ambrosius praises in the religious doctrine of the Jews
especially “the victory of reason over feeling.” { The
word reason is perhaps not very happily chosen, Will
would be nearer the point ; but he is quite right in regard
to the subjection of the feelings, and he here says in
simple forra something of so great significance that his

* Treatise Themuva, fol. 16a (Winsche):

+ According to the testimony of a contemporary Jew, Rubens,
Dey alte und dey neue Glaube (Zurich, 1878, p. 79), the Jew who lives
according to the ordinances needs ‘‘ about half the day for religion alone.”’
God wished, says Rabbi Chanania ben Akasiah, to give Israel oppor-
tunity to do good service, therefore he imposed on it a mass of ruleg
and observances,

{ In his work Von den Pflichten dey Kivchendiener i. 1193
474 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

words will spare me considerable discussion. But who-
ever wishes to know to what this subjugation of the
feelings leads in the case of a religion should study the
history of the Rabbis and attempt to read through some
of the fragments of the Talmud. He will meet noble
Rabbis and in the Talmud more praiseworthy rules for
aman’s daily walk and life (especially in the treatise Pirke
Aboth, 7.e., sayings of the fathers) than he perhaps expects,
but the whole literature of the world has nothing to show
that is so dreary, so childishly wearisome, so composed of
the desert sand of absolute sterility, as this collection of
the wisest discussions which were held among Jews for
centuries concerning the Thora.* And this spiritless

* Examples teach more than differences of opinion. In regard to
the belief in God’s almightiness: ‘‘ Rabbi Janai was so afraid of insects
that he placed four vessels with water under the feet of his bed. Once
he stretched out his hand and found insects in the bed; then he said
with reference to Psalm cxvi. 6: Lift the bed from the vessels, I rely
on divine protection” (Terumoth viii. 3, 30a). In regard to Biblical
exegesis : ‘‘ Rabbi Ismael has taught’’—we find it in Leviticus xiv. 9—
“on the seventh day he shall shave all his hair off his head and
beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off”; all
his hair, that is general; his head, his beard, his eyebrows, that is
special, and his hair, that is again general. In the case of general,
special and general the rule is that you can only render that which is
like to the special, t.e., a3 the special is a place which embraces in itself
such a collection of hairs” (Kidduschin i. 2, 9a). In regard to the
law: ‘‘ Rabbi Pinchas came to a place where the people complained
to him that the mice devoured their grain. He accustomed the mice
to listen to his call; they assembled before him and began to squeak.
Do you understand, said the Rabbi to the people, what they are
saying ? No, was their answer. They say, in fact, that you do not
give a tithe of their grain. Thereupon the people said, we are grateful
to you for leading us into better paths. Since then the mice did no
more damage”’ (Demaz i. 3, 3b). In regard to knowledge of nature:
“‘ According to Rabbi Judah the thickness of the heavens amounts to
a journey of fifty years, and since a man of ordinary strength can go
in one day 4o miles and, till the sun breaks through the sky, 4 miles,
so one can conclude that the time of the breaking through the sky
amounts to the tenth part of a day. But as thick as the sky is also
the earth and the abyss. The proof (!) is got from Isaiah xl. 20., Ht.
xxii. 14 and Prov. viii. 27°’ (Bevachoth i. 1, 4b). In regard to daily
life: ‘Rabbi bar Huna did not breakfast till he had brought his
child to school’”’ (Kidduschin Div. 1). That one finds many a fine
saying amid the rubbish of the Talmud must, on the other hand, be
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 475

product was held more sacred by later Jews than the
Bible ! (Treatise Pea ii. 5). Indeed, they had the imper-
tinence to say, “The words of the elders are more im-
portant than the words of the Prophets”! (Treatise Bera-

emphasised, but with the addition that these sayings refer only to
morals; these collections do not contain beautiful thoughts, in fact
almost nothing that has any family resemblance to a thought. And
the fine moral sayings, too, are often like the poems of Heine: the end
spoils the beginning. An example: “A man should sow peace with
his brothers and relatives and with every one, even with the stranger
upon the street ’’—up to this point no minister in the pulpit could
give better advice: but now the reason, that is usually the weak
point with the Jews (see p. 453): ‘‘ that we may be beloved in heaven
and liked on earth” (Bevachoth, fol. 17a). Or again, we read with
pleasure, ‘‘ Let a man take heed of the honour of his wife, for blessing
is found in the house of a man only because of his wife ’’—in truth
not quite correct, but these words testify to a sentiment which we
gladly hear expressed; but here again the conclusion: ‘‘ Honour
your wives, that you may become rich!” (Baba Mezia, fol. 59a).
However it must also be mentioned that besides the beautiful moral
sayings there are very ugly and abominable ones; as, for example,
that a Jew cannot transgress the seventh Commandment with a non-
Jewess : ‘‘ For the heathen have no lawfully wedded wife, they are not
really their wives’’ (Sanhedrin, fol. 52b and 82a). I give intentionally
only one example, in order that the reader may see the tone, that
suffices: ab uno disce omnes. Of course there are Rabbis who dispute
this fearful doctrine; but where the Rabbis contradict each other,
the Jew can choose for himself, and no casuistry can annul the fact
that this contempt for the non-Jew is one of the bases of the Jewish
faith ; it follows logically from their insane over-estimation of them-
selves; they represent Jehovah as calling to them “‘ ye are gods”
(Psalms \xxxii. 6). Other interpretations, too, of the Ten Command-
ments show how the idea of morality was only skin-deep in the Semitic
Hittites; thus the Rabbis (Sanhedrin, fol. 86a) utter the doctrine:
“the words of the eighth Commandment, ‘ thou shalt not steal,’ refer
according to the script only to man-stealing’” !—and as another
passage quoted by scribes of greater moral sentiment says, ‘“ thou
shalt not steal” (Leviticus xix. 11), and refers expressly to the Israelites
“the one from the other,” so in this case, too, the simple moral command
leads to an ocean of casuistry; the Talmud does not indeed teach
(as far as I could find from the fragments at my disposal) that ‘‘ thou
mayest rob the non-Jew,” but it nowhere teaches the opposite. Fearful,
too, are the many precepts in the Talmud concerning the persecution
and the destruction of the unorthodox Jews: how individuals are to
be stoned and the people executed with the sword, and still more
frightful are the descriptions of the tortures and executions which
this equally dismal and spiritless book expatiates upon with pleasure ;
hete too only one example; “ The criminal is placed jn dirt up to tha
476 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

choth, i. 4). So surely had the new covenant led them
on the downward religious path. In the “ bottomless
sea,” as they themselves call the Babylonian Island, their
nobler religious sentiments were drowned for ever.*

knees ; a hard clothisthen laid in asoft one and wrapped round his
neck; the one witness pulls the one end towards himself and the
other the other, till the prisoner opens his mouth. In the meantime the
lead is heated and poured into his mouth so that it enters his vitals
and burns them up” (Sanhedrin, fol. 52a). Then there are learned
discussions about such things in the Talmud, thus the extremely pious
Rabbi Jehuda thinks it would be advisable to open the poor man’s
mouth with pincers and to pour the lead down quickly, otherwise he
might die of strangulation and then his soul would not be consumed
with his body.

This is what one comes to with ‘‘ the subjection of the feelings to
the reason!” 3

There is not even yet a complete translation of the Talmuds Many
have concluded from this that it must contain things that are fearful
and dangerous to the Goyim; it is asserted that it is the Jews who
hitherto frustrated every attempt at a complete translation, a suspicion
by which they feel themselves greatly flattered. The historian Graetz
grows angry with those of his people who “‘ reveal the weaknesses of
Judaism to the eyes of Christian readers,” and mutters terrible things
about certain writings of Spanish Jews, in which the “‘ weaknesses
of the Christian articles of faith and sacraments are so openly repre-
sented that one cannot venture to explain the purport wherever
Christianity is the prevailing religion” (iii. 8). Now we are not so
delicate and sensitive, such ‘‘revelations’’ are indifferent to us;
if the Jews keep their literary products secret, that is their
business ; but tragical suspicion is out of place, it is merely a question
of a feeling of shame easy to understand. (All the above quoted passages
are taken from the only reliable translation, that of Dr. Wiinsche,
which has been revised by two Rabbis: Der jerusalemische Talmud,
Zirich, 1880, and Der babylonische Talmud, Leipzig, 1886-1889 ; only
the quotation concerning Rabbi bar Huna is from Seligman Griinwald’s
collection of Talmudic sayings in the Jewish Universal-Bibliothek. Ct.,
further, Strack, Einleitung in den Talmud, No. 2 of the writings of the
Jewish Institute in Berlin, where one will find a complete enumeration
of all the fragments translated, p.106f. Much clearer and less pedantic
is the supplement on the Talmud in the excellent little book of William
Rubens, Der alte und der neue Glaube im Judentum, 1878.

* To this day every orthodox Jew regards the Rabbinical ordinances
as divine and holds fast to the Talmudic sentence: ‘‘ If the Rabbis
call left right and right left, you must believe it’’ (see the book of the
anti-Rabbinical Jew, Dr. William Rubens, p. 79}, Theclose connection
with Jesuitism (see next chapter) is here as in many other things very
obvious.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 477

THE MESSIANIC Hope

All this, however, represents as it were the negative
element in the founding of Judaism: of the beautiful
legacy—simple and lively memories and popular tales of
the Hebrews, impressive religious ordinances belonging to
the Canaanites, as also many customs such as the Sabbath
which rested on Sumero-Accadian influence and were all
common to Western Asiatics—of this legacy the priests
had made a rigid law; by art of magic * they had trans-
formed warm blood into cold metal, and of this they
had forged a vice for the soul—an instrument of torture
like the iron maid at Niirnberg ; they had tied the arteries
of spontaneous feeling, or “ of the feelings,’ as Ambrosius
says—the arteries of the instinctive creative activity
of a people, by which its faith, its customs, its thoughts,
adapt themselves to changing times and by new forma-
tions arouse to new life what is eternally true in the old;
but their work would have had no permanence if it had
halted half-way and been content with this negative
element. If in physiological experiments we cut the
connection between brain and heart, we have to arrange
for artificial breathing or the functions of life cease ;
this the priestly founders of religion did by the introduc-
tion of the Messianic kingdom of the future.

I have frequently demonstrated,f and shall not do so
again, that a materialistic philosophy is necessarily based
on an historical view of things, and moreover, that history,
wherever it serves as the basis of a religion, must neces-
sarily embrace the future as well as the present and the
past. It is therefore beyond all doubt that thoughts of

* It is known that Cabal is a Jewish word and a Jewish thing;
The impulse common to all men, which in our case leads to mysticism,
leads in the case of the Semite to magic. Always and everywhere the
rule of blind will !

+t Pp. 229, 244 note, 419, 421 fi, 440, &c.
478 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

the future formed a very old element of the Hebraic
legacy. But how modest, how natural, how completely
within the limits of the possible and actual! Canaan
alone presented Jehovah to the Israelites, for he was
the God of Canaan alone; apart from many unavoidable
feuds, until the captivity, the tribe of Judah lived, just
like the other tribes, on the best terms with its neigh-
bours; there are immigrations and emigrations (see the
book of Ruth); the God of the country where a man
settles is adopted as a matter of course (Ruth i. 15, 16) ;
the national pride is scarcely greater than in France or
Germany to-day. Of course the future is more definite
to the Prophets, in harmony with their other ideas and
particularly in view of the extremely dangerous political
situation (for Prophets arose only in times of political
crisis, never in peace) ; * as a foilto the moral admonitions
and threatened punishments, which form almost the whole
purport of their proclamations, they required a bright
picture of blessings which would fall to a pious, God-fear-
ing people, but in the genuine writings of the Prophets
before the exile there is never a word of universal empire.
Even Isaiah does not go farther than the idea that Jeru-
salem is impregnable and that punishment will fall upon
his enemies ; then, in the “ sure dwelling,” “‘ salvation,
wisdom, prudence, and fear of the Lord will be the treasure
of the inhabitants,” and as an especial blessing the great
man seems to foresee that “‘ at that time there will be no
scribes”! I have the support of the greatest living
authority when I assert that the conception of an es-
pecial sanctity of the Jewish people—that conception
which is the basis of Jewish faith—was quite unknown
to Isaiah.t All those passages—as, for instance, chap.
iv. 3, ‘‘He that is left in Zion shall be called holy”;

* Wellhausen (from Montefiore, p. 154}.
+ See, for instance, chap. xxxiii.
¢ Cheyne: Introduction to Isaiah (ed: 1895), pp. 27 and 534
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 479

chap. Ixii. 12, “‘ And they shall call them the holy people,”
&c.—have been proved to be late interpolations, that is to
say, the work of the great synagogues already named ; the
language of a much later century which no longer freely
mastered the Hebrew has betrayed the pious forgers.
Invented are also almost all those ‘“ consoling additions ”
which are found after most of the threats of Amos, Hosea,
Micah, Isaiah, &c.,* and absolutely forged, from the first
to the last word, are such chapters as Isaiah Ix., that
famous Messianic prophecy, according to which all the
kings of the world will lie in the dust before the Jews,
and the doors of Jerusalem be open day and night in
order that the treasures f of all people may be carried in.
The genuine Isaiah promised his people “wisdom and
prudence ” as their reward, the ideal of the still greater
second Isaiah (the one who would have neither sacrifice nor
temple) was that Judah should be the servant of God,
called to bring consolation everywhere to the weary, the
blind, the poor and the heavily laden. But now things
had changed; the curse of God is henceforth to smite
him who maintains that “the house of Judah is like
unto all the heathen” (Ezekiel xxv. 8), for it shall be a
“kingdom of priests” (Exodus xix. 6).{ The Jews were
now promised the possession of all treasures of the world,
particularly of all gold and all silver.§ “Thy people .
shall inherit the land for ever”? (Isaiah lx. 21); that is
henceforth the future which is held out to the Jews. In
humility he shall bow before God, but not in that inner
humility, of which Christ speaks—he bows the head before
Jehovah, because of the promise that by the fulfilment

* Cheyne in his Introduction to Robertson Smith: Prophets of Israel,
p. xv. f.

+ Luther has “ might” by mistake.

t~ Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs, pp: 93 and 97, proves
that the passage xix. 3-9 is an interpolation of post-Deuteronomic time.

§ Isaiah, the whole of chap. xl. See, too, the postexilic Prophet
Haggai, who promises to the Jews “the treasures of all Heathens” :
“ The silver is mine, the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (ii. 8, 9).
480 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIiXtH CENTURY

of this condition he will put his foot upon the neck of
all the nations of the world and be Lord and possessor
of the whole earth.* This one basis of Jewish religion
includes, therefore, a direct criminal attempt upon all
the peoples of the earth, and the crime cannot be dis-
avowed because hitherto the power has been lacking to carry
it out; for it is the hope itself which is criminal and
which poisons the heart of the Jew.f To the misunder-
standing and intentional falsification of the Prophets
were added other dreams of the future, which, however,
were no better. From the Persians the Jews had during
their captivity for the first time heard vague tales of an
immortality and a future life; they had also heard of
angels and devils, heaven and hell.{ On this basis there
was now produced an enormous apocalyptic literature of
which the book of Daniel, in spite of its senseless mystery-
mongering, would give a much too favourable idea,
which dealt with the end of the world, the resurrection
of the just, &c., without in any way idealising the Mes-
sianic hopes; at the best it is a case of a resurrection
of the body, which shall give support to the dubious

* Theabsurdity of the idea, that this religion is thestem of Christianity,
Christianity its blossom, must be manifest to the most prejudiced.

+ The Jewish apologists reply that they obey the law, not “‘ because itis
by thesemeans that they are toattain to empire, but because Jehovahcom-
mands it; that Jehovah gives the world to the Jews as one sacred people
is done to his own honour not theirs.’ But this seems to me pure contemp-
tible casuistry. A reliable author, Montefiore, says literally, “‘ Beyond
question the argument—‘ obey the law, for it will pay you ’—forms
the chief and fundamental motive in Deuteronomy” (p. 531). That
countless Jews are pious men who fulfil the law and lead a pure noble
life, without thinking of reward, only proves that here as elsewhere
morals and religion do not go together and that in the whole world
there are men who are very much better than their faith. But even
to-day fairly free-thinking Jews still write: “The existence of
Judaism depends upon the clinging to the Messianic hope ”’—the
definite expectation of world empire thus still forms the soul of Judaism
(cf. above, p. 334).

+ In connection with the borrowing of Zoroastric (half-understood}
conceptions by the founders of Judaism, see Montefiore: Religion of
the Ancient Hebrews, pp. 373, 429, 453, &cs
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 481

assurance *! to-day you must obey the law and later
you will receive your reward”’ (Talmud, Treatise Eru-
bin, Div. 2), and this Jewish ‘‘ Kingdom of God ”’ will,
as one of the most eminent of Israelite thinkers, Saadia
(tenth century), assures us, “be a kingdom on earth.’
The quotation from the Apok. of Baruch, on p. 425,
shows what was the Jewish idea of this future world ;
it differed from the world of to-day almost solely in
the predominant position of the Jewish nation. An
interesting trace of this view has by mistake found its
way even into the New Testament. According to
Matthew the twelve apostles, seated on twelve thrones,
will judge the twelve tribes of Israel, which of course
assumes that no others than Jews enter into heaven.*
Thus the invented and utterly falsified past is
completed by an equally fictitious, Utopian future, and
so the Jew, in spite of the materialism of his religion,
hovers between dreams and delusions. The mirage
of the desert of their fathers conjures up by magic for
these half-Semites sweet consolation for their tragic
destiny—an airy, empty and delusive consolation; but
by the strength of their will—called faith—it is a suff-
ciently vigorous living power, and indeed often a dan-
gerous one for others. The power of the idea triumphs
here in an alarming fashion; in a people with good
capacities but not pre-eminent physically or mentally
it produces the delusive idea of a particular selectness, of
a special pleasantness in the sight of God, of an incom-
parable future; it isolates them in an insane pride from
all the nations of the earth; forces upon them, as laid

* Matthew xix. 28; Luke xxii. 30. This utterance put in the
mouth of Christ directly contradicts what is said in Matthew xx. 23.
The clinging to the twelve tribes also, although for more than five
hundred years there were only two, is genuinely Rabbinical. The
Rabbis, too, expressly teach the doctrine: “‘ The non-Jews are as
such precluded from admission to a future world” (cf. Laible: Jesus
Christus im Talmud, p. 53). Concerning the Messianic expectations,
see chap. iii. p. 235 note.

J 2H
482 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XI XtH CENTURY

down by God, a law which is senseless, unreasonable,
and impossible in practice ; it nourishes them with lying
memories and lulls them with criminal hopes ;—and,
while it thus raises this people in its own conceit to giddy
Babel-like heights, it in truth depresses their souls
deeply, weighing so heavily upon their best qualities,
isolating them from suffering, striving and creating
humanity, confirming them hopelessly in the most un-
fortunate fixed ideas, and making them in every form (from
the extremest orthodoxy to outspoken free-thinking) so
inevitably the enemy, open or secret, of every other human
being, and a danger to every culture, that at all times
and places it has inspired the deepest mistrust in the most
highly gifted, and horror in the unerring instincts of the
common people. I said just now that orthodoxy and
free-thinking could be regarded by us as equivalents here,
in fact the question to-day is not so much what a Jew
believes as what, to use a paradoxical antithesis, he can
believe or is capable of believing. Intellectual endow-
ments and morality are individual qualities. The
Jew is, like other men, shrewd or stupid, good or bad;
whoever denies that is not worth talking to; but there
is something which is not individual, namely, les plis de la
pensée, aS the Frenchman says, the inborn tendencies of
thought and action, the definite bent, which the mind
takes from the habits of generations.* And thus we
see to-day Jewish atheists of the most modern type who,
by their tendency to regard senseless hypotheses or mere
makeshift conceptions of science as material, actual facts,
by their total incapacity to rise above the narrow his-
torical standpoint, by their talent for planning impossible

* If we reckon twenty-four years as a generation, which is not
exaggerated considering how soon the Jews are mature, the Jew of to-
day belongs on an average to the hundredth generation since the return
from Babylon and the founding of Judaism. That holds of the male
line of descent; an unbroken female line would be in about the one
hundred and fiftieth generation.
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 483

socialistic and economic Messianic empires without
inquiring whether they thereby destroy the whole of
the civilisation and culture which we have so slowly
acquired, by their childish belief that with decrees and
laws the souls of the people can be changed from to-day
to to-morrow, by their lack of understanding for every-
thing genuinely great outside the narrow limits of their
own circle of thought, and by their ridiculous over-
estimation of every Lilliiputian intellectual work which has
a Jew for its author—we see, I say, such so-called free-
thinkers who prove themselves to be genuine children
of the religion of the Thora and the Talmud in a much
more thorough and striking fashion than many a pious
Rabbi who exercises the lofty virtues of humility and
obedience to the law, united with love to neighbour, sym-
pathy with the poor, tolerance towards the Gentiles,
and lives in such a way that he would be an honour to
any nation and a glory to any religion.

THe Law

Now in spite of all, there is greatness in the specifically
Jewish theory of life, and I have already hinted in a former
part of the chapter what makes this greatness (see p.
390 f.). Even if, as Robertson Smith assures us, the
purely pecuniary interests of the priestly noble caste and
their political ambition may have weighed in the momen-
tous decision to centralise the cult in the one city Jeru-
salem,* yet I am convinced that barren, critical
minds always attach far too much importance to such
considerations. We cannot, by purely egoistic considera-
tion of interests, found a nation which survives being
scattered; such a belief is an error of judgment.f

* Prophets of Isvael, p- 3654

+ A really classical example of this so-called critical but in reality
just as uncritical as inappreciative method is seen in Professor Hermann
Oldenberg’s Religion des Veda, where the symbolism and the mysticism
of the Hindoos are represented continuously as priestly swindle !
484 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

Neither can we see that Ezekiel, Ezra and Nehemiah,
who bore the burden and the danger, had any personal
advantage in the matter. In fact idealism was required
to leave Babylon for Jerusalem; the more luxurious,
worldly-minded men remained in the metropolis on
the Euphrates. In aftertimes too the Jew was always
better off abroad than at home, and the Rabbi who
earned his scanty livelihood by tailoring and cobbling
and then devoted all his leisure hours to the study of
the script, to teaching and discussion, was anything
but a pursuer of pecuniary interests. An egoist cer-
tainly, a fanatical egoist, but only for his nation, not
for himself personally. Here, therefore, as everywhere
the ideal sentiment is the only one which has power
to create and to maintain, and even the religion of materi-
alism rests upon it. These men forged; that is beyond
question. And forging history is in a sense worse than
forging cheques ; its consequences may be immeasurable ;
the many millions who were massacred by or for Christi-
anity,* as well as the many Jews who died for their faith,
are all victims of the forgeries of Ezra and the great syna-
gogue. _But we cannot suspect the motives of these men.
They acted in the greatest despair ; they wished to accom-
plish the impossible—to save their nation from downfall.
Certainly a noble goal! They could conquer only by the
employment of the most extreme means. It was a
_delusive but not an ignoble aim, for above all they wished
to serve their God. “I shall be sanctified in the
sight of the heathen” (Ezekiel xxviii. 25); “this
people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth
my praise” (Isaiah xliii. 21, postexilic interpolation).
If the Jewish people disappeared, Jehovah remained
behind unhonoured. That the founders of Judaism

* Voltaire in his article Dieu et les hommes gives a detailed calculation,
according to which ten million human beings fell victims to the Christian
Church doctrine, but everywhere he has reduced the numbers very
much, sometimes by half, so as not to be charged with exaggeration. |
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 485

thought so purely and unselfishly, that they raised their
eyes to a God, was the source of their strength. The
idea of isolating the nation by forbidding mixed marriages,
and of rearing a noble race from the hopelessly mongrel
Israelite, is nothing if not brilliant ; equally so the idea
of representing the purity of the race as an historical
legacy, as the special, characteristic feature of the Jew.
In this connection the whole law should be mentioned ;
for it was by this law that they succeeded in banishing
every thought but the thought of Jehovah in making
the people really “sacred” in the Semitic sense. A
Jewish writer informs us that “for the Sabbath alone
there are thirty-nine chapters of forbidden occupations,
and every chapter had sub-divisions ad infinitum.” *
Moses is said to have been taught three hundred and
sixty-five prohibitions and two hundred and sixty-four
commands on Mount Sinai,f and this only provides
the preliminary scaffolding for the detailed “law.”
Montefiore asserts also that the obeying of the law had
soon become with the Jew the ruling thought to such an
extent that it was for him the summum bonum, the best,
noblest and sweetest occupation in the world.{ While
memory and taste were thus paralysed, the faculty of
judgment was simply broken by the law; a poor woman
who on the Sabbath gathered dry wood for her fire
committed, by this transgression of the law, as great a

* Montefiore ; Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, pi 504)

+ Talmud, Treatise Maccoth, Div. 3 (according to Grinwald)/

t Montefiore, p. 530. ‘‘ The huge number of ceremonial prescriptions
is the high privilege of Israel,’ says the Talmud (Montefiore, p. 535),
and in Lamentations (falsely ascribed to Jeremiah) we read: “It is
good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He putteth his
mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope” (iii. 27, 29). For
the opposite view one should read the beautiful remarks in Kant’s
Anthropologie, § 10 4, concerning religious obligations, in which the
great thinker expresses the opinion that nothing is more difficult for
a sensible man than “the commands of a bustling do-nothingness
(Nichts-thuevei), such as those which Judaism established.”
486 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

crime as if she had broken her marriage vow.* ... I
say, therefore, that the men who founded Judaism were not
impelled by evil, selfish motives, but goaded on by a
demoniacal power, such as only honest fanatics can
possess; for the terrible work which they completed
is perfect in every point.

THE THORA

The everlasting monument of this perfection is their
Thora, the books of the Old Testament. Here history
again shapes history! What scientific work could ever
hope to exercise such an influence upon the life of
humanity? It has frequently been asserted that the
Jew lacks imaginative power; the study of this remark-
able book must teach us something different. At least
they acquired this power in their direst need and created
a true work of art, for in this history of the world, which
begins with the creation of heaven and earth, to end
with the future kingdom of God upon earth, all perspec-
tive relations serve to emphasise especially the one
central thing—the Jewish people. And wherein lies the
strength of this people—that vigour which so far has
successfully defied every destiny—wherein, if not in
this book ? We have learned that the Israelites in former
times were in no way distinguished from the neighbouring
Hebrew races ; we saw in the Syrian-Hittites an exceed-
ingly hardy but remarkably ‘‘ anonymous ’”’ human type
without physiognomy, the nose being more prominent
than anything else. And the Judeans? They were so
unwarlike, so unreliable as soldiers, that their king had
to entrust the country and his person to the protection
of mercenary troops ; they had so little enterprise that

* According to the law (see ae, XV. 32-36) she must be punished
with deaths
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 487

the Phoenicians, had attained such brilliant fortunes,
frightened them ; so little capacity for industry that for
every undertaking artists and overseers, and for the finef
pieces of work even artisans, had to be procured from
the neighbouring lands ; they were so little adapted to
agriculture that in this (as is clear from many passages of
the Bible and the Talmud) the Canaanites not only re-
mained their teachers but also the labour element in the
country.* Indeed, even in purely political matters
they were such opponents of all stable, ordered con-
ditions that no sensible form of government could exist
long among them, and from first to last they were always
most comfortable under the yoke of a foreign Power,
which did not, however, prevent them from trying to
throw it off. ... Such a people seems predestined to
disappear quickly from the history of the world; and
in fact of the other, much more vigorous, half-Semitic
races of that time only the names are now known. What
saved the small people of the Jews from the same destiny ?
What kept it together when it was scattered over the
world? What made it possible for the new world-
principle of Christianity to spring from its midst ? This
book alone. It would lead us too far if we were to analyse |
the distinctive features of this book which has played such
a part in history. Goethe writes concerning it in one
passage: ‘‘ These writings are so happily grouped that
from the most alien elements a delusive whole presents
itself to us. They are complete enough to satisfy us,
fragmentary enough to stimulate us, sufficiently bar-
baric to provoke us, sufficiently tender to soothe us.”
Herder explains the widespread influence of the Old

* Thence it is that one of the worst threats against the Jews, if they
did not keep Jehovah’s commandments, was that ‘‘ they would have
to do their own work, instead of getting it done by others” (Talmud,
Treatise Bervachoth, chap. vi., according to Griinwald). The idea that

‘‘the sons of the alien shall be the ploughmen and the vine-dressers”’ is
also found (as a prophecy) in Isaiah \xi. 5.
488 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

Testament principally from the fact that “it satisfied
the human craving for knowledge by furnishing for such
questions as the age and the creation of the world, the
origin of evil, &c., popular answers that every one under-
stands and can easily grasp.” Thus we see how this book
meets the demands of the educated mind and of the man
of the people—of the one, because it admires the daring
arbitrariness in the ‘“‘delusive whole’; of the other,
because the mystery of existence is, like Jehovah behind the
temple curtain, concealed from his gaze, and he receives
to every question “ popular answers.’’ This book marks
the triumph of materialistic philosophy. In truth no
small achievement! It signifies the victory of will over
understanding and every further effort of creative imagi-
nation, Such a work could be created only by pious
sentiment and demoniacal power.

We cannot understand Judaism and its power, as well as
its ineradicable tenacity, we cannot form a just and proper
estimate of the Jew among ourselves, his character and
way of thinking, until we have recognised his demoniacal
genius and can explain its growth. Here it is a struggle
of one against all; this one has taken upon himself
every sacrifice and every shame, in order at some time,
no matter when, to enter into the Messianic empire of
supreme power, to the eternal glory of Jehovah. The
Talmud thus expresses it: “‘ Just as thy oppression
will follow from transgressing the law, so obedience
to it will be rewarded by the fact that thou thyself wilt
one day command ”’ (Aboth iv. 5; after Montefiore).

JUDAISM

One more word in conclusion. My reply to the ques-
tion, Whois the Jew? has been, in the first place, to point
out whence he came, what was his physical foundation, and
secondly, to reveal the leading idea of Judaism in its origin
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 489

and nature. I cannot do more; for the personality
belongs to the single individual, and nothing is falser than
the widespread procedure of judging a people by in-
dividuals. I have brought forward neither the ‘“ good ”’
Jew nor the ‘‘ bad” Jew; “no one is good,” said Jesus
Christ, and when is a man so utterly despicable that we
would be inclined to call him unconditionally bad ?
Before me are lying several criminal statistics ; the one set
tries to prove that the Jews are the most pious and lamb-
like citizens of Europe, the others assert the opposite.
How both conclusions are juggled out of the same figures
beats me, but I am still more surprised that people should
imagine that this is the way to deal with the psychology
of nations. No one steals for the pleasure of it, unless he
is a kleptomaniac. Is the man who through need or in
consequence of a bad example steals, necessarily a bad
man, and he who has not the least occasion to do so a good
one? Luther says: ‘‘ Whoever steals bread from the
baker without being forced by hunger is a thief; if he is
forced by hunger he acts rightly, for people ought to give
to him.” Give me a statistic which shows how many
people who live in direst need, oppression and abandon-
ment, do not become criminals; from it one might
eventually draw some conclusions—yet no very far-reach-
ing ones. Were not the ancestors of our feudal nobility
highway robbers ? and are their descendants not proud of
it? Did the Popes not have kings assassinated by hired
murderers ? And in our present civilised society are not
lying and misleading recognised in high diplomacy ?
Let us therefore leave morality alone, as also the almost
equally slippery question of predisposition; that there
are more Jewish than European lawyers in a country
only proves that law pays there—nothing more; special
ability has nothing to do with it. . . . In all these things,
especially if they are presented statistically, we can
prove anything. On the other hand, the two facts of
490 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH# CENTURY

race and ideal are fundamental. There are no good and
bad men, at least for us, but only before God, for the
word “good” refers to a moral estimation, and this
again depends on a knowledge of motive, which can
never be revealed. ‘‘Who can know the heart?”
was the cry of Jeremiah (xvii. 9).* On the other hand

, _ there are certainly good and bad races, for here we have

to deal with physical relations, general laws of organic
nature, which have been experimentally investigated—
relations in which, in contrast to those mentioned above
figures provide irrefutable proofs—relations concerning
which the history of humanity offers us abundant infor-
mation. And scarcely less manifest are the leading ideas.
In reference to race these must in the first place be
looked upon as a consequence ; but one should not under-
estimate this inner, invisible anatomy, this purely spiritual
dolichocephaly and brachycephaly, which as cause also
has a wide range of influence. Hence it is that every
strong nation has so much power of assimilation. The
entrance into a new union in the first place changes
not a fibre of the physical structure, and only very slowly,
in the course of generations, affects the blood ; but ideas
have a more rapid effect, because they direct the whole
personality almost at once into new channels. And the
Jewish national idea seems to exercise a particularly strong
influence, perhaps for the very reason that in this case
the nation exists merely as an idea and never, from the
beginning of Judaism, was it a ‘“‘ normal” nation, but
above all, a thought, a hope. It is therefore quite wrong,
in the case of the Jews especially, to lay much weight—
as Renan for example was fond of doing in his last years
—upon the adoption of alien blood which took place from
time to time. Renan knew better than anybody else

* As Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason says (in explaining the
cosmological idea of freedom]j: ‘‘ The real morality of actions (merit and
guilt) remains quite concealed from us, even in the case of our own
conduct.”
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 4o1

that the conversion of Greeks and Romans to Judaism
was an absolutely unimportant phenomenon. What
were those “‘ Hellenes ’ from Antioch, of whom he tells
us in his lecture “ Judaisme, race ou religion’’ ? and who
are said to have been converted in crowds to Judaism,
a fact for which we possess only the evidence of a very un-
reliable Jew, Josephus? They were Hebrew-Syrian
mongrels, in whose veins probably not a drop of Greek
blood flowed. And those “‘ Romans,” for whom Renan
quotes the evidence of Juvenal (Sa¢. xvi. 95 f.)? The
dregs of the people composed of the freed Asiatic and
African slaves. Let him name one single Roman of im-
portance who became a Jew! Such assertions are an in-
tentional misleading of the unlearned public. But even
if they were based on truth instead of arising out of bias
and falsification, what would that signify 2? Are we to
suppose that the Jewish national idea has not the force
of other national ideas? On the contrary, it is more
powerful, as I have shown, than any other, and
transforms men to its own image. One does not need
to have the authentic Hittite nose to bea Jew; the term
Jew rather denotes a special way of thinking and feeling.
A man can very soon become a Jew without being
an Israelite; often it needs only to have frequent
intercourse with Jews, to read Jewish newspapers, to
accustom himself to Jewish philosophy, literature and
art. On the other hand, it is senseless to call an Israelite
a “ Jew,” though his descent is beyond question, if he
has succeeded in throwing off the fetters of Ezra and
Nehemiah, and if the law of Moses has no place in his
brain, and contempt of others no place inhis heart. ‘‘ What
a prospect it would be,” cries Herder, “‘ to see the Jews
purely humanised in their way of thinking!” * But a
purely humanised Jew is no longer a Jew because, by
renouncing the idea of Judaism, he 7pso facto has left
* Advastea 7, Stick V., Abschnitt ‘“ Fortsetzung.’’
492 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

that nationality, which is composed and held together
by a complex of conceptions, by a “faith.” With the
apostle Paul we must learn that “he is not a Jew who
is one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly ”
(Rom. ii. 28-29).

Now such national or religious ideals can exercise their
revolutionising influence in two ways, positive or negative.
I have shown in the case of the Jews how a handful of
men forced a definite national idea upon a people not at
all inclined to accept it, and so impressed the stamp of
this idea upon it that it would seem impossible for that
people to efface it; but consanguinity and congeniality
were necessary for the accomplishment of this. In this
case, then, the idea exercised a positively creative in-
fluence. Just as remarkable a case is the sudden con-
version of the bloodthirsty, wild Mongolians by the
adoption of the Buddhist faith to mild, pious men, a third
of whom have become monks.* But an idea can also
have a purely negative result ; it can lead a man out of
his own course without opening up another which is
suited to his race. A well-known example is the way in
which Mohammedanism has affected the Turkomans:
by adopting the fatalistic view of the world this wildly
energetic people has gradually sunk into complete pas-
sivity. If the Jewish influence were to gain the upper
hand in Europe in the intellectual and cultural sphere,
we should have one more example of negative, destructive
power.

I have thus pointed out the method adopted by me
and its chief results; I cannot otherwise summarise this
chapter. Formule are mere phrases in respect of
organic phenomena. The anecdote Le voild, le chameau!
is well known. Such a pretension is ridiculous even in
respect of the camel, and it would never occur to me to
close this sketch with generalisations and formule, as

* Cf. Déllinger ; Akademische Vortrage i. 84
JEWS ENTER INTO WESTERN HISTORY 493

if I should say, Le voila, le juif! For the theme is in-
exhaustible and unfathomable ; I have scarcely used the
twentieth part of my illustrations and notes: But
my belief is that every one who reads this chapter will
feel qualified to form a sharper and clearer judgment
of Judaism and its product, the Jew. From this judg-
ment will follow of itself the answer to the question,
What is the significance of the entrance of the Jew into
the history of the West? It is not my task to trace
this influence century by century. The indirect influence
of Judaism on Christianity was and still is immense ;
its direct influence on the nineteenth century appears
for the first time as a new influence in the history of
culture: it thus becomes one of the burning subjects
of the day, and I have felt bound therefore to lay a
sound foundation for its appreciation. Towards this
end neither the passionate assertions of the Anti-Semites,
nor the dogmatic platitudes of the humanitarians, nor
even the many learned books, theological or archzological,
from which I have gathered the materials for this chap-
ter, give us any assistance. In the task imposed upon
me by necessity, I hope I have not striven in vain to
arrive at a clear understanding. We have to deal here
with a question affecting not only the present, but also
the future of the world.
SIXTH CHAPTER

THE ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE
INTO THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Mon devoir est mon Dieu supréme.—FREDERICK THE GREAT.
(Letter to Voltaire on June 12, 1740.]

HE entrance of the Jew into European history
had, as Herder said, signified the entrance of
an alien element—alien to that which Europe
had already achieved, alien to all it was still to

accomplish ; but it was the very reverse with the Ger-
manic peoples. This barbarian, who would rush naked
to battle, this savage, who suddenly sprang out of woods
and marshes to inspire into a civilised and cultivated
world the terrors of a violent conquest won by the strong
hand alone, was nevertheless the lawful heir of the Hellene
and the Roman, blood of their blood and spirit of their
spirit. It was his own property which he, unwitting,
snatched from the alien hand. But for him the sun of
the Indo-European must have set. The Asiatic and African
slave had by assassination wormed his way to the very
throne of the Roman Empire, the Syrian mongrel had
made himself master of the law, the Jew was using the
library at Alexandria to adapt Hellenic philosophy
to the Mosaic law, the Egyptian to embalm and bury
for boundless ages the fresh bloom of natural science
in the ostentatious pyramids of scientific systematisa-
tion; soon, too, the beautiful flowers of old Aryan life
—Indian thought, Indian poetry—were to be trodden
494
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 495

under foot by the savage bloodthirsty Mongolian, and
the Bedouin, with his mad delusions bred of the desert,
was to reduce to an everlasting wilderness that garden of
Eden, Erania, in which for centuries all the symbolism of
the world had grown; art had long since vanished ; there
were nothing but replicas for the rich, and for the poor the
circus : accordingly, to use that expression of Schiller which
I quoted at the beginning of the first chapter, there were
no longer men but only creatures. It was high time for
the Saviour to appear. He certainly did not enter into
history in the form in which combining, constructive
reason, if consulted, would have chosen for the guardian
angel, the harbinger of a new day of humanity; but
to-day, when a glance back over past centuries teaches
us wisdom, we have only one thing to regret, that
the Teuton did not destroy with more thoroughness,
wherever his victorious arm penetrated, and that as a
consequence of his moderation the so-called ‘‘ Latinising,”
that is, the fusion with the chaos of peoples, once more
gradually robbed wide districts of the one quicken-
ing influence of pure blood and unbroken youthful
vigour, and at the same time deprived them of the rule
of those who possessed the highest talents. At any rate
it is only shameful indolence of thought, or disgraceful
historical falsehood, that can fail to see in the entrance
of the Germanic tribes into the history of the world
the rescuing of agonising humanity from the clutches of
the everlastingly bestial.

If I here use the word “‘ Germanic,” I do so, as I have
already remarked in the introduction to this division,
for the sake of simplification—a simplification which
expresses the truth, which must otherwise remain
veiled. But this expression, whether taken in the wide
or the narrow sense, seems somewhat elastic, perhaps
inadmissible, particularly so because it was late before any
people, at any rate we ourselves, became conscious of such
496 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

a thing as the specifically “‘ Germanic ’’ character. There
never has been a people that called itself ‘‘ Germanic,”
and never—from their first appearance on the stage of
history to the present day—have the whole of the Ger-
manic peoples unitedly opposed themselves to the non-
Germanic; on the contrary, from the beginning we find
them continually at feud with one another, displaying
towards no one such hostility as towards their own blood.
During Christ’s lifetime Inguiomer betrays his nearest
relative, the great Hermann, to the Marcomanni, and
thereby hinders the process of union among the northern
tribes and the total destruction of the Roman; Tiberius
already could recommend no safer policy to adopt with
the Germans than to ‘‘ leave them to their own internal
quarrels’; all the great wars of the following age, with
the exception of the Crusades, were wars between Germanic
princes ; the same thing holds in the main for the nine-
teenth century. But a foreigner had at once recognised
the uniformity of the various tribes, and instead of the
indistinguishable babel of names, Chatti, Chanki, Cheruski,
Gambrivii, Suevi, Vendales, Goti, Marcomanni, Lugii,
Langobardi, Sachsi, Frisii, Hermunduri, &c., he had
created for the luxuriant offshoots of this strong race the
uniform comprehensive term ‘‘ Germanic,”’ and that be-
cause his eye had at the first glance discerned their com-
mon stock. Tacitus, after growing tired of enumerating
names, says, ‘the physical characteristics of all these
men are the same’’; this was the correct empiric basis
for the second and correct judgment, ‘I am convinced
that the various tribes of Germania, unpolluted by
marriages with alien peoples, have from time immemorial
been a special, unmixed people, resembling itself alone”
(Germania 4). It is peculiar how much more clearly the
stranger, who is not biased by details, sees the great
connection of phenomena, than the man who is directly
interested in them !
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 497

But to-day it is not merely bias which prevents us from
using the word “‘ Germanic ”’ in its geographical and racial
sense with the simplicity of Tacitus: those “ various
Germanic stems ’’ which he regarded as an unmixed,
comparatively uniform people have, since his day, like their
predecessors, the Hellenes, entered into all kinds of
unions among each other, and only a portion remains “ un-
polluted by marriages with strange peoples’’; moreover
in consequence of the great migrations, they have been
subjected to particular cultural influences, resulting from
geographical position, climatic conditions, the standard of
civilisation among the nearest neighbours, and so forth.
That alone would have sufficed to break up any unity. But
the state of things becomes still more confused when we
supplement the teaching of political history, on the one
hand by more minute, comparative researches in the
department of national psychology, philosophy and the
history of art, and on the other by the results of the pre-
historic and anthropological investigations of the last
fifty years. For then we see that we may and must give
a much wider meaning to the word “ Germanic” than
Tacitus did, but at the same time we notice necessary
limitations of which he, with the defective knowledge of
his time, could not have dreamt. To understand our past
and our present, we must follow the example of Tacitus,
and like him, collect material and sift it, but upon the
broader basis of our modern knowledge. It is only by
the exact definition of a new term “ Germanic ”’ that our
study of the entrance of these peoples into history ac-
quires practical worth. It is the object of this chapter
to give such a descriptive definition as briefly as may be.
How far does the stem-relationship extend? Where do
wemeet ‘“‘Arya”’ (z.e., those who belong to the friends) ?
Where do we first find the alien element, which, according
to Goethe, we “‘ must not tolerate ”’

I ai
498 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXto CENTURY

EXTENSION OF THE IDEA

T have said that we must give the expression “‘ Germanic”
a wider and at the same time a narrower signification than
that of Tacitus. Both the extension and the narrowing
are the results of historical and anthropological con-
siderations.

The expression is widened by the knowledge that no
clear distinction can be drawn physically and mentally
between the “German” of Tacitus and his predecessor
in history, the ‘‘ Celt,’ or his successor whom we are
wont even more audaciously to sum up as the “ Slav.”
In view of their physical characteristics the scientist would
not hesitate to look upon these three races as varieties
of a common stock. The Gauls who in the year 389 B.c.
conquered Rome answer exactly to the description which
Tacitus gives of the Germanic race: ‘bright blue
eyes, reddish hair, tall figures’’; and, on the other hand,
the skulls which have been found in the graves of the
oldest heroic Slavonic ages have shown to the astonish-
ment of the whole scientific world that the Slavs from
the time of the migrations were just as distinctly dolicho-
cephalous (z.e., long-skulled) and as tall as the other
Germanic tribes of that time and those of pure race
to-day.* Moreover, Virchow’s comprehensive investiga-
tions into the colour of hair and of eyes have revealed
the fact that the Slavs were originally and still are in cer-
tain districts just as fair as the Germanic races. Quite
apart, therefore, from the general conception ‘“ Indo-
European,” which is a mere theoretical and hypothetical
term, it appears that we have every reason for con-
siderably extending the idea ‘‘Germanic’’ which we

* Cf. the summary in Ranke; Dey Mensch, 2nd ed. ii. 297. It
is not possible that these excavations revealed facts limited to the
Norman Waregians, since the investigations embrace subjects from
the most various places, not only in Russia, but also in Germany.
philological reasons been inclined to make narrower and
narrower.*

THE CELT

Let us speak first of the Celts.

Misled chiefly by philological considerations, the Celtic
languages being supposed to be more nearly related to
the Italian and Greek than to the Germanic, we have
been used to overlook the very decisive physical, and
still more decisive moral influence.t We group the
Celt with the Greeco-Italians, with whom he is manifestly
only distantly connected, while he is intimately related
to the Germanic peoples. Though the completely
Romanised Gaul may have presented a direct contrast
to his conqueror, the Burgundian or Frank, yet that
original conqueror of Rome, indeed even the later Gaul
who had been settled for centuries in Northern Italy,

* In consequence the anthropologists of to-day use the expression
homo europa@us (see p. 373) in a much more definite sense than Linnzus
had done; but such a nomenclature is much too abstract for the
historian, who has therefore hitherto taken no notice of it. In order
to awaken intelligent interest in wide circles, one must employ the
existing, well-known terminology and suit it to new needs. This is
here done by widening the idea ‘‘ Germanic,” a procedure which will
justify itself step by step in the course of this work ; it is only by this
that the history of the last two thousand years and especially of the
nineteenth century becomes intelligible. That Celts, Slavs and Teutons
are descended from a single pure stock may to-day be regarded as
certain in the light of anthropology and ancient history. (Cf. the
final summary of Dr. G. Beck; Dery Urmensch, Basel, 1899, p. 46f.).
In addition we have historical evidence of the mutual mixing of these
different stems. Thus, for instance, H. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
Professor at the Collége de France, arrives in his book Les Celtes, 1904,
at the conclusion: Ji y @ probablement en Allemagne plus de sang
Gaulois quen France.

+ Schleicher, for instance, in his famous, universally copied genealogy
of the Indo-Germanic languages (cf. Die Deutsche Sprache, 1861, p. 82)
makes one group of the Italo-Celtic languages, which he thinks branched
off in very early times from the ‘“‘ North European mother tongue’”’;
also such divergent views as the well-known “ wave-theory’”’ of Johannes
Schmidt continue to represent the Celt as if he were the furthest
removed of all Indo-Europeans from the Germanic peoples.
500 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

and whom Florus still describes as ‘‘ superhuman”
(corpora plus quam humana evant, ii. 4) clearly resembles
the Teuton physically ; but not only physically, for his
love of wandering, his delight in war, which leads him
(as the Goths at a later time) even to Asia in the service
of any master who gives him an opportunity of fighting,
his love ofsong . . . all these things are essential features
of this same relationship, whereas one would be at a loss
to prove the points of connection with the Greeco-Italians.
The Germanic peoples in the narrower, Tacitean sense
of the word enter history for the first time * mixed with
Celts and led by Celts; the word “‘ Germanic ”’ is Celtic.
Do we not still meet those tall figures with blue eyes and
reddish hair in North-West Scotland, in Wales, &c., and
are they not more like a Teuton than a Southern European?
Do we not yet see how the Bretons as daring mariners
rival the feats of the old Norsemen? But no less an
authority than Julius Cesar has told us, in the first
chapter of the first book of his Gallic War, how this wild
Celto-Germanic mind becomes everywhere gradually
effeminate through contact with Roman civilisation.f

More striking and more decisive for my theory is the
relationship of Celt and Teuton in the deeper mental
qualities. History gives us ample proof of this, of the
relationship of those finer features that make up individu-
ality. Are we to believe—to dive deeply into the subject—
that it is an accident that St. Paul’s epistle on redemp-
tion by faith, on the gospel of freedom (in contrast to the

* At the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutons, 114 B.cs

+ Regarding the physical identity of Celts and Germanic peoples
Professor Gabriel de Mortillet has lately collected such comprehensive
material, anthropological facts, as well as the testimonies of old
Roman writers, that it is sufficient if I refer to his Formation de la
nation francaise, 1897 (p. 114f.). His final words are: “‘ La cavac-
téristique des deux groupes est donc exactement la méme et s’applique
ausst bien au groupe qui a vegu le nom de Gaulois (synonymous with

Celts, see p. 92) gu’au groupe qui depuis les invasions des Cimbres a
pris le nom de Germains.”.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE sor

“slavish yoke’ of the Church law), on the importance
of religion as not consisting in works but in regeneration
“to a new creature ’’—was addressed to the Galatians,
those “Gallic Greeks”? of Asia Minor who had
remained almost pure Celts—an epistle in which we
seem to hear a Martin Luther speaking to Germans
credulous indeed but yet incomparably gifted for
understanding the deepest mysteries? * I for my
part do not believe that there is any room for chance in
such matters ; I believe it all the less in this case, because
I notice in what a different way the same man speaks,
what endless roundabout paths he chooses when teaching
the same truths to a community of Jews and the children
of the chaos of peoples, as in the Epistle to the Romans.
But our judgment does not rest merely on such a hypo-
thetical basis, nor does it rest solely upon the relationship
between old Celtic and old Germanic mythical religion,
but upon observation of the relationship between the
mental qualities generally, to which the whole cultured
history of Europe up to the present day testifies—
wherever the Celt has kept his blood pure. Thus, for
example, we find in the genuinely Celtic parts of Ireland
in former times—taking the five hundred years from the
Celt Scotus Erigena to the Celt Duns Scotus—splendid
theologians with high philosophical gifts, whose inde-
pendence of thought and keen desire to investigate
brought upon them the persecution of the Roman Church ;
in the heart of Bretagne was born that intellectual pioneer
Peter Abelard, and let it be carefully noted that what dis-
tinguishes him, like those others, is not merely indepen-
dent thought and striving after freedom, but above all
the holy earnestness of his life, a thoroughly “‘ Germanic
quality.” These Celtic minds of former centuries, teeming

* Mommeen testifies that Galatia was ‘* a Celtic island amidst the
floods of the Eastern peoples,” in which even the Celtic language
maintained itself for a long time: Roman History, 3rd ed. v, 311 fy
502 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

with strength, are not merely free, and not merely pious,
any more than the Breton seaman of to-day, but they are
both free and pious, and it is this very combination that
expresses what is specifically ‘‘ Germanic,”’ as we observe
it from Charlemagne and King Alfred to Cromwell and
Queen Louise, from the daring anti-Roman troubadours
and the Minnesingers so politically independent, to
Schiller and Richard Wagner. And when we see, for
example, Abelard contending from profound religious
conviction against the sale of indulgences (Theologia
Christiana), and at the same time putting the Hellenes
in every respect far above the Jews, declaring the morals
of their philosophers to be superior to the Jewish sanctity
of law, Plato’s view of life more sublime than that of
Moses—yes, when we actually find him in his Dzalogus
inter philosophum, Judeum et Christianum, making the
recognition of the transcendental ideality of the concep-
tion of space the basis of religious thought, so that man
stands directly before God’s countenance not by entering
into an empirical heaven but solely by an inner conver-
sion of mind: are we not forced to recognise that this
mind is characteristically Indo-European in contrast to
the Semitic and the late Roman, and that, moreover, an
individuality here reveals itself, which in every single
one of those plus de la pensée (of which I spoke in the
previous chapter) betrays the specifically Germanic cha-
racter ? I do not say German but Germanic character,
and J am not speaking of to-day, when differentiation has
led to the formation of very clearly defined national
characters, but of a man who lived almost a thousand
years ago ; and I assert that so far as the whole tendency
of his thought and feeling is concerned this Breton might
right well have been born in the heart of Germania. A
typical Celt in the gloomy passionateness of his nature,
a new Tristan in his love, he is flesh of our flesh and blood
of our Teutonic blood ; he is Germanic, Just as Germanic
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 503

as these so-called “ pure German ” populations of Swabia
and the Black Forest, the home of Schiller, Mozart and
many others of the greatest of Germany’s sons, who owe
their peculiar character and uncommon poetical gifts to
the strong admixture of Celtic blood.* We recognise
this same spirit of Abelard at work wherever it can
be proved that the Celts were present in large numbers,
as in the home of the unfortunate Albigenses in the
South of France, or as they still are in the homeland of
the Methodists, Wales. We recognise it also in the
so-called typically Catholic country Bretagne, for Catho-
licism and Protestantism are, after all, mere words; the
religiosity of the Breton is genuine, but in its colour it is
really ‘“‘ heathen” rather than Christian; primeval
popular religion lived on here under the mask of Catho-
licism ; moreover, who would not see in the ineradicable
loyalty of this people to the throne a Germanic charac-
teristic which is just as common as the love of war and
loyalty to the flag among the Irish, who in politics agitate
against England, but at the same time voluntarily furnish
a large proportion of the English Army, and go abroad to
die for the same alien king, to whom they are so hostile
athome ? But the close relationship between Celts and
Germanic peoples (in the narrower sense of the word)
reveals itself most strikingly in their poetry. From the
first Frankish, German and English poetry were closely
allied to genuine Celtic, not that the former people did not
possess motives of their own, but they adopted the Celtic
ones as being originally akin to them, and in these there is
a something strange, something not quite understood,
because half-forgotten, which lends them increased
piquancy and charm. Celtic poetry is incomparably pro-
found, inexhaustibly rich in symbolical meaning ; it was
manifestly in its far distant origin intimately connected

* Wilhelm Henke: Dey Typus des geymanischen Menschen (Tibingen,
1895), Similarly Treitschke ; Politik i. 279,
504 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

with music, the soul of our Germanic poetry. If we
examine the works which were written when the poetic
impulse once more awoke to life, about the turn of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in all Germanic lands,
but above all in the lands of the Franks—when we on the
one hand consider the Geste de Charlemagne, the Rolands-
lied, the Berte aus grans piés, Ogier le Danots, &c., all in-
dependent efforts of Frankish imaginative power, and on
the other hand see Celtic poetry live again in the legends of
the Queste du Graal, Artus’ Tafelrunde, Tristan und Isolde,
Parzival, &c., we cannot for a moment doubt where the
deeper, richer, more genuine and poetically inexhaustible
wealth of imagination and thought is to be found. And
this Celtic poetry of the thirteenth century was at a
disadvantage, since it appeared not in its own form, but
robbed of the wings of song, expanded to romance form,
quickened with knightly, Roman and Christian beliefs, its
genuine poetical kernel almost as much obscured by
alien accrescences as the Norse myths in the German
Nibelungenlied. ‘The further back we go, the more clearly
do we recognise—in spite of all individual differences—
the intimate relationship between old Celtic and old
Germanic poetical tendency ; from stage to stage back-
wards something is lost, so that, for example, although
Gottfried’s Tristan as a poem undoubtedly surpasses the
French versions of the same subject, yet several of the
deepest and finest traits, upon which this incomparable,
poetical, mythical and symbolical legend is based, are
lacking in it, while the old French romance possesses them
and Chrestien de Troyes had at least given a suggestion
of them ; the same is true of Wolfram’s Parzival.* But
this relationship reveals itself most convincingly and
impressively when we see that in reality it was only

* In this place I have used the results of some of my own studies
(cf: Notes suy Parsifal and Notes sur Tristan in the Reoue Wagnérienne,
1886 and 1887},
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 505

German music that was able to awaken to new life the
old Celtic and old Germanic poetry in their original inten-
tion and significance ; this we have learnt from the artistic
achievements of the nineteenth century, which at the
same time revealed the close relationship between both
these sources.

THE GERMANIC SLAV ~

Of the genuine Slav there is less to be said, since we
are at a loss where to look for him, and are sure of only
one thing, that in his case there has been a transformation
of the type, so that the thick-set body, round head, high
cheek-bones, dark hair, which we to-day consider to be
typically Slavonic, were certainly not characteristics of the
Slav at the time when he entered European history. But
even to-day the fair type predominates in the north and
east of European Russia, and the Pole, too, is distin-
guished from the southern Slav by the colour of his skin
(Virchow). In Bosnia one is struck with the tallness of
the men and the prevalence of fair hair. The so-called
Slavonic type which merges into the Mongolian I have
not once met in a journey of several months across that
country, any more than the characteristic “ potato-face ”’
of the Czech peasant; the same may be said of the
splendid race of the Montenegrins.* In spite, therefore,
of the universal prejudice, there are, as we see, enough
physical indications that the Germanic man, when he
entered history, had, in addition to an elder brother in

* On the other hand the shape of the skull has undergone a gradual
change: among the present inhabitants of Bosnia we find not quite
1} per cent. of long heads, while there are, on the other hand, 84 per
tent. of distinctly round heads ; the oldest graves show 29 per cent.
of long heads and 34 per cent. of round ones, and graves from the
time of the Middle Ages 21 per cent. of long heads. (See Weisbach ;
Altbosnische Schddel, in den Mitteilungen der anthvopologischen Gesell-
schaft in Wien, 1897.) It is interesting to hear that the formation of
the face, in spite of the change of skull, has remained “ lepto-
Prosop,”’ 4.e., long in shape.
506 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

the west, a younger in the east who was not so very
unlike himself. But on the other hand it is exceedingly
difficult to unravel the confused skein of what was origi-
nally Slavonic, owing to the manifest fact that this branch
of the Germanic family was at a very early time almost
completely destroyed by other tribes, much earlier and
more thoroughly and more mysteriously than the Celts ;
but this fact should not deter us from recognising and
admitting the related features and attempting to sift
them out from the mass of what is alien.

But here again our best help will lie in searching
the depths of the soul. If I may judge from the one
Slavonic language of which I have a slight knowledge,
the Servian, I should be inclined to think that a strong
family resemblance in poetical. gifts to the Celts and
Germanic peoples could be proved. The heroic cycle
which celebrates the great battle of Kossovopolje (1383),
but which beyond doubt goes further back in its
poetical motives, reminds one of Celtic and Germanic
lyric and epic poetry by the sentiments to which it gives
utterance—loyalty unto death, heroic courage, heroic
women, as well as the high respect which these enjoy,
the contempt for all possessions in comparison with
personal honour. I read in histories of literature that
such poems, and heroic figures like Marco Kraljevich are
common to all popular poetry; but this is not true,
and can only appear so to one whose excess of
learning has blinded him to the fine features of indi-
viduality. Rama is an essentially different hero from
Achilles, and he, again, quite different from Siegfried ;
while on the other hand the Celtic Tristan betrays in many
features direct relationship to the German Siegfried, and
that not merely in the external ornaments of the knightly
romance (fights with dragons, &c.), which may to some
extent be a later addition, but rather in those old, popular
creations where Tristan is still a shepherd and Siegfried
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 507

not yet a hero at the Burgundian Court. It is here that
we see Clearly that, apart from extraordinary strength
and the magic charm of invincibility and more such general
attributes of heroes, definite ideals form the basis of the
poems; and it is in these, not in the former, that the
character of a people is reflected. So it is in the case of
Tristan and Siegfried : loyalty as the basis of the idea of
honour, the significance of maidenhood, victory in down-
fall (in other words, the true heroism centred in the
inner motive, not in the outward success). Such features
distinguish a Siegfried, a Tristan, a Parzival not only
from a Semitic Samson whose heroism lies in his hair,
but equally from the more closely related Achilles. Purity
is strange to the Hellenes; faith is not a principle of
honour, but only of love (Patroclos); the hero defies
death ; he does not overcome it, as we can say of the
heroes of whom we have spoken. These are just the
traits of true relationship which, in spite of all divergences
of form, I find in Servian poetry. The fact alone that
their heroic cycle groups itself around, not a victory, but a
great defeat, the fatal battle of Kossovo, is of great signi-
ficance ; for the Servians have won victories enough and
had been under Stephan Duschan a powerful State.
Here, then, beyond question we find a special tendency of
character, and we may with certainty conclude that the
rich store of such poetical motives—all referring to
destruction, death, everlasting separation of lovers—
did not spring up only after that unfortunate battle and
under the brutalising rule of Mohammedanism, but is an
old legacy, exactly as the Fate of the Nibelungs, “aller
Leid Ende,” and not the Fortune of the Nibelungs, was the
German legacy, and exactly as Celtic and Frankish poets
neglected a hundred famous victors to sing of the obscure
conquered Roland, and to let primitive poetical inspira-
tion once more live through him, in a half-historical new
youth, Such things tell their tale, And just as decisive
508 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

is the peculiar way in which woman is represented among
the Servians—so delicate, brave and chaste—also the
very great part which poetry assigns to her. On the
other hand, only a specialist can decide whether the
two ravens that fly up over Kossovo at the end of the
battle, to proclaim to the Servian people its downfall, are
related to Wotan’s ravens, or whether we have here a
general Indo-Germanic motive, a relic of the nature
myths, a case of borrowing, a coincidence. And so, too,
in reference to a thousand details. But fortunately here,
as everywhere, the element that is really important is
manifest to every unbiased observer. In Russian poetry
we seem to find little but legends, fairy tales and songs
of the olden time; but here too the melancholy on the
one hand and on the other the intimate relation to nature,
particularly to the animal world (Bodenstedt : Poetische
Ukraine), are unmistakably Germanic.

It is not my intention to carry this investigation
further ; want of space as well as my plan forbids me.
Let criticism put to the test the truth of what unerring
feeling will reveal to every one who has the sense of
poetry; that is the critic’s duty. I must, however,
mention the second manifestation of the soul-life by
which the Germanic element in the Slav clearly reveals
itselfi—Religion.

In whatever direction we glance, we behold the Slav,
especially in early times, distinguished by earnestness
and independence in religious matters. And one of the
principal features of this religiosity is the fact that it
is saturated with patriotic feelings. As early as the ninth
century, even before the parting between east and west
had taken place for ever, we see the Bulgarians in the
interest of questions of dogma maintaining equally
friendly relations with Rome and with Constantinople.
What they demand is solely the recognition of the inde-
pendence of their Church; Rome refuses it, Byzantium
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 509

grants it. And thus in the first half of the tenth century
is founded the first Christian Church which has an inde-
pendent constitution.* The immense importance of
such an event must be immediately manifest to every one.
With Michael of Bulgaria it was no question of divergences
of faith ; he was a Christian, and ready to believe every-
thing that the priests proclaimed as Christian truth.
In his case it was solely a question of constitution ; he
wanted to see his Bulgarian Church managed by a Bul-
garian Patriarch with complete independence ; no Prince
of the Church in Rome or Byzantium should interfere.
This may seem to many to be merely an administrative
question, but in reality it is the rising of the Germanic
spirit of free individuality against the last incorporation of
the imperium which was born of the chaos, and represented
the anti-national, anti-individual and levelling principle.
This is not the place to enter more fully into this
subject; that can be done only in the two following
chapters. But when we encounter the same process
everywhere among the Slavs, we cannot deny its
significance as a symptom to aid our judgment of their
original character. No sooner had the Servians estab-
lished their kingdom than they made for themselves an
autonomous Church; and the great Czar Stephan Du-
schan defended his patriarch against the suzerain preten-
sions of the Byzantine Church and forced the latter to
recognise him legally. There, too, it was not a matter
of faith; for at that time (the middle of the fourteenth
century) the schism between Rome and Constantinople
was a fact of long standing and the Servians were already
as they are to-day, fanatically orthodox members of the
Greek Church; but just as the Bulgarians resisted the
interference of Rome, so the Servians resisted that of Con-
stantinople. The principle is the same—the maintenance
of nationality. The Russian Church certainly took much
* Cf. Hergenrother ; Photius ii. 614%
510 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

longer to free itself; indeed only long after the destruc-
tion of the Byzantine Empire did it do so. But Russia
can only in a very qualified and un-Germanic sense be
called a Slavonic land, and yet it and England are the
only pre-eminent nations of modern Europe that possess
an absolutely national Church with a national head. It
is, further, a specially striking fact that the Slavs are the
only Christians (with the exception of the Czechs, who are
subject to German influence) who have never tolerated
divine service in any language but their own! The great
‘Slavonic apostles ”’ Cyrillus and Methodius had trouble
on this account ; though persecuted by the German pre-
lates who clung to the “ three sacred languages ”’ (Greek,
Latin, Hebrew), though denounced as heretics by the
Roman Pope, they yet succeeded in gaining this point as
a special right: the strictly Roman Catholic Slavs had
also their Slavonic Mass, and even in the last years of
the nineteenth century Rome had not succeeded in
wresting this privilege from the Dalmatians. But all
this forms only one side of Slavonic religion, the external
(though hardly external in reality) ; the other side is still
more striking. In Russia, in those parts where we find
the greatest percentage of genuine Slavs (that is in Little
Russia, the home of that beautiful poetry which I have
alluded to above), there manifests itself to-day by the
never-ceasing formation of sects an intensive inner reli-
gious life similar to that of Wiirtemberg and Scandinavia.
The relationship is striking. Of this in the so-called
“ Latin ’’ countries there is no trace. It is in such matters
that the inmost nature of the soul is reflected. And
here, too, it is a question of a lasting quality, which
asserted itself in every century despite all blood-mixtures.
The extreme trouble experienced in converting the Slavs
to Christianity is a testimony to their deeply religious
nature: Italians and Gauls were the easiest to convert,
Saxons could be won only by the powers of the sword,
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 511

but it took long years and fearful cruelties to make the
Slavs give up the faith of their fathers.* The notorious
persecutions of the heathen lasted, in fact, to the century
of Gutenberg. Very characteristic is the attitude here
also of those genuine, still almost pure Slavs in Bosnia and
Herzogovina. At an earlier period the influential part
of the nation adopted the doctrines of Bogumil (allied
to those of the Catharists or Patarenes); that is, they
rejected everything Jewish in Christianity and retained
besides the New Testament only the Prophets and the
Psalms, they recognised no sacraments and above all no
priesthood. Though unceasingly opposed, oppressed
and crushed from two sides simultaneously—by the
orthodox Servians and the Hungarians who obeyed
every sign of the Roman Pope—though they were thus
the bloody victims of a double and continuous crusade,
this little people nevertheless clung to its faith for cen-
turies ; the graves of the heroic followers of Bogumil still
adorn the peaks of the hills, to which the corpses were
borne to avoid the danger of desecration. It was the
Mohammedans who, by forcible conversion, first did
away with this sect. The same spirit, which animated
a brave but ignorant people in a remote corner of the
earth, in other places bore richer fruits, whereby the
Slavonic branch distinguished itself just as much as the
other branches of the Germanic family.

THE REFORMATION

The most important event in the nineteen centuries
that have passed is undoubtedly the so-called “‘ Reforma-
tion”: at the bottom of it there is a double principle, a
national and a religious ; common to both is the freeing

* The first division of the sixth book of Neander’s Allgemeine

Geschichte der Christlichen Religion und Kiyche shows how difficult
it was to convert the Wends and Poles to Christianity.
512 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

from the alien yoke, the shaking off of that ‘‘ dead hand”
of the extinct Roman Empire, which stretched not only
over the goods and money, but also over the thoughts and
feelings and faith and hope of humanity. Nowhere does
the organic unity of Slavonic Germanicism manifest itself
more convincingly than in this revolt against Rome. To
understand this movement from the standpoint of national
psychology, one must, to begin with, pay no attention to
any dogmatic disputes concerning creed ; it is not what
people consider the truth in regard to the nature of the
Communion that is important, it is a question solely of
two directly contradictory principles, freedom and slavery,
The greatest of the reformers points out that so far as he
is concerned he is not contending for political rights, and
he goes on to say, ‘‘ but in spirit and conscience we are
of all men the most independent : here we believe no one,
trust no one, fear no one, but Christ alone.” This signifiés
the freeing of the individual as well as of the nation. And
when we have thus learned that the ‘‘ Reformation”
should be regarded not as a purely ecclesiastical affair but
as a revolt of our whole nature against alien rule, of the
Germanic soul against un-Germanic spiritual tyranny,
we must at the same time admit that the “ reform”
began as soon as the Germanic peoples by culture and
leisure had awakened to consciousness, and that this
revolt still goes on.* Scotus Erigena (in the ninth cen-
tury) is a reformer, since he refuses to obey the commands
of Rome, and prefers to die by the dagger of the assassin
than give up an iota of his “ freedom of mind and con-
science ” ; Abelard in the eleventh century is a reformer,
since with all his orthodoxy he refuses to be deprived of
the freedom of his religious conceptions and attacks in
addition the administration of the Roman Church, the

* The anthropologist Lapouge says in his purely scientific definition

of the homo europaeus : “‘ en religion tl est protestant.” See Dépopulation
de la France, p. 79.
such lights of the Catholic Church as Dollinger and
Reusch in the nineteenth century are reformers; not a
single dogmatic question separated them from Rome,
except the one question, freedom. In this momentous
movement not only the Germanic peoples in the narrower
sense of the word, not only the Celts, but also the Slavs
distinguished themselves. What I said in the last para-
graph about their refusing to permit alien interference
in their Church administration, and their regarding the
mother tongue as their most sacred legacy, should be
repeated here; both signify the denial of the essential
principles of Rome. But these endeavours were more
deeply rooted; in the depth of their hearts it was a
question of religion, not merely of nation. And as soon
as the Reformation had gained a strong hold—which
happened first in distant England—the Slavonic Catholics
crowded to Oxford, drawn thither by the affinity of the
most sacred feelings. It is quite certain that without
the great Martin Luther the Reformation would never
have become what. it did—our most modern historians
may say what they like, nature knows no greater power
than that of one great strong man—but the soil on which
this German could develop his full strength, the atmo-
sphere in which alone his cause could prosper, were
primarily the creations of Bohemia and of England.*
Even a hundred years before the birth of Luther every
third man in England was an anti-Papist, and Wyclif’s
translation of the Bible was known throughout the whole
land. Bohemia did not lag behind; already in the
thirteenth century the New Testament was read in the
Czech language, and at the beginning of the fifteenth
century Hus edited the complete Bible in the language
of the people. But the most quickening influence was

* Luther writes to Spalatin, February 1520:‘* Vide monstva, qua@so
in qua@ venimus sine duce et doctore Bohemico.”
I 2K
514 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

that of Wyclif; he was the first to open the eyes of the
Slavs to evangelic truth, so that Hieronymus of Prague
could say of him: ‘‘ Hitherto we have had only the shell,
Wyclif has revealed the kernel.” * We get an altogether
false idea of the Slavonic reformation if we direct atten-
tion principally to Hus and the Hussite wars ; the predomi-
nance of political combinations, as well as of the enmity
between Czechs and Germans from that time forth con-
fused men’s minds and obscured the pure object of their
endeavour which at first had been so clear. Even a
hundred years before Hus lived Milic, who, though an
orthodox Catholic and disinclined by his interest in
practical ministry to all speculation concerning dogma,
invented the expression Antichrist for the Roman Church ;
in the prison at Rome he wrote his treatise, De Anti-
christo, in which he shows that the Antichrist will not
come in the future, but is already there, he is heaping up
“clerical ’’ riches, buying prebends and selling sacraments.
Mathias von Janow then expands this thought and thus
paves the way for the real theological Reformation ; he
certainly champions the one sacred Church, but it must be
thoroughly purified and built up anew: “ It remains for
us now only to wish that the Reformation may be made
possible by the destruction of the Antichrist; let us
raise our heads, for salvation is already near at hand!”
(1389). He is followed by Stanislaus von Znaim, who
defends before the University of Prague the forty-five
theses of Wyclif; Hus, who makes a clear distinction
between the “ Apostolic” and the “ Papal ”’ and declares
that he will obey the former, but the latter only in as
far as it agrees with the Apostolic; Nikolaus von Wele-
nowic, who denies the position of the priests as privileged
intercessors with God ; Hieronymus, that splendid knight
and martyr, who moved even the indifferent Papal
secretary Poggio, who was more interested in Hellenic

* Neander, ix. 314.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 515

literature than in Christianity and chiefly known as a
collector and editor of obscene anecdotes, to utter the
words, ““O what a man, worthy of immortal fame!”
And many others. Clearly we have not the achieve-
ment of a single, perhaps erratic mind in all this; on the
contrary it is the soul of a nation—at least everything
that was genuine and noble in that people—that expresses
itself. It is well known what fate overcame this noble
section, how it was wiped off the face of the earth. The
Pope and the Roman bishops had bribed the army of
international mercenaries, and from them it received its
death-blow at the White Mountain.* Nor is it a question
of a Czech idiosyncrasy ; the other Catholic Slavs adopted
exactly the same attitude. Thus, for example, the hymns
of Wyclif were printed in the first Polish printing-press ;
Poland sent to the Council of Trent bishops whose sym-
pathies were so distinctly Protestant that the Pope
accused them before the king of being rabid heretics.
But the Polish Parliament was not intimidated; it
demanded from the King a complete reorganisation of
the Polish Church upon the one basis of the Holy Scrip-
tures. At the same time it demanded—muirabile dictu !—
the “ equal rights of all sects.” The nobility of Poland
and all the intellectual aristocracy were Protestant. But
the Jesuits profited by the political confusion, which soon
arose, to gain a firm footing in the land, and they were
supported by France and Austria; the process was not
“bloody and speedy,’ as Canisius had demanded, but
the Protestants were nevertheless persecuted more and
more cruelly and finally banished ; with the downfall of
its religion the Polish nation also fell.f

* Déllinger: Das Haus Wittelsbach, Akad. Vortrage i. 38.

+ Read the exceedingly interesting work of Count Valerian Krasinski:
Geschichte des Ursprungs, Fortschvitts und Verfalls dey Reforma-
tion in Polen, Leipzig, 1841. Nowhere else, perhaps, is to be
found so complete, abundant, convincing and perfectly treated
material as in Poland, to see how religious intolerance and especially
the influence of the Jesuits completely ruined a land which was advancing
516 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

As these facts are not universally known, 1 have had
to emphasise them in some detail, sufficiently, I hope, to
pave the way for the conviction that/the genuine Teuton,
the genuine Celt, and the genuine Slav are originally
and intimately related. At the moment when these
races enter history, we do not find three ethnical souls
side by side, but one uniform soul. Though the Celts

have in many places, but not everywhere as I have shown

above, undergone such physical changes by assimilating
Virchow’s hypothetical ‘‘ Pre-Celts ’’ and elements from
the Latin chaos of peoples, that the so-called Celt of
to-day is the very contrary of the original Celtic type ;
though a like fate may, to a still more regrettable degree,
have overtaken the tall fair Slavs, who remind us of
Norsemen, yet throughout the centuries we have seen the
working of that distinct and thoroughly individual
spirit, which I unhesitatingly call the Germanic, because
the genuine Teuton, in the usual, limited sense of the word,

towards a brilliant future in every intellectual and industrial sphere.
We can best see the attitude of the Poles to Rome before the time of
Luther in the speech delivered by Johann Ostrorog in the assembly
of the States in the year 1459, in which he said, ‘‘ We cannot object
to the recommending of this land as a Catholic one to the protection
of the Pope, but it is unbecoming to promise him unbounded obedience.
The King of Poland is subject to no one, and only God is over him;
he is not the vassal of Rome .. . &c. &c.” ; then he inveighs against
the shameless simony of the Papal stool, the sale of indulgences, the
greed of the priests and monks, &c. (see p. 36 ff.). This whole Polish
movement is, like the Bohemian, distinguished by a fresh breath of
independence and national feeling and at the same time indifference
to and depreciation of dogmatic questions (the Poles never were
Utraquists) ; and (just as in Bohemia) it is born Germans who contend
for Rome and gain the victory over religious and political freedom:
Hosen (Cardinal Hosius)—the man who sends Cardinal de Guise a
lettcr of congratulation on the murder of Admiral Coligny and who
‘thanks God for the great gift that France has received through the
night of St. Bartholomew and prays that God may look upon Poland with
equal mercy ’’—this same Hosen is at the head of the anti-national
reaction, he introduces the Jesuits into the land, he forbids the reading
of Holy Scripture, he teaches that the subject has absolutely no rights
in reference to his prince, &c. If such a man is Germanic, and those
champions of freedom are not, then this name is purely and simply «
term of reproach.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 517

in spite of all blood crossings, preserved this spirit in its
purest and therefore most powerful form. This is not
hair-splitting but a question of historical insight in the
widest sense ; I have no intention of putting down to the
Germanic maces: or indeed to the German, achievements
which they did not accomplish, or of assigning to them
fame which belongs to others. On the contrary, I wish to
call to life again the feeling for the great northern brother-
hood, and that, too, without binding myself to any racial
or prehistoric hypothesis whatever, but solely by relying
upon what is clear to every eye. I do not even postulate
the blood-relationship ; indeed I believe in it, but I
am too well aware of the extreme complexity of this
problem, I see too clearly that the true progress of
science has here chiefly consisted in the discovery of our
boundless ignorance and the inadequacy of all hypotheses
hitherto formulated, to have any desire on my own part
to continue building new castles in the air, when every
genuine scientist is beginning to keep silence. ‘‘ Every-
thing is simpler than we can think, and at the same time
more complicated than we can comprehend,’ as Goethe
says. In the meantime we have met with relations in
spirit, in sentiment and physical form: that may satisfy
us. We have a definite something in hand, and since
this something is not a definition, but consists of living
men, I refer the reader to the study of the real Celts,
Teutons and Slavs, that he may learn what is the true
Germanic character.

LIMITATIONS OF THE NOTION

I think I have now shown what is to be understood
by the necessary extension of the idea; but in what
does the limitation which I described as equally necessary
consist ? Here, too, the answer will be twofold, referring
to physical qualities on the one hand, to intellectual
518 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

on the other; but fundamentally these two things are
really manifestations of the same thing.

The physical consideration must not be undervalued ;
indeed it would perhaps be difficult to over-estimate
it. I have tried to show the reason, in the discussion of the
race question in the previous chapter but one; besides
this fact is one of those which mere instinct—that thin
silken thread of connection with the tissue of nature—
lets us directly feel, without learned proof. For just as
the dissimilarity of human individuals can be read in
their physiognomy, so the dissimilarity of human races
can be read in the structure of their bones, the colour of
their skin, their muscular system and the formation of theit
skull; there is perhaps not a single anatomical fact upon
which race has not impressed its special distinguishing
stamp. As is well known, even our nose, this organ of ours
which has grown rigid and frostily motionless and which,
according to certain followers of Darwin, is on the way
to even greater monumentalisation by complete ossifica-
tion—even our nose, which in city life to-day is a dispenser
of discomforts rather than of joys, a mere burdensome
appendage, stands from the cradle to the grave in the
centre of our countenance as a witness to our race!
We must therefore, in the first place, strongly emphasise
the fact that these North Europeans—the Celts, Teutons
and Slavs—were physically different from the other
Indo-Europeans, distinguished from the Southern Euro-
peans in stature, “‘ and like to themselves only,” * but we
must at once make the first limitation here, namely, that
whoever does not possess these physical characteristics, no
matter though he were born in the very heart of Germania

* During the last years the conviction is growing among the learned
that the Germanic peoples did not emigrate from Asia to Europe, but
were settled in Europe from earliest times (see Wilser: Stammbaum
dev avischen Vélker, 1889 (Naturw. Wochenschr.); Schrader: Sprach-

vergleichung und Uvgeschichte, 2. Auflage, 1890; Taylor: The Origin
o{ the Aryans, 1890: Beck: Dey Uymensch, 1899, &c.).
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 519

speaking a Germanic tongue from childhood, cannot be
regarded as genuinely Germanic. The importance of
this physical motive power is easier to prove in the case
of great national phenomena than in individuals, for
it may happen that an especially gifted individual
assimilates an alien culture and then, just because of his
different nature, achieves something new and profitable ;
on the other hand, the particular value of race becomes
clear as soon as it is a question of collective achievements,
as I can impress at once upon the German reader when
I tell him in the words of a recognised authority that
“the privileged great statesmen and military leaders
of the time of the founding of the new empire are mostly
of the purest Germanic descent,” like the “ storm-tried
seamen of the North Sea coast and the keen chamois-
hunters of the Alps.” * These are facts which should
be pondered long and carefully. In their presence the
senselessness of the well-known phrases of natural
scientists, Parliamentarians, &c., concerning the equality
of the human races ¢ becomes so plain that one is almost
ashamed of having listened to them even with one ear.
They let us also see in what definitely conditional sense
the well-known remark of that thorough Teuton, Paul
de Lagarde, may claim validity, namely, that ‘‘ Ger-
manism does not lie in the blood, but in the mind.” In ©
the case of the individual, the mind may indeed rule the
blood, and the idea conquer, but it is not so with the °
great mass. And in order to measure the importance
of the physical element, as well as its limitation, one
should remember further that that which may be called
the Germanic idea is a very delicately constructed, many-
jointed organism. One requires only to look at the
Jewish idea by way of comparison, this infancy of art,
the whole cunning of which lies in binding the human

* Henke: Der Typus des geymanischen Menschen, p. 33s
+ See pp. 259 ff., 392 note 2, 531.
520 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XiXtu CENTURY

soul as tightly as Chinese ladies do their feet, the only
difference being that these ladies can no longer move
about, whereas a half-throttled soul is easier to carry
and causes the busied body less trouble than a fully
developed one, laden with its dreams. In consequence
of this: it is comparatively easy ‘‘ to become a Jew,”
_ difficult, on the contrary, almost to the verge of impossi-
, bility “to become Germanic”; here as everywhere the
power of the idea is supreme; but one should guard
against following a true principle so far as to overlook the
connection of natural phenomena. ; The richer the mind,
_ the more closely and manifoldly is it connected with the
.. substructure of a definitely formed blood. It is self-
evident that in the unfolding of human qualities, the
further their development has advanced, the higher must
the differentiation in the physical substratum of our
mental life have become, and the more and more delicate
its tissues. Thus we saw in the former chapter how the
noble Amorite disappeared from the world: by fusion
with unrelated races his physiognomy was, as it were,
wiped away, his gigantic form shrunk together, his spirit
fled: the simple homo syriacus is, on the other hand,
the same to-day as he was a thousand years ago and
the mongrel Semite has to his perpetual contentment
come out of the mixture in the crystallised form of
the “Jew.” The same has happened everywhere.
What a magnificent people the Spaniards were! For
centuries the West Goths were strictly forbidden to marry
“Romans ”’ (as the rest of the inhabitants were called),
whereby a feeling of race nobility was developed, which
long prevented mixing even at a time when such a fusion
of the population was desired and enforced by the
authorities; but gradually ever deeper and deeper
breaches were made in the dam, and after mingling with
Ibevians, with the numerous remnants of the Roman
chaos of peoples, with Africans of the most various origin,
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 521

with Arabs and Jews, they lost all that the Germanic
people had brought with them : their military superiority,
their unconditional loyalty (see Calderon !), their high
religious ideal, their capacity for organising, their rich
artistic creative power; we see to-day what remained
over, when the Germanic “ blood,” as the physical sub-
stratum, was destroyed.* Let us therefore not be in
too great a hurry to assert that Germanicism does not
lie in blood ; it does lie in it; not in the sense that this
blood guarantees Germanic sentiment and capacity, but
that it makes these possible.

This limitation is therefore a very clear one: as a rule
that man only is Germanic who is descended from
Germanic ancestors.

I must, however, immediately call attention to the
necessity of the previous extension of the idea, in order
that this limitation may be intelligibly applied. Other-
wise we must arrive at such comical conclusions as even
Henke is guilty of in the pamphlet already quoted, when
he says that Luther was not genuinely Germanic or that
the Swabians, who are rightly regarded in the whole world
as the finest representatives of pure Germanicism, are
likewise not genuinely Germanic! A man whose descent
and countenance prove him to be the product of a mixture

* Cf. Savigny’s Geschichte des vémischen Rechtes im Mittelalter, i.,
chaps. iii. v. This keeping of the Germanic race pure for centuries,
in the midst of an inferior population, is seen not only in Spain but
also in Northern Italy, where the Teutons lived under separate laws
into the fourteenth century. See details below and in vol. ii:
chap. ix: When criticising this book, Professor Dr. Paul Barth wrote
in the Vierteljahrsschrift fir wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1901, p. 75,
“ Chamberlain might have gone further than he does into the influence
of Semitic blood in Spain. By the addition of Semitic blood the
Spaniards have become fanatical, they have carried every idea to its
extreme, so that it loses all its reason and sense: religious devotion
even to ‘‘ cadaver-obedience’’ towards their superiors, politeness
which is painful, ceremonious etiquette, honour which has become the
most insane sensitiveness, pride which is ridiculous grandezza, so that
Spanish in popular speech among us has become almost equivalent
to absurd.”
522 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

of genuine German and genuine Slavonic blood, as Henke
demonstrates in Luther’s case, is genuinely Germanic,
the child of a fortunate union ; the same can be said of
the Swabians, in whose case a close union of Celts and
Germans has taken place and laid the foundation of rich
poetical powers and remarkable strength of character.
I have already spoken of the great advantages of crossing
between nearly related peoples (chap. iv., pp. 277-283) ;
this law proved its validity everywhere in the case of the
Teutons: among the French, where the most manifold
crossings of Germanic types produced a superabundance
of rich talents, and where even to-day, in consequence of
the existence of many centres of the most diverse pure
race cultures, rich life manifests itself, among the English,
the Saxons, the Prussians, &c. Treitschke calls attention
to the fact that the ‘‘ State-building power of Germany ”
has never lain in the pure German stems. “The true
pioneers and promoters of culture in Germany were in
the Middle Ages the South Germans, who are mixed with
Celtic elements; in modern history it is the North
Germans who are mixed with Slavs.* These results are
at the same time a proof of the close relationship of the
North Europeans, that human type which we can with
Lapouge and Linnzus call the homo europeus, but better
and more simply the Teuton. Now and only now we
learn how in reference to ourselves we should distinguish
between crossing and crossing. By crossing with each
other Germanic peoples suffer no harm—rather the
reverse; but when they cross with aliens they gradually
deteriorate.

Farr HAIR

But this limitation, which is so clear in the general
definition, is unfortunately very difficult to apply in
individual cases. For it will be asked: By what physical

* Politik i. 2796
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 523

characteristics can one recognise the Teuton? Is, for
example, fairness really a characteristic feature of all
Germanic peoples? This seems to form a fundamental
dogma, not only for the old historians, but also for the
most modern anthropologists, and yet certain facts make
me doubt it very much. In the first place there is the
fact, which naturally is ignored by Virchow and his
colleagues, blinded as they are by political prejudice ;
I mean the prevalence of dark colour among the members
of the most genuine old Germanic nobility. In England
this is quite striking. Tall, spare-built figures, long
skulls, long countenances, the well-known Moltke type
with the large nose and the clean-cut profile (which
Henke too considers characteristically “‘ pure Germanic ’’),
genealogies which go back to the Norman period, in short,
beyond doubt genuine Teutons in physique and history
—but black hair. Eckermann was struck by the brown
eyes of Wellington.* In Germany I have noted the same
in various families of old hereditary nobility. Moreover
it has appeared to me remarkable that poets from the
extreme north of Germany pretty frequently speak of
dark hair as a characteristic feature not only of the
nobility but also of the people; thus, for example, in
Theodor Storm’s story, Hans und Heinz Kirch, those
genuine defiant Germanic seamen have both “ dark
brown hair,” and of another daring figure, Hasselfritz,
the poet says that he has brown eyes and brown hair ;
those genuine Teutons therefore resemble Achilles with
his ‘ brown hair.”’ How often, too, in the folksongs do
“dark brown eyes” occur! Burns, too, the Scottish
peasant-poet, loves the “ nut-brown maidens” of his
home.f Once while on a voyage in Norway north of the
7oth degree I was driven out of my course to a group of
islands rarely visited by strangers, and to my astonishment

* Gesprache mit Goethe, 16.2.1826.
+ Goethe, too, makes “black hair’ and “black eyes’ heroic
attributes.
524 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

I found among the fair fishing population individuals
who corresponded exactly to that type: remarkably
finely built men with noble, imposing Viking physiog-
nomy, and in addition almost raven-black hair. Later
I met this type in the south-east of Europe, in the
German colonies of Slavonia, which, settled there for
centuries, have kept their German race stainlessly pure
amid the Slavs: the figure, the Moltke type (or, as the
English say, the Wellington type), and the black hair
distinguish these people from their neighbours, who are
chiefly fair and have more or less expressionless coun-
tenances. However, we do not require to go so far; we
find this type almost the predominant one in German
Tyrol, whose inhabitants Henke says “represent the
true type of the primeval Teuton.” The same scholar
explains their having, for the most part, dark and often
black hair by the fact that the “sun has burned them
black,” and is of opinion that colour is ‘the quality
which changes most easily with time.” But Virchow’s
researches had long ago proved the opposite (see p. 385)
and we might answer this assertion with a question, Why
was David fair? Why did the Jews take from the
Amorites a certain tendency to auburn hair and nothing
more? What sun has darkened the hair of the English
nobility and of the Norwegian in the far north, where the
sun is not seen for months? No, certainly we have here
to deal with other conditions, which must first be cleared
up physiologically, for, so far as I am aware, it has not yet
been done.* Just as certain red flowers at certain
places or under the influence of conditions which are
hidden from human observation grow up blue in colour
(sometimes red and blue on the same stem), and black
animal species sometimes produce white varieties, so it is
not unthinkable that the colour of the hair in a certain

* At least I can find nothing on this point either in the text-books
of physiology or in such special works as Waldeyer’s.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 525

human type is as a rule light, but may under certain
conditions incline to the opposite extreme of the colour
scale. What is decisive in this case is that we find
this dark hair in individuals whose genuine Germanic
origin is established beyond doubt, not only in the wider
but also in the narrower Tacitean sense of the word,
and moreover confirmed by their whole outward and
inner personality. However, as soon as we look around,
we see this very type—tall, spare-built, long-skulled,
with Moltke physiognomy, and a “‘ Germanic nature ’—
on the southern slopes of the Maritime Alps, for example ;
we need only go from Cannes, and Nice, peopled
with the descendants of the chaos, two hours northwards
to more remote parts of the mountains: here, too, one
finds the black hair. Are they Celts? Are they Goths ?
Are they Langobardians? I do not know: they are
at any rate brothers of the races just named. In the
mountains of Northern Italy one finds them also, alter-
nating with the small, round-skulled un-Aryan homo
alpinus. Regarding the Celts, Virchow has already said
that he is “not disinclined to suppose that the original
Celtic population was not fair-Aryan but brown-
Aryan,” and armed with this daring “inclination to
suppose’ he declares all dark hair to be a sign of an
admixture of Celtic blood. But the ancients describe
the original Celts as strikingly fair and “ red-haired,”
and we can still see them with our own eyes, in Scotland
and Wales ; this hypothesis stands therefore on but ‘one
leg, that the Celts, besides being fair, may also be
brown—or rather dark-haired, which is not quite the
same thing—and among the pure Celts we can find proots
enough of this. We have therefore here exactly the
same phenomenon as in the case of the Germanic peoples.
Of the Slavs I can only say one thing, that Virchow
declares them to have been “ originally fair.” But
not only were they fair, they still are so; we only
526 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtuH CENTURY

need to let a Bosnian regiment file past to be con-
vinced of it. The map showing the result of Virchow’s
investigations in the case of school children proves that the
whole of Posen, as well as Silesia east of the Elbe, shows
the same small percentage of dark people (10-15 per
cent.) as the countries that lie farther to the west; the
greatest percentage of brown people is found in districts
which never a Slav entered, namely, Switzerland, Alsace,
and the old German Salzkammergut. Whether or not
there are genuine Slavs in whom black hair occurs, I do
not know.
_From these facts one can draw the irrefutable conclu-
™ sion that fair hair cannot be arbitrarily assigned to
‘the Teuton, as is so often done; the most genuine sons
'of this race may be black-haired. The presence of fair
( hair will certainly always allow us to conjecture Germanic
. blood (in the wide sense of the term), even though it be
a very distant admixture, but the absence of light colour
does not justify the opposite conclusion. One must
therefore be careful in the application of this limitation ;
the hair alone is not a sufficient criterion, the other
physical characteristics must also be taken into con-
sideration.

THE SHAPE OF THE SKULL

This brings us to the further, equally difficult question :
that of the form of skull. Here it appears as if a boun-
dary could and must be drawn. For, however complex
matters are to-day, in old times they were very simple:
the old Germanic peoples of Tacitus, as well as the Slavs,
were for the most part distinctly long-skulled ; the long
skull and the long face beneath it are such unmistakable
marks of race that one may well ask whether he who does
not possess them may be regarded as belonging to the
race. In the Germanic graves of the time of the Migra-
tions one finds half of the skulls long, that is, with a
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 527

breadth which stands to the length in the relation of
75 (or less) to 100, and with few exceptions the rest of the
skulls come near to this artificially chosen proportion ; real
round skulls (see p. 374) hardly occur at all. In the old
Slavonic graves the proportion is still more in favour of
the extremely long skulls. Little is known regarding
the old Celts ; but the tendency to long skulls among the
Gaels of North Scotland and the Cymbrians of Wales
also lends support to the same supposition in their case.*
‘Since then this has changed very much, at least in many
countries. It is not so upin the north, in Scandinavia, in
Northern Germany (excluding the towns) and in England ;
on the contrary, the long skulls seem more prevalent in
Denmark than among the Germanic peoples of the time
of the Migrations: there there are 60 long skulls to the
hundred, only six genuine and short ones. But the Slavs
of Russia show (according to Kollman) scarcely three long
skulls to the hundred, but 72 short skulls and the remainder
incline to be short. And the old Bavarians! Johannes
Ranke found by measuring the skulls of rooo living
individuals that only one in a hundred possessed the old
Germanic skull, while 95 had genuine short skulls!
Measurements of the Hellenic skulls of the Classical age
and of to-day have produced similar results, but even
in the case of the former the middle form of head was
predominant ; yet a third of them had long skulls, and
in their graves fewer genuine short skulls are found than
in Germanic graves; to-day, however, more than half.
are short skulls. That in these phenomena we see the
effects of the infiltration of an Un-Germanic race, a race
which does not belong at all to the Indo-European circle,
but to the raceless chaos, can scarcely be doubted: Much
trouble has been taken to sweep aside this conclusion.
For instance, Kollmann (Professor in Basle) has sought
to emphasise the countenance rather than the skull and to
* Cf. Ranke: Der Mensch ii. 298.
528 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

make the distinction one between long faces and short
ones ; * Johannes Ranke took up the idea and constructed
as the specifically Germanic type a long face under a
short skull; Henke again would fain believe that there
has here been a gradual development, by which the
length of the front of the head has increased rather than
decreased, while the back has become shorter and shorter ;
that in consequence the long skull is still present in the
case of the Germanic peoples with short skulls, only that
it is concealed, &c. But however worthy of consideration
all these views may be, the fact still remains that the
Germanic peoples, wherever they have not crossed with
others or only to a small extent, as in the north, are
long-skulled and fair (or, it may be, dark) while this
character disappears, first, the nearer one comes to the
Alps, secondly, wherever it has been historically proved
that there was much crossing with races from the
south or with degenerate Celto-Germanic or Slavo-
Germanic races.

Naturally the crossings known to history had the
quickest influence (Italy, Spain, Southern France, &c.,
are well-known examples); but besides these mixtures
—and where they did not occur this was the sole influence
—there was another factor at work, namely, the existence
of one or perhaps several prehistoric races, who never
(or only indefinitely) appeared in history as races, and
who, standing on a lower stage of civilisation, were at
an early time conquered and assimilated by the various
branches of the Indo-Germanic peoples. This, perhaps,
contributes even at the present day to the process of
ungermanising. For example, Wilhelm von Humboldt
supposed that formerly the Iberians were spread over
Europe, and this view has lately been championed by
Hommel and others. Even though only a small portion
saved itself by fleeing to the extreme west, the home of

* Correspondenzblatt dey deut. anthrop. Gesellschaft, 1883, No. 11.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 529

the Basques to-day, and though the majority of the men
died perhaps by the sword of the enemy, yet one seldom
finds complete extinction of the poor and helpless ; they
are kept as slaves, and the women become the property
of the victors. In the Alps the same or perhaps a
different race, but at any rate an Un-Germanic and non-
Indo-European one had its abode, or at least fled thither
as to a last place of security ; one is forced to this sup-
position by the fact that to-day the Alps are the centre
of the Un-Germanic, short-skulled, dark type, and that
from here they radiate to north and south ; the Rhetian
race, which anthropology has shown to be distinct, is
perhaps a fairly genuine remnant of those former lake-
dwellers and perhaps identical with Virchow’s pre-Celts.
In the wide districts of Eastern Europe we must alse
presuppose a special, probably Mongoloid race, to account
for the specific deformation which so rapidly transforms the
majority of the Germanic Slavs into inferior ‘‘ Slavonics.”’
How could we then bring ourselves to regard those
Europeans who are descended from this altogether
Un-Germanic type as “‘ Germanic,”’ simply because they
speak an Indo-European language and have assimilated
Indo-European culture? I consider it, on the contrary,
a most important duty to make a clear distinction here,
if we wish to understand past and present history. It is by
distinguishing between peoples that we come to recognise
the ideas in their special individuality. This is all the
more necessary, as we have among us men who are half,
a quarter, or perhaps a sixth Germanic, &c., and in conse-
quence we have a mass of ideas and ways of thinking which
are Germanic to the extent of a half, a fourth, a sixth, &c.,
or on the other hand are directly Anti-Germanic. And
only by practice in distinguishing between the pure
Germanic and the absolutely Un-Germanic can we find
our way out of the confusion of this growing chaos.
Chaos is everywhere the most dangerous enemy. In
I au
530 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtTH CENTURY

facing it thought must develop into action; towards
this, clearness of conception is the first necessary step;
and in the sphere in which we are at present, clearness
consists in the recognition that Germanicism to-day
contains a large number of Un-Germanic elements, and
in the endeavour to separate what is pure from that
which contains alien, and in no sense Germanic,
ingredients.

Yet, justifiable as it may be to emphasise anatomical
research, I am afraid that anatomy alone will not suffice
here ; on the contrary, it is just on this point that science
is at present like a helpless barque tossing to and fro on
a troubled sea ; whoever is led away by its illusions is
doomed sooner or later to sink. For that which I have
just demonstrated concerning the various races who
survived in Europe from pre-Aryan times, the Iberians,
Rhetians, &c., although indeed essentially correct,
represents only the most elementary simplification of
the innumerable hypotheses which, at the present moment,
are afloat in the air, and every day the matter becomes
more complicated. Thus—to give the layman only
one example—long and careful researches have led
to the conclusion that in Scotland, in the earliest stone
age, there existed a long-skulled race, but that in the stone
age there appeared another exceedingly broad-headed
race, which after fusion with the former and with mixed
forms was typical of the bronze age; all this took place
in the remote past, long before the arrival of the Celts ;
when these appeared as the vanguard of the Germanic
peoples, it can scarcely be doubted that they under-
went changes through contact with the race settled there
before them, since even to-day, after so many and so
strong waves of immigration have swept over that land,
we find in many individuals characteristics which, an
authority tells us, point back directly and unmistakably
to that prehistoric race of the bronze age which sprang
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 531

from the mixing of long skulls and short ones! * Now
how can we estimate anatomically the craniological
influence of such long-settled races upon the Germanic
peoples, if they themselves already possessed long skulls,
short skulls, and skulls that are between the two? And
why is it that to-day only the short skulls tend to increase ?
But here again come other men of science who sing a
different song: some authorities hold that we have no
strong reason for believing in the immigration of the
Indo-European. It is their opinion that he was already
there in the stone age, was even then distinguished by
his long skull from another short-skulled race, and
struggled with it for the mastery; that this Long-skull
of the stone age was no other than the Germanic in-
dividual! Virchow’s view, based upon anatomical
material, is, that even the oldest Troglodytes of Europe
might have been of Aryan descent, at least that no
one could prove the contrary.f But with the younger
school such cautious and hesitating judgments find no
favour ; under the pretext of strictly scientific simplifi-
cation they wave aloft the standard of the chaos and
degrade the whole history of humanity as lies. These
modern theories have been most clearly expressed by
Professor Kollmann. He reduces all the peoples living
in Europe to four types: long skulls with long faces,
long skulls with short faces, short skulls with short faces,
and short skulls with long faces; these four races he
supposes to have lived with and beside each other for
centuries and to do so still. And now comes the devil’s
hoof: all that history teaches us about the Migrations,
nationalities, mental differences, great creative works of
art, which were executed solely by single national in-
dividualities and at best merely taken over by others,

* Sir William Turner: Early Man tn Scotland. Speech deiivered
before the Royal Institution in London on January 13, 1898,
t+ Ranke: Dey Mensch ii. 578.
532 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtu CENTURY

and about the war still waged among us between those
elements that advance and those that retard culture

. all this is put aside as rubbish and we are called
upon to believe the following dogma: ‘‘ The development
of culture is manifestly the common achievement of all
these types. All European races, so far as we have
penetrated into the secret of the nature of race, are
equally gifted for every task of culture.” * Equally
gifted ? One can scarcely believe one’s eyes! “‘ Equally
gifted” for “every” task! I shall have to return to
this point soon ; I did not wish to leave the question of
craniometry without having pointed out, first, how
difficult it is here, too, to separate the Germanic from the
non-Germanic by formulas, by the compass and the
ruler; secondly, upon what a dangerous path these
worthies take us, when they suddenly interrupt their dis-
cussion of ‘‘ chameprosopic, platyrrhinous, mesoconchic,
prognathic, proophryocephalous, ooidic, brachyklito-
metopic, hypsistegobregmatic Dolichocephali”’ in order
to link on to it general remarks about history and culture.
The layman understands little or nothing of the remainder;
he wades hopelessly about in this barbaric jargon of neo-
scholastic natural science ; only the one point is printed
in all the newspapers of Europe as the visible result of
such a congress: that the most learned gentlemen in
Europe have solemnly protocolled the fact that all the
races bear an equal share in the development of culture;
there never have been Greeks, Romans, Germanic peoples,
Jews, but from time immemorial there have lived peace-
fully side by side or, it may be, devouring each other,
leptoprosopic Dolichocephali, chameprosopic Dolicho-
cephali, leptoprosopic Brachycephali and chameprosopic
Brachycephali, ‘‘ all working unitedly at the furtherance
of culture” (sic /). It provokes a smile! But crimes

* Allgemeine Versammlung der deutschen anthropologischen Gesell.
schaft, 1892.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 533

against history are really too serious to be punished
merely by being laughed at; the sound common sense
of all intelligent men must step vigorously in and put
astop to this: we must say to these worthies, “ Cobbler,
stick to your last!” *

How utterly unscientific such a proceeding as that
of Kollmann must be is quite manifest. Far-reaching
simplification is a law of artistic creating, but not a law
of nature ; the characteristic thing here is rather endless
complexity. What should we say of a botanist who wished
to class plants in families according to the length and
breadth of their leaves, or according to any other one
characteristic ? Kollmann’s method is a retrograde step
as compared with old Theophrastus. As long as men
attempted artificial classifications, the systematic know-
ledge of the plant world did not advance one step; but.
then came men of genius of the nature of Ray, Jussieu,
De Candolle, who by observation united to creative
intuition established the chief families of plants and
only then discovered the characteristics—mostly very
concealed ones—which enabled us to demonstrate the
relationship anatomically as well. The same is true of
the animal world. All other procedure is absolutely
artificial and consequently mere fooling. And hence in
the case of man we cannot, as Kollmann does, build up }
at the anatomist’s bidding a system into which facts.
then have to be fitted as well as may be; we must ;
ascertain precisely what groups actually exist as indivi-
dualised, morally and intellectually distinguishable races,
and then see whether there are any anatomical
characteristics which will aid us in classification.

* Cf. the splendid satire by M. Buchner on modern craniometry in
the supplement tothe Munich Allgemeine Zettung, 1899, No. 282-284.—
In the meantime J. Deniker has proposed a new division of all Europeans
into six chief and four subordinate races. Thus the picture changes
every year |
534 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

RATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This digression into the sphere of anatomical science
, has had the one good result of revealing to us how little
sure help and how little useful or practical instruction
: we may expect from that source. We are either walking
upon sandy and shifting ground or in a quagmire, where
we sink at the first step and stick fast, or we must spring
from point to point on the exceedingly sharp edges of
dogma and at any moment fall into the abyss. The digres-
sion has moreover positive advantages: it enriches the
material of our knowledge and teaches us to see more
clearly. Both history and daily observation teach us
that the races are not equally gifted, any more than
individuals are; and anthropology shows us further
(in spite of Professor Kollmann) that in the case of races
which have achieved certain results, a definite physical
conformation predominates. The mistake liesin operating
with haphazard numbers of objects of comparison and
in measuring according to arbitrarily chosen relations.
Thus, for example, it is considered a fixed rule that as soon
as the breadth of a skull bears the relation of 75: 100
or less, then it is ‘‘ dolichocephalous,” with 76 or even 75}
it is “ mesocephalous ” and from 80 onwards “ brachy-
cephalous.” Who is the authority? Why should
there be a special magic in the number 75? Any other
magic than that of my own convenience and laziness ?
I understand quite well that we cannot get on in daily
practice without teymint technice and limitations, but
what I cannot understand is that they should be taken
for anything but arbitrary limits and arbitrary words.*

* Very remarkable in this connection are the researches of Dr. G.
Walcher, which show that the position of the head of the new-born
child exercises a definite influence upon the shape of the skull. In
the case of twins from one embryo by this means the one was developed
into a distinct dolichocephalous, the other to a brachycephalous child.
(See Zentralblati fv Gyndkologie, 1905, No. 7.)
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 533

This applies to the high and low countenances just as
well as to the long and short skulls ; everywhere it is a
question of relations which merge by degrees into each
other. But it is the nature of life to be plastically
mutable ; the living principle of creation is fundamentally
different from the crystalline principle in this, that it
does not shape according to unchangeable relations of
numbers but that it in a way freely creates, while observing
the harmony of parts and retaining the fundamental
scheme which is given by the nature of the thing itself.
No two individuals are like each other. To survey the
physical structure of a race at any given moment, I
should require to have before me all the representatives
of that race and seek out in this crowd the uniform
and uniting idea, the predominant specific tendency of
physical conformation, which is peculiar to this race as
race; I should see it with my eyes. If I had had, say
at the time of Tacitus, all the Germanic peoples before
my eyes: the still unmixed Celts, the Teutons and the
Germanic Slavs, I should certainly have seen a harmonious
whole, in which a certain law of structure predominated,
and round it the most manifold and varying conformations
would have grouped themselves. Probably there would
not have been a single individual who united in himself
all the specific characteristics of this plastic idea of race
(in the way in which it would have appeared to my
thinking brain) in the highest potentiality and in perfect
harmony: the great radiant heavenly eyes, the golden
hair, the gigantic stature, the symmetrical muscular
development, the lengthened skull (which an ever-active
brain, tortured by longing, had changed from the round
lines of animal contentedness and extended towards the
front), the lofty countenance, required by an elevated
spiritual life as the seat of its expression—certainly no
single individual would have possessed all these features.
Were one feature perfect the other would be merely
536 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

indicated. Here and there, too, nature, which is ever
experimenting and never repeating itself, would have
broken the law of harmony, an overgrown giant would
swing his club over dull eyes, under too long a skull would
be seen a face proportionately too short, glorious eyes
would beam from beneath a fine lofty forehead, but in
comparison, the body would be strikingly small, &c. &c.,
ad infinitum. In other groups again secret laws of the
correlation of growth must have manifested themselves ;
here, for example, families with black hair, but at the same
time with particularly large daring aquiline noses and
more slender build, there red hair with remarkably
white freckled skin and countenance somewhat broader in
the upper part . . . for the slightest change in the con-
formation causes other changes. Still more numerous
must those figures have been from which in their average
commonplaceness no specific law of structure could have
been derived, if they had not appeared as portions of a
large whole, in which their place was definitely fixed,
so that we could see from the way in which they fitted
in that organically they did belong to it. Darwin him-
self, who worked all his life with compass, ruler and
weighing machine, is always in his studies on artificial
breeding calling attention to the fact that, the eye of
' the born and experienced breeder discovers things of
which figures give not the slightest confirmation, and
which the breeder himself can hardly ever express in
words ; he notices that this and that distinguishes the
one organism from the other, and makes his selection
for breeding accordingly; this is an intuition born of
ceaseless observation. This power of observation we can
acquire only by practice; the survey of the Germanic
peoples in the time of Tacitus would have served our
purpose. We should certainly not have found that in
the case of all these men the breadth of the head bore
to the length the proportion of 75 : 100; nature knows
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 537

no such limitations ; in the unlimited complexity of all
thinkable intermediate forms, as well as of forms of
greater development towards this or that extreme, we
should probably here and there have encountered distinct
brachycephali; discoveries in graves make it probable,
and why should the plasticity of creative powers not
have brought it about? We should, moreover, not
have seen nothing but ‘giants ’’ and be able to say that
he who did not exceed six feet high was not Germanic :
on the other hand, we might quite well have made the
seemingly paradoxical statement, that the small men
of this group are tall, for they belong to a tall race, and
for the same reason those short skulls are long; if we
look more closely we shall soon see that outwardly and
inwardly they have specific characteristics of the Germanic
people. The hieroglyphs of nature’s language are
in fact not so logically mathematical, so mechanically.
explicable as many an investigator likes to fancy. Life
is needed to understand life. And here a fact occurs to
me which I have received from various sources, viz., that
very small children, especially girls, frequently have
quite a marked instinct for race. It frequently happens
that children who have no conception of what “ Jew”
means, or that there is any such thing in the world, begin
to cry as soon as a genuine Jew or Jewess comes near
them! The learned can frequently not tell a Jew from
a non-Jew; the child that scarcely knows how to speak
notices the difference. Is not that something? To
me it seems worth as much as a whole anthropological
congress or at least a whole speech of Professor Kollmann.
There is still something in the world besides compass and
yard-measure. Where the learned fails with his artificial
constructions, one single unbiased glance can illuminate
the truth like a sunbeam. ae

Und was kein Verstand der Verstandigen sieht,
Das tibet in Einfalt ein kindlich Gemiit.
538 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

We shall not interfere with the craniologists any longer
than is necessary; however, we shall not despise the
material collected by their diligence : it will be a valuable
addition to our knowledge of what is Germanic and an
earnest warning in regard to the intrusion amongst us
of that which is non-Germanic.

The very necessary limitation of the name ‘‘ Germanic ”
to those who are really Teutons or at least have much
Germanic blood in their veins can therefore never be
carried out with mathematical exactness, but will always
require, as it were, the eye of the breeder and the eye
of the child. Much knowledge must, of course, be useful,
but seeing and feeling is still more indispensable. And
with this we transfer our investigation into the necessary
limitation of the word ‘‘ Germanic ”’ to the mental element,
in which history teaches us on every hand to separate the
Germanic from the non-Germanic, and at the same time
thereby to recognise the physical element and value it at its
true worth.

SCIENCE OF PHYSIOGNOMY

The science of physiognomy, which is at once spirit
and body, mirror of the soul and anatomical ‘ factum,”
next claims our attention. Look, for example, at the
countenance of Dante Alighieri; we shall learn as much
from it as from his poems.* That is a characteristically

* That Dante is Germanic and not a son of the chaos becomes in

. my opinion so clear from his personality and his work that proof of it
is absolutely superfluous. But it is nevertheless interesting to know
that the name Alighieri is Gothic, a corruption of Aldiger ; it belongs
to those German proper names, at the basis of which lies the word
“ ger’? = spear, as in Gerhard, Gertrude, &c. (a fact which in reference
to Shake-speare might have given the visionaries much to think about !).
This name came into the family through Dante’s grandmother on the
father’s side, a Goth from Ferrara, whose name was Aldigiero. With
regard to the origin of the paternal grandfather and of the poet's
mother only the one fact to-day is known, that the attempt to derive
him from Roman families is a pure invention of the Italian biographers
who thought it more illustrious to belong to Rome than to Germania ;
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 539

Germanic countenance! Nota feature in it reminds us of

any Hellenic or Roman type, much less of any of the

Asiatic or African physiognomies which the Pyramids

have faithfully preserved. A new being has entered aol
the history of the world! Nature in the fulness of her '
power has produced a new \
soul: look at it, here she
reflects herself in a counte-
nance such as never was
seen before! ‘‘ Above the
mental hurricane expressed
in the countenance rose
nobly the peaceful brow
arching like a marble
dome.” * Yes, yes, Balzac
is right. Hurricane and
marble dome! If he had
only told us that Dante was
a leptoprosopic Dolicho-
cephalous, we should not
have been much wiser. At
any rate we shall never find
a second Dante, but a walk through the collection of
busts in the Berlin Museum will convince us how firmly
established this type was in Northern Italy, which had been
thoroughly germanised by Goths, Langobards and Franks.

 

but since the grandfather was a warrior, knighted by the Emperor
Conrad, and Dante himself tells us that he belongs to the petty nobility,
then his descent from pure Germanic parentage is as good as proven
(cf. Franz Xaver Kraus: Dante, Berlin, 1897, pp. 21-25). Even to
the beginning of the fifteenth century many Italians are described in
tld documents as Alemanni, Langobardi, &c., ex alamanorum genere,
egibus vivens Langobardorum, &c. (and that though the majority of them
had adopted Roman law, whereby the documentary evidence of their
descent usually disappeared) ; so thoroughly saturated with Germanic
blood (and that too its sole creative element) was that people which
the so-called ‘‘ Roman Culture”’ to-day wishes to regard as its source
(see Savigny : Geschichte des rémischen Rechtes im Muttelalter, 1., chap. iii.}.
* Balzac: Les Proscrits.

|
540 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

To this day we see the closest unmistakable physiognomi-
cal relationship in the German Tyrolese mentioned above,
as also in Norway, and individual kindred features
wherever genuine Teutons are to be found. However,
if we look at the greatest Germanic men, we shall not
find one but numerous physiognomic conformations ; the
daring powerfully curved nose predominates; we find,

 

LUTHER

however, all thinkable combinations, even to that powerful
head which in every particular is the very opposite of
Dante’s and by this very fact betrays the intimate
relationship: I mean the head of Martin Luther. Here
the hurricane, of which Balzac spoke, embraces forehead,
eyes and nose, no marble dome is arched above it; but
this flaming volcano of energy and thoughtfulness rests
upon mouth and chin as upon a rock of granite. Even
the smallest feature of the powerful face testifies to energy
and thirst for achievement; when one looks at this
tountenance the words of Dante rise to one’s memory

Cola dove si puote
Cio che si vuole.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 541

This man can do what he wills and his whole will is directed
to great deeds : in this head there is no studying for mere
learning’s sake, but to find out truth, truth for life; the
man does not sing to charm the ear, but because song
elevates and strengthens the heart; he could not, like
Dante, have lived proudly apart and unknown, trusting
his fame to future generations—what does such a coun-
tenance care for fame? “Love is the pulse-beat of our
life,’ he said. And where love is strong, there too there
is strong hatred. It is absolutely false to say, as Henke
does, that such a countenance represents the North
German Slavonic type.* So mighty a personality towers
high above such specifications ; it shows us the outward
expression of one of the astonishingly rich possibilities
of development of the Germanic spirit in its highest and
richest form. Luther’s countenance, like Dante’s, belongs
to all Germanic peoples. One finds this type in England,
where no Slav ever made his abode; one meets it also
among the most active politicians of France. One can pic-
ture to oneself this man fifteen hundred years ago, on horse-
back, swinging his battle-axe to protect his beloved northern
home, and then again at his own fireside with his children
crowding round him, or at the banquet of the men, drain-
ing the horn of mead to the last drop and singing heroic
songs in praise of his ancestors. Dante and Luther are
the extremes of the rich physiognomical scale of great
Germanic men. As Tacitus said: they resemble them-
selvesalone. But every attempt to localise the type, to the
north or to the south, to the Celtic west or the Slavonic
east, is manifestly futile, futile at least when one looks
especially at the more important and therefore more
characteristic men, and disregards the chance details
of habit, especially of the manner of wearing the beard.

* As above, p. 20. What is here said about Luther has since been
verified by the strictly anthropological researches of Dr. Ludwig
Woltmann; see the Politisch-anthropologische Revue, 1905, p. 683 fa
542 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtx# CENTURY

Goethe, forexample, might be the child of any Germanic
stem judging by the cast of his face, as might also Johann
Sebastian Bach and Immanuel Kant.

FREEDOM AND LOYALTY

Let us attempt a glance into the depths of the soul.
What are the specific intellectual and moral character-
istics of this Germanic race? Certain anthropologists
would fain teach us that all races are equally gifted;
we point to history and answer: that is a lie! The
races of mankind are markedly different in the nature
and also in the extent of their gifts, and the Germanic
races belong to the most highly gifted group, the group
usually termed Aryan.’ Is this human family united
and uniform by bonds of blood ? Do these stems really
allspring from the same root? I do not know and I do
not much care; no affinity binds more closely than
elective affinity, and in this sense the Indo-European
Aryans certainly form a family. In his Politics Aristotle
writes (i. 5): ‘‘ If there were men who in physical stature
alone were so pre-eminent as the representatives of the
Gods, then every one would admit that other men by
tight must be subject unto them. If this, however,
is true in reference to the body, then there is still greater
justification for distinguishing between pre-eminent
and commonplace souls.” (Physically and mentally
the Aryans are pre-eminent among all peoples; for
that reason they are by right, as the Stagirite expresses
it, the lords of the world.) Aristotle puts the matter
still more concisely when he says, “Some men are by
nature free, others slaves”; this perfectly — expresses
the moral aspect. For freedom is by no means an
abstract thing, to which every human being has funda-
mentally a claim; a right to freedom must evidently
depend upon capacity for it, and this again presupposes
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 543

physical and intellectual power. One may make the
assertion, that even the mere conception of freedom is
quite unknown to most men. Do we not see the homo
syriacus develop just as well and as happily in the position
of slave as of master? Do the Chinese not show us
another example of the same nature? Do not all
historians tell us that the Semites and half-Semites, in
spite of their great intelligence, never succeeded in founding
a State that lasted, and that because every one always
endeavoured to grasp all power for himself, thus showing
that their capabilities were limited to despotism and
anarchy, the two opposites of freedom ? * And here we
see at once what great gifts a man must have in order
that one may say of him, he is “ by nature free,” for
the first condition of this is the power of creating. ‘Only
a State-building race can be free; the gifts which make
the individual an artist and philosopher are essentially

the same as those which, spread through the whole mass |

as instinct, found States and give to the individual that
which hitherto had remained unknown to all nature:
the idea of freedom. As soon as we understand ee :
the near affinity of the Germanic peoples to the Greeks {
and Romans strikes us, and at the same time we recognise '
what separates them. In the case of the Greeks the
individualistic creative character predominates, even in |
the forming of constitutions ; in the case of the Romans |
it is communistic legislation and military authority that —
predominate ; the Germanic races, on the other hand, have .

*
i
}
;

individually and collectively perhaps less creative power,; |

but they possess a harmony of qualities, maintaining the’

!

balance between the instinct of individual freedom, which: —

finds its highest expression im creative art,f and the in-
stinct of public freedom which creates the State; and
in this way they prove themselves to be the equals of
their great predecessors. Art more perfect in its creations,

* CH. p. 404. ¢ See pp. 14, 25, 33, &es
544 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

so far as form is concerned, there may have been, but no
art has ever been more powerful in its creations than
that which includes the whole range of things human
between the winged pen of Shakespeare and the etching.
tool of Albrecht Direr, and which in its own special
language—music—penetrates deeper into the heart than
any previous attempt to create immortality out of that
which is mortal—to transform matter into spirit. And
in the meantime the European States, founded by Ger-
manic peoples, in spite of their,so to speak, improvised,
alwiys provisional and changeable character—or rather
perhaps thanks to this character—proved themselves to
be the most enduring as well as the most powerful in the
world. In spite of all storms of war, in spite of the decep-
tions of that ancestral enemy, the chaos of peoples, which
carried its poison into the very heart of our nation,
Freedom and its correlative, the State, remained, through
all the ages the creating and saving ideal, even though
the balance between the two often seemed to be upset :
we recognise that more clearly to-day than ever.
In order that this might be so, that fundamental and
common “‘ Aryan” capacity of free creative power had
. to be supplemented by another quality, the incomparable
_{and altogether peculiar Germanic loyalty (Treue). If
that intellectual and physical development which leads
to the idea of freedom and which produces on the one
hand art, philosophy, science, on the other constitutions
(as well as all the phenomena of culture which this word
implies),is common to the Hellenes and Romans as well
as to the Germanic peoples, so also is the extravagant
conception of loyalty a specific characteristic of the
Teuton. As the venerable Johann Fischart sings:

Standhaft und treu, und treu und standhaft,
Die machen ein recht teutsch Verwandtschaft !

Julius Cesar at once recognised not only the military
prowess but also the unexampled loyalty of the Teutons
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 545

and hired from among them as many cavalrymen as he
could possibly get. In the battle of Pharsalus, which was
so decisive for the history of the world, they fought for
him ; the Romanised Gauls had abandoned their com-
mander in the hour of need, the Germanic troops proved
themselves as faithful as they were brave. This loyalty

to a master chosen of their own free will is the most |.

prominent feature in the Germanic character; from it
we can tell whether pure Germanic blood flows in the
veins cr not. The German mercenary troops have often
been made the object of ridicule, but it is in them that
the genuine costly metal of this race reveals itself. The
very first autocratic Emperor, Augustus, formed his
personal bodyguard of Teutons; where else could he
have found unconditional loyalty ? During the whole
time that the Roman Empire in the east and the west
lasted, this same post of honour was filled by the same
people, but they were always brought from farther and
farther north, because with the so-called ‘‘ Latin culture ”’
the plague of disloyalty had crept more deeply into
the country ; finally, a thousand years after Augustus,
we find Anglo-Saxons and Normans in this post, standing
on guard around the throne of Byzantium. MHapless
Germanic Lifeguardsman! Of the political principles,
which forcibly held together the chaotic world in a sem-
blance of order, he understood just as little as he did
of the quarrels concerning the nature of the Trinity,
which cost him many a drop of blood: but one thing
he understood : to be loyal to the master he had himself
chosen. When in the time of Nero the Frisian delegates
left the back seats which had been assigned to them in
the Circus and proudly sat down on the front benches of
the senators among the richly adorned foreign delegates,
what was it that gave these poor men, who came to
Rome to beg for land to cultivate, such a bold spirit of
independence? Of what alone could they boast?

J 2M

ne.
546 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

“That no one in the world surpassed the Teuton in
loyalty.” * Karl Lamprecht has written so beautifully
about this great fundamental characteristic of loyalty in
its historical significance that I should reproach myself
if I did not quote him here. He has just spoken of
the “‘ retainers’? who in the old German State pledge
themselves to their chief to be true unto death and prove
so, and then he adds: “In the formation of this body
of retainers we see one of the most magnificent features of
the specifically Germanic view of life, the feature of loyalty.
Not understood by the Roman but indispensable to the
Teuton, the need of loyalty existed even at that time,
that ever-recurring German need of closest personal
attachment, of complete devotion to each other, perfect
community of hopes, efforts and destinies. Loyalty
never was to our ancestors a special virtue, it was the
breath of life of everything good and great; upon it
tested the feudal State of the Early and the co-operative
system of the Later Middle Ages, and who could conceive
the military monarchy of the present day without loyalty ?
. . . Not only were songs sung about loyalty, men lived
init. The retinue of the King of the Franks, the courtiers
of the great Karolingians, the civil and military ministers
of our medizval Emperors, the officials of the centres of
administration under our Princes since the fourteenth
and the fifteenth centuries are merely new forms of the
old Germanic conception. For the wonderful vitality of
such institutions consisted in this, that they were not
rooted in changing political or even moral conditions,
but in the primary source of Germanicism itself, the
need of loyalty.” T

However true and beautiful every word that Lamprecht
has here written, I do not think that he has made quite
clear the “ primary source.” Loyalty, though distinguish-

* Tacitus: Annals xiii. 54.
+ Lamprecht: Deut. Gesch., 2nd ed. is 1364
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 547

ing the Teutons from mongrel races, is not altogether
a specific Germanic trait. One finds it in almost all
purely bred races, nowhere more than among the negroes,
for example, and—I would ask—what man could be
more faithful than the noble dog? No, in order to
reveal that “‘ primary source of Germanicism,”’ we must
show what is the nature of this Germanic loyalty, and
we can only succeed in doing so if we have grasped the
fact that freedom is the intellectual basis of the whole
Germanic nature. For the characteristic feature of this
loyalty is its free self-determination. - The human character
resembles the nature of God’ as the theologians represent
it: complex and yet indiscernible, an inseparable unity.
This loyalty and this freedom do not grow the one out
of the other, they are two manifestations of the same cha-
racter which reveals itself to us on one occasion more from
the intellectual on another more from the moral side. The
negro and the dog serve their masters, whoever they may be:
that is the morality of the weak, or, as Aristotle says, of
the man who is born to be a slave ; the Teuton chooses his
master, and his loyalty is therefore loyalty to himself : that
is the morality of the man who isbornfree. But loyalty
as displayed by the Teuton was unexampled. The dis-
loyalty of the extravagantly gifted proclaimer of poetical
and political freedom, t.e., of the Hellene, was proverbial
from time immemorial; the Roman was loyal only in
the defence of his own, German loyalty remained, Lam-
precht says, “‘ incomprehensible to him” ; here, as every-
where in the sphere of morals, we see an affinity with the
Indo-Aryans ; but these latter people so markedly lacked
the artistic sense which urges men on to adventure and
to the establishment of a free life, that their loyalty never
reached that creative importance in the world’s history
which the same quality attained under the influence of
the Germanic races. Here again, as before, in the con-
sideration of the feeling of freedom, we find a higher
548 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

harmony of character in the Teuton ; hence we may say
that no one in the world, not even the greatest, has sur-
passed him. One thing is certain: if we wish to sum up
in a single word the historic greatness of the Teuton—
always a perilous undertaking, since everything living is
of Protean nature—we must name his loyalty. That is
the central point from which we can survey his whole
character, or better, his personality. But we must re-
member that this loyalty is not the primary source, as
Lamprecht thinks, not the root but the blossom—the
fruit by which we recognise the tree. Hence it is that this
loyalty is the finest touchstone for distinguishing between
genuine and false Germanicism ; for it is not by the roots
but by the fruit that we distinguish the species; we
should not forget that with unfavourable weather many
a tree has no blossoms or only poor ones, and this often
happens in the case of hard-pressed Teutons. The
root of their particular character is beyond all doubt
that power of imagination which is common to all Aryans
and peculiar to them alone and which appeared in greatest
luxuriance among the Hellenes. I spoke of this in the
beginning of the chapter on Hellenic art and philosophy
(see p. 14 f.) ; from that root everything springs, art, philo-
sophy, politics, science; hence, too, comes the peculiar
sap which tinges the flower of loyalty. The stem then is
formed by the positive strength—the physical and the
intellectual, which can never be separated; in the
case of the Romans, to whom we owe the firm bases of
family and State, this stem was powerfully developed.
But the real blossoms of such a tree are those which
mind and sentiment bring to maturity. Freedom is an
expansive power which scatters men, Germanic loyalty is
the bond which by its inner power binds men more
closely than the fear of the tyrant’s sword: freedom
signifies thirst after direct self-discovered truth, loyalty
the reverence for that which has appeared to our an-
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 549

cestors to be true; freedom decides its own destiny and
loyalty holds that decision unswervingly and for ever.
Loyalty to the loved one, to friend, parents, and father-
land we find in many places; but here, in the case of
the Teuton, something is added, which makes the great
instinct become a profoundly deep spiritual power, a
principle of life. Shakespeare represents the father giving
his son as the best advice for his path through life, as the
one admonition which includes all others, these words :

This above all: to thine own self be true!

The principle of Germanic loyalty is evidently not the
necessity of attachment, as Lamprecht thinks, but on
the contrary the necessity of constancy within a man’s own
autonomous circle; self-determination testifies to it;
in it freedom proves itself; by it the vassal, the member
of the guild, the official, the officer asserts his independence.
For the free man, to serve means to command himself.
“Tt was the Germanic races who first introduced into
the world the idea of personal freedom,” says Goethe.
What in the case of the Hindoos was metaphysics and |
in so far necessarily negative, seclusive, has been here
transferred to life as an ideal of mind, it is the ‘‘ breath '
of life of everything great and good,” a star in the night,
to the weary a spur, to the storm-tossed an anchor of?
safety.* In the construction of the Germanic character
loyalty is the necessary perfection of the personality,
which without it falls to pieces. Immanuel Kant has
given a daring, genuinely Germanic definition of person-
ality: it is, he says, “‘ freedom and independence of the
mechanism of all nature’’; and what it achieves he has
summed up as follows: ‘‘ That which elevates man above
himself (as part of the world of sense), attaches him to an
order of things which only the understanding can conceive,

* But quite analogous to Indian sentiment, in so far as here the
regulative principle is transferred to our inmost hearts,
550 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

and which has the whole world of sense subject to it, is
Personality.” But without loyalty this elevation
would be fatal: thanks to it alone the impulse of freedom
can develop and bring blessing instead of acurse. Loyalty
in this Germanic sense cannot originate without freedom,
but it is impossible to see how an unlimited, creative
impulse to freedom could exist without loyalty. Childish
attachment to nature is a proof of loyalty: it enables
man to raise himself above nature, without falling
shattered to the ground, like the Hellenic Phaethon.
Therefore it is that Goethe writes: ‘‘ Loyalty preserves
personality!’’ Germanic loyalty is the girdle that
gives immortal beauty to the ephemeral individual,
it is the sun without which no knowledge can ripen to
wisdom, the charm which alone bestows upon the free
individual’s passionate action the blessing of permanent
achievement.

IDEAL AND PRACTICE

These few simplified remarks should, I think, enable
us to understand the essential characteristics, intellectual
and moral, of the Germanic races. Simplification might
easily fill a whole book and it would only be amplifica-
tion. If we wish clearly to distinguish the Teuton
from his nearest kinsmen we should study the inmost
being of both and compare a Kant as an ethical teacher
with an Aristotle. For Kant “the autonomy of the
will is the highest principle of morality”; a “ moral
personality ”’ exists for him only from the moment
when ‘“‘a man is subject to no other laws than those
which he gives to himself.” And according to what
principles shall this autonomous personality give itself
laws? We must suppose that there is an unprovable
“‘ realm of impulses—certainly only an ideal!’’ An ideal is
therefore to determine life! And in a note to the same
book (Grundlegung zur Metaphysth der Sttten) Kant ina
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 551

few words contrasts this new, specifically Germanic philo-
sophy with the Hellenic: ‘‘ There the realm of impulses
is a theoretical idea, to explain that which is ; here (in the
case of the Teutons) it is a practical idea to bring about
by our active and passive attitude that which is not,
but yet may be.” What daring, to create by our will
a moral realm which is not, to cause it “actually”
to come into existence! What a dangerous piece of.
daring if loyalty were not at work, which is so
thoroughly characteristic of Kant’s own mental physiog-
nomy! And we should carefully note this contrast:
here (in the case of the Teuton) Ideal and at the same
time Practice, there (in the case of the Hellene) sober
Reality and, as its associate, Theory. The great captain
of the powers of the chaos laughed at the German
“ideologists,”’ as he called them: a proof of ignorance,
for they were more practical men than he himself. It
is not the ideal that is in the clouds but theory.
The Ideal is, as Kant here wishes it to be understood,
a practical idea as distinguished from a theoretical one.
And that which we see here, on the heights of metaphysics,
in clear-cut outlines, we find again everywhere: the
Teuton is the most ideal, but at the same time the most
practical, man in the world, and that because here we
have not dissimilarity, but on the contrary identity.
A Teuton writes a Critique of Pure Reason, but at the same
time a Teuton invents the railway ; the century of Bessemer
and of Edison is at the same time the century of Beethoven
and of Richard Wagner. Whoever does not feel the
unity of the impulse here, whoever considers it a riddle
that the astronomer Newton should interrupt his mathe-
matical investigations to write a commentary to the
Revelation of St. John, that Crompton invented the spin-
ning machine merely to give himself more leisure for his
beloved music, and that Bismarck, the statesman of
blood and iron, caused Beethoven’s sonatas to be played

-
552 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXTtH CENTURY

to him in the decisive moments of his life, understands
nothing at all of the nature of the Teuton, and cannot
in consequence rightly judge the part he plays in the
history of the world in the past and at the present time.

TEUTON AND ANTI-TEUTON

So much for this important subject. We have seen
who the Teuton is; * let us now see how he entered
into history.

I am not qualified and do not wish in this work to give
a history of the Germanic races; but we cannot under-
stand and value the nineteenth century either in so
far as it is a product of the preceding ones nor in its
own gigantic expansive power, if we do not possess clear
conceptions, not only concerning the nature of the Teuton,
but also concerning the conflict which has been raging
between him and the non-Teuton for fifteen hundred years.
To-day is the child of yesterday: what we haveis partly the
egacy of pre-Germanic antiquity, what we are is altogether
the work of the early Teuton, who is wont to be repre-
sented to us as a “ barbarian,” as if barbarism were a
question of relative civilisation and did not simply denote
a rudeness of mind. One hundred and fifty years ago
Montesquieu brilliantly cleared up this confusion of ideas.
After showing that all the States that make up Europe
to-day (America, Africa and Australia were then out
of the question) were the work of Germanic barbarians
who suddenly appeared from unknown wilds, he con-
tinues, ‘‘ But in reality these peoples were not barbarians,
since they were free: they became barbarians later
when, dominated by the absolute power, they lost their
liberty.”’t In these words we read not only the character

* The whole ninth chapter, which tries to describe Germanic civilisa-
tion and culture in its principal lines, forms a supplement to what is
as briefy as possible sketched here,

+ Lettres persanes, chap. cxxxvi.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 553

of the Teutons, but also the fate against which they
were destined continually to struggle. For it is not
possible to say what uniform and independent culture
might have arisen on a purely Germanic soil ; instead of
this the Teuton entered into a history which was already
perfectly shaped, a history with which he had hitherto
not come in contact. As soon as the bare struggle for
existence gave him leisure, he grasped with the fervour
of passion the two constructive ideas which the “ old
world ” now tumbling to pieces had tried in its last agony
to develop: imperialism and Christianity. Was this a
piece of luck? Who will venture to affirm it? He
received no great thoughts of antiquity in pure form, all
were transmitted by the sterile, shallow spirits of the
chaos that shunned the light and hated freedom. But
the Teuton had no choice. In order to live, he had in
the first place to assimilate alien customs and thoughts
as they were presented to him ; he had to be apprenticed
to a civilisation which in truth was no longer worthy to
loosen the latchet of his shoes; the Hellenic creative
impulse, Roman legislation, the sublime simple doctrine
of Christ, which would have had the greatest affinity
to his nature, were completely removed from his
eyes, to be dug up centuries later by his own diligence.
In his adoption of the alien he was greatly aided by his
perilous power of assimilation, and also by that “ modesty ”
which Luther praises as “ the sure sign of a pious god-
fearing heart,” but which in its extravagant estimation
of the merit of others leads to many a foolish delusion.
Hence it is that a sharp critical eye is needed to separate
in the motives and thoughts of those old heroic generations
what is genuinely Germanic from that which has been
deflected from its natural course, sometimes for ever.
Take, for example, the absolute religious toleration of
the Goths, when they had become masters of that Roman
empire where the principle of intolerance had long
554 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

been predominant : it is just as characteristic of Germanic
sentiment as the protection which they gave to the
monuments of art.* We see here at once these two
features, freedom and loyalty. Characteristic, too, is the
constancy with which the Goths clung to Arianism,
Dahn is certainly right in saying that it is a chance that
the Goths were induced to join the sect of the Arians
and not of the Athanasians; but chance ceases where
loyalty begins. Thanks to the great Wulfila, the Goths
possessed the whole Bible in their mother tongue, and
Dahn’s mockery of the incapacity of these rough men for
theological disputes is somewhat out of place in view of
the fact that this living book was the source of their
religious faith—a thing that not every Christian of the
nineteenth century could say of himself. And now
comes the really important matter—not the dreary
quarrel about Homo-ousian and Homoi-ousian, which
even the Emperor Constantine declared to be idle—but
the loyal clinging to what has once been chosen, the
emphasising of Germanic individuality, and the right of
free-agency in dealing with the foreigner. If the
Teutons had been as Dahn represents them, mere
barbarians with no will, as ready to adopt the cult of
Osiris as any other faith, how does it come that all
of them (Longobardians, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians,
&c.) in the fourth century adopted Arianism and
that, while elsewhere it scarcely survived fifty years,

* See above, p. 322, and cf. Gibbon: Roman Empire, chap. xxxix.,
and Clarac: Manuel de Vhistoive de l'art chez les Anciens jusqu’a la
fin du 6° siécle de notre éve, ii. 857 f. The mongrel races destroyed
the monuments, partly from religious fanaticism, partly because the
statues provided the best lime for building and the temples furnished
splendid dressed stones. Where are the true barbarians ?

+ We can see in Neander’s Kirchengeschichte, 4th ed. iii. 199, how
characteristic of the Goths was the reading of the Bible. Neander
quotes a letter in which Hieronymus expresses his astonishment at
the manner in which ‘‘ the barbaric tongue of the Goths seeks aiter

the pure sense of the Hebraic original,” while in the south “no one
troubles about the matter.’ That was already in the year 403!
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 555

they remained true to it for centuries? I see nothing
theological in this and I do not attach the slightest
importance to those subtleties which can be twisted out
of every little trifle to prove a preconceived thesis; I
direct my attention solely to the great facts of character
and here again I see loyalty and independence. I see
the Germanic peoples instinctively carrying out the eman-
cipation from Rome a thousand years before Wyclif,
at a time when the religious idea of Rome had not been
clearly separated from the Roman imperialism, and in
such a phenomenon I can see nothing accidental.* It
is clear from Karl Miiller’s account in his Kirchenge-
schichte (1892, i. 263) how far from unimportant this
phenomenon was ; he says of the Arian Teutons : ‘‘ Each
Empire has its own Church. There are no Church unions
inthe manner of the CatholicChurch . . . the new priests
.. . have been component parts of the organisation of
the race and the people. The standard of culture in the
ministry is naturally quite different from that among the
Catholics: purely national and Germanic, without being
influenced by the ecclesiastical and profane culture of the
old world. On the other hand, according to all Christian
testimony the customs and morals of the Teutons are im-
measurably higher than those of the Catholic Romance
peoples. It is the moral purity of a still uncorrupted
people as opposed to an absolutely rotten culture.” -
Tolerant, evangelical, morally pure: that is what the
Teutons were before they came under the influence of
Rome.

Now it is peculiar that the Teutons at a later period
allowed themselves to be ensnared and created knights
of the Anti-Germanic powers ; I am afraid that this too
js a genuinely Germanic feature, for everything living bears
in itself the germ of its own ruin and death. Certainly
Charlemagne never even in his dreams thought of serving

* Dabn, 2‘ Auflage von Wietersheim’s Vélkerwanderung ii. 60,
556 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

the Bishop of Rome; on the contrary, he wanted to make
the Bishop’s power subordinate to his own; he treats
the Pope as a master treats his subject,* he is called by his
contemporaries a “‘ reformer ’”’ of the Church and carries
his point against Rome even in matters of dogma, as in
the worship of images, to which he as genuine Teuton
objected. But allthis did not hinder him from strengthen-
ing the Papacy by bestowing on the head of the Roman
Church power and dignity, and furthering the amalgama-
tion of the German monarchy with a Roman Christianity,
hitherto unheard of, but which thenceforth weighed like
anightmare upon Germany. Imagine how matters would
have developed if the Franks, too, had become Arians
or if they as Catholics had early renounced Rome, say
under Charlemagne, and had founded nationally organised
churches like most of the Slavs! When the Popes
urgently appealed to Charlemagne’s predecessors, Charles
Martel and Pépin, for help, Rome’s position as a world-
power was lost ; the decisive rejection of her pretensions
would have destroyed her influence for ever. Indeed, if
Charlemagne’s efforts to get the Imperial Crown conferred
by Byzantium and not by Rome had been successful, the
ecclesiastical independence of the Teutons would never
have been endangered. Charlemagne’s whole activity
testifies to such distinctly German nationalism that we
see that Germanisation was his object, and not only his
object but also his life-work, in spite of all appearances
and many consequences which seem to point to the
contrary ; for he is the founder of Germany, the man
who, as the venerable Widukind said, made
quast una gens of the Germans, and in so far he is the
originator of the no longer ‘‘ Holy Roman” but “ Holy
German ” empire of to-day. The Roman Church, on the

* That the Pope was actually the subject of the Emperor is proved
by civil and by public law, so that the passionate dissertations for and
against are aimless. (See Savigny: Geschichte des rémischen Rechtes
im Mittelalter i. chap. v.}.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 557

other hand, was unavoidably the shield- and armour-
bearer of all Anti-Germanic movements; this was the
part which it played from the beginning—more and more
openly as time went on, so that it never was more Anti-
Germanic than at the present day. And yet it owes its
existence to the Teutons! JI am not speaking of matters of
faith at all, but of the Papacy as an ideal, secular power ;
orthodox Catholics, whom I honour in my heart, have
understood and admitted this. To give only one example,
which is linked with what I have written above: we
have seen that religious toleration is natural to the Teuton
as a man who has sentiments of freedom and to whom
religion is an inner experience ; before the Roman Empire
was seized by the Goths persecution had been the order
of the day, but then it ceased for a long time, for the
Teutons put an end to it. It was only after the doc-
trines and passions of the races had estranged the
Teuton from himself that the Frank began to preach
Christianity to the Saxon sword in hand. It was the
De Civitate Det which impressed upon Charlemagne the
duty of conversion by force,* and to this the Pope, who
bestowed on him the title of Christianissimus Rex un-
ceasingly urged him ; hence it was that the first Thirty
Years War raged among Germanic brothers, laying waste,
destroying, sowing undying hatred, not because they, but
because Rome so wished it. It was exactly the same
nine hundred years later in the second Thirty Years War,
which in some parts of Germany only a fiftieth part of the
population survived—certainly a practical way for getting
rid of the Teutons, to make them destroy each other.
And in the meantime the doctrine of Augustine, the
African half-breed, the dogma of systematic intolerance
and of the punishment by death of heterodoxy had
entered the Church ; and, as soon as the Germanic element
had “been sufficiently weakened and the Anti-Germanic
* Hodgkin: Charles the Great, 1897, pp. 107, 248,
558 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

element sufficiently strengthened, that dogma solemnly
declared to be law and to the everlasting disgrace of
humanity was put in practice for five hundred years, in
the midst of a civilisation which otherwise was advancing
everywhere. How does one of the most eminent Catholics
of the nineteenth century judge this remarkable event,
this brutalisation of men, who had formerly shown them-
selves so humane, in the days when they were supposed to
be barbarians? “It was,” he says, “a victory which
the old Roman Imperial law gained over the Germanic
spirit.”’*

If we wish to carry out the necessary limitation of the
expression “‘ Germanic,” that is, separate the Germanic
from the Un-Germanic, we must in the first place endeavour,
as I did in the beginning of this chapter, to realise the
fundamental qualities of mind and character of the
Teutons, and then, as has just been shown by an example,
we must with a critical eye follow the course of history.
Such “ victories over the Germanic spirit’ were fre-
quently won, many of them with only temporary success,
many so thorough that noble races falling into a pro-
gressive degeneracy disappeared for ever from the German
family. For this Teuton who entered into history under
such complex, contradictory and absolutely obsolete con-
ditions had become estranged from himself. Every
power was set in motion to delude him: not only the
passions, the greed, the lust of power, all the evil vices,
which he had in common with others, even his better
qualities were played upon to serve this purpose: his
mystical tendencies, his thirst for knowledge, his force
of faith, his impulse to create, his high organising abilities,
his noble ambition, his need of ideals—everything
possible was used against himself. The Teuton had
entered history not as a barbarian but as a child—as a

* Déllinger: Die Geschichte dey rveligidsen Fretheit (in his Academic
Lectures, iii. 278)-
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 559

child that falls into the hands of old experienced libertines.
Hence it is that we find Un-Germanic qualities nestling in
the heart of the best Teutons, where, thanks to Germanic
earnestness and loyalty, they often took firmer root than
anywhere else ; hence, too, the great difficulty of solving
the riddle of our history. Montesquieu told us that
the Teuton had become barbarian through the loss
of his freedom: but who robbed him of it? The chaos
of races in conjunction with himself. Dietrich of Berne
had rejected the title and the crown of Imperator ; he
was too proud to wish to be more than King of the East
Goths. Later Teutons, on the other hand, imbued as
they were by Un-Germanic ideas, were dazzled by the
Imperial purple with the power of a magic talisman.
For in the meantime the Jurisconsults of the late de-
generate Roman law had come and whispered in the
ear of the German Princes wonders concerning the kingly
prerogatives; and the Roman Church, which was the
most powerful disseminator of Justinian law,* taught
that this law was sacred and given by God ; ¢ and down
came the Pope declaring himself to be lord and master of
all crowns ; he alone, as Christ’s representative on earth,
could grant or remove,f and the emperor as mere vex
regum was subject to the sevvus servorum. But if the
Pope bestowed or ratified regal power, every King was
King by the grace of God, and when the legal authorities
declared that the bearer of the crown was the rightful
owner of the whole land, and had unlimited authority
over his subjects, the transformation was complete, and
in place of a nation of free men there now stood a nation
of slaves. This is what Montesquieu rightly calls bar-
barism. The Germanic Princes, who had made this

* Savigny: Geschichte des rémischen Rechts i. chap. iii.

+ ‘(The Middle Ages put Roman Law as revealed reason in matters
of justice (ratio scripta) side by side with Christianity as revealed

religion” (Jhering: Vorgeschichte dey Indo-ewropder, p. 302).
+ Phillips: Lehrbuch des Kirchenvechtes, 1881 (lj, § 102, &ci
560 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

contract not merely from lust of power and wealth, but
also out of misunderstanding, had unconsciously sold
themselves to the hostile powers; thenceforth they
became the pillars of Anti-Germanicism. One more
victory had been gained over the Germanic spirit !

I leave to the reader’s own study other examples of
the way in which the Teuton was estranged from himself.
Once he had lost the freedom to act and the freedom to
believe, the basis of his particular, incomparable nature
was undermined in such a way that only the most violent
revolt could save him from complete downfall. How free
and daring had been the religious speculation of the first
Norse schoolmen, full of personality and life; how
enslaved and gagged such speculation appeared sub-
sequently to Thomas Aquinas, who to the present day
stands as law to all Catholic schools!* How touching
it is to think of the Goths in possession of their Gothic
Bible, listening awestruck to the words of Christ which
they but imperfectly understood and which seemed
to them the words of some ancestral almost forgotten
tale, or perhaps a distant voice penetrating to their ear,
and calling them to a beautiful inconceivable future ;
so that we find them sinking on their knees in the simply
hewn house of God or in the tent that served the same
purpose,f and praying with childlike simplicity for all
that is nearest and dearest tothem! But nowall that had
disappeared : the Bible was to be read solely in the Latin
vulgate—that is, only by scholars—and was soon so little
known to even priests and monks that even Charlemagne
had to admonish the bishops to pay more earnest heed to

* We must also remember that Thomas Aquinas was descended
on his mother’s side from the house of Stauffen and early came under
the influence of German knowledge and thought (Albertus Magnus).
Where would the chaos have achieved anything great—and the
achievements of Aquinas deserve our admiration for their strength
and greatness—without the help of the Teutons ?

¢ See Hieronymus: Epist. ad Latum
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 561

the study of the sacred writings ;* the sacred worship
could henceforth be held only in a language which no
layman understood.t How brilliantly clear, on the

* Dollinger: Das Kaisertum Karls des Grossen, Acad. Lectures,
iii. 102.

t It is interesting in this connection to call attention to the fact
that Pope Leo XIII., by the constitution offciorum numerum of
January 25, 1897, has ‘‘ not inconsiderably intensified the strictness ”
of the Index of forbidden books (so says the orthodox-Roman commen-
tator Professor Hollweck in his book Das kirchliche Biicherverbot, 2nd
ed., 1897, p. 15). The old Germanic spirit of freedom had in fact
begun to assert itself in France and Germany in the nineteenth century ;
ecclesiastical teachers asserted that the Index was not valid for those
countries, bishops demanded great changes in the direction of freedom,
laymen (Coblenz, 1869) united in sending addresses, in which they
demanded the complete abolition of the Index (see pp. 13, 14) ; Rome’s
answer was to make it stricter than ever, as every layman can find
from the book quoted above, which has the episcopal sanction. Ac-
cording to this law the orthodox Roman Catholic is forbidden to read
practically all the literature of the world, and even such authors as
Dante he can read only in drastically expurgated, “ episcopally approved”
editions. It is an interesting fact in connection with the strictness
of the new Index constitution that henceforth not merely books which
touch upon theological questions must be episcopally approved but
also that, according to pp. 42 and 43, such as treat of natural science and
art may not be read by orthodox Catholics absque previa Ordinariorum
venta, But it is specially noteworthy that the reading of the Bible
in a faithful complete edition, even when this has been edited by
Catholics, is forbidden as ‘‘ grievous sin’?! Only those editions may
be read which have been specially revised, provided with notes and
approved by the Papal stool (p. 29). This care, however, is exercised
only for minds already wavering, for during religious instruction as
well as at other times the young are warned so strongly against reading
the Scriptures that I have lived for twenty years in Catholic countries
without encountering a single Catholic layman who ever had had the
complete Bible even in his hand; in other cases the Index libyorum
prohibitorum finds little or no application in practical life; with un-
erring instinct Rome has felt that the one really dangerous book for
it is that in which we find the simple figure of Christ. Before the
Council of Trent, z.e., at a time when the later “‘ Protestant ’’ had not
yet visibly separated from the later ‘‘ Catholics,” this was not so in
Germany ; by means of that pioneer of the Reformation, the ‘‘ German
art” of book-printing, in a short time (and in spite of the then existing
ecclesiastical prohibition), the Bible in “‘ right common German” had
become the most popular book in the land (Janssen: Geschichte des
deutschen Volkes i. 20). But the Council of Trent for ever put an
end to this state of affairs by its Decretum de editione et usu sacrorum
libvorum. Immanuel Kant admired, however, the strong consistency
of the Roman Church and looked upon the prohibition to read the

I 2N
562 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XiXta# CENTURY

other hand, does the idea of pure science appear in Roger
Bacon at the beginning of the thirteenth century—
observation of nature, philology to be studied scientifically,
mathematics! But his works are condemned by Rome
and destroyed, he himself in the prime of his life is
imprisoned in a cloister, so that all earnest investiga-
tion of nature was held back for centuries and then
opposed at every step. That such lights of science as
Copernicus and Galilei were good Catholics, and such
pioneers of new cosmological and philosophical concep-
tions as Krebs (Nicolaus of Cusa), Bruno, Campanella and
Gassendi, actually Cardinals, monks and priests, only
proves that in the case of all these men it is not a question
of difference of faith but of the struggle between two philo-
sophies, or better still, between two human natures, the
Germanic and the Anti-Germanic, which also was proved
by the fact that most of these men were persecuted, or
that at least their writings were condemned.* Cardinal
Nicolaus of Cusa, the confidant of Popes, who was fortu-
nate enough to live before the retrograde movement
introduced by the Council of Trent, proved his genuinely
Germanic nature by the fact that he was the first to
reveal the forgery of the Decretalia of Isidor and the
would-be donation of Constantine, and that he as an active
reformer of the Church untiringly, though unsuccessfully,
strove to bring about what had later to be obtained by
force. The man who exposes forgeries cannot possibly
be morally identical with him who commits them. And

Bible as its ‘‘ corner-stone’”’ (Hasse: Letzte Aiisserungen Kant’s, 1804,
p. 29). At the same time he was wont to laugh at the Protestants,
“who say: study the Scriptures diligently, but you must not find
anything there but what we find” (Reicke: Lose Blatier aus Kant’s
Nachlass ii. 34).

* Itis very remarkable that such original and free-thinking philosophers
as Bruno and Campanella belong to the extreme south of Italy, where
even to-day, according to anthropological verifications, the Indo-
Germanic, distinct dolichocephalous type is most strongly represented
in the Peninsula (see Ranke: Der Mensch ii, 299).
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 563

so we cannot make religious denominations any more
than nationalities the test by which to distinguish be-
tween that which is genuinely Germanic and that which
is Anti-Germanic. Not only is it difficult before the
Council of Trent to distinguish between the Roman
Christians and others, inasmuch as many of the great
teachers of the Church like Origenes and many Catholic
doctors had gone much further than a Luther or a Hus
in accepting tenets and views which from that time forth
were reckoned to be heretical—but in later times and
down to the present day we see pre-eminently German
minds remain obedient to Rome from deep conviction
and loyal attachment to the great idea of a universal
Church, and yet prove themselves most genuine Teutons ;
while on the other hand the man in whom the revolt
against the Anti-Germanic powers was most powerfully
expressed, Martin Luther, quotes the testimony of Augus-
tine, to urge the Princes to rebellion, and Calvin burns
the great doctor Michel Lervet because of his dogmatic
views, receiving for this the approval of the humane
Melancthon. We cannot therefore put down individual
men as representatives of the Teutons; but as soon as
they have become subject to the Non-Germanic influence
in education, surroundings, &c.—and who was not so
influenced during at least a thousand years ?—we must
learn to distinguish carefully between that which grows
out of the genuine pure Germanic nature, be it for good
or for evil, as a living component of the personality,
and that which is forcibly grafted on or bound up with it.

It is clear that, in a certain sense, we may regard the:
intellectual and moral history of Europe from the moment
of the entry of the Teuton to the present day as a struggle
between Teuton and non-Teuton, between Germanic
sentiment and Anti-Germanic disposition, as a struggle
which is waged partly externally, philosophy against
philosophy, partly internally, in the breast of the Teuton
564 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIxXtaH CENTURY

himself. But here I am trespassing upon the following
division. What has been said here I shall summarise
by referring to the perfect type of the Anti-Germanic ;
this is, I think, the most valuable supplement to the
positive picture.

IGNATIUS OF LoyoLa

The struggle against the Germanic spirit has in a way
embodied itself in one of the most extraordinary men of
history ; here as elsewhere a single great personality has,
by its example and by the sum of living power which it
brought into the world, been able to do more than all the
councils and all the solemn resolutions of great societies.
And it is a good thing to see our enemy before us
in a form which deserves respect, otherwise hatred or
contempt is apt to dim our judgment. I do not know
who would be justified in refusing honest admiration to
Ignatius of Loyola. He bears physical pain like a hero,*
is just as fearless morally, his will is of iron, his action
direct, his powers of thinking spoiled by no ped-
antry and artificiality; he is an acute, practical man,
who never stumbles over trifles and yet assures to his
influence a far-reaching future, by seizing the needs of
the moment and making them the basis of his activity ;
he is in addition unassuming, an enemy of phrases, and
no comedian ; a soldier and a nobleman ; the priesthood
is rather his instrument than his natural vocation. Now
this man was a Basque; not only was he born in the
pure Basque part of Spain, but his biographers assure
us that he was of genuine unmixed Basque descent, that
is, he belonged to a race which was not only Un-Germanic
but absolutely distinct from the whole Indo-European

* His leg had been shattered in battle and after it was completely

healed he had it broken again because it had become shorter than
the other and so rendered him unsuitable for military service.
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 565

group.* In Spain since the time of the Celtic immigration
the mixed Celtiberians formed a considerable portion of
the population, but in certain northern parts the Iberian
Basques have remained unmixed to the present day and
Ignatius, really Ifigo, is said to be a “‘ genuine son
of the enigmatical, taciturn, energetic and fantastic stem
of the Basques.” { It is, by the way (as an illustration
of the incomparable importance of race), exceedingly
remarkable that the man, to whom principally must be
ascribed the maintenance of the specifically Romish,
Anti-Germanic influence for centuries to come, was not
himself a child of the chaos but a man of pure descent.
Hence the simplicity and power which strike us as so
wonderful when in the midst of the Babel of the sixteenth
century, just as the Germanic spirit of independence is
being reawakened (the true Renaissance !) and all voices
mingle in the hoarse and confused din of fear, we see
this one man, who, standing apart, calm and unconcerned
about what others decide and endeavour to attain
(except in so far as it affects his plans), goes his own way
and without precipitation, in full control of his natural
passionate temperament, forms the plan of campaign,
fixes the tactics to be employed, drills the troops to the
most carefully conceived and therefore most dangerous
attack that was ever made against Germanicism—or
rather against Aryanism as a whole. Whoever considers
it a coincidence that this personality was a Basque,
whoever considers it a coincidence that this Basque,
although he soon found capable and perfectly devoted
assistants from all nationalities, yet at the summit of his.
power made an intimate, indeed almost inseparable
friend of one sole man, consulted with him, and proclaimed
his will through him, and that this one man was by race

* See Bastian: Das Bestindige in den Menschenrassen, p. 110;

Peschel: Vélkevkunde, 7th ed. p. 539. .
} Gothein: Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegenveformation, 1895,

Ps 209.
566 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

a pure Jew (Polanco) who had been converted to Christi-
anity at a later period of his life—whoever, I say, passes
such phenomena by unheeded, has no feeling for the
majesty of facts.* If we gain access to the innermost
mental life of this remarkable man, as we can easily do
by his Exercitia spirttualia (a fundamental text-book of
the Jesuits to the present day) we seem to be entering
an absolutely strange world. At first I felt myself in a
Mohammedan atmosphere set out with Christian decora-
tions: f the absolute materialism of the conceptions
—for example, that we can feel the stench of hell and
the glow of its flames, the idea that sins are transgressions
of a “ paragraphic ’”’ law, so that we can keep an account
of them and should do so according to a definitely pre-
scribed scheme, and so on—reminds us of Semitic religions ;
but we should be doing the latter an injustice if we
identified them with the thinly varnished Fetishism of
Loyola. The fundamental principle of the religion of
Ignatius is opposition to every kind of symbolism.
He has been called a mystic and an attempt has been
made to prove the influence of mysticism upon his
thought, but this intellect is quite incapable of even
grasping the idea of mysticism in the Indo-European sense ;
for all mysticism from Yajfiavalkya to Jacob Béhme
signifies the attempt to discard the dross of empiricism
and surrender to a transcendental, empirically incon-
ceivable untruth,{ while Loyola’s whole endeavour is to
represent all mysteries of religion as concrete manifest

* It also deserves mention that the first two men who joined Ignatius
and helped to found his Order were likewise not Indo-Europeans:
Franz Xavier was a genuine Basque, Faber a genuine, superstitious
Savoyard (see p. 373 note 2).

+ Since the above was written, a book by Hermann Miller has
appeared, Les Ovigines de la compagnie de Jésus, in which it is proved
that Ignatius had studied very carefully the organisation of the
Mohammedan secret leagues and in his Exercises in many ways followed
Mohammedan views. In truth this man is the personification of all
that is Un-Germanic.

¢ See chap. ix., Division ‘“ Philosophy.”
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 567

facts in direct contrast to mysticism. We are to see,
hear, taste, smell and touch them! His Exercitia are
not an introduction to mystical contemplation, but rather
the systematic development of the hysterical tendencies
present inusall. The purely sensuous element of imagi-
nation is developed at the expense of reason and judg-
ment and brought to the point of its greatest capacity ;
in this way the animal nature proves victorious over the
will and henceforth the will is not broken, as is generally
asserted, but fettered. In a normal human being,
understanding forms the counterpoise of will; Loyola’s
idea directs itself, therefore, first against understanding,
as the source of freedom and the creative impulse; in
one of his latest proclamations he expresses it concisely :
he characterises the “‘renunciation of will and the
negation of our own judgment” as the “source of the
virtues.’”’* In the Exercitia also, the first rule of orthodoxy
is “the destruction of every judgment of our own”
(see the Regule ad sentiendum vere cum ecclesia, reg. i.).F

* See the last writing to the Portuguese, analysed and quoted by
Gothian, p. 450.

+ The Jesuit father Bernhard Duhr has devoted a paragraph of
the fourth edition of his well-known book Jesuiten-Fabeln to my “‘ Foun-
dations.’ As the expression of a different point of view is always
suggestive and instructive, I would gladly recommend this criticism
to my readers, just as I have taken every opportunity to refer to the
pamphlet of the Catholic theologian Professor Dr. Albert Ehrhard
against these “‘ Foundations” (Heft 4. der Vovrtrdge der Leoge-ellschaft).
But I must unfortunately point out that my Jesuit opponent does not
hesitate at an untruth, whereby he makes his task indeed easier, but
spoils its effect on sensible independently thinking readers. As a
refutation point for point would lead me too far, I choose two examples ;
they will suffice. On page 936 Duhr says (in reference to what I
asserted on p. 566): Nowhere in the Exercitia is any attempt made to
destvoy the judgment of the individual, on the contrary, a number of
directions are given for extending our knowledge and so forming our
judgment rightly. In the rule quoted by Chamberlan also all that
is said is: ‘‘ Putting aside our own judgment we must be prepared to
obey in everything the true bride of Christ, the Church.” Now this
interpretation is a frivolous sophism; for when I “ put aside” my
own opinion to obey ‘‘in everything’ the judgment of the Church,
then I no longer have an opinion of my own, But in the literal trans-
568 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta CENTURY

By this the will is not broken, but only freed from
obedience to its natural master, the individual ; but what
now controls him is the whip of the Exercitia. By these,
exactly as in the case of the Fakirs, only in much more
carefully planned and therefore more successful manner,
a pathological condition of the whole individual is pro-
duced (and by yearly repetitions and still more frequent
ones in the case of persons whose capacity of resistance
is greater, it is always strengthened anew), and this
condition has exactly the same effect as every other form
of hysteria. Modern medicine sums up these psycho-
pathological conditions in the term “ forced neurosis ”’
and well knows that the person affected does not indeed
lose his will, but certainly within the circle of the forced
conceptions all free control of it! Naturally I cannot
here enter more fully into this highly complex matter,

lation of the Spanish original, published by the Jesuits themselves,
versio literalis ex autographo hispanico, we read as follows: ‘‘ Primo,
deposito omni judicio proprio, debemus tenere animum paratum et
promptum ad obediendum in omnibus vere sponse Christi domini nostri,
que est nostra sancta mater ecclesia hierarchia, que romana est.”” And
in the other passage adduced by me, Loyola’s epistle to the Portuguese,
the words are (S. 21): ‘‘ [vos ego per Christum dominum nostrum obtestor
ut +. .] voluntatem dico atque judicium expugnare et subjicere studeatis.”
Are these words not clear enough? Do “ deponere,’’ “‘ expugnare”’
and ‘‘subjicere’”’ really only mean “to put aside’? The second
nstance is still worse. On page 157 of the second volume I have
quoted a sentence of the Jesuit Jouvancy concerning and against
occupation with the mother tongue ; Duhr boldly answers, ‘‘ So foolish
an assertion Jouvancy has nowhere made.’”’ In refutation of this I
beg the reader to take up the following book: Bibliothek der katholischen
Padagogik, founded with the assistance of P.C. Dr. L. Kellner,
Suffragan Bishop Dr. Knecht, Spiritual Councillor Dr. Hermann
Rolfus and published by F. X. Kunz, vol. x., Der Jesuiten Sacchint,
Juvencius und Kropf Erlauterungsschriften zur Studienordnung der
Gesellschaft Jesu, trans. by J. Stier, R. Schwickerath, F. Zorell, mem-
bers of the same society, Freiburg i. B., Herder, 1898. Pages 209 to
322 contain the translation into German of Jouvancy’s Lern- und
Lehrmethode. And here we read on p. 229, ‘‘ We must take this
opportunity of calling attention to a cliff which is especially dangerous
to young teachers, namely, too much reading of works in the mother
tongue, especially poetical ones. This is not only a waste of time
but may very easily cause shipwreck to the soul,’
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 569

which, especially in the second half of the nineteenth
century, has been in so far cleared up by the experiments
of Charcot and others as well as by scientific psychology
that the problem is now clearly grasped and the fearful
power of Physis over Psyche recognised ; * it is sufficient
if I have proved the destruction of the physical basis
of freedom to have been Loyola’s first purpose. This
direct attack upon the body of the individual, not for
the purpose of subjecting the body to the spirit, but to
seize and conquer the spirit by means of the body,
teveals a sentiment which is the negation of all that
we Indo-Europeans have ever called religion. For Loyola’s
system has nothing in common with asceticism ; on the
contrary, he hates asceticism and forbids it, and rightly
so from his standpoint: for asceticism increases the
intellectual capacities and culminates, when carried out
with absolute consistency, in the complete conquest of
the senses; these may then continue, so to speak, as
material for the imagination, to serve the mystical devotion
of a Saint Theresa or the mystical metaphysics of the
author of Chandogya; from that time forth they are
senses rendered subject to will, elevated and purified
by the power of the mind, and this the Hindoo teacher
expresses when he writes: “ the man of understanding is
already in his lifetime bodiless.’’t On the other hand, as
I have said, Loyola’s method actually prescribes a gym-
nastic course for the sensitive faculty, by which, as he
himself describes his aim, the will and the judgment
may be enslaved. While true asceticism is possible only

* To the most interesting summaries of late years belong the essays
of Dr. Siegmund_ Freud : Uber die A tiologie der Hysterie and Die
Sexualitat in der Atiologie der Neurosen in the Vienna Klinische Rund-
schau in 1896 and 1898. I am convinced that every strong stimulus
of the outward activity of sense from purely inner excitement, even
when it does not occur in sexual form, is an exacerbation of the sense-
life, the seat of which is the brain, and from it results a corresponding

paralysis.
j Gankara: Die Siitra’s des Vedanta i. 1, 44
570 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

to a few chosen individuals, since moral determination
must obviously form the basis and constantly hold the
reins in this matter, these so-called ‘“‘ mental exercises ”
of Loyola, which must never last more than four weeks
(but may be shortened or adapted by the teacher to each
individual) will find an impressionable subject in almost
every one, especially in younger years. The suggestive
power of such a grossly mechanical method planned
with supreme art for exciting the whole individual
is so great that no one can get quite out of it. I too feel
my senses tremble when I give myself up to these Exer-
citia ; but it is not the anatomically cut out heart of
Jesus that I see (as if the muscular apparatus called
“heart” had anything in common with divine love }),
I see the ravenous ursus speleus lying in wait for its prey ;
and when Loyola speaks of the fear of God and teaches
that it is not “ childlike fear ” that should satisfy us, but
that we should tremble with ‘‘ that other fear, called
timor servilis,”’ that is, the tottering fear of helpless
slaves, then I hear that mighty bear of the cave roar,
and I shudder as did the men of the diluvial age, when
poor, naked and defenceless, surrounded by danger day
and night, they trembled at that voice.* The whole
mental disposition of this Basque points backwards thou-
sands of years; of the intellectual culture acquired by
humanity he has adopted some externals but the inner

* Regule ad sentiendum cum ecclesia, No. 18: It is very remarkable
in connection with this fundamental doctrine of Ignatius (and all
Jesuitism) that the Church father Augustine considered the timor
servilis a proof that the man who felt it did not know God! Of such
people he says : “‘ They fear God with that slavish fear which proves the
absence of love, for complete love knows no fear ”’—‘' Quoniam timent
quidem Deum, sed illo timore servilt, qui non est tn charitate, quia perfecta
chavitas fovas mittit timorem”’ (De Civitate Dei xxi. 24). Goethe has
clearly expressed in his Wanderjahre (Bk. ii. chap. i.) what should be
the sacred rule of every Teuton in this matter: ‘‘no religion which
is based on fear, is respected among us.’’ Diderot makes the fine
remark: ‘I] y @ des gens dont il ne faut pas dive qwils craignent Dieu,
mais bien qwils en ont peur” (Pensées philosophiques viii.).
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 571

growing and strengthening, that great emancipation of
man from fear, that gradual tearing down of the tyranny
of sense, which was formerly a condition of existence
and hindered the development of every other quality,
that ‘‘entrance of mankind into the daylight of life”
with the awakening of his freely creative power, that
tendency to seek ideals, which one does not first smell
and taste in order to believe in them, but which one
“really allows to grow up,” because man, who has be-
come a moral being, so wills it, that divine doctrine that
the kingdom of Heaven comes not with outward signs but
is within us like a hidden treasure *—all this left
absolutely no impression upon this man; standing apart
from the restlessly hurrying waters which flow together
to the great stream of Aryanism, his forefathers have
lived since time immemorial, proud of their individuality,
organically incapable of ever attaining to an intimate
knowledge of that other nature. And do not imagine
that Ignatius is in this respect a unique phenomenon !
There are hundreds of thousands of people in Europe
who speak our Indo-European tongues, wear the same
clothes, take part in our life, and are excellent people in
their way, but are just as far removed from us Teutons
as if they lived on another planet ; here it is not a question
of a cleft such as separates us in many respects from the
Jew, and which may be bridged at this point and that,
but of a wall which is insurmountable and separates |
the one land from the other. The exceptional importance |
of Loyola lies in his pre-eminent greatness of character ;
in such a man therefore we see the Un-Germanic and the
necessarily Anti-Germanic in a clear and great form,
whereas at other times, whether it be owing to apparent
unimportance or the indefiniteness of the half-breed cha-
racter, it is easily overlooked or at least difficult to
analyse. I said “ greatness of character,” for as a matter of .
See pp. 187, 188. *
572 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

fact other greatness is here out of the question: wenotein
the case of Loyola neither philosophical nor artistic
thoughts and just as little real inventive power ; even his
Exercitia are in their outlines borrowed from former
cloister exercises * and merely “ materialised’ by him,
and his great fundamental principle of uncompromising
obedience is an old soldier’s thoughtlessly brutal trans-
ference of a military virtue of necessity to the domain
of mind. His activity as an organiser and agitator
bespeaks the subtlest cunning and a precise knowledge
of mediocrities (very important or original people he
systematically excluded from the Order), but nowhere is
there evidence of depth. To prevent misunderstandings
and misinterpretations I must add that I do not ascribe
to him as an intention what has come to pass as the
result of his action. , Loyola did not call his order into
, existence with the object of opposing the Reformation
' —so at least the Jesuits assure us—much less can the
| word “ Germanic”? have been associated in his mind
with any definite conception, nor can he have viewed his
struggle against Germanicism as a life-purpose. We
might just as well assert that that race of the Basques
which had been pursued, driven and persecuted ever
further and further by the encroachment of the Indo-
Europeans had wished to avenge itself on the victor
through him. But in this book, where we are occupying
ourselves not with chronicles but with the discovery of
fundamental facts of history, we should emphasise the
amount of truth that lies concealed behind these utterances
which are untenable from the point of view of chronology.
For it is not in what he wished to do but in what
he had to do that the greatness of this extraordinary
man lies. Father Bernhard Duhr may assure us in his
most excited tone} that the founding of the Order of

* See, too, the above note about the influence of Mohammedanism
upon the composition of the Evercitia.
¢ See Jesuitenfabeln, 2nd ed, pp. 1-114
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 573

the Jesuits had nothing to do with opposition to Protestant-
ism ; its activity culminated from the very first so mani-
festly and so successfully in the prosecution of this one
aim that even the earliest biographers of Loyola bestow
onhim the title of honour “‘ Anti-Luther.”’ And whoever
says ‘‘ Anti-Luther ”’ says Anti-Germanic—whether he is
conscious of this or not. But with regard to the question
of race-revenge, the fact that those physically strong
but mentally inferior and Anti-Germanic races, which
were never quite destroyed but withdrew into the
mountains, are reviving and increasing, is engaging
more and more the attention not of visionaries but of
the most earnest natural scientists.*

With Ignatius of Loyola I place the type of the Anti-
Germanic spirit before the reader and I think I have thereby
illustrated the necessary limitation of the Germanic idea
which at the beginning of the chapter was taken in as
comprehensive a sense as possible. I cannot imagine
a definition of the Teuton put down in paragraphs—as
we have seen that is not even possible with physical
man—but rather as something vividly conceived, which
qualifies us to give an independent judgment. Here
more than anywhere else we must guard against letting
the conception stiffen in the definition.f Such living
definitions of ideas are not like mathematical ones: it
is not sufficient to say that this or that is so and so, it is
only by means of the negative supplement, not so and not

* I should perhaps have pointed out more emphatically that from
the first the activity of the Jesuits has been exercised chiefly in opposition
tothe Reformation. Thus, forexample, two of the direct pupils and
friends of Ignatius, Salmeron and Lainez, took care to arrogate to
themselves the decisive positions at the Council of Trent, the one as
opener of each debate, the other as the last speaker in each case.
Little wonder that the ‘‘ freedom of the Christian,’’ concerning which
Luther had written such beautiful words, was fettered once for all
at this Council! The great Catholic Church already entered upon
that course which was gradually to lower it to a Jesuit sect, .

+ Ct. Goethe: Geschichte der Farbenlehre, under Scaliger.
574. FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXta# CENTURY

so, that the positive representation is put in relief and the
idea freed from the fetters of words.

BACKWARD GLANCE

Freedom and loyalty then are the two roots of the
Germanic nature, or, if you will, the two pinions that
bear it heavenwards. These are not meaningless words,
each one of them embraces a wide complex of vivid con-
ceptions, experiences and historical facts. Such a simplifi-
cation has outwardly only been justified by the fact that
we have proved that rich endowments were the inevitable
basis of these two things: physica] health and strength,
great intelligence, luxuriant imagination, untiring impulse
to create. And like all true powers of nature, freedom

{and loyalty flowed into each other: the specifically
| Germanic loyalty was a manifestation of the most elevated
'freedom—the maintenance of that freedom, loyalty to our
own nature. Here too the specifically Germanic signifi-
cance of the idea of duty becomes clear. Goethe says in one
passage—he is speaking of taste in art, but the remark
holds for all spheres: “‘to maintain courageously our
position on the height of our barbarian advantages is
our duty.’ * This is Shakespeare’s “to thine own
self be true!’’ This is Nelson’s signal on the morning
of the Battle of Trafalgar “‘ England expects every man
to do his duty!” His duty? Loyalty to himself, the
maintenance of his barbarian advantages, z.e. (as Mon-
tesquieu teaches us), of the freedom that is born in him.
In contrast to this we behold a man who proclaims as
the highest law the destruction of freedom, 7.e., of freedom
of will, of understanding, of creative work—and who
_ replaces loyalty (which would be meaningless without
\ freedom) by obedience. The individual shall become
—as Loyola says word for word in the constitutions of
* Anmerkungen zu Rameau’s Neffe,
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 575

his Order—‘ as it were a corpse which lets itself be turned
on any side and never resists the hand laid upon it, or
like the staff of an old man which everywhere helps him
who holds it, no matter how and where he wishes to employ
it.” * I think it would be impossible to make the contrast
to all Aryan thought and feeling more clear than it is
in these words: on the one hand sunny, proud, mad
delight in creating, men who fearlessly grasp the right
hand of the God to whom they pray (p. 243); on the
other a corpse, upon which the “ destruction of all in-
dependent judgment ”’ is impressed as the first rule in
life and for which “‘ cowering slavish fear ’’ is the basis of
all religion.

FORWARD GLANCE

I sometimes regret that, in a book like this, moralising
would be so out of place as to be almost an offence against
good taste. When we see those splendid “ barbarians ”’
glowing with youth, free, making their entry into history
endowed with all those qualities which fit them for the
very highest place ; when next we realise how they, the
conquerors, the true “Freeborn’”’ of Aristotle, con-
taminate their pure blood by mixture with the impure
races of the slave-born ; how they accept their schooling
from the unworthy descendants of noble progenitors,
and force their way with untold toil out of the night
of this Chaos towards a new dawn ;—then we have to
acknowledge the further fact that every day adds new
enemies and new dangers to those which already exist—
that these new enemies, like the former ones, are re-
ceived by the Teutons with open arms, that the voice of
warning is carelessly laughed at, and that while every
enemy of our race, with full consciousness and the

* Peyinde act si cadaver essent, quod quoquoversus ferri, et quacunque

vatione tvactave se sinit: vel similiter atque sents baculus, qui obicumque
et quacumque in ve velit co uti, gui cum manu tent, et inservil,”
576 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtaH CENTURY

perfection of cunning, follows his own designs, we—still
great, innocent barbarians—concentrate ourselves upon
earthly and heavenly ideals, upon property, discoveries,
inventions, brewing, art, metaphysics, love, and heaven
knows what else! and with it all there is ever a tinge
of the impossible, of that which cannot be brought to
perfection, of the world beyond, otherwise we should
remain lying idle on our bear-skins! Who could help
moralising when he sees how we, without weapons,
without defence, unconscious of any danger, go on our
way, constantly befooled, ever ready to set a high price
on what is foreign and to set small store by what is our
own—we, the most learned of all men, and yet ignorant
beyond all others of the world around us, the greatest
discoverers and yet stricken with chronic blindness!
Who could help crying with Ulrich von Hutten: “Oh!
unhappy Germany, unhappy by thine own choice!
thou that with eyes to see seest not, and with clear under-
standing understandest not!’ But I will not do it.
I feel that this is not my business, and to tell the truth
this haughty pococurantism is so characteristic a feature
that I should regret its loss. The Teuton is no pessimist
like the Hindoo, he is no good critic; he really thinks
' little in comparison with other Aryans; his gifts impel
. him to act and to feel. Tocall the Germans a “nation of
thinkers ’”’ is bitter irony ; a nation of soldiers and shop-
keepers would certainly be more correct, or of scholars
and artists—but of thinkers ?—these are thinly sown.*
Hence it was that Luther went so far as to call the Germans
“plind people”; the rest of the Germanic races are
the same in scarcely less degree ; for analytical thought
belongs to seeing, and to that again capacity, time,
practice. The Teuton is occupied with other things;
he has not yet completed his “ entrance into the history

* Herder says (Journal, 1769, near the end): ‘“‘ The Germans think
much and nothing.”
ENTRANCE OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLE 577

of the world”’; he must first have taken possession of
the whole earth, investigated nature on all sides, made
its powers subject to him; he must first have developed
the expression of art to a perfection yet unknown,
and have collected an enormous store of historical know-
ledge—then perhaps he will have time to ask himself
what is going on immediately around him. Till then he
will continue to walk on the edge of the precipice with
the same calmness as on a flowering meadow. That
cannot be changed, for this pococurantism is, as I said
above, characteristic of the Teuton. The Greeks and the
Romans were not unlike this: the former continued to
think and invent artistically, the latter to add conquest
to conquest without ever becoming conscious of them-
selves like the Jews, without ever noticing in the least
how the course of events was gradually wiping them
from off the face of the earth ; they did not fall dead like
other nations ; they descended slowly into Hades full of
life to the last, vigorous to the last, in the proud con-
sciousness of victory.*

And I, a modest historian, who can neither influence
the course of events nor possess the power of looking
clearly into the future, must be satisfied if in fulfilling the
purpose of this book I have succeeded in showing the
distinction between the Germanic and the Non-Germanic.

* That the Teuton is one of the greatest, perhaps the very
greatest power in the history of mankind, no one will
‘wish to deny, but in order to arrive at a correct apprecia-
tion of the present time, it behoved us to settle once for
all who could and who could not be regarded as Teuton.
In the nineteenth century, as in all former centuries, but
of course with widely different grouping and with con

>
* This reminds us of what Goethe called “‘ after all the most magnificent
symbol”: a setting sun on a sea, with the legend ‘‘ even when setting
it remains the same” (Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler von Miller,
March 24, 1824.

I 20
578 FOUNDATIONS OF THE XIXtH CENTURY

stantly changing relative power, there stood side by side
in Europe these “‘ Heirs ’’—the chaos of half-breeds, relics
of the former Roman Empire, the Germanising of which
is falling offi—the Jews—and the Germans, whose con-
tamination by mixture with the half-breeds and the
descendants of other Non-Aryan races is on the increase.
No arguing about “ humanity ”’ can alter the fact that
this means a struggle. Where the struggle is not waged
with cannon-balls, it goes on silently in the heart of society
by marriages, by the annihilation of distances which
furthers intercourse, by the varying powers of resistance
in the different types of mankind, by the shifting of
wealth, by the birth of new influences and the disappear-
ance of others, and by many other motive powers. But
this struggle, silent though it be, is above all others a
struggle for life and death.

END OF VOL. I
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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