'■-X; • /•• .^ 'iM r" >..-..•>,-';; %\M:{^miM 1 1 z? rV /fW Cfi/^F^LEs Hdch E\/ei^ard. iiff?ii^V^'»:# 1 ^^ >( I7i PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY TOO SWIFT ARRIVES TOO TARDY AS TOO SLOW. * — Shakespeare. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN EUROPE BY ROBERT FLINT rBol'ESSOK OF MORAL I'lllLUSOI'Uy AND TOLII lUAl. KtONOWV UNIVKHSITY OF ST ANUHIiWS VOL. L WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDUCGLXXIV "as the earth bkingeth foeth her bud, and as the garden CAUSETH the things THAT ARE SOWN IN IT TO SPRING FORTH ; SO THE LORD GOD WILL CAUSE RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PRAISE TO SPRING FOETH BEFORE ALL THE NATIONS."— /sdlftA.. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE AND GERMANY BV ROBERT FLINT PROFESSOK OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCIiXXIV f 5;l P E E F A C E. In this volume I have endeavoured to sfive an account of the principal attempts which have been made in France and Germany philosophically to comprehend and explain the history of mankind, with a reasoned estimate of their value. I have still to describe and criticise the general philosophies of history which have appeared in Italy and England ; to indicate what light has been thrown on the course, laws, and significance of human development by the progress of the sciences; and to notice the chief contributions which have been made to the discussion of the special problems of historical speculation. In bibliographical appendices I mean briefly to characterise the large number of writings on the philosophy of history which, from their inferior importance, or other causes, have not been examined in the work itself. At a time when all history is rapidly tending to become scientific, and almost all science is adopting historical methods, it requires but little perspicacity to foresee that thoughtful minds will soon be far more gene- rally and earnestly engaged in the philosophical study of history than they have ever yet been. It cannot, therefore, be inopportune to record what has already been attempted in this department, and to indicate Vlll PREFACE. what has been achieved, and where and why there has been failure. The substance, or, I should perhaps rather say, the germ, of the following work was delivered in two series of lectures at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. With the exception of some pages on Comte and Hegel, little has been directly transferred from the lectures to the book ; and I here mention the former merely because I would gladly associate in some measure the latter with an Institution which has had a very honourable place in the intellectual history of Scotland, and from the members of which I have repeatedly received much indulgent kindness. The volume has been a considerable time in passing through the press. Thus the chapter on the historical speculations of MM. Michelet and Quinet was printed and revised previous to the death of M. Michelet, which took place on 10th February 1874. Althouo^h the work was beorun and has been carried on mainly as an introduction to other studies which have longer occupied my thoughts, it has cost a con- siderable amount of labour, and may, I hope, not only be of use until a better appears, but help, to some ex- tent, any one who hereafter engages in the same task, to accomplish it with more ease and success than I have done. I have to thank my learned colleague. Professor Crombie, for his great kindness in assisting me to re- vise all but a few sheets of this volume. Abbey Park Villa, St Andrews, 1st June 1874. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Aim of the present work, ...... The absolute origin of historical philosophy cannot be discovered, All great religions have involved historical theory, How philosophy includes historical speculation, . How political discussion leads to historical speculation, . The philosophy of history is a natural gi'owth of history itself, Histoiy in the great oriental nations, .... The Jewish historical records, ..... History among the Greeks, ..... The idea of a universal history was the result of Roman historj% . Christianity introduced into history the consciousness of a spiritual unity of the human race and the conception of a divine plan gradually un- folded in time, ........ Sketch of the historical philosophy of Augustine, .... Its merits and defects, ....... The medieval mind had not a sufficiently comprehensive acquaintance with historical facts to frame a philosophy of history, It could neither sift nor scientifically use the facts accessible to it. How modern historians difier from ancient and medieval historian.s, The gi'owth of history towards a scientific .stage has been partly the con- sequence and partly the cause of the growth of certain ideas, How far the idea of progress was known among the oriental nations, In Greece and Eome human development was thought of as progressive, retrogi'essive, and cyclical, but in none of these ways consistently or comprehensively. This proved, Christianity and the idea of progi'ess, The Gnostics, JMontanists, and early Millenarian.s, The Christian Fathers, . . . ^ . The idea of progress in the middle ages. It implies the idea of unity. Dawn of the consciousness of human unity. Traces of this consciousness in Egypt, China, India, and Persia, The services of Greece to the cause of human unity. Those of Rome, ..... 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 14 16 17 22 23 24 26 28 29 30 37 38 39 40 42 43 44 47 49 X CONTENTS. Christianity supplied what was defective in the Greco-Roman view, . 51 Gradual realisation of the idea of human unity in the Christian world, . 53 Why the history of the idea of freedom is not traced, . . . . 61 BOOK L — FRANCE. Chapter I.-BODIN AND CARTESIANISM. • Sketch of the progi-ess of liistory in France from its rise to the sixteenth century, ........ 65 Bodin the first French author who took a philosophical survey of historj', 68 Character of his ' Methodus,' ...... 69 The place he assigns to human history, . . . . .70 His recognition of progress in history, . . . . .71 His recognition of law in history, ...... 73 Sought to explain events, chiefly by general physical and political causes, ih. Attempted to explain the origin of nations and to divide time into epochs, 75 Influence of Cartesianism on historical study, . . . .76 The idea of progress in Pascal, Perrault, Fontenelle, &c., , . .78 Chapter II.— BISHOP BOSSUET. Was Bossuet the founder of the philosophy of history ? . . .81 Summary of his * Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle,' . . .83 The true and the false in his attempt to rest the philosophy of history on the doctrine of Providence, ...... 84 He erred as to the final cause of history, . . . . .86 Did justice only to the Christian element in history, . . .88 Unfairness of Mr Buckle's criticism of Bossuet, . . . .89 Chapter III.— MONTESQUIEU. Mental change in France between 1681 and 1748, . . .93 The central conception of the ' Spirit of Laws,' . . . .95 Montesquieu's method defective inasmuch as he did not systematically compare coexistent and consecutive social states, . . .96 Often explained historical facts when he failed to reach their general laws, 97 He had an inaccurate notion of inductive law, . . . .99 In treating of the influences of governments he confounded two distinct methods, ........ 100 His defective method led him to exaggerate the influence of physical agencies and to overlook that it is chiefly indirect, . . . 103 He proved and applied the principle that the course of history is chiefly determined by general causes, . . . . .105 He introduced the economical element into historical science, . .106 The concluding books of his work, ..... 107 CONTENTS. XI Chaptee IV.— TURCOT. His character, . . . . . . .109 His cMef service to the science of history lies in the comprehensive view he gave of human progression, . . . . .110 His sketch of a political geography, . . . . .112 His anticipation of Comte's "law of three states," . . . 113 He gave it no irreligious application, . . . . .114 Chapter V.— VOLTAIRE. Why such different estimates have been formed of his character and Aim of his ' Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations,' The qualities displayed in it. Critical spirit, Independence of judgment. Hostility to Christianity, . Want of comprehensiveness, Want of philosophical depth. The views of Voltaire's contemporaries on the course of history. influence. 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 Chaptek VI.— CONDORCET. Circumstances in which his ' Sketch of the Progress of the Human Spirit ' was written, ........ 125 Its fundamental idea, . . . . . . .127 Its division of human development into epochs, .... ib. Imperfections of the division, ...... 128 Exaggerated and inconsistent view of human perfectibility, . . 129 Importance of the last chapter of the work, .... 131 The tendencies of progress maintained to be towards (1) the distinction of inequality between nations, (2) the destniction of inequality between classes, and (3) the improvement of individuals. These tendencies considered, . . . . ■ . . . .132 Chapter VII.— THE THEOCRATIC SCHOOL. The French Revolution and historical speculation, Origin of the theocratic school. Its representatives, .... Its antagonism to modern philosophy. Its defence of absolute authority as the basis of society. The historical theory of M. Ballanche, . . ' The theocratic ideal of society, Historical formulae of M. de Bonald, 139 140 141 143 147 149 151 154 Chapter VIII.— SAINT -SIMON AND FOURIER. Distinctive principle of Socialism, ..... Character and influence of Saint-Simon, .... Place which he assigns to the science of history, 155 156 157 Xll CONTENTS. His laws of two states from which Comte's law of three states must have been derived, ........ His attempt to reduce historical to pliysical law, .... He sought to raise his historical philosophy on the foundation laid by Condoi'cet, ........ Its leadiug principle is that general intelligence and individual intelligence are developed according to the same law, and pass through precisely parallel stages, ....... Saint- Simon divides history into organic and critical periods. Attempts to arrange the facts of history into series corresponding to the chief phases of human nature, ..... Also attempts to arrange the various societies of men into a scale graduated according to their degree of culture, .... Assumes the rudest stages of culture to be the oldest, Fourier's exaggeration of the principle of perfectibility. His law of " passional attraction," ...... His division of history into four great periods corresponding to infancy, youth, manhood, and old age, ...... 158 160 162 163 164 165 ib. 166 167 168 169 Chapter IX.— COUSIN AND JOUFFROY. I. The eclectic school, . . . . . . .172 Relation of Cousin to Hegel, ...... 173 His view of the connection between psychology and the philosophy of history correct, ....... 174 He errs in substituting human reason for human nature, . . .176 In his division of intelligence into spontaneous and reflective, he confuses a number of distinctions, ...... 178 His distribution of history into the three epochs of the infinite, finite, and their relation, rests on an inaccurate analysis of reason, and is inconsistent with facts, ...... 185 His optimism, ........ 189 His views regarding the influence of places on history inconsistent and erroneous, ........ 190 His theory of nations, ....... 192 The theory examined, . . . . . . .193 His theory of war examined, ...... 195 His theory of great men, . . . . . . .199 Its examination, ........ 200 II. Jouffroy's writings on the Philosophy of History, . Summary of his 'Reflections,' .... Remarks, ....... Summary of his essay on ' The Present State of Humanity, ' How far inconclusive, ..... Dissent from his speculations as to the relation of England, France, and Germany to the future of humanity, ..... 206 207 210 211 213 215 CONTENTS. Xlll Chapter X.— GUIZOT. Connection of doctrinaire politics with eclectic philosophy, Guizot as historian and historical philosopher, How his historical works are related to one another, Examination of his opinion that French civilisation is the type of civilisation, ...... Criticism of his account of civilisation, How he distinguishes ancient from modern civilisation, His vindication of the notion of political legitimacy, Its futility, ...... Summary of the ' Course of 1829,' The scientific spirit and character of Guizot's method, His proof of the existence of historical science, or model 219 221 223 226 233 235 236 237 239 240 241 Chapter XL— THE SOCIALISTIC SCHOOL CONTINUED BUCHEZ AND LEROUX. Literary life of M. Buchez, ..... Analysis of his ' Introduction to the Science of History, ' . His definition of the science of history, .... Dependence of the science on the ideas of humanity and progress, Summary of the discussion on 'The Methods of the Science of History,' His division of history into four epochs, each initiated by a revelation. General estimate of his work, . . . , . 242 243 ib. 244 245 249 250 II. Literary life of M. Leroux, ....... His 'Refutation of Eclecticism,' ...... The theory of historical development expounded in his ' De I'Humauitd ' rests on his definition of man — "an animal transformed hy reason and united to humanity," ...... His view of continuous progress, ...... "The axiom of solidarity," ...... Progress represented as a continuous advance towards equality, with three stages corresponding to the three chief forms of caste, 252 253 254 255 256 257 Chapter XII.— AUGUSTE COMTE. What parts of Comte's works treat of the philosophy of history, . . 259 General aim of Comte's labours, ...... 260 The place of the philosophy of history in his system, . . . 261 He attempts to combine the truths of order and progress, and so to avoid the one-sidedness both of the reactionists and revolutionists, . . ib. He did not borrow from Hegel or Schelling, .... 262 Fairness and unfairness in his estimate of the past, . . • 264 His "law of the three states," ...... 267 XIV CONTENTS. It rests on a confusion of aspects of tilings with eras of time, Where it applies at all it applies only partially, . How Comte treats the facts inconsistent with it, . How J. S. Mill deals with theiu, ..... M. Littre and Comte'a law, . . . . • Littrd's law of four states proceeds on the denial of a truth insisted on by Comte, and is contradicted by the facts, Comte's Positive Religion should be counted as a fourth state. Mill's assertion of the compatibility of Positivism and Theism ii-reconcil able with his acceptance of the Comtist law, . 269 272 273 275 ib. 279 281 283 Chapter XIII.— THE DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL: MICHELET AND QUINET. I. Democracy in France, ....... 285 Writings of M. Michelet which bear on the philosophy of history, . 286 His relation to Vico, ....... 287 His * Introduction to Universal History ' represents history as the progres- sive realisation of freedom in humanity, . . ... 291 Account of the work, ....... 292 Some of its errors, ........ 295 The 'Bible of Humanity,' 297 II. Life of M. Quinet, ........ 298 His relation to Herder, ....... 300 He regards history as the manifestation of fi-ee-will, . . . 301 Maintains that religion is the generative principle of civilisation, . . 303 His polemic against the optimism of the doctrinarian historical philosophy, 304 Its substantial justice, ....... 306 Logical error of the doctrinarian historians, .... 308 Chapter XIV.— THE DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL CONTINUED : DE TOCQUEVILLE, ODYSSE - BAROT, DE FERRON, AND LAURENT. How De Tocqueville's works bear on historical philosophy, Character of M. Odysse-Barot's 'Letters on the Philosophy of History,' Examination of his tliree so-called laws, .... M. de Ferron in his ' Theory of Progress ' attempts to combine the prin ciples of Vico and Saint-Simon, and to combat Cffisarism, How M, Laurent's ' Philosophy of History ' is related to his ' Studies on the History of Humanity, ' . It deals chiefly witli the moral development of humanity, . And surveys history rather from a religious than a scientific point of vieW; It is an imi)ortant contribution to natural theology, Inaccuracy of Professor Bona Meyer's criticism of it, Summary of the second book of M. Laurent's work, 311 313 314 320 321 323 324 325 ib. 328 CONTENTS. XV BOOK IL — GERMANY. Chaptek I.— the progress OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN GERMANY. Historical inquiry was stimulated in Germany by the Renaissance and Reformation, altliougli both of these events led men to value the knowledge of history merely as a means, .... 333 Ecclesiastical historiography in Germany was first polemic, . . 334 next pietistic, . . ib. then pragmatic, . . 335 afterwards rationalistic, . . ib. and has become philosophical, . . 336 Civil historiography has run a nearly parallel course, . . . ib. In the sixteenth century history still appeared in the form of Chronicles, ib. In the seventeenth century learned historical collections were made, . 337 About the middle of the eighteenth century a school of learned historians arose in the universities, ...... 338 The German Illuminism gave rise to a school which attempted to philoso- phise on history, ....... 339 And which was succeeded by one more critical and profound, . . 341 Chapter II.— THE RISE OF HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY : LEIBNITZ, ISELIN, WEGELIN, SCHLOZER, VON MtJLLER. The services of Leibnitz to the philosophy of history. His optimism, ..... The idea of there being a philosophy of history received from France, ..... Chladni's ' General Science of History, ' Character of Iselin, .... And of his work entitled * Philosophical Conjectures on Humanity,' ..... Account of this treatise, .... Wegelin's historical works, His ' Five Memoirs on the Philosophy of History, ' Analysis and criticism of these Memoirs, . Schlozer as an historian, .... His " ideal " of a universal history, Better realised by Von Miiller than by himself, by the Germans the History of 344 345 347 ib. 348 ib. 349 351 353 355 361 362 363 Chapter III.— LESSING. In what sense a philosopher, ...... 366 In his ' Education of tlie Human Race ' he does not sketch a philosophy of history from the stand-point of religion, but treats of revelation in relation to history, ....... 367 XVI CONTENTS. He regards revelation as the education of the race, and as differing from natural religion only in form, ..... 368 Narrowness and inconsistency of this view, . . . . ib. He conceives of the Old and New Testaments as school-books of the human race, the former of which has been, and the latter of which will be, outgrown, ....... 369 Keniarks on the way in which he has presented the idea of a divine educa- tion of humanity, ....... 372 Chapter IV.— HERDER. How led to the thought that there must be a pliilosophy of history, . 375 Character of his ' Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind,' . 376 General view of its first eight books, ..... 377 Herder conceives of spirit in such a way as to make his belief in freedom illogical, ........ 379 Treats of the lower stages of human life with more ability than the higher, 380 Insists on the interdependence of men as a truth of historical philo- sophy, ........ ih. Tries to show where man originated, ..... 381 Marks the place in history of each nation and age, . . . 382 His catholicity of feeling and comprehensiveness of view, . . . ib. He regards humanity as the end of history, and maintains that it is realised freely through reason and justice, ..... 383 Vagueness of his conception of humanity, ..... 384 And of most of his general conceptions, ..... 385 The five propositions of his fifteenth book, .... 386 Chapter V.— KANT AND SCHILLER. The thought with which Kant's ' Idea of a Universal History from a cos- mopolitical point of view ' starts, ..... 388 Explanation and criticism of its nine propositions, viz. — 1°, That all the natural tendencies of each creature have been so formed as that they will finally reach a complete and appro- priate development, ...... 389 2°, That the natural tendencies of man, Avhich have for destination the use of reason, must find their perfect development, not in the individual, but in the species, .... ib. 3°, That nature has willed that man should draw from his own internal resources by the right use of his reason what happi- ness and perfection he is to possess, .... 390 4°, Tliat the means nature employs to bring about the development of man's powers is their antagonism in the social state, . 391 5°, That the most important problem for the human race is the establishment of a universal civil society in which political justice will reign, ...... ib. 6°, That this is also its most difficult problem, . - . 392 7°, That this problem implies a regular constitution of interna- tional relations, ...... ib. CONTENTS. Xvii 8°, That the history of the human race may be regarded as the ac- complishment of a secret plan of nature to solve this problem, 393 9°, That a philosophical universal history must be composed from this point of view, ...... i6. Kant gives an illegitimate place to a priori speculation and to the prin- ciple of final causes, ....... 396 His view of the particular final cause of history is erroneous, . . 398 Defence of it by Kosenkranz, ...... ib. Kant's treatise ' Of Perpetual Peace,' and the treatises of others on the same subject, ........ 399 Estimate of their worth, ....... 401 Kant's review of Herder's ' Ideen,' ...... 403 His ' Conjectural Commencement of the History of Mankind,' . . ib. His attemj)t to give definiteness to the idea of organic development, . 404 Schiller's relation to Kant, ...... 405 Summary of his Inaugural Discourse on Universal History, . . 406 He showed the place and importance of art in history, . . . 407 His three epochs of history, ...... 408 Chapter VI.— FICHTE. Fichte's theory of history rests on the principle that philosophy is to be kept separate from experience, . . . . .410 He fails to establish this principle, . . . . .411 Maintains that the end of the life of mankind on earth is to order all their relations with freedom according to reason, . . . .413 Di^ddes history into five epochs, — the state of innocence, of progressive sin, of completed sin, of science, and of art, . . . .414 His views on the origin of civilisation, . . . . .415 Hypothesis of a primitive normal people surrounded by earth-born savages, 416 Character of the lectures on the third age, .... 417 Cosmopolitanism of the ' Characteristics,' .... ib. Diff'erent spirit of the ' Discourses to the German Nation, ' . . 418 Tone of thought and feeling in the lectures * On the Doctrine of the State,' 420 Chapter VII.— SCHELLING. Character of Schelling, ....... 421 His earliest discussion of the question, Is a philosophy of history possible ? 422 Point of view from which the ' System of Transcendental Idealism ' is written, ........ 423 Natui-e resolved into intelligence and development represented as uni- versal, ........ 424 Views adopted by Schelling from Kant and Fichte, . . . 425 Human history regarded by him as characterised by the union of freedom and necessity, ....... 426 Also as a self-evolution of the absolute, and divisible into a period of destiny, of nature, and of providence, .... 427 In his ' Lectures on the Method of Academic Study ' he maintains the hjrpothesis of a primitive cultured people, .... 428 XVlll CONTENTS. Kepresents history as the ideal side of the Absolute, and the ancient world, as the real and the modern world, as the ideal side of history, . 428 Considers the primary characteristic of Christianity to be its regarding the universe as history, ....••• ^f^- Considers the end of history to be the formafion of a State in which free- dom and necessity are harmonised, ..... 429 Considers that a philosophy or science of history must be derived from theology or philosophy, ...... 4:30 In his ' Philosophy and Religion ' he maintains that the finite world is a falling away from the Absolute, ..... 431 Represents history as consisting of two parts, — the departure of humanity from the centre of existence, and its return, .... 432 And assails the doctrine of continuous historical progress, . . ib. In his ' Inquiries into Human Freedom ' he represents history as a length- ened conflict between self-will and universal will, ending in the triumph of the latter, ....... 433 Schelling's views on history form no system, and are mostly unproved, . ib. His method is neither legitimately inductive nor deductive, . . 434 His " absolute " is a creation of fancy, ..... 435 In defending it against the attack of Sir William Hamilton, Professor Ferrier erred both as to that absolute and Hamilton's relative, . 436 It was an error in Schelling to represent the absolute, and not humanity, as the subject of history, ...... 437 He failed in all attempts to derive history from the absolute by evolution, emanation, or disseverance, ...... 438 He saw clearly that history combines freedom and necessity, without being able to show how, ....... ib. His divisions of history have no value, ..... 439 His affirmation that history is a divine poem is merely a metaphor, . 440 Chapter VIII THE SCHOOL OF SCHELLING : STUTZMANN, STEFFENS, AND GOERRES. Sources of Stutzmann's ' Philosophy of the History of Mankind, ' Leading doctrines of the work, ..... Character of Steffens, ...... Relation of his ' Anthopology ' to the philosophy of history, Regarded man as the synthesis of nature, . . . . • Held that the goal of history is the realisation of the divine image in humanity, ....... Summary of his work, 'The Present Time,' &c., . Historical writings of Goerres, ..... He attempts to exhibit the fundamental principle of history. To show the relation of its secondary principles to its primaiy principle, And to distribute history into epochs, .... Faucifulness of his views on the course of history. 443 ib. 445 ib. 446 447 448 450 451 452 ib. 453 CX)NTENTS. XIX Chaptek IX. -FREDERICK SCHLEGEL." His qualifications for historical speculation, .... Connection between his ' Philosophy of Life ' and ' Philosophy of History,' Presuppositions of the latter work, .... The criticism of it by G an s unjust, .... Contradictory professions with which Schlegel starts. His opinions regarding the primitive condition and history of man. His view of Chinese, Hindoo, Egyptian, and Hebrew history, His attempt to prove that a primitive revelation underlies the various forms of heathenism, . His lectures on Persia, Greece, and Rome, His classification of historical phenomena. The lectures on medieval history, . His Roman Catholicism, The three principles which he regards as the laws of the historical world, His account of the Reformation questioned. His hopes as to the future of humanitj', .... 455 457 ib. 458 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 471 Chaptek X.— KRAUSE. The man, . . . . . . His style, ........ His followers, ....... His system a vast monistic theory, which ascends analytically from self consciousness to Deity, and descends synthetically from Deity, so as to comprehend and explain the whole organism of existence, He deiines the philosophy of history as the knowledge of life and its evolution, ....... Divides it into pure and applied, ..... Attempts to lay its foundation in metaphysics, and the special philoso phical sciences, ...... His views on the life of God, the life of the world, and the life of humanity His dissection of the internal organism of society, His description of the coiirse of life, .... And of the three ages in the history of humanity, His theory one of the most elaborate attempts at an a priori explanation of history, ....... JIuch empirical matter introduced into the reasoning. His inductions valuable, although erroneously put forth as deductions. He had the merit of seeing the close connection between the philosophy of history and universal biology, . . . . • And of showing historical development to be a kind of organic evolution, He supposed the resemblance between the development of the race and that of the individual closer than it is, The place of free-will in his system, ..... His fancifulness, ....•••• 472 473 474 476 477 ih. 478 479 481 482 483 485 487 ib. 488 489 491 493 494 XX CONTENTS. Chapter XL— HEGEL. The Hegelian philosophy of history part of a comprehensive system, The system an absolute idealism, all the divisions of which are determined by an inherent principle or law of movement. How far Hegelianism maybe true in regarding the iini verse as a develop- ment or history, ....... The Hegelian view of human history involves all the speculative and practical difficulties inherent in the Hegelian philosophy in general, Hegel's idea of God obscure and ambiguous. His ' Philosophy of History ' pervaded by a religious spirit, His method so separates the elements of history as to make historical syn thesis impossible. He treats ably, however, of the separate developments of history, especi ally of the Eesthetical, religious, and philosophical, He regards history as original, or reflective, or philosophical. Aim of philosophical history. Non-historical peoples and countries. Theatre of history, . The three great stages of history, China, India, Persia, including Judea, Egyjjt, . . Greece, Rome, Christianity, The epochs of Christian history, Unsatisfactoriness of Hegel's view of the relation of nature and spirit, Of his view of spirit itself, . And of his view of the purpose of hi His optimism, hero-worship, conception of freedom, &c., . His error in representing the course of history as a straight line. Examination and disproof of his formula of the three stages, What his followers have done in the department of history. storical development, 496 497 498 499 503 504 505 507 510 511 512 513 514 515 ib. ib. 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 524 525 527 528 531 532 540 Chapter XIL— SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. I. Phases of Schelling's negative philosophy, .... 542 His positive philosophy, ....... 544 Claims to be an historical and religious philosophy, . . . 545 The ' Introduction to Mythology,' ..... 546 Schellings answer to the question, What makes a people ? . . 547 His view of the connection between the philosophy of mythology, and the philosophy of history, . . . . . .549 How far the " Exposition of the Rational Philosophy " touches on history, 550 CONTENTS. XXI How monotheism, theism, and pantheism are conceived of by Schelling, . 551 How mythology is related to monotheism, ..... 552 And to revelation, ........ 553 Mythologj' and revelation constitute history, .... 554 Influence of Schelling's positive philosophy, .... 555 II. Central thought of Bunsen's life, ...... 556 Works to which it gave rise, ...... 557 The religious conception with which Bunsen's historical philosophy starts, ih. His views as to the aim and method of historical philosophy, . . 558 Man's consciousness of God the chief motive force in history, . .559 Action and reaction of the individual and the community in history, . ih. Also of intuition and reflection. Whence the epochs of history, . . 560 The antithesis between thought and will in histor}', . . . ib. Outline of Bunsen's work, ' God in History,' .... 561 How far it seemed to himself to approximate to, and how far to fall short of, a philosophy of history, . . . . . .562 His recognition of the power and significance of comparative philology, . 563 His conception of the course of linguistic evolution, , . . 564 His views of liistorical method not sufliciently comprehensive, . . 565 Some particular errors into which he has fallen, .... ih. III. Lasaulx, in what respects like and in what unlike Bunsen, . . 566 His essays bearing on the philosophy of histoiy, .... 567 The presuppositions on which he rests the philosophy of history should not be assumed, ....... 568 His generalisations based too much on analog}^ .... 569 He conceives humanity and nations to pass, like individuals, through the stages of childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, . . . 570 He errs in regarding the movement of history from east to west, and war as di\ane and objective laws, ...... 571 His formulie for the sx^ecial phases of human development, . . 572 He fails to show that nations, like individuals, must die of age, . . 573 Chapter XIII.— LAZAEUS, LOTZE, AND HERMANN. Historical theories in Germany have generally sprung from philosophical and in France from political principles, Baader and the philosophy of historj'-, .... Schopenhauer and the philosophy of history, Pessimism, ........ Herbart as the antithesis of Hegel, .... His view of the connection between psychology and the science of history Applied by Prof. Lazarus, ...... Principles adopted by Lazarus from W. v. Humboldt, What influence he attributes to formative ideas, . He has followed a true path but not sufliciently far. Summary of his essay on the " Condensation of Thought," 575 576 ih. 577 579 ih. 580 581 583 584 585 XXll CONTENTS. II. Lotze not a " Herbartist, " . .... His intellectual character and activity, How his ' Mikrokosmus' is more than a philosophy of history, Wise scepticism displayed in it, . Summary of its author's views as to — the creation of man, ..... the purpose of history, .... the efficient forces of history, . the external conditions of historical development, the general course of historical development, . and the various phases of development, — intellectual, industrial, . artistic, religious, and public or social, III. Prof. Hermann's ' Philosophy of History ' the result of long labours, His perception of the importance of the philosophy of history. He regards Hegel as almost his sole predecessor, . Eeason of this error, ...... Wliat he censures in Hegel, ..... What he regards as the fundamental distinction between Hegel's philoso phy of history and his own, ..... How far right and how far wrong in opposing an organic and defending teleological point of view, ..... Inaccuracy of his analysis of the contents of culture, The " general law of history " derived from the analysis not verifiable, The analogy associated with it delusive, .... Character of the chapters devoted to particular sections of history, 586 587 588 590 591 592 ih. 593 ib. 594 595 ib. ib. 596 ib. 597 598 599 600 601 602 605 606 ib. 607 INTRODUCTION. One result of this inquiry should be to afford a clearer view of what the philosophy or science of history is than any definition or general description could do. I mean to pass in review the more famous of the many attempts which have been made within the last century and a half to discover the laws of order which regulate human affairs, and to indicate what appear to me their chief merits and defects ; and if I accomplish with the slightest measure of success my purpose, the conceptions of the reader as to the character, scope, and method of the philosophy of history, as to what it ought to do and how it ought to do it, should be constantly increasing in definiteness and accuracy as the inquiry itself advances. It may be that even at its close there will still remain possibilities of misapprehension, reasons for uncertainty, as to the precise sphere and method of the philosophy of history ; but the proper place to attempt to remove these is obviously not at the outset, but at the end of our his- torical review, when, from the vantage-ground gained by a study of the thoughts and labours of the past in this department of research, its failures and successes, we may hope to get a clearer view than we could otherwise have attained of the duties of the future, of the aims which a philosophy of history may reason- ably propose to itself, and of the processes to be pursued and the errors to be avoided if it would realise them. There is no need, then, that we should start with any defini- tion of the philosophy of history, or any attempt at a precise description of what it is. On the contrary, it may be better A 2 INTRODUCTION. that we begin with a notion quite general, even although vague. That the reign of law somehow extends over human affairs — that history has not been abandoned to caprice and chance, is not mere anarchy and chaos, but embraced within a system of order, more or less perfect — that amidst all its apparent con- fusion and incoherence there has been some sort of growth, some sort of development of the mind and spirit of the human race — tliat events are connected by some determinate relation- ships, and that one social state arises out of another, to which it retains some correspondence in character, — is a conviction which every man is likely to bring with him to the study of history ; and more in the way of presupposition is certainly not necessary, and perhaps not desirable. The error, in fact, most to be guarded against at starting, is a too definite or rather too narrow view of law and order ; one drawn from physical science alone and applicable to physical nature alone ; the transference of such a view into the moral world with the latent or conscious deter- mination to find it hold true there, without any modifications corresponding to the essential differences which distinguish mind from matter. The origin of the philosophy of history, its absolute origin or commencement, is not to be dated from the time when it began to be cultivated as a distinct division of knowledge. It is at a comparatively late stage that any science definitively separates itself from contiguous fields of knowledge and assumes an independent form. The man of genius who is called the founder of a science merely brings together its already existing elements, its disjecta membra, which lie far and wide apart im- bedded in the most diverse studies, organically unites them through some great thought, some happy discovery, and breathes into the body thus formed the breath of life. There is no science, even among those which like geology or political eco- nomy we in one sense rightly enough call recent, whose history is all in the daylight ; there is none which has come at once into the full enjoyment of individual existence like a Pallas from the brain of Jove ; the origins of science, like the origins of all things, lie beyond the utmost limits research has yet attained. In very old poetry, and in the very oldest mythology, INTRODUCTION. 3 there are rudimentary geological speculations. The atomic doc- trine of Dalton is but a more developed form of the hypothesis maintained by the Hindu Kanada and the Greek Democritus. The development theory of Darwin goes clearly back not only to Maillet and Lamarck, but to Anaximander and Empedocles. Although political economy established its claims to be a separate science only in the eighteenth century, it may be truly said, seeing that economical laws have always operated and always forced men to take some cognisance of them and yield some obedience to them, to have had under one form or another always and everywhere an existence. Tiie philosophy of history is no exception to the rule which every other science has obeyed ; on the contrary, it is perhaps its most striking example. While men still dispute as to the reality, and even as to the possibility, of its separate scientific existence, religion, poetry, speculation of various kinds, political movements, the cares and trials of common life, have for countless generations been bring- ing its problems in manifold forms before the human mind and into contact with the human heart. As diffused through these things, it is, and for we know not how long has been, widely present. There may have been a time during which man felt in no degree the mystery of his own being, but no direct records remain of such a time ; and so far as can be gathered from the mere literary monuments of our race, a kind of philosophy of history may have been as old as history itself, and the first question man proposed to himself may have been that which Milton puts into the mouth of Adam — " How came I thus, how here ? " The very lowest forms of religion are not mere embodiments of the feelings of fear, or love, or dependence, but consist in great part of rude speculations, strange fancies, as to the making and the meaning of nature and man. It is still truer of Asiatic than of European civilisations that they are based on religion, and that the rationale of their distinctive institutions are to be sought in their theological creeds. In all the chief religions of the East we find speculations more or less elevated on the origin and destiny of the race ; attempts more or less plausible to tell whence man has come and where he goes — how the present is 4 INTRODUCTION. related to the past and future — how the lower world is connected with a higher. The historical pessimism of Schopenhauer, although still a novelty in Europe, is confessedly borrowed from Brahminism and Budhism, in both of which its leading prin- ciple is an essential dogma. Christianity, like all other reli- gions, contains a theory of history, although only under the form proper to a religion. " Tliere is a little book," says Mr Ripley, " which is taught to children, and on which they are examined in the Church. If we read this book, which is the Catechism, we shall find a solution of all the problems which have been pro- posed ; all of them without exception. If we ask the Christian, whence comes the human race, he knows ; or whither it goes, he knows ; or how it goes, he knows. If we ask that poor child, who has never reflected on the subject in his life, why he is here below, and what M'ill become of him after death, he will give you a sublime answer, which he will not thoroughly compre- hend, but which is none the less admirable for that. If we ask him how the world was created, and for what end ; why God has placed in it plants and animals ; how the earth was peopled ; whether by a single family or by many ; why men speak different languages ; why they suffer, why they struggle, and how all this will end, — he knows it all. Origin of the world, origin of the species, question of races, destiny of man in this life and in the other, relations of man to God, duties of man to his fellow-men, rights of man over the creation, — he is ignorant of none of these points ; and when he shall have grown up, he will as little hesi- tate with regard to natural right, political right, or the right of nations : all this proceeds with clearness, and as it were of itself, from Christianity." ^ Philosophy does not assume form and body till long after religion, and it does so at first, wherever there is a great religion, on the basis of the religion, and not on a foundation of its own. India, which is the great philosophical land of Asia, had such a religion, and the philosophy of India never severed itself from its religion. Its chief systems, the six darsanani, are classed as orthodox and heterodox : five of them rest on the Vedas ; and although it cannot be said that the Sankhya acknowledges the ^ Introductory Notice to Jouffroy's Philosophical Essays, p. 23, 24. INTRODUCTION. 5 authority of any sacred book, it proposes to itself for final aim a religious end, the securing of salvation to man, and recom- mends the pursuit of truth only as a means to that end. It was otherwise in Greece, the anthropomorphic polytheism of wdiich, although singularly beautiful, being mainly a product of imagi- nation and the aesthetic sense, with no depth of root either in the reason or conscience, with feeble philosophical and moral powers and possibilities, has no claim to be regarded as a great religion, and indeed would seem to have been in some measure outgrown by the Greek mind even when Homer wrote. Hence Greek philosophy from its origin kept itself essentially distinct from Greek mythology, the influence of which upon it at the strongest was only secondary; at a very early date it began not only silently to undermine but openly to assail it as irrational and immoral. It is its characteristic and glory that from first to last it was free and independent, acknowledging subjection to no authority save that of reason alone. This philosophy having fulfilled its providential mission, expired in a struggle wath Christianity; the classical world and its wisdom gave place to a new social order and a higher wisdom. A world arose of which Christianity was the central power, the dominant principle, and again for centuries philosophy was rested on theology, as it had been in ancient India. Only slowly, and with difficulty, and in comparatively recent times, has philosophy once more recovered its independence and ceased to be the handmaid or bondwoman of theology. The Hindu darsanas and scholastic philosophies were, then, systems of philosophy based on systems of theology. One consequence was, that in a sense they were as comprehen- sive as the theologies with which they were connected. What- ever problems the Vedas were supposed to have shed light on, the Hindu philosophers felt emboldened to deal with. Whatever the Church received as doctrine, the scholastic philosophers made it their aim to develop and apply. In the Indian and medieval philosophies there is, accordingly, no lack of historical theory of a sort, as there is no lack of any kind of theory of which the germs could be discovered in the authoritative sources of Brah- minism and Christianity. And the Greek philosophies, although not based as these were on religion, none the less attempted to 6 INTRODUCTION. coiiixjass the explanation of the entire universe. They did not, as the philosophies of all moderately prudent men now do, pre- suppose the positive sciences, but occupied their place. These sciences did not then exist. There was only one vast vague philosophy, at least till Aristotle broke it up to some extent into parts and laid the foundations of certain sciences ; and that philosophy, although ever baffled, ever renewed its efforts to explain nothing less than the mystery of all that is. It has to be acknowledged that even in its oldest form, its rude Ionian stage, when assuming water and air and unconditioned matter to be first principles, it did not overlook that the origin of man, the existence of intelligence, and the gradation of intelligence, required to be accounted for no less than the character and arrangement of the material portions of the universe. In the course of its development it perhaps gained few permanent and positive results ; but, besides educating the human faculties, it was accompanied by an ever-widening view and ever-deepening sense of the difficulty and magnitude of the problem it sought to solve ; man and society, in particular, gradually bulked more prominently before it and commanded a constantly increasing share of attention, until at length Plato from the stand-point of idealism, and Aristotle from that of realism, elaborated those two memorable theories of society which at once summed up the past and represented the great antagonistic movements of politi- cal life in the future.^ This leads me to remark that there can scarcely be political disquisition without historical speculation. As soon as political thought comes forth into life, it is found to oscillate between two poles — between despotism and anarchy — the extreme of social authority and the extreme of individual independence. Before political thought awakens, social authority predominates. The man as an individual does not exist, but is merged in the family, clan, city, or nation. But in every progressive society there comes a time when its stronger minds feel that they are not merely parts of a social organism, that they have a life and destiny, rights and duties of their own, and simply as men. There are then two princij)les in the world — the principle of ' Appendix A. INTRODUCTION. 7 authority and the principle of liberty, the principle of society and the principal of individualism. These two principles co- exist at first in a few individuals, but in process of time they come not only to coexist in some degree in all, but to manifest themselves apart, and then there are not only two principles in the individual but two parties in the State, the one inclining more to the side of social authority, and the other more towards individual independence — a conservative and a liberal party; each party existing in virtue of its assertion of a truth, but ex- isting only as a party because it does not assert the whole truth — each conferring its special services — each having its special dangers — each being certain to ruin any society in which it succeeds in crushing the other, — but the two securing both order and progress, partly by counteracting each other, and partly by co- operating with each other. Now it is not until these two parties emerge, not until their respective claims come into open conflict, that there is any active political thought, any general political theory ; and hence political thought, political speculation at least, is from the very first forced on historical speculation. The pro- blem which is its root, out of which it issues, is no other than this, — What is the relation of the past to the present ? What influence ought the past to have over the present, and society over the individual ? Where between slavish deference to all that is, and a proud and wilful rejection of it, lies the golden mean at which political wisdom aims? But that problem involves a whole philosoi)hy of history. It was therefore altogether nat- ural that historical reflection should have received in Greece a special stimulus from the Sophists, who effected in philosophy the transition from cosmological to psychological speculation, and who substituted in politics the principle of individualism for that of social authority ; whose chief merit was assertion of the rights of the subject, and whose radical error was denial of the rights of the object, both in philosophy and politics. It was altogether natural, also, that the clearest and deepest thinker of the classical world, Aristotle, should have been the man who came nearest being the founder of the philosophy of history. He had, it is true, scarcely a conception of progress, and no conception of any law of progress, but he had studied 8 INTRODUCTION. closely the constitution of all the Greek States and surrounding peoples ; had a full appreciation of the importance of the analysis and comparison of the most varied forms of government, and employed with rare skill and success both processes ; had a most remarkable insight into the requirements, composition, working, and influence of every species of polity which had until his time been tried; and, in consequence, singularly correct, profound, and comprehensive conceptions of that social stability or order which is the prime condition of social progress. The historian is in still closer contact if possible with our science than the politician. The philosophy of history is not a something separate from the facts of history, but a something contained in them. The more a man gets into the meaning of them, the more he gets into it, and it into him ; for it is simply the meaning, the rational interpretation, the knowledge of the true nature and essential relations of the facts. And this is true of whatever species or order the facts may be. Their philosophy is not something separate and distinct from, something over and above, their interpretation, but simply their interpretation. He who knows about any people, or epoch, or special development of human nature, how it has come to be what it is and what it tends to, what causes have given it the character it has, and what its relation is to the general development of humanity, has attained to the philosophy of the history of that people, epoch, or development. Philosophical history is sometimes spoken of as a kind of history, but the language is most inaccurate. Every kind of history is philo- sophical which is true and thorough; which goes closely and deeply enough to work ; which shows the what, how, and why of events as far as reason and research can ascertain. History always participates in some measure of philosophy, for events are always connected according to some real or supposed prin- ciple either of efficient or final causation. The dullest mind can only describe them on that condition ; the most confused mind must have some sort of reason of selection, and any sort of reason followed out will lead to some sort of philosophy. The more the mind of the historian is awake and active, the more, of course, it is impelled to go in search of the connections be- INTRODUCTION. 9 tween causes and effects, between occurrences and tendencies; but even the most absolute " dry-as-dust " manifests a degree of desire to get below the surface, and generally gets so far below it as to find that some larger causes than mere individual volitions determine the course of events. A man has only to give himself seriously to the study of any portion of history, and he can scarcely fail to discover that it is pervaded by thoughts and forces which determine the nature and form of the opin- ions and acts even of those who are unconscious of or opposed to their influence ; and that discovery logically involves and necessitates the existence or validity of a philosophy of his- tory. It is accordingly natural that history should have surely, although slowly, and, as it were, of itself, led up to the philo- sophy of history ; that it should have in each new epoch of its own development become more philosophical, more conscious of the principles which regulate the succession of human affairs, and at once more comprehensive and definite in the apprehen- sion of their final causes. It may be desirable briefly to show this. History appears only at a comparatively late period in the progress of a people. It is an error to regard the rude min- strelsy which has everywhere long preceded the use of letters as essentially historical ; and for Mr Buckle's extraordinary asser- tion, that, until corrupted by the discovery of the art of writing, such minstrelsy is " not only founded on truth, but strictly true," there is no shadow of evidence. The lowest form of history is first found among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chinese. Differ- ing in many respects, these great monarchies yet had, in the dependence of enormous populations on a central individual will, the existence of a learned class, the concentration of popu- lation in vast and crowded cities, and other characteristics and wants of the civil and political life inseparable from every exten- sive empire of a despotic type, enough in common to account for the antiquity and authenticity of such historical records as they possess, royal genealogies, registers of military expeditions and treaties, lists of tribute, annals or chronicles of various kinds. But the very circumstances which originated history at an early date in these empires determined that it should never 10 TNTRODUCTION. rise above the humblest stage,— the dull, dead form of mere reo-istration. It has never been found to flourish even in the modified despotisms of modern times, and it was impossible that it should develop itself with any vigour on a soil unfertilised by any living springs of national feeling, and in the withering atmosphere of ancient oriental tyranny. Hence even in China it exists only as annals, although no nation can boast of so lengthened and strictly continuous a series of liistorical writers, since for upwards of 2600 years a tribunal has been established in the capital expressly for the recording of events supposed to be of national importance. History of the kind found in these countries is accordingly both very superficial and very narrow : very superficial, because, occupied only with the outward acts of a few ruling men, and satisfied with the mere statement of cer- tain public events severed from their causes, it makes no attempt to understand the character, the conditions, the social develop- ment of the people or nation itself ; and very narrow, because, in addition to being thus exclusively conversant with a small class or caste of persons in the nation, and with what affects their interests, it wholly fails to realise that any other nation can have historical significance. India presents us with a far richer and finer literary development than any of the nations now mentioned, its poetry and philosophy in particular being ex- ceedingly remarkable ; but the unparalleled mixture of races contained from a remote antiquity within it, the utter want of any extensive political unity, the genius and character of its leading people, and their external and social conditions, were all unfavourable to the use of historical composition, and the Hindus have no ancient native histories. They have known how to give true and full expression to the innermost workings of their minds, they have faithfully delineated all the features of their character, in the Vedas, the Code of Manu, the Pour- anas, the Soutras of their philosophers, and especially in their two great national epics ; but they have neglected and despised the events of their outer and social life, and allowed the memory of them to be to all appearance hopelessly lost. Nothing seems less promising than the attempt to separate historical fact from poetical fiction in the Eamayana and Maha-Bharata, either INTHODUCTION. 1 1 according to Professor Lassen's ingenious process of symbolism and interpretation, or Mr Wheeler's naively simple process of selection and reduction. The national histories of the Hebrews must be allowed to be incomparably superior to those of any other Asiatic people. Leaving aside as irrelevant here the question of their inspiration, no impartial critic can refuse to acknowledge that they are ex- alted above all previous compositions of an historical nature alike by the rare merits of their contents and form. The pro- found sense of a supernatural presence which pervades them is combined with the clearest insight into human nature, so that man appears nowhere more man than where God is represented as miraculously by his side. They are written in general with such simplicity, naturalness, and life, often with such a pathos and sublimity, that they must continue for all time to be the books through which the historical sense can be most surely and energetically elicited. History has been defined as the biography of nations ; but the Jewish histories so delineate the various stages and fortunes through which from its origin on- wards " the peculiar people" passed, that they may not unfitly be compared to the successive chapters of an autobiography. The feeling of their own national significance, which the Jews pos- sessed in so singular a degree, and which they so carefully cherished, was grounded on their history, which had conse- quently the most vital interest for them. Probably no people has ever been more thoroughly conscious of being rooted in, and of growing out of, a marvellous past. And this historical self- consciousness was accompanied with a sense of relationship to other peoples such as had not been previously displayed. The national exclusiveness of the Jews, as compared with European peoples, either ancient or modern, is an undoubted fact ; but it should not conceal this other fact, that it is among them that the convictions of the unity of the race, of the filiation of all the peoples of the world, and of a common and hopeful final destmy, are first found prevailing— and that it is among them, on the basis of these convictions, that history first rises from particular to universal. We have, it is true, the history of the Jews, as of a nation under a special discipline and with a special mission. 12 INTRODUCTION. minutely narrated, but it is shown to be only an offshoot of the history of humanity ; and if the Jews thought the twig greater than the tree, or if Christian writers have spoken as if they thought so, the original historians are not to blame. But his- tory as it is in the Bible is not history in a pure form, but some- thing very much more than history. It exists not for its own sake, but for the sake of something higher, of which it is repre- sented as merely the medium and manifestation. It may thus be said to be, as history, a stage of transition from lower to higher, which in no degree interrupts the progress or violates the order of development in this kind of composition, although otherwise incomparable with any writing of merely human fame. It contained what was far more precious than anything Greece possessed ; and yet, looked at from another side, fell short of, and only led up to, history as we find it among the Greeks, who in this, as in so many other provinces of intellectual activity, as- serted an unmistakable pre-eminence, an unparalleled originality. On the classic soil of ancient Hellas history first attained the dignity of an independent art, first was cultivated for its own sake. It is what the Lord said and the Lord did that Scripture history chiefly aims to exhibit — it is His guidance of a particular nation in an essentially special way that is its subject — whereas the historians of Greece set before themselves for end simply the satisfaction of man's curiosity about the actions of his fellow- men. " These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus which he publishes, in order to preserve from decay the remem- brance of what men have done, and to prevent the great and mar- vellous actions of the Greeks and barbarians losing their due meed of glory, as well as to state the causes of their hostility." " Thucydides of Athens wrote the history of the war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians while it was going on, having begun to write from its commencement in the belief that it would turn out great, and worthier of being recorded than any which had preceded it." The oriental world had no histories written from these simple natural motives, which are, however, those distinctively appropriate to the historical art. That art, there- fore, as its own true self — as a free and separate form of literature, and not the mere appendage or offshoot of something else — first INTRODUCTION. 13 grew out of the soil of Greek culture, and after a period of bare- ness and dryness blossomed and ripened into the immortal works of Herodotus and Thucydides. There it attained a perfection of form which has perhaps never since been surpassed. Herod- otus, with all his credulity and want of criticism, is, through the wonderful fulness and perennial freshness of his information — through his transparent candour and simplicity of spirit, his ease of narration, vividness of portraiture, pathos and humour — the very type and model of one great class of historians ; and Thucydides, by his accuracy of investigation, intense reali- sation and austerely graphic representation of events, and especially by his deep insight into the working of political ■ causes and social forces, of another. Further, that remarkable many-sidedness which characterised the Greek genius, which showed itself at the very origin of Greek literature in Homer in a form which could not be again surpassed, revealed itself in this sphere also, worthily repeating itself in the Father of History to gratify the boundless curiosity of the most inquisitive and philosophical of nations. So it was natural that it should be a Greek who first tried to realise the idea of a universal his- toiy, although it could not be even the most comprehensive- minded Greek of the age of Herodotus or Thucydides when there was no visible unity of any kind in the world, but one who had the spectacle of Eome before his eyes, and who had studied her steady march towards universal empire as far at least as the period when " the affairs of Italy and Africa con- joined with those of Asia and Greece, and all moved together towards one fixed and single point." ^ Polybius, who spent a portion of his life at Eome — who studied her history closely and saw clearly that her success was no accident but the natural result of general causes, her unity, institutions, and character — who beheld her triumph over Carthage and Macedonia, and was fully conscious that his own divided and demoralised land could offer her no resistance-^was a Greek so placed, and he was the first to attempt a universal history. He did so with the dis- tinctest perception of its advantages over particular histories, which, he tells us, " can no more convey a perfect view and 1 Polybius, B. I. c. 1. 14 INTRODUCTIOX. knowledge of the whole, than a survey of the divided mem- bers of a body once endued with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all the comeliness and vigour which it has received from nature." The idea of a universal history was, then, the reflection and result of the universal empire of Eome, which made the known world externally one, a single great political whole. Eome made the world Eoman and became herself cosmopolitan. The enervated generations of her decadence were citizens of the world, universal philanthropists, in mere thought and feeling ; and her fate should be an eternal warning how little grand ideas and fine sentiments may do for the life either of a nation or of those who entertain them. The fault lay, however, not in the ideas or sentiments themselves, which are the richest part of the heritage Eome bequeathed the world ; which have not died, and never will ; which the life of society is even now a struggle to realise. The indebtedness of history to Eome, as exemplify- ing that unity of a universal government without which there could have arisen no notion of a universal history, is incalcula- ble. The world has known external unity only in and through Eome, for the universal empire of Pagan Eome was the condition and foundation of the universal empire of Catholic Eome, and of that strange, changeful, phantom-like, yet most needful and influential existence, the Holy Eoman Empire — the condition and foundation, in a word, of that Church and of that State which served to prepare a spiritual unity yet unrealised, the thought of which now possesses many hearts, but would never have been conceived had external unity not previously existed, and had not a present type and a venerable tradition of such a unity saved human society in medieval times from dissolution into individual units, isolated atoms. But I must not forget further to remark, that the men who founded Eome's greatness, who won for her by endurance and daring the empire of the world, were not men of broad but of narrow ideas, not of liberal but of exclusive feelings, men animated by a proud, absorbing, ruthless patriotism. It was through the strength of their national feel- ing that the Eomans gained that universal empire in which they lost it ; and as a general rule, when tlie classical scholar thinks TNTPcODUCTION. 15 of Roman history, it is not as leading to oven an imperfect recognition of human brotherhood, to a sense of somethinp]ied by latent or innate powers, and new conditions of existence. — L. v. c. xiii.-xv. R 258 BOOK I. — FRANCE. mal ; la patrie est un bien, la patrie caste est un mal ; la propriety est un Lien, la propriety caste est un mal." Future progress must lie in rejecting the evil but retaining and organising the good, alike in the family, the state, and property. Especially is organisation of the good needed in the period of history at which we have arrived. The equality of all men before the law has come to be recognised. The greatest of revolutions, the French Eevolution of 1789, established it as a principle, and so inaugurated a new and better era of history. The new form of society, however, is not yet constituted, although its principle has been found. The generation in which we live is one with- out faith, law, or system. The old order is broken down, but the new has not been built up.^ ' The theory of M. Leroux regarding the historical evolution of humanity and its stages will be found in the preface, and second and third books, of ' L'Hu- manite,' but more fully in the ' Essai sur I'l^galitd' 259 CHAPTER XII. AUGUSTE COMTE. The story of the life of Auguste Comte, the founder of the so- caUed positivist school of philosophy, has been so often told, and is in its outlines at least so generally known, that I shall not repeat it here even in the briefest form. Let it suffice to indicate below where abundant information may be obtained on the subject.^ His general philosophy has given rise to so many and diverse judgments, ranging between the extremes of idolatrous adulation and the most scornful compassion, that I have no wish to add another to their number without having ample space and time to state and vindicate it.^ Of his works, these two may be said to contain the whole thinking of his life — the 'Cours de Philosophic Positive' (6 vols., 1830-42) and the ' Systeme de Politique Positive ' (4 vols., 1851-54). The last ^ M. Littr^'s ' Auguste Cointe et la Philosophie Positive ; ' Dr Robiiiet's ' Notice sur les Travaux et la Vie d'Augiiste Cointe ; ' the sketch by Mr Lewes in the third edition of his 'History of Philosophy ;' and an article by Principal Tulloch in the 'Edinburgh Review,' No. cclx., April 1868. ^ In addition to Comte' s own works, among the writings most worthy of being consulted regarding his S3^stem as a whole, are those of M. Littr^, Mr Lewes, and Principal Tulloch, mentioned in the preceding note, ' Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences,' by Mr Lewes ; ' Auguste Comte and Positivism,' by Mr J. S. Mill ; 'The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine,' by Dr Bridges ; Mr Herbert Spen- cer's Essays on ' The Genesis of the Sciences ; ' Dr Whewell's ' Comte and Posi- tivism' (Macmillan's Magazine, March 1866); Mr Henderson's 'Positivism' ('North British Review,' September 1868); Professor Huxley's 'Scientific Aspects of Positivism' (Fortnightly Review, June 1869); Dr Hutchison Stir- ling's ' Why the History of Philosophy ends with Hegel and not with Comte,' in his ' Supplementary Notes to Schwegler's Handbook of the History of Philoso- phy ; ' ' Paroles de Philosophie Positive,' by M. Littr^; ' Exposition de la Philo- sophie Positive,' by M. Celestin de Blignieres ; the ' Essai Critique sur la Philo- sophie Positive,' by M. Charles Pellarin ; and the ' Lehren und Schriften Auguste Comte's,' by Carl "Twesten, in the Preussische Jahrbiicher, B^ iv. 260 BOOK I. — FRANCE. three volumes of the former work — the volumes which appeared in 1839, 1841, and 1842 — present us with his historical philo- sophy in its best form. The first of these three volumes — the fourth volume of the work — insists on the necessity and im- portance of the new science of Social Physics ; describes the principal attempts which had been made to constitute it ; iudi- dicates the characteristics of the positive method in its applica- tion to social phenomena, and the relation of the Social Science to the other positive sciences ; divides Social Physics into Social Statics and Social Dynamics, and gives an outline of the theory of the former. The fifth volume expounds the general theory of Social Dynamics, and treats fully of the first two ^stages of his- torical evolution — the theological and metaphysical. The sixth volume deals with the third or positive stage, and concludes with an attempt at a comprehensive estimate of the positive philosophy in its method, doctrines, influences, and results. Although the whole of the ' Systeme de Politique Positive ' may be said to concern in some degree the student of the philosophy of history, he will not, perhaps, find in it very much of value which he has not already met with in the earlier work. What is new, so far at least as regards views on the course of history, are mainly speculations as to the future, which few persons will be inclined to rank higher than improbable conjectures. Pro- bably the essays contained in the Appendix to the fourth volume, but originally published at various dates between 1819 and 1828 form the most interesting portion of the Systeme. In that published in 1822, Comte is found to have already made what he regarded as his great discovery of the law of three stages. M. Comte made in his philosophy a strenuous effort to ela- borate a doctrine so complete and comprehensive that it should embrace all knowledge and action. What he endeavoured to do was not to discover special subordinate laws, not to expound isolated ideas however excellent, not to establish in any depart- ment of study truths of detail ; but to construct a system of thought so wide and well arranged, that not only every science, but every large scientific generalisation and every great social force, would have its proper place assigned it and full justice done it, — a system in which nothing should be arbitrary, but AUGUSTE COMTE. 261 everything determined by three closely connected laws, proved by the concurrent application of deduction and induction, the law of historical filiation, the law of hierarchical generalisation, and the law of practical activity. In this general doctrine or system the philosophy of history ranks not as itself a science, but as the division of a science — as the second part of Sociology, the last of the sciences. Sociology is divided into Social Statics and Social Dynamics, and it is the latter which is the Philosophy of History. Social Statics is the theory of the spontaneous order of human society, and Social Dynamics the theory of the natural progress of human society ; the one exhibits the conditions of the social existence of the individual, the family, and the species, and the other the course of human development. It is essential, Comte insists, to regard these two theories as supplementary or complementary of each other. The ideas of order and progress correspond in sociology to the ideas of organisation and life in biology, and are as rigor- ously inseparable. The combination of them is the grand diffi- culty of the science, but of primary importance. It was because he thought he had succeeded in combining them that Comte claimed to be the founder of sociology. He admitted that Aristotle had almost wrought out the theory of social order, and that for nearly a century that of progress had been receiving a continuous elaboration ; but held, notwithstanding, that order and progress had never been exhibited in their true relationship, but, on the contrary, set in radical opposition to each other : and his own view of his position as a speculator on society was that, standing between two extremes of hitherto antagonistic opinion, he could not merely effect a make-shift compromise between them like the eclectics or doctrinaires, but could establish on a truly scientific foundation a doctrine which would definitely settle the strife between the advocates of order and of progress, and help to settle the wider and deeper strife in society itself, of which that was but the expression in speculation. He flat- tered himself that his theory of society contained all of truth that had been said on behalf of order by the reactionary school, and all of truth that had been said on behalf of progress by the revolutionary school, while so reconciling the claims and ex- 262 BOOK I. — FRANCE. hibiting the relationship of order and progress, that order would henceforth be seen to be the basis of progress, and progress to be the development of order. Whether he has been as success- ful in attaining the golden mean as he fancied, or whether he has failed, and if so, in what direction and to what extent, are points on which readers will differ according to their own politi- cal convictions. In various particulars his theory of social statics seems to me eminently judicious, where to Mr Mill, his most distinguished English disciple, it appears to be distressingly conservative; while, even according to my judgment, Comte has not held the balance justly poised, but has thrown more weight into the scale of social authority, and given less to that of indi- vidual independence, than is due. His sympathies certainly were more with the reaction than with the Eevolution. He speaks with an enthusiastic recognition of the services rendered by the representatives of the former, which he never manifests, except in the case of Condorcet, towards those of the latter. He thought revolutionary ideas had somewhat overdone their work, that pulling down had gone farther than was needed, and that construction was worthy of much more praise. Comte looked on history from a point of view in some re- spects not unhke that of Hegel, and his opinions coincided with those of Hegel on a number of social questions. Hence some have thought that he may have been influenced by Hegel, or even have borrowed from him. Dr Stirling, for example, col- lects from Mr Mill's summary of Comte's doctrine several state- ments which he pronounces " Hegelian indications," eminently " Hegelian traits," " Hegelian analogies ; " and Principal TuUoch writes as follows : " Other thinkers before Comte had conceived of human society as regulated by natural laws, and so presenting throughout its course a great plan of development. It cannot be said that even here he is entirely original. Not to speak of Montesquieu and Condorcet, to whose labours he himself does justice, M. Littre has cited a remarkable passage from Kant, in which the idea of human history as a connected chain of events, and of human society as a vast organism governed by its own laws, is expressed with great clearness and force. The same views were worked out with still greater power and success by AUGUSTE COMTE. 263 Hegel, from whom we cannot but think that Comte borrowed many of his ideas." I must entirely dissent from the opinion expressed by the learned Principal in the concluding words of this citation. That Comte borrowed from Hegel is a conjecture not only unsupported, but opposed, by facts. It is true that in 1824 his friend M. d'Eichtal sent him from Berlin a trans- lation which he had made for him of Kant's short essay, " Idea of a Universal History," and some brief extract, clearly not made with much intelligence, from some work of Hegel ; but in 1824 he had already discovered his sociological laws, and his politi- cal convictions were definitively formed. In his reply to M. d'EichtaP he expresses the liveliest admiration of Kant's trea- tise^, pronounces Hegel " un homme de merite," thinks he might perhaps be made use of to spread positivism in Germany, and hopes to be informed further about his teaching, — a hope which was never realised, as M. d'Eichtal went over to Saint-Simon- ianism, the result of which was " a rupture " between him and Comte. M. Comte remained to the last ignorant of German philosophy. In 1843 he consulted Mr Mill as to the advisa- bility of making some general acquaintance with German philo- sophical doctrines, but, on being dissuaded, abandoned the idea.^ Further, any coincidences which have been pointed out between the views of Comte and Hegel are of such a nature as would not, although multiplied fifty-fold, prove in the least that the former had borrowed from the latter. They regard views of which Hegel was neither the author nor the sole proprietor, which he only shared with hundreds of other thinkers, and which were current in the catholic and socialistic medium in ^ Littr^ — Augiiste Comte, p. 155-157. ^ Comte read so little that it is not strange he should have been ignorant of the fact that Kant's essay had been translated into French twenty-three years before ; but it does surprise us to find that M. Littre, after it has been translated, condensed, or summarised at least a dozen times, and been referred to in almost every account, however brief, of the notion of progress, should translate it again as " inconnu en France." Not less wonderful is it that he should suppose it had been left to him to discover Turgot's anticipation of the law of the three states. That discovery was made by M. Buchez shortly after Comte's earliest enunciation of his law. M. Littre is a man of great ability and merit, and, in certain departments, of great erudition; but he has added nothing to our know- ledge of the history of Comte's leading ideas. ** Littre — Auguste Comte, p. 446, 447. 264 BOOK I. — FRANCE. which Comte lived. Why label as " Hegelian " what were com- monplaces among the adherents of socialism and the theological reaction ? Why suppose Comte to have derived from a distance opinions which were floating in the intellectual atmosphere around him, and to be had for the inbreathing ? Comte was thoroughly French ; the direct and immediate influences which moulded his life and doctrine were exclusively French.i The position of Comte in relation to the revolutionary and reactionary school of thought explains much both of his strength and weakness, of his merits and defects, as an historical specu- lator. In the first place, it enabled him to start with a more than usually consistent and comprehensive conception of pro- gress, — one which, while accepting the previous elaboration of that conception as a whole, added, by defining it as the devel- opment of order and prefacing it with an investigation into the conditions of order, a good deal that had been hitherto left out — viz., that it must not only never violate but always involve the ' I cannot admit tliat tliere is any truth in tlie following remarks of Mr Mo- rell, wliicli have been, I regret to observe, quoted with approval both by Profes- sor Terrier and Dr Stirling: "The influence of Schelling was not confined to Germany. His attempt to unite the process of the physical sciences in one affiliated line with the study of man, both in his individual constitution and historic development, has also had a very consideiable result out of his own country. No one, for example, who compares the philosophic method of Schel- ling with the 'Philosophic Positive' of Auguste Comte, can have the slightest hesitation as to the source from which the latter virtually sprang. The funda- mental idea is, indeed, precisely the same as that of Schelling, with this differ- ence only, that the idealistic language of the German speculator is here trans- lated into the more ordinary language of physical science. That Comte bor- rowed his views from Schelling we can by no means affirm ; but that the whole conception of the affiliation of the sciences, in the order of their relative sim- plicity, and the expansion of the same law of development so as to include the exposition of human nature and the course of social progress, is all to be found there, no one in the smallest degree acquainted with Schelling's writings can seriously doubt." Now, in all probability Comte never read a single page of Schelling even in a translation. But apart from this, and still more decisive against Mr Morell's supposition, is the fact that the Comtist classification of the sciences has really nothing in common with the philosophy of Schelling. What Mr Morell refers to is entirely distinct from it, is really no classification of the sciences at all, and proceeds on a principle utterly antagonistic to that of Comte, on the principle not of an intelligent methodical study of phenomena, but of the self-movement or potentiation of the absolute from the lowest manifestations of what is called matter to the highest activity of reason. It is quite illusory to compare the successive " potences " of Schelling with the fundamental sciences of Comte. AUGUSTE COMTE. 265 principles of social stability, personal morality, a naturally regulated family life, and subordination to organised authority in the state. His conception of progress necessarily led him to test the character of all social changes by their influence on these the fundamental principles of moral and social existence. That was certainly an advantage. It may be that the concep- tion of social order is not a simpler or clearer conception than that of social progress ; but, be it simple or complex, clear or ob- scure, we must have some tolerable understanding of what order is before our notions about progress can be of much worth. Then, again, his sympathies with the reaction enabled him to judge several of the great social institutions of the past, and es- pecially of the middle ages, with a spirit of fairness strikingly in contrast with the spirit of sectarian bitterness displayed by the deists and atheists of the Eevolution. The claim has been put in for him that he was the first worthily to appreciate the middle age. It is a claim, I need scarcely say, which cannot be seriously maintained ; and he himself expressly ascribes the honour to those to whom it was more due, the theological school, the reaction of which, however, in this as in other respects, was but a sign of a general change in the current of European thought, which began in Germany, and only reached France after having passed through England. Although any such claim, however, be absurd, and although it be strange that, after Thierry's celebrated account of the rise and spread in France of correct views as to the middle ages, any such claim should have been made, yet Comte is entitled to the honour of having estimated their character and significance on the whole well, and even in some respects better than any of his prede- cessors. The medieval Church, feudalism, and scholasticism, are appreciated in their general relations and influences with com- prehensiveness and truthfulness ; and, in fact, all the great sys- tems of speculation and religion belonging to Western Europe down to the Eeformation are judged of, so far as they can be regarded merely as historical phenomena, with a fairness and insight surprising in a man whose own views as to speculation and religion were so peculiar. I wish this, however, to be un- derstood as merely a general judgment, and as not inconsistent 266 BOOK I. — FRANCE. with the conviction that even in his analysis of medieval so- ciety there are great errors and some gross blunders. But while some of the mistakes as to fact can only be accounted for by the abstinence from reading which he imposed upon himself, under the name of cerebral hygiene, as " necessary to elevate the views and give impartiality to the sentiments," his errors of judgment are mainly due to excess of sympathy with the char- acter and ideal of medieval society. It is quite otherwise as to the chief forces and institutions peculiar to modern history. These M. Comte seldom looks on with an impartial or favourable eye. He is, for example, unjust to the philosophy of the eighteenth century, most unjust to Protestantism, seeing both only on their negative side, and regarding them as stages of a merely critical and destructive movement. There was a great deal more to see in both than that. The philosophy of the eighteenth century had great faults and disastrous consequences ; but it was no mere nega- tion ; nor is its work so completely over that it can henceforth be safely dismissed from consideration, as is perhaps sufficiently apparent from the single fact that the two writers who have done most in France since Comte in the same province of re- search, Quinet and Laurent, are both men saturated with the distinctive ideas and feelings of that philosophy, — ideas and feelings, indeed, which it did not absolutely originate, but which it signally promoted, and which it transmitted to us, and which will never pass away. While as to Protestantism, if it rejected and discarded much, it was in the interest of truths displaced, disfigured, and almost extinguished by what it renounced ; and if it insisted on the rights of reason, it equally insisted on the claims of spiritual authority, of the Divine Will made known in the Divine Word. It is, further, necessary to remark that Comte did not look upon history from a purely scientific point of view. He was influenced in his whole treatment of it by practical interests. From the outset of his career as an author, his mind was pos- sessed and ruled by the fundamental principles of socialism. What was the chief end of life to Saint-Simon became also his — viz., the reorganisation of society through the establishment of AUGUSTE COMTE. 267 a "new spiritual power" capable of giving unity and direction to opinion and action. This aim he gave clear expression to in his early essays, and it permeates and modifies the entire system of his positive philosophy, but especially that part of it which explains the historical evolution of humanity. The judgments he passes on institutions have a double reference, one to what has been, another to what he has decided ought to be and will be in the future. Thus the grounds of his extremely favourable estimate of medieval Catholicism were not merely certain con- siderations, partly sentimental and partly historical in their na- ture, but, still more, the belief that although the Catholic doc- trine, like every other theological doctrine, was to be rejected, the Catholic organisation was to be retained and extended by positivism, with such modifications as the substitution of a scientific for a theological creed might render necessary. And his aversion to Protestantism and modern philosophy had for one main reason the fact that they had broken up the external unity of the Catholic or medieval form of social organisation, and were hostile to its restoration. But now let us proceed to the statement and examination of what Comte regarded, and what his disciples regard, as the fun- damental law of historical evolution, the so-called law of the three states. It is the nceud essentiel at once of Comte's philoso- phy of history and of his general philosophy. The three states are the successive stages through which the mind of man in nations, individuals, and each distinct order of conceptions, is maintained to pass in the course of its history. The first state is the theological. Before either metaphysics or science, there is religion. That goes back as far as history will take us. There is reason to believe it coeval with man. In this state the facts and events of the universe are attributed to supernatural voli- tions, to the agency of beings or a being adored as divine. The lowest and earliest form of this stage is Fetichism, in which man conceives of all external bodies as endowed with a life analogous to his own. Astrolatry is a connecting link between Fetichism and Polytheism, there being a generality about the stars which, connected with their other characteristics, fits them to be com- mon fetiches. Polytheism is directly derived from Fetichism, 268 BOOK I. — FEANCE. and it is the second stage or phase of the theological state. It is either conservative and theocratic as that of Egypt, or pro- gressive and military as those of Greece and Eome, the one of which was of an intellectual, and the other of a social type. It gradually concentrates itself into Monotheism, which, growing out of different forms of polytheism, is of different kinds. Thus the monotheism of the Jews differs from that of Europe, because evolved out of a conservative instead of a progressive polythe- ism. The contact of these gave rise to Christianity, which cul- minated in Catholicism, the last and highest type of monothe- istic development. With it the long infancy of human thought terminates. The metaphysical spirit, which has been operative in some degree almost through the whole theological period, bringing about even the transition from fetichism to polythe- ism, and still more from polytheism to monotheism, and which has been constantly growing in strength, now, as there is no- thing beyond monotheism but a total issue from theology, throws theology off altogether and establishes a metaphysical state. Theology dies, and the intellect of humanity which has passed away from it embodies itself in another form. In this second state, for supernatural agents abstract forces are substi- tuted. Phenomena are supposed to be due to causes and es- sences inherent in things. First causes and final causes, these are what the mind in this state longs and strives to know, but in vain; and it begins slowly and gradually to recognise in one sphere of nature after another that a knowledge of these is un- attainable to it ; and so it reaches a third and final state, that of positive science. In this state the mind surrenders the illusions of its infancy and youth, ceases to fancy that it can transcend nature, or know either the first cause or the end of the universe, or ascertain about things more than experience can tell us of their properties and their relations of coexistence and succes- sion. It is a state of learned ignorance, in which intelligence sees clearly and sharply its own limits, and confines itself within them. Within these limits lie aU the positive sciences; beyond them theology and metaphysics. Now, there is, I think, a certain measure of truth in this al- leged law. There are three ways of looking at things, — a reli- AUGUSTE COMTE. 269 gious, a metaphysical, and a scientific. It is natural for the mind to believe that things and the successions of things tell something about a power in or beyond them with faculties ana- logous to those which itself possesses. It is natural for it also to speculate on the reason and mode of the existence of things, and to ask a number of questions about them which cannot be immediately answered from observation of their properties and ascertainment of their relations of coexistence and succession. It is natural for it no less to observe these properties and study these relations. It is natural for it to do all three, and even all three about the same things ; in other words, things may be looked at in three aspects. But three aspects are not three suc- cessive states. From the fact that it is natural for the mind to look at things in all these three ways, it in no wise follows that it is necessary or even natural to look at them one after another. Nay, just because it is so natural to look at things in all these three ways, it is not natural to suppose that the one mode will be exhausted, gone through, before the other is entered on, but that they will be simultaneous in origin and parallel in devel- opment ; or at least that the religious and positive will be so, however the metaphysical, as, so to speak, the least natural and imperative, may lag somewhat behind them. Now, what say the facts ? Comte believes that man started with a religion. He attempts a refutation of those who supposed a state prior to all religion, even to fetichism. But, I ask, had man no positive conceptions even then ? Did he live by fetich- ism alone? How could he build a hut, or cook his food, or shoot with precision, otherwise than by attention to the physical properties and relations of things ? Without some conceptions identical in kind, however different in degree, with the latest discoveries of positive science, life were impossible. Positive conceptions, then, instead of only beginning in modern times, began with the beginning of human history. And they have been increasing and growing all through it. True generalisa- tions as to the physical properties and relations of things were multiplied and widened by one generation after another in the so-called theological and metaphysical states. Then, as to metaphysics, according to Comte's own account, it pervaded 270 BOOK T. — FRANCE. almost the whole theological state. Fetichism passed into poly- theism, and polytheism into monotheism, from the impulse of the metaphysical spirit, and under the influence of metaphysical conceptions. And Comte, however inconsistent, is here obvi- ously quite correct. Nothing has so powerfully affected theo- logical development as speculative philosophy; and that such philosophy may flourish at a comparatively early stage of theological development, ancient India and Greece, with their marvellously subtle metaphysics coexisting with the most im- aginative of polytheisms, are surely indubitable proofs. Now, what does this amount to ? Why, that Comte has mis- taken three coexistent stages for three successive states of thought, three aspects of things for three epochs of time. Theo- logy, metaphysics, and positive science, instead of following only one after another, each constituting an epoch, have each pervaded all epochs, — have coexisted from the earliest time to the present day. There has been no passing away of any one of them. History cannot be invoked to show that theology and meta- physics are purely of her domain, merely preparatory for positive science, stages in the interpretation of nature through which the mind required to pass from infancy to maturity. History certifies, on the contrary, that positive science and they began at the same time, that they and it have developed together through all history, and still continue to exist together. Her own birth and theirs were simultaneous, and she has not yet had to record the death of any of them. But it is said science has been continually gaining, theology and metaphysics continually losing, ground ; science has been gradually expelling both theology and metaphysics from one region of knowledge after another, until they will soon have no foot of ground to stand on. I ask, however, for proof of this assertion, and not only cannot find it, but feel confident it cannot be found. There is, indeed, a fact which, confusedly apprehended, has given a certain degree of plausibility to it ; but this same fact, correctly apprehended, is really its refutation. The fact I refer to is, that in the early history of the race the three lead- ing aspects of things are not clearly distinguished. Theological, metaphysical, and positive conceptions are commingled — their AUGUSTE COMTE. 27l developments thoroughly entangled ; often so commingled and entangled that it is impossible to determine whether they would he better described as bad theology, bad metaphysics, or bad science, being really all three. But the effect of progress here, as everywhere, is differentiation, the increasing separation of things really and properly distinct, the inclusion of all within their own spheres, and consequent exclusion from those of others. Theology is driven more and more out of metaphysics and physics ; metaphysics out of theology and physics ; and physics no less out of metaphysics and theology. Comte says fetichism is the first and lowest stage of human development. What, then, precisely, is fetichism? Just the chaotic union of theological, metaphysical, and positive thought. It may be described equally well either as a physical theology or a theological physics, and it is at the same time obviously a metaphysics, an attribution of vital essences and personal causes as inherent in inanimate things. But thought has come out of this chaos, and how? By the continuous evolution of all the three orders of conceptions, by an ever-growing compre- hensiveness and distinctness of vision as to the proper spheres of all three. Each has been gradually emancipating itself from the interference and control of the others. It is not more true that physics began with being theological and metaphysical, than that metaphysics began with being physical and theo- logical, and theology with being physical and metaphysical. The law of the three stages is to about the same extent true of all the three developments, only, of course, the arrange- ment of the stages is different in each. It is only in a very general way that it is true of any of them, and in such a way it is, with the necessary change of terms, true of aU. I have no objection, then, to admit that in a very general way the so-called Comtist law of the three stages is true of most orders of properly positive conceptions ; and I should hold as strongly as Comte himself that every order of properly positive 'conceptions ought to be freed from the interference and intermixture either of theology or metaphysics. The confusion of either with positive science is illegitimate and mischievous ; and the expulsion of them from a domain which is foreign to 272 BOOK I. FRANCE. tliem must be beneficial to them no less than to the science whose rightful province it is. Now, it is only this sort of ex- pulsion, and the restriction consequent on it, which history shows them ever to have met with. In every other way, each advance of science, instead of being a limitation of either, has been an extension of both. So far from metaphysics and the- ology having been driven from any region of nature by science, no science has arisen without suggesting new questions to the one and affording new data to the other. Each new science brings with it principles which the metaphysician finds it requisite to submit to an analytic examination, and in which he finds new materials for speculation ; and also, in the measure of its success, results in which the theologian finds some fresh disclosure of the thoughts and character of God. Underneath all science there is metaphysics, above all science there is theology ; and these tliree are so related that every advance of science must extend the spheres both of true metaphysics and true theology. Comte has failed entirely to prove that theology and metaphysics are mere passing phases of thought, illusions of the infancy and youth of humanity, which have no sphere of reality corresponding to them. The testimony of history is all the other way ; it gives assurance that they have always been, and grounds of hope that they will always be ; that they repre- sent real aspects of existence, and respond to eternal aspirations in the human heart. My reason for holding it true only in a very general way, or, in other words, only very partially true, that positive science has passed through a theological and metaphysical state, must be obvious from what has been already said. There must have been some conceptions positive from the first. It is impossible to conceive of an exclusively theological cooking, l^unting, or hut-building ; for although many tribes of savage men believe that food and fire, bows and arrows, &c., have souls, they must none the less attend to the positive properties of these things in order to make use of them. There are other conceptions which, although they may or must have been late in beincf discovered, must yet have been at their discovery apprehended as positive. It is most improbable that either arithmetical AUGUSTE COMTE. 273 or geometrical truths were first apprehended as either theo- logical or metaphysical. It is true that even arithmetical and geometrical truths have been theologically and metaphysically regarded, as by Laotseu, the Pythagoreans, and Eleatics ; but in these cases the theology and metaphysics were by subtle efforts of speculative ingenuity associated with, grafted on, posi- tive conceptions. In mathematics, the positive stage is the first, and spontaneous, and only natural stage. This is so obvious that Comte and his disciples have been unable altogether to ignore it ; yet they have, notwithstanding, adhered to their law as if it were unaffected by such facts. A more inconsistent and futile expedient could not be imagined. By having recourse to it they have exposed themselves to the charge of the crassest ignorance of what is meant by a law of nature. A law which does not apply to a class of phenomena is surely not the law of these phenomena; and even a so-called law, which only sometimes or in part applies to a class of phenomena, can surely be no true law. The most elementary notion of a law of nature is a rule without exceptions — a uniformity of con- nection among coexistent or successive facts. And yet Comte, although maintaining his law of the three states, three mutu- ally exclusive phases of thought, to be the law of historical evolution, an invariable and necessary law, can write thus: " Properly speaking, the theological philosophy, even in the earliest infancy of the individual and society, has never been strictly universal. That is, the simplest and commonest facts in all classes of phenomena have always been supposed subject to natural laws, and not ascribed to the arbitrary will of super- natural agents. The illustrious Adam Smith has, for example, made the very felicitous remark, that there was to be found in no age or country a god of weight. And even in more compli- cated cases the presence of law may be recognised whenever the phenomena are so elementary and familiar that the perfect invariability of their relationships of occurrence cannot fail to strike even the least educated observer. As to things moral and social, which some would foolishly exclude from the sphere of positive philosophy, there has necessarily always been a belief in natural laws with regard to the simpler phenomena of daily s 274 BOOK I. — FRANCE. life, — a belief implied in the conduct of the ordinary affairs of existence, — since all foresight would be impossible on the sup- position that every incident was due to supernatural agency, and in that case prayer would be the only conceivable means of influencing the course of human actions. It is even notice- able that the principle of the theological philosophy itself lies in the transference to the phenomena of external nature of the first beginnings of the laws of human action ; and thus the germ of the positive philosophy is at least as primitive as that of the theological philosophy itself, though it could not expand till a much later time. This idea is very important to the perfect rationality of our sociological theory ; because, as human life can never present any real creation, but only a gradual evolution, the final spread of the positive spirit would be scientifically incomprehensible, if we could not trace its rudiments from the very beginning." ^ I consider these remarks excellent, but excellent as a proof that there is no such law as the so-called law of three states. If they be true, as I have no doubt they are, it cannot possibly be in any recognised or proper sense of the term the law, the fundamental law of history ; it can at the most be only the law of some historical phenomena which Comte should have care- fully discriminated from other phenomena, in order not to im- pose on himself and his readers a secondary and special in place of a primary and general law. If true, he was logically bound entirely to recast his statement of his supposed law, and to acknowledge that, if a law at all, it was by no means one so important as he had at first imagined. He failed to take this course, and involved himself, in consequence, in obvious self- contradictions on which I need not insist, as they have been clearly pointed out by Professor Huxley, who, so far as I am aware, has not been answered. In view of his own procedure, M. Comte had some interest in w^arning, as he did, thinkers against inquiring " too closely " into the exact truth of scien- tific laws, and in pronouncing worthy of " severe reprobation " those who break down " by too minute an investigation " gener- alisations which they cannot replace. 1 Phil. Pos., iv. 491. AUGUSTE COMTE. 275 It speaks ill for M/Comte's " law " that men like Mr Mill and M. Littre have had to deal with it in the same way. Mr Mill writes : " Mathematics, from the very beginning of its cultiva- tion, can hardly at any time have been in the theological state, thongh exhibiting many traces of the metaphysical. No one, probably, ever believed that the will of a god kept parallel lines from meeting, or made two and two equal to four ; or ever prayed to the gods to make the square of the hypothenuse equal to more or less than the sum of the squares of the sides. The most devout believers have recognised in propositions of this description, a class of truths independent of the divine omnipotence. Even among the truths which popular philo- sophy calls by the misleading name of Contingent, the few which are at once exact and obvious were probably, from the very first, excepted from the theological explanation. M. Comte observes, after Adam Smith, that we are not told in any age or country of a god of weight" (p. 47, 48). "There never can have been a period in any science when it was not in some degree positive, since it always professed to draw conclusions from experience and observation" (p. 51). And yet Mr Mill fully accepts, as amply proved deductively and inductively, the law of the three states, and tells us that it must be passed through by " every distinct class of human conceptions " (p. 12), by "all human speculation" (p. 32), by "all the sciences" (p. 47), without apparently the slightest suspicion either of self-con- tradiction, or of breaking what he himself calls " the backbone of Comte's philosophy." The procedure of M. Littre is still more curious. In his ' Paroles,' published in 1860, he maintained that although the law of the three states must be held to be a true law, the dis- covery of which had founded sociology, it was only an empiri- cal law, a mere general statement of historical fact ; and ac- cordingly, he proposed to substitute for it a law of four states, as at once of a deeper and more comprehensive character, as inclusive of Comte's law, and entitled, in consequence of ex- plaining the development of humanity by the development of the individual mmd, to the designation of rational. In his much more important work ' Auguste Comte,' published three 276 BOOK I. — FRANCE. years later, he confessed to have discovered in the interval that a law very similar to that which he had proposed had been enunciated so far back as 1808 by Saint-Simon. Still main- taining, however, the great importance and substantial origi- nality of his own conception, he not only adhered to his criti- cism of the Comtian law, but greatly extended it. He denied that that law applied to the development of industry, morality, or art ; affirmed that it held true only of the development of science. " Cette critique," are his own words, " je la maintiens ; pourtant je ne voudrais pas qu'on se meprit et qu'on crut que je rejette la loi des trois etats. Je ne la rejette point, je la restreins. Tant que Ton se tient dans I'ordre scientifique et que Ton con- sidere la conception du monde d'abord theologique, puis meta- physique, finalement positive, la loi des trois ^tats a sa pleine efficacite pour diriger les speculations de I'histoire. Mais, en histoire, tout n'est pas renferme dans I'ordre scientifique. M. Comte, qui a dit quelque part qu'il fallait bien supposer quel- ques notions qui ne fussent ni th^ologiques ni metaphysiques, a indiqu^ le germe, je ne dirai pas de mon objection, mais de ma restriction. En effet cette loi des trois ^tats ne comprend ni le d(^veloppement industrial, ni le developpement moral, ni le d^veloppement esthetique." ^ As a critic of the historical philosophy of M. Comte, I can- not pass unnoticed these views of the most eminent of his dis- ciples in France. And I would remark, first, that M. Comte certainly believed his own alleged law to be not merely empirical but rational, in the only sense in which the word ra- tional can, according to the positive philosophy, be legitimately used in connection with law. He maintained the law of three states to be not merely empirical but rational, in the same sense in which M. Littr^ maintains the law of four states which he would substitute for it to be rational. Both writers alike deny that law can be rational in the sense of being traceable to power, force, efficient causality — of being anything deeper than, or dif- ferent from, a uniform relation of sequence or resemblance be- tween phenomena ; and both alike affirm not only that laws may be rational in the sense of being deducible and deduced from ^ Auguste Comte, 49, 50. AUGUSTE COMTE. 277 wider laws as well as empirically ascertained by an induction of instances, but that those laws which they pronounce to be the fundamental laws of social evolution are in that sense actually rational. M. Comte has explicitly, repeatedly, and elaborately argued that the law of the three states can be reached by de- duction no less than by induction, and is not merely a descrip- tion of the ascertained course of human events, a general state- ment of historical fact, but a law of which the a priori reason is known, and which is the expression not simply of what has happened, but of what from the veiy nature of the human mind must have happened. In contrasting the law of the three states with a law of four states as an empirical with a rational law, M. Littre has overlooked both the direct claims made by M. Comte on behalf of the first-mentioned law, and the numer- ous passages in which he attempted to assign its logical, moral, and social grounds. M. Comte may have failed in proving his so-called law to be rationally or philosophically necessary, but he certainly took a Vastly greater amount of trouble in endeav- ouring to do so than M. Littre has as yet taken in connection with the alleged law of four states. I cannot but think, there- fore, that had the former lived to read what the latter has writ- ten in this connection, he might with good reason have com- plained of being unfairly dealt with, and I have no doubt that he would have complained somewhat loudly. Then, in the second place, M. Littr*^ overlooks, and indeed virtually denies, truth of the utmost importance, of which M. Comte had the merit of clearly seeing and clearly stating the value. The founder of positivism showed himself perfectly aware that the intellectual development was not the only de- velopment in history. He not only knew that there was an industrial development, a moral development, and an aesthetic development, as well as an intellectual development, but he traced their courses with much care, and, as it seems to me, with no inconsiderable success. He saw, however, something more, without which no philosophy of history is conceivable, yet which M. Littre has not seen. He saw that there must be a general historical development inclusive of these particular developments, and that the particular developments must be 278 BOOK I. — FRANCE. not mere stages of the general development, but movements pervasive of it from beginning to end, and parallel to one an- other. He saw that the elements of the social evolution are throughout connected and always acting on one another. Surely that is a truth which cannot be seriously contested. It is certain that Comte regarded it as an indispensable presuppo- sition to the construction of a philosophy of history. He could not have failed to be astounded at any one who denied it fancy- ing he nevertheless accepted his philosophy of history on the whole. Such is, however, the position taken up by M. Littr6, when he maintains that the law of the three states regulates only the intellectual, or, as he calls it, the scientific develop- ment; and that expressly on the ground that the industrial, moral, and aesthetic developments are separate from and ante- cedent to the intellectual development, instead of being, as Comte so strongly insisted, dependent on, correspondent to, and contemporaneous with it. To me Littre seems utterly wrong, and Comte thoroughly right. Comte had a clear recognition of the truth that the special developments of human activity are not successive epochs of history. Littre's distinctive theory proceeds entirely on the error that that is precisely what they are. This is his state- ment of the law which he imagines to comprehend and supple- ment the law of Comte: "H me semble que I'histoire se par- tage en quatre ages fondamentaux : le plus ancien est celui ou I'humanit^ est sous I'empire preponderant des besoins ; le plus ancien ensuite, ou age des religions, est celui ou la morale, se de- veloppant, suscite les premieres creations civiles et religieuses ; le troisieme, ou age de I'art, est celui ou le sens du beau, de- venu a son tour, capable de satisfactions, enfante les construc- tions et les poemes ; enfin, le quatri^me, ou age de la science, est celui ou la raison, cessant d'etre employee exclusivement a I'accomplissement des trois fonctions precedantes, travaille pour elle-meme et procMe a la recherche de la v^rite abstraite." Certainly this is remarkably similar to what Saint-Simon had written half a century earlier, when he maintained that the development both of the race and of the individual might be divided into four stages — viz., 1st, Infancy, characterised by de- AUGUSTE COMTE. 279 light in construction and handiwork ; 2d, Puberty, characterised by artistic aspirations ; 3d, Manhood, characterised by military ambition ; and Age, characterised by the love of science. Of course, M. Littre has endeavoured to show that his law is much superior to that proposed by M. Saint-Simon. But it seems to me that there is very little indeed to choose between them. They are both so bad that it would be mere labour lost to try to ascertain which is best or worst. And the exceeding bad- ness of both is due to their implicit contradiction of the truth which Comte had the wisdom to lay down as the very corner- stone of his historical philosophy. It was his perception of the fact that social evolution is a general or collective movement, inclusive throughout its whole length of the special and particular developments which Littre erroneously regards as fundamental ages or secular epochs, that caused Comte to infer that though the elements of the histori- cal process are connected, and always acting and reacting on one another, one must be preponderant in order to give impulse to the rest, and to guide them all in the same direction. He saw that only on this condition could there be a general col- lective movement, correlation between the particular constitu- ent developments, a common goal, the unity presupposed by science. And accordingly, he inquired which was the superior element. The conclusion he came to was, that it must be that element which can be best conceived of apart from the rest, while the consideration of it enters into the study of the others — i.e., the intellect. The history of society, he argued, must be regulated by the history of the human understanding. Thought is that which determines and guides the course of society. " It is only through the ever increasingly marked influence of the reason over the general conduct of man and of society, that the gradual march of our race has attained that regularity and per- severing continuity which so radically distinguish it from the desultory and barren expansion of even the highest orders of animals, which share, and with intenser strength, the appetites, passions, and even the primary sentiments of man." I accept this answer as completely as Mr Mill, and would repel still more decidedly, if possible, the counter-answer of Mr Herbert 280 BOOK I. — FRANCE. Spencer, that the social world is ruled not by ideas but by feel- ings. That view appears to me to be not only contrary to the facts, but psychologically absurd. We know and can know ab- solutely nothing of feeling apart from thought. Feeling neither has nor can have any existence independent of thought. With- out feeling thought can certainly do nothing, but without thought feeling can have no being. Consciousness is primarily cognitive ; and feeling, alike in its origination and development, is conditioned and determined by cognition. Erroneous, how- ever, as is the view of Mr Spencer, it is somewhat more con- sistent than that of M. Littre, which represents the elements of consciousness as taking what is colloquially called turn about in ruling the historical evolution, one element being the supe- rior principle in one age of the world, and another in another. My final objection to M. Littre's observations is the obvious one that a law so restricted as he would restrict the law of three states cannot possibly be a fundamental law of history. If it be, as he represents it, empirical in character in the hum- blest sense of the term, and confined to a single sphere of human activity, and to one of the four ages of history, it can only be at the most a law of secondary importance. The pre- tensions put forth by Comte in connection with it, and unani- mously and enthusiastically endorsed by his disciples, must have been highly extravagant. Why is there no acknowledgment of this ? Why does M. Littre, even after all his admissions and restrictions, instead of confessing that what Comtists have hitherto so exultingly proclaimed as the greatest, most funda- mental, most distinctive discovery of their master, the central law of social evolution as much as gravitation is of the solar system, has been found to be a very imperfect and incomplete achievement, the recognition of a mere fragment or section of the truth, — seem quite unconscious that any such confession is needed ? Is it not needed ? Then reasons to prove that are surely very much needed. Comte, as well as his most eminent disciples, would appear therefore to have virtually shown that the so-called law of the three states was not what they alleged it to be. He involved himself still further in self-contradiction when, while adhering to his law, he attempted to found a new religion. I have no wish AUGUSTE COMTE. 281 to enter on an examination of the flimsy and fantastic system, the extraordinary compound of fetichism, scepticism, Catholicism, and science, designated " the religion of humanity." Enough to remark that the object which it presents for adoration is a fetich- istic Trinity, of which the world, space, and humanity are the persons or hypostases. Says one of its adherents in England in perfect accordance with the teaching of his master, — " We com- memorate the services of our common mother the Earth, the planet which is our home, and the orbs which form, with her, the Solar System. We recall with gratitude the services which have been hitherto unconsciously received from her coeval institution, Space — services of which we now consciously avail ourselves. We commemorate the services of Humanity, the great organism of which we are inseparable parts ; those, too, of all the generations of her individual organs who have by their efforts made us what we are." ^ Not unnaturally, perhaps, humanity is the favourite personage in this triad, and very wondrous indeed are the words and works, the prayers, hymns, sacraments, and other rites by which humanity, the Grand Etre — space is the Grand Milieu and the earth the Grand Fetiche — is glorified. For example, the author whom I have just quoted is again only faithfully repeating a doctrine of the founder of his faith when he says, — "As the symbol of humanity we adopt, with somewhat altered associations, the beautiful crea- tion of the medieval mind — the woman with the child in her arms ; and to give life and vividness to this symbol, and to our worship in general, each Positivist adopts as objects of his adora- tion his mother, his wife, his daughter, allowing the principal place to the mother, but blending the three into one compound influence — representing to him Humanity in its past, its present, and its future." Leaving it to common-sense and the sense of humour in humanity to pronounce on the merits or demerits of this new claimant to faith, I require here only to remark that it ought to be counted by those who accept it as a fourth Mat, and that they ought to recognise three etats as insufficient. If, as Comte thinks, our race is hastening into it with great rapidity, clearly positive science is not the last stage of history — clearly 1 From 'A Sermon preaclied at South Fields, Wandsworth, Wednesday, 19th Moses, 72 [19th January I860]. By Richard Congreve.' 282 BOOK I. — FRANCE. the reigu of reason is to be succeeded by that of fancy. The positivist religion is a confession that humanity can neither dis- pense with a religion nor construct one on the foundation of the positive philosophy, — a confession all the more noteworthy for being accompanied by a partial acknowledgment that the new religion propounded is composed of no better materials than poetic fictions. According to Comte, the ultimate result of historical progress is to be man's return to a form of the re- ligion of his childhood, a conscious adoption of a refined and comprehensive kind of fetichism. So be it ; but as the second childhood of an individual, however like the first, is to be counted a distinct stage of his existence, so ought the second childhood into which it would appear from the prophecies of the posivitists that our race is destined to enter. Few probably who compare the positive religion with the positive philosophy, the later with the earlier speculations of M. Comte, will refuse to accept the conclusion of Mr Mill that they are irreconcilable. The pamphlet written by Dr Bridges to combat that conclusion and prove the unity of Comte's life and doctrine, is able but thoroughly delusive. As to the main issue, what Dr Bridges maintains is what Mr Mill never denied. " That the conception of an organised spiritual power was not one of Comte's later speculations but one of his earliest ; that social reconstruction was from the first and to the last the dominant motive of his life; and that the ' Philosophic Positive ' was consciously wrought out not as an end in itself, but as the necessary basis for a renovated education, the foundation of a new social order," — all that Dr Bridges had simply no excuse for representing as denied by Mr Mill either expressly or by implication. Why, Mr Mill, instead of ignoring or denying that the philosophy of Comte aimed from the first to lay the founda- tion of a social system or pohty, discussed with Comte himseK, soon after the appearance of the ' Philosophic Positive,' the prin- ciples of his proposed pohty in a correspondence which has been partly published by M. Littre. He even then asserted his right to separate Comte's polity from his philosophy in his own mind, and to reject the one while accepting the other; but neither then nor subsequently did he assert that they ever had been sepa- rated in their author's mind. The Comtist religion, liowever, AUGUSTE COMTE. 283 is not to be confoimded with the Comtist polity. The chief doctrines of the polity are certainly among the earliest published speculations of Comte, and even if false, are false inferences from the philosophy. It is not so with the chief doctrines of the religion. The polity as conceived by M. Comte before the change produced on his mind by his affection for Madame Clotilde de Vaux, aimed at the organisation of society by reason and science. The religion is based on the assumption of the supremacy of imagination and feeling. It enjoins humanity, instead of putting away to take back the childish things it had outgrown. It undertakes the spiritual organisation of society, while admitting itself to be only a sort of poetical creation, a product of self-illusion. The Comtist polity may thus be re- garded as a defective structure insecurely founded on the philo- sophy. The Comtist religion cannot be regarded as founded on the philosophy at all. Now it admits of no doubt that the doctrines which constitute the religion, as such, are among the latest speculations of Comte, — those which originated in what he characterised as " the revelation of power, purity, genius, and suffering " made to him through Mme. de Vaux. It was the in- spiration flowing from that revelation which filled him with the ambition of " rendering to his race the services of a Saint Paul after having already conferred on it those of an Aristotle." ^ I regret not to be able to conclude without remarking that Mr Mill, although right on the particular point indicated, fell into even deeper inconsistency of the very kind which I have been charging upon M. Comte. The positivist religion is of so fictitious a character that there is considerable excuse for counting it as nothing. But no such excuse can be pled as regards ordinary rational Theism, Now Mr Mill wished to relieve the doctrine of Positivism from the objection that it is atheistical. And while he can hardly be said to have attempted to meet the objection by argument, he certainly ^ The article in the ' North British Review ' mentioned at the commencement of this chapter, gives an excellent account of the Comtist religion, and much interesting information as to its history. Although the author of that article maintains, like Dr Bridges, that the Comtist religion is not inconsistent with the Comtist philosophy, probably his view is not in reality different from my own. At least, the respect or reference in which he maintains them to be consistent is not that in which I maintain them to be inconsistent. 234 BOOK I. — FRANCE. met it with a most explicit denial, and affirmed in most explicit terms the compatibility of Positivism and Theism. "Positive Philosophy," he says, "maintains that within the existing order of the universe, or rather of the part of it known to us, the direct determining cause of every phenomenon is not supernatural but natural. It is compatible with this to believe that the universe was created, and even that it is con- tinuously governed, by an Intelligence, provided we admit that the intelligent Governor adheres to fixed laws, which are only modified or counteracted by other laws of the same dispensa- tion, and are never either capriciously or providentially de- parted from. Wlioever regards all events as parts of a constant order, each one being the invariable consequent of some ante- cedent condition, or combination of conditions, accepts fully the Positive mode of thought ; whether he acknowledges or not an universal antecedent on which the whole system of nature was originally consequent, and whether that universal antecedent is conceived as an Intelligence or not." ^ As it is not my business or purpose to estimate the character of Positivism as a general philosophy, I must not inquire whether or not the theory of knowledge on which it rests is essentially inconsistent with an admission of the existence of God or any- thing except empirical phenomena and their relations, with belief in a supernatural world — a world of first and final causes. I require only to indicate — what indeed scarcely needs it — that if Theism be not necessarily undermined and displaced by Positivism, but may make good its claims to the end of time, the law of the three states, as maintained both by Comte and Mill, is plainly false. In that case the theological state in its entirety is never outgrown, never passed through ; it is only erroneous phases of theology that are passed through and cast off. Count, if you so please, these false forms of theology as one state, and still matters are not mended, for then there lies beyond the utmost confines of positive science a state of true theo- logy, with a God to be sought after, to be known, and to be adored. Is that state not to count ? Or, are we already in that world ima- gined by Mr Mill where the sum of 2 4- 2 is not 4 but 3 ? 1 Auguste Comte and Positivism, 15. 285 CHAPTER Xm. THE DEMOCRA.TIC SCHOOL: MICHELET AND QUINET. I. We have seen how the philosophy of history has been con- ceived of in France since the fall of the first Napoleon by defenders of the theocracy and absolutism like De Bonald and De Maistre, and legitimists like De Chateaubriand ; by those ambitious theorists who, like Saint-Simon, Fourier, Buchez, Leroux, and Comte, flattered themselves that they had discovered the means of entirely revolutionising human belief, and of reorganising on new principles the whole system of society ; by the admirers of philosophical and political compromise, eclectics like Cousin and Jouffroy, and a doctrin- arian like Guizot ; — and we now come to inquire how it has presented itself to the minds of the friends of democracy. These, I need hardly say, have in recent times been numerous. Democracy is in France the youngest of all the powers that be, but also the strongest, as would be universally apparent were it not that it is as yet blind and anarchical. It first began to assert clearly its claims about the middle of the eighteenth century ; put forth its full force in the Revolution of 1789, and thereby laid feudalism in ruins; was used and abused, spread beyond the limits of France and crushed down within them, by Buonaparte, its armed soldier ; and has been the perplexity and the terror, alternately the victim and the conqueror, of every regular government in France from that time until now, all having failed either to suppress or satisfy it. It had even under the reign of Charles X. distinguished representatives, — a man like Lafayette, orators like Foy and Manuel, a publicist like Armand Carrel; poets like Casimir, 286 BOOK I. — FRANCE. Delavigne, and Beranger ; au historian like Sismondi ; — and under Louis Philippe these multiplied into a host. To this party, this direction of thought, belong the two authors whose historico- philosophical writings must come next under our consideration. The name of either can hardly be pronounced without recalling that of the other, and this is what both would desire ; for during some forty-five years they have been the most affectionate of friends, and have been intimately bound to each other by joy, sorrow, and labour, the same tri- umphs and defeats, the same convictions and hopes. Their lives have been so associated that death will not separate their memories. These two authors are M. Jules Michelet and M. Edgar Quinet. M. Michelet was born at Paris in 1798, of poor but worthy parents. He has never forgotten or been ashamed of his origin. Love to the poor, love to the people, is one of the most deeply engraven features of his character. It has produced, saturated, coloured the larger portion of what he has written. He has probably, as lovers are wont to do, on many occasions unduly idealised the object of his affection, and adorned it with charms not its own, out of the rich treasur}' of his imagination. But at least there can be no doubt as to the sincerity of his affection. In his boyhood he was a bookbinder's apprentice. He had not the advantage of attending the courses of the Ecole Normale, but he taught himself so successfully, that at the age of nineteen he became a teacher of others, in such studies as philosophy, history, and languages. His first publications were summaries of modern history. In 1827 appeared his ' Principes de la Philosophic de I'His- toire, traduites de la Scienza Nuova de Vico,' which may almost be said to have made the great Neapolitan philosopher known to France, and which, indeed, helped considerably to make him known to all the rest of Europe, Italy not excepted. The dis- sertation prefixed to this volume gave a decidedly truer estimate of Vico's position in the history of speculation, of his merits and services, than had ever been given before. The mind of M. Michelet was naturally much influenced by his study of the ' Scienza Nuova,' one of the profouudest, greatest of books — the MICHELET AND QUINET. 287 philosopliical complement to Dante's ' Divina Comm^dia.' Vico taught him that divine ideas are manifested through human actions — that the providence of God permeates the world of nations — that the idea of God is the productive and conservative principle of civilisation — that as is the religion of a community, so will be, in the main, its morals, its laws, its general history ; and all such truth as this he eagerly imbibed, notwithstanding that he had drunk, even too deeply, of the wine of Voltaire. He refused, however, to regard the movement of humanity, the movement of providence in society, as an eternal rotation. He has always been a firm believer in progress. " Vico," he says, " did not perceive, or at least did not say, that if humanity proceeds in circles, the circles are ever growing larger." M. Michelet presented his work on Vico to M. Cousin ; and it was at the house of M. Cousin that he first met M. Quinet, who, by a curious coincidence, had shortly before presented to the brilliant orator and philosopher of eclecticism, a translation of Herder's ' Ideas towards a Plnlosophy of the History of Mankind.' They were drawn to each other at once, as by a moral magnetism, and, thirty-one years after, M. Quinet, in dedicating to his friend a work on ' Christianity and the French Kevolution,' wrote these lines : " Depuis le premier instant oii nous sommes connus, par quel hasard est-il arrive que, separ^s ou rapproches, nous n'ayons cesse au meme moment de penser, de croire, et souvent d'imaginer les memes choses, sans avoir eu besoin de nous parler ? Cet accord de I'ame a toujours ete pour nous la confirmation du vrai ; depuis trente et un ans, ce com- bat nous reunit ; c'est le combat ^ternel qui ne finira qu'en Dieu." The philosophy of Vico is a generalisation of the history of Eome ; the student of Vico must have always before his mind the history of Eome. Not unnaturally, therefore, we find M. Michelet publishing, in 1831, an ' Histoire Eomaine.' It is a work in which inaccuracies are not difficult to discover, yet one which shows genius, a great power of historical divination, and peculiar charms of style. The first edition of his ' Introduction a I'Histoire Universelle,' the work of his which has most interest for us, in our present research, appeared in the same year. It 288 BOOK I. — FRANCE. has gone through various editions. The second (1834) and the seventh (1843) are those which have been in my hands. I shall soon return to it. In 1833 he began the publication of the chief work of his life, his ' Histoire de France.' In the following year, M. Guizot appointed him his substitute in the Chair of History at the Faculte des Lettres. At this time, and for several years after, his mind was much under the influence of Guizot's historical views. He speaks of him as his " illustrious master and friend; " he it was, he says in the preface to the ' History of France,' who taught him to " trace the course of ideas underneath the course of events ; " he it was, he says in his Inaugural Dis- course at the Sorbonne, who, " freeing science from all ephemeral passions, all partiality, aU falsehood of matter and style, raised history to the dignity of law." In 1838 he was appointed to the Chair of 1 'Histoire et la Morale, at the College of France. The volumes of his ' History of France ' appeared in regular succession till 1844 — the sixth volume, which was published in that year, closing with the reign of Louis XI. Here he stopped till 1855, or rather, he made a gigantic leap forwards to the French Revolution, the history of which he published, in seven volumes, between 1847 and 1853. Why was this ? It was because he and Quinet had become engaged in a severe struggle with the priests, in which, not content to stand merely on the defensive, they had turned on their assailants, and exposed their principles and aims by lectures on ' The Jesuits,' and ' Ultra- montanism' (Quinet), and on ' Priests, Women, and Families,' and ' The People ' (Michelet). The excitement produced was im- mense. The story of the struggle merits to be known — more so than the earlier one, in which Guizot, Villemain, and Cousin were the heroes, which is, however, better known ; but unfor- tunately it was a complicated affair, which cannot be told profitably except at some considerable length. The position of the Government was certainly a difficult one; but, after all allowances on this score are made, MM. Guizot and Salvandy must be pronounced to have acted unwisely and illegally in interfering as they did, first, vainly to control, and then forcibly to suppress, the courses of the two bel- MICHELET AND QUINET. 289 ligereut professors. M. Michelet was suspended from his office in 1847. It was under the influence of the feelings natural to this struggle with the priests and doctrinarian ministers of State, that, abandoning for a time the older history of France, he threw himself into the study of the French Eevolution. The spirit in which the first six volumes of his ' History of France ' are written is, accordingly, very different from that which per- vades his ' History of the French Eevolution ; ' very different, and, I venture to add, much better, much broader, much more impartial. Indeed he has written nothing so valuable as these six volumes. It is said he now despises them, and I can easily believe it, but hope he will never try to improve them. In them we find an historical philosophy on the whole sound, wedded to an art of historical painting the most wonderful, and producing a true resuscitation of the past, both in body and soul. They are the creations of the subtle, varied, powerful imagination of M. Michelet, working patiently on all the data which a vast erudition could supply, and under the guidance of the elevated and comprehensive ideas of Vico and Guizot. In later volumes, philosophy is still united with art, but it is a philosophy which reminds us much less of Vico and Guizot than of Voltaire and Dr Cabanis. Still, even his ' History of the French Eevolution ' is a great work ; not more one-sided and not less stirring than that of Carlyle ; reproducing the inner movement, the emotional life, of the time, in a succession of pictures as remarkable, from an artistic point of view, as those in which Mr Carlyle has represented its outward move- ment, its external agitation. His is even the truer w^ork of the two ; produced from within, and displaying, notwithstanding the numerous traces of partiality, prejudice, and caprice which disfigure it, a deep inner comprehension and feeling of its sub- ject; whereas, sublime, terrible, incomparable of its kind, as is the power displayed by Mr Carlyle, in describing the taking of the Bastile, the massacres in prison, night of spurs, &c., his imagination has worked wholly from without, helping neither himself nor his reader to get in the least below the surface, the outward confusion of the scene ; so that, from the first page to T 290 BOOK I. FRANCE. the last of his book, the most significant event in modern history appears as absolutely devoid of positive meaning, a mere bank- ruptcy, a hideous imbroglio, a commingling of Chaos and Erebus. The Eevolution of 1848 restored our author to his professor- ship for a short time, but he was again silenced in 1851. After the coiLp d'etat he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to Louis Napoleon, and was, in consequence, dismissed from his offices. In 1855 he resumed his ' History of France' at where he had left off, and carried it on to where his ' History of the Revolution ' began, ten volumes filling up the intervening void. The best of these volumes are inferior to their predecessors, and some of them are truly deplorable productions. The principles by which M. Michelet now seeks to explain history are sickly and semiprurient conceptions, akin to those which he has ex- pounded in 'UAmour' and 'La Femme.' How a sane man can believe that the youth of France are to be regenerated and built up into moral manhood by such principles, is inex- plicable. I need not speak of M. Michelet's prose poems on ' The Bird,' ' The Insect,' ' The Sea,' ' The Mountain,' published since 1858. It is now more than time that I should return to the work in which M. Michelet has presented his historical philosophy in its most general form — the ' Introduction to Universal History.' It belongs to the period of his spiritual health, when Vico and Guizot had great influence over his mind, although he had a faith in progress unknown to Vico, and democratic sympathies which Guizot never felt. It is brief, unlaboured — touches only the summits of things — aims merely at fixing the positions which the chief nations of the world have occupied or still occupy in the history of humanity. When its author says that he might as well have entitled it an " Introduction to the History of France," because " logic and history " have proved to him that his " glorious country is henceforth the pilot of the vessel of humanity," and assures us that patriotism has had no share in his reaching this conclusion, we can only smile at such nmvetS and vanity, and suggest that France may find quite enough to do in steering her own bark. The point of view from which M. Michelet has chosen to sur- MICHELET AND QUINET. 291 vey universal history had been previously occupied by Hegel. "What he has seen is in great part what Hegel had seen. It is in great part what every eye must see from the same station. Whether M. Michelet has borrowed much, or anything, from Hegel, I cannot venture to determine. The mere fact of equally regarding history as the progressive realisation of freedom in humanity, is certainly insufficient to prove that he borrowed a conception which is in itself so obvious and natural. And if he did not borrow that, he may well have borrowed notliing, since everything common to him and Hegel is contained in that — his fundamental and central thought. At the outset he declares history to be the story of the inter- minable war between man and nature, the spirit and matter, liberty and fatality ; and laments that the doctrine of fatalism is taking possession of science, philosophy, and history.^ Pro- nouncing that doctrine in history as elsewhere pernicious, he undertakes to show that, notwithstanding _ many appearances to the contrary, history is the progressive triumph of liberty. Nature, he says, remains always the same, but man changes for the better. The Alps have not increased, but we have made a path across the Simplon. The winds and waves are as capricious as ever, but steam has rendered us independent of their caprices. To all this in itself I have, of course, no objection. It is one of the chief services which we owe to M. Michelet and his friend M. Quinet, that they have so emphatically and elo- quently insisted on the great truth that man is free, at a time when many were forgetting, and not a few denying it. They have not erred in maintaining that history shows us a pro- gressive realisation of freedom. They have not erred, perhaps, even in thinking that it can show us nothing nobler. My doubts begin only when we go beyond this point — when we go as far as Hegel certainly goes, as far as Michelet perhaps goes, — when we affirm that history is the realisation of freedom in humanity— -that and nothing more. In the progressive realisa- 1 In a note he expressly exempts M. Guizot from the reproach of favouring the belief in historical fatalism. He has since concurred with M. Quinet in representing him as specially censurable on this ground. 292 BOOK I. — FRANCE. tion of freedom I see an historical truth, but not the whole truth of history, not the definition of history. Growth in free- dom is only one of several facts all equally essential to hu- manity and its development. Truth, beauty, and morality can no more be resolved into freedom than freedom into any of them ; and they belong no less to the substance of mind, their evolution no less to the substance of history. Wliat M. Michelet proposes historically to prove is, that if, following the course of the sun and the magnetic currents, we proceed from east to west, from India to France, the fatal power of nature will be found showing itself less at each station. He starts with India, and describes man in that country as utterly overpowered by nature — as like a feeble child on its mother's breast, alternately spoiled and beaten, and intoxicated rather than nourished by a milk too strong and stimulating for it. We naturally ask. Why start with India ? Why pass over China, which is still farther east than India? Is it not be- cause man is less enslaved in China than in India, less the victim either of superstition or despotism ? If so, the course of liistory fails at its very outset to coincide with the course of the sun. We naturally ask, also. Why should the course of his- tory coincide with the course of the sun ? How comes it that freedom should follow the same path with an object the move- ment of which is mechanically necessitated ? Is freedom, then, but an appearance, and really subject to fatality ? How is it that there is even an appearance of such subjection ? We ask these questions, but we get no answers. Beginning with India as the country in which man is most under the tyranny of nature, M. Michelet passes on to show us Persia as that in which liberty commences to manifest itself in fatality. The Persian discards with hatred the Hindu multi- plicity of gods, and takes refuge in the thought of a divine power of pure and intellectual light which will eventually con- quer the principle of darkness and matter. Pass to Egypt. The very soil of Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and the Egyp- tian necessarily felt himself entirely dependent on nature, yet, thanks to liis faith in the immortality of the soul, he did not wholly sacrifice to it his personality : the aspirations crushed MICHELET AND QUINET. 293 in this world betook themselves to another. Human liberty next pursues its course from Egypt to Judea — which is placed in the East only to curse it and all its creeds in the name of unity and the spirit. M. Michelet here wisely overlooks the fact that Judea is not situated to the west of Egypt. He wisely lets go consistency, and so escapes erring like Hegel, who, rather than allow that freedom could run in any other than a straight line, made Palestine an appendage of Persia. Still proceeding with his argument, he points out that Asia is a comparatively uniform mass ; that Europe is vastly more articu- lated — that it is consequently more perfectly organised — and that it shows its superiority by a higher development of freedom. He compares and contrasts Greece and Eome with Asia and with each other. Much as both did — beautiful as was the one, and sublime and strong as was the other — they left the arts of peace to the conquered and enslaved, and so that victory of man over nature which is called industry was pursued but a little way. Eome dreamed that she had subdued the world and suc- ceeded in building up a universal and eternal city; but the slave, the barbarian, and the Christian protested each in their own way that she was deceived, and each in their own way con- tributed to destroy the delusive unity which bore her name: while she dreamed, her physical and moral dissokition hastened on ; Greece and Asia, whom she had vanquished by her arms, invaded and conquered her by their beliefs. Among the re- ligions which reached her from Asia was one profoimdly dif- ferent from all the rest, which immolated the flesh and glorified the spirit, while they immersed and defiled man in matter. It — Christianity — is still the only refuge of a religious soul. " L'autel a perdu ses honneurs, I'humanite s'en eloigne pen a pen ; mais, je vous en prie, oh ! dites-le moi, si vous le savez, s'est-il eleve un autre autel?" After referring, far too briefly, to the barbarian invasions, the kingdom of Charlemagne, the crusades, the medieval organisa- tion of the Church or empire of the spirit, and of the State or empire of force, and contenting himself with a mere general affirmation that the Me, liberty, the heroic principle of the world, has slowly but gradually triumphed, as is evident alike 294 BOOK I. FRANCE. in science, religion, and industry, M. Miclielet proceeds to show what part the political persons named Germany, Italy, England, and France, have taken in the enfranchisement of the human race. This is the most interesting portion of his work, and that which is much the most carefully done. The notes which illus- trate it are also particularly interesting and suggestive. At the same time, I should be sorry to pledge myself to the truth of it. Perhaps it may be about half true. The readers of national characters seldom succeed so well. I shall merely indicate what M. Michelet's conclusions are. To examine them would be a lengthened task; to replace them by more certain con- clusions, one in all probability beyond my powers. He starts with the very true thought that Europe is a complex organism, of which the unity, soul, and life are not in this or that part, but in the disposition or relationship and interaction of its parts, so that any one part, any one of its peoples, is only to be understood through the others. Then he delineates the character of Germany as it has expressed itself in history, literature, and manners. The renunciation of self, the devotion of man to man and of man to woman, sympathy, indecision, mysticism, pantheism, these are, he thinks, its chief features. Germany is " the India of Europe, vast, vague, unsettled, prolific, like the pantheistic Proteus, its god." The Italian genius he regards as forming in almost all respects a contrast to the Ger- man ; as not less strongly and persistently individual and inde- pendent than the other is soft and easily disciplined. The Italian cannot consent to sacrifice his personality even to God, and much less to man ; he is capable of the highest devotion to a definite cause or interest, but not to an individual, nor in the service of a vague idea or feeling. He is the man of the city, not of the family, or tribe, or country. Politics, jurisprudence, art of the kind which is passionate yet severe, are the depart- ments in which he excels. M. Michelet insists strongly on the perpetuity of the Italian character, its essential identity in ancient and modern times. He maintains that the German in- fluence on it has been but external and superficial, and that the inhabitants of the different districts of Italy still display the same peculiarities of talent and disposition by which they were MICHELET AND QUINET. 295 distiuguished in the days of the Eoman Eepublic. In Germany and Italy, he goes on to say, fatality is still strong; moral freedom still borne down by the powerful influences of race, locality, and climate ; in both, races and ideas are imperfectly or unequally mingled. The civilisation which is the least simple and natural, the most complex and artificial, the most European, the most human and free, is that of France. France is much more a person than Germany or Italy, better organised, greatly more centralised, — indeed, France only has a true centre and head. French genius is essentially social and active ; its bent is towards war, politics, argument. "What it seeks in war is not selfish gain but proselytism, the assimilation of intelli- gences, the conquest of wills. In literature it displays itself to most advantage in rhetoric and eloquence ; is unequalled in prose, but deficient in poetical feeling. The spirit of the French people is profoundly democratic, and has always been so in a large measure. England is the antithesis of France, and explains France by contrast, England is " human pride per- sonified in a people." Its pride punishes itself by internal self- contradiction, the antagonism of feudalism and industry, two powers which agree only in an insatiable thirst for gain that leads to life-weariness and despair. The Satanic school is the most representative phase of English literature. The English genius is aristocratic and heroic. England entered first among modern nations into the field in the struggle for liberty, but has no real love of liberty. It wishes liberty without equality, which is a selfish and impious liberty; whereas France seeks liberty with equality, which is alone a just and sacred liberty. It is France, therefore, which must inaugurate the coming era of a new unity, which will this time be a free unity. Every solution either of social or intellectual problems is sterile and unsuccessful until it has been interpreted, translated, and poj)u- larised by France. France is the word of Europe as Greece was of Asia. Now, few of these positions, perhaps, are wholly true, and a considerable number of them are probably not far from wholly false. The estimate even of France, of her genius, of her place in Europe, is most inaccurate. The excessive centralisation of 296 BOOK I. FRANCE. France can be proved by masses of evidence of all kinds to have seriously injured the intelligence, character, and political capa- city of Frenchmen — to have destroyed liberty, science, and art in the provinces — and to have brought no end of shame and misery on the nation ; and yet M. Michelet sees in it a sign of the superiority of France to other nations. That is precisely as if a man suffering from cancer were to pride himself upon its dimensio«is. If M. Michelet had attempted to enumerate the solutions of social and intellectual problems which France has interpreted, translated, and popularised for the benefit of Europe, he would have found that she had been no more successful in that respect than her neighbours, and had, in fact, very often required to be taught by them. The nations have no need of a nation to interpret, translate, and popularise for them. Each nation must do that work for itself France can only become the word of Europe by following the example of Greece, by having more original thought than the rest of Europe, not by interpret- ing, translating, or popularising the thoughts of other nations. What educated man in England or America looks to France to interpret or translate for him the solutions of social and intel- lectual, philosophical and religious, problems, which, during the present century, have been proposed in Germany ? Then, where is the necessity that France should distance the other nations of Europe in the path of freedom ? France has enjoyed so little freedom, has sought it so little, so intermittently, and so gene- rally where and how it is least likely to be found — viz., on the streets by the light and help of insurrectionary passions and violence — that the probability of her inaugurating a new era of free unity does not seem very great. It does not excuse M. Michelet that in spreading these delusions he was repeating the teaching of M. Guizot. Both should have known better. I pass over what seem to me mistakes in M. Michelet's esti- mates of Italy, Germany, and England. Suppose him to have made no mistakes — suppose his whole book, both in its reason- ings and facts, true — and have we a science of history? M. Michelet has not said we have — and, obviously, we have not ; we have only an account of a single aspect of history, of one side or phase of its development. And even that aspect or phase is MICHELET AND QUINET. 297 merely described, not explained. We are told that liberty has progressed from age to age — that nation after nation has con- tributed more or less to its growth ; we are not shown the course of causation through which, in each age and nation, the result has been brought about. A line of thought is run through his- tory just sufficient to connect the principal states which have risen and fallen with the lapse of time, and the general truth is established that all the arts of oppression have ever been found insuflficient permanently to prevent the advance of liberty, but that is certainly not enough to constitute science. It may be something more and better than science, but it is also something less and other. "0 Freedom ! thou art not as poets dream, A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses gushing from the cap With which the Roman master crowned his slave When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, Armed to the teeth, art thou ; one mailed hand Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred With tokens of old wars ; thy massive limbs Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee ; They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, And his swart armourers, by a thousand fires. Have forged thy chain ; yet, while he deems thee bound. The links are shivered, and the prison walls Fall outward ; terribly thou springest forth. As springs the flame above a burning pile. And shoutest to the nations, who return Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies." The truth which Bryant has sung in these lines is the ulti- mate conclusion at which Michelet arrives, and it is indubitably a high and consoling truth, but as indubitably it wants the precision of a scientific law, and even many such truths woiild not compose a body of doctrine rigidly entitled to be called a science. In a work entitled ' La Bible de THumanite,' published in 1865, M. Michelet has surveyed history from another, but not more comprehensive or scientific, point of view. Each great civilisation is regarded as a verse written by the life of a peoj)le. 298 BOOK I. — FRANCE. in a universal, eternal, ever-advancing Bible, oi- gospel of hu- manity. From this point of view are drawn a series of pictures of national character, some of which — as, for example, those of India, Egypt, and Greece — are beautiful, and moderately accurate, while others are worthless, and the description given of Chris- tianity is a mere caricature. Any one who looks into the work for more than a series of pictures, strung together on a very slender thread of argument, will, I fear, be disappointed. II. M. Quinet is much less known in this country than M. Michelet. He was born at Bourg in 1803. His father was an army commissary under the Eepublic and during the early years of the Empire ; his mother, born near Geneva, was Pro- testant in her convictions. Both parents hated Napoleon, yet their boy soon became one of his most ardent idolaters, and only with the most painful struggle, after he had reached middle life, and contributed to create and spread the Napoleonic legend, which has been so injurious to France, was he able to emanci- pate himself from the tyranny which the memory of the Con- queror exercised over his imagination. He was educated at CharoUes, Bourg, Lyons, Paris. He early began to cultivate poetry, history, philosophy ; to study diligently many sub- jects ; to read the best books in various languages. As he began, so he has continued. His whole life has been, in the rarest degree, a course of self-education, carried on through meditation, the study of books, the close observation of events, and foreign travel. As regards the last, for example, in or about 1823 he spent nearly a year in England ; in 1827 he studied at Heidelberg ; in 1829 he was in Greece, as one of a scientific commission sent to explore the Morea; in 1832-33 he travelled in Italy, and in 1834 in Germany; in 1843-44 he visited Spain and Portugal ; and the years of his exile, since 1851, have been passed chiefly in Belgium and Switzerland. Wherever he has gone it has been, not as an ordinary sightseer, but as an earnest and sympathetic student of nature, of histori- cal monuments, of literature, of men and their ways. I know MICHELET AND QUINET. 299 of no more generally or finely cultured mind among living authors than his. His first publication of importance was a translation of Her- der's ' Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humanity ' (1825-27), to which he added an able introduction. This book, I have already mentioned, was dedicated to M. Cousin, and was the occasion of its author's becoming acquainted with M. Michelet. Since its publication M. Quinet's pen has had little rest. Its products have been very varied, — poems, political pamphlets, histories, impressions of travel, philosophical and theological disquisitions. The ten volumes of his 'Q^^uvres Completes ' contain only those which were published in or before 1858. He was for two years Professor " des Litteratures Etrangeres," at Lyons, and was then, notwithstanding the well- known democratic character of his opinions, transferred to a chair " de Litterature Meridionale," instituted expressly for him at the College of Prance. His teaching excited great enthu- siasm among the students of Paris, but brought him into conflict with the priests and Government. He was not the man to recoil before such opposition, in a path which he deemed traced out for him by duty ; not the man to refuse " Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Eather tlian in silence shrink From the truth he needs must think." He was suspended from his office, however, in 1845, about two years before his friend Michelet was similarly silenced. The Government appeared to triumph, but in reality merely completed its own moral ruin. It had sown the wind, and in February 1848 it reaped the whirlwind, and was swept away by it. M. Quinet was among the first to enter the Tuileries, gun in hand. He was restored by the Eepublic to his chair, and chosen by the electors of his native district to represent them in the National Assembly. He was much less successful as a deputy than as a professor. His comparative fail- ure was due, partly to want of practical tact, but mainly to the complexity of the situation, and the perversity of contending parties. He did what he could to prevent that wicked act — the French expedition to Eome. He foresaw the triumph of 300 BOOK I. FRANCE. Louis Napoleon, as he had foreseen the fall of Louis Philippe. Of course, after the coup d'etat, he became an exile. A decree banishing him from France was promulgated on the 9th of January 1852 ; but he had freely withdrawn ten days after the 2d of December 1851, feeling that the sorest exile is " not to live out of one's country, but to live out of the city of conscience, imprisoned in the house of injustice." Through all the years which have since elapsed, he has not ceased to labour for the instruction of his countrymen and race. After the recent war, he attempted to take a part in public affairs at the Assembly of Bordeaux, but was ill received. I do not think that, there or then, he could have been of much use. To the youth of Trance his writings may be of incalculable value. There are none, perhaps, in recent French literature, fuller of the moral seed most needed. Whatever may be thought of some of M. Quinet's opinions, his life must be admitted to have been singularly unselfish, pure, high in aims, earnest in endeavours, fruitful in works, and profoundly religious in spirit. He has been twice married : his first wife was a German ; the present Madame Quinet is a Eouraanian. There is an admirable account both of his personal life and literary activity by M. Charles-Louis Chassin.^ M. Quinet's career as an author began, I have just mentioned, with a translation of Herder's 'Ideen.' He may almost be said to have found himself in Herder, to have had himself revealed to himself by Herder's book as in a mirror. Herder is in some measure at the bottom of all that he has attempted and accom- plished. He accepted Herder's central thoughts as his principles. Herder's aims as his own purposes. His ' Introduction k la Philo- sophic de I'Histoire' and ' Essai sur les CEuvres de Herder,' show us how thoroughly he had adopted and assimilated the truth which is in Herder. He thus came to the study of history with the same comprehensive conception of man's relation to nature and of hu- manity in itself, with the same catholic spirit. Almost all that is true in Herder is presupposed in Quinet. But there was a weak side, an element of error, in Herder. He was right in holding that all nature is related to man, and condi- ^ Edgar Quinet, sa Vie et son (Euvre. Paris, 1859. MICHELET AND QUINET. 301 tional to the history of man ; but wrong in that he exaggerated the power of nature over man, and left the impression that the moral world is only the product of the natural world, the laws of history simply the laws of nature manifesting themselves through a particular organism. Now, M. Quinet was even from the first no servile disciple of Herder, but a free critic and impar- tial judge as well as a disciple, and he not only never fell into this grave error, but assigned the utmost importance to its anta- gonistic truth. He founds on the truth which is in Herder, but at least as much on the truth which Herder overlooks. Far from regarding human history as merely natural history {eine reine Na- turgeschichte), he insists that there is in it a something altogether peculiar and distinctive — a something nowhere found in nature, but which struggles against, subdues, and uses nature. What that something is we know and can name, because we have it within us and can feel it. It is the Will. The Will which we are conscious of in ourselves, and in virtue of which we resist the force of circumstances, the seductions and oppression of so- ciety, was also in our earliest ancestors, to render them capable of resisting the tyranny of physical nature. When Cato slew him- self in order to escape from a world where he could no longer be his own master — when More, and Kussell, and others ascended the scaffold for a cause which they deemed worthy of their blood, — their actions! may have been more heroic than that of the first man who, in the exercise of his free-will, confronted unintelligent nature, and strove to determine his own future; but although different in form, these two orders of action were one in principle, alike springing from the activity of the mind itself. That in- ternal self-activity is no prodigy which heaven creates for a day and never renews, is no special gift conferred only on highly-fa- voured individuals, but what is most essential in man and tlie root of all his history. History is from beginning to end the develop- ment and display of liberty, the continuous protestation of the mind of the human race against the world which oppresses and enchains it, the process through which the soul gradually secures and realises its freedom. Thus, regarding history as the manifestation of free-will, M. Quinet pronounces against subjecting it to any rigid formula. 302 BOOK I. FRANCE. Its course is not a straight line, but tortuous ; instead of moving direct to its end, it has gone back upon itself a hundred times. There is, however, a general movement which is on the whole up- ward and onward. The Me only gradually disengages itself from the universe which surrounds it, as the statuary only gradually disengages from his block of marble the image which originally existed merely within himself. It rejects by degrees all that is foreign to itself, all that is contrary to a complete display of its nature, to perfect freedom. It progresses in a path which is sub- stantially a vast and unending deduction from the general to the particular. Human personality at first diffuses itself through the immensities of space and time, animating with its own life the wandering hosts of heaven, the mighty seas, the teeming earth, the mountains, forests, and floods. In this stage of his existence — one which may be studied in India — man, embracing all, ador- ing all, forgetting only himself, has a cosmogony and a theogony, but no proper history. Withdrawing from the waste vagueness of the physical universe, the spirit then proceeds to confine itself in empires — Media, Persia, Egypt, Assyria — with which its existence is so bound up that it has no individual force or worth. Another step, and personaKty, although still half confounded with the city and borrowing thence its vigour, is seen to have gained greatly by concentration. With Greece and Eome the city is broken, and now the Me, the spirit, alone with itself, finds in itself an infinity surpassing that with which it started, the true infinity, the Christian universe. This infinite it again proceeds to divide, to analyse, seeking to explain and derive it wholly from its own self, — hence the Eeformation, Cartesianism, the Eevolution have been, and an unknown future will be. Humanity wanders like Ulysses from land to land, from sea to sea, from adventure to adventure, in quest of a lost home. Impelled and guided by an invisible hand and divine instincts, it never rests long content in any dwelling-place. India and China, Babylon, Palmyra, Ecbatana, Memphis, Athens, Ptome, and other countries and cities, it has lodged in for some hour of its life, some age of time ; but in none of them finding what it sought, it has forsaken them one after another, and is still in search of its Ithaca. It is a natural consequence of M. Quinet's attaching the im- MICHELET AND QUINET. 303 portance wliicli he does to the fact of will or personality in history, that he should strongly insist on the necessity of every man who would understand history studying his own nature. He who would comprehend the life of a hero, or of a nation, or of humanity, must seek the principles of explanation within himself. He has there the key to all history. If we would give a true basis to historic science, we must " start from the narrow sphere of the individual Me, and thence ascend, step by step, along the succession of empires and peoples, up to the hut of Evander, the tent of Jacob, and the palm-tree of Zoroaster." These seem to me the most prominent ideas in the two above- mentioned works. But there is another indicated to which M. Quinet has always attached the utmost importance, and which he has elsewhere carefully elaborated. It is, that the funda- mental and generative principle in civilisation is the religious principle; that the political form assumed by society is uni- formly determined by its religious beliefs, and moulded on its religious institutions. He insists that what raises man above an animal subject to mere natural laws and forces, and by uniting man to man originates society, is the apprehension of Divinity ; that the fetich assembles around it the tribe, and a national god brings forth a nation ; that religious unity founds political unity; and that all the revolutions which have taken place in the social relations of human beings have been owing to the modification of their thoughts about God. This view is directly opposed to that which generally prevailed in the eighteenth century, and, indeed, to what is perhaps still the prevalent opinion — viz., that religion is only a secondary social element, if not even a social invention. Of course, M. Quinet has no claim to absolute originality in connection with it. It had previously found some measure of expression through Fichte, Baader, and Krause, Gorres and Steffens, Schelling and Hegel, &c. It to some extent underlay the whole teaching of the Theocratic school. It has found, however, much its most accurate and adequate expression in Quinet. Above all, it has received from him much its nearest approximation to an ade- quate historical proof. I regret that space forbids my attempt- 304 BOOK I. PRANCE. ing to convey any conception of the ingenuity and talent, of the wealth of knowledge and depth of thought, with which he has worked out that proof in ' Le Genie des Religions ' as re- gards the civilisations of India, China, Persia, Egypt, Babylon, Phenicia, Judea, Greece, and Eome ; and in ' Le Christianisme et la Revolution Pran9aise,' ' Les Jesuites,' ' L'Ultramontanisme,' and ' La Revolution,' as regards medieval and modern civilisa- tion. The highest point of view from which these works can be surveyed collectively, and in connection, is as a demonstration of the truth that the idea of Divinity is the root of civilisation — and its gradual apprehension, the regulative principle of the history of civilisation ; and, judged from that point, nothing approaching to them in cogency and completeness has been written by any author known to me. M. Quinet, then, has advocated, with conviction and enthu- siasm, the rights of free-will and of religion in history. I have to add, that he has, with equal zeal, advocated the rights of conscience in history. The article which he published in the pages of the ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' in 1855, under the title of "La Philosophie de I'Histoire de France," is a memorable document in this connection. It was an eloquent and passion- ate protest against the dominant historical philosophy in France, against the doctrinarian theory of the course of human things, as from beginning to end an affirmation of the fatalism of facts, and a denial of the claims of justice in estimating the character of national events. That philosophy, that theory, seemed to him to be at once a symptom and cause of the sickness of society in France. Nations, he said, had fallen irretrievably much more frequently through their infatuated faith in false ideas, or infatuated rejection of the truth, than through the power of their enemies; and as France was cherishing a number of grave errors regarding her own past, she was in imminent danger if every man who could use a pen did not come forward in defence of the simple truth which was discarded and dishonoured, — if every thoughtful Frenchman were not willing to have his night of the 4th of August and loyally sacrifice for his country his errors in history, philosophy, and science. One of the greatest and most pernicious of these errors is an immoral historical MICHELET AND QUINET. 305 Optimism, which rests on two sophisms that have, unfortunately, come to be accepted as axioms — viz., that despotism leads to liberty, and that men always do the opposite of what they sup- pose they are doing. This doctrinarian optimism M. Quinet has described as ap- plied to the history of France, in a way which may be thus summarised. At the very commencement of French history it is found pronouncing the Gauls incapable of self-education, of self-civilisation, and vindicating their conquerors in the name of the future of France and of humanity. It teaches that it was necessary for the progress of both, that the Gauls should first be trampled under foot by the Eomans, and afterwards, along with the Eomans, by the Franks; that not otherwise than through violence and slavery could order and freedom be reached. In a word, it begins by justifying conquest, representing wrong as necessary, might as inherently right, and thus discrediting, as far as it can, the holy idea of justice. As it begins, so it continues. It maintains that it was most fortunate that the Albigenses and Waldenses, and other protesters against Papal and feudal tyranny, who, even in the twelfth century, proclaimed such great truths as that every believer is a priest, did not succeed, and that their ideas were effaced in blood, till the world, some generations later, was prepared for them. Thus it makes irra- tional any such thing as pity for the fate of the victims of Toulouse and Beziers. It maintains equally that the success of the struggles of the provinces, of the communes, and the third estate, which began so early and terminated so late, would all have been disastrous, ruinous to France ; and that, in fact, France owes its very existence, and almost all its greatness and glory, to the victory of the monarchy over these opponents, the victory of unity and despotism over liberty and self-govern- ment. When it comes to deal with the struggles which arose out of the spread of the principles of the Eeformation, instead of acknowledging that France went grievously wrong in rejecting Protestantism, — that her policy with regard to the new faith, under Francis I., and Henry III., and Charles IX., and Henry IV., and Eichelieu, and Louis XIV., was at once unjust and foolish, criminal and disastrous, — it pretends that the real u 306 BOOK I. — FRANCE. significance of the wars of religion, and of the measures pursued relative to the Eeformed, was not whether France should be Protestant or Catholic, but whether it should be feudal or monarchical, and that, as the triumph of Protestantism would have involved the victory of the nobles over the crown, and the recovery of their medieval powers and privileges, it was necessary, for the welfare of France, that Protestantism should be defeated and suppressed. Arrived at the age of Louis XIV., it salutes it with boundless enthusiasm, as the glorious consum- mation of all the bloodshed, and usurpations, and oppression of the centuries which preceded it, as the end which sanctified all the means which led to it, as the crowning of the edifice of cen- tralised authority. It finds a place for the Eevolution on the ground that freedom ought to be developed after authority, but justifies all the governments which followed, on the plea that they were occupied in organising those liberties which the Ee- volution proclaimed. From first to last, it finds that France has committed no folly, and perpetrated no wrong ; that what ought to have been has always been; that the successful cause has uniformly been a just cause. From this whole view of French history, which he regards as the ofiicial and universally accepted view — that taught in every school where French history was taught at all — M. Quinet dis- sents and protests, severely, and almost violently. France, he maintains, far from showing herself either infallible or impec- cable, really erred and sinned grievously, preferred darkness to light, and sowed for herself the seeds of a vast harvest of evils, in the instances referred to, and many others, where doctrinar- ianism vindicates her conduct. And the first act of her regene- ration, he declares, must be that she confess her sins and repent of the iniquities of her fathers. An attack so direct, so sweeping, and so little conciliatory, on what was wildly accepted as established historical doctrine, naturally excited considerable anger, which found vent in coun- ter-protestation. It was not shown, however, and could not, I believe, be shown, to be other than substantially just and greatly needed. Historical optimism is an evil so subtle and seductive, that perhaps few historians in any country do not occasionally. MICHELET AND QUINET. 307 and to some extent, yield to its influence, while many it wholly masters and possesses without their being aware that such is the case. Any historical philosophy which commits itself to an absolute or unconditional defence of social institutions as they are, which identifies the real of any given time with the rational, must be optimistic, fatalistic — must identify the real with the rational throughout all time. For the present is the necessary product of the past. The present could not have been precisely what it is had not the past been precisely what it was. The true and adequate explanation of any social fact or institution can be found only in its actual historical antecedents, and will be found there. But if we absolutely approve the end, it is absurd not to approve the means which necessarily led to it. If we accept, for example, as the best thing which could have happened to France, precisely what happened, in the early and complete triumph of the monarchy over its enemies, in the cen- tralisation of all powers in the hand of the king, it is utterly unreasonable to regret the measures which arrested, say, the south of France in that career of national development, of in- dependent religious thought, and independent literary activity, on which it entered so early, — or any of the other measures, however sanguinary and treacherous, by which local independ- ence, personal, political, and religious liberties were crushed down and rooted out. The historian is, in fact, in all circum- stances, in danger of confounding the necessary connection which he finds between institutions and their antecedents, with the moral necessity, which is a moral justification, or the physical necessity, which takes away moral responsibility ; and the his- torical philosopher who sets to work with the political aims which Hegel had as regards Germany, and Guizot as regards France, leaves himseK not even a chance of escape. Guizot by no means escaped without injury, although he did not drive his bark on the rock with full sail, like the more venturesome Hegel and (M. Guizot's own friend and colleague) Cousin. He did not explicitly maintain that the real world of history was just what it ought to be, but he suggested that conclusion : he did not censure the instinctive protests of conscience against triumphant wrong as " subjective fault-finding ;" but the whole 308 BOOK I. — FEANCE. drift of his reasoning tended to prove that the wrong had a right to be triumphant, and that it would have been unfortunate for humanity if events had occurred in a way which would have pleased conscience better. He found each event necessary to that which had succeeded it, onwards to a state of things which he regarded with complete satisfaction, and virtually justified the entire series, on account of this necessary connection be- tween antecedents and consequents. The accusation brought by M. Quinet against the doctrinarian philosophy of history was thus not irrelevant, not misapplied. Where, however, was the logical error committed by doctrin- arian historical philosophers ? It lay in two things ; the first of which was accepting any actual state of society as a state of realised reason. The real in history is never the rational, but only more or less of an approximation to the rational, never identical with but only participant in reason. No fact, no group of facts, no social state, has that absolute goodness in virtue of which it can be regarded as an end which justifies the means absolutely necessary to attain it. We can always ask, Might society not have been better, and would it not have been better, had antecedent acts and events been better ? But that is what the doctrinarians never ask. They accept a certain state of society as above criticism, as entirely conformed to the standard of reason, and then show that it was precisely what the actual past was capable of producing. Their primary assumption is erroneous. Let any state of society be critically examined, and its defects and evils will testify to what the crimes of the past have done for it. M. Guizot had no difficulty in showing that what M. Quinet, giving expression to the natural voice of human conscience, has denounced as crimes, were the steps which led to the early unification of France and the centralis- ation of power in the person of the monarch ; and these results he was entitled to hold had been in many respects beneficial to France, and probably the chief reasons why she so early became the leading nation in Europe ; but he ought not to have over- looked as he did the debtor side of the account, the terrible price which France has already paid, and must still pay, for the glories of the monarchy and the advantages of administrative MTCHELET AND QUINET. 309 centralisation — and he would then have found it hard, I think, not to admit that France might have been much happier and stronger now if her history had been quite other than it was, if the natural development of the different divisions of France had not been violently arrested, if liberty had been more successful, if Protestantism had conquered as it deserved, if unification had been later, and centralisation less complete. Further, historical optimism fails to recognise that freedom of choice and action is compatible with necessary connection be- tween historical phenomena. That the present is precisely what the past has made it is true, but not more true than that the men of the past had it in their power every hour so to act as would have given us a different present, No man needs to deny the connection between actions and their effects to be necessary because he holds action to be free, and it is only actions and their effects which history presents us with. Ne- cessity runs through actual history from beginning to end, yet actual history rests on free choice from beginning to end; on choice out of many possibilities, some better and some worse. It is from ignoring this latter fact, from confining their regards solely to actuality, that so many historical philosophers have found no room in their systems for conscience. M. Quinet performed excellent service, then, by insisting on the rights of conscience in relation to historical speculation. Perhaps it would not have hurt his own cause, and it would only have been just to his opponents, and especially to M. Guizot, if he had acknowledged that his objections validly ap- plied not to the substance of their historical philosophy, but to assumptions associated with it. Suppose all that M. Quinet has urged to hold true of the historical philosophy of M. Guizot, the value of that philosophy as an explanation of the actual course of events remains intact. The doctrinarianism, the im- plied optimism and fatalism, in M. Guizot's system must go, if M. Quinet be right ; but these will not carry away with them any of its explanations as to how fact gave rise to fact, how so- cial conditions succeeded one another, in the history of France. I have only to add that no man has done more than M. Quinet to explain and delineate the spirit and characteristics of 310 BOOK I. FRANCE. the nationalities of Europe. In proof I must content myself with simply referring the reader to the following works : ' La Gr^ce Moderne et ses Eapports avec I'Antiquite,' in vol. v. of his ffiuvres Completes ; ' Les Eomains, Eeorganisation des Provinces Danubiennes,' in vol. vi.; 'AUemagne et Italic/ and 'Les Revolu- tions d'ltalie,' in vols. ii. iii. and iv. ; 'Mes Vacances en Espagne,' in vol. ix. ; 'Fondation de la Republique de HoUande/ ' Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde,' in vol. v.; 'Le Genie des Religions;' the essay on " The Moral Unity of Modern Peoples ;" and even the lectures on the Jesuits and Ultramontanism.-^ ^ M. Quillet's last book of importance — ' La Creation ' — which I have as yet seen only in the German translation, " durchgesehen und eingefiihrt" by the distinguished geologist, Professor v. Cotta of Freiberg, I shall require to refer to in the " Conclusion" of this work. Its chief aim is to show how the history of the world is related to the history of humanity— how the one history throws light on the other. 311 CHAPTER XIV. THE DEMOCEATIC SCHOOL CONTINUED: DE TOCQUEVILLE, ODYSSE- BAROT, DE PERRON, AND LAURENT. By far the most moderate and judicious, profound and com- prehensive, thinker, sharing in democratic convictions, which France has had in recent times, was a man of singularly beauti- ful character and life, the high-minded and pure-hearted Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-58). Mr Reeve has enriched our litera- ture with an excellent translation of his writings, which are probably now studied with as much admiration and more in- telligence in this country than in France itself. They have nowhere found more appreciative reviewers than in Britain. I should be going out of my way to engage in work well per- formed already if I enlarged on their general merits and charac- teristics instead of simply indicating their relation to histori- cal philosophy, for which a very few words will suffice. He had no belief in the easy discovery of general laws of historical evolution. He did not profess to have discovered or even to be aware of any such laws himself, although, as he jocularly observed, he heard almost every morning that some- body had been more fortunate and found a hitherto unknown fundamental law of history by means of which the most won- derful social improvements were to be brought about. He had a constitutional aversion to all general historical speculation, because it could not be based on a full and accurate know- ledge of the whole time and space, of the whole mass of facts, covered by its conclusions. He could always find scope enough for his powers of acquisition and reflection, great as they were, 312 BOOK I. — FRANCE. within a comparatively limited area; and he preferred culti- vating a small and distinctly defined territory thoroughly, to cultivating a vast and vague one superficially. But notwithstanding this jealousy of general historical philo- sophy, both his ' De la Democratic en Amerique ' (1835) and his 'L'Ancien E(^gime et la Kevolution' (1856) have great interest and value for the historical philosopher. The former especially is a singularly original and masterly application of the induc- tive method to the study of society. Never before had the social characteristics of a country been so faithfully observed and skilfully analysed, and so ingeniously yet impartially com- pared with those of a country very different in its history, very differently circumstanced in many ways, in order to discover the real workings of certain dispositions or tendencies of spirit which they possessed in common. As a magnificent exempli- fication of the logical processes by which social and historical science are to be obtained the work is invaluable, independently of the worth of its results. Most of these processes, indeed , Guizot had already successfully practised in his examination of the development of European civilisation; but it fell to De Tocqueville to employ them with a fulness of illustration , a thoroughness and detail, only possible within a more limited and manageable sphere, and to show that a smaller field with a more elaborate culture would yield a harvest of results, at least not less rich and precious than a much larger one with less culture. The work on ' L'Ancien E^gime et la E^volution ' is less con- clusive, but chiefly because death prevented its gifted author from completing it. The differences between French society before and after the Eevolution are not brought out, nor are their causes. The influence of the literary men of the eighteenth century on opinions and events is passed over unestimated. Still the work accomplished much, although not all that it sought to accomplish. It investigated the causes of the catas- trophe which cast to the ground the old French monarchy, and of the course followed by the Eevolution, in a manner far more sifting and trustworthy than had previously been displayed. The inductions it contained were based on the most laborious ODYSSE-BAKOT. 313 and conscientious study of original testimonies, the accounts and correspondence of intendants, parochial registers, parlia- mentary decisions, and contemporary memoirs. It was the least declamatory and yet the most terrible exposure of the incompetency and oppressiveness of the monarchy which had appeared, and the most convincing demonstration that the Re- volution had left essentially unaltered far more of the govern- mental system of the monarchy than was supposed. It showed that while the fall of the monarchy was the natural consequence of its faults, the Revolution had affected the course of the devel- opment of French history much less than was believed, and much less than was to have been desired. It showed, in par- ticular, the absurdity of attributing to the Revolution the ad- ministrative centralisation of France, and, at the same time, the folly of the promoters of the Revolution in maintaining centrali- sation while desirous of fostering liberty. IT. The ' Letters on the Philosophy of History,' by M. Odysse- Barot, have few of the higher qualities which lend an inde- scribable charm and inestimable value to the pages of M. de Tocqueville. But they are exceedingly clever and sparkling, give evidence of considerable historical learning, and express with vivacity and force some useful truths. They appeared at first in the journal ' La Presse,' and were addressed to its editor, the well-known M. Emile de Girardin, whose criticism of them is appended to the volume of the ' Biblioth^que de Philosophic Contemporaine,' in which they were republished in 1864. The first nine letters deal in a light, smart, journalistic fashion with war and peace, military genius, the superiority of Freder- ick the Great to Caesar and Napoleon, diplomacy, treaties, and congresses. They have a connecting thought, and it is that society is constituted by two principles — force and justice — of which the former leads to war and finds expression in battles, while the latter tends to peace and finds expression in treaties. These two principles are compared to positive and negative electricity, the warm and cold currents of the Gulf Stream, the 314 BOOK I. — FRANCE. ebb and flow of the sea, the male and female, &c. They are held to be equally necessary, since the one supplements and completes the other, since right without force and force without right are alike nugatory and sterile, but force is described as the more prevalent. M. Odysse-Barot has counted, he says, the years of war and peace and the treaties concluded and broken from the fifteenth century before Christ to the present time, and has found that there have been 3130 years of war to 227 of peace, and 8397 treaties sworn to be eternally observed, the mean duration of the eternities of which has been two years. War, he contends, is not accidental or contingent, but universal and necessary, having its primary cause in the essential nature of man, and its final cause in the essential nature of things. The progress of civilisation has, in his opinion, no tendency to destroy or even diminish it. All that, and what he has said in connection therewith, I am content to leave without remark, having already had occasion to exhibit the chief fallacies in- volved in such views. With the tenth letter we pass from the shell to the kernel of his theory. He here tells us that historical study has three stages, the empirical, the critical, and the philosophical, or the stages of fact, method, and law, of observation, classification, and generalisation ; that it has now reached the second but not the third of these stages ; that important materials, however, for a philosophy of history have been collected and prepared ; and that the general conclusion which he himself proposes to ex- pound is the result of ten years' research and reflection. He then attacks the notion that France is a single nationality, and that French unity has existed for ages, and insists that, on the contrary, France is only a geographical expression, and French unity a quite recent creation. In the next letter he proceeds with his proof. He regards every State in Europe, except Por- tugal, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, as not a nationality, but " a composite of heterogeneous elements, a Macedonia of peoples, an ethnological harlequin, a social mosaic." He tells briefly the story of the formation of the British empire through the union of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland with England ; and gives a very interesting account of the slow and painful pro- ODYSSE-BAROT. 315 cess by which what is called France was built up on the ruins of the independence of Normandy, Provence, Guienne and Gascony, Lorraine, and Brittany, laying, of course, the greatest possible emphasis on the fact that each of the different peoples incorporated into Britain and France still retains its distinctive character and feelings. He commences the twelfth letter with the prophecy that perhaps before the end of the century, and certainly before a hundred years have passed, the great States of Europe will be dismembered ; that factitious nationalities will have given place to real nationalities ; that Britain, for example, will be redistributed into four kingdoms, and France broken up into five states — France proper, Brittany, Aquitaine, Burgundy, and Lorraine. Such is the inevitable conclusion, he argues, of two principles which have taken root in the world, and can neither be arrested nor eradicated — the principle of decentralisation and the principle of nationalities ; the former meaning dismemberment, and the latter the system of small or natural states, as opposed to that of artificial or agglomerated states. But what is a natural State ? a true or simple nation- ality ? It is, M. Odysse-Barot asserts, neither a linguistic, nor an ethnological, nor a religious, nor a moral fact, nor a combin- ation of these four orders of facts, but a purely geographical fact. " Une nationalite, c'est un bassin." The centre, the axis of a real nation is a river. This law, we are told, has no ex- ception, and an attempt is made to show that geology and cli- matology accord with history in recommending this distribu- tion of peoples according to basins. In the following chapter a second, so-called, is deduced from the first : " Une frontiere, c'est une montague." These two laws are said completely to define what a natural nationality is. Then a third law is laid down as determining the whole course of the historical movement. " The world oscillates between two systems of society ; simple and compound societies ; natural nationalities and artificial ag- glomerations ; peoples with frontiers and peoples without them ; the system of small states and the system of great empires." These two systems, according to M. Odysse - Barot, regularly alternate, and historical progress is little else than the periodical return of the same facts and ideas. The system of agglomera- 316 BOOK I. — FRANCE. tion or of great empires being at present at its height, must be speedily succeeded by that of true nationalities. A confedera- tion of such nationalities is what Europe will present in the near future. M. Odysse-Barot insists that small and natural states are those which are most favourable to civilisation and liberty, to material and moral wellbeing. The first impression which this theory will produce on most minds is one of amazement at its visionariness. The whole of Europe will, we are told, in a hundred years at longest, be di- vided and distributed in the manner indicated. Well, how is this wonderful change to be brought about ? Is it to be by a great European war ? No. We must do M. Odysse-Barot the justice to acknowledge that he obviously did not propose the doctrine of natural boundaries as a plea for French aggression and spoliation. So far from that, he recommended with a liberality which cannot be regarded as other than excessive — in 1864, be it remembered — that Alsace should be handed over to the German Confederation of States, and Artois to Belgium. Besides, nations have never hitherto been seen to rush to war for the express purpose of getting split up or being made smal- ler, and are not likely to be seen doing so in future. The dis- integration or dismemberment which is predicted will require to be realised, therefore, by an internal movement, by the irre- sistible enthusiasm of the populations of large empires for re- organisation according to " basins." Are " basins" at all likely, however, so to inflame the imaginations of men ? Is " a banner with the strange device," " Basins," at all likely so to terrify or so to charm the powers that be in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, in France, and Italy, and England, that they will hasten to par- cel out their kingdoms into " natural nationalities," and forth- with retire in favour of governments which can have only a fraction of their own strength ? What probability is there of Russia dividing herself according to river- basins, even if she had mountains enough to serve as natural boundaries to them ? And if Russia does not, how can Prussia ? And if Prussia does not, how can France ? The more, in fact, we look at the theory in the light of common-sense, or in relation to practicability, the more marvellous does its visionariness — to use no stronger term — appear. ODYSSE-BAROT. 317 And yet the theory has not been held merely by M. Odysse- Barot, It had been — in substance — previously advocated by M. Proudhon and others. It has since, as all the world knows, been put forth by the insurrectionary communists of Paris and the federal republicans of Spain. It is probably what many of the advocates of " Home Eule " in Ireland wish. The explana- tion of this, doubtless, is, that although the theory be absurd, its absurdity arises from the exaggeration of truth. Centralisation is a very serious disease, and most countries are suffering from it more or less. Centralisation, as it at present exists in Prance, is not improbably more injurious than would be even the di- vision of the country into a confederation of small states, on the plan recommended by M. Odysse-Barot. But the remedy for one evil is not another evil, although its contrary. The remedy for the evils of excessive centralisation is not dismem- berment, but simply a reasonable decentralisation, the limita- tion of the central power, and the leaving to the provinces and municipalities the free management of their own affairs. It is to add to the advantages of general unity those of local and personal liberty, and to avoid excesses on either side. Our author has not been happy in the discovery of his three so-called laws. The first — " nationality is a river-basin " — he affirms to be a law without exceptions ; but, to substantiate the assertion, finds it requisite to deny that there are any but three real nations in Europe, and probably should have gone further and denied that there are any real nations in the world. What country except Egypt is with any strictness a basin ? And even Egypt is a basin bounded not by mountains but by a desert and a sea. If Great Britain were divided according to basins, it would contain far more states than four. But Great Britain never was divided in that way ; nor, so far as I can discover, has any country of Europe been so divided within historical times ; and certainly none since national feeling made its ap- pearance in history. Then, as to the second law — " a natural boundary is a moun- tain " — any line of demarcation whatever between two nations is a natural boundary; for what makes a boiindary natural is nothing in itself, but the circumstance that it separates distinct 318 BOOK I. — FEANCE. nations. The true line of contact is the natural boundary, whether mountain, or river, or sea, or even merely a hedge or ditch. M. Odysse-Barot regards the sea as an unnatural boun- dary; but assuredly the inhabitants of Great Britain will not be found to agree with him. It is deeply to be regretted, indeed, that the principle of nationality should ever have been associ- ated with the dogma of so-called natural boundaries. The as- sociation or confusion may be traced chiefly to an obscure and unscrupulous party in France before the Franco-German war, who wished their country to have the Ehine for a boundary, notwithstanding that there were no more thorough Germans anywhere than those who lived on the French side of the Rhine ; and, under the name of the Munroe doctrine, to a similar party in America, who wished the whole North American continent to become the seat of a single great republic, notwithstanding that Canadians and Mexicans are nationally as distinct as can be from citizens of the United States. Since Russia, Prussia, Bavaria, Austria, and many other nations, had no more nat- ural boundaries than the United States or France, the doctrine advocated by these parties amounted to the affirmation of an almost universal right of international robbery. It was therefore matter for congratulation, that until very recently no government, even when acting on it, was shameless enough to avow adhesion to it. It had doubtless its influence in the annexation of Nice and Savoy to France, but it was not brought prominently forward, and the annexation was effected through universal suflrage, the popular vote. Near the close of the Franco-German war, however, the German Government took on itself the responsibility which even Napoleon III. had declined; and it was then deplorable to observe how the learned profes- sors of Germany — men bearing names most justly honoured for services to science — hastened forward to repeat and justify the governmental order of the day. In the form in which the prin- ciple is advocated by M. Odysse-Barot, it is not, as in that just referred to, either a direct provocation to international robbery or a 'justification of such robbery, but its acceptance could not fail to lead to all the horrors of civil war. These two fictitious laws reduce nationality, as M. Odysse- Barot himself says, to " a geographical fact." But who does not ODYSSE-BAROT. 319 see that tliat is a one-sided aud exaggerated, a mean and narrow, view of nationality, and that geography, like race, language, religion, and unity of government, is merely one of the factors which contribute to form nationality? Geographical limits, identity of race and descent, community of speech and faith, the same government aud the same political antecedents, participa- tion in the same triumphs and the same disasters, all conduce to the rise and growth of nationality, yet not one of them consti- tutes it, and not one of them will infallibly and in all circum- stances generate it. It arises from the action of many and varied causes. It is no natural quality and no necessary pro- duct of natural forces, but a spiritual creation, a result of intel- lectual and moral development, merely influenced by natural forces and outward circumstances. To this extent all nation- ality is artificial, and it suffices to show that the distinction be- tween natural and artificial nationalities as drawn by M. Odysse- Barot is inherently untenable. For the third law — " the world oscillates between a system of small states and a system of great empires" — no historical proof is attempted ; and without ample proof we must decline to accept a proposition which identifies progress with oscillation, development with the incessant recurrence of the same facts and ideas. M. Odysse-Barot has so much faith in its truth that the prevalence of the system of large states appears to him enough of itself to warrant his prediction of the near advent of the system of small states. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the former system is a natural expression of econo- mical and social conditions, which, it is to be hoped, will not pass away in the course of a century ; that it is implied in rail- ways and telegraphs, and the gigantic proportions of modern industry and commerce, as well as of modern war, and will prevail so long as these continue. Divide Trance into five in- dependent nations to-day, and the work of unification, by fair means and foul, by force, fraud, and honest exertion, will com- mence to-morrow. A great empire is now not more difficult to govern than a small state was formerly, while the disadvan- tages of small states are more numerous and decided. From beginning to end, then, the theory of M. Odysse-Barot is a failure. 320 BOOK I. — FRANCE. III. The ' Theorie du Progres ' (1867) of M. H. de Ferron, is a much more valuable work than that just noticed. It obviously owes its origin chiefly to fear, inspired by the growth of Csesar- ism in France. M. de Tocqueville had long before demonstrated that democracy was in imminent danger of issuing in despotism ; and that the more thoroughly the democratic spirit did its work in levelling and destroying social inequalities and distinctions, just so much the less resistance would the establishment of despotism encounter, while at the same time so much the more grievous would be its consequences. With regard to France his gloomiest forebodings were realised. In 1852, Ca3sarism was acclaimed by eight millions of votes. The system was subse- quently not only carried out to all its practical consequences, but the theory — the Messiahship of Csesar — was undisguisedly advocated by the man most interested in it, in his ' Histoire de Jules Cesar,' and by two of his employes, M. Dubois-Guchan, in his ' Tacite et son Siecle,' and M. Eomieu, in his ' Ere des Cesars ' and * Le Spectre Eouge.' ^ The main design of M. de Ferron's book is to expose the theory of Caesarism, and to exhibit the true character and tendencies of its practice. The first part of the first volume gives an outline of the his- tory of the theory of progress. Vico and Saint- Simon are treated with special aj^preciation ; in fact, about half of the whole space is devoted to the former alone. M. de Ferron com- bines Vice's conception that historical development has had three stages, the divine, heroic, and human, with Saint-Simon's conception that organic and critical periods have succeeded each other. These two generalisations, when united, seem to him to determine what is the line or course of human progress ; and the second part of the volume is an attempt to verify them. Greece, Rome, France, and England, are argued to have had their theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and the histories of law, art, religion, and science, to have exemplified ^ The ' Philosophie Absohie de I'Hi&toire' of M. Hoeu^ Wronski is, so far as I know, the only general philosophy of history which incorpoiates the theory of ]iolitical messiahship. I shall give some account of his works in Appendix B. LAURENT. 321 the alternation of organic and critical epochs. I need say noth- ing of this composite theory, as I have already dealt with the conception of Saint-Simon, and will, at the appropriate time, examine that of Vico. Greece and Rome not only reached a democratic stage, but they passed through it into Csesarism. The nations of Europe either have reached, or will reach, the same stage. Can they avoid the same fate ? That depends upon what organisation can be given to democracy, which again implies a knowledge of the conditions and means of progress. How has progress been brought about in the past ? Has it been by authority or by freedom ? To this question M. de Ferron returns an elaborate historical answer. He institutes an independent investigation into the influence of the control of society by the State on pro- gress under the Eomans and in modern times, on the one hand, and into the influence of liberty in France and England on the other, and finds that the political lessons which have been incul- cated by Madame de Stael, Benjamin Constant, M. de Tocque- ville, and M. Laboulaye, in France, and by John Locke, Lord Macaulay, and J. S. Mill, in England, are alone those which history warrants ; while the Csesarists, and Saint-Simon, and Louis Blanc, and Thomas Carlyle, recommend us to follow a path which history abundantly proves to be one of shame and death. His argumentation is always able, and even where not decisive, is valuable. The suggestions which he offers as to how Csesarism may be avoided are practically most interesting, but do not concern us here. IV. We conclude this chapter with ' La Philosophic de THistoire ' (1870) of Professor Laurent of Ghent. It forms the eighteenth volume of his ' Studies on the History of Humanity,' and may be regarded as a r6sum6 of the volumes which preceded it. It ex- pounds the general doctrine involved and established in those volumes. M. Laurent has been privileged to bring to a close a work which few would have had the courage to commence. He has been privileged to study every stage of human history X 322 BOOK I. FRANCE. known to us through written documents, leisurely and long enough to enable him to master the contents of the original sources of information, and of the principal treatises of the more eminent historical scholars of all times and countries ; and to trace, age after age, with independence and profundity, the de- velopment of society, and of the ideas most influential in pre- serving and regulating it. He has been privileged to communi- cate to the world the results of his researches and reflections in a long series of volumes, each devoted to some great epoch of time — the East, Greece, Eome, Christianity, the Barbarians and Catholicism, the Papacy and the Empire, Feudalism and the Church, the Eeformation, &c., &c. ; — and to recast and revise, correct and improve his work, in a second edition. Elevation of aim, independence of judgment, and diligence in research, are most conspicuous qualities in this vast monument of toil and talent ; but not more so than the love of philosophy, the desire to comprehend the meaning and purpose of facts, to discover the ideas which underlie events. In facts in them- selves, facts out of which no thoughts can be extracted, M. Laurent shows no interest ; in all facts, on the other hand, which can be seen to have influenced the essential destiny of man, to have helped or hindered the human race in its struggle for freedom and justice, he shows an almost too passionate interest. The dominant principle of his mind is obviously that of final causes. Each event, each institution, suggests to him the ques- tions — What was the design of it ? What did man intend by it ? What did God intend by it ? The ideas of efficient causation and of law are much less prominent. In other words, his intel- lect is decidedly more philosophical than scientific, — so far as philosophy and science are distinguishable. The circumstance that his ' Philosophy of History ' is the summary and conclusion of a series of most remarkable, most masterly * Studies,' confers on it an authority which it could not have possessed had it stood alone. It not only speaks for itself, but all its predecessors speak for it and tlirough it. That very circumstance, however, although greatly enhancing its value in one respect, has not proved favourable to it in another, and is, indeed, the chief reason why it is no complete philosophy of LAURENT. 323 history, or even complete outline of a philosophy of history. M, Laurent's ' Studies ' have for alternative title ' History of the Law of Nations and of International Eelations.' That title is too narrow, and the author did well to take the more general one of ' Studies on the History of Humanity ; ' still these ' Studies ' are mainly on the moral history of humanity, on its progress in the knowledge and practice of justice and benevolence, on the growth of man's insight into and reverence for the law of conscience both as regards himself and his fellow-men. Now, notwithstanding its title, M. Laurent's ' Philosophy of History ' is so much the summary of the ' Studies ' that it deals exclusively with the same phase of human development ; which is just to say that it overlooks the scientific, the ajsthetic, and the industrial evo- lution of society, and so is, properly speaking, no philosophy of history as a whole. It is doubtless, in part at least, owing to the same circum- stance, that M. Laurent makes no attempt to determine the problem of the philosophy of history, to define or describe what that philosophy ought to do ; to lay for it a foundation in the science of human nature, or even to indicate its re- lationship to the science of human nature ; to fix its general position among the sciences ; and to ascertain the methods required for its successful study. These also are fatal omis- sions in a philosophy of history. They are explained in the case of M. Laurent by his proceeding at once to enunciate the general theory which had underlain and directed his an- terior labours. In the Introduction to his work the author expounds his views regarding the immanence of God in humanity, the coexist- ence of Divine Providence and human liberty, and the reality of progress, moral and religious progress not excluded; and at- tacks the views of those who would banish God from history, or acknowledge the working of the devil in history. He argues that there can be no philosophy of history unless it be admitted that God is present in the minds and hearts of all men, controls and guides the entire series of events, and, while respecting human freedom, is continually raising the human race to higher stages of being. Naturally we ask, — Does not history, then. 324 BOOK I. — FRANCE. prove these truths ? And to our astonishment we find that M. Laurent not only believes it does, but believes that these truths with their proofs actually constitute the philosophy of history. Why the philosophy of history should presuppose what it can prove, — how it can even presuppose what it is the proof of, — he does not explain. And, in fact, his conception of the relation of theology or theodicy to the science of history appears to be just the reverse of the truth. He represents the science of his- tory as a department of natural theology, when all that can be properly maintained is, that there is a department of natural theology the truths of which may be legitimately inferred from the findings of the science of history. The science of his- tory itself neither requires nor admits of any theological pre- suppositions, M. Laurent conceives of the philosophy of history as a the- odicy ; his point of view is not the scientific but the religious. It is entirely from this stand-point that he criticises the theories of his predecessors.^ In Bossuet he sees only an advocate of the miraculous government of Providence ; in Vico, of ancient fatalism ; in Voltaire and Frederick II., of chance ; in Montes- quieu, of the fatalism of climate — in Herder, of nature — and in Eenan, of race ; in Thiers, of revolutionaiy fatalism ; in Hegel, of pantheistic fatalism; in Comte, of positivist fatalism ; and in Buckle, of the fatalism of general laws. It will be observed that, with the exception of one Italian, one English, and two German works, he has confined his survey to writings in French ; that Frederick II. and M. Thiers have no claims to a place in a his- tory of the philosophy of history not possessed by all historians ; and M. Eenan none which would not warrant the introduction of all ethnologists. But it ought also to be observed that his aim obviously has not been to give a general account of histori- cal philosophies, but simply to state and criticise representative specimens of those which imply the truth of miracle, chance, or fatalism ; which deny, explicitly or implicitly, the immanence of God, and the progressive, providential, non-miraculous educa- tion of man through the Spirit of God acting on reason and free- will. From this point of view, his criticisms, although some- 1 L. 1, c. 1. LAURENT. 325 what too polemically conceived and sharply expressed, must be admitted to be, in general, of remarkable ability. He proceeds to attempt to prove, by an examination of the facts of history as a whole, that God has been ever present therein in wisdom, and justice, and power. Taking up in suc- cession antiquity, Christianity and the barbarian invasions, feudalism, the Eeformation, and the Eevolution, he strives to show in each case that what man willed was not what God willed, and has accomplished but something lower, something less, if not even something contrary. Man has been continually growing in the knowledge of God's will, but even yet he has no more than a vague and dim perception of the general plan of His providence, although in looking back he can clearly enough see that there was a plan imderlying events which those who took part in them never dreamt of, being engrossed in far other plans of their own. He has attempted to establish this, I say, by an examination of the actual facts of history, and by what is en- titled to be regarded as a most minute and searching examina- tion of these facts, seeing that the argument summed up in book i. chap. ii. of this eighteenth volume has been carried through all the previous seventeen volumes. In doing so he seems to me to have made a most valuable contribution to natural theology. It is chiefly in the service of natural theology that he has la- boured so long and so patiently ; and he has successfully shown, what professed natural theologians have so strangely overlooked, that not less than the heavens and earth — nay, that much more than either — does history declare the glory of God. The conclusiveness of his argumentation has been challenged by Professor Jiirgen Bona Meyer, but on quite insufhcient grounds.^ The first of the two objections urged by the professor is as follows: "The fact that the consequences of human actions are frequently not those which the agents willed, and that in virtue of this contradiction between the willed and the accomplished, men obtain against their wills what is best for them, is capable of explanation from the natural reaction and counteraction of the appropriately arranged forces of the physi- cal and moral worlds. The examination of history enables us ^ Von Sybel's Historische Zeitschvift, Bd. xxv. s. 377. 326 BOOK I. FRANCE. only to recognise this natural antagonism of the forces which it comprehends ; and to refer their order, their disposition, to a divine power, is an act of faith not involved in the historical investigation. In order to help in strengthening faith in a divine government of the world, the study of history would re- quire to lead to results which admit of no sufficient explanation from the natural concatenation of what has happened, or from the free wills of men. But such results are just those to which M. Laurent's point of view does not lead." It is inexplicable how Professor Meyer — usually a most care- ful writer — could have so misunderstood M. Laurent's argument as he has here done; and how he could have overlooked the numerous passages, the pages after pages, in which M. Laurent had done all that was possible, and far more than seemed neces- sary, to make misunderstanding of the kind impossible. The argument of M. Laurent is that the examination of history dis- closes a plan pervading human affairs which has been realised through the operation of the forces of the physical and moral worlds, through the actions of human beings influenced by their surroundings, but which is not their plan, which has not originated with man, which has not originated with matter, which cannot be the work of chance, which cannot be an effect without a cause, and which must therefore be ascribed to God. Again and again he states his argument substantially so ; and yet Professor Meyer thinks it relevant to object that the fact that what is wished is often not what is attained can be ex- plained from the natural reaction and counteraction of the appropriately arranged historical forces, as if M. Laurent had failed to raise the question, Who arranged these forces ? and as if he had never argued that it could not be nothing, could not be chance, could not be nature, could not be general laws, could not be man, but must be God. "What is the avowed purpose of the whole 237 pages of introduction and criticism which precede his examination of the facts ? Here is an abridgment of what he himself says : " We have passed in review all the theories imagined by philosophers and historians to explain the mysteri- ous fact that there is in the life of man unfolded in liistory a succession, a plan, a development which cannot be referred to LAURENT. 327 man himself. Some, despairing from the outset to find a solu- tion, make of their ignorance a blind power which they call hazard. Evidently that is no solution. Hazard is a word, and nothing more. Other writers — the majority of writers — say that this mysterious power is nature, under the form of climate, or races, or the whole of the physical influences which act on the moral world. But what is nature ? Whence has it this power, this foresight, this intelligence, which are so conspicuous in the course of our destinies ? If nature is matter, and nothing but matter, that too is no answer. Who will believe that matter acts with wisdom, with intelligence? Where there is intelligent action there must be an intelligent being ; therefore nature leads us to God. Finally, there are those who substitute for nature general laws. But do not laws suppose a legislator ? And who can this legislator be if not God ? " ^ These are the conclusions, I repeat, which M. Laurent devotes the first 237 pages of his work to enforce, — partly by expounding his own views, and partly by assailing those of others. And then he occupies the 134 pages which follow with an examination of the facts of history as a whole, undertaken expressly and exclusively to show that they necessitate the same conclusions. In these cir- cumstances. Professor Meyer's objection must be held quite unreasonable. And indeed it seems to me, no objection can possibly apply to M, Laurent's reasoning which would not equally apply to every form of theistical argument from effect to cause, from plan to designer, from course of procedure to character of the agent. He does not pretend that history proves to us the presence of God as it proves to us that a certain battle took place, or that a certain law was passed ; but that it proves it as clearly as nature does. He takes no notice of objections, like those formulated by Kant, against all theological reasonings which are based on empirical facts, and assume the validity, beyond the bounds of experience, of the principles either of efficient or final causes ; but against all less sweeping and radical objections he has made his position quite secure. Professor Meyer proceeds : " Laurent's point of view is like- wise suspicious, since it leads to misinterpretation of the will 1 P. 239, 240. 328 BOOK I. — FRANCE. of men, in order thereby to exalt so much the more the will of God, He has fallen into this error, for example, when he main- tains that Christ had not the intention of founding a new re- ligion, but of preparing men for the near end of all things. In- deed he has been misled throughout by his false point of view to follow the course of the human will mainly in the direction of perversity and evil." Now it is unfortunately true that M. Laurent has fallen into the error of maintaining that Christ in preaching the gospel of the kingdom willed what God did not will, and has accom- plished not what He Himself willed, but w^hat God willed. The cause of that, however, is not the general point of view from which he has argued for the presence of God in historj^, but simply the fact that for the reasons which he gives in the fourth volume of his work, that entitled ' Etude sur le Christian- isme,' he rejects Christianity as a special divine revelation. I deeply regret that a man who in every page of his work shows so profound and living a sense of the presence and providence of God, should not have a deeper insight into the character and mission of Christ ; but I can find no grounds for attributing his defective vision to his historical " point of view." The general assertion of Professor Meyer, that M. Laurent's point of view has led him throughout to seek chiefly the evi- dences of perversity and evil in the motives of men, is utterly baseless. What M. Laurent really seeks chiefly throughout his work are the evidences of man's progressive apprehension of the plan and purposes of God in human life, of his own rights to liberty and equality, of religious truth and moral duty. His argument requires him to lay no undue stress on the perversity and wickedness of men's wills. It is enough for it that men's wills have not been coincident with God's will ; that their pur- poses have been narrower and meaner than His plans ; that high as are the heavens above the earth, so high have been His thoughts above their thoughts. The second and last book of M. Laurent's ' Philosophy of His- tory ' treats of progress in history. It is, in fact, an inductive proof of the reality of the progress of man, individually and nationally, in all ethical directions. In a chapter on " The In- LAURENT. 329 dividual and his Eights," the author traces the growth of liberty and equality in the oriental theocracies, in the classical na- tions, in the Christian Church, in Germanic and feudal society ; and concludes by warning against the individualism which de- nies the rights of the State, and the socialism which denies the rights of the person. In the second chapter — " The Individual and his Duties" — he argues that the facts of history viewed along its whole course indubitably establish that there has been both a religious and a moral progress in the personal lives of men, — a growth in spiritual truth and an emancipation from spiritual errors, a growth in purity and delicacy of feeling as to relations between the sexes, a decrease of cruelty, &c. From individuals with their rights and duties he passes to na- tions and their relations. The third chapter dwells on the sig- nificance of nationality, and gives an historical exposition of the formation of nationalities in humanity, or of the differentiation of humanity into nationalities. It shows how the variety of nations in the unity of humanity contributes to the profound and exhaustive development of the soul, and to the advance- ment of the race in knowledge and morality ; how different from true national feeling were the sentiments which united the subjects of Asiatic despotisms and the inhabitants of Greek cities, and which impelled the Romans to constant aggression on their neighbours ; how the principle of nationality was affected by Christianity and the Papacy ; how it was furthered by the Eenaissance and the Eeformation ; how its course was modified by the Monarchy, the Eevolution, and Napoleon ; and how, in still more recent times, it has made itself known and felt in all directions as never before, seeing that in peace and war the peoples are everywhere appearing with the assertion of their right to decide for themselves, to be themselves the central and conspicuous figures in whatever drama Providence composes for them. Along with the idea of nationality itself there gradually grows up this other, that nation is bound to nation by ties of justice and nature ; that they have rights and responsibilities, mutual obligations and interests ; that they are members of hu- manity, a brotherhood, a family, and that a wrong done by one to another, by the strongest to the weakest, is fratricidal and 330 BOOK I. FRANCE. unholy. The gro'Avth of this idea, or, in other words, the growth of a true recognition of the moral relations in which nations stand to one another, of how they ought to feel and act towards one another, is traced from the earliest to the latest times in the last chapter of M. Laurent's work, and certain speculations con- nected therewith bearing on the future prospects of humanity are discussed. A hopeful, yet not Utopian, spirit characterises all his speculations as to the future. The conclusions relative to progress, which have their evi- dence summarily stated in these four chapters, and stated in the seventeen volumes of the ' Etudes ' with a fulness never be- fore equalled, are far from composing a complete philosophy of history, or even of historical progress ; but they are most im- portant conclusions, which every philosophy of history must undoubtedly include, and M. Laurent is entitled to all grati- tude for the enormous labour he has bestowed on their demon- stration.^ ^ In Appendix B a considerable number of French treatises, essays, &c., on the philosopliy of history, not mentioned in the preceding pages, will be found liriefly noticed. A few works I have passed over in silence, not because I regard them as of comparatively little importance, but because in my " General Conclu- sion" I shall have to refer to them in discussing the questions on which they seem to me to be of special interest. The ' Considerations sur la Marche des Idees et des Bvenements dans les Temps Modernes' of M. Cournot, and the 'In- troduction a la Philosophic Analytique de I'Histoire' of M. Eenouvier, are, e.g., books of this latter class. BOOK IT. GERMANY 333 CHAPTER I. THE PROGEESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN GERMANY. It seems desirable briefly to indicate the course by which Ger- man historiography led on to the philosophy of history. The reader must, however, kindly remember that there is no good account of the development of historical literature in Germany, no re- liable guide-book on the subject, although the Historical Com- mission of the Royal Academy of Bavaria, to which the world is already indebted for some very able works on the history of the sciences, has promised to supply this great, and, I believe, widely felt want, and may be expected to do so admirably.^ It is the general view in this country that the historical litera- ture, and indeed the entire literature, of Germany sprang up of a sudden in the latter part of last century : and the notion is not altogether false; for the marvellous literature with which we associate the name German, although perhaps at the present day the richest in Europe, does in a sense date only from about the middle of the eighteenth century. However, it has under- ground roots which go very far back : in no department is its connection with the most ancient times quite severed ; it is the brilliant son of a long line of plain but respectable ancestors. There is abundant evidence of this as regards historical compo- sition without going further back than the Eenaissance and the Eeformation. These two events both acted on the study of history in the same way. Both stimulated inquiry and gave an impulse to the collection of historical materials, the former sending the Ger- man humanists to search in history for illustrations of the Greek and Roman classics, and the latter the German reformers to seek ^ The task has been intrusted to Professor Wegele of Wiirzburg. 334 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. in it arms of attack and defence against the adherents of the Papacy ; while, at the same time, both led men to value histori- cal knowledge, not for its own sake, but merely as an instrument, and so to study history in a way the reverse of catholic, free, or philosophical. The Eeformation especially could not fail power- fully to affect the character of ecclesiastical historiography, which has had in Germany an uninterrupted course from the Ee- formation downwards, and which has steadily advanced from the narrow bondage of dogma towards the broad freedom of science. It began with the celebrated Centuriaj Magdeburgenses of Mat- thias Flacius and his assistants, a vast work in thirteen folio volumes, which first appeared at Basle (1559-74), and con- tained an enormous erudition whence all Lutheran Church his- tories for a century afterwards were drawn, but which sought throughout to vilify Eomanism and glorify Lutheran Protestant- ism, and displayed a spirit so bitter and unjust that Koman Catholics had some excuse for speaking of it as ' The Centuries of Satan.' J. H. Hottinger and others followed with histories written in the interest of Eeformed as opposed to Lutheran Pro- testanism. In this stage ecclesiastical history was the slave of sectarian theology, — at the best a conscientious and laborious slave. George Calixtus, a man of great genius and merit as a theological thinker, pointed out a broader and better path than any which was followed until long after. The Impartial History of the Church and Heretics (Unpartheyische Kirchen und Ketzer- historie) of Gottfried Arnold, the first volume of which appeared in the last year of the seventeenth century, marked an extreme point in the pietistic reaction against a dead orthodoxy and Churchly self-sufficiency and intolerance, subordinating as it did everything external and doctrinal to pious feeling or even mys- tic emotion in the individual, and proceeding on the notion that the only true Church is invisible, composed of "hidden ones," who are hated and persecuted not only by avowed worldlings, but by the partisans of the visible Churches, men who wrangle and fight for the honour of being sound in the faith although wholly destitute of spiritual life. There can be no doubt that this view was useful as a reaction; that it directed the attention which had hitherto been fixed almost exclusively on dogmatic opinions and THE PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY. 335 outward facts to the varied phases of the inner spiritual life ; and that, by giving " heretics " more than justice, it helped to secure for them their due of justice, and thereby greatly to enlarge and enrich Church history both in conception and execiition : but it was, notwithstanding, a narrow, one-sided, and prejudiced view, which was naturally soon left behind. The next step was an important one. About the middle of last century there was formed an historical school, seated chiefly in the universities of Gottingen and Jena, which performed services that must always be remembered wath gratitude. It had for representatives in the department of ecclesiastical history such men as Mosheim, Pfaff, the Walchs, &c., who endeavoured to do justice to all parties, and to find sense in all systems ; and whose works are characterised not only by this admirable im- partiality, but by an unwearied diligence in the collection of materials, an earnestness of research which makes them often indispensable even at the present day. The chief defect in the writers of this school was want of philosophical insight into the organic development of the past, and into the working of the deeper and more pervasive factors of history ; whence it resulted that although they honestly tried to explain events, or to refer them to their causes, their explanations were superficial and unsatisfac- tory — the causes indicated, secondary and individual, not perma- nent and essential. This defect is still more manifest in Schrockh, Spittler, Planck, and others, who continued the school ; and it may fairly be regarded as the internal and constitutional cause of its having gradually lost its separate existence, and been absorbed into the cold dry Ptationalism, inaugurated by Semler, with which the last century closed and the present began. That Eationalism rendered by its bold criticism both of facts and accredited opinions important services, and its scepticism completed the independence of religious history or dogmatic theology ; but, treating as it did the whole Christian past as the product of human passions, mean motives, and trivial causes, and seeing in it no underlying plan, no organic connection and* development, no worthy end, it had no claim to be considered as philosophical in character, although it helped on to the philosophical schools which succeeded it. 336 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. These were called forth by that entire change in the spiritual atmosphere of the world which made itself first universally per- ceived by the tremendous volcanic eruption of the French Revolu- tion ; but gradually showed itself in all lands in the most manifold forms, literary, artistic, political, moral, scientific, philosophical, and religious, making all the springs of life gush forth, and all its channels flow with a fulness unknown before. They may, so far as Church history is concerned, be reduced to two — the one having had Augustus JSTeander for its greatest representa- tive, and the other Ferdinand Christian Baur — the one having received its strongest impulse from Schleiermacher, and the other from Hegel, — but both having, notwithstanding their profound differences, this in common, that they consciously rest on philosophical principles, consciously treat religious history as a process which has laws and relationships of the kind that fall within the province of philosophy. The course of political historiography ran nearly parallel to the ecclesiastical. Of course the Reformation influenced it much less ; in fact, it influenced it at first very little. Power- ful as that event was in certain respects, it was long before it worked its way as a transforming principle into the political life of Germany ; it operated visibly as a sword long before it brought about as leaven any marked political change capable of making itself felt in the composition of political histories. In the sixteenth century, Carlo, Cluverius, Gamerus, Genebrard, Kup- ferschmid, Macker, Neander, and others, all wrote what they themselves correctly called Chronica. Some of these works must have been very popular ; -^ but none of them contains philosophy enough even to entitle it to be regarded as history in the higher sense of the term. Sleidan, who had in an ex- ceptional degree some of the best gifts of an historian, came nearest to producing what might properly be called a universal history in his ' De Quatuor Summis Imperils Libri Tres,' pub- lished in 1556 ; yet the mere title of this work discloses the antiquated and absurd point of view from which it is written ; ^ E.g., I find from the Catalogue of tlie University Library of Tiibingen, that that library contains eighteen editions, all belonging to the sixteenth century, of the ' Chronica' of J. Carlo, first published in 1499. THE PllOGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY. 337 and notliing can more decisively show how dull a race his successors must have been, than the fact that J. G, Gatterer, who died only in 1799, has the honour of having definitively convinced historians of the absurdity of dividing general history into four periods corresponding to the monarchies of the prophet Daniel. In the seventeenth century, and down even to the middle of the eighteenth, civil, like ecclesiastical historiography, was in Germany in a truly deplorable condition, the prime cause of which, doubtless, was the anarchy and misery of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), which ended with the Peace of West- phalia — i.e., with the division of the nation, according to religi- ous differences, into two halves, and the consummation of the ruin of the secular power and of political life through the estab- lishment of small local sovereignties. " It would be hard," says Mr Bryce in his excellent work on the Holy Roman Empire, " to find, from the Peace of Westphalia to the French Revolution, a single grand character or a single noble enterprise, a single sacrifice made to great public interests, a single instance in which the welfare of nations was prefeiTed to the selfish passions of their princes. The military history of these times wiU always be read with interest, but free and progressive countries have a history of peace not less rich and varied than that of war ; and when we ask for an account of the political life of Germany from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts and the wranglings of diplomatists at never-ending congresses." This state of things reflected^ itself in the dull, dead way in which history was written. Never were men more devoid of political insight, breadth of view, national feeling, or power of narration, than the German his- torians of this epoch ; they were in all these qualities far behind their French and English contemporaries ; they had, in fact, only that one merit which the Germans have preserved even in their lowest estate, and displayed through all the vicissitudes of their history — perseverance, industry in collecting materials, the patient discharge of the most wearisome taskwork, that " laboriositas " of which Leibnitz speaks, — " cui nationi, inter Y 338 BOOK II. GERMANY. animi dotes, sola laboriositas concessa esse videtur." In this century Germany produced, so far as I know, not a single civil history of real excellence. It produced, however, several valuable collections of historical materials — e. g., those of Mei- bomius, Schilterus, Canisius, and especially the ' Acta Publica ' of Londorp, and the * Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus/ the ' Scriptores Eerum Brunsvicensium,' and ' Accessiones His- toric8s' of the illustrious Leibnitz. And that great man, it must be remembered, meant himself to utilise the enormous store of materials which he had amassed by three years of in- cessant research in Franconia, Bavaria, Suabia, Austria, and Italy, in a history of the House of Brunswick, of which, unfor- tunately, only the outline or plan was published, although that suffices to show that the work proposed was grandly and philo- sophically conceived. He was to have begun with the geography and geology of Germany, and with the historical conjectures which these suggest ; next, to have described, as far as linguistic remains and other records allowed, the different tribes which had successively settled in it ; to have become more minute and special from the time of Charlemagne, and in recounting the his- tories of the emperors descended from him, and of the five em- perors of the House of Saxony, to have included the histories of the great Saxon, Bavarian, and Lombardian houses, from which arose that of Brunswick ; then to have narrated the story of its fortunes ; and finally to have traced all its relationships. Leibnitz believed himself able to throw a vast amount of new light on medieval times, and so almost to revolutionise men's views regarding them ; probably he did not greatly overestimate his powers. The antiquarian and documentary collections of the seven- teenth century were preludes to the works of a very learned school of civil history which flourished at the same time, in the same places, under the same influences, and which displayed the same qualities as the school of ecclesiastical history founded by Pfaff and Mosheim. It was represented by Mascov, the two Mosers, Justus Moser, Hiiberlin, Piitter, A. L. von Schlozer, and others — men, some of whom were highly remarkable both for ability and character, and all of whom accomplished no in- THE PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY. 339 considerable amount of solid and useful work, although their services are no longer remembered, and, with the exception of Schlozer, their very names are omitted from our best English biographical dictionaries. Never were there more conscientious labourers. They spared no toil to make their work substantial. If they have ever been surpassed in industry and accuracy of research, which may be doubted, it has only been by a few authors belonging to the school of liistory founded by Savigny and Niebuhr, or, in other words, by men whose advantages and resources were vastly greater. And their impartiality was not inferior to their industry. In fact, the indefatigable industry, which is their most obvious characteristic, had its motive cause in a love of truth as pure as it was earnest, not less free from prejudice than capable of toil and sacrifice. They showed these merits of industry and impartiality chiefly in two spheres, the history of particular provinces and princely families, and the history of foreign peoples. They did comparatively little di- rectly for general German history, but it was because there was either none or only what was a grief and distraction to look on. English scholars preceded those of Germany in the study of the histories of foreign peoples ; but from 1772, the date of the pub- lication of Schlozer's ' AUgemeine Nordische Geschichte,' the lat- ter have probably surpassed in this field all competitors. It was a field in which Masco v had already done excellent service. i" The spread of the so-called German Illuminism, a continua- tion of the French Illuminism, gave rise to other views re- garding the historical art. Learned research became less valued, while beauty of form, elegance of composition, came to be con- sidered indispensable. Less industry was manifested in re- search, — more attention was given to arrangement and style. Thus far, perhaps, the gain scarcely balanced the loss. There was, however, another and greater than merely aesthetic gain. History was seen in a new light. The fact that it had been pervaded by general ideas began to be realised. A growth of culture, of enlightened reflection and social refinement, was discerned to have pervaded the ages, and many began to think ^ Mascov's 'History of the Ancient Germans and other Northern Nations' was translated into English by Thomas Lediard in 1738. 340 BOOK II. — GERMANY. tliat the true aim, or at least the highest aim, of the historian must be to trace the course and progress of that growth. It was during this period, which embraced the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth century, that tlio notion of there being a philosophy of history dawned on the Grerman mind, and it is remarkable by how many persons it was apprehended about the same time. In the quarter of a century which preceded the Trench Eevolution, Iselin, Wegelin, Schlozer, Miiller, Lessing, Herder, Kant, and Schiller, aU tried to trace the outlines of the plan which underlies universal human history, and to discover and exhibit its central thought. There could scarcely be a more striking confirmation of Ba- con's words, " Truth has been rightly named the daughter of Time." The two most representative historians of the period were the celebrated Johannes von Miiller and the still more celebrated Friedrich Schiller. In Germany, as in France, it was the writers of the age of illumination who definitively freed historical composition from theological thraldom and scholastic pedantry and formalism, and raised it to the dignity of an independent department of literature ; who breathed life into its dry bones, and clothed them with flesh fair to see ; who presented it as a manifestation of humanity and its culture, and thereby gave it present and permanent interest for human beings as such, for men as men. But while they saw a meaning in history previously unper- ceived, they failed to estimate aright the depth at which it lay and the difficulties of reaching it, and so felt very inadequately the necessity of laborious and critical research. They went little below the surface, did not penetrate into the depths of past human existence and try earnestly by study and experience of life to realise what had taken place in them ; but accepted hastily a few easily formed generalisations about progress, freedom, cul- ture, humanity, as the essential truths of history, the substance of its whole teaching, while they remained still devoid of any but the most superficial notions of these things, progress, free- dom, culture, humanity. History itself, however, soon began to teach the Germans the superficiality of their notions on these subjects in a severe and bitter but effective way. They THE PROGRESS OF HTSTORIORGAPHY. 341 liad come to fancy the principle of true culture to be the en- thusiasm of humanity, a passionate vague love of man as man, in which patriotism and other particular affections are absorbed and lost. Many even of the men who did most to found Ger- man nationality regarded national feeling as but another name for an irrational prejudice. Frederick the Great did so ; Lessing confessed he could not understand what patriotism meant ; Goethe and Hegel were devoid of it ; Schiller said it was chiefly of importance for unripe nations and the youth of the world, but that thoughtful men could not grow warm over a particular nation, except in so far as its fortunes influence the progress of the species ; and Fichte, very shortly before the battle of Jena, declared that only a mere earth-born man would mourn over the fall of his country, and that a man of true culture would ever regard the nation whose culture was highest as the real fatherland and home of his spirit. But the shame of actual national humiliation and the discipline of national suffering taught the Germans the shallowness of their cosmopolitanism and its culture, and the value of national feeling and life ; taught them to study themselves, to seek to know and be themselves, to get down to the roots of their weakness that they might root them out, and to the roots of their strength that they might un- derstand how to develop them. And the whole world knows how amply they have profited by the teaching, and how nobly they have developed their resources in the most manifold forms of literature, science, art, and action, — certainly not least in the department of history. Since " the storm broke loose and the people rose " in the war of liberation, far more historical works of sterling merit have been written in Germany than in all the rest of the world to- gether during the same period. There is not a corner of the vast field of history where the scholars of Germany are not to be found labouring in greater numbers and with more fidelity and success than those of any other nation. If we think of oriental and classical history, Plath and Lassen, Movers and Ewald, Lepsius, Brugsch, and Bunsen, Von Hammer-Purgstall and Weil, Boeckh, 0. Miiller, and Curtius, Niebuhr, Mommsen, and Ihne, are the sort of names which recur to us ; if of the mid- 342 BOOK II. — GERMANY. die ages, Savigny, the brothers Grimm, Pertz, Leo, Giesebrecht, Von Maurer, K. Hegel, &c. ; if of later times, Schlosser, Gervinus, lianke, Von Sybel, and a great host of others so kindred in spirit and equally matched in talent that to choose among them seems invidious. Every modern country has had light thrown on its history by German research — as, for instance, our own by the studies of Dahlman, and Lappenberg, and Pauli, and Eanke, and Gneist, and Pischel. Almost every branch of science, physical and mental, has had its history worthily described by Germans. The history of philosophy, for example, has been in- vestigated by Hegel, Ritter, Zeller, Stockl, Erdmann, Fischer, and a multitude of others. For every one ecclesiastical historian which France or England could produce, Germany could pro- duce fifty as good or better. The fundamental principle of the great historical school founded in Germany by Niebuhr and Savigny, is national in- dividuality : its essential characteristics are aversion to impos- ing on history general ideas and constructions, or deducing from it systems of abstract propositions ; a desire to penetrate into the character of each people as if it were a concrete personality ; an endeavour to comprehend and trace each stage of the historical movement as a stage of organic growth or natural evolution ; and a faithful and critical use of the primary sources of information. It may have dealt with history in a one-sided way, — its aversion to general ideas may have been due, at least in part, to inability to apprehend them, — and it may have shown an excessive jealousy towards historical philosophy except in the somewhat puerile form of a comparison of national development to the or- ganic growth of the individual man ; but whatever may be its faults, they have arisen mainly from the very intensity of the desire of those who have belonged to it thoroughly to sift and master the subject on which they happened to be engaged, from the very concentration of their faculties on their task ; and it is only through such works as those which they have produced that the true philosophy of universal history, which is nothing else than its true comprehension, can be gradually evolved. The special and the particular must be gone through before real philosophical generality can be reached. The cosmopolitanism THE PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY. 343 of view which ignores or denies national differences is false ; the true cosmopolitanism presupposes them, and while rising above them rises out of them. The chief error of historical philoso- phers has been overlooking this fact, and supposing that the race could be known while the nations and generations which con- stituted it were not; or, in other words, that the philosophy of his- tory lay on the near instead of on the far side of liistory itself I must not go farther or more minutely, however, into the history of the historical art in Germany, but must turn to my proper theme, the history of historical science or philosophy. 344 CHAPTER II. THE EISE OF HISTOEICAL PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY : LEIBNITZ, ISELIN, WEGELIN, SCHLOZER, VON MULLER. Leibnitz (1646-1716) was gifted, as very few have been, with all the faculties required in a great historical philosopher. He possessed powers of endurance and labour rarely equalled, and exercised them with an assiduity and energy which made him even early in life undoubtedly one of the most learned men that have ever lived; and his extraordinary industry and erudition were united with the keenest insight, the prufoundest reflection, and the highest speculative originality. He possessed almost all endowments of mind, even those which are seldom combined in the same individual, in wondrous perfection, and with far more truth than Lord Bacon he might have said, " I have taken all knowledge for my province." Aristotle alone, in fact, in the his- tory of thought, can be compared with him for universality of in- tellect and intellectual acquisition. Mathematics, metaphysics, theology, languages, law, history, politics, geology, chemistry, medicine, all came alike to him. He had a corresponding catho- licity of spirit which led him to seek a soul of truth and good in all things, and to endeavour to combine, conciliate, and har- iQonise the most diverse systems. He was the first, and, Hegel excepted, the greatest of modern eclectics. It is impossible not to regret that he has nowhere treated directly of a science which he was so singularly fitted to advance, although he has done so much for so many sciences that it appears like ingratitude even to wish that he had done either more or otherwise than he did.^ 1 For a list of biographies of Leibnitz, editions of his works, and treatises on his philosophy, see Ueberweg's ' Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie der LEIBNITZ. 345 Notwithstanding his not having directly treated of the philo- sophy of history, Leibnitz has rendered it valuable services, or at least has exercised considerable influence on it. He did much, as has been already said, for history itseK ; and directly to ad- vance the study of history is mediately to advance the study of the science of history. So far as I know, he was the first to combine on a scale of any considerable magnitude history and philology, which is as important in historical science as the com- bination of algebra and geometry in mathematics. The whole spirit of his philosophy was historical. It was the first philo- sophy which was profoundly historical in spirit. It was so in its comprehensiveness and catholicity, uniting not only imme- diately Cartesianism and the Aufklarung, but mediately the whole past and future of the history of reason. It was so, like- wise, in some of its essential principles and distinctive tenets — as, for example, in its doctrine of a world-law of analogy resting on the individuation and specification of the monads ; in the appre- hension of life as everywhere present, everywhere related to all other life, and everywhere a development ; in the importance assigned to the law of continuity, of an unbroken gradation of organisms, the non-existence of any break in the order of dependent beings ; and in the general theory of pre-established harmony and its special form of optimism. These views have all been carried, since Leibnitz wrote, into historical speculation. As Leibnitz himself, however, did not make an historical appli- cation of them, it would be out of place to discuss that applica- tion of them here. To consider them in themselves would be still more so, and would, besides, involve the investigation of the whole Leibnitzian system. Perhaps the theory of optimism may claim to be in some degree an exception ; for although Leibnitz did not attempt to Neuzeit,' Dritte Auflage, 106-109. The best biography is that of Guhrauer ; the most convenient edition of his philosophical works that of Erdmann ; the best editions of his whole works are those of Pertz, De Careil, and Klopp, but all three are still incomplete ; the ablest and most accurate accounts of his philoso- phy are those given by Erdmann (' Darstellung der Geschichte der neuern Philo- sophic,' Bd. ii. Abth. ii), Nourisson (' La Philosophie de Leibnitz ' ), Kuno Fischer (' Geschichte der neuern Philosophic,' Bd. ii.), and Zeller (' Geschichte der deut- schen Philosophie,' Erster Abschnitt.) Pfleidcrer's G. W. Leibnitz, als Pntriot, Staatsraann, und Bildungstriiger (1870), is an interesting book. 346 BOOK II. — GEEMANY. prove it by means of history, and was not apparently influenced by it in his mode of writing history, he so stated and illustrated it as to have clearly suggested historical optimism, which, in fact, is but the consistent and thorough introduction into his- tory of his thought that the best of all possible worlds is one which abounds in crimes like those of Sextus Tarquinius, — that if Sextus had lived contented with a moderate fortune at Corinth, or been a wise and virtuous king in Thrace, the world must ne- cessarily have been worse than it has been, notwithstanding the enormous iniquities of the Sextus who ruled at Rome. It is scarcely necessary to say that the historical illustration gives not the slightest confirmation to the theory, for history affords no warrant whatever for belief of the assertion which it involves. History knows the actual Tarquin of the actual world, but it knows nothing of possible Tarquins in possible worlds. Only to a very superficial and inaccurate glance will it seem that the crimes of Tarquin contributed much to Eoman freedom and power, and that they contributed anything was due to their eliciting the action of forces which many other things might have excited and impelled in a better way. The optimism of Leibnitz has some decided advantages over the o^Dtimism of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope; but it is equally hypothetical, and the only real argument for it is the theological one, — " The world is the best possible, because God is infinitely powerful, wise, and good." It is an argument in which I confess I can discover little force. Is there not just as much reason for saying that the world cannot be so good but that God could have made it better because He is thus infinite ? He is infinite, and the world is finite, — the distance between His goodness and any degree of goodness the world can have must be infinite, — and to say that it is as good as He could make it, however good He may have made it, would appear to involve the supposition that His power is limited. In fact, it almost seems as if here were a case where, turn to which side you please, there meets you the horn of a dilemma. If, says the optimist, the world is not the best possible, God cannot be all-good. Grant that; but then, if the world be the best possible, God cannot be all-powerful. The latter inference seems to be as good as the former. And per- LEIBNITZ. 347 haps the true inference is, that we are reasoning in a region too high for us ; that our reasoning being about the infinite, our conclusions are really not much worth one way or another. At the same time I think the difficulty raised by the optimist the lesser difficulty. The inference for the goodness of God is secure, I think, if the original constitution of all things, if all things as made by God be very good, whether the best possible or not; but I cannot conceive how the power, wisdom, and goodness there is in the present or any finite universe can be the highest possible expression of a power, wisdom, and good- ness which are infinite.^ It was only, as has been already said, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, that the idea of there being a philosophy of history dawned on the German mind. It was one of the many ideas which Germany about this time derived from France. Herr Rosenkranz has denied this, but it is nevertheless true ; and nothing but national prejudice could have led him to attri- bute the opinion to French ' Levity and Vanity,' The two first authors in Germany who attempted to subject history to phil- osophy-were both natives of Switzerland, a country which has long been and still is influential as an intellectual medium between France and Germany. These two authors were Iselin and WegeHn.^ ^ On the optimism of Leibnitz see, besides the already mentioned works of Erdmann, Nourisson, Fischer, and Zeller, the treatises of Bilfinger ('De Origi- ne et Permissione Mali,' 1724) and Baumeister {'Historia Doctrina; de Optimo Muudo,' 1741); Kant, ' Uber den Optimismus ' and ' Uber das Misslingen allor philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee ; Chalmers, ' Natural Theology ' (Book V. ch. ii.); Bonifas, Etude sur la Theodicee de Leibnitz ; ' and Pichler, ' Die The- ologie des Leibnitz.' 2 The earliest work in German professing to expound the principles of a science of history, with which I am acquainted, was published by John Martin Chladni in 1752. It has been quite overlooked even by the Germans. The author was of Hungarian extraction, and of a family several of whose members distinguished themselves in science, the most celebrated, perhaps, being Ernst Chladni, the great discoverer in experimental acoustics. John Martin Chladni wrote, in addition to his ' Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft, ' a ' Philosophia Nova Definitiva,' a ' Logica Practica,' and two volumes of ' Opuscula Academica ; ' but these are also unknown even to the German historians of philosophy. The ' AUg. Geschichtswissenschaft' does not answer to its name. Its subject is not history itself, but historical investigation and exposition. It is what the Ger- mans now call an ' Historik.' Dr Chladni fully believed himself to be laying in it the foundation of a science entirely new and infinitely important. In the 348 BOOK II. — GERMANY. II. Isaak Iselin (1728-82) was a highly genial, kindly, and cultivated man ; keenly alive to the claims of justice and the charms of benevolence ; a sincere seeker after truth, and an in- defatigable disseminator of it. He was a zealous advocate of the views on education associated with the names of Eousseau and Basedow, the reforms in criminal legislation demanded by Beccaria, the truths in practical politics promulgated by Mon- tesquieu, and the economical doctrines of Quesnay. The fervent love of truth, virtue, and his fellow-men, which characterised him, pervades with a most pleasing warmth his ' Versuch liber die gesellschaftliche Ordnung,' 'Traume eiues Menschenfreun- des,' ' Ephemeriden der Menscheit,' and all his other works ; but none of them more so than that which claims our attention, the two volumes of ' Philosophische Muthmassungen iiber die Geschichte der Menscheit ' (Philosophical Conjectures on the History of Humanity), published in 1764. It has for motto these lines from Pope : — * ' Let us, since life can little more supply, Than just to look about us and to die, Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man. " And " expatiate free o'er all this scene of man " is precisely what it does. It consists of six books, and each book contains many chapters, all short, some very short, one consisting of only two sen- tences, as in Montesquieu ; so that a vast number of subjects are preface he expresses the conviction that his life has been providentially guided to this end, and states how he supposes his various changes and situations, his offices at the university of Wittenberg, his duties as lecturer on Church Antiqui- ties at Leipsig, as director of the gymnasium at Coburg, and finally as 'ordent- licher Professor der Gotteslahrheit, der Beredsamkeit und der Poesie, wie auch Pastor an der Uuiversitlitskirche ' at Erlangen, had all led him to it, and pre- pared him for it. The work consists of twelve chapters, which treat respectively of the following themes : 1°, Historical knowledge in general ; 2°, The move- ments of bodies ; 3°, The movements of moral beings ; 4°, The movements of men and histories ; 5°, The spectator and the point of view ; 6°, The alteration which history suffers in the telling of it ; 7°, The diffusion and propagation of history ; 8°, The connection of events and historical causation ; 9°, Historical certainty; 10°, Historical probability ; 11°, Ancient and foreign histories; and 12°, Future things, and rules in conjecturing. ISAAK ISELIN. 349 touched upon, while, unfortunately, none are studied with ade- quate depth and fulness. It is neither a philosophically elab- orated whole, nor a series of connected investigations, but an extremely rapid succession of remarks, loosely put together under a few general heads, on the immense variety of matters presented by " this scene of man." The first book professes to be a psychological consideration of man. It is not, however, an analysis of his mind into element- ary or primary principles, and still less such a study of these as is needed to lay a solid psychological foundation for an histori- cal theory. It is merely a series of remarks, interesting and well put, but not in the least scientific, on the more obvious as- pects, properties, and relations of the soul. It is considerably more desultory and less analytic than even the first part of Fer- guson's ' Essay on the History of Civil Society ' — that on " The general characteristics of human nature," — while it corresponds to it, and may profitably be compared with it. The second book treats of the state of nature. By that ex- pression some philosophers have meant the simplest and lowest state a man can be in, remaining man, and others the best state a man can be in, the state most conformed to the character of his constitution ; and these latter philosophers have often sup- posed that they refuted the former by showing that what was affirmed of the state of nature in the first sense was not true of it in the second, not seeing that even if they proved such to be the case they only established what needed no proof, and what nobody ever denied — viz., that man's worst estate is not his best. Dr Ferguson, for instance, fell into the error, and actually sup- posed it to be a relevant objection to Hobbes's hypothesis of the state of nature being a state of war out of which men contrived to escape by combination and mutual concessions to say, that the state of nature had never ceased, and was as well represent- ed by the most polished Parisian as by the rudest savage ; and Cousin and others have referred to this reply with approbation. Iselin deserves some credit for not having fallen into this error. Without explicitly distinguishing the two meanings of the phrase " state of nature," he does so virtually by proceeding throughout on the correct supposition that the second signifi- 350 BOOK II. — GERMANY. cation is irrelevant to the investigation he has in hand, and that the real questions he has to resolve in this second book are, What is the lowest or simplest condition in which man can be supposed to have lived? and what are the conditions next in order through which he must have passed, in ascending from it to his present place in civilisation ? He thinks man could not have existed with merely the use of his senses, and a susceptibility to present pleasure and pain ; but must even in his lowest state have had both foresight and memory to some extent, with corresponding aversions and de- sires, although only for sensible things. In this state there would be no sense of property, no sentiment of decency or duty, no general notions, and no speech. Whether it ever actually existed is doubtful ; if it did we ought not to regret, like Eous- seau, that it has passed away, or deem the capacity of progress which distinguishes man from the beasts an evil endowment, manifesting itself in carrying us from freedom and happiness instead of towards them. The second stage is described by Iselin as a little higher than a merely animal condition — as one in which man begins to recognise distinctions where before all was confusion, to have a few comparatively steady feelings, the first germs of general notions, and the weak beginnings of speech. He admits that the characteristics of this stage are united in no single people of which we have heard ; but thinks that they may be found scattered among several, and, indeed, endeavours to trace and collect them. There comes next the simplest phase of social life, that of nomad shepherds, with rudimentary notions of truth and justice, the first promptings of those feelings which eventually lead to married love and domestic order, a language somewhat developed, and a larger measure of happiness than their predecessors had enjoyed. From this point, according to Iselin, history divides itself into two channels, the human race into two classes. The simple shep- herd life may serve as a transition either to civilisation or bar- barism : in itself it would naturally lead to the former ; but it may also tempt the tribes of rude hunters which must form on the mountains and in the woods to plunder, destroy, and en- slave their peaceful and more prosperous neighbours, and tliis WEGELIN. 351 will bring the state of nature to au end, and introduce the sav- age state, so extensively prevalent even at the present day. The state of nature may never have existed in any of its phases ; the savage or barbarian state is too well known to us. It must be studied and compared with the civilised state, and to this purpose Herr Isehn has devoted the whole of his third book. His delineation of the peculiarities of savage life was meri- torious at the date he wrote ; but, of course, does not satisfy us now in the days of Lubbock and Quatrefages. The dis- tinction between the state of nature and the savage state is itself untenable. The second volume is entirely occupied with the considera- tion of the civilised state, the three books of which it consists treating respectively of civilisation among the peoples of the East, among the Greeks and Eomans, and in the nations of mod- ern Europe. Eeligion, morals, government, law, arts, language, literature, and learning, the changes they undergo, the influence which certain great events have exerted on them, their action on one another, are all spoken of in connection with each of these epochs of historical time, the oriental, classical, and mod- ern, and generally in a just and interesting way, but nothing is examined thoroughly, and still less is the whole organised into a science or elevated into a philosophy. Iselin's aim, in fact, is throughout not speculative but practical. He seeks to find in history not scientific laws but moral lessons.^ III. Jacob Daniel Wegelin is an important name in the. history of our science. He was born at St Gallen in 1721. In 1765 he became Professor of History at the Koyal " Kitterakademie " of Berlin, as also Archivarius and Member of the Eoyal Academy 1 It is amusing to find Professor Doergens, of Heidelberg (see his ' Aristoteles,' 12), speak of Iselin as "der erste namhafte Philosoph der Geschichte " — after Oros- ius. Now, even if we consent to sacrifice Vico and Bossuet because they founded on theology, what are we to say, for example, of Turgot, who wrote about a quarter of a century earlier than Iselin, and with far more profundity and com- prehensiveness ? Our German friends are no less given to calling their geese swans than the French, who are much more credited with the practice. 352 BOOK II. — GERMANY, of Sciences, and from that time to his death in 1791, he was incessantly occupied with publications on historical subjects. Frederick the Great held him in high esteem both as a man and a thinker, and usually spoke of him as the second Montes- quieu. The year after his death a biography of him was pub- lished at St Gallon by J. M. Fels, a native of that town. It is curious how entirely his merits in the department of historical philosophy have passed into oblivion even in Germany. The sole exception to the general ignorance of which I am aware is only partial. Herr Eosenkranz, in his interesting brochure, entitled, ' What the Germans have done for the Philosophy of History,' published in 1835, called attention to the solid and ad- mirable character of Wegelin's work on the philosophy of his- tory in the Memoires of the Berlin Academy, translated into German twelve paragraphs of the first memoir, and the head- ings of the other paragraphs to the end of the second memoir, and stated that he had ten years before purposed translating the whole ; yet, notwithstanding all this, he supposed the whole to consist of two memoirs, whereas it really consists of five. He makes no mention of Wegelin's other works in the same de- partment. The following are at least the most important of them : — ' Considerations sur les Principes Moraux et Caracteristiques des Gouvernements,' 1766. Wegelin here tries to trace the growth of government through its various forms from man's rudest to his most refined condition. In this attempt his chief aim is to discover in each civil constitution its central and organising principle, its life or spirit. His success, I think, is unfortunately not what could have been wished. In the first chapter he describes the savage state ; in the second, those civil constitutions which seem to him to have been based chiefly on merely natural impressions or impulses — e.g., the Egyptian on wonder, the Babylonian on the desire of pleasure, the Chinese on filial reverence, and the Persian on love for the native soil ; in the third, those which he regards as having been grounded mainly in moral habit or reflection — e.g., the Phoenician in self- interest, the Carthaginian in the spirit of mercantile conquest, and the Dutch in that of national diligence ; in the fourth, he WEGELIN. 353 treats of religion in its relation to the state as a source of politi- cal principles ; and he concludes with the particular discussion of several civil constitutions. ' Plan Eaisonn6 d'une Histoire Universelle et Diplomatique de I'Europe depuis Charlemagne jusqu'k I'an 1740/ 1769. This work begins with an inquiry into the nature of the task which the universal historian has to discharge. He must master the original documents. He must judge of actions and agents. He must avail himseK of analogy and induction ; the former being the process of discovering resemblances between persons or events, and the latter the art of rising from particular facts to general conclusions. The rest of the treatise is the exposi- tion of how, in the opinion of Wegelin, the principles of the historical method should be applied. He afterwards sought to exemplify them still further in a learned and able work in six volumes, the ' Histoire Universelle et Diplomatique de I'Europe depuis la Chute de I'Empire Remain jusqu'a I'an 987,' where his incessant preoccupation is obviously seen to be the discovery of causes, and of the influence exerted by events on the progress of ideas and the welfare of communities. ' Briefe liber den Werth der Geschichte,' 1783. These thirty letters treat of a great many interesting questions relative to history as an art. Among Wegelin's contributions to the vol- umes of the Berlin Academy the following merit to be men- tioned in a work like the present : — 5 Memoires sur la Philosophie de I'Histoire. 1770, 1772, 1773, 1775, and 1776. 3 Memoires sur I'Art Caract6ristique, Psychologique, Poli- tique et Morale de Tacite. 1 Memoire sur I'Histoire consideree comme la Satyre du Genre Huraain. 1 Memoire sur le Cours Periodique des Evenements. Among the various works which he left in MS. were two, en- titled, (1), ' Betrachtung liber die philosophische Erkentniss und Anwendung der Geschichte ;' and (2), ' Flinftzehn Abhandlungen liber die Belehrende Geschichte.' I do not know whether they were ever printed, or whether they now exist. The five Memoirs on the Philosopliy of History compose a 354 BOOK II. — GERMANY. treatise which well merits republication, displaying, as it every- where does, vigour and clearness of thought, analytic and generalising ability, an extensive familiarity with historical facts, and careful reflection on historical method. It has, how- ever, no grace or charm of style to recommend it ; on the con- trary, it is in that respect extremely arid and uninteresting. Nor, with all its merits, can it be properly said to be a philosophy of history, or even a part of such a philosophy ; it is merely a work about the philosophy of history, a series of general thoughts concerning history and its study ; it never allows us to forget the " sur " in its title. The reflections of which it consists are, further, only externally, not organically connected, which makes it impossible to give an abstract or summary of them, with the brevity here demanded. I can do little more than indicate what are the chief subjects discussed. M, Wegelin, in the opening paragraphs of his first memoir, describes philosophy as comprehending all the universal notions by which objects are connected, states that the principal ideas which enter into the moral world, and consequently into history, are those of assimilation and concatenation, general, particular, and individual reasons, indefinite continuity and indefinite diversity, living forces and dead forces ; and dis- tinguishes the notions with which metaphysics is conversant from tliose with which history has to do by saying, that while the former are abstract and refer exclusively to the essential and universal relationships of things, the latter are collective, includ- ing all that goes to determine and constitute a fact ; so that the philosophy of history, although a series of notions, is based on the modifications and succession of the facts themselves. He then treats at considerable length of what he calls the " concatention of the facts " {enclicdiinre des faits). And perhaps no portion of his work is superior in interest to that devoted to this discussion. Probably no one before him had expressed so well the great truth, that beneath the system of outward or visible facts of history there is ever a system of intellectual principles, of regulative thoughts, combining, pervading, and determining it ; a mass of ideas which are organically bound together, which can only be slowly produced and modified ; and WEGELIN. 355 that what is essential and substantial in history, must be sought in the character and development of ideas. The way in which he has pointed out that the changes which take place within a nation are due to the separate or combined action of a law of universality and a law of individuality, of the coactive force of the state and the reactive force of personal freedom in its members, the one producing what may be called a centripetal and the other a centrifugal movement, while the right adjust- ment of the two secures movement in a safe and regular orbit, is only less admirable. His remarks on the different kinds of concatenation between facts, on the different sorts of series into which events may be ranged, on the employment of the series in universal history, and on the influence of moral and political interests and actions on each other, are worthy of consideration. M. Wegelin next takes up the subject of historical analysis, which he somewhat strangely divides into the analysis of facts and the analysis of events, the former being simply the chrono- logical arrangement of what has happened, the latter the refer- ence of what has happened to its originating principles or reasons. He remarks on the difficulties which history presents to analysis, sometimes owing to the abundance, and sometimes owing to the paucity, of its data. All that he has said of concatenation and analysis implying that there is in history a part which comprehends principles, reasons, intellectual grounds, he proceeds to treat of these in relation both to the agent and the action. He tells us how we ought to judge of the character and conduct of the actors in history, and that, abstracting this relationship, historical facts may require to be referred either to general reasons — those which are common to several different series of facts ; particular reasons — those which arise from the antagonism of conflicting general principles, and originate a distinct intermediate series of actions ; and in- dividual reasons — the relation of facts to the entire combination of circumstances which make them to be what they are. The illustrations which he adduces of these " reasons " are probably more valuable than their definitions. In the concluding part of this memoir, Wegelin discourses of what he calls the phenomena of history, meaning thereby the 356 BOOK IT. — GERMANY. si^ecially characteristic incidents of history, those which so light np for us the past or present as to let us see their true spirit and significance. An eye for such phenomena is the distinctive gift of the historian. An historical picture is but their collec- tion and arrangement. Our author considers them under the heads of psychological, moral, and political phenomena : the first class being those which cast light on the intellectual character of an individual or people ; the second, on the state of men's sentiments, affections, and habits ; and the third, on the constitu- tion and tendencies of a government. He would subordinate psychological and moral to political phenomena by regarding the political reasons of the latter as the final caiiscs of all the intellectual and practical activity of men. He thus falls into the old Greek and Eoman error of sacrificing the individual to the state and viewing " ethics as a sort of politics." It is scarcely necessary to refute this antiquated notion. It in no way follows that, because man is not made to live alone, and the state includes individuals, man is made for the good of the state, and the good of the state must be a nobler and more com- prehensive thing than that of the individual. The state is made for man, not man for the state. The citizen does not compre- hend the man, but the man the citizen. The state is but the expression of a phase of human nature. The political is in every respect subordinate to the ethical ; the ethical is in the main independent of the political. The second memoir shows that Leibnitz had exercised a decided influence on the mind of Wegelin. Indeed it is little more than the application to history of two principles which Leibnitz had rendered celebrated. The first is that which Wegelin calls the law of the indefinite diversity of historical facts, and which is simply a particular form of the Leibnitzian princi'jiium indiscernihilium. No two things in the world, said Leibnitz, are quite alike. And especially, adds "Wegelin, no two historical facts are quite alike. Of course, he has no difficulty in proving his proposition ; in showing that the facts of the moral world differ from one another in a greater number of respects than those of the physical world ; that if it be vain to hope to find any two leaves of the same tree precisely similar, still more WEGELIN. 357 vain must it be to hope to find any two acts of a man or nation precisely similar. But while the truth of the conclusion can- not be called in question, its value, I fear, not unreasonably may. Wegelin pronounces it a rich and faithful principle. To me it seems, at least as far as science is concerned, a poor and barren affirmation. It explains nothing in history ; it is an abuse of terms to speak of it, as M. Wegelin does, as a law of history. A law is a definite connection between facts ; but to say that no two facts of a certain kind are alike, is certainly not to state a definite connection between any two facts of that kind. The imncipiuni indiscernihilium is in every form and reference a deception when passed off either as a law or an explanation. It states definite connection between no two facts whatever ; it accounts for no one fact whatever. Principle is a word so general that we need not refuse to apply it either to the pro- position of Leibnitz or Wegelin ; but law is a title to which neither has the slightest claim. The other principle wliich Leibnitz enunciated in a general form, and Wegelin applied to history, is that called by the latter the principle of indefinite continuity. This principle also is no law. When it has been established with reference to any class of facts, a connection merely is proved to exist between these facts, not the definite connection which alone constitutes law. It is, however, a far more important service to establish the principle of continuity than that of diversity ; in some depart- ments, and especially in history, it may be a most important service. If continuity is not a law, it is nevertheless a con- dition of law, and an indication of law ; an assurance that law will ultimately be found. Where we cannot make out the definite connection between things, we may still have much reason to be thankful for being able to make out a connection between them. The comparative method of research has of late, in the hands of ethnologists, philologists, historians, S:c., thrown great light on what was previously obscure in human development, by proving continuity to exist where there had hitherto appeared to be a breach of continuity ; and no wise man will despise or depreciate that light because it is not still gi'eater than it is, and seldom reveals to us the law, but merely the fact 358 BOOK II. GERMANY. of continuous evolution. It must be allowed, then, I think, to have been a decided merit in Wegelin that he laid so much stress as he did on the notion of continuity in historical de- velopment, on the persistence or permanence of principles, the slow modification of the ideas and feelings which deter- mine the form and actions of societies. With the most genuine thoughtfulness, and with many apt illustrations, he proved what is a most important truth (how important only those who have long reflected on the subject can realise), that there is very little of abrupt transition in the history of nations, forms of government, systems of religion, moral convictions, or social usages. In the latter part of this memoir, M. Wegelin divides the forces of the moral world into two classes or groups : the first including all those motives and tendencies which'prompt men to self-activity, to independent courses of speculation and con- duct, to innovation and invention ; and the second, all those workings of sympathy, authority, antiquity, imitation, associa- tion, and love of ease and quiet, which lead men to rest with satisfaction in what is already established, which show that ' ' Out of the common is raan'8 nature framed, And custom is the nurse to which he cleaves." The former, the progressive principles in history, he connects with the principle of diversity, and calls the living forces of society ; the latter, the conservative principles in history, he connects with the principle of continuity, and calls the dead forces of society. The terms living and dead forces are obvi- ously about the most infelicitous that could have been selected, but the phraseology has exerted little, if any, influence for evil on the author's thoughts ; and his remarks on the forces or prin- ciples themselves, and on their modes of action and interaction are, on the whole, excellent. He falls, however, into one radi- cal error, seeing that he regards the principle of diversity and continuity, and consequently the forces of progression and con- servation, as entirely separate, and, indeed, as purely antagon- istic. They appear to him distinctly to divide, as it were, the moral world between them, so that each of its forces belongs definitely and exclusively either to the one or the other. Now WEGELIN. 359 that is an undoubtedly mistaken view. Diversity and con- tinuity, progress and order, are so little wholly separate, so little opposed, that the latter is a condition of the former. They are only separated and opposed in the thoughts of those who con- ceive of them in a one-sided and exaggerated manner. But, then, they are so frequently conceived of in that manner, that we need not wonder at M. Wegelin's error, which, indeed, is still prevalent, and has been so long and generally accepted, that, for an adequate refutation of it, we have to refer to the pages of a distinguished thinker of our own day, the late Mr J. S. Mill, who has very ably shown, in the second chapter of his ' Representative Government,' that " the requisites of progress are but the requi- sites of order in a greater degree ; those of permanence merely those of progress in a somewhat smaller measure ; " — that " progress of any kind includes permanence in that same kind ; whenever permanence is sacrificed to some particular kind of progress, other progress is still more sacrificed to it ; and if it be not worth the sacrifice, not the interest of permanence alone has been disregarded, but the general interest of progress has been mistaken ; " — that " the very same social causes — the same beliefs, feelings, institutions, and practices — are as much re- quired to prevent society from retrograding, as to produce a further advance." The third memoir is somewhat miscellaneous in its contents, and I shall merely mention what are the chief subjects which it deals with. The first is political history, the history of the state ; and the state is regarded as having its centre of unity and root of growth in a constitution, which may be either vague and indeterminate, as having arisen from a fortuitous conjunction of circumstances or of peoples — or precise and determinate, as the deliberate work of legislative wisdom ; and in this latter case the precision and determinateness may rest either on the principle of diversity or of continuity, either on the exclusion of certain classes from participation in the power of govern- ment, as at Eome, or on the inclusion of all under a uniform law and system of life, as at Sparta. M. Wegelin endeavours to indicate how states thus differing in constitution may be ex- pected to differ in development ; argues that in order to trace 360 BOOK II. — GERMANY. the courses of their movement, it would be of use to generalise the methods employed by geometers in the analysis and deter- mination of curves ; and maintains a truth which M. Guizot has had the merit of rendering popular — viz., that the political history of the East has been much more simple, much less varied and complicated, than that of the West. He next makes a number of observations on the character of the history of the Church, of the several forms of Church government, heresies, &c. Having done so, he passes to the consideration of the history of what he calls " la police," taking the word in a very broad sense as the administration of all the resources which a nation applies to the amelioration of its condition. He then, still more cur- sorily, discourses of the history of philosophy, the history of physical science, the history of morals, and the history of taste, — all departments of the history of the mind of man. He is thence led to speak of the peculiarities of understanding and genius which are required for the advancement of these dif- ferent kinds of knowledge. And he concludes the memoir with a few remarks on character, how it is modified, and how it may be analysed. The most interesting part of the fourth memoir, at least to the student of historical philosophy, is probably that consisting of the first six paragraphs or sections. It is in substance a general but distinct exposition of the truth to which Mr Lecky justly assigns so much importance — viz., that the beliefs of a given age or people are mainly determined not by definite reasons or arguments, but by the general intellectual conditions of the society, — conditions which can only be slowly brought about and slowly modified by the combined operation of all the forces of civilisation. In the state of nature — that is, when destitute of culture — man, argues M. Wegelin, is almost passive under the rule of the laws of physical and animal life, incapable of con- ceiving anything better than the condition he is in, impressible through his imagination but not through his judgment. With the growth of reason social changes come to be accomplished by reason, but the reason of individuals is always to a great extent determined in its actions by the general habits of thought and feeling which prevail in their generation. In each community A. L. VON SCHLOZER. 361 the conflict of parties aud opinions produces a sort of common sense, proper and peculiar to that community, which influences the conduct of all who belong to it and its whole public history. In each nation the spirit or principle of its constitution gives a character to its conduct throughout its entire existence. Parti- cular causes are always and in many respects conditioned, di- rected, and controlled by general causes. There follows a group of seven sections which tell us how we may so analyse a politi- cal constitution as to ascertain what its spirit is, what natural principles a government must conform to in order to be good and durable, and how patriotic sentiment is modified by the distribution of dignities and by the characters of individuals. From this point M. Wegelin enters on a discussion as to the method of historical research and the credibility and worth of its results, which occupies the rest of the fourth and the whole of the fifth memoir. It will be referred to again when I requu-e to consider the logic of history; at present it may be sufficient to say that it was for the time when it appeared a valuable con- tribution to that department of study. IV. A. L. von Schlozer (1735-1809) was a far greater liistorian than either of the two authors who have just passed under our review. He was a man of unwearied diligence, of unresting and varied activity, who brought strong faculties to bear on many subjects, — theology, language, statistics, the organisation of the political sciences, history, &c., — and who wrote and edited a great number of learned book's. On history especially he conferred services of the highest merit by his laborious re- searches into the history of Northern Europe, and particularly of Ptussia. His ' Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte,' published so early as 1772, was a work of which his country had reason to be proud. I do not know that any other country had at that date so good a history of its neighbours. The work, however, which falls to be noticed here is not im- portant, and will not detain 'us long. It is his 'Vorstellung der universal Historic,' published at Gottingen in 1772-73. 362 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. It consists of two parts. The first part is an outline of univer- sal history, which is divided into five ages, — viz., 1°, the Primal World, extending from Adam to Noah, a period of 1656 years ; 2°, the Fore World, extending from Noah to Cyrus, a period of 1770 years ; 3°, the Ancient World, from Cyrus to Clovis, the founder of the kingdom of the Franks, 1000 years ; 4°, the Medieval World, from Clovis to Columbus, 1000 years ; and 5°, the Modern World, from Columbus to the present time (the publication of Schlozer's book) 300 years. Each of these ages is treated of under eight heads. First, its duration and limits are described ; next, its divisions, larger and smaller ; then, the peoples which belonged to it ; further, its geography and what was known thereof; afterwards, the sources, monuments, &c. ; sixthly, the inventions in arts, sciences, and religion ; seventhly, the migrations or diffusion of peoples, animals, plants, arts maladies ; and, finally, there is given a connected view of the historical movement in each age as involving or involved in all these orders of facts. Anything more stiffly systematic and skeleton-like than this there could not possibly be. And yet there was an " Ideal " un- derlying it which the author unfolds in an Appendix to Part I. He wished, he there tells us, universal history to include as to matter an account of the revolutions which had taken place in human history, and also on the earth itself, whether tlirough nature or the action of men ; and that as to form, it should be to the whole of special histories not unlike what a history of the German empire ought to be to a history of the several German states. It should exclude, he thought, some things which had hitherto found a place in universal histories — viz., all criticism reasonings, moralisings, all things of secondary importance, and especially all trivialities. At the same time, it should include more, and be more usefid, than such histories had previously been. It should comprehend all peoples and states of the world, all times, aU events of primary importance, all sorts of truly remarkable things. It should be a his- tory of humanity in essentials; it should contain the ele- ments of all special histories ; it should habituate the mind to truer and worthier notions of the greatness of the moral J. VON MULLER. 863 world, of the nature and power of the forces which move it, and of the comprehensiveness of historical science ; and it should throw on all particular facts a light which no mere isolated study of them would yield.^ Schlozer has also discussed in the same Appendix the proper modes of concatenating events, and of arranging or disposing synchronistically and synthetically the materials of universal history.^ It was not to be expected that such an " ideal " would satisfy the soaring ambition and poetical nature of a man like Herder, before whose mind, indeed, a very different " ideal " abeady gleamed. Not unnaturally, therefore, when Schlozer published that part of his work which has just been described. Herder reviewed it severely in the ' Frankfurter Gel. Anzeiger.' The second part of Schlozer's work is a reply to that review. In it Herder is treated very contemptuously as a mere litUratcur, incompetent to pass a judgment on historical subjects. It contains nothing of real importance. Schlozer attempted to realise his " ideal " more fully in a Uni- versal History, published in two volumes in 1785 and 1789, which is one of the earliest Universal Histories in German still readable with satisfaction. I need scarcely say that in no lan- guage are there now so many excellent works of the kind. The first by which that of Schlozer was decidedly surpassed was that of a student of his own, the celebrated Swiss historian, Johann von Miiller (1752-1809). Mliller was a born historian, and from early youth devoted himself heart and soul to historical study. An act of deplorable weakness which he committed near the close of his life — the acceptance of office from Napoleon, whose conduct and aims he had previously denounced with an eloquence which had won for him the admiration of all who loved national freedom and independence — has pressed heavily upon his me- mory, and often prevented justice being done to his merits. As an historian his merits were undoubtedly very great. A vast memory and inquisitiveness, a vision of wide range and strict truthfulness, imaginative realisation, artistic skill in grouping and disposing facts, an impressive although rather laboured style, eloquence, and a living interest in all that seemed to him ^ Ideal der Wei tgeschicbte, Kap. i. ^ K. ii.-iv. 364 BOOK II. — GERMANY. to affect the welfare of men, were among his most marked char- acteristics. He combined conservative and liberal tendencies, an appreciation of the old and of the new, to an extent rare in his age. He did not dissociate the love of truth, libei-ty, and humanity, as so many of his contemporaries did, from love of country, respect for the past, and recognition of the claims of domestic and personal duty. He continually insisted that poli- tics ought to be based not on abstract theory but on concrete life, on history and statistics ; that what was needed was not revolu- tion but evolution ; that no social system could endure which was not rooted firmly in the past. His merits are seen to most advantage in his 'History of Swit- zerland,' the first volume of which appeared in 1 780. This work united, as no German historical work up to that date had done, extensive and accurate research, dignity and beauty of style, and a warm yet rational patriotism. It was the first truly national history which had appeared in the language. It was a noble specimen of a much higher kind of historical art than had hitherto been attempted. It was pervaded by a love of consti- tutional freedom, of freedom united with order, at once so ar- dent and enlightened, that Schiller even in the immortal speech which in his ' Wilhelm Tell ' he puts into the mouth of Stauff- acher at Eiitli seems to give only its condensed and poetical expression. Its influence extended through all Germany and far beyond it, was deep as well as wide, and contributed greatly to the progress of history both as science and art. The ' Twenty -four Books of Universal History ' were not pub- lished until the year after Schlozer's death ; but he had begun to collect the materials for them as early as 1772, and had de- livered the substance of them in lectures at Geneva in 1779, and at Cassel in 1781 and 1782. He often busied himself with them — for the last time not many days before his death. Probably none of the Universal Histories composed since have been drawn more conscientiously from the true sources — the oldest records. Hegel in his ' Philosophy of History ' has so spoken of the work as to leave the impression that it abounds in moralisings and external reflections. Nothing can be farther from the truth. There is a very considerable amount of that kind of matter in J. VON MULLER. 365 Hegel's own work, but almost none in Miiller's. What Miiller aimed at was truthfully to delineate what had occurred in its essential and permanently interesting features; to omit what was merely local and temporary, but to give to each land and age its due place, to mirror the plan of Providence in the succession of events and the fortunes of men, and to accomplish this by a strictly historical narrative. The idea was on the whole just and good, and was so ably realised, that all Universal Histories since which have gained the approbation of the public have been fashioned in the likeness of that of Miiller, and are essen- tially unlike the Universal Histories of an older date. 366 CHAPTER III. LESSING. GoTTHOLD Ephraim Lessing was above all others the leader of the great movement which gave to Germany a national literature and mental freedom. A braver, more devoted, more resolutely- active, or more skilful champion it could not have had. He was ever and at all points in its van. He may be said to have lived and died for it, for he sank prematurely to his grave from the sheer exhaustion of vital energies by excessive exertions. He wrought out no philosophical system, and he had no very firm grasp even of philosophical principles, yet few writers have more de- served than he the name of philosopher in the highest sense of the word, for his entire life was a sincere and fervent search after truth. No such life is in vain; and although Lessing elaborated little, he discovered and communicated much, and impressed a powerful and abiding impulse of the noblest kind upon the world. ^ It is in virtue of the little book on ' The Education of the Human Eace ' that the name of Lessing belongs to the philo- sophy of history. I am aware of the reasoning (see Ilgen's Zeitschrift, 1839, pt. 4.) by which it has been attempted to show that Lessing was only its editor, and that its author was the physician Albert Thaers, but I consider it to have been con- clusively refuted by Guhrauer and others, and entertain no doubt that this remarkable book was the composition of Lessing alone. 1 There are two excellent biographies of Lessing — one by Danzel, completed by Guhrauer, and another by Stahr. Erdmann and Zeller give good summaries of his philosophical views. Among essays on Lessing, that by Von Treitschke in his ' Historische und politische Aufsatze,' i. ; those by Dilthey and Rossler, in the 19th and 20th vols, of the ' Preussische Jahrbiicher ; ' tliose by Cherbuliez in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' Ixxiii. (1868); and that by Zeller in Von Sybel's ' Historische Zeitschrift,' Tahrg. xii. (1870) — may be specially mentioned. LESSING. 36Y The style of itself is extremely strong evidence. Lessing has nowhere written better ; and those who know the peculiar qua- lities and singular perfection of his style, will be very slow to believe that Albert Thaers, or any one else, could have equalled him in his own distinctive excellences. * The Education of the Human Eace ' neither contains nor indicates a philosophy of history. It is not, as it is commonly described, a philosophical consideration of history from the stand-point of religion. It touches only one side or aspect of history, and only a portion of that. Its real subject is revela- tion in relation to history ; and the thoughts it expresses, and those it gives rise to, have more of religious than of historical significance. The author offers his thoughts, not as the sum and substance of the matter, but simply as suggestions tending towards the discovery of fuller truth through other minds. He is but an inquirer, and aware of the many phases of ignorance, doubt, and error, through which the human mind must pass be- fore it can become capable of receiving pure truth. It is his deep conviction that spiritual apprehension is subject to the law of growth which rules all other knowledge. " All the laws of the universe have had existence from the beginning, yet how recently is it that electricity has been discovered ? and do we yet know all which this power implies? Did the earth ever do other than go round the sun ? yet how long is it since man found this out ? And are the spiritual truths of man's nature more easily discerned than the physical phenomena which sur- round him ? Why should there not be development in these as well as in those ? " The title of the work expresses both its subject and leading idea. The phrase, " education of the human race," is not used as synonymous with " plan of history," but with " revelation." Kevelation is the education of the human race. The entire aim of the book is to present revelation in that light, as one which cannot but remove difficulties and yield services in theology. Kevelation, the opening paragraphs state, is to the race what education is to the individual, — it gives to the human reason nothing which it might not attain to if left to itself, but gives to it what it is most essential for it to know, quicker and more 368 BOOK II. — GERMANY. easily than it could have found out for itself, just as education gives to man nothing which he might not conceivably educe out of himself, but gives it to him sooner than he would do so, — it must therefore be graduated to the capacities of the race, as education must to those of the individual. Eevelation, it will be perceived, is understood by Lessing as differing from Natural Eeligion merely in form. Its contents are the same. It is only because reason, left to itself, cannot master its truths rapidly enough, that they must be taught by some one divinely commissioned. I need not say that such is not the orthodox view of revelation, but may be required to re- mark that it is by no means a very clear or distinct view. It discriminates revelation from natural religion in the abstract which has no form, but not as a positive religion from other positive religions, as they all impose truths in the divine name. Are they all, so far as true, revelations? Lessing considers only two of them — Mosaism and Christianity — to be so ; but where in the form separate from the essence can a warrant be found for this ? It can only be in the evidences of divine com- mission in their founders, or, in other words, in miracles and prophecies. But these Lessing regards as quite subordinate accessories, which may or may not have been, and belief in which is unimportant. Hence I cannot but deem his view of revelation more calculated to confuse than to enlighten. He should either have gone farther or not so far. And besides, when he identifies revelation with the education of the human race, and yet confines it to Jews and Christians, he is naturally led in consequence, not to a broad and consistent conception of the education of humanity, but to this somewhat narrow and self-contradictory one, that the race, as a whole, has not been educated — that its Father in heaven has only educated a por- tion of it, and allowed the rest of it to grow up in ignorance, or left it to educate itself. Have we any warrant for so con- tracted a notion? any reason for considering revelation more than one of many means, although the greatest and most effec- tive, which God makes use of to educate the minds and form the characters of men ? Instead of rising above the traditional creed of Cliristendom on this point, has Lessing not fallen below LESSING. 3G9 one of the most venerable of Christian beliefs, that of a Justin, a Clement of Alexandria, an Origen, and an Augustine, in the divine guidance and instruction even of the heathen ? Lessing proceeds to say, that even if the first man were fur- nished with a conception of the one God, he would not long clearly retain it. As soon as reason, left to itself, began to exa- mine and develop that conception, the one immeasurable would be broken up into many measurables, the original vague theism into polytheism and idolatry. To give the race a better direc- tion, God must select an individual people and educate it Him- self. He selected the rudest of all to begin with it from the very commencement. To this rude people, who in Egypt were perhaps without any faith or worship, He caused Himself to be announced first, simply as " the God of their fathers," in order to make them familiar with the idea of a God belonejins to them too, and to begin with confidence in Him ; then, through the miracles by which He led them out of Egypt and planted them in Canaan, testified to them that He was a God mightier than any other God ; and gradually demonstrated Himself to be the mightiest of all, the one God. But to this conception of the One, the people, as a whole, were long unable to raise them- selves, and so often apostatised, and sought the mightiest god in some god of some other people. A race thus rude, thus entirely in its childhood, could only be taught as a child, only through rewards and punishments addressed to the senses. It knew of no immortality of the soul, yearned after no future life ; and to have taught these things to it would have been the same error as that of a schoolmaster who hastens his pupil on without regard to thorough grounding. The Old Testament shows us no such error was committed. It may be conceived of as ' the First Primer ' out of which God taught the Jewish people in a way suited to their state of childhood. It did not contain what they could not have under- stood or been the better of. At the same time it contained noth- ing to delay their progress and keep them from the attainment of fuller truth in due time. On this ground Warburton's hy- pothesis of a miraculous distribution of rewards and punish- ments under the Mosaic economy is to be rejected, although he 2 A 370 BOOK II. — GERMANY. was right in holding that the doctrines of the immortality of the soul and future recompenses were not to be found authori- tatively revealed in the Old Testament. It contained, however, preparations, allusions, hints with respect to these truths ; and therein consisted its iJositive perfection as a Primer, just as the throwing no difficulties or hindrances in the way to the suppressed truth constituted its negative perfection. While God guided His chosen people through all the degrees of a childlike education, the other nations of the earth had gone on by the light of reason. Most had remained far behind the chosen people, but a few had got before them and educated themselves to an amazing degree. The divinely-educated child and these highly self-educated children were in the fulness of time providentially brought into contact ; for the former was sent into foreign countries to have his conceptions enlarged and cor- rected, to be taught through the medium of the pure Persian doctrine to see in Jehovah not merely the mightiest of national deities but God, to become in some measure acquainted with the doctrine of immortality through the Chaldeans and the Greek philosophers in Egypt, to exercise his reason on revela- tion, to interpret with a wider intelligence and deeper insight his own Primer. But every Primer is only for a certain age, and to keep a pupil in it after he has outgrown it, is not only useless but hurtful, causing him to look into it for more than there really is, and to handle it in ways hurtful both to the in- tellect and character. Christ came, therefore, and provided for the child, who had grown up to be a youth, a second Primer, the instructions of the New Testament, the certain and practi- cal knowledge of life and immortality. The books of this second and better Primer have for seven- teen hundred years exercised human reason more than all other books, and enlightened it more, even were it only through the light which the human reason itself threw into them. No other book could have become so generally known among different nations ; and the fact that modes of thought so diverse should have been employed on the same volume, has been far more helpful to human reason than if every nation had had a Primer of its own. It was most necessary that each people should for LESSING. 371 a time believe this book to be the nc plus idtra of knowledge. But it may be as necessary that that time should have an end. The truths which we have been receiving as mysteries of reve- lation may come to be received as pure truths of reason. The doctrine of the Trinity may raise the mind to see that the unity of God is a transcendental unity inclusive of a kind of plural- ity, — the doctrine of the fall, that man is inherently unable to obey moral laws, — and of the atonement, that notwithstanding this inherent inability, God has rather chosen to give him moral laws and to forgive him his sins for the sake of His Son, the self-existent whole of all His own perfections, than not to give them to him and exclude him from the moral blessedness of which they are the essential conditions. A religion whose historical truth perhaps eventually seems doubtful, may lead the mind to a more living and adequate conception of God, its own nature, and relation to God, than it could ever have at- tained of itself. Thus the Gospel that now is should be thought of not as the absolute and ultimate truth, but as leading to a still better Gospel promised us in the Primer of the New Testa- ment itself. The enthusiasts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who taught that the new covenant must become as antiquated as the old, and give way to a third age, that of the Eternal Spirit, erred only in being premature and impatient. That is the failing of all enthusiasts — and it is a most natural one ; for if what a man sees to be the best does not become the best in his lifetime, what good will it do to him ? Will he come back to profit by it ? And why not ? Why should not the path of the individual to perfection be that of the race? Why should not the orbit of the smaller be included in that of the greater ? Why should not every individual exist more than once upon the world ? Why should we not be profiting now, although unconsciously, by what we have helped to bring about in a former generation ; and why should we not reap in a later generation what we are helping to sow now ? Do we take away so much from existing once that there would be nothing to repay the trouble of coming back ? ^ ^ On this the obscurely expressed conjecture, with which Lessing concludes his treatise, see the essay of Rossler in the Preus. Jahrlt. fur September 1867, and that 372 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Such is a summary of the treatise of Lessing, for the most part in his own words. It will substantiate, perhaps, my state- ment that it belongs more to religious than historical philoso- phy, and that it is more owing to its title than to anything else that it is constantly mentioned among works on the latter sub- ject. At the same time, the idea that God acts as the educator of mankind, and in so acting even by revelation does not dis- card and displace human reason, but elicits and guides it, is cer- tainly one which connects religion and history, and which is of great importance to both. It is a natural deduction from the thought of an omnipotent, omniscient, and gracious God, and a fair religious inference from history ; and although it cannot be legitimately made use of as a positive principle of historical explanation, when historical explanations contradict it, there is the strongest presumption against their truth. Therefore, that Lessing should have presented so impressively as he did the idea of a divine education of collective humanity, was un- doubtedly of service to the understanding of history as well as of revelation ; and one can only regret that his treatment of the idea was not as comprehensive and thorough as it was impres- sive. It is not a simple or clear idea — it rests mainly on ana- logies between the species and the individual of a kind very apt to delude ; there is much to try faith and baffle reason in ac- cepting and applying it, whether humanity be considered as a succession of generations of which those that precede know no- thing of those that will follow, and those that follow very little about those which have preceded, or as a whole in space where the black shadows far exceed the bright spots. Now, Lessing has enunciated the idea, has proclaimed that it is enlightening and consoling, and avowed his own faith in it ; but he has not explained or analysed or verified it ; has not supplied either its internal elucidation or external vindication. He has even in- volved it in unnecessary obscurity and inconsistencies by iden- tifying it with revelation, and yet identifying revelation with Mosaism and Christianity. His essay is pervaded by the two mutually contradictory principles : revelation is education which of Dilthey in the No. for October ; also what Leroux says on the subject in his De rHumanite. The .suggpstion of Lessing finds itsc^planation in the theor3'of Leroux. LESSING. 373 has come, and is now coming, to the human race ; and the edu- cation of revelation is distinct from the education of reason. He should have surrendered either the one position or the other; and there can be no reasonable doubt that the general character of his views made his holding the latter position specially incon- sistent. Believing that the two religions which he called re- vealed were independent either of Scripture or miracle, as he had emphatically maintained in his anti-Goetze war — that they contained only truths of reason, and that reason would have to leave both behind it — he should not have used revelation in the narrower sense at all, but have maintained it to be the source of all religion; or, in other words, have maintained religion to be a continuous revelation. Kuno Fischer and Adolf Stahr^ erro- neously represent him as having done so ; they give us what in self-consistency should have been his view, but certainly not what it was. Had he worked out his thought clearly and fully, it must have become identical with that to which a man of genius, the late Signor Mazzini, has given expression in lan- guage which might have flowed most appropriately from the pen of Lessing. " Eevelation, which is, as Lessing says, the education of the human race, descends continuousl}' from God to man ; prophesied by genius, evoked by virtue and sacrifice, and accepted and proclaimed from epoch to epoch, by the great religious evolutions of collective humanity. From epoch to epoch the pages of that eternal Gospel are turned ; each fresh page, disclosed by the ever-renovating Spirit of God, indicates a period of the progress marked out for us by the providential plan, and corresponds, historically, to a religion. Each religion sets before mankind a new educational idea as its aim ; each is a fragment, enveloped in symbols, of eternal truth. So soon as that idea, comprehended by the intelligence, and incarnated in the hearts of mankind, has become an inalienable part of universal tradition, even as the mountain traveller on reaching one summit beholds another rising above him ; so is a new idea or aim presented to the human mind, and a new conception of life, a faith, arise to consecrate that idea, and unite the powers ^ Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, ii. 558-580. Adolf Stahr, Lessiug's Leben und Werke, B. xiv. R. 2. 374 BOOK II. GERMANY. and activity of mankind in the fulfilment of that aim. Having accomplished its mission, that religion disappears ; leaving be- hind the portion of truth it contained, the unknown quantity disengaged by it from its symbol, a new immortal star in hu- manity's heaven. As the discoveries of science have revealed, and will reveal, star upon star, until our knowledge of the celes- tial system, of which the milky way is zone, and the earth a part, be complete, so the religious faculties of humanity have added, and will add, faith to faith, until the entire truth we are capable of comprehending be complete. Columns of the temple which the generations are building to God, our religions succeed and are linked with one another, sacred and necessary each and all, but having each and all their determinate place and value, ac- cording to the position of the temple they sustain. You who seek to support God's temple on a single column seek the im- possible. Could mankind follow you in the insane attempt, column and temple would fall together."^ This doctrine thus expressed must be allowed to have the merits of consistency and completeness ; and the same merits may be claimed for its direct antithesis, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit is educating each individual, each age and nation, day by day out of two books. Nature and Scripture, both inexhaustible, the latter not less so than the former, — that tliis teacher is never wearied, and his books, although they have lessons suited for the simplest, can never be outgrown even by the wisest, — that although our little systems built on these " have their day and cease to be," the foundations themselves abide sure, unchanged, eternal ; but Lessing's attempt to mediate between these conflicting faiths must be pronounced " a halting between two opinions which neither religion nor philosophy can sanction." ^ ^ " A Letter to the Members of the CEcumenical Council. By Joseph Mazzini.' Fortnightly Review, June 1, 1870. ^ On Lessing's religious views see Schwarz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing als The- olog dargestellt (1854), and the Essay of Zeller ah-eady referred to — Lessing als Tlieolog. Both accounts are able, but in both there is much with which I can- not atrree. 375 CHAPTER IV. HERDEK.^ The little book of Lessiug just noticed appeared in 1780. Four years afterwards, Herder published the first volume of his ' Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind ' (Ideen zur Philo- sophie der Geschichte der Menschheit), a work which was com- pleted in four volumes in 1787. He had ten years before published a tract entitled * Another Contribution to the Philo- sophy of the History of Mankind.' Indeed the subject had presented itself to him in his youth. "In my very early years," he says, " when the meadows of knowledge lay before me in all their morning brightness, so much of which the noonday sun of our life takes away, the thought came often to me whether, since everything in the world has its philosophy and its science, there ought not to be a philosophy and a science of that which concerns us most nearly — the history of mankind in its greatness and entireness. Everything reminded me of this — metaphysics and morals, physics and natural history, religion most of all. The God who has ordained everything in nature according to measure, number, and weight — who accord- ing to these has determined the nature of things, their form, their union, their progress, their continuance, so that, from the greatest things to the grain of dust, from the power that holds earth and sun to the thread of a spider's web, only one wisdom, 1 See the * Lebensbild ' by Herder's son (in 6 vols.), and the ' Erinnerungen aus Herder's Leben ' (2 vols.) edited by J. G. Miiller. MuUer's edition of Herder's works is in 40 vols. The English reader will find two interesting papers on Herder by Karl Hillebrand in vol. cxv. of the North American Review. His historical philosophy has been discussed by Qninet (CEuvres com- pletes, t. ii.), and Laurent (Phil, de I'Hist. 115-132). Adolf Kohut's ' Herder und die Humanitatsbestrebungen der Neuzeit ' (1870) merits perusal. 376 BOOK II. — GERMANY. goodness, and power rules — He who also in human bodies, and in the powers of the human soul, has conceived all so wonder- fully and divinely that, if we try to reflect on the All- Wise, we lose ourselves in an abyss of His thoughts, — how, said I to myself, can this God have departed from His wisdom and His goodness in the destiny and direction of our race, and here be without a plan ? Or can He have meant to conceal from us tliis plan, seeing that in the lowest creatures, which concern us so little. He has shown us so much of the laws of His eternal scheme ? " The thought of his youth remained with him through life, prompted him to the most manifold studies, and ri2:>ened into one of the greatest works of which historical science can boast. In that work he concentrated all the energies, and poured forth all the treasures, of a singularly comprehensive, richly endowed, finely disciplined, and genial nature. I can easily perceive various faults in it ; the thoughts are often ill-defined, the language often over-exuberant, ultimate principles ignored or feebly grasped, analogies made too much of, the higher stages of civilisation unsatisfactorily treated ; and yet I entertain the sincerest admiration for it, as displaying a breadth and truth of general view, a fulness of knowledge, and catholicity of feeling, of the rarest merit. It seems to me to be generally undervalued, because its author had no very eminent capacity for abstract speculation. I admit that he had not ; in that respect he was not only far below a Kant or Hegel, but far below a Fichte or Herbert or Krause ; yet none the less am I convinced that as regards the philosophy of history, after all that the illustrious chiefs of modern German philosophy have done or caused to be done, there is still need to go back to him, and there may still be found in him some things broader and better than in any of them. None of them had equal width and delicacy of mental susceptibility ; in none of them did the relations between nature and man mirror themselves so faith- fully on the whole. It is very difficult to convey even a general notion of a work so comprehensive and rich as his ; and, of course, utterly impos- sible to analyse its 20 books, its 118 chapters, all crowded with thoughts. It is necessary, however, to do what little we can. HERDER. 377 He begins by endeavouiiug to exhibit the relations of man to the entire system of which he is a part ; and although he may have been frequently mistaken as to what these were, separately considered, he certainly saw with wonderful clearness how wide and far-reaching as a system they were. He descants on the earth as a star among stars, as one of the middle planets, on the nature of its movements round its own axis and the sun, on its atmosphere, on the distribution of its elements, on the direction of its mountains, and on the revolutions it has undergone ; for even these facts have imposed certain limits and exerted certain influences on history. He then describes how minerals are supe- rior to the amorphous substance of the earth out of which they are found ; how plants are superior to minerals, animals to plants, one tribe of animals to another ; and how what constitutes the superiority of one of these forms of existence to another,is the pos- session of properties which prefigure something in man, who is thus the centre of the whole terrestrial creation, while at the same time sejjarated and raised above it by the indwelling of a divine principle. He next compares and contrasts the bodily and mental organisation of man with that of the lower animals, and then studies its different faculties in themselves, deducing from his examination that man has been formed for reasoning, for the exercise of art and the use of language, for finer than brutal instincts, for freedom, for spreading over the whole earth, for humanity, for religion, for immortality ; while the fact that man never attains here below, otherwise than most imperfectly, the end to which all his meaner wants are sub- servient, and which they are all contrived to promote, and the general truths that both external nature and the several spheres of human life exhibit a connected and progressive series of forms and powers, and that although no power in nature is without an organ, no organ is itself a power, but only a mean through which immortal power operates — lead him to the con- clusion that the earthly life is only a state of preparation, man the connecting link of two worlds, present humanity, but the bud of a future flower. He proceeds to describe the organisation of the varieties of the human race, and to argue that there is but one and the same species of man throughout 378 BOOK II. — GERMANY. the world, this one species having naturalised itself nnder every climate ; that the appetites of the human species vary with con- stitution and climate, yet a less brutal use of the senses uni- versally leads to humanity ; that human fancy is everywhere constitutional and climatic, and yet everywhere led by tradition ; that the practical understanding has everywhere grown up under the wants of life, and yet is everywhere a blossom of the genius of a people, a product of its traditions and customs ; that the feelings and inclinations of men are everywhere con- formable to their organisation and the circumstances in which they live, yet are everywhere swayed by custom and opinion ; and that happiness is confined to no spot or climate. In the last four sentences I have indicated the subjects dis- cussed, and some of the chief theses maintained in Herder's first eight books; but as these constitute, perhaps, the most distinctive and valuable portion of his work, I must add here a few remarks. The great merit of these eight books is, as I have already hinted, their comprehensive and generally truthful exhibition of man's relationship to the rest of nature. No one before him had nearly equalled him in this respect ; and the author who has since sur- passed him most, Lotze, in his Mikrokosmos, has avowedly imi- tated him. This merit must not be underrated. Geographical and climatic conditions and man's own organisation are un- doubtedly factors which influence most powerfully all history, and which ought to be appreciated by the historical philosopher as completely as possible. It is none the less especially to those books that whatever truth there is in the criticism of Gans, that " ' Herder's Ideas towards a Philosophy of the History of Mankind ' contradict their title by not only banishing all metaphysical categories, but moving in an element of positive hatred to metaphysics," will be found to apply, I do not grant that there is the amount or kind of truth in it that Gans supposes ; I deem it no fault or injury to have banished from the territory of historical science the sort of meta- physical categories to which Gans would give rights of citizen- ship and even of sovereignty ; but certainly care must be taken that along with such categories no spiritual properties or powers be banished. And Herder, I fear, cannot be said to have exer- HERDER. 379 cised sufficient care in this respect. He repudiated materialism, but was far from adopting a decided spiritualism. He did not conceive of spirit otherwise than as an organic power, which is neither indeed identical with organism nor the function of organism ; which, on the contrary, fashions and animates organic matter, yet which is originally the same with all the powers of matter, of irritability, of motion, of life, and merely acts in a higher sphere, in a more elaborate and subtle organisation. Out of the deepest recess of being there flows an inscrutable and active element, imperfectly called light, ether, vital warmth, probably the sensorium of the Creator ; and this stream of celestial fire, poured out into thousands and millions of organs, runs still finer and finer, till it attains in the human frame the highest degree of subtilty of which it is capable in any terrestrial organisation. The soul in the body is thus simply the subtlest of an innumer- rable multitude of powers, which it links together and controls, because essentially one with them in nature. With such a con- ception of spirit. Herder naturally represents it as entirely con- ditioned by its organism ; he even goes so far as to argue in some pages which remind us unpleasantly of Helvetius and La Mettrie, that the erect posture of man is the grand characteristic which has determined the differences between his body, brain, mind, and those of the other animals. He supposes a complete coincidence between the spiritual power and the bodily instru- ment, so that there is nothing in the former which is not ex- pressed in the latter ; no innate properties, no latent wealth ; that organisation is the full manifestation and measure of spirit. But he does not prove this, nor even try to remove the contra- diction which appears to exist between such a supposition and two doctrines which he maintains as of fundamental importance, — viz., that man is free, and that history is a progress. He makes no effort to show how a power essentially identical with those of physical nature, and wholly incorporated in organisation, can be capable of free volition, nor that organic modification keeps pace with social evolution. He seems not to have felt that his conception of spirit made it imperative on him to vindicate his right to believe in liberty and progress. In my opinion his belief in them was as illogical as it was sincere. 380 BOOK II. — GERMANY. His conception of spirit being thus poor and inadequate, he, notwithstanding his admission of liberty and progress, naturally ascribes to the external world and the bodily organisation an inlluence which is excessive. " He regarded man," as Cousin says, " too much as the child and passive scholar of nature, and has not made enough of his activity." Hence, as all his critics have remarked, his treatment of the lower and simpler stages of human life is immensely superior to his treatment of the higher; and his insight into the earlier forms of the development of speech, poetry, religion, and into the barbarian and oriental worlds generally, much deeper than that of any of his contem- poraries ; while his comprehension of the character of the classi- cal nations was widely inferior to that of Lessing and Winck- elmann. To proceed. When Herder has shown how man is related to the universe, to the earth, to the particular character and con- tents of the earth — how the one species of man has been vari- ously organised, and how it is destined to incessant perfecting — he proceeds to insist that men are not isolated individuals, self- dependent, or dependent only on the external world, but that they are connected with and dependent on others through the whole structure of their humanity ; that no one can become a man of himself, but only through the co-operation of parents, teachers, friends, countrymen, ancestors, and even of the race as a whole ; that no man can escape being laid hold of and moulded by tra- dition, by an improving or vitiating civilisation ; that language is the special means through which individuals and generations act on one another ; that by the help of this instrument reason and imitation have been able to invent the various arts and sciences, which have in turn been diffused by its aid as tradi- tions to the remotest places, and transmitted to the most distant ages ; that government which consolidates and organises man into his natural state of society, is itself based mainly on a chain of traditions, the first link of which may have been forged by fortune or wisdom, by force or goodness ; and that religion, which has introduced the first rudiments of civilisation and science among all peoples, has also been propagated and per- petuated as a sacred tradition. HERDER. 381 All this part of his argument, comprising the ninth book, has high value as a statement of the truth of the interdependence, or, as it is often now called, solidarity of men ; a truth not only of essential importance in the philosophy of history, but in- volved in the very conception of its possibility. Herder finds in this truth a warrant for faith in the progressive education of the race. " The history of mankind is a whole — that is, a chain of sociability and tradition, from the first link to the last. There is an education, therefore, of the human species ; since every one becomes a man only by means of education, and the whole species lives solely in this chain of individuals." The title of Lessing's book notwithstanding, it was not Lessing but Herder who represented all history as a course of education, the whole earth as a school, — " the school," as he says, " of our family, containing indeed many divisions, classes, and chambers, but still with one plan of instruction, which has been transmit- ted from our ancestors, with various alterations and additions, to all their race." (IX. 1.) In the following book he endeavours to prove by various scientific and historical considerations that man originated in Central Asia, and that from thence tradition and civilisation, the rudiments of speech, government, culture, and religion, have spread over the habitable earth ; and discusses at length what he caUs " the most ancient written tradition of the orioin of man," the Mosaic account of the Creation, finding in it a re- markable number of the ideas he had already enunciated. In this book he seems to me to have failed throughout. Neither history nor science have as yet data, revelation apart, to prove where man originated. Ethnology and philology, the two sciences which bear most directly on the question, have only made evident how difficult of solution it is ; they have de- stroyed a vain confidence of knowledge, and taught caution and modesty, but have not attained a certain and definite result ; they have shown that such grounds as were in Herder's time received as conclusive are altogether insufficient, and that no conclusion has as yet the warrant of science. The interpreta- tion which Herder gives of the two opening chapters of Genesis is good of its kind ; but the kind, of which the late Mr Hugh 382 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Miller's attempt is perhaps the most generally familiar, is radi- cally bad, consisting of a surreptitious substitution of the pro- fessed interpreter's own ideas for those of his author. Herder, in the last ten books of his work, marks the place in history of each nation and age, and this he does often with great truth, always with a noble freedom and breadth of judgment. In one most important respect he decidedly surpassed all his predecessors. He showed a far truer feeling of the rich variety of elements in human life, and of the duty of the historian of humanity to take account of all its aspects. The sympathetic character of his heart, and the synthetic character of his genius, preserved him from anything like narrowness or exclusiveness. And it is just this catholicity, as we may call it, of thought and sentiment, this breadth of conception and affection, which en- titles Herder to the high place he must ever hold among those who have sought for a philosophy of history. He has, of course, treated each element and aspect of his subject in a way that seems superficial to the student of the present day who has the advantage of the light diffused by the special researches of eighty intervening years ; he has neither adequately traced their separate developments, nor the relations of the separate developments to one another ; each element, each epoch is very differently known now from what it was when he wrote ; on all particular points — even in regard to art and poetry, which he treated with such wonderfully fine appreciation — Herder is out of date : but yet there is something in Herder which will never be out of date : yea, what is the very essence and life as it were of Herder, his catholicity, his comprehensiveness, can never be outgrown. The philosophy of history must always have in- cumbent on it as its first duty that of abiding faithful to his universality of spirit and aim. This universality may, perhaps, have sometimes been over- praised, as if it included all merits, but it is now, probably, in more danger of being regarded as no merit at all ; and, indeed, Herder has of late been frequently depreciated on this very ground. It has been said that the whole tendency of his labours was to make the Germans strive to be citizens of the world instead of their own true selves, and that his meditations HERDEE. 383 on universal history were hurtful because they withdrew atten- tion from the history of the Fatherland, which had been griev- ously neglected. Now, we admit that his universalism or cos- mopolitanism was one-sided, but assuredly the nationalism or patriotism which looks on it as in itself an evil, or denies it to be in itself a good, is as one-sided. Universality ought not to be held any the less good because nationality is also good. These two things are not opposites, but conditions and com- plements of each other. A German who has not a considerable tincture of universalism in his constitution must be a poor specimen of a German. The Germans claim catholicity of sym- pathy and the power of assimilating foreign ideas as marked national characteristics, and certainly they are admirable char- acteristics which every nation should strive to acquire. Herder may not have been national enough, but he was not too univer- sal, catholic, human. Just on account of its catholicity and comprehensiveness his point of view is that which is proper to the philosophy of his- tory. But, unfortunately, it cannot be said to be as clear as it is comprehensive. " The end of human nature is humanity," is the proposition around which his whole historical philosophy turns. It is only as subordinate thereto that he labours so anxiously to prove that all the arrangements of physical nature have a reference to man ; that all earthly life culminates in man ; that the powers of each species of creature become more various as the scale of organisation rises until they all unite in the hu- man frame, as the central and most perfect form, the consum- mation and crown of the entire development of the earth. In his eyes the importance of establishing that the world is a sys- tem which centres in man, and organisation a progressive series of forms which terminates in man, lies in the proof these con- clusions seem to afford that man, occupying as he does this position simply because organised with more diversity and art, with finer and more varied faculties, than any other being on earth, must have his end in himself. He ought not to seek his end in anything lower than himself, and on earth there is noth- ing higher. Therefore, reasons Herder, the end of man must simply be to be man, to become what he is capable of becoming, 384 BOOK II. — GERMANY. to mould himself into humanity so far as he can discern it. And the examination both of the individual and of society yields manifold confirmation and evidence still more direct. The human constitution, with all its finer senses and instincts, its reason and liberty, the conditions of its health and happi- ness, its faculties of language, art, and religion, has been ob- viously organised with this purpose. The differences of sex, of modes of life, of law and government, the distribution of men over the earth, and the vicissitudes of history, can only be un- derstood if viewed as means to the attainment of the end, that man should everywhere over the whole earth be what he had the will and the power to become.^ Humanity is thus, for Herder, the final cause of history, of human nature, and of the earth itself. We naturally expect that he should endeavour to determine what so important a con- ception means ; but in that we are entirely disappointed. He leaves it in all its native vagueness. 'No difficulties in connec- tion with it seem to have occurred to him ; certainly none are removed. " The end of human nature is humanity," — " man's end is in himself." Are these, what Herder makes them, equi- valent propositions ? And ought either of them to be identified with the assertion that " man is everywhere what he has the will and the power to become " ? Herder has affirmed that the Negro and the Chinaman are all that they have had the will and power to become ; that the former could not have been other than gross and violent in his passions, nor the latter, other than the slave of tradition and habit ; that thousands of years of dis- cipline could not alter their characters ; that nature has made the most she could of beings whom it was necessary so to orga- nise, as that countries like those of Africa and of the north and east of Asia might be peopled. But if so, how has man in these countries had his end in himself, and his destiny in his own hands ? Or, how has human nature in these countries had for its end humanity? Are there distinct kinds of humanity for distinct races of men — a Negro humanity, a Chinese humanity, a European humanity, &c. ? And in that case may not the word humanity be applied to things as different as the word ^ B. XV. c. i. HERDER. 385 colour when applied both to white and black, or the word moral when applied both to good and evil ? " Man's end is in himself." On Herder's own showing, that is not a view which analogy favours. All other creatures on earth have their ends not in themselves. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of any creature as having its end in itself. Then, supposing man to have his end in himself, it still remains to be determined whether his end is in the race or the individual, or somehow in both ; and that requires an investi- gation of the severest and most perplexing character, on which Herder has not even entered. No light is thrown on what the solution ought to be by the affirmation that " the end of human nature is humanity." Humanity may mean the attributes which all human beings as such possess, or the culture of these attributes, or a state resulting from their culture, or an ideal to which human nature ought continually to be approximating al- though it can never reach it. Which of these does it mean in Herder? He does not tell us; nay, he passes from signification to signification, and interweaves and commingles them in the most hopelessly confused and inextricable way. It cannot reason- ably be understood in the first sense, when said to be the end of human nature ; for in that sense it is really the sum of the con- ditions of human nature, or the basis and beginning of human nature. What the highest of human beings aims at, cannot be what the lowest of human beings possesses. Taken in the second sense, humanity means self-cultivation. But is self-cultivation not essentially a means to an end ? Does it not imply a stand- ard above and a goal beyond itself ? If by humanity be meant a state either actually realised or actually realisable, that state ought to be described. If by it be meant an unattainable ideal, its relation to the realised and realisable must stand in great need of elucidation. Now, Herder far from solving these and similar problems, does not even propose them. He leaves, that is to say, utterly vague and unsettled, the conception on which his whole historical philosophy revolves. And unfortunately the remark must be extended. It is not only the central conception of his historical philosophy which he has left in this state, but all its general conceptions. He is 2 B 386 BOOK II. — GERMANY. constantly using such words as nature, fate, liberty, organism, &c., in the same loose, incoherent, and even inconsistent way as he uses the term humanity. In fact, although he had a great and rich intellect, he had not the sort of intellect fitted to deal satisfactorily with general conceptions, to analyse them with closeness and completeness, to separate them clearly and pre- cisely from one another, and to trace with truthfulness their relations both to subordinate and co-ordinate conceptions. He was deficient in the logical qualities required for these exercises of mind. It must also be acknowledged that he was not successful in his attempt to sum up his system in general theorems. The fifteenth book of his work — that in which he made the attempt — consists of five chapters, each intended to establish or illus- trate an important proposition. These five propositions are the following : — I. The end of human nature is humanity ; and that they may realise their end, God has put into the hands of men their own fate. TI. All the destructive powers in nature must not only yield in time to the preservative powers, but must ultimately be subservient to the perfection of the whole. III. The human race is destined to proceed through various degrees of civilisation, in various revolutions, but its abiding welfare rests solely and essentially on reason and justice. IV. From the very nature of the human mind, reason and jus- tice must gain more footing among men in the course of time, and promote the extension of humanity. V. A wise goodness disposes the fate of mankind, and there- fore there is no nobler merit, no purer or more abiding happiness, than to co-operate in its designs. It is scarcely necessary to remark that these five propositions, even if thoroughly established, would be a very inadequate general expression of anything worthy of being called a philo- HERDER. 387 sopliy of history. And they are far from sufficiently estab- lished, either by the speculative considerations, or the historical facts which Herder urges in support of them. The reasonings are feeble, the facts too few ; and both reasonings and facts are not unfrequently irrelevant or inconsistent with other reason- ings employed, or other uses made by him of the same facts elsewhere. 388 CHAPTER V. KANT AND SCHILLEE. The next writing which has a claim to notice from us is a trac- tate of Immanuel Kant, the founder of modern German philo- sophy, published in the same year as the first volume of Her- der's ' Ideen,' 1784, and entitled ' Idea of a Universal History from a cosmopolitical point of view ' (Idee zu einer allgemeiner Geschichte in weltbiirgerlicher Absicht). It has been very skilfully translated by Mr Thomas De Quincey, and I shall make my extracts from his translation. It is prefaced by a short introductory statement, in which Kant insists that human development, like everything else, must proceed according to law, and exemplify a plan. The following sentences from it may be acceptable. " Whatsoever difference there may be in our notions of iho. freedom of the loill, metaphysically considered, it is evident that the manifestations of this will — viz., human actions — are as much under the control of universal laws of nature as any other physical phenomena. It is the province of history to narrate these manifestations ; and let their causes be ever so secret, we know that history, simply by taking its station at a distance and contemplating the agency of the human will upon a large scale, aims at un- folding to our view a regular stream of tendency in the great succession of events ; so that the very same course of incidents, which, taken separately and individually, would have seemed perplexed, incoherent, and lawless, yet viewed in their connec- tion, and as the actions of the human species, and not of inde- pendent beings, never fail to discover a steady and continuous though slow development of certain great predispositions in our nature. Thus, for instance, deatlis, births, and marriages. KANT AND SCHILLER. 389 considering how much they are separately dependent on the freedom of the human will, should seem to be subject to no law according to which any calculation could be made beforehand of their amount : and yet the yearly registers of these events in great countries prove that they go on with as much conformity to the laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather : these again are events which in detail are so far irregular that we cannot predict tliem individually ; and yet, taken as a whole series, we find that they never fail to support the growth of plants, the currents of rivers, and other arrangements of nature, in a uniform and uninterrupted course. Individual men, and even nations, are little aware that, whilst they are severally pursuing their own peculiar and often contradictory purposes, they are unconsciously following the guidance of a great natural purpose which is wholly unnoticed by themselves ; and are thus promoting and making efforts for a great process which, even if they perceived it, they would little regard." The essay itself consists of nine propositions, with illustrative and confirmatory observations, so that it is easy both to acquire and convey a clear general view of its contents and purport. Prop. 1 is, That all the natural tendencies of each creature have been so formed as that they will finally reach a complete and appropriate development. For its proof a mere reference is made to the internal and external observation of animals, and to the belief in nature as a system of order in which organs are never found without a use, and in which every arrangement attains its purpose. Kant obviously supposed this proposition far more easily proved than it is ; and necessarily, because physiology and natural history had not in his time brought to light those numerous instances of organs at least apparently useless, which now afibrd so much matter for speculation, and which have modified to a considerable extent the doctrine of final causes in the minds of competently informed men. I question if any cautious biologist would at present undertake to furnish a complete scientific proof of the proposition which seemed to Kant so manifest and undoubted. Prop. 2 is. In the case of man (as the only rational being on earth), those natural tendencies which have for destination the 390 BOOK IT. — GERMANY. use of reason must find their perfect development not in tlie individual but in the species. The proof of it is rested on the fact that instincts display in an individual all that they are capable of — put forth in each individual all that is in them — whereas reason reaches in the individual only to a very small extent the perfection proper to it. This proposition assumes the previous proposition, inasmuch as it promises reason a com- plete development on the ground of being one of those natural tendencies all of which must of a priori necessity reach a com- plete development. This falling back on an a priori belief I think a weakness and an error. The conviction which most men in the present day entertain that reason will develop itself in the future, is based simply on the knowledge that it has de- veloped itself in the past. That it will ever attain a complete development is a mere speculation, which probably few will grant to be even plausible. On the other hand, the proposition before us to a certain extent, seemingly at least, contradicts that on which it is based, inasmuch as it denies that reason finds its complete development in individual men; while the other affirms all the natural tendencies of each creature to have been destined to a complete development. What is meant by saying tliat reason will find its perfect development only in the species ? Either that it will do so in an abstraction, a general conception, and not in reality, or that it will do so in some individuals or generations of individuals to be born, perhaps thousands or millions of years hence, but not in any individuals or genera- tions before them ; and either alternative so attenuates the sig- nificance of the complete development promised to every natural tendency in Prop. 1, as to leave behind nothing but vacuity. To apply the term " creature " indiscriminately to individual and species is fallacious. Prop. 3 is, Nature has willed that man should draw from his own internal resources all that transcends the mere mechanic constitution of his animal existence, and should attain no other happiness or perfection than that which, instinct apart, he pro- cures for himself by the right use of his reason. Nature, who does nothing in vain, who is no spendthrift of her means, does no more for man than is good for him. Having endowed him with KANT AND SCHILLEK. 391 reason and will, she exercises towards him a wise parsimony, calculated to force him to exercise them, and to obtain through them the satisfaction of his wants. She casts him on the world as a naked and hungry animal, and leaves him to find out even clothing and food for himself, and puts hindrances and diffi- culties as well as opportunities and facilities in his way, with the beneficent design of evoking, strengthening, and maturing the distinctive powers in virtue of which he is man, and of causing him to seek and pursue those paths which will guide him on to all heights of achievement. Prop. 4 is, The means which Nature employs to bring about the development of all the tendencies she has laid in man is the antagonism of these tendencies in the social state, — no farther, however, than to that point at which this antagonism becomes the cause of social arrangements founded in law. The previous proposition informs us what is Nature's general aim as to man, and this what the general means by which she seeks to accom- plish it. It is through an antagonism which consists in a certain unsocial sociability (ungesellige Geselligkeit), the result of men having both tendencies to social union and tendencies disruptive of it, both general sympathies and private interests. Were it not for this antagonism, were interests and feelings not to clash, social life would be only like that of Arcadian shepherds, where men would be as gentle as the flocks they tended, and not much more intelligent or energetic. Man wishes peace, but Nature progress, and progress involves antagonism, conflict. The next proposition is narrower and more definite — viz.. The most important problem for the human race, and one to the solution of which Nature irresistibly urges it, is to establish a universal civil society in which political justice shall reign. Society can only be perfectly regulated when a political con- stitution is found which completely harmonises the liberties of each individual with the liberties of all other individuals. Liberty is not lawlessness — it has its conditions and limits ; and it is only when a State is so constituted that these are observed, that human nature develops itself as it ought to do. Men in a well-ordered State are like trees in a well-kept plauta. 392 BOOK II. — GEllMANY. tion. In a plantation the trees seek to take the light and air from one another, but they thus only force one another to seek the light and air above them— and thus they all grow tall and straight and beautiful ; whereas if they had had no restraints on their liberty— if they had stood quite isolated, and grown just as their natures prompted them — they would have been distorted and misshapen. The proposition which follows is, That the problem of a perfect political constitution is not only, as the previous pro- position afiirms, the most important which man can propose to himself, but likewise the most difficult, — the one which it takes longest to solve. Man inevitably abuses his freedom in regard to his equals. He is an animal who needs a master. A master, however, can only be found for him among men, among his fellows — i.e., among those who themselves need a master, and in whose hands, whether they be many or few, when mastership is lodged it is sure to be abused. Out of wood so crooked and perverse as that which man is made of, nothing absolutely straight can ever be wrought. Approximation only is possible. And it must take long to reach even a close approximate solu- tion, since even this presupposes just notions of the nature of a good constitution, great experience, and, above all, a will fa- vourably disposed to the adoption of such a constitution ; three things tliat can hardly, and not until after many fruitless trials, be expected to concur. Prop. 7. The problem of the establishment of a perfect civil constitution implies that of a regular constitution of inter- national relations, and cannot be solved without it. Long after men living within the pale of civil society have cast off bar- barism in their relations with one another, it continues to j)revail in the relations of State to State. Kant thought it could only be put an end to through the foundation of a great confederation of nations, which should do for separate States what they do for individuals, and in which the safety and rights of each of its members, even the feeblest, should be secured by the collective strength of all. " Visionary," he says, " as this idea may seem, and as such laughed at in the Abb^ de Saint Pierre and in Pvousseau (possibly because they deemed it too near its accom- KANT AND SCHILLER. 393 plishment), it is, notwithstanding, the inevitable resource and mode of escape under that pressure of evil which nations reciprocally inflict ; and hard as it may be to realise such an idea, States must of necessity be driven at last to the very same resolution to which the savage man of nature was driven with great reluctance — viz., to sacrifice brutal liberty, and to seek peace and security in a civil constitution founded upon law." All w^ars may be considered as so many attempts on the part of Nature to bring about an arrangement. To doubt of its ultimate accomplishment is, while assuming a final purpose of all natural processes and arrangements in the parts, to suppose there may, notwithstanding, be a want of purpose in the whole. The eighth proposition sums up all the preceding seven. It is that the history of the human race may be regarded as the accomplishment of a secret plan of Nature to produce a perfect political constitution, both in internal and external relations, as the only condition which can give scope for the complete development of all the faculties with which humanity has been endowed. Philosophy, too, has its millenarianism, for it catches a glimpse of the far-off end towards which Nature moves. The whole course of her movement may be too vast, and the part of it yet traversed too small for us to be able correctly to determine it ; and yet both on general grounds, derived from the systema- tic frame of the universe, and from the scanty stock of observa- tions as yet accumulated, we may have warrant enough to assert that there is a course. Various circumstances, and especially the growing dependence of industrial and commercial interests, the dominaucy of which is so characteristic of modern society, and ever increasing, on civil liberty within States and peace between them, justify a hope that after many revolutions and reforms Nature will realise her supreme purpose in the estab- lishment of a universal federation of nations, within which all the primordial tendencies of humanity wiU be able fully to develop themselves. The essay concludes with this proposition, — A philosophical attempt to compose a universal history according to a plan of Nature, which aims at a perfect civil union of the human species, is to be regarded as possible, and even as capable of 394 BOOK II. — GERMANY. helping toward this very purpose of Nature. I must quote wliat is said in support of it. " At first sight it is certainly a strange and apparently an extravagant project, to propose a history of man founded on any idea of the course which human affairs would take if adjusted to certain reasonable ends. On such a plan it may be thought that nothing better than a romance could be the result. Yet if we assume that Nature proceeds not without place and final purpose even in the motions of human free-will, this idea may possibly turn out very useful ; and although we are too short-sighted to look through the secret mechanism of her arrangements, this idea may yet serve as a clue for connecting into something like systematic unity the mass of human actions that else seem a chaotic and incoherent aggregate. For if we take our beginning from the Grecian history, as the depository, or at least the collateral voucher, for all elder or synchronous liistory ; if we pursue down to our own times its influence upon the formation and malfor- mation of the Eoman people as a political body that swallowed up the Grecian state, and the influence of Eome upon the barbarians, by whom Eome itself was destroyed ; and if to all this we add, by way of episode, the political history of every other people, so far as it has come to our knowledge through the records of the two enlightened nations above mentioned, — we shall then discover a regular gradation of improvement in civil polity as it has grown up in our quarter of the globe, which quarter is in all probability destined to give laws to all the rest. If, further, we direct an exclusive attention to the civil constitution, with its laws, and the external relations of the State, in so far as both, by means of the good which they contained, served for a period to raise and to dignify other nations, and with them the arts and sciences, yet again by their defects served also to precipitate them into ruin, but so that always some germ of illumination survived, which, being more and more developed by every revolution, prepared continually a still higher step of improvement: in that case, I believe that a clue will be dis- covered not only for the unravelling of the intricate web of human affairs, and for the guidance of future statesmen in the art of political prophecy (a benefit which has been extracted KANT AND SCHILLER. 395 from history, eveu whilst it was regarded as au incoherent result from a lawless freedom of will), but also such a clue as will open a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we shall discover the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted, and its destination upon this earth accomplished. Such a justification of Nature, or rather of Providence, is no mean motive for choosing tliis cosmo- political station for the survey of history. For what does it avail to praise and draw forth to view the magnificence and wisdom of the creation in the irrational kingdom of nature, if that part in the great stage of the supreme wisdom, which con- tains the object of all this mighty display — viz., the history of the human species, is to remain an eternal objection to it, the bare sight of which obliges us to turn away our eyes with displeasure, and (from the despair which it raises of ever dis- covering in it a perfect and rational purpose) finally leads us to look for such a purpose only in another world ? "My object in this essay would be wholly misinterpreted, if it were supposed that under the idea of a cosmopolitical history, which, to a certain degree, has its course determined a ijrioi'i, I had any wish to discourage the cultivation of empirical history in the ordinary sense : on the contrary, the philosopher must be well versed in history who could execute the plan I have sketched, which is indeed a most extensive survey of history, only taken from a new statioii. However, the extreme, and, simply considered, praiseworthy circumstantiality with which the history of every nation is written in our times, must natu- rally suggest a question of some embarrassment. In what way will our remote posterity be able to cope with the enormous accumulation of historical records which a few centuries will bequeath to them ? There is no doubt that they will estimate the historical details of times far removed from their own, the original monuments of which will long have perished, simply by the value of that which will then concern themselves — viz., by the good or evil performed by nations and their governments in a cosmopolitical view. To direct the eye upon this point as connected with the ambition of rulers and their servants, in order 396 BOOK II. — GERMANY. to guide tliem to the only means of bequeathing an honourable record of themselves to distant ages, may furnish some small motive (over and above the great one of justifying Providence) for attempting a philosophical liistory on the plan I have here explained." I have given a full account of this tractate, which is deservedly celebrated. It is an ingenious and vigorous attempt, worthy of Kant, to find an a priori or metaphysical thread to guide us through the labyrinths of history, and to enable us to see the unity of plan which pervades it. However, it must be remarked, that even had this design been realised, a philosophy of history would have still been to discover. A knowledge of the end or purpose of anything gives a unity to all our other knowledge of that thing, but does not necessitate our knowledge of it being either extensive or thorough. I may know the purpose of a ma- chine without understanding its construction and how it works. And in like manner I might know the purpose of history, while ignorant of how historical events are brought about. But admi- rable although many of its particular remarks are, and able as is the elaboration of its general conception, the essay under consi- deration does not succeed as to its main design ; it fails to make good its claim to simplify the comprehension of history by the help of a 'priori thought. The appearance of a priori deduction which it presents is delusive, and arises from ascribing an abso- lute and a priori character to propositions which have no validity beyond what induction gives them, on the ground of their involv- ing an a priori principle — that of final causes. The principle of final causes is not only assumed throughout, but is expressed in such forms as — Nature does nothing in vain — Nature has such and such an end in view — Nature must perfectly realise all her ends, — and made the warrant of other and wider inferences than are contained in the historical facts themselves. Now it is not necessary to deny either the principle of final causes or to deny that it is a prioj^i in order to reject as illegitimate such an appli- cation of it. If knowledge is to be regarded as a priori when- ever it involves an a p)riori principle, must not all knowledge — even the simplest act of perception through sense — be a priori ? That a principle of thought is a 2}riori as a condition in the ap- KANT AND SCHILLER. 397 prehension of facts, is not the slightest reason for concluding that an a ■priori use can be made of it — that is, a use apart from, or at least going beyond, the facts. Every attempt at an a priori use of the principle of final causes can only lead to error. It consists in reasoning not from facts to final causes, which is legi- timate, but from final causes to facts, which is illegitimate, and which is even a more futile and dangerous process to employ amidst the complications of historical phenomena than in physical science, where, however, it has long been wisely abandoned. It will have been remarked that Kant distinctly disclaims any wish to discourage or supersede the empirical study of history by carrying a priori speculation into the province of history. The far-sighted man must have perceived that there was a danger that a 'priori speculation would not consent to remain merely the servant of what he called empirical history, but might assert independence, in which case the study of his- tory would be much more hindered than helped by it. Could he consistently, however, grant a priori speculation so much and refuse it more ? Could he warrantably say it should go only so far and no farther, or that it should be a servant to any- thing ? No. If speculation possess power of its own, pure a priori power, it has a riglit to use that power in perfect freedom to the very utmost. Nay, more, it is bound to do so ; bound to proceed as far as it can of itself; bound, as Eothe argues in the introduction to his great work on Theological Ethics, to go straight on, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, con- sidering neither whether empirical realities exist nor what they are, following merely the necessity of logic, the inner sequence of the thoughts deducible from the primary datum. If the re- sults at which it thus arrives are found irreconcilable with facts testified to by the senses or established by induction, there must, of course, be supposed to be error either in the speculative or the empirical process, and both must be repeated and revised ; but if, after every effort to detect and eliminate error, none can be dis- covered, and yet no conciliation can be effected, remedy there is none — since to sacrifice the results of either process to those of the other, while at the same time accepting that process as no less legitimate than the other, is a manifestly arbitrary and self- 398 BOOK II. — GERMANY. contradictory act. Either, then, there is no a priori use of reason, and Kant has gone too far ; or there is, and he has not gone far enough. In the latter case, Fichte only carried out his view to its legitimate issue when he distinctly maintained the monstrous paradox that the philosopher can by pure a ^priori reason — can, apart from all experience — think out the entire plan of the world ; can elaborate the philosophy of history with- out looking at history ; can determine all its epochs and the significance of them from the a priori idea of universal time. The particular final cause which Kant assigns to history is the production of a perfect political constitution. Now, a perfect political constitution, a State rightly organised in all its inner and outer relations, would certainly be a very excellent thing ; but that it is the great and ultimate end of Providence may reasonably be doubted, and must be most difficult to prove. It implies that a political constitution is the most valuable of all things which history contains, the worthiest of being the final end of Providence, and can only be successfully argued if the entire worth of man is subordinate to, and capable of being summed up in, his citizenship — or, in other words, if the distinctive principle of the modern or Christian world is false, and that of classical paganism true. It is inconsistent with Kant's own view of the State as not an end but a means — as an institution for the realisation of political justice, for harmonising the liberties of each individual with the liberties of all other in- dividuals ; so that when Pichte and Hegel represented rational freedor)i as the end of historical development, although they only made explicit what was implicit in Kant, they got rid of a rather obvious inconsistency chargeable against him, that of setting forth an end as de eodcm both ultimate and proxi- mate. Eosenkranz maintains, " Kant has taken the right view of the philosophy of history. If we cram into that philosophy all that exists in history, it will inevitably be of an immeasurable ex- tent, and a medley dc omnibus et de quihnsdam aliis. The notion of the State alone supplies a firm foundation, and renders pos- sible organic development. Religion, art, science, can only be included in the philosophy of history, so far as they refer to KANT AND SCHILLER. 399 political freedom, not as they are in and for themselves." ^ Now, no doubt, it would simplify greatly the problem of historical philosophy if we were free to neglect the considera- tion of every kind of history but the political, or at least to con- sider it only in subordination to that ; but we are not free to simplify a scientific problem by the exclusion or depreciation of any of its essential elements. If political history be the only kind of history, then, but not otherwise, may the philosophy of history occupy itself solely therewith. With religion, art, and science, indeed, in themselves, it has strictly no concern, but neither has it with the State in itself ; it has to do only with their development, or, more properly, with the development of man in these spheres of activity. It is conceivable, of course; that the philosophy of history may succeed in proving that all kinds of human development are subordinate to political free- dom : if it can, let it do so ; but most certainly it must not assume it. A theorem or result of the science must not be in- troduced into its definition or notion, I believe, however, no such theorem will be proved. Freedom, political freedom, is '' a noble thing," but noble as a means and not an end ; only when used so as to attain ends, some of the best of which lie beyond the political sphere altogether, can it be rightly called, as it is by Fichte and Hegel, rational freedom. Hence Professor Eosenkranz, instead of here making evident a merit in Kant's essay, has only brought into additional prominence its narrow- ness, its exclusiveness, or, in other words, its deficiency in the excellences most characteristic of the conception and work of Herder. The doctrine maintained by Kant in connection with the seventh proposition of his ' Idea of a Universal History,' was advocated by him ten years later in a special tractate, entitled ' Vom ewigen Frieden' (Of Perpetual Peace). It was even in his time no new doctrine. George Podiebrad, ruler of Bohemia, laid before Louis XI. of France, in 1464, a plan " for the eman- cipation of peoples and kings by the organisation of a new Europe," in which there would be such a coalition of the secondary powers as would be irresistible either by Pope or ^ Geschichte (lev Kant'sclien Philosophic, 2G5. 400 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. Emperor, and as would prevent both tyranny and aggression. Henry IV. of France and his minister Sully, about the end of the sixteenth century, pondered over the similar but more elaborate design of " a Christian republic " of free nations, preserved from war by a sort of Amphictyonic Council. In 1623, Emeric la Croix published at Paris ' Le Nouveau Cyn^e, Discours des Occasions et Moyens d'establir une Paix Generale et la Libert(^ du Commerce par tout le Monde,' in which he argued for the establishment of a permanent international diet, to be in- trusted with the power of settling all disputes between na- tions. Leibnitz maintained in 1670 that this end was to be attained by the nations of Europe forming themselves into a confederation under the sovereignty of the Emperor of Ger- many. In 1693, the good and great William Penn, in an ' Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe,' also tried to prove that by a diet or confederation Europe could completely free itself of war if it chose. Twenty years later the theory of universal and perpetual peace found in the Abbe de Saint-Pierre one of the most enthusiastic advocates it has ever had. The first of his w^orks in its favour was published in 1712, the last in 1736. Kousseau gave an eloquent exposition of the ingenious Abbe's views in 1761. Goudar in his 'La Paix de I'Europe' (1757) and 'L'Espion Chinois' (1765), and Mayer in his 'Tableau Politique et Litt^raire de I'Europe en 1775' (1777) advocated plans of a Ei^ropean congress for the securing and maintaining of peace substantially the same as that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Kant's work followed these, and is, perhaps, not inferior to anything of the same size which has been published on the same subject. He did not suppose that what he recommended would be speedily adopted. He thought only that even if a dream it was one in which a good man might well indulge ; and that there were guarantees in human nature itself, and the essential tendencies of history, that the cause of peace would eventually triumph, and a rational system of international law, preventive of war, be established and respected. He saw clearly that Saint-Pierre's project was faulty, in so far as it assumed that the congress proposed ought to be the creation KANT AND SCHILLER. 401 of kings, and secure them not only against external wars, but internal revolutions. He considered that nations must be what he called republics — using the word in a sense not to be con- founded with democracy, nor inconsistent with monarchy — must be self-governing, and under not the will of one man or any number of men, but of the Law, as the first condition of their entering into concert with others with any rational hope of preventing war. He wished the individual independence of the confederated States to remain intact, so that there should be union without fusion. Since Kant wrote, many others have written in the same spirit and to the same effect. Saint-Simon and Fourier, and every socialist and communist since, have had plans for the abolition of war. Societies even have been formed in America, in England, and on the Continent, for the establishment of per- manent and universal peace, which have maintained journals to advocate their views — Heralds of Peace, Harbingers of Peace, &c. — and which have repeatedly held great international meet- ings. In 1863 the project of a European diet, of a permanent peace congress, for the settlement of international disputes, was recommended by Napoleon III. to his brother sovereigns. The Franco-Prussian war, so burdened with horrors, and so preg- nant to appearance with future mischiefs, gave a new impulse and life to the idea of providing a security against the recur- rence of war. It was curious to observe what a number of people within a few months after that war set forth the idea, in our public journals as not only a brilliant but a new one. Among its recent advocates, perhaps Professor Seeley, Lord Amberley, and M. de Laveleye have commanded most attention. The plan of Kant, then, is not likely to be now much laughed at as Utopian. Many even of those who see no likelihood of its being realised, will probably regard favourably its advocacy as tending to diffuse a healthy horror of war. For my own part, I cannot say I see much beyond good intentions, either in it or in any kindred scheme. The most thoroughgoing is that which requires nations to cease to be independent States, and to become merely parts of one great empire or federation, a United States of Europe in transition to a United States of the 2 c 402 BOOK II. GERMANY. world. It rests on the argument that if the decisions of any court or other authority are to be effective and final settlements of disputes between peoples, there must be an executive power to enforce them ; which necessarily implies that the federation alone has an armed force to obey its will, that there is but one sovereign power, that nations cease to be independent and self- governing. And the argument seems to me conclusive so far as it is negative. While the characters of nations are not essentially different from what they are, nothing less than the absolute absorption of their independence in one comprehensive sovereign will can secure them exemption from war. But, that granted, two strong objections present themselves against our allowing it any further validity, any positive worth. First, although nothing else, a complete spiritual regeneration of human nature excepted, can avail, probably even it would fail. Suppose it so far realised — suppose nations to become unani- mously so profoundly convinced of the evils of war, as to sacrifice their independence in favour of a single common power, — how could they guard against the obvious danger of its becoming a tyranny requiring to be overthrown ? Is it not likely that leviathan would take to devouring those who had created him ? Is it not likely that a universal government would be, as Kant has argued, a very bad government, having far more to do than it could possibly do well, and, in conse- quence, doing everything ill ? It could not be other than very ignorant of the condition and wants of large provinces of its empire ; it could have little zeal for the welfare of large sections of its people ; it must necessarily be above responsibility. Is it not likely, then, — is it not almost certain, — that the world under its rule would fluctuate between anarchy and despotism ; that wars in the form of revolts would be more numerous even than now ; and that the world's standing army would require to be larger, and its military budget heavier than ever ? Secondly, even peace so obtained would be too dearly bought. What would be given for it would be the life, the independence, the moral dignity of nations, and that is more than even peace is worth. A peace founded on the sacrifice of the nationality of peoples is only the peace of a cemetery. KANT AND SCHILLER. 403 I see no probability, however, of getting perpetual peace cheaper. International congresses, Amphictyonic leagues, and high courts of nations, might all, I believe, be shown to be more likely to increase wars than to diminish them, to become the instruments of ambition than safeguards against it. The less nations try to realise these plans, the better for the weak and honest amons[ them. The reference of international dis- putes to arbitrators chosen by the contending parties, is of a diflferent character. It may in many cases be most reasonable and proper — it may often preserve peace when endangered ; but most certainly it will never extinguish war, and may occasionally give rise to it instead of preventing it. War has its source in evil lusts, from which no external means or con- trivances will deliver us, and which mere worldly prudence will never effectually control. It will cease only when the law of righteousness is fully realised in the conduct of nations, which will only be when the truth has made all individuals free. Not till then wiU earth see Kant's " republics " and the " perpetual peace " which is to reign among them. In the year following the publication of his tractate on Uni- versal History, Kant reviewed in the ' Allgemeiue Literaturzeitung ' the first two parts of Herder's ' Ideen,' in a way which bitterly offended their author, who attempted to retaliate by severe crit- icism of the Kantian philosophy, but unsuccessfully, as nature had not qualified him to understand, much less to judge, a spe- culative system so subtle and profound, Kant's review dwelt unduly, I think, on certain obvious defects in Herder's modes of thought and expression, which it would have been sufficient merely to indicate, while it very inadequately appreciated his merits, and contained in itself little or nothing either new or valuable. It was thus unsatisfactory both in relation to Herder and to the subject. In 1786 he published a short essay entitled 'Conjectural Commencement of the History of Mankind,' in which he endea- voured to explain the Mosaic account of the Fall as the represen- tation in an historical form not of an actual event or individual incident, but of the transition from the innocence of mere sense and instinct to the conscious imperfection of reason and freedom. 404 BOOK II. GERMANY. Herder had preceded Kant in this direction, both in the 'Ideen' and in a special work. Schiller in 1792, in his ' Hints on the Origin of Human Society as Indicated in the Mosaic Records,' and the youthful Schelling in the same year, in a dissertation for his degree of Master of Arts, ' On the Biblical Philoso- pheme of the Origin of Evil,' adopted, expanded, and applied the tlioughts of Herder and Kant, and contributed to diffuse the notion so current in subsequent German literature and philoso- phy, that the Fall was a great step in the progress of human culture, and that sin, although a defect in the individual, is a necessity and advantage as regards the race. In my opinion all these attempts proceed on false principles of interpretation, and tend to darken any little light we have on the primeval history of man. Probably Kant rendered more important service to historical science by the attempt which he made in the ' Kritik of Judg- ment' to determine what constitutes and differentiates an organism, properly so called, than by anything in the essays — the ' Idea of a Universal History ' excepted — brought together by his editors, Rozenkranz and Schubert, in the seventh volume of his works, under the general title of ' Zur Philosophie der Geschichte.' Although Herder had often spoken of history as an organic development, he had done nothing to define and explain, what organic development meant, and obviously had merely a vague notion thereof, which he might as well have ex- pressed by natural process, or some similar phrase. Kant, on the other hand, did not apply the notion of organism to history, but he endeavoured to ascertain precisely what it denoted — to dis- tinguish it from mere external adaptation — to analyse it into its conditioning and constituent thoughts. He may not have entirely succeeded, his analysis may not have been exhaustive or even quite satisfactory so far as it went; but to deal with the subject at all was a great gain ; and to deal with it in so vigor- ous and suggestive a manner as he undoubtedly did, was a still greater gain. But, of course, by far the greatest of Kant's services to the science of history, as to every other special science, was the mar- vellous impulse which he gave to the scientific spirit by his KANT AND SCHILLER. 405 investigations into the nature, conditions, and limits of know- ledge itself. These investigations — the most profound and the most comprehensive ever made — broke the dogmatic slumber of Europe, dispelled a host of cherished dreams, and allowed a flood of light to pour in through new openings. What he did in these ways I must not here attempt to indicate, and still less to esti- mate ; but silence certainly does not imjjly belief that it was little, or indeed other than indescribably great. Among the earlier followers of Kant there is only one whom it is necessary to mention in the present history — the poet Schil- ler.^ In 1787 he read the more important of those essays of Kant of which I have just given an account, and accepted with full assent the idea that history to be treated philosophically must be studied and presented teleologically, or as a system of means and ends. It was about this very time that he began col- lecting materials for his historical works ; and the teleological principle advocated by Kant is the most general philosophical idea traceable in the ' History of the Revolt in the Netherlands,' and the ' History of the Thirty Years' War.' It must be allowed, however, that there is not much of philosophy in either, any more than of research, although there are other things which have not undeservedly given them popularity. The clearest proof of the influence of Kant's historical specu- lations on Schiller is to be found in the Inaugural Discourse delivered by the latter in 1789 as Professor of History at Jena. That lecture, entitled ' What is Universal History, and with what views should it be studied ? ' is certainly a most eloquent one — every way worthy of Schiller ; but to say, as Lord Lytton has done, that " the notions it contains on history are worth whole libraries of history itself," or, as MrCarlyle, that " there perhaps has never been in Europe another course of history sketched out on principles so magnilicent and philosophical," is eulogy utterly 1 Of course all the biographers of Schiller treat to some extent of his philo- sophical abilities and writings. Kimo Fischer has three excellent lectures on 'Schiller as a Philosopher;' Drobisch has treated specially of his relation to the Kantian ethics ; and Schasler, in his recent ' Critical History of ^Esthet- ics,' has given an able account of his testhetical speculations. 406 BOOK II. — GERMANY. dissevered from truth — eulogy of a kind which no man needs less than Schiller. The order of thought in the discourse is as follows : First, a contrast is eloquently drawn between study which has no higher aim than to amass the knowledge required for worldly mainte- nance, wealth, and preferment, and the study which springs from a philosophical spirit, from the love of truth, and of intellectual and moral perfection ; and it is inferred that the latter kind of study is alone desirable and appropriate in regard to universal history. Next two pictures are presented to us — one of what man is in the savage state, and another of what he is at the pre- sent time in civilised Europe ; and universal history is described as the study which shows how men have passed from the former to the latter of these states, what their fortunes have been in each age, why nations differ so much from one another, and why society has the creeds, laws, manners, classes, &c., which it has. We are then told that there are great blanks in the historical world — that not only many events but many ages are irreco- verably forgotten — so that universal history will never be other than an aggregate of fragments unworthy of the name of a science. The universal historian must, moreover, make a selec- tion even among the facts which have been recorded ; and the principle of selection, Schiller argues, must be the perception of an essential, incontestable, and evident relationship between these facts and the present constitution of society, the welfare or misery of the generations now living. Universal history itself has flowed down through time ; but the universal historian must trace the course of the stream by proceeding upwards. Having adopted this thought of Kant, Schiller then adopts another, and declares that the philosophical spirit soon discovers, in the course of its study of history, that the past is connected with the present not merely as cause with effect, but as means with purpose. He, finally, insists that the teleological principle is what alone can make of history a rational whole for the mind of man, and a morally elevating object of study. These are, I believe, the only thoughts which will be found in Schiller's lecture when it is reduced to its essential constituents, to what Lytton calls its " notions," and Carlyle its " principles. ' KANT AND SCHILLER. 407 The process of reduction, of course, strips it of all its eloquence and deprives it of all its life ; but it leaves behind all its funda- mental ideas, and these are just those which have been indi- cated. Obviously, even had they all been original, a mere statement of them, however eloquent, would have been an insufficient ground for our assigning liim a distinguished place among the cultivators of historical philosophy. And there is not one of them in the slightest degree original. Such being the case, it would be as reasonable to represent him as a great historical philosopher because of the delineations of the progress of society, and of the epochs of history in his beautiful poems of " The Walk," and " The Four Ages of the World," as because of the brief and general observations contained in the Discourse on Universal History. The department of philosophy in which Schiller really distin- guished himself was Esthetics ; in the history of that science his services must always be recorded with honour ; and these services, I would add, tended to the benefit of the science of history, inasmuch as they contributed to determine the function of art in human nature and human history, in the life of the individual and the life of the race. The noble poem of " The Artists " celebrates the influence of that feeling after Beauty which is distinctive of man, — its conciliation of sense and reason — its elevation of the savage into a cultured being, — its *' Chai-miug the breast it tutors to aspire. From the I'ude passion and the low desire " — its " luring of the indolent through sweet play to lofty duties," — its eliciting and diffusing the joys of sympathy and its refining and spiritualising of love, — its giving form and force to the powers of the world to come, and investing the Invisible with attributes which secure reverence and affection ; — in a word, it delineates, with exquisite truth and skill, art as the assistant and associate of morality, religion, and philosophy, necessary to their existence, and still more necessary to their development and perfection. And all that Schiller there sings he philosophically establishes and justifies in his various essays on aesthetic sub- jects, and especially on the ' Letters on ^Esthetic Education.' 408 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. Ill that work he effected important modifications in the theory of Kant, although chiefly by the development of Kantian prin- ciples. These modifications all tended to show that art was the principle and form of life which bridged over the chasm between sense and intellect — between the reign of mere force and the reign of law — and gave to man the freedom only to be found in the co-operation and harmonious action or play of his twofold nature. They all tended, in other words, to correct an error into which Kant had practically fallen, — the error of regard- ing political history as the whole of history. If the Esthetic Letters have not wholly failed in what they sought to accom- plish — and he must be a rash man who undertakes to main- tain that they have — art cannot but be admitted to have such a place in the human soul and in the education of human life that its history must be ah essential department of general history. . The last four of these Letters illustrate the following thesis enunciated at the commencement of Letter XXIV. : " There may be distinguished three different moments or stages of development, through which both the individual man and the whole race must pass in a necessary and prescribed order, if they would complete the entire circle of their destiny. Through accidental causes, indeed, which lie either in the influ- ence of external things or in the free choice of man, the single periods may be at one time protracted, and at another abbre- viated, but none can be entirely overleaped, and even the order of their succession can be neither inverted by nature or will. Man is wholly subject to the force of nature in the ijliysical condition; he frees himself from this force in the ccsthetical condition ; and rules it in the moral condition." I have already in the course of the present work had several times to reject laws or generalisations of this kind, and have no hesita- tion in now rejecting Schiller's, so far as it pretends to deter- mine the succession of the epochs of history. He has produced no proof of there being three separate and distinct epochs — a physical, resthetical, and moral— which follow one another in the order he mentions ; nay, his observations aU directly tend to prove, or at least to illustrate the contrary— viz., that the physical, c^sthetical, and moral, being essential elements in KANT AND SCHILLER. 409 human nature, are also essential developments of human history, and, in consequence, so intimately related as to be through all epochs of time inseparable. I regret that I do not feel at liberty to make more than a single quotation in illustration of the character of his observa- tions. It is from the last Letter : " Although need forces man into society, and reason plants social principles within him, yet beauty alone can impart to him a social character. Taste alone introduces harmony into society, since it establishes harmony in the individual. All other forms of conception dismember man, since they are founded exclusively either on the sensuous or on the spiritual part of his being ; only that of beauty makes of him a whole, since both his natures must thereto unite and agree. All other forms of communication dismember society, since they relate exclusively either to the private susceptibility or to the private dexterity of its individual members, and con- sequently to what is distinctive between man and man ; only the communication of beauty unites society, since it relates to what is common to all. We enjoy the pleasures of sense merely as individuals, without the generic nature which dwells in us participating therein ; consequently we cannot extend our sensuous pleasures to universality, since we cannot make our individuality universal. We enjoy the pleasures of know- ledge merely generically, and while we carefully remove from our judgment every trace of the individual ; consequently we cannot make our rational pleasures universal, since we cannot exclude the traces of individuality from the judgment of others, as from our own. Beauty alone we enjoy both as individuals and as genus ; that is, as representatives of the genus. Sensuous good can only make one person happy, since it is founded upon appropriation, which always carries with it exclusion ; and even this one it can only make partially happy, because the personality does not participate in it. Absolute good can only make happy under conditions, which cannot be universally pre- supposed ; because truth is only the reward of sacrifice, and only a pure heart believes in the pure will. Beauty alone blesses all the world, and every being forgets its limitations while under her spell." 410 CHAPTER VI. FICHTE. After Kant, Fichte ; after one noble man another still nobler ; but also after one erroneous mode of treating history another far more erroneous. Fichte's views on the subject of historical phi- losox^hy are contained in his ' Characteristics of the Present Age' (Grundziige des gegenwartigen Zeitalters), published in 1806, but consisting of lectures delivered in Berlin during the winter ot 1804-5. This book, like all the writings of Fichte, is instinct with the noblest and divinest life ; like all his popular writings, is composed in the most beautiful style ; and both spirit and style have been preserved with singular fidelity and felicity by William Smith, LL.D., its translator into English.^ There lies, however, at the root of the whole theory which Fichte here sets forth, an error of the most fatal kind — the sepa- ration of philosophy from experience, of the philosophy of history from history itself. Whether such a dualism could be logically justified in a system which claimed to be strictly unitarian, and if so how, are questions which I must not discuss ; the fact of the dualism alone concerns us. Its source, doubtless, was Kant's distinction between sensibility and understanding, and it may be regarded as the reductio ad ahsurdum of that distinction. According to Fichte there is a philosophy of history, but it is not to be found in history itself, nor is the way to it through history. " The philosopher," he says, in his first lecture, " must deduce from the unity of his presupposed principle all the pos- 1 Dr Smith is also the author of an excellent Memoir of Fichte, and has trans- lated his Vocation of the Scholar, the Nature of the Scholar, the Vocation of Man, the Way towards the Blessed Life, and the Outlines of the Doctrine of Knowledge. The Complete Works of Fichte are in 8 vols. (Berlin, 1845-6), edited by his son, J. H. Ficlite, who has likewise written his father's life and published his correspondence. FICHTE. 411 sible phenomena of experience ; but it is obvious that in the fulfilment of this purpose he does not require the aid of expe- rience — that he proceeds merely as a philosopher, paying no respect whatever to experience, but absolutely a priori describes Time as a whole, and all its possible epochs." And again, in the ninth lecture : " The philosopher who, in his capacity of philo- sopher, meddles with history, follows the a priori course of the world-plan, which is clear to him without the aid of history at all ; and the use which he makes of history is not to prove any- thing by it, for his principles are already proved independently of history, but only to illustrate and make good in the actual world of history that which is already understood without its aid." Now this is at least very explicit and clear. There can be no doubt as to what it means, and no doubt that its meaning is thorougMy false. The philosopher has no such marvellous pri- vilege accorded him as to be able thus to know, through merely ideal speculation, the course of events. An a priori description of any epoch of time is impossible. The true philosopher of his- tory is he who studies it more deeply than other men, not he who does not study it at all, but who deduces it from the unity of a presupposed principle. In fact, the assertion that all the possible phenomena of experience are capable of being deduced by philosophy without the aid of experience is so extravagant that defence of it is impossible, and we may anticipate that who- ever makes it will not seriously maintain it. Certainly Fichte does not, but explains it entirely away. We find to our astonish- ment that the possihiliiy of deducing from a philosophiccd princiiile all experience means really the impossihility of dedttmig any; that the world-plan is all that can be deduced ; and that the world- plan is not only not a fact of experience, but that experience may not correspond to it — that experience is a posteriori, and refuses to be deduced. " The history of the gradual culture of the hu- man race," we read in Lecture 9, " is made up of two intimately connected elements — one a priori, and the other a posteriori. The a priori is the world-plan, the general features of which have been set forth, conducting humanity through five epochs. With- out historical information at all, the thinker may know that these five epochs must succeed each other, and may also be able to characterise generally such of them as have not yet taken their 412 ' BOOK II. — GERMANY. place in history as facts. Now this development of the human race does not take place at once, as the philosopher pictures it to himself in thought, but, being disturbed by foreign powers, it takes place gradually at different times, in different places, and under particular circumstances. These conditions do not by any means arise from the idea of the world-plan, but are absolutely unknown to philosophy ; and here begins the pure em- piricism of history — its a 'posteriori element — history in its own proper form." I do not think this consistent either with the general philosophy of Fichte or with a host of other statements in this book, and believe him to have been logically bound to show that there were no foreign powers which could disturb the rational development of the human race, no a posteriori ele- ments, no real distortion of events even in time, and that any appearances there might be of such were due merely to imperfec- tions in philosophy which it must eventually free itself from ; but, consistency or inconsistency, the concession to experience will probably be regarded as an act of homage to common-sense and the truth of things. It calls to mind an amusing passage in our author's ' Leben und literarischer Briefwechsel ' (Th. ii. 438-435). Fichte informs F. A. Wolff he had arrived by a priori deduction at the same results, regarding the Homeric Epos, as the other through empirical criticism. The illustrious scholar shrewdly replies that there were certain peoples whose names were unfortunately all that the ancients had favoured us with, and that he would be very glad to learn their histories from one who, like Fichte, could get at them a prioi^i. Fichte excuses himself; he is a philosopher, not a philologist, and will only estimate the value of what has been historically discovered. (" Ich bin niclit Philolog von Profession ; als Philosoph bin ich bekannt. Als Philosoph nur diirfte ich die historische Ent- deckung wurdigen.") The general assertions about deducing experience somehow turn out then to have meant nothing when they require to be made good. Let us see how it stands with the world-plan. That rests, according to Fichte, on the idea of time as a whole. " Every particular epoch of time is the fundamental idea (GrundbegrifF) of a particular age. These epochs and fundamental ideas of par- ticular ages, however, can only be thoroughly understood by and FICHTE. 413 through each other, and by means of their relation to universal time. Hence it is clear that the philosopher, in order to be able rightly to characterise any individual age, and, if he will, his own, must first have understood a^n'oW, and thoroughly penetrated into the signification of universal time, and all its possible epochs." Here, at the outset, our difficulties begin. Why should time have epochs ? It seems absurd to say that time, merely as time, has epochs. Epochs are stages of the development of beings in time. To talk of penetrating into the signification of universal time means nothing, or it means attaining to an understanding of the nature and purposes of the existences conditioned by time, which is not likely to be reached by an a priori route. Let us suppose, however, that time has a signification of its own, or apart from things in time — that we can penetrate a priori to this significa- tion, and not only prove in consequence time to have epochs, but seize the fundamental ideas of these epochs, (which is certainly liberality enough in the concession of suppositions), — and there still remains that the philosopher should connect deductively earthly with eternal time — the plan of the world with the plan of the universe. Fichte assures us it can be strictly done, but declines the task of doing it, on the ground that the demonstra- tion is unsuited to a general audience, which one can very readily believe. The result, however, is, that again our hopes of a priori deduction are disappointed. It may charitably be supposed that the deduction is, as some say it is, in the Wisscnschaftslchre ; but T wish the reader joy who looks for it there, and envy his happiness if he find it. Fichte merely states dogmatically, without deduction, what the fundamental idea of earthly time is. He does so in this golden sentence : " The end of the life of mankind on earth is this — that in this life they may order all their relations with freedom according to reason." A noble and true thought, worthy of the noble and true man who expressed it ! Had he a right, however, as a philosopher, to express it here ? It is impossible to overlook that, under the plea of declining to undertake a de- duction of earthly from eternal time, Fichte has excused himself from deducing earthly from eternal, human from divine life, ; that he has silently identified time and life — a most unwarranted procedure, but a convenient one : because, while time of itself will 414 BOOK II. — GERMANY. not divide into epochs, life in time will, especially if we are free to choose, as Fichte does, that notion of life which pleases us, without giving any reason. " The end of the life of mankind on earth is this — that in this life they may order all their relations with freedom according to reason." Why should induction not be able to establish that ? or rather, how should anything else be able to establish it ? How prove what the end of human life on earth is except through examination of the actions which show what the tendencies of that life are ? The belief that man's life on earth tends to rational freedom is not a presupposition of his- torical science, but one of its inductions. It is warranted only so far as history, understood as inclusive of all that manifests the character of individuals and societies, confirms it. Although Fichte does not deduce human life on earth from the one eternal life, he earnestly insists that the one is the necessary development of the other — that all existence in time has its root in a higher existence above time — that, strictly speaking, there is but one life, one animating power, one living reason — and that the greatest of errors, and the true ground of all other error, is the delusion of the individual that he can exist, live, think, and act of himself The first of thought and being, the starting-point and substance, at once the subject and object of speculation, was not for him in 1804 the ego of the Wissenschaftslchre ; but the one, true, and absolutely self-existent Being — the God whom all hearts seek. And that each individual moment of man's life on earth is contained within the development of the one original divine life ; that whatever meets the view, and seems beyond that one life, is not beyond it but within it ; that to see things truly, means to see them only in and through the one original life ; that the light and life of religion, light and life in God, is the only true light and life, the only science and the only vir- tue, — is the central, inspiring, everywhere-present conviction of the book before us — so that open it where we will, we find our- selves in the pure, ennobling, holy atmosphere, congenial to a pious and heroic soul like that of Fichte. The world-plan embraces, according to Fichte, five epochs : the primitive age or state of innocence of the human race, in which reason rules as mere law of nature or blind instinct ; the FICHTE. 415 age of authority, or state of progressive sin, in which reason rules only through external institutions, and creeds which do not seek to convince but demand a blind assent and obedience ; the age of indifference to truth, or state of completed sinfulness, in which reason is rejected, both as instinct and authority, with- out being accepted in any higher form ; the age of science, in which reason and its laws are understood with clear conscious- ness, and truth is revered and loved before all other things ; and, finally, the age of art, in which humanity beautifies itself in all its relations through the exercise of the perfect freedom which it has realised for itself into a fitting image and representative of reason. The two first of these ages agree in that both are epochs of blind or unconscious reason, the first as instinct, and the second as autlwrity. The two last agree in that both are epochs of see- ing or conscious reason, the one as science, and the other as art. The third age is transitional, and we are living about the close of it, in the middle of universal time, with a world of darkness and constraint behind, with a world of light and freedom before, but belonging properly to neither. Fichte pronounces illegitimate all questions as to the origin of the world, the origin of the human race, the origin of civilisa- tion and of language, and even as to how the different regions of the earth were originally peopled, and considers all attempts to answer them mere trouble and labour lost. That he could seri- ously give utterance to such an opinion showed conclusively that one-sided speculation had, in a considerable measure, de- stroyed his very sympathies with positive scientific research ; but irrational as the assertion, even in his time, was, it did not of course display the same measure of ignorance and dogma- tism combined as it would do now. And similar assertions may be heard even now. Fichte knew, however — of course as a philosopher — what took place on the earth before the origin of history. He knew that from the first absolute reasonableness had somewhere existed among men ; that the human race was, in its primitive form, purely reasonable, without effort or freedom ; that before history, science, or art, a normal people lived in a state of perfectly devel- oped although unconscious reason. This dogma, already pro- 416 BOOK II. — GERMANY. pounded the year before by Schelliiig, was obviously derived chiefly from an arbitrary interpretation of the earlier chapters of Genesis as a myth, and an assumption that myths were essen- tially philosophemes; but it was also affirmed to be a conclusion of a priori philosophy. Our author actually imagined he suffi- ciently proved it by saying, " Out of nothing nothing conies, and therefore irrationality can never become reason ;" actually imagined he could dispel the arguments of those who would extend the development theory to man and his history by simply pronouncing over them ex nihilo nihil fit. The Fichtean hypo- thesis of a primitive normal people has in itself nothing inhe- rently absurd, and has as good a claim to be candidly considered as any other hypothesis on the same subject ; but the Fichtean philosophy makes but a poor appearance in trying to establish it. Scattered around the normal people, Fichte supposes that there lived timid and rude earth-born savages (" scheue und rohe erdge- borene Wilde"), with no culture beyond what was necessary for the maintenance of their sensuous existence. Neither the normal people nor these earth-born savages had a history, or are known to history, for that takes cognisance only of what is new and unexpected, only of what contrasts with what preceded it, of which there was nothing either in the life of the normal people, guided equally and unconsciously as they were by their rational and moral instinct, or in that of the earth-born savages, who were exclusively impelled by their senses and appetites. The very existence of history, therefore, implies that something must have occurred to drive the normal people away from their native homes, and scatter them over the seats of barbarism ; and this supposition, according to Fichte, can be proved in the strict domain of philosophy. It certainly occupies an important place in his philosophy of history. The transition from the first to the second great epoch of time — from that of reason which rules as instinct to that of reason which rules as authority — the rise of science and art, and the establishment of the earliest states or governments, are all referred to the contact and conflict of the two original races, and to the superiority of the rational people over the barbarians. His profound reverence for true culture made liim regard the possession or the want of it the broadest FICHTE. 417 distinction which could separate man from man, and so this dis- tinction seemed to him not only to go back through all history to the very beginning, but to be the axis, if we may so speak, on which all history turned. It was to him what the distinction of Cainites and Sethites, or of children of God and children of the world, has been to so many others. The lectures on the idea and historical development of the State, and on the influence of Christianity upon the State, are pervaded by this wholly unverified hypothesis that history has been throughout the result of the contact and interaction of two original tribes of men — a normal and a savage people. They con- tain, however, various suggestive and even true views. The lectures on the third age — the present age — delineate its scientific, literary, moral, political, and religious condition, with singular clearness and power, and, I believe, with singular truth- fulness. They are, it must be admitted, anything rather than the expositions of a 'priori science ; but they are among the noblest of lay sermons. In them a man entitled to do so by his rare personal worth holds up to the light of reason the actual life of his age, so as unsparingly to expose its self-deceits, its shortcomings, and sins. With righteous indignation, with withering sarcasm, he attacks the shallowness and one-sidedness of its science, the pandering of its literature to the indolence and prejudices of the public, its substitution of letter and dogma for resignation and devotion to the will of God, its vain efforts to penetrate into the spiritual world by mystical means, its sen- suous egotism. Naturally, he sometimes goes too far. In one respect he seems to me to go lamentably too far ; for he condemns both Catholicism and Protestantism as unchristian, condemns even the Pauline doctrine on which he holds them to be based, and maintains that the Apostle John alone has taught us truly what was the mind of Jesus. Fichte wrote his characteristics in a spirit of very enthusiastic cosmopolitanism, which finds its most decided expression in the well-known words at the close of the 14th lecture : " Where, I ask, is the fatherland of the truly cultivated Christian European ? In general it is Europe, — in particular, it is that State in Europe which occupies the highest rank of culture. The State which 2 I) 418 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. commits a fatal error must indeed fall in course of time, and therefore cease to hold this rank. But although it falls, and must fall — nay, on this very account — others arise, and among these one especially which now occupies the rank which the other held before. Let, then, mere earth-born men, who recog- nise their fatherland in the soil, the rivers, and the mountains, remain citizens of the fallen State, — they retain what they de- sire, and what constitutes their happiness ; — the sun-like spirit, irresistibly attracted, will wing its way wherever there is light and liberty. And in this cosmopolitan frame of mind we may look with perfect serenity on the actions and the fate of nations, for ourselves and our successors, even to the end of time." These words had only been printed nine months when the catastrophe of Jena occurred, when the military power of Germany was broken, and its last defence, the Prussia of Frederick the Great, lay smitten to the dust. Logically, Fichte should have gone over to the side of France ; but, of course, in defiance of logic, he left such baseness to the earth-born, and stood forth with such power as he (one man) had, and with such weapons as he (no soldier but a thinker) had, to do battle for the Father- land against its oppressor. The disgrace and misery of his country made him feel how dear it was to him, how precious national honour was, how significant a fact in history na- tionality was. And this new experience found expression in the breathing thoughts and burning words of the ' Reden an die deutsche Nation.' These ' Discourses to the German Nation,' pronounced in 1807 in Berlin, when that city was in the hands of the French, so that the drums of the enemy at times drowned the voice of the orator, both contrast with and supplement the ' Characteristics of the Present Age.' In the latter work, Fichte supposes human- ity to have reached only the middle of the third epoch ; in the for- mer, he supposes it to have made, in the three intervening years, an unexampled stride forwards, so that the third epoch is already completed, and the fourth commenced. Subjectivity, wilfulness, egoism, sin, are regarded as having developed themselves to the full, and as having thereby shown their own nothingness, and FICHTE. 419 necessitated the flow of history into a new channel. The stand- point of the ' Discourses ' of 1807 is that of transition to the epoch of reason as science, the age in which truth is to be esteemed and loved above all things else. But it is maintained that there is one nation on which the progress of true culture and science is entirely dependent. Its fall would be the ruin of all the interests and hopes of humanity. That nation is Ger- many. The German people, according to Fichte, has alone been preserved pure or unmixed, has alone an original genius, has alone within it the hidden and inexhaustible springs of spiritual life and power. The French and other Eomanic peoples, having bloomed and ripened prematurely owing to the over-stimulus consequent on the commingling of their constituent races, are now exhausted and effete. In fact, the antithesis of German and French, of Urvolk and Mischvolk, holds a similar place in the Eeden to that of the normal and earth-born people in the Grundziige, and a use is made of it very flattering to the Ger- mans, and very unfair to the French. At the same time, his patriotism did not prevent his seeing the faults of his country- men ; on the contrary, he thought them even more hope- lessly corrupt than events proved them to be. He looked for good only from their children, if subjected to a rational education. The epoch of reason as science must gradually pass into that of reason as art, the fifth and final stage of the life of humanity on earth ; for man cannot study and love the truth as what is highest and best without having his character moulded by it into a fitting image of Absolute Reason. He gradually learns to order all his relations and actions according to the truth, which he has succeeded in scientifically comprehending. He thus only comes back to the state of perfect reason from which he started, and, so far, may be considered to have gained nothing. He has only regained the paradise he lost. Has he not had the toil of his long journey for nothing ? No ; for he has thereby learned to know the value of what he lost, and learned both to know and freely to live according to his own true nature. This final age was described by Fichte in the lectures ' Ueber die Staatslehre,' which 420 SOOK II. — GERMANY. he delivered at Berlin in 1813, but which were only published posthumously in 1820. The pervading tone of thought in these lectures, as in all his later productions, is that of theosophic mysticism, and so the epoch of art is pictured as the realisation of the Christianity taught by the Apostle John — the kingdom of God on earth, the reign of the spirit of love, which, all-suffi- cing, needs no external laws. 421 CHAPTER VII. SCHELLING, 1 A NUMBER of the notions contained in Fichte's ' Cliaracteristics of the Present Age ' had shortly before its publication been cast into circulation by an author who began his philosophical career as the avowed disciple of Pichte, the brilliant Joseph Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. That imagination had too much influence over this remarkable man — that he wanted logical persistency — constructed a series of systems instead of elaborat- ing one — dazzled often instead of enlightening — and attempted far more than he was capable of performing, — are facts which must not prevent our admitting that his nature was most richly endowed, and that he contributed many valuable ideas ' The general philosophy of Schelling will be found well described in the histories of philosophy l)y Willm, Schwegler, Chalybaus, Erdmann, Zeller, &c. Rosenkranz published in 1843 a volume of lectures on Schelling. The work of Noack — * Schelling und die Philosophic der Eomantik' (1859) — is not written in an amiable spirit, but its perusal can scarcely be dispensed with. It is to the study of Schelling what Haym's book is to that of Hegel. Frederick Schelling, the son of the philosopher and editor of his collected works, was engaged on a biography of his father when he died in 1863. The fragment of about 200 pages which he had prepared, has been included in the three volumes, ' Aus Schelling's Leben. In Briefen ' (1869-70), edited by Professor Plitt of Erlangen. The two volumes of letters published by Waitz in 1871, under the title ' Caroline,' is a very interesting contribution to our knowledge of the most important decade of Schel- ling's life. These soiirces have been utilised with characteristic skill by Kuno Fischer in the volume of his 'Geschichte der Neuern Philosophie ' (vi. 1) devoted to ' Schelling's Leben und Schriften,' and published in 1872. His book on ' Schelling's Lehre ' has not yet appeared. There is an excellent paper on ' Schel- ling's Life and Letters,' by an able and very careful student of his writings, Mr J. S. Henderson, in the ' Fortnightly Review,' Nov. 1, 1870. The complete edition of his works is in 14 vols., which are distributed into two divisions, the first containing ten and the second four volumes. All the works referred to in this chapter are contained in the first division. 422 BOOK II. — GERMANY. to almost every department of philosophy. He had a mind susceptible to every kind of influence, and hence oriental and classical literature, the theological rationalism of the eighteenth century, the political and social principles of the French Kevolu- tion, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, Kant, and Fichte, the new forms of poetry, and the new discoveries of science, had all strongly and permanently affected his character while still a mere youth. He gave expression to general views on history at all stages of his philosophical career, without, however, publishing any work exclusively devoted to the subject. Leav- ing out of account at present his so-called positive philosophy, which will fall to be spoken of at a later period, a very brief indication of his earlier historical reflections must sufiice. There is among the articles which Schelling published in the 'Philosophical Journal 'in 1797 and 1798, under the title of ' General Survey of the latest Philosophical Literature,' the frag- ment of a discussion of the question. Is a philosophy of history possible?^ It lays down the proposition (Satz), There is no philosophy of history possible, and endeavours to establish it by argument. Had the essay been completed, there must have been the counter-proposition {Gegensatz) with its argument, and the reconciliation of the proposition and counter-proposition, — a reconciliation, or, as Schelling would have said, dialcktischc Losung, which could only have consisted in showing that a philo- sophy of history, although in some respects impossible, is in other respects, or within certain limits, possible. In what remains of the essay, philosophy is assumed to be a priori science ; while all that occurs according to mechanical laws, or in a necessary cycle, or that can be determined a priori, is argued to fall with- out the sphere of history. Philosophy and history are obviously on this view irreconcilable or mutually exclusive, and the notion of a philosophy of history is self-contradictory. Our author repeats the thoughts contained in the article just referred to, and at the same time supplements and completes them in his ' System des transcendentalen Idealismus,' which was published in 1800. In this work we see him not far beyond the beginning of his divergence from Fichte. He 1 Schelling's ' Siimmtliclie Werke,' \. 466-473. SCHELLING. 423 gradually learned that the pure one-sided subjective idealism of the original Fichtean philosophy was too narrow — that it rather suppressed than explained nature.^ A variety of in- fluences and considerations led him to lay more and more emphasis on nature, and so to work himself out of an idealism which separated itself from realism, which glorified mind by virtually effacing matter, which in exalting the abstract moral law, denied all worth to concrete and sensuous existence. His- tory taught him that the progress of philosophy had always been dependent on the progress of physical science. Herder had resisted the critical philosophy, and Goethe had stood aloof from the idealism derived from it, as at most but half-truths ; and although the polemic of the one may not have been very successful, nor the dislike of the other grounded on conclusive reasons, the resistance and aversion of such men were in them- selves significant facts, and what they had actually accomplished in literature and science was no bad vindication of their views. Komanticism and all the mystic influences associated with it were working in the spiritual atmosphere towards the fusion of ideality and reality into one.'^ Experimental physics had been attracting attention to itself by numerous remarkable dis- coveries which had discredited in men's minds a merely me- chanical explanation of the physical world, and with these discoveries and the speculations and hopes connected with them, Schelling became acquainted and deeply impressed during his stay at Leipsig.^ The action of all these circum- 1 There is a very careful and detailed exposition of the successive modifications in Schelling's views regarding the ultimate principle of his philosophy — the Absolute— so far as the period of which this chapter treats is concerned, in the two last articles of the second volume of Professor Hoffmann's ' Philosophische Schriften.' The essays of Dr Hoffmann — the most distinguished and zealous of Baader's disciples— are, I may add, extremely woi-thy of the attention of philo- sophers and theologians. 2 On the relation of Schelling to Romanticism, the reader may consult the work of R. Haym, ♦ Die Romantische Schule ' (1870). "Whoever wishes to under- stand the general spiritual influences amidst which Schelling lived, should study Dilthey's ' Leben Schleiermachers,' Bd. i. (1870)— a most remarkable contribu- tion not only to biography biit to history. 3 Among his contemporaries, Kielmeyer, Eschenmayer, J. W. Ritter, and Baader, exerted most influence in turning Schelling's thoughts in the direction of physical speculation. That the physio-philosophy which resulted from that 424 BOOK II. — GERMANY. stances on his susceptible, poetical, fervent mind, had for result a philosophy which sought to extend the kingdom of idealism over the whole of nature, while doing it no injustice — nay, while representing it in all the beauty and glory with which it is seen by the eye of the poet. As early as 1800 he had come to think that the perfected theory of nature would resolve the whole of nature into in- telligence, all the laws of physical phenomena into laws of unconscious intuition and of a self-sustaining, self-organising life, not essentially different from that of the conscious human soul. " The dead and unconscious products of nature," he says, " are the abortive attempts of nature to reflect herself ; so-called dead nature is but unripe intelligence, and in her phenomena the character of intelligence is really, although unconsciously, revealed. The highest goal, that of becoming wholly an object to herself, is first attained by nature through what is highest and last, reflection, which is nothing else than man, or, more generally, what we call reason, through which nature first com- pletely returns into herself, and whereby it becomes obvious, that nature is originally identical with what is known in us as intelligent and conscious." It seemed, therefore, to Schelling at this period, to be as necessary to derive intelligence from nature as nature from intelligence ; and that philosophy had, in fact, both problems to solve, the former as philosophy of nature, and the latter as transcendental philosophy. From this point of view the * System of Transcendental Idealism ' was written. It is pervaded, like all the writings published by Schelling after he had ceased to be a disciple of Fichte, by the idea of universal development. Everywhere there is held to be development, dynamic movement, organic process. Nothing is really dead, mechanical, inorganic. Nature is visible soul, soul invisible nature, and both advance incessantly by an unin- terrupted succession of stages and gradation of forms. The doctrine of development, which is, of course, a most important direction having been given to liis thoughts has exercised a vast influence on all the departments of physical science is undeniable, although there is room for any amount of discussion as to the measure in which that influence was bene- licial or injurious. SCHELLING. 425 one in the science of history, has never had a devotee more convinced of its truth than Schelling ; and in the work before us he has applied it to the whole worlds, both of matter and spirit, as co-ordinate and essentially identical realms, with an unsurpassed ingenuity and boldness. The speculative grounds, however, on which he rests it, few if any of its advocates would now maintain to be valid. The pages expressly devoted to history are not many.^ They belong to that j)ortion of the work in which the principles of transcendental idealism are applied to what is called Practical Philosophy, in treating of which Schelling explains very much as Fichte had done what is implied in freedom, right, or natural law, and the State ; adopts Kant's thought that the realisation of a perfect political constitution or State is the object of history ; and endorses his theory of a universal peace to be secured through " a parliament of man, a federation of the world." He is thus led to the consideration of history as an object of philosophy, and to the statement of views regarding it which rest on principles more his own. As nature is the object of theoretical philosophy, so, he holds, is history the object of practical philosophy, and the special problem of the philosophy of history is to determine whether in history individual free-will excludes necessity, or is some- how combined with and subject to it. To elucidate this pro- blem, he first insists on the dependence of history on the individual consciousness, and of the latter on history. Whatever is, is for the individual only so far as he is conscious of it ; past history, consequently, exists only as phenomenon of conscious- ness. It is for each man just what his own individual con- sciousness is. But each individual consciousness, again, is what it is through belonging to a particular age, with its parti- cular character, measure of progress in culture, &c. ; and that age can only be what it is through the whole of past history having been what it has been. Thus history depends on the individual consciousness ; and that the individual consciousness should be what it is, the whole of past history was necessary. Our author next proceeds to argue that the end of history 1 S.W., tIt- 587-604. 426 BOOK II. — GERMANY. being what it is, a reign of universal justice, of itself proves that history is not abandoned to chance, not composed of an accidental succession of events, but is pervaded by a plan which connects the acts of which it consists, notwithstanding that these acts are the products of freedom. The notion of history, or history in the strict and proper sense of the term, does not comprehend all kinds of events. It excludes mere natural events, whatever occurs at fixed and regular intervals, and whatever can be ascertained a 'priori. It is neither an absolutely lawless series of events nor an absolutely regular series of events. Only beings capable of progressive approxi- mation to the attainment of an ideal can have a history. Human history is the gradual realisation of the ideal of uni- versal justice by the entire species. It is therefore character- ised by a union of freedom and necessity ; it is the product of a freedom which is somehow pervaded by necessity ; it is composed of the acts of countless conscious subjects — i.e.^ of countless free acts ; yet these acts form a world of order, the laws of which, lying beyond the consciousness of individual subjects, are objective and necessary. But how can this be ? How can freedom or subjectivity and necessity or objectivity be conceived of as so united in history that order will guarantee freedom, and freedom will produce order? Only, argues Schelling, through the working of a principle superior both to subject and object, which cannot be either, and yet is that in which they are one. This principle he calls the absolute identity, and describes as being, while devoid of consciousness, yet the source of all consciousness ; the eternal sun of the realm of spirits ; an object of our faith, but not of our knowledge, being hid from us by its very brightness ; the in- visible root of which intelligences are only potences or func- tions. History is the evolution of this principle, the Absolute, which expresses itself more or less in all actions, and by doing so connects and harmonises them, confers on them regularity and law, and composes out of them, free although they be, a maf^nificent poem or drama. In the recognition of the plot or plan of that drama, and the reference of it to its ultimate source or "round — the absolute — reflection attains to the apprehension SCHELLING. 427 of providence, or religion in the only true sense of the word. While working in every place and through all time, the ab- solute can in no place, and at no time, fully express or rea- lise itself. "Were it to do so, nothing else would be — neither individuals, nor freedom. It reveals itself, however, only through the free play of individual wills, and could not be, were these wills not free, so that they are fellow-workers with it. Thus the consequence of the absolute working through intelligent beings is that their actions, those which constitute history, are neither exclusively free nor necessary, but both free and necessary. In the progressive self-evolution of the absolute, or gradual self-revelation of God, which, according to Schelling, constitutes history, three periods may be distinguished. The first has as dominant principle destiiiy, a blind force which coldly and ruthlessly destroys what is grandest and noblest ; it may be called the tragic period of history, being that of the ruin of the oldest and most marvellous empires of the world, of the first and fairest flowers of the tree of humanity. The second period is that in which the blind power of destiny or fate gives place to nature, to a physical law which overrules freedom, and so produces at last a certain mechanical regularity in the course of human affairs ; it begins with the conquests of the Eoman republic. The third period is that in which what manifested itself in the two former periods as fate and nature reveals itself as providence, and in which it is apparent that the fate and nature of these earlier periods were the imperfect and initial manifestations of providence. When this third period will be we know not ; but when it will be, God will be. In the lectures on the ' Method of Academic Study ' (' Vor- lesungen iiber die Methode akademischen Studiums ' ^), delivered at Jena in 1802, and published in the following year, ScheUing is found to have advanced to the point where Hegel at once joins on to and breaks off from him. These lectures give a survey of the whole field of academic study, and, indeed, an encyclo- pedic view of science from the standpoint of absolute identity 1 Siimmtliclie Werke, i. 428 BOOK II. GERMANY. and idealism. I shall very briefly indicate the more important opinions contained in them relative to history. In the second and eighth lectures, Schelling maintains on the subject of the origin of civilisation the same hypothesis which Fichte, as we have seen, shortly afterwards presented in a more developed form. He argues that science and religion have to a certain extent been transmitted from a primitive, highly endowed, and favoured people; that man has not raised himself from instinct to consciousness, from an animal to a rational condition, but has had the rudiments of all knowledge, practical wisdom, and religion taught to him ; that his first estate was one not of barbarism, but of culture. The eighth and ninth lectures, although entitled respectively " On the Historical Construction of Christianity," and " On the Study of Theology," may be regarded as partly a supplement to, and partly an elucidation of, the vague and general account of the epochs of history given in the ' System of Transcendental Ideal- ism.' For some reason or other, — probably from mere want of time and space — certainly not, as Herr Noack affirms, from ignorance, — Schelling had been altogether silent in that earlier work as to the place and significance of Christianity in history, and he here attempts to supply the defect. He conceives of history as a higher potence of the absolute than nature, the ideal side or expression of the absolute, as the other is its real side or expres- sion ; and in history itself, of the modern world as holding the same relation to the ancient world which nature does to history in general. The ancient world is, as it were, the natural or real side of history, and in it the infinite is only seen as in the finite, and consequently as subordinate to it ; the modern world is its ideal or spiritual side, and in it the finite is only seen as in and dependent on the infinite. Tlie principle of the ancient world attained its fullest realisation in Grecian polytheism, which viewed the whole universe, gods included, as nature. Christianity views it as a manifestation of the absolute, sees in every moment of time a stage or phase of that manifestation, and so is in its very essence historical. Its primary characteris- tic is that it regards the universe as histoi'y, a moral kingdom, a work of providence. It has at once completed and abolished SCHELLING. 429 the old world because it sets forth an incarnation of God in man through which the finite is reconciled to the infinite, and it has initiated the new world, the period of providence, by proclaim- ing the return of the God-man into the bosom of the absolute after the end of the incarnation was accomplished, and by promising the coming of the Spirit. It is only, according to Schelling, as thus an historical necessity, and a complete revolution in history, that Christianity can be understood, or theology profitably studied, and only from the Christian point of view is history itself intelligible.^ The tenth lecture consists of general remarks on the study of history and jurisprudence. As to the former, which alone here concerns us, Schelling begins with the statement, that, as the absolute manifests itself as one and the same in the double form of nature and history, so theology, as the indifierence point of the real sciences, breaks off on the one hand into history, and on the other into natural science, each of which considers its object apart from the other and from the supreme unity, yet each of which is capable of going back to the central and pri- mordial knowledge. The ordinary conception of nature is that in which everything happens through necessity — and of history, that in which everything happens through freedom ; but this conception takes no account of the connection which both nature and history have with the absolute. History is a higher potence than nature, expressing ideally what that does really, but they differ only as potences or formally ; essentially they are identical, and in virtue of this identity nature is inclusive of a form of freedom, and history of a form of necessity. The end of history, indeed, is the formation of an ideal nature, the State, an outward organism in which, through the working of freedom, necessity and freedom are harmonised. With reference to the question, whether history can be science, Schelling observes that history as such is the antithesis of science, and so, of course, cannot itself be science ; and that if the real 1 A repetition of this so-called " historical construction " of Christianity, and some additional details, will be found in the ' Philosophic der Kunst,' which con- sists of lectures first delivered in 1802-3, but not published in Schellins's life- time.— See S.W., i. 425-432. 430 BOOK II. GERMANY. sciences are syntheses of philosophy and history, history alone can no more be such a science than it can be philosophy. He then describes the different points of view from which history can be studied. The highest is the religious, from whence all history is looked upon as the work of providence. It is not essentially different from the philosophical point of view, and properly falls within theology or philosophy. To attain a religious or philosophical comprehension of history, it is neces- sary to start, not from history, but from theology or philosophy. Opposed to this, the absolute or speculative point of view is the empirical, which again has two sides or aspects — the critical and the pragmatical — seeing that the mind may either content itself with the mere ascertainment of what has taken place, or may, after having satisfied itself as to that, endeavour to subordinate the whole of the events to some general truth or principle, and to show that they have taken place to bring about some end. Polybius and Tacitus are adduced as examples of pragmatical historians, and ranked decidedly below Herodotus and Thucydides, but far above those into whose feeble and un- worthy hands the composition of history had fallen in Ger- many. A third point of view, and the highest and truest of all, is that of art, which shows us the ideal in the real, not like philosophy apart from it, and which exhibits more perfectly than either religion or philosophy the harmony of necessity and freedom, by exhibiting it in the sphere of actual occur- rences. Art is the final and most satisfying revelation of the reality and working of that ultimate principle which, although the cause of all that is objective, never becomes objective itself. Historical art is the most perfect revelation of the working of the absolute principle in the department of human interests and actions. It is bound not to despise or do violence to the parti- cular facts, but to deal honestly with them ; yet, at the same time, it must so apprehend and reflect them in their deeper and wider relations as to show that they belong to a system of eternal order, and are expressions of the highest ideas ; it must do justice to empirical causes, yet so exhibit them that they will appear to be the means and instruments of a supreme necessity ; it must aim, in fact, to be a mirror of the universal spirit, by look- SCHELLING. 431 ing into which at any point we shall see some act of a divine drama. Schelling concludes what he has here to say on his- tory with a few slight remarks in favour of its being studied, and written as if it were a sort of drama or epic poem. A year later he returned to the subject in a small treatise, . entitled ' Philosophic und Eeligion/ With this work begins what is usually called the fourth period of his philosophical career; and from the date of its publication onwards, the mysticism which lay in germ in his previous writings, flourishes conspicuously, and with ever-increasing luxuriance. The new point of view, the central thought of this 'Philosophy and Eeligion,' was a new conception of the relation of the universe to the absolute, — one which naturally opened up boundless vistas of theosophical, theogonical, and cosmological fancy, in which the mind of Schelling wandered " in endless mazes lost " for fifty long years. It was that the finite and relative world can be no emanation or evolution, no direct product or im- mediate manifestation of the infinite and absolute, no true con- tinuation of it, but a something, and yet essentially a nothing, radically separated from it, only indirectly and negatively re- lated to it. The ideas of things are in the absolute, but the things themselves owe their existence to being broken off, or having falling away, from the absolute. Schelling tries to ex- plain how this sad accident, this break or fall, occurred, and flat- ters himself that his explanation solves, among various other mysteries, the greatest of all, the origin of evil ; but this I must pass over in silence, merely indicating that he adopts the " old holy doctrine " of the pre-existence and fall of souls in the poeti- cal form given to it by Plato in the Phsedrus ; ^ that he not only insists, as he had repeatedly done before, that the human race started with a primitive revelation of art, science, religion, and civilisation, but that it was preceded on the earth by a higher order of beings, who, after having sown the divine seed of ideas, the elements of all culture, disappeared ; ^ and that he maintains, that after their departure there was a gradual de- terioration of the globe and a gradual degradation of men.^ The following passage is the statement of his general notion » S.W., ,V 47. « S.W., ^,- 57-58. " S.W., 1- 59. 432 BOOK IT. — GERMANY. of history. " God is the absolute harmony of necessity and freedom, and this harmony cannot be'expressed in the individual, but only in history as a whole ; consequently only history as a whole is a revelation of God, and this revelation is accomplished by a successive development. Although history represents only one side of the destinies of the universe, it is not to be con- ceived of as partial, but as symbolic of the others, which repeat and reflect themselves in it in their entirety and with clearness. It is an epic, composed in the mind of God, and consists of two chief parts : the first describing the departure of humanity from its centre to the utmost point of distance therefrom ; and the second, its return. The one is, as it were, the Iliad, and the other the Odyssey, of history. In the one the direction is centrifugal ; in the other, centripetal. The great purpose of the entire phenomenal universe in this way expresses itself in history. Ideas, spirits, must fall from their centre to become particular in nature, the general sphere of the fall ; that after- wards, as particular, they may return to the Indifference, and, reconciled to it, may be able to abide in it, without disturb- ing it." 1 This view of the course of history plainly implies that it has not been one of continuous progress — that, at a certain point, a revolution has taken place in it — that the direction in which humanity is now advancing is the opposite of that once fol- lowed ; and in a work written by Schelling in the same year as the ' Philosophy and Religion,' although not published until after his death — I mean the ' System of the whole of Philosophy, and especially of the Philosophy of Nature' — the notion of a continuous historical progress is directly assailed and rejected.^ It is so in connection with the proposition that the highest aim of every rational being — individual or species — is identity with God, — a proposition also insisted on in ' Philosophy and Religion,' and there associated with the transmigration of souls, life on the stars, and other similar dogmas. Still onwards went Schelling on his adventurous way. Five years later we find him in his ' Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom,' under the inspiration and guidance 1 S.W., i 57. 2 S.W., I. 563-564. SCHELLING. 433 of that most profound theosophist, Jacob Bohme, applying his method of speculative construction as confidently to the very being of God as he had previously done to nature and man, and connecting with a remarkable ingenuity the whole of the finite universe, matter and spirit, chaos and order, evil and good, to one or other of the moments of the divine life. Perhaps this treatise on human freedom is the pro- foundest of Schelling's writings, and it is at least that by which he has exercised most influence on the course of theological thought ; but all that I have a right here to say in connection with it is, that it represents history as a long conflict between self-will and the universal will, between evil and good, which ends in the latter subduing and reconciling all things unto itself, and the turning-point of which is the incarnation of Christ, the opposition of the universal will to the self-will directly in the human person. Soon after the appearance of the work just referred to, Schelling began to show as much anxiety to conceal his specu- lations from the public as he had previously shown to spread them, and for forty-five years he maintained an almost uninter- rupted and almost unparalleled literary silence. The system which under the name of positive philosophy he expounded in Berlin after the death of Hegel, cannot be spoken of at this stage, which, on the other hand, is an appropriate station for our casting a glance back on the views already stated. They are obviously mere views ; and even when collected, and, as far as possible, combined, they form no general system. They are vague, incomplete, and sometimes inconsistent with one another. They are, at the best, but what have been called " genial intuitions," never the established conclusions of science. They are often airy and unsubstantial imaginations ; and even when reasoned inferences, they are loosely drawn from arbitrary principles. The fundamental objection to them is one which applies to all the other speculations of Schelling — viz., that they are unproved, unverified, by any method which can possibly lead to truth. Of such methods there are only two really distinct, induction and deduction, which, however, may, and often must, be conjoined, and made to assist each 2 E 434 BOOK II. — GERMANY. other ; but Schelling's mode of procedure is neither induction, deduction, nor their legitimate combination. It is a method of his own, a device of his individual will, and therefore a false method. Induction — the gradual and regular ascent from ex- perience to science, from facts to laws — is rejected with con- tempt, on the assumption that facts or phenomena, the objects of the perceptive powers, the data or materials of induction, are destitute of truth and validity. Schelling, like his contem- poraries Fichte and Hegel, allowed his mind to be possessed with the notion which had led astray Plato and his followers in antiquity, — namely, that science is not to be reached through observation, analysis, and generalisation of phenomena ; that there can be no true science of the laws of phenomena ; but that to arrive at science the mind must get beyond and behind phe- nomena, through and above them, as it were, into a region where change and time, contingency and particularity, are unknown. It is a notion which has a powerful charm for the imagination and the higher sympathies of our nature, but which will not bear the examination of reason, and which has received the most conclusive refutation from the whole history of science. It has never led to any real discovery ; and to set aside for it a method which, like induction, can point to count- less glorious triumphs, would be an act of ruinous folly. But deduction is in the hands of Schelling as badly treated as induction. To possess any worth, that method must start from principles which are either self-evident to every sound in- tellect, or fully established by a foregoing induction. Schelling, of course, does not start from inductively-established principles, but as little does he start from self-evident principles. He holds that philosophy can only begin with the absolute, the iden- tity of subject and object, the indifference of the ideal and real ; and avows that that, instead of being a principle self-evident to every sound human intelligence, is out of the reach of ordinary intelligence altogether. To aU that commonly goes by the name of intelligence it is not an absurdity, simply because it is a blank. If such intelligence will foolishly try to apprehend it, it will, as a punishment for dealing with a matter too high for it, land itself in absurdity. When we ask Schelling, How then SrJHELLING. 435 are we to get at a first principle which is neither self-evident nor to be reached by ordinary logic? He tells us with a candour, the 7idiveU of which is charming, that it is by " in- tellectual intuition," by a sinking back out of consciousness and reflection into identity with the absolute, by a mystic act through which the soul transcends ordinary thought and relative being, by a flash of genius, a gleam of inspiration, such as are elicited from poetic and prophetic souls. So there is the absolute " shot out of a pistol ; " there is the first principle high up in the air ; and yet that is the founda- tion on which Schelling would have us build the temple of science. The absolute apprehended by so strange and mysterious an act as the intellectual intuition, could not be other than a strange and mysterious existence, and that Schelling should have found it the veriest Proteus was only natural. It was no independent objective reality, no eternal unchanging truth, but essentially a creation of imagination, which it was almost inevitable should continue to be moulded and fashioned, even as a first principle, by the power which had produced it, into manifold forms. Hence the rapid succession of systems constructed by Schelling. Hence his " leaping in such a variety of directions, according to the latest goad," which is certainly apt to seem, what Dr Stir- ling pronounces it, " not an edifying spectacle." These varied constructions, sudden leaps, abrupt changes, are not to be re- garded, however, as on the whole either unnatural or inconsistent ; and they are even, perhaps, no more derogatory in reality either to his insight or love of truth than Hegel's labouring contentedly throughout his entire philosophical career in building up a single gigantic system on the particular pinnacle of cloud to which Schelling had lifted him. They were the natural consequences of trying to build or walk at all on what, although it had a delusive semblance of solidity, was always gliding away. And that such was the character of Schelling's absolute — that it was a cloudy illusion, an appearance and not a verity — I deem suffi- ciently proved even by the brief argumentation of Sir William Hamilton in his celebrated essay on the Philosophy of the Un- conditioned ; although I am aware, of course, that a singularly 436 BOOK II. GERMANY. fine metaphysical thinker, Professor Ferrier, has challenged the soundness of that argumentation, and maintained Schelling to be substantially right, if there be, as he holds there is, any such thing as truth for intelligence simply or in itself, truth common to all intelligences, and not merely peculiar to some in- telligences.^ In so doing. Professor Ferrier believed himself de- fending his own faith in the absolute against the attack of his illustrious contemporary and friend ; but, by a strange oversight, he failed to observe that the rejection of the absolute as under- stood by Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Cousin, was quite compat- ible with the acceptance of it as understood by himself, and he unconsciously ascribed both to Schelling and Hamilton opinions precisely the opposite of those which they really held. Sir William Hamilton's belief in the relativity of knowledge is quite consistent with Ferrier's belief in an absolute in knowledge, while Schelling's opinion is inconsistent with both. Sir Wil- liam Hamilton's refutation of Schelling, and indeed the whole reasoning of his essay, proceeds on the supposition or principle that there is one truth at least common to all intelligences, or absolute in Ferrier's sense of the word, — viz., that no intelligence can know what is out of relation to its own powers of knowing — that every act of knowledge involves the condition of subject and object — that a unity of cognition exclusive of the dualism of subject and object is inconceivable and absurd. He argues for the relativity of knowledge against Schelling, on the suppo- sition that he denied an absolute in cognition in that sense by affirming an absolute really out of relation to intelligence — an absolute not common to, not present in, all intelligence, biit one, on the contrary, which all that is commonly and properly called intelligence is, by the very law of its being, by its constitution simply as intelligence, shut out from the possibility of knowing. Now there cannot reasonably be a doubt that Sir William Hamilton was thoroughly justified in regarding Schelling as an advocate of the absolute in the latter sense, and not in that which Professor Ferrier generously transferred to him. The use of the word which gave a rational meaning may have been that which Schelling ought to have adopted ; but it was certainly not * ' Lectures and Philosophical Remains,' vol. ii. 551-555. SCHELLING. 437 that which he actually adopted ; he preferred a use of it which gave a meaning excessively absurd and fantastical, and instead of being credited with what he ought to have done, must be held responsible for what he did. It would be easy to prove that his so-called method of con- struction, the process of reasoning by which he tries to show how all things issue from the absolute, is loose and unsatisfactory in the last degree, and his particular arguments very often so flimsy and fanciful, that in any truly scientific discussion or even deliberation on practical matters, arguments of a similar char- acter would inevitably produce not conviction but derision or amusement ; but I must now confine my attention to his views on the course of history. Now these views not only derive no confirmation or benefit from the system on which they have been engrafted, but have been vitiated in various ways through their connection with it ; chiefly, however, inasmuch as its im- mediate and manifest consequence is that the true subject of history is not man but God, not humanity but the absolute. The philosophy of Schelling comes to history with the fixed fore- gone conclusion that it is a self-evolution of the absolute, a gradual self-manifestation of God, the course or process by which God comes to attain self-consciousness and to realise Himself ; that humanity is only a sort of mirror or mask of the absolute ; that men, free finite persons, have no real being, and their acts no real significance, apart from the All One, an impersonal in- finite. But surely this is not a view to begin the study of his- tory with, to bring into and impose upon history. It may be a correct view, yet certainly the first and natural impression which history produces on the mind is that man is its true subject, and the actions of men its constituents ; the operations of the absolute are altogether invisible to ordinary observation ; human history appears as manifestly to have to do with men only, as natural history with beasts only ; and we have no right to assume that this impression is a delusion, although we may have a right to try to prove it so, and to set it aside when its inadequacy or erroneousness has been made out. If Schelling had endeavoured to establish by the analysis and examination of the events of history that the pantheistic conception of it was 438 BOOK II. — GERMANY. the correct one — that it was really, notwithstanding all appear- ances to the contrary, the self-evolution of the absolute — he had only done what he was perfectly justified in doing; but when, apart from any examination of the kind, and in opposition to what appeared to be the natural interpretation of the facts, he laid that down as a premiss or principle, his procedure was wholly indefensible ; it was forcing a philosophy on history, which is a very different operation from drawing a philosophy out of history. Unfortunately this was a difference which Schelling could not and would not see ; or rather, for him there was no philosophy or science in history, and consequently none to be got out of it ; all the XDliilosophy or science of history lay out of itself in theology or metaphysics. When history is described as a self-evolution of the absolute, or as substantially derived from the absolute either by emana- tion or disseverance, there is a delusive appearance, without any of the reality, of explanation. Because our eyes are accustomed to see rays of light issuing by emanation from the sun, plants from seeds by evolution, one piece of matter from another by disseverance, our sluggish minds are apt to acquiesce in the pan- theistic transference of these relations to the connection between the infinite and the finite, God and the world or man, as in some measure accounting for and illustrating the derivation of the latter from the former, when, in reality, it is a wholly illegiti- mate procedure, in which images of sense are given and received for truths of reason. Emanation, evolution, disseverance, fall, are words without the slightest meaning when used of the absolute ; the very fact, indeed, of their being so used, proves that the absolute to which they are applied is a coarse creation of the sensuous imagination. Schelling made many efforts to connect the infinite with the finite, to exhibit history as a phase or po- tence of the one true existence, consistently with pure idealism ; his merit being that he was never long in finding out that he had been unsuccessful, and his fault that he never learned that the task was hopeless. He deserves praise for having so clearly seen that history combines freedom and necessity, and can only be understood when the sense, extent, and mode in which it does so are ascer- SCHELLING. 439 tallied. He has repeatedly declared the discovery of that to be the problem of the philosophy of history, and undoubtedly it is one of its most important problems. It seems to me that his chief service to the philosophy of history was his clear statement of this problem, and his clear recognition of its importance in historical science. The solution of it, however, which he indi- cated, was more than a mere failure. He sincerely washed to harmonise freedom with necessity ; but the attempt to do so by referring them to the absolute, only made obvious that there was no place in his system for true freedom, for independent indi- vidual wills. His conception of the absolute, and of construction as the method of philosophy, bound him in logical consistency to sacrifice all particular wills to the universal will, to acknow- ledge only one will in the universe as real, and all other wills only as apparent, its passive organs ; and to maintain that even that one will was neither in itself free nor guided by consciousness, but worked itself blindly and necessarily out of darkness, and almost out of nonentity into consciousness, and towards true or per- sonal God ship, which it has, however, not yet reached ; and all his struggles, repeated, earnest, and vigorous as they were, failed to break the chains which fettered him to these consequences, the denial of true personality and liberty both to God and man. I need not describe the various attempts which he made to deliver himself, nor show that they were futile. His positive philosophy, whatever else it was, was a confession that his earlier or negative philosophy had in all its stages failed to rise to a true theism, and failed to do justice to the will and its freedom. The division of history which he gives us in the system of transcendental idealism — viz., into the three periods of fate, nature, and providence-r-has no value, as he does not in the least prove that Egypt, China, India, Persia, and Greece were more under the law of fate, and less under that of nature, than Eome and- modern nations, or that the reign of providence has still to make its appearance ; and, in fact, in the Lectures on the ' Method of Academic Study,' he virtually withdrew this threefold division, and substituted for it a twofold one, having become convinced in the interval that Christianity, of which he had taken no account before, was the centre, and at the same 440 BOOK II. — GERMANY. time the key, of all history ; a circumstance which shows how hastily he extemporised the formulse which he professed to be the expression of the fundamental laws of human development. It was the fashion with the German idealists who succeeded Kant to spare themselves the labour of ascertaining, analysing, and generalising the facts of history, by assuming that the sum and substance of the philosophy of history was to be found in some formula of development and division derivable a priori from the idea; and, unfortunately, of this indolent and illusory fashion Schelling was a leader. For holding that the human race has not civilised itself, he had, apart from tradition, no other reason to give than an assertion that it could not civilise itself ; and for that assertion, obviously more difficult to establish than that which it was em- ployed to prove, he gave no reason at all ; so that his opinion as to the primitive state of man would have been entitled to little weight, even if he had not, as he has, connected with it a crowd of baseless fancies, such as that of there having been a higher and nobler race of intelligences before man upon the earth. No objection can fairly be taken to Schelling's affirmation that history is a divine poem, whether of the epic or tragic order, so long as it is allowed to be merely a rhetorical figure, an illustrative comparison. Faith and reason both look on history as ruled, even where it seems most irregular and dis- cordant, by laws which make it, as a whole, beautiful and harmonious; and on that ground it may appropriately and significantly be called a poem — epic in its continuous flow, tragic from its ever-recurring catastrophes, and lyric as an anthem of praise to the glory of God. It is long since St Augustine compared the ordered series of the centuries to an antistrophic hymn, pervaded by an antithetic parallelism, which turns on the call of God and the response of man: " Deus ordinem sseculorum tanquam pulcherrimum carmen ex qui- busdam quasi antithetis honestavit." ^ But more than a grace- ful and significant figure of speech, a fine similitude, the statement of Schelling is not; and it is a something almost incredible, that by some of his disciples it should have been 1 De Civ. Dei., xi. 18. SCHELLING. 441 spoken of as in itself a theory of history, an expression of the veritable sense of history. Obviously it has, and can have, no truth except as a figure ; when it ceases to be used as a figure, it loses all the truth, and even all the sense that is in it. To call history a poem is true if you mean only that in certain respects it is like a poem ; erroneous if you mean that it is so in all respects, for in many respects it is unlike any kind of poem ; and not only utterly false, but positively nonsensical if you mean that it is not merely like, but really is, a poem. 442 CHAPTER YIII. THE SCHOOL OF SCHELLING : STUTZMANN, STEFFENS, AND GOERRES. FiCHTE exerted great, Sclielling extraordinary, influence in all departments of German thought. Both changed their princi- ples, or at least their points of view, so often and rapidly, that it was impossible for them to form a large compact body of adherents with a definite self-consistent creed; but they originated a variety of schools, and gave impulse and direction to a vast number of persons. In this chapter I purpose examining the writings of some of the authors thus influenced. In literary history they are all included in what is vaguely and ambiguously called the Eomantic School.^ They are all more or less fanciful and mystical thinkers, wonderfully bold in assertion, and unusually weak in demonstration — very religious, very poetical, and utterly unscientific. I. The first who must be summoned before us is John Joshua Stutzmann (1777-1816), who was a professor at Erlangen, and who wrote various philosophical works which no man need much regret being ignorant of.^ Fortunately one alone con- cerns the present writer or his readers. It is the ' Philosophic der Geschichte der Menscheit,' published at Nurnberg in 1808. ^ Kegarding which see the work of Haym already mentioned. The best ac- count of the theories of the philosophers of the Schellingian school is that in Erdraann's 'Geschichte d. n. Phil.,' Bd, iii. Abtli. 2. 2 The most important of them, perhaps, are the ' Philosophic des Universums ' (1806), and the *Grun(lzuf;e des Standpunctes, Geistes und Gesctzes der uni- verselleu Philosophic' (1811). THE SCHOOL OF SCHELLING : STUTZMANN. 443 Traces of the influence of Herder, Heeren, Eichhorn, Von Miiller, are very visible in it ; but essentially it is an attempt to com- bine and systematise the historical views of Fichte and Schel- ling, in order[thus to arrive at a complete philosophy of history. ^ That is its merit — a considerable merit, but almost its only one ; an able or important work it cannot be said to be, and a mere indication of its contents must suffice. The first and perhaps the best chapter in the book, is on the possibility of a philosophy of human history. In substance it is an argument to the effect that a philosophy of history must, fi-om the very nature both of philosophy and history, be held to be possible, for philosophy is the science of reason, and reason is the true essence and content of human life and history. The second is on the nature of man, as the subject of history. The true nature of man, it affirms, is reason ; and reason has two sides, an objective and a subjective, the former being what is called sense, and the latter understanding. This appears very questionable psychology ; but the historical application of it is still more questionable. The principle of the ancient world, we are told, was sense or reason in its objective aspect, and that of the modern world is understanding or reason as sub- jective. Originally these two principles were one, and they will be finally one again in a higher mode. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that this is nearly a reproduction of Fichte's view of the course of historical development ; it must be quite unnecessary to remark on its inadequacy — its arbitrariness. The third chapter is on the essence of the eternal, as the principle of history. It is an attempt to connect absolute being with the phenomenal world by means of those hypotheses of infinite self-potentiation, divine ideas, primitive types, dualism of opposing forces, &c., which Schelling had rendered popular ; in other words, it is not of a philosophico-historical, but of a theologico-metaphysical character, and neither luminous nor illuminating. The next chapter should be the most important, for it pro- ^ What he here endeavoured to do for history he had previously soii^ht to do for religiou in an * Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion,' and ' Reilections on Religion and Christianity.' 444 BOOK II. — GERMANY. fesses to be an investigation of the essence of human history in general, and an outline of the entire course and philosophy thereof. It treats the subject from a theological point of view, affirming that the divine idea is the true content of all that is realised in time — i. e., of all history ; that time is the form of the manifestation of the divine action, as space is the form of the manifestation of the divine Being ; and that history is the life and essence of the Eternal displayed in the sequence or succes- sion of existence. Now all these statements may be true, and the philosophy of history may either itself prove or help theo- logy to prove them true ; but it ought not to assume or merely assert them. When even religion acknowledges itself under obligation to supply reasons for the faith which it demands, a philosophy which professes to be the science of reason itself, ought certainly not to expect its dicta to be received by faith without reason. The whole course of human development is then divided by Stutzmann into four periods or ages : the first being that of innocence or rational instinct ; the second, that of the ancient world, or of reason in its objective direction ; the third, that of the modern world, or of reason in its subjective direction ; and the fourth, that which combines the principles of the second and third in the unity of fully developed and self-reconciled reason. These periods, it is maintained, con- stitute the childhood, youth, manhood, and old age of the human species, on the ground that the history of the race may be justly compared to the life of the individual. The fifth chapter treats of the relation of human history to the external universe, and especially to the earth, the stage on which it is transacted. It is full of far-fetched hypotheses and fanciful analogies, mostly revolving round the bizarre notion that the ancient world was centrifugal, while the modern is cen- tripetal, and the future will unite both, as the East originally did, but in a more perfect form. The three chapters which close the work apply the views con- tained in those which precede them to the explanation of the characters and histories of the oriental, classical, and Christian ages. They contain nothing striking in thought, and display only a moderate erudition. THE SCHOOL OF SCHELLING ; STEFFENS. 445 II. Henry Steffens (1773-1845) was a man far superior to Stutz- mann in intellect, and of so admirable and interesting a charac- ter that his autobiography (' Was Ich erlebte ') is very readable, even although in ten volumes. Born in Norway, and half a Scandinavian by descent, he was nevertheless wholly German in feeling, and, indeed, was of all German professors, with the excep- tion of Fichte, the one who threw himself with the greatest devot- edness into the struggle against Napoleon. His ardent patriotism contrasted with the philosophic indifferentism of his friend and master, Schelling, who more than once wrote to him, "\Vliy should we cast ourselves into the turmoil of this world ? What good will it do ? Is it not the case, then, that our kingdom is not of this world?" It was chiefly as a philosophy of nature that the doctrine of Schelling gained his assent and affection. His studies in mineralogy, geology, and natural history, and the impressions made on him by various poets and philosophers, and especially Spinoza, had so prepared his mind for the Natur- Philosophie, that having heard Schelling in his inaugural lecture at Jena expound his idea thereof, and insist on the necessity of proceeding in the study of nature from the point of her essential unity, and on the light that would spread itself over all the branches of natural science so soon as naturalists should dare to plant themselves in this central position of the unity of reason, he was completely carried away, and hastened to him next day to declare himself his disciple. He was the first professional natur- alist who attached himself to Schelling unconditionally and with enthusiasm. The works in which Steffens speculates on physical and organic nature do not here concern us further than that the Anthropology may be so far said to lay a foundation for a phil- osophy of history, as it endeavours to define and describe the position of man in the universe. It contains three parts ; the first treating of what is called geological, the second physio- logical, and the third psychological anthropology ; the first view- ing man in relation to the whole development of the earth in the 446 BOOK II. — GERMANY. past, the second in relation to the entire system of organised and animated existence in the present, and the third in relation to the future. It represents him to be the completion or copestone of the past, the centre of the present, and the starting-point of the future. Steffens was one of the naturalists of the school of Schelling who elaborated and spread the notion that man is the living synthesis of nature, — a being who sums up in himself all its processes in perfection and harmony. The notion originated in remote antiquity, and has been entertained by a great number of thinkers in different lands and ages. In particular, mystics, both heathen and Christian, have cherished the belief that man is a microcosm, and assumed it as a basis for their meditations. But Steffens, Oken, and Cams were the men who, under the im- pulse of the Natur-Philosophic, first seriously attempted to sup- ply its scientific verification, and to employ it as a fundamental principle in the classification of physical forces, plants, and ani- mals. Man, they endeavoured to prove, was the harmony, type, and standard of nature, by reference to which everything else that it contained ought to have its place, rank, worth, and sig- nificance determined. For a considerable time they were almost universally believed to have essentially succeeded, in spite of the multitude of extravagant assertions and deductions inter- woven with their argumentation ; and although that will now be very generally contested, owing to the prevalence of the Dar- winian form of the development theory, no candid critic will question that their labours exercised a profound, and, in the main, beneficial influence on the biological sciences. Historical science was also affected and modified by them, although in a less degree. The researches and speculations of Steffens, Oken, and Carus, did not result in a view of the relation of man to nature, of human to natural history, which subsequent inves- tigation has confirmed, but they certainly contributed in no ordinary degree to open men's minds to the closeness and com- prehensiveness of the relation. Steffens maintains, then, that man includes in himself all the qualities and processes of lower creatures, and ennobles and har- monises them ; that nature in all lier parts prefigures man, and THE SCHOOL OF SCH ELLING : STEFFENS. 447 in all her functions aspires to what is only satisfied in man ; and also that the entire course of the development of the world is one of progress towards individuality, of deliverance from the generic, which culminates in what he calls the " talent " of man, that which is central, essential, and most peculiar in him, his natural individuality, the principle through which God manifests Himself within him, the organ which appropriates the divine grace and the divine love needed by man for the accomplishment of his destiny. The goal of history is the realisation of the divine image in humanity, and the course of history a series of struggles which have been typified in the successive stages of the development of external nature. Steffens, like other fol- lowers of Schelling and Schelling himself, has drawn numerous comparisons of the most curious kind between the macrocosm and the microcosm, between the universe and its history and man and his history. It was his belief that the wider history not merely conditioned the narrower, but that it exemplified a plan in essentials the same, and that the two histories in conse- quence so corresponded as to reflect and mirror each other. It was his belief, also, that man had been ordained to be the re- gulative principle of the world, and that between him and it there exists an intimate and mysterious sympathy ; that spiritual peace produces material order, and the wrath of man the de- structiveness of nature ; that moral virtues and moral evils find expression in physical blessings and physical defects. "In our life alone doth nature live ; Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud." The work, however, in virtue of which chiefly Steffens is ranked among historical philosophers, is * Die gegenwartige Zeit und wie sie geworden' (The Present Time, and how it has become what it is), which was published in 1817. It is an eloquent, devout, poetical book, luxuriant with thoughts, crowded with bright-coloured pictures ; but the history in it is probably not very accurate, and the philosophy woven to a greater extent out of fancy than reason. It is comparatively little tinctured with the principles of Schelling, and is pervaded by an ardent patriotism which Schelling never felt. It is filled with the spirit of the war of liberation — a spirit of reaction against the shallow 448 BOOK II. — GERMANY. cosmopolitanism previously current, of intense nationalism, of burning love of the fatherland, and vehement hatred of what seemed hostile to it. Germany did not throw off the yoke of French tyranny before a great change had taken place within herself. When her armies were first beaten out of France she was as soulless and dead as a nation could be — without faith, without patriotism, without independence — so much the abject creature of her contemptible petty potentates that probably the French conquest was a providential mercy. When her armies marched into France victorious from Waterloo, she had learned in the school of suffering and house of bondage the value of the national life and freedom which she had formerly despised. This change — a reaction at once against her own former self and her oppressor — showed itself in literature as well as in war, and nowhere more distinctly than in Steffens' ' Gegenwartige Zeit.' The aim of the work is to trace the path in which God has guided the German people during the centuries of its known existence, and to show the significance of Germany for the future of humanity. Its inspiring principle is not love of science but love of country — not speculative curiosity, but the desire to prove by an historical retrospect that the prosperity of Europe must rest in an especial manner on the prosperity of the German nation. In the first chapter the three great divisions of the Caucasian family of mankind, which are said to be the Oriental, Greco- Eoman, and Germanic, are characterised in a way made familiar by Hegel. The Oriental, the first to flourish, but the first also to become exhausted, has abstract universality for principle, all indi- vidual wills being displaced by the one absolute extraneous will of the ruler, so that there is no trace of personal freedom. In the Greco-Roman world the State held the position which in the East was occupied by a single uncontrolled will. The Germans came last, but they brought with them as their original and essential peculiarity the highest principle — that of personal independence. They are depicted as the bravest, truest, noblest race of men that ever lived. It requires to be here remarked that the work of Steffens at present under consideration, and that in which Hegel first sketched the course of historical development, the ' Encyclo- THE SCHOOL OF SCHELLING : STEFFENS. 449 psedia/ both appeared in the same year, 1817, so that the one author must not be assumed to have borrowed from the other. The ' Philosophische Propadeutik,' written by Hegel during his rectorate at Niirnberg, although only published in 1840, proves that to him at least it was in 1817 no new thought. The second chapter is designed to show how Christianity re- sponded to the religious aspirations of the ancient Germans, and how it became the principle of their social organisation. From this point of view the medieval life is depicted as a beautiful and exalted form of existence. Steffens opens the following chapter, however, by supposing an historical student to insist on the other side of things in those times, on the arid and bewilder- ing philosophy, the imperfection of the laws, the oppression of the poor, and to maintain that in many respects the new order is better than the old. He grants that the old cannot be brought back, and that the new has some decided advantages over it ; but insists that there is not less danger of underestimating than of exaggerating the value of the past, and that the present takes care of itself, while comparatively few realise the true character of the past, and its bearings on the present and future. The answer is so far true, but it is not the whole truth. To under- estimate the value of the past is as great a fault as to over- estimate it ; but that does not prevent its being a fault. It was a merit in Steffens and other writers of the Eomantic school insisting that justice should be rendered to the middle ages ; but they did only harm by keeping out of sight their defects, and attributing to them excellences which they never possessed, or, in a word, by substituting for the real middle ages others which never existed outside of their own imaginations. The fourth chapter traces the formation of the modern out of the medieval world as far as the Pieformation ; and the fifth chapter, which comprises the whole of the second and largest volume of the work, describes how the course of history since the Eeformation has issued in society being what it at present is, and particularly in Germanic countries. It is impossible to convey any correct conception of these chapters by a brief summary, and therefore I must content myself with saying that they are most eloquently and attractively written, in spite of 2 F 450 BOOK II. — GERMANY. some diffuseness and over-ornamentation, and that they contain a considerable number of true and suggestive observations which a philosophy of history will appropriate and prize. III. JosejJh Goerres (1776-1848), whom I have next to mention, exerted a very considerable influence both on the political and religious life of Germany. He was in his youth an ardent republican, in his manhood an ardent constitutionalist, and in his later years an ardent ultramontanist. His zeal was always greater than his judgment. His vague, swollen, tumultuous language, the perverse fancifulness and passionate excitement of his mind, his manifold inconsistencies, were in some measure redeemed by his sincerity, outspoken honesty, courage, and real although unregulated genius. A ' History of Asiatic Myths ' is, perhaps, his most important work. It belongs to the same school and epoch of mythological interpretation as Creuzer's Symbolik, and has similar merits and defects — the merits, however, being nearly all less, and the defects greater. Some German authors have spoken of his ' Germany and the Eevolution' (1819), and 'Europe and the Eevolution' (1821), as contributions to the philosophy of history ; but no unprejudiced person who takes the trouble to read these books will find it possible to admit the claim. They are merely politi- cal pamphlets written under a strange poetic and prophetic furor, with " Dominus confregit reges, judicabit in nationibus, implebit ruinas, conquassabit capita multorum " for burden — one which naturally displeased the kings, and which so highly displeased the King of Prussia in j)articular, that he hunted poor Goerres for a time into France. The only one of his books here entitled to notice consists of three lectures, ' Ueber die Grundlage, Gliederung und Zeitfolge der Weltgeschichte,' delivered at Munich in the chair of universal history established for him in 1827. In this work,i which was published in 1830, Goerres professes, 1st, to ascertain and state 1 There is a review of it by Hegel in the second volume of his ' Vermischte Schriften. ' THE SCHOPL OP SCHELLING : GOERRES. 451 the fundamental principle of history ; 2d, to show how secondary and subordinate principles are connected with the primary and central principles ; and 3d, to explain how, through the inner connection of principles, history is an articulated organism which gradually develops itself, and divides into great natural periods, into an ordered succession of spheres, comprehensive of the entire mass of facts. With respect to the first point, the primary principle of history, the truth on which universal history turns and moves, Goerres has substantially little more to say than that, as there are in regard to physical nature two essentially distinct views, which determine and rule all other views, — the ancient, which made the earth the centre of the universe — and the modern, which makes the sun the centre and the earth a satellite ; so there are two fundamentally distinct and opposed views of history, — one nearly as old as his- tory itself, and the other as old — one dating from the origin of sin, and another proper to man's primitive state of intimate com- munion with God — one ignoring the divine or subjecting it to the material, and another referring everything good and true to the providence and will of God ; and that the latter of these views — that which makes God the principle of history, its begin- ning, middle, and end, which traces its origination to His power, its development to His love, its moral order and judgment to His justice — is entitled to acceptance. That there is in this answer truth of the utmost practical importance few will deny ; but before that truth can become an integral part of a philosophy of history, and especially before it can become the very founda- tion of a philosophy of history, it must be more than merely asserted, it must be proved, and must be so exhibited in relation to the appropriate facts as to leave no doubt of its being the keystone of the whole edifice of history. Nothing of the sort, however, is accomplished, or even attempted, by Goerres. Not only strict demonstration but solid proof of every kind is want- ing. Assertions, fancies, phrases, these occupy the place which should have been filled with facts and arguments. In addition, he has completely overlooked, and, indeed, implicitly contra- dicted, the very important truth suggested by the fact that there is an ancient and a modern view of physical nature, or rather, 452 BOOK II. — GERMANY. that there has been from the most ancient to the most modern times a continuous alteration and enlargement of view — viz., that there has been a correspondent continuous alteration and enlargement of view respecting history. A belief that all higher spiritual truth had been in possession of primitive men, had been shipwrecked by the Fall, had floated down through traditions and mysteries to the present time, and that the growth of the race in religious knowledge was merely their gradual recovery of what they had lost — prevented his perceiving the correspondence men- tioned, and necessitated his forming a false notion of the general evolution of history. With respect to the second point, the relation of the second- ary principles to the primary principle of history, Goerres descants on the harmony of the physical world, and its fitness to serve as a basis and model for the harmony of the spiritual world ; insists that divine power and human will are not natur- ally antagonistic to each other or exclusive of each other ; tells us of three kingdoms, — that of absolute freedom, the Godhead — that of freedom combined with necessity, the soul of man — and that of pure necessity, nature, — each with its own laws; those of the first having their seat in the bosom of God, while those of the second regulate the operations of the human mind, and those of the last are involved in the constitution of matter; also of three Bibles — the Bible of nature, the Bible of the spirit, and the Bible of history ; and he assures us that the laws of these three kingdoms meet and interact in history, and that the teachings of these three Bibles are self-consistent and accordant. But cer- tainly all this, however true, can profit science little or nothing so long as it is, as with Goerres, mere vague rhetorical assertion. Of genuine philosophical exposition of the interconnection and subordination of the principles of history there is in his work no trace. Goerres' distribution of the epochs of history proceeds on the supposition that the life of the species corresponds to that of the individual, so that the one passes through the same stadia as the other. Its principle is thus a mere analogy, which is very vague even when the terms are the individual and a nation, and far more vague when they are the individual and the race. The THE SCHOOL OF SCHELLING : GOEERES. 453 analogy is one which has been often used and as often abused, and which has been exhibited in all sorts of ways ; but a more erroneous conception of it has seldom been formed than that which we find in the second of the lectures under consideration. The first stadium- of the individual, according to Goerres, is that of his natural existence, the period of youth ; the second is that of the exercise of his various indwelling powers of life, and in- volves his relations to the family, tribe, and nation ; the third is that of the activity of the moral faculties ; and the fourth that of the culture of the religious principles. And in like manner, he thinks, the first and lowest stadium of the development of the race is seen in the divisions and distinctions produced by physical conditions, such as climate, the geological character of a locality, and its geographical position ; the second in ethno- graphical divisions, or the distribution of men into races, tribes, nations, each with its own mode of living, its own instincts and dispositions ; the third in ethico-political life, as exemplified in civilised states ruled by codes of law ; and the last in the reli- gious or churchly life, which nations elaborate with more or less purity out of that portion of the divine Word which they have been privileged to receive. Hegel remarks that spheres of life are here combined and con- founded with stages of life ; that only the first stadium of indi- vidual development, for example, is a stage, the three other so-called stadia being spheres ; and that the parallelism attempted to be drawn between the history of the individual and of the race is, in consequence, illusory. But probably the remark is not so true in the form Hegel puts it as it at first sight appears to be. Goerres certainly supposed all his stadia to be stages, phases of human nature appearing one after another, because the powers or elements in which they originate manifest them- selves in a fixed order of succession. That any thoughtful per- son should thus suppose the principles of human nature to be successively developed in separate and distinct groups is, indeed, exceedingly strange, but it has often happened ; and even at pre- sent, a man like Littre, as we have seen, can regard a form of this very absurdity as an important scientific discovery of his own. A safer and more decisive objection than that Goerres 454 BOOK II. GERMANY. confounded stages and spheres, is that there are no such stages as those which he supposed, since the development both of the the individual and of humanity is a continuous development of all their powers and principles, and not of different classes of powers and principles, in distinct successive stadia. The last lecture abounds even more than the others in capri- cious and fantastic views. It aims at giving an outline of the entire course of historic development. It begins by treating of eternity and the self-manifestation of God, and thence passes to the creation of the world by successive separations and combina- tions during the Mosaic days, which are the eras of this first period of time ; next, it notices the genesis of evil in six acts, which occupy the second period ; and then the stages of conflict between good and evil, Sethites and Cainites, from the Fall to the Flood, which ends the history of the old world. The history of the new world has three periods. The first begins in Noah's ark and ends with Greece and Eome. It has six eras, and these correspond to the six Mosaic days. The second period is the new Sabbath, or period of the second Adam. The third is the period of the conflict between the life and light He has brought into the world and the surrounding antagonistic darkness and death. This period also is represented as having epochs corre- sponding to the Mosaic days. Thus, from the spread of Christi- anity to the spread of Mohammedanism was evening and morning of the first day. It is in the third day that we are living. There can be no need to state a theory of this kind more minutely. And it would obviously be labour thrown away to criticise and disprove it. A subdivision of the periods of history according to the days of the Mosaic account of creation may be very in- genious ; but, of course, it cannot possibly have any title to be considered a true scientific distribution of historical eras. A worse abuse there has scarcely been even of these days. 455 CHAPTER IX. FKEDEEICK SCHLEGEL.^ I. The character of Frederick Schlegel (1772-1829) is an interest- ing and perplexing subject of study, which cannot be delineated by a few general phrases ; and the same is true of his genius, which was full of strength and weakness, rich yet unripe, widely cultured, quick, susceptible, not incapable of penetrating deeply, but somehow never bringing anything to perfection, never per- forming more than a small part of what it promised. The cor- respondence of his college friend Schleiermacher, and his own contributions to the ' Athenaeum,' show that from the commence- ment of his literary career there floated before his mind the con- ception of a philosophy of history.^ It seems never quite to have left him, although it only attained anything like realisation in the course of lectures delivered by him at Vienna during the year before his death. A long series of remarkable studies, on particular periods and departments of history, had by that time prepared and entitled 1 The complete edition of Schlegel's works is in 15 vols., of which the ' Phil- osophy of Life ' forms the 12th, and the ' Philosophy of History ' the 13th volume. There is a review of the latter by Rosenkranz in ' Das Verdienst der Deutschen um die Philosophic der Geschichte.' The historical theorj' expounded by the Earl of Crawford in ' Progression by Antagonism ' and ' Scepticism and the Church of England,' although an independent and original theory, contains al- most all the more important principles to be found in Schlegel's ' Philosophy of History.' It is chargeable with few of the defects which I have indicated in Schlegel's doctrine. 2 For most interesting detailsonthis point see Dilthey— ' Leben Schleiermachers,' p. 226-230 and 354-361.' Professor Dilthey's account of Schlegel in this work has been drawn largely from unpublished sources, and is an important contribu- tion to the knowledge of his early life. 456 BOOK II. — GERMANY. him to treat of it as a whole. At the outset of his literary career, his investigations into the history and poetry of the Greeks and Eomans had been such as to have obtained the commendations of men like Heyne and Wolf, A. von Humboldt and Boeckh. He had subsequently applied himself to the study of Sanscrit and of Hindoo literature and philosophy, with a success suflficient to convince the scholars of Germany that the study would be emi- nently remunerative, and with an enthusiasm which kindled a love for it in some congenial spirits. He had afterwards pub- lished a course of lectures on modern history, the learning and ability of which were recognised even by those who dissented most decidedly from some of the views which they contained. He had next passed in review the great literary monuments of all ages, and judged them in relation not only to the general re- quirements of art, but to the state of society, religion, and mo- rals^ of thought and feeling, in the countries and epochs in which they appeared. A work on the philosophy of history was the natural conclusion of such a course of historical studies. It is impossible to accuse Schlegel of having neglected, as so many other historical theorists have done, that first and most indispen- sable condition of historical speculation — the acquisition of a reasonable amount of ordinary historical knowledge. He was, further, a man of strong speculative tendencies, whose historical investigations were always prompted by philosophical curiosity, and always speedily converted into themes for philosophical med- itation. Each fragment of history with which his mind hap- pened to be occupied suggested to him thoughts on humanity itself, and the problems which its destiny involves. Proof of this may be found abundantly in all the works I have mentioned. His speculative abilities were, perhaps, not commensurate with his speculative desires and ambition, but they were much greater than is ordinarily allotted to men. He had an amply-stored memory, a wide and varied experience of life, a vigorous imagi- nation, a deep and productive understanding, and intuitive and poetical genius ; was familiar with philosophical questions and theories ; had passed through a time of almost unparalleled philosophical activity, shared in its tendencies, and even been, in many aspects, one of its chief representatives. SCHLEGEL. 457 It is natural, therefore, that we should come to Schlegel's 'Philosophy of History' with large expectations ; and it is char- acterised by a fulness of knowledge, and a completeness and skill of treatment, which so far respond to our expectations. The general impression left in most minds, however, is decidedly one of disappointment. "Why, will become apparent through an examination of the work itself The course of lectures on the philosophy of history is closely connected with a course which Schlegel had delivered the 'pre- vious year on what he called the philosophy of life. These two courses may, in fact, be regarded as the two divisions of a single work ; they treat of the two sides of one subject. Philosophy, according to Schlegel, is the science of the inward life of man. It makes, he insists, but one presupposition — viz., the existence of the internal life; and its chief or central problem is to deter- mine how unity and harmony may be conferred on that life, how the image of God, which it has lost, may be restored in it. To point out how this may be effected in the individual conscious- ness, is the task of pure philosophy — the philosophy of life, distinctively so called. To point out how the process has been so far actually carried on among the different peoples and in the various ages of the world, is the task of the philosophy of history. That is how Schlegel starts. To me the start seems a stumble. The assurance that philosophy has only one presupposition, the existence of the internal life, is contradicted in the very act of being uttered. That philosophy is the science of the internal life is another presupposition made, and a far more questionable one than that internal life exists. I do not see that internal life, or what we are conscious of, need be pronounced a presup- position ; but the fact of internal life, however designated, will be at once accepted. Can the definition of philosophy as the science of the internal life be reasonably accepted with the same readiness ? Can it be accepted at all ? Is it not mere arbitrary caprice to single out the internal life from other things, and make it the alone and adequate object of philosophy ? There is still another presupposition involved — viz., the " Fall," the loss of God's image from the soul. Now it is throwing no 458 BOOEC II. — GERMANY. doubt on the reality of that occurrence to deny that it can be legitimately presupposed by any science. If the philosophy of history be a science, it may conceivably show that there are facts which can only be satisfactorily explained through a " fall," or, in other words, facts which point to the conclusion that there was a " fall ; " but to assume the doctrine of the Fall into its defi- nition is utterly incompatible with any claim to its possession of a scientific character. No science can assume or presuppose ex- planations of its phenomena. While I cannot but state this objection, I should be sorry to magnify it, or to condemn his whole historical system because of it, as has unfortunately been frequently done. He seems to me to have already paid a most unreasonable price for his error. It has cost him, in fact, with many, his entire reputation as an historical philosopher, Gans, in his preface to the first edition of ' Hegel's Philosophy of His- tory,' passed a severe censure on Schlegel's work mainly on that ground; and his one-sided and unjust judgment has been accepted as final and complete to a strange and most mischievous extent. His words are: "In Frederick von Schlegel's 'Philosophy of History' we find, if we seek, a fundamental thought which may be called philosophical. It is this, namely, that man was created free, and that two ways lay before him, of which he could choose either the one or the other — either that which led upwards, or that which led into the lower depths. Had he remained firm and faithful to the original will which proceeded from God, his freedom would have been that of the blessed spirits, as regards which it is altogether erroneous to conceive of the paradisiacal state as one of blissful idleness. But since man has unhappily chosen the second path, there is now a divine and natural will in him, and the problem for the life both of the individual and of the entire race is to change and convert the lower and earthly natural will ever more and more into the higher divine will. Thus this Philosophy of History really begins with the monstrous lamentation that there should be any history, and that the un- historical condition of blessed spirits did not last. History is apostasy — an obscuration of pure and divine being — and instead of God being to be discovered in it, it is rather the negative of God which is therein muTored. Whether the human race will SCHLEGEL. 459 ultimately succeed in returning entirely and completely to God is on this view no more than a matter of expectation and of hope, which, after its prospects have been once more darkened through Protestantism, must, to Frederick von Schlegel, appear at least doubtful. In the delineations of the distinctive features of the characters and histories of the several nations, where this fundamental thought is placed a little in the background, an intellectual platitude shows itself, which seeks to compensate by smoothness of diction for frequent feebleness and cessation of thought," It has seemed to me necessary to set before the eyes of the reader words which have had so much influence on the reputa- tion of the work under consideration. The criticism contained in them is far from just. Gans ought to have stated much more clearly and explicitly what it was to which he objected — where Schlegel's fundamental thought was erroneous. Was it false to hold that man was created free ? or that he had had two very different paths lying before him? or that he had chosen to follow a worse path than he might have done and often dis- obeyed God's will ? Was any one of these assertions — or were all of them — equivalent to lamenting that there had been a his- tory ? That witticism of Herr Gans has been wonderfully effec- tive, but the reasoning by which he reaches it is perhaps more amusing than itself. Certainly it pledged him to maintain that man had not been created free — had never had any path before him but one — and had never strayed or sinned. But if pre- pared to do so, he should have distinctly stated that these were the presuppositions involved in the fundamental idea which he would oppose to Schlegel's, in order that his readers might com- pare them and form their own opinion as to whether or not it were better entitled to be called philosophical. The reason, it will be observed, which I gave for considering it illegitimate and unscientific to begin the philosophy of history with an affir- mation of the Fall, proves it equally illegitimate and unscientific to begin with its denial. It bears as heavily against Gans as against Schlegel. Of course, Schlegel did not lament that there should have been a history at all, but only that there should have been a history originated and pervaded by sin. He had 460 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. not got the length of admiring the Fall as a happy and heroic achievement, and of looking on evil in general as merely " good in another way we are not skilled in." That history is represented by Schlegel only as a process of human apostasy, in which what is reflected is not God but His negative, is quite untrue. He heartily accepted Lessing's idea of a progressive providential education of the human race ; fully expounded and enforced it in the seventh and eighth lectures of the ' Philosophy of Life ; ' and repeatedly returns to it in the ' Philosophy of History.' He does not deny the indefinite perfectibility of man, but only affirms that his cor- ruptibility is as great as his perfectibility. He rejects the hypothesis that man was developed from an entirely animal condition, and that his history has been throughout a course of gradual progress without break or pause, without deviation or retrogression ; but he admits that progress is the natural result of the faculties with which man has been endowed, and that it is clearly traceable as a general historical fact. He certainly tries to prove the existence of an original revelation to mankind, and to trace the course of its falsification by the admixture of various errors ; but his main endeavour is, as he himself says, "to point out the progressive restoration in humanity of the effaced image of God, according to the grada- tion of grace in the various periods of the world, from the revelation given at the beginning, down to the middle revelation of redemption and love, and from that to the final consum- mation." Schlegel begins by informing us that the philosophy of history is the spirit or idea of history, and that it must be educed from history itself ; that what he intends is to give such an account of the chief transactions of the past and of their connections, and so to estimate their importance relatively to the collective progress of mankind, as may unfold in some degree the general plan of history as a whole ; and that in carrying out his purpose he will keep his attention fixed on the main subject, the general outline of human development, in- stead of letting it be distracted or dissipated by a number of minute details, and be content not to attempt to explain every- SCHLEGEL. 461 thing, or to supply whatever appears to be a gap in history. Unfortunately, for this admirable profession he soon substitutes quite another which cannot be reconciled with it. "In his- tory," he says, " as in all science, and in life itself, the principal point on which everything turns, and the all-deciding problem, is, whether all things shall be deduced from God, and God Himself shall be considered the first, nature the second exist- ence, although holding undoubtedly a very important place ; or whether, inversely, the precedency should be given to nature, and, as in that case invariably happens, all things should be deduced from nature only, whereby the Deity, though not by express unambiguous words, yet indirectly and really is set aside, or at least remains unknown. This question cannot be settled by mere dialectical contention, which rarely attains its end. It is the will which here mostly decides, and leads the individual to choose, according to the nature and bias of his character, between two opposite paths, the one which he would follow in speculation and science, faith and life." Schlegel ought to have explained how the first and all-deciding problem of the philo- sophy of history could possibly be the deduction of things either from God or nature, if the philosophy of history were, as he had previously affirmed, simply the spirit or idea of history, and only discoverable in history itself ; how a beginning could be made from the facts of history and also from either a religious or an ontological principle ; how induction could be first, if deduction were before it. He has made no efi"ort to do so ; and if he had, he would have failed, for the two views are irreconcilable, — if the one be true, the other must be false. In the first two lectures Schegel treats of the relation of the earth to man, of the primitive condition of humanity, and of the division of mankind into races or classes, which afterwards gave rise to a plurality of nations. He rejects the notion that man was developed out of the ape, and maintains that he was constituted the lord and ruler of the earth by having imparted to him a divine principle, the internal word of God, which is the light of the higher consciousness, the root of thought and speech, the bond which unites and the power which directs all the distinctive excellences of Immau nature. He holds the 4G2 BOOK II. — GERMANY. first estate of man to have been one of innocence and high endowments, and the savage state one of degeneracy and de- gradation — consequently not the first but the second phase in human history. He represents the origin of discord as the first historical fact, and the antagonism of Cainites and Sethites as the axis on which all primitive history turned, being far more a struggle of principles than of races, and, in reality, a contest between religion and impiety, conducted on the mighty scale of the primitive world. He argues for the credibility of the traditions which assign to the first men gigantic statures, enormous longevity, and great mental powers for good and evil. His attempt to rest this inference on the discoveries of the physical sciences is the reverse of successful. The concluding pages of his second lecture closely resemble certain pages in Hegel's ' Philosophy of History,' and the position they advocate will be examined in connection with Hegel. It is, that as only a small number of individuals, so only a small number of nations, can be properly called historical, — that, indeed, fifteen only have a right to be so designated, and that these form a chain or stream from the south-east of Asia to the northern and western extremities of Europe, of considerable breadth in itself, although not of great extent in proportion to the two continents which it passes through. The four following lectures treat of the constitution of the Chinese empire and the character of the Chinese mind — the institutions, doctrines, mental and moral culture of the Hindoos — the science and religion of the Egyptians — and the theocratic government and providential mission of the Hebrews. Egypt is very briefly dealt with, ChampoUion being the chief authority relied on ; China with considerable minuteness, under the guid- ance of Abel Kemusat, and especially of Dr Windischmann ; India still more minutely, on the data supplied by Colebrooke, August William von Schlegel, &c. ; while as to Israel's place in history, Molitor's ' Philosophy of Tradition ' is largely used. Comparing these four nations, Schlegel professes to find that each is characterised by the predominance of one of those four facul- ties which he holds to be primary in the soul and spirit of man, and to have been disunited and arrayed against each other SCHLEGEL. 463 through the sin that destroyed the primitive harmony and per- fection of human nature. The Chinese mind, it seems to him, is distinguished by the prevalence of reason — the faculty of analysis and arrangement, but in itself devoid of inventive or productive power, and apt to decline into egotism, formalism, and atheism ; the Hindoo mind by the prevalence of imagination — the inven- tive faculty in art, poetry, and even science, but prone to run into sensuality and mysticism ; the Egyptian mind by the preva- lence of understanding — the faculty of apprehension or intuition, which penetrates into the inward essence and scientific signifi- cance of things, yet which, when separated from a pure and steadfast heart, cannot preserve from dark delusions and vile practices ; and the Hebrew mind by the prevalence of the will — a will that sought its God with sincerity, earnestness, and ardour, and followed His guidance with faith, resignation, and courage. It will be observed that there are here two things, — a psychological theory and an historical generalisation, and that although they are connected by Schlegel they may be separated. I believe that they ought to be separated. The psychological theory — that reason, imagination, understanding, and will, defined as above, are the four primary faculties of mind — will be rejected by every person who has paid any attention to mental science. The historical generalisation — that the Chinese, Hindoos, Egyp- tians, and Hebrews were distinguished from each other by the peculiarities of character mentioned — probably contains a con- siderable amount of truth. Further, the external word, according to Schlegel, was divided and diversified among these nations not less than the internal word. He repeatedly informs us, indeed, that it was his main purpose, so far as the first period of universal history was con- cerned, to prove the existence of a primitive revelation of divine truth which preceded and underlies the manifold fictions of heathenism. In this I cannot find that, even with the help of his friend Dr Windischmann, and Dr Molitor, he has in the least degree succeeded ; but the belief was, of course, a very natural one in a Eoman Catholic like Schlegel, and his acceptance of it on insufficient grounds was much more excusable than it would be in any other than a Eoman Catholic. It is remarkable, how- 464 . BOOK II. — GERMANY. ever, that there are Protestant authors — and not a few of them — who expose with severity the absurdity of Roman Catholics supposing that truths or practices could be handed down from the comparatively recent time of the first Christian teachers, through ages comparatively enlightened, and over a few countries which have always been in comparatively close intercourse with each other, yet who themselves believe in primeval traditions which must have endured four times as long, and have traversed the whole earth and been clung to through every vicissitude of fortune by all peoples and tribes, and see in these traditions an explanation of almost every fact of heathen life. These men surely strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. The best researches into the development of religion do not confirm the opinion that the knowledge of the one true God and of other spiritual truths has been diffused through the world by tradition, but show that in all the more civilised heathen nations unity is not the start- ing-point, but the goal of religious thought, while in the more barbarous nations it is rarely found at all. In the Vedic period of Indian history naturalism came first, anthropomorphism next, and last of all, through the long labours of reflection, the notion of one Being was reached ; but the notion was purely a product of speculation, and essentially pantheistic. It was not otherwise in Greece, where the popular religion began with naturalism and ended with anthropomorphism, never reaching the knowledge of the one God ; for although the philosophers speculating on the world and man approximated to it, even Plato and Aristotle, like the Aryan sages, never got farther than a refined form of the pantheistic reduction of multiplicity to unity. Schlegel passes from the four nations mentioned to the Persians, who must, he thinks, be classed along with them, so far as regards religion and sacred tradition, and also from their character and geographical position, yet who formed the transi- tion from the first to the second epoch of the world, com- mencing the course of rmiversal conquest, afterwards followed by the Greeks, and carried farthest by the Eomans, and thus heading the series of nations to whom a really mighty historical influence was assigned. He touches briefly on the strong deep sense of nature, the old ancestral faith, and the pure manners of SCHLEGEL. 465 the ancient Persians, the spirit of ambition and martial enthu- siasm whicli grew up among them, the character of the new monarchy founded by Cyrus, the institute of the Magi, the privileges of the nobility, the system of moral and military edu- cation, the rapid conquests of the empire, and its decline and fall through the operation of pride and luxury (L. vii.) He then delineates, on the one hand, the immense wealth and variety of life and intellect among the Greeks, as displayed in their widely- dispersed settlements and colonies, and their manifold forms of government and culture, and the distinctive features of their policy, religion, art, science, and philosophy (viii.) ; and, on the other hand, the strong and harsh character of the Eomans, their early simplicity, their serious piety, their j)erspicacious practical sense and political insight, their perseverance and energy in con- quest, the sanguinary nature of their civil wars, the merits of their poetry, history, and jurisprudence — this last being superior to anything the world had previously seen, yet faulty because overlooking the distinction between strict or absolute law and the law of equity, or law modified by circumstances — and the exten- sion, gradual dissolution, monstrous and irremediable corruption, and overthrow of the empire (ix.) He does not attempt to con- nect these three nations by a general formula, at least by none more definite than that they all displayed great energy and sought universal empire. No dogmatic aim — no foregone conclu- sion — is prominent in his treatment of them ; which is what cannot be said, perhaps, of any other division of his work. The tenth lecture — the first of the second volume — brings us to the central crisis of history, — the rise of Christianity. The way in which Schlegel distributes and characterises the great epochs of human development is almost incredibly superficial and fanciful. The determining principle he holds to be in each epoch the divine impulse imparting new life. " The word of divine truth originally communicated to man, and wdiich the sacred traditions of all nations attest in so many and such vari- ous ways, forms the guiding thread of historical research and judgment during the first stage of the progress of society. But in the second stage of historical development, which must be fixed in that full noonday of refinement, when victorious power 2 G 4^ BOOK 11. — GERMANY. shines forth so conspicuously in the ascendancy obtained by nations, to whom univei'sal pre-eminence was accorded, the right notion of this power, or the question how far it was just or hurt- ful in its application, godly or ungodly, or at least of a mixed nature, must constitute the true standard of historical inquiry. And in the third or last stage of this progress, which occurs in the modern period of the world, the pure truths of Christianity as they influence science and life itself, can alone furnish the right clue of investigation, and can alone afford any indication as to the ulterior advances of society in future ages. Thus the Woi'd, the Power, and the Light, form the threefold divine principle, or the moral classification of historical phenomena." A formula like that is, of course, beneath all serious criticism; and we may pass on, comforting ourselves with the reflection that a more specious and definite one would almost certainly have done greater harm. In the first five lectures of his second volume, Schlegel de- scribes the social and political condition of the world when Christianity appeared, the decline of the Roman power, the invasions of the Germans, the spread of the Christian religion, the rise, conquests, and character of Mohammedanism, the new organisation of the European West under the influence of the Church, the establishment of the German empire, the struggles . of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Crusades, Romantic poetry and art, Scholastic science and jurisprudence, and the awakening of the spirit of unrest and independence which led to the Reforma- tion (x.-xiv.) The influence of his Roman Catholic convictions becomes very visible in these lectures. To glorify the medieval Church, the Papal system, he considerably exaggerates its real merits, and entirely overlooks both the evil which it produced and the good which was accomplished in spite of it. He is silent as to the condition of the immense mass of the people, the oppressed and tormented serfs, and almost silent as to the abounding violence and brutality of the nobility. He paints the clergy, notwithstanding the prevalence of corruption, avarice, ambition, and falsehood among them, only in rosy tints, forgetful of the very different colours which had been employed by those who had been eyewitnesses of their conduct. He actually argues SCHLEGEL. 4G7 that the radical vice of the middle ages was rationalism, or, as he calls it, the spirit of the absolute. He thinks the Scholastic philosophy was essentially an expression of that spirit; and that, although men like Thomas Aquinas contrived to make it as little dangerous as possible, it would have been better had it never been, had reason never learned to question faith. He believes the earlier period of the middle age to have been on the whole a satisfactory and beautiful phase of existence, until individual- ism or free inquiry, which is the inspiration of Antichrist, made its appearance. He represents, in fact, the principle of human progress as the principle of human degeneracy. "While from a Eoman Catholic point of view medieval history looks far more beautiful than it really was, modern history is seen in the most unfavourable light, the national life of all peo- ples which have felt powerfully the impulse given by the Eefor- mation necessarily appearing to be of an essentially diseased and anti-Christian character. It was from that point of view, how- ever, that Schlegel theorised on history. To vindicate Roman Catholicism, to exhibit it as the source of all true national pros- perity and historical progress, was one of his most obvious and cherished aims. I am far from imputing that to him as a fault. A Roman Catholic has, of course, every right to try to show that history is on his side ; it is even his duty to do so, and a duty, I may add, which Protestants ought to rejoice to see fulfilled, since, if Protestantism be more in harmony with the teaching of history than Roman Catholicism, the study of history must tend to enlarge and liberalise the Eoman Catholic mind, and to pre- pare it for the acceptance of Protestant principles. The mere fact that Schlegel's philosophy of history is an attempt to explain the movement of humanity by the creed of Catholicism, invests it with a peculiar interest and value. It is the distinguishing char- acteristic of his work to have applied the Roman Catholic view of human life to the interpretation of history, as a whole, in a closer and more comprehensive way than any one had done before him ; and it would be unjust to deny this to be a merit. None the less are we free to hold that a considerable part of the service thus rendered to historical philosophy lies in the indirect and involuntary proof which it affords of the inability of Roman 468 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Catholicism to supply the principles of an adequate historical theory. To Schlegel, as to every other author who has attempted to theorise on the same presuppositions, history, since the Refor- mation, is not a source of instruction but of perplexity. It is not explained, but merely pronounced an enigma which must be re- ferred to " the wonderful secret of the divine decrees in the con- duct of mankind." It is not brought within the sphere of phil- osophy, but confessed to lie beyond it. In the lectures devoted to the Reformation, the Religious wars, lUuminism, and the French Revolution (xv.-xvii.), Schle- gel, although obviously himself even more liberal than a Roman Catholic can consistently be, is forced by the narrowness and one-sidedness of the theory on which he proceeds to shut his eyes to many facts, and to pervert and misjudge others. He pre- faces them by some general observations on the philosophy of history. This philosophy, he tell us, is not to be found in his- torical particulars but in the principles of social science, and these principles are no mere organic laws of nature but manifes- tations of free-will, the faculty of moral determination between good and evil, to which natural laws form only a physical basis, or rather, simply a disposition of which the direction depends on the use man makes of his freedom. It is only when the higher principle of free-will has been debased and destroyed that the laws of nature, the laws of necessity, prevail, and that the pro- gress and symptoms of organic disease can be traced by histori- cal science in bodies politic with almost as much precision as by medical science in the bodies of individuals. Along with free- will there is another divine principle to be recognised in the pro- gress of nations, — viz., the guidance of an all loving and all-ruling Providence — the effective, historical, redemptive power of God, — which restores to the individual and the race their lost freedom, and with it the effectual power of good. Without this idea of an all-niling Providence, of the redeeming power of God, history would be a labyrinth without clue or issue — a mighty tragedy without proper beginning or ending — a confused pile of ages heaped on ages. Side by side with free-will and Providence is a third principle, the permitted power of evil, the deepest and most complicated enigma of the world, which can find its solu- SCHLEGEL. 460 tion only in the divinely-ordained trial of the faculty of freedom. Only he who has a clear and deep insight into the nature and working of the mystery of evil can penetrate to any great depth below the surface of historical events. These three mighty prin- ciples, — the hidden ways of a Providence delivering and emanci- pating the human race — the free-will of man destined to a deci- sive choice in the struggle of life — and the power permitted by God to the principle of evil, — constitute the threefold law of the historical world. They cannot be deduced as absolutely neces- sary, like the laws of nature or of reason, but must be drawn out of the multitude of historical facts, and spring up, as it were, spontaneously from bare observation. Having laid down these principles, he proceeds to pass judg- ment on the Eeformation. He acknowledges the greatness of Luther — admits that a reformation was in the fifteenth century urgently needed — and characterises that which was actually accomplished as a mighty and momentous revolution, which has since, down even to the present day, mainly determined the movement of modern times and the character of modern science. But, at the same time, he pronounces the actual Eeformation to have been a mere human, unsanctioned enterprise — the cause of a vast, protracted, incurable division among mankind, — not what it should have been, a divine Eeformation, extensive, deep, and effectual, which would have renovated and revived the Church without severing itself from the sacred centre of Chris- tian tradition or causing discord in society. Now I greatly object to the Eeformation being declared in an easy, offhand, sweeping way a work of man as opposed to a work of God, since my religious lights, like Schlegel's own, lead me to believe a work of man as opposed to a work of God to be a work of Satan. As whatever is good has its source in God, so whatever is evil has its source in Satan. Good is an effect of which God is in all cases the first cause ; evil is an effect of which Satan is in all cases the first cause. Between visible good or evil events, however, and their first causes, a secondary cause, the human will, always intervenes ; that is to say, in history God is the author of all good, Satan of all evil, through the will of man We may therefore satisfy ourselves in any given circumstances 470 BOOK IT. — GERMANY. as to the agency or absence of God or Satan by a legitimate pro- cess of inference from an investigation of the moral character of the facts involved, and have no right to attribute things to either by mere guessing and dogmatism — no right to make assertions about the first cause of facts without an honest and patient ex- amination of their secondary causes and consequences, through a knowledge of the nature of which alone can their true first cause be ascertained. Before any man can be justified in con- necting either the name of God or Satan with an extensive movement like the Eeformation, he ought to have analysed it into its elements, to have carefully ascertained and studied its secondary causes and results, and to have diligently separated the good from the evil in it, — and after that has been done, he ought to go no farther than to refer the good to God and the evil to Satan. Schlegel has certainly not proceeded thus; on the contrary, he has pronounced the Eeformation a work of man as opposed to a work of God without any proof of its having been wholly or even predominantly evil. Then, as to the reformation which he holds should have been instead of the actual one, I have only to remark, that it would have been not merely a work of God, but a miraculous work. The Pope and other members of the hierarchy resolutely refused to turn from their evil ways — resolutely resisted the most urgently needed reforms — reso- lutely disobeyed, in a word, God speaking to them through men, — and as He did not choose to speak to them through miracles, and make them honest, enlightened, and pious men in spite of themselves, the Eeformation had of necessity to take place in defiance of them, and amidst a vast amount of discord. Perhaps a reformation by miracle and rose-water might have been pre- ferable, and undoubtedly would have been more pleasant ; but a miracle was not wrought, and rose-water alone was clearly insufficient. In tracing the development and spread of Protestantism in the different countries of Europe, Schlegel condemns all perse- cution, and maintains that where Protestantism was outwardly suppressed, its most essential part — the spirit of destructive ne- gation and revolutionary innovation — was left to rage inwardly ; and that this spirit instilled into the moral system of a Catholic SCHLEGEL. 47l nation is far more fatal to its welfare, and to that of its neigh- bours, than an established Protestant constitution. He specifies these as the three great historical results of Protestantism : in Germany, the religious peace ratified by the treaty of West- phalia; in England, the constitution of 1688, and tlie material system of the balance of power ; and in France, the Auiklarung issuing in the Eevolution. The first of these consequences he estimates very justly ; the latter two very imperfectly. The last lecture is not, perhaps, of any great intrinsic value, but it is of great interest. It shows that the author had not found in the Eoman Catholic Church the satisfaction which he had sought in it. It shows that he felt that his philosophy of history was far from a perfect theory ; that, in particular, more than three centimes of time were a niystery and perplexity to it. It is the expression of a longing for a solution of the enigma, for a divine Eeformation before which the human Reformation will sink and disappear, for a divine enlightenment in presence of which the delusive glare of all systems of philosophical rational- ism wiU be extinguished, for the destruction of the spirit of the absolute, and for the formation, establishment, and triumph of Christian government and Christian science. It is with the religious hope that all this will speedily be realised that Schlegel closes his philosophy of history ; but as the spirit of the absolute or cause of evil really means with him the spirit of rational free- dom, and the good cause which he wishes to triumph in science and life is unqualified and unquestioning submission to external authority, I can discover no satisfactory grounds for his hope. 472 CHAPTER X. KRAUSE. Charles Christian Frederick Krause (1781-1832) has been little heard of in this country. He studied philosophy at Jena under Fichte and Schelling, and the influence of both, but especially of the latter, may be distinctly traced in his works. He cannot, however, be described with any propriety as a follower of Schelling, or indeed as a follower of any one; he pursued a path of his own : after failing to find satis- faction for his mind and heart in the doctrines of his teach- ers or in older systems, he wrought out with quiet indepen- dence and the most praiseworthy perseverance a philosophy which is as much entitled to be regarded as original as that of Fichte or Schelling or Hegel. In the truth and value of that philosophy he had the most profound and fervent faith, and he devoted himself to its elaboration and diffusion with indefatigable zeal. It was long before his labours produced any visible results. His numerous works on philosophy attracted little attention, and those which he wrote on freemasonry involved him in persecution. He had all his life to contend with poverty and adversity. He never rose above the rank of privat-doccnt. This want of popular success was not, perhaps, altogether unnatural. He was the contemporary of Schelling and Hegel, and a voice like his had little chance of being listened to, so long as the ears of men were bewitched by their magnificent professions and promises. These two mighty sor- cerers drew almost the whole philosophical world in wonderment after them ; and " Scholars, in their lore too apt, Suffering a lofty madness from the love Of their new thought, a race of Titans, plunged KRAUSE. 473 Into tlio sea of Nature, and with rash Intrusion rushed into the innermost shrine, Where men have kept their holiest, preaching dreams Like hierophants before the gaping mob." The devout speculations of Krause were not of a character to commend themselves to the minds of men in this state of excitement. The spell had to be broken, the delirium required to subside, before his claims could receive a fair examination. Then he considerably diminished what chance he had of attracting attention to himself, or rather to what was dearer to him than his own self, his doctrine, by the adoption of a most perplexing and repulsive terminology. He conceived the idea of reforming the German language as well as German philo- sophy, of purifying it from all foreign elements, of writing an absolutely pure German. At the same time, far from deeming it necessary to avoid as much as possible the use of technical terms, he employed them more lavishly than those who drew most freely on Latin and Greek. The result was a German so pure that the best-educated Germans have declared that they could no more understand it than Arabic or Sanscrit.^ Of course, in that they exaggerate a little, or even not a little, but still they only exaggerate ; and in many cases Krause's pure 1 Here is what Professor Zeller says : " "Wer gelesen sein will, der schreibe so, dass man ihn versteht ; es heisst dem Leser gar zu viel zumuthen, wenn man von ihm verlangt, er solle erst eine neue Sjirache erlernen, um sich durch ein paar Biicher durchzuarbeiten, von denen er denn doch nicht zum voraus wissen kann, ob in der harten und stacliligen Schale ein Kern liegt, wegen desseu es sich verlohnt, sie zu ofFnen. Jede Wissenschaft braucht ja ihre Terminologie, und wer neue Begriffe entdeckt, der ist auch genothigt und berechtigt, be- stimmte Bezeichnungen dafilr zu schaffen. Aber alles hat sein Mass. Wenn ein Schriftsteller gar nie von den Steltzen seiner Terminologie herabsteigt, wenn er aus lauter Purismus ein Deutsch schreibt, welches dem Deutschen so unver- stiindlich ist, als ob es Sanskrit ware ; wenn man bei ihm auf jedem Schritte, und oft zu Dutzenden in einer Periode Ausdriicken begegnet, wie Satzheit, Ursatzheit und "Vereinsatzheit, Richtheit, Fassheit und Erkennheit, Seinheiturein- heit und Seinheitvereinheit, Verhaltseinheit und Gehaltseinheit, wenn man nicht hoffen kann, seine Meinung zu fassen, ehe man sich den Unterschied von Urweseninnesein, Selbweseninnesein, Ganzwesininnesein und Vereinselb- ganzweseninnesein oder Schauvereinfiihlen gemerkt, die Bedeutung von Orwesen, Antwesen, Miilwesen und Omwesen, Wesen-als-Urwesen und Geist-verein-Leib- wesen, von Or-om-Wesenlebverhaltheit und Orend-eigen-Wesenahmlebheit, das Verhiiltniss von ' Wesens Or-ora-Lebselbstschauen ' zu seinem Ur-und Ewig-Selbst- schauen sich klar gemacht hat, so ist es am Ende begniflich, das nicht jeder sich entschliesst, sich durch solche Hieroglyphen durchzuarbeiten." 474 BOOK II. — GERMANY. German is indescribably hideous. Again and again, when stuck fast in a sentence like this (and there are sometimes three or four quite as bad on a siugle page)—" Das Wesenleben ist Or-, Ant-, Mai-, Om-Wesen-leben, es ist in sich der Eine Wesenleben- Gliedbau ; es euthiilt in sich Urwesen- Wesenleben, Geistwesen- Wesenleben, Leibwesen - Wesenleben, Geistwesen - verein - Lei- bwesen - Wesenleben und darin Menscheit- Wesenleben, jedes dieser Glieder fiir sich und alle im Verein mit alien, — also das Wesen-Vereinleben, und den Wesenlebenverein, den Wesenle- ben-Bund (nach der Grundwesenheit der Gesellheit oder Selb- heit " ), — I have felt as if my pursuit of philosophy had made of me if not a martyr at least a victim, while I have reflected with thankfulness that the English language has never been so tor- mented even by a philosopher. What made Krause's procedure all the worse was, that he was quite capable of writing admir- ably, and that, in spite of his purism, he sometimes did so. No one can read his ' Urbild der Menscheit,' for example, without finding in it the richest aesthetic as well as moral enjoyment. The first to come thoroughly under the influence of Krause were a few of his students at Gottingen, and his fame has been greatly due to their zealous propagandism. One of the most enthusiastic among them was Henry Ahrens, now Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Leipzig, but formerly Pro- fessor of Philosophy and the Law of Nature in the University of Brussels, after having been a student and privat-docent at Gottingen. He introduced the doctrine of his master into Belgium, where it still flourishes. A course of philosophy (1836-38) which he delivered in Paris under the auspices of the French Government, drew to it the attention of philo- sophically - minded men in France, and there it gained the assent of M. Bouchittee, Duprat, &c. His ' Cours de Droit Naturel,' a work which has gone through more than twenty editions or translations, has made it favourably known to the jurists of all lands. Its chief advocate in Belgium at present is M. Tiberghien, who has done much, both as professor and author, to expound and diffuse its principles. Baron von Leonhardi, formerly professor at Heidelberg, and now at Prague, is generally regarded as the head of the school in KRAUSE. 475 Germany. Along with Ahrens, Professors Boeder and Schlie- phake, botli of Heidelberg, are its chief representatives among German jurists. H. S. Lindemann has published very service- able expositions of Krause's ' Theory of Science,' of his ' An- thropology/ and his ' Logic' Froebel, the celebrated educa- tionalist, the founder of the Kindergarten, was only less in- fluenced by Krause than by Pestalozzi. The congresses for the advancement of philosophy which have been held in Germany since 1868, show that Krauseanism is there strong and full of faith and vigour. It certainly shows no signs of dying, and has in all probability a long and honourable future before it, not only as a doctrine in the schools, but as a power in society. It is, perhaps, strange that it should have been able to take root and grow in Spain. It was transplanted thither by Julio Sans del Eio, who learned to appreciate it during a stay of consider- able length at Heidelberg, and afterwards taught it for about twenty years in the University of Madrid, until he was in 1868, through the influence of the Pope and the priests, dismissed from his office in the meanest and most lawless manner, for having translated into Spanish Krause's ' Urbild der Menscheit.' Neither Del Rio, nor the government which persecuted him, had much longer to live ; but the former had done honest, earnest work, and he left behind him many whom he had imbued with his own admiration for Krause, including several who had them- selves become teachers in the universities of Madrid and Seville. Sad and chaotic as existence at present is in unhappy Spain, we shaU hope yet to see appear, when the dark waters which have risen so high have again subsided, the bread he cast upon them. I am not aware that in Great Britain Krause has been studied by any one except Professor Lorimer of Edinburgh, who, in the ' Institutes of Law,' shows a sympathetic appreciation of the merits, as well as insight into the defects, of his juristical philo- sophy. Krause left his system almost completely evolved and organ- ised ; a whole which he had repeatedly delineated and carefully elaborated in its parts and members ; the beginning and end, the divisions and subdivisions, the principles, method, plan, and doc- trines of which were all settled with a rare degree of precision. 476 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Like the systems of Ficlite, and Schelling, aud Hegel, it is a vast monistic theory, centring in a single truth, to which everything may be referred, and from which everything may be educed. That truth is the one and absolute Being which comprehends all being, the essence ( TFesen) which is the substance of all exis- tences, God, in whom, through whom, and to whom, are all things. The knowledge of God is, according to Krause, the true and living root of all knowledge ; theology the fundamental science. Nay, the sole task of science is reduced by him to the apprehending of God in Himself, and to tracing how He mani- fests and mirrors Himself in the world, reason, and humanity. Philosophy, as universal science, ought thus to be a delineation of the organism of the divine life. In common with his con- temporaries Jacobi and Baader, Krause denied that the existence of God could be, properly speaking, proved, being necessary and immediately certain, and, in fact, itself the presupposition of all proof. At the same time, he admitted that the so-called proofs were most valuable in awakening the mind to a consciousness of what is the light of all our seeing, the condition of all our know- ing ; and so far from beginning at once, like Schelling and He- gel, with the positing of the absolute and objective first principle, he insisted that philosophy was bound to start with what is sub- jectively certain, self-consciousness, and thence methodically to rise by a process of analysis, which he has minutely described, to the recognition of the highest truth ; for only when this pro- cess was completed, and the idea of God was, in consequence, clearly and faithfully apprehended, could, he held, the mind hope to deduce from that idea the universe of science it included. It is only after reason has ascended to God by a subjective and analytic method, that it can descend from Him in an objective and synthetic course, comprehending and exhibiting the whole organism of existence. What was most distinctive in his own mode of apprehending the absolute Being and Cause, was the earnestness with which he strove to mediate between Pantheism and Theism, and to combine what he regarded as the truth in both into a completer conception, into Pan-en-theism. He could not think of the divine Being as one amongst a multitude of beings, as simply an immeasurably greater Being than all others ; KRAUSE. 477 but held that He must be the one Being as comprehending all being, as the essence of all that is, the life of all that lives ; and on the other hand, he maintained, with the utmost explicitness, that God is a free, intelligent, loving, and righteous personality, and endeavoured to show that finite existences had even a rela- tive life of their own, comprehended within the divine life, issu- ing from it, and bearing its likeness or image. How history de- pends on the divine life, and finds therein its law and explana- tion, Krause has attempted to describe in his ' Eeine, i.e., allge- meine Lebenlehre und Philosophic der Geschichte zu Begriindung der Lebenkunstwissenschaft ' — a work of which I now proceed to give a brief account. The introduction is devoted to elucidate what is meant by his- tory, philosophy, and philosophy of history, and to indicate what intellectual and spiritual advantages the philosophy of history should confer. The subject of history is declared to be the de- velopment of life, or, more precisely, of the one divine life, since all the life which reveals itself in nature, reason, or humanity, is included in that life — the universal life. History itself is con- sequently infinite, — the infinite work of God. The knowledge or science of it, however, is confined within narrow limits, since it comprehends merely so much of the divine life as manifests itself to our finite minds in the life within and around us. Phil- osophy is declared to consist of non-sensuous, and especially of supra-sensuous, knowledge ; and such knowledge, we are told, every man who reflects on the subject will find that he possesses. The two conceptions of philosophy and history seem at first glance, according to Krause, to exclude each other ; but they may be combined and harmonised by defining the philosophy of his- tory as the knowledge of life and its evolution, regarded both purely in itself or according to the idea and in relation to em- pirically realised life or pure history. It is not to be understood as a knowledge of the series or aggregate of events which have happened, but as a knowledge of the spiritual and eternal nature of life, and of its laws of evolution, with the application of that knowledge to explain and estimate the actual course of history. Hence it must be either a imrc or an apiilied philoso- phy of history. The pure philosophy of history is a purely phil- 478 BOOK II. GERMANY. osophical science. It may at times be illustrated from actual history ; but for it to seek therein the proofs of its conclusions, is as illegitimate as it would be for a geometer to found the de- monstrations of his theorems on the individual peculiarities of his squares, triangles, &c. It consists entirely in a knowledge of ideas — the idea of nature as a living whole, of spirit as the one living reason, of humanity as the most intimate union of spirit and nature, and of God as the infinitely absolute and ab- solutely infinite being. The applied philosophy of history receives the ideal truth in which the pure philosophy of history consists, and measures and judges by it the actual course of human events, showing how and to what extent it has been realised in positiye facts, in occurrences perceivable by the senses. Tliese views seem to me quite erroneous. The statement of them, however, has the merit of preparing us for what follows. Long before we have read through the introduction we know that the philosophy of history into which we are to be initiated presupposes a know- ledge of almost everything except one, which, strangely enough, happens to be history itself. Krause divides the rest of his work into two parts, in the first of which he undertakes to lay the scientific foundation of the philosophy of history, and in the second to give an outline of that philosophy so far as it is limited to humanity. I must not attempt to give more than the briefest summary of the first part, for it is itself a summary of almost all that is most distinctive and important in the Krausean system. Its perusal may be heartily recommended to those who wish to get at the kernel of Krause's teaching with the least possible expenditure of time and trouble. It contains an exposition of the doctrines which he thinks a philosophy of history must presuppose, and these are the chief doctrines both of metaphysics (Orundtvissenschaft) and of the special philosophical sciences. The philosophy of history seemed to Krause to be the completion and conclusion of phil- osophy, and to imply the results of all other departments of philosophy. God, the world and its relation to God, and life, are the metaphysical themes which he discusses, — the two first briefly, the last at considerable length. He begins with God, because he holds all knowledge to be in its ultimate nature KRAUSE. 479 knowledge of God, and the divine attributes to be the supreme categories of thought and the fundamental principles of exist- ence. In the primary categories of totality, selfness, and their harmonious reunion (Ganzheit, Selhheit, and Ganz-verein-selb- hcit), he finds the essential elements, and in the secondary cate- gories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which correspond to them, the formal principles of all that is, whether infinite or finite. He represents God as an infinite and absolute personality, as existing alone for Himself and for Himself alone, yet as so present in all beings and with all beings so present in Him, that He is not merely the cause of the world, but its immanent and active ground or essence. He conceives of the world as neither identical with God nor separate from Him, but as His finite ex- pression and image. He endeavours to prove that life is founded in the essential attributes of the divine nature, — that it involves all these attributes, and therefore is even in God an organic whole, — that the divine life is an infinite and universal life, inclusive of the life of nature, the life of spirit, and the life of humanity, all which lives are organisms, yet organically related to one another, — that the life of God is a realisation of His essence, which is the good, while man has his end in the Alone Good, — that God acts with an eternal and unconditioned free- dom, man with a limited and conditioned freedom, dependent on the absolute freedom of God, and in some measure on the freedom of others, — that evil has its source in the finite will, the want of liberty or abuse of liberty, and while not a mere nega- tion is real only as a relation, — that so far as the infinite enters into the constitution of his finite nature man resists and rejects evil, and that the divine Being must necessarily and incessantly oppose and overcome it, and must finally deliver all creatures from it and completely destroy it, — that the development of individual lives passes through an endless number of finite cycles or periods in such a way that the ideal is realised in an infinite variety of forms instead of being for ever approached yet never reached, — that each of these periods comprehends a deter- minate series of ages which are not only separated in time but distinct in idea, — and that life is an organic process which tends as a whole and in every part to the honour and glory of God. 480 BOOK II. — GERMANY. He next expounds, so far as seems to him necessary for the creation of a philosophy of history, the fundamental truths of the speculative sciences of nature, spirit, and humanity. He represents both nature and spirit as existing in God and bearing His image, each representing chiefly, although not exclusively, a different phase or attribute of His being. He decidedly rejects all atomistic and mechanical explanations of the world ; main- tains that it is a living organism pervaded by a peculiar kind of thought and will ; and insists strongly, while granting to it a real value of its own — a value as an end and not as a mere mean — on its harmony with spirit, on their intimate and manifold connec- tion and correspondence. He conceives of spirit as the counter- part of nature, as a whole which comprehends countless spirits and societies of spirits, as the realm of spirits. Nature and spirit he deems to be combined in a low form in the brutes ; but he regards humanity as the closest and completest manifestation of their union in God. In man the highest individual spirits are connected with the most perfectly organised bodies. He is by his body the harmonious representation, type, and crown of the entire organisation and life of nature, and by his mind of the entire organisation and life of spirit ; he is thus the most com- plete synthesis of the universe, as well as the truest image of God. He describes humanity as filling with its life all space and time, — as composed of an infinity of individual souls, which can neither be increased nor diminished in number, and each of which must reach its rational destination, — as perfectly realising at each moment its nature, although only in the way appropriate to the moment, — as one vast society, of which the whole hu- manity on earth is but a member, which lives at present in un- conscious connection with higher societies. Each individual is called to realise in his own 'fashion the whole idea of man, — each is an end in himself, — all are essentially equal. The individual, however, can only become his true self, and fully attain to what he is called, through association and intercourse with his fellows. And, on the other hand, the whole society of mankind is to be viewed as one vast individual man, and each smaller society as a lesser individual. The end of these societies is, as collective moral persons, to develop and cultivate all the elements of hu- KRAUSE. 481 man nature, and to realise all the aims of human life in an orderly and harmonious manner. The humanity of the universe, and, of course, the humanity of the earth, must become increas- ingly organised and increasingly conscious of their social unity. All the nations of the earth will ultimately be drawn closely together by association and confederation. Our author next j)roceeds to dissect and describe the internal organism of society. Society is composed of societies, an association of associations. There are two chief kinds of association — those the ends of which are general, and those the ends of which are special ; and as the latter kind admits of a twofold division, there may be said to be three series of associations. The family, the community of friends, the local group, the nation, and the race itself, are asso- ciations of the former order, seeing that their end is nothing less than assistance to the individual in realising the purpose of his being as a whole. They are so many spheres of increasing generality and comprehensiveness, the members of which belong to them, as it were, through all the faculties of their being, and do not co-operate with one another merely for some definite special end, but for all the greater ends of life. There is another class of associations : those which exist expressly for the accom- plishment of certain works incumbent on humanity, such as education, science, art. And there is, or ought to be, a third class of associations corresponding to all the fundamental phases of human life, all the distinct ends of human nature, justice, morality, beauty, and religion. These three series of associa- tions are by no means merely juxtaposited in the world, or it would be a world of inextricable confusion ; but the associations of the first series are not only connected with one another as successive stages in the evolution of collective humanity, but they so include those of the other series, and all are so unified and co-ordinated through their relationship to man and the ulti- mate aim of humanity, that the harmonious development of social life is secured. Krause concludes this part of his work by an exposition of his views on the two great associations in- tended respectively to realise justice and religion— the State and the Church {Bcclitbuncl and Gottinnigkeitbund). The title of the second part is "The philosophical science of 2 H 482 BOOK II. — GERMANY. the development of life in time, or the general philosophy of history." This part is also divided into two sections. The first is simply a further elaboration of the doctrine of life. Proceed- ing upon what had been already laid down on that subject, it proposes to render more explicit and definite the general idea of life, the organic nature of its entire development in all beings, and its differentiation into a succession of epochs and ages, as well as to determine more exactly what are its general laws. In con- nection with it there is, perhaps, no need to do more than direct attention to the view given of the stages through which life must pass. The life of every finite being, it is maintained, must traverse an infinite number of spheres or periods, which are entered by the gate of birth and left by that of death. In each period the direction pursued is first upward and then downward, and both the ascending and descending course is divided into three ages, the characters of which are determined a priori from the formula — Gcmzheit, Selhheit, and Ganz-vcreinSdhheit In the first age of life, a being exists either as a germ within or in intimate dependence upon a higher whole, another being ; in the second age, distinguishing itself from, and opposing itself to, that and other beings, it attains independence and individuality, although at the cost of manifold error and evil ; and in the third age, recognising its relations to other beings, and conform- ing itself thereto, it reaches a state of fully-developed power and harmony, in which it has complete mastery over all its faculties, and exercises them in a right way, and to the greatest good of itself and others. When it has risen to its full maturity — to the highest point destined to be reached by it in a single cycle of life, — it forthwith begins to descend, and passes through three ages, which are counterparts to those through which it ascended, but which succeed one another in the inverse order. Each age may be subdivided, according to the formula by which it was separ- ated from the other ages of its cycle, into three partial ages. No age arises without having been preceded by a long preparation, and, at the same time, no age can be explained wholly by what belonged to the past, every age bringing with it entirely new and distinctive principles, which are inseparable from its pecu- liar and characteristic idea. KRAUSE. 483 The theory of life and development which Kranse has thus far expounded he believed to be as applicable to the history of the formation of a new drop or of a solar system, as to the history of an individual man, a society, or humanity. But now in the last division of his second part — the last section of his work, — he comes to the philosophy — the ^w?-e philosophy, it will be remembered — of the history of humanity. It is the theory of human development in all parts of the universe, and not merely of human development on the earth. The history of earthly humanity is specially referred to merely for the sake of illustra- tion. Making a twofold subdivision of this section of his treatise, Krause first lays down certain theorems regarding the historical development of the individual man, and then regarding the his- torical development of humanity as a collective individuality. He argues that each man brings with him his peculiar genius, disposition, and character (his TJrgeist und UrgcmiXth — his alleineigcnthumliclie Anlagen des Geistes und Herzens) from the depths of eternity, from his prior states of being — that every age of man's life has a value and dignity of its own, apart from what it may lead to — and that the number and order of his ages are those which have been a priori determined to belong to finite life as such ; and this having been done, he proceeds to describe how the life of a particular humanity is related to life in all surrounding spheres — in God, in nature, in contiguous partial humanities — and how it is evolved as an independent and organic whole. His account of the three ages in the history of humanity is of special interest. It is the subject of the last chapter of the treatise under examination, and may be succinctly reproduced as follows. The first age (das Keimalter) is that of infancy and innocence, in which humanity is a feeble but undivided society, protected and guided by higher powers, and extremely susceptible to physical and divine influences. In this age, man existed in a clairvoyant condition with respect to the natural and super- natural world, and, seeing God in all things, his religion was a vague and undefined monotheism. Humanity had at this date no proper historical self-consciousness, and there has come down to us from it only some dim traditions or myths of a paradise or 484 BOOK II. GERMANY. golden age. Man, although originating organically in every planet when it reaches maturity, is no developed ape, but essen- tially and widely separated from the highest brutes ; and savage tribes are not men in a primitive but in a fallen and degenerate state. The second age {das Wachsaltcr) is that of youth and growth. It is characterised by the disruption of the primitive unity of humanity, by the acquisition of independence and self-know- ledge, by the separation of society into tribes and nations, castes and classes, by division of labour, by variety of activity. This second age includes three periods. In the first, clairvoyance almost ceases, a faint knowledge of the one God is only retained in secret societies and communicated in mysteries, while poly- theism prevails, wars rage, and slavery and caste are instituted. The histories of the oriental nations and of Greece and Eome fall within this period. In that which follows, polytheism is re- placed by monotheism, but by an abstract and crudely appre- hended monotheism which leads to fanaticism, contempt of the world, the slavish dependence of art and science on theology and clerical despotism. The middle age corresponds to it. In the third period, humanity rejects all authority which would inter- pose between itself and the primary sources of truth, and all restraints on its natural freedom of action. This love of light and liberty is accompanied by the virtues of toleration and philanthropy, by recognition of the rights of others, by the dif- fusion of knowledge, and the growth of more enlarged and pro- found views of religion and philosophy; yet the struggle between the old and new, the good and evil, is severe, and existence is self-contradictory, sinful, and burdensome. It is in such a period that we are now living. The third great age of humanity (das Rcifcdtcr) is that in which all its powers are fully and harmoniously developed ; in which it has thorough mastery both over physical nature and over itself ; in which all the societies which compose it unite to form one vast collective and complexly organised individuality ; and in which panentheism is universally and cordially accepted as the only true and adequate doctrine either of science or of society. The whole of mankind on earth will be united into KRAUSE. 485 one great, peaceful, and prosperous state. They will not only become conscious of their unity in God and in humanity, but they will practically and outwardly realise it in every sphere of life,— the ethical, the political, the industrial, the aesthetic, the scientific, and the religious. Science and art, religion and morals, law and policy, will all become when they have reached their maturity cosmopolitan, and will all contribute to bind together, to unify, our earthly race into a city and kingdom of God. And even tliis will not be the end. To the eye of faith, a still wider and grander prospect presents itself. For although, after having reached the summit of an epoch of life, humanity (entire or partial) must thenceforth descend until it reaches the bottom on the other side, not only may each period through which it passes in its downward career be virtuous and happy — not only may each have its own charms and worth, and the last be the most venerable and honourable, as old age is in an individual who has spent his life well — but each period is a step towards a new and higher epoch, towards a far wider and better cycle of being. The humanity of earth may become a humanity of the sun, and enter into connection with the humanities of many a planet and sun, and thus bring nearer the day when all humanity will be one ; when men, not only of all countries, but of all solar systems, will know and love one another, and will work together in unison of spirit. Having thus given a general account of Krause's philosophy of history, I must now consider critically some of its more marked characteristics. And, first, its method. It professes to be a syn- thetic, deductive, aiJriori system ; to be derived not from history but from the categories of being and thought, from the very idea of life ; even that portion of it which Krause left unelaborated, the ap2)licd philosophy of history, is described as purely ideal truth deductively obtained, as a standard by which history is to be judged, but by no means as a theory drawn from history, and worthless if unverified by it. It is, further, one of the most serious and laboured attempts ever made actually to reach such an. a priori comprehension of history, and in this respect it contrasts most favourably with the historical philosophies of Fichte, of Schelling, of Hegel, &c. Fichtc asserted he was able 486 BOOK II. — GEEMANY. to deduce a priori the world-plan from tlie philosophical idea of universal time ; but he gave no proof of his ability — made not the slightest effort to supply the deduction. Schelling threw over history a number of formulse which he professed to find necessarily involved in the evolution of absolute truth ; but how they were logically so involved he too forgot even to endeavour to show, and so his readers have been left to see in them only casual suggestions, felicitous or the reverse — mere views loosely and carelessly cast forth. Hegel virtually assumes the task of deduction to have been completed when he posits the develop- ment of reason as the subject of the philosophy of history, and consequently applies himself at once to master and elaborate the empirical matter, and to pour it, as it were, into the dialec- tic mould provided for it. Krause's procedure is very different, and in perfect accordance with the view which he gives of the philosophy of history as a science which consists in purely ideal and a priori truth. He does his utmost to work out a philo- sophy of history which shall answer to his description of what a philosophy of history ought to be. He labours manfully to compass a deduction of the law and plan of human development from the absolute first principle, working slowly down through what he regards as the intermediate principles, which are the primary and essential truths of all the chief sciences. His demonstration is so lengthened and elaborate that it may almost be said to include his entire synthetical philosophy. All honour to him for having been thus in earnest even as regards what may be deemed by us an erroneous view. Consistency and thoroughness are always high merits, even although they fail to secure success. In the instance under consideration they have only contributed to make apparent the hopelessness of what was attempted, the impossibility of accomplishing what was undertaken. Krause applies to his task all the faculties of a vigorous and original mind, and works out what has some appearance of being a most elaborate deductive process ; but the slightest examination of that process proves its deductive ap- pearance a complete illusion. No minute or subtle analysis is needed to show that empirical truth has been surreptitiously drawn into the pretended demonstration at every step, and KRAUSE. 487 afterwards unconsciously passed off as truth found a 2^'^ori in the pure idea. Thus the idea of life itself, so far as it is truth- fully described, is simply a generalisation from our experience of life as it displays itself in the physical world without us, in our own minds, and in history ; and similarly, what are repre- sented as the laws of life are mere inductions, valid only to the extent that observation and inference from observation support them. The so-called law of the ages of life, for example, has been derived mainly from observation of the course of individ- ual life to which it consequently applies with tolerable accu- racy ; while, having been drawn only to a wery small extent from a study of the phases through which societies gradually pass, it does not hold true of social development. It must not be supposed, however, that, because Krause failed to accomplish his immediate purpose, there is nothing to com- mend, except good intentions and laborious diligence, in what he performed with a view to demonstrate cc p'riori the ideal plan and necessary order of historical evolution. Although the truths which successively make their appearance in what ought to be a deduction are in reality inductions, they have none the less, both singly and collectively, an important bearing on historical science. They are inductions from a sphere of experience which is much wider than history proper ; and it is only by the help of such inductions that the science of history can ever be raised to any considerable height. It is vain to suppose that history can be in any measure imderstood without examination of the events which it includes ; and yet the most careful study, the most minute analysis, of these events, will not suffice to lead us to its truly scientific comprehension. History is so complex that we cannot hope to discover its peculiar or distinctive laws until we are in possession of wider laws, suggested by analogous phenomena in simpler departments of knowledge, yet capable of being traced through all history, and even of being converted into principles of explanation so potent as to leave only a com- paratively small residue of phenomena to be referred to causes which do not operate beyond the limits of human society and its development. Now, Krause's laws of life, so far as true, are of this nature ; they are inductive generalisations wider in range, 488 BOOK II.— GERMANY. and yet, on that very account, easier of discovery, than any general principles to be found in history alone. They apply to history because they apply to life as a whole. In other words, Krause has seen that there is the closest connection between life and history, between the science of life and the science of history. He has seen, and expressly and repeatedly declared, that the theory of history must be to a great extent included in the general theory of life ; that the philosophy of history must be rested on the broad basis of a universal biology {allgcmcinc BiotiJc). It has been left to a philosopher of our own day, Mr Herbert Spencer, to give cur- rency to this truth ; but even he has not apprehended it with a more comprehensive or tenacious grasp, or a deeper sense of its importance. Krause saw as clearly and insisted as strongly as Mr Spencer has done, that the progress of life and the progress of society are so far correspondent and even identical processes, and that the pages of history must in great part remain unde- ciphered and uninterpreted, until their key is found in the nature and laws of life. Nor is there anything, I think, included by Mr Spencer in life which was excluded from it by Krause. Cer- tainly Krause included among the general laws of life, which he held a philosophy of history must presuppose, the truths on which Mr Spencer has chiefly insisted — viz., that the growth of all life involves a series of successive changes and a plurality of simultaneous changes, — that it tends, on the one hand, by a pro- cess of division or differentiation, from simplicity to complexity, and, on the other hand, by a process of coml)ination and adjust- ment or integration, from indefiniteness to definiteness, — and that it is a continuous establishment of correspondence between the internal states or faculties of the living being and its sur- roundings. Of course he mixed up these truths confusedly along with other truths, as well as along with errors and mere fancies, and can scarcely be said to have proved them at all ; whereas Mr Spencer has distinguished and defined them with precision, and verified and illustrated them with an extraordi- nary fulness of scientific knowledge. At the same time, as I shall endeavour to show wdien I come to examine Mr Spencer's services in connection with these famous generalisations, he has fallen into some errors which Krause has avoided. I can only KRAUSE. 480 regard it as meritorious that Krause discarded every merely mechanical explanation of progress, and did not eliminate the distinctive characteristics of mind from his explanation of his- tory. But, however this may be, it was certainly merit to asso- ciate in the intimate manner described the science of life and the science of history. For although the science of history is connected with all the physical sciences, and indeed with all the sciences, it is in the sphere of organic science that we first meet with general truths which may, with due precautions and limitations, be directly transferred to historical science. To carry over into history a law of inorganic nature, — to say, for example, with Saint-Simon, that social states are determined by gravitation — with Fourier, by attraction — or with Azais, by ex- pansion, — is simply to impose on one's self and others by meta- phors ; but in organic nature we really come face to face with facts which involve truths that hold good under certain limits and with certain qualifications of man and society, and the study of which is a real and almost indispensable preparation for the proper apprehension of the facts of individual and social life which correspond to them. In especial it is there that we first meet with the great fact of development, growth, progress ; and it is not more certain that we may carry over from biology into history more than we are warranted to do, and thereby pervert history, than that if we do not carry over much, we shall fail adequately to comprehend history. And here it must be further remarked that Krause laboured with special zeal to prove society an organism and social evolu- tion organic. Schelling, as I have already said, so employed the idea of organic evolution in general philosophy as to give it a previously unknown extension and popularity. He left it, how- ever, to others to define, to develop, and to apply it ; and — not to speak of philosophy, theology, or art — this was done as regards general physics by Steffens, Troxler, &c. ; as regards zoology, by Oken, Cams, and many others ; and as regards all departments of social science, by Krause, directly under the impulse of Schel- ling ; while Von Baer and the embryologists, Savigny and the historical schools of jurisprudence and political economy, have wrought out and applied the idea in their respective provinces 490 BOOK 11. GERMANY. of research, independently of the immediate influence of Schel- ling, although certainly not unaffected by him indirectly. With Krause the notion of organism was an idee fixe, and he probably sometimes fancied he saw " organic totality " and " organic de- velopment " where they had no existence ; but he must not, on any such ground, be denied the merit of having exhibited society in his ' Ideal of Humanity ' as an organic whole, composed of diverse institutions, each representing a phase of human life, distinct and yet inseparable from every other phase of life — a multiplicity of parts co-ordinated and subordinated with a view to the preservation and development of the whole; and of having shown in his ' Philosophy of History ' how a society which pro- gresses tends to become more and more differentiated and inte- grated, more and more complex, self-consistent, and conformed to its surroundings, or, in a word, more and more organised, — with an ingenuity, minuteness, general truthfulness, and suggestive- ness previously unknown. The notion of organism ought, I believe, to be so extended as to include society, and that of organic development so as to include social development ; but when this is done, these notions are undoubtedly very apt to be obscure and even misleading. There is great danger that the differences between a physical and a spiritual, an individual and a collective organism, be over- looked, and, in particular, that due regard be not given to the circumstance, that " among the higher physiological organisms there is none which is developed by the conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences into a complex whole ; while the essence and foundation of every social organism, whether simple or complex, is the fact that each member of the society voluntarily renounces his freedom in certain directions, in return for the advantages which he expects from the other members of that society." ^ There is, consequently, great danger 1 Professor Huxley on " Administrative Nihilism," in ' Fortnightly Review,' Nov. 1, 1871. Mr Huxley adds : " The process of social organisation appears to be comparable, not so much to the process of organic development, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are gradually built up into complex aggi-egations — in which each element retains an independent individuality, though held in subordination to the whole. The atoms of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, which enter into a comj)lex molecule, do not KKAUSE. 491 that the mind take fanciful analogies for scientific truths, and, above all, that it disregard the fact that human progress, unlike physical growth, is rooted in freedom ; that while the plant and animal have only a capacity for growth, society has a capacity for progress no otherwise than it has a capacity for degradation, being free at all times to move in more directions than one, to choose between opposite courses — so that although wherever a society progresses there must be certain conditions involved identical with those which are to be detected in the growth of a plant or animal, it cannot fairly be thence concluded that since a plant or animal must grow a society must also progress. Krause has not quite escaped these dangers. He has not, indeed, stretched and strained the parallelism between the in- dividual and the social organism as many have done, — Mr Spencer, for example, when he compares the governing, trading, and working classes of the body corporate to the nervo-muscular, circulating, and nutritive systems of the animal frame, com- modities to the blood, and money to the red blood-corpuscles, — but his theory of the ages of humanity supposes the develop- lose the powers originally inherent in them, when they unite to form that mole- cule, the properties of which express those forces of the whole aggregation which are not neutralised and balanced by one another. Each atom has given up something, in order that the atomic society, or molecule, may subsist. And as soon as any one or more of the atoms thus associated resumes the freedom which it has renounced, and follows some external attraction, the molecule is broken up, and all the peculiar properties which depended upon its constitution vanish. Every society, great or small, resembles such a complex molecule, in which the atoms are represented by men, possessed of all those multifarious attractions and repulsions which are manifested in their desires and volitions, the unlimited power of satisfying which we call freedom. The social molecule exists in vii'tue of the renunciation of more or less of this freedom by every individual. It is decomposed, when the attraction of desire leads to the resumption of that freedom the expression of which is essential to the existence of the social molecule. And the great problem of that social chemistry we call politics, is to discover what desires of mankind may be gratified, and what must be suppressed, if the highly complex compound, society, is to avoid decomposition." If these words were intended merely to illustrate and confirm those quoted above, I entirely assent to them ; but if meant to show that absolutely or on the whole there is a greater resemblance between chemical synthesis and social development than between organic and social development, I must as entirely dissent from them. There are laws common to the two latter in virtue of both being alike developments far more important than any mere analogy like that described by Professor Huxley. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to remark, that to speak of a chemical atom as " re- suming the freedom which it had renounced" is altogether metaphorical language. 492 BOOK II. — GERMANY. ment of the race to resemble that of the individual far luore closely than the facts warrant us to believe. What he calls the age of the infancy of humanity is, as described, wholly un- historical ; all records of it have passed away ; nothing remains on the earth which corresponds to it ; the sole tradition said to refer to it which commands respect in scientific Europe autho- rises few, indeed, of the traits with which it is delineated. The stationary savage tribes are thrown out of account altogether, and necessarily, for, unlike all known human children, they have neither died nor grown towards manhood ; yet are they none the less human societies. And moreover, if humanity has really had a KcimaUer, during which its existence resembled that of the higher mammalia before and for some time after birth, the various savage societies still existing may very reasonably be held to represent embryological and infantile stages of life, — a conclusion which would necessitate an entirely different account to be given of the whole age than that which we have from Krause. Then it will have been observed that the whole of history proper — the whole of it so far as it is known, and so far as it has yet gone — falls, according to his view, within a single age of the ascending or progressive series of ages. It is entirely included in the second age or Waclisalter, for the first age was prior to the existence of historical self-consciousness, and the subsequent ages are still in the future. History can therefore verify only what is said of one of these ages, which is, surely, nearly equivalent to an admission that it cannot verify and does not warrant any division according to ages. The division must depend wholly on the a priori idea — a most insecure basis. As to the periods comprehended in the second age, it is to be re- marked, that the nations which are described as representing periods that are past are still existing, so that humanity appears as an individual of which some parts grow no older with the lapse of years while others do, of which some members are much older than others although they have lived no longer — a some- what perplexing conception. With regard to the second and main danger, that of icrnorincr implicitly denying, or imperfectly recognising the freedom which KEAUSE. 49 o underlies and pervades human progress, Kranse must be ac- knowledged to have been aware of its seriousness, anxious to avoid it, and convinced of having succeeded. To have done justice to free-will in history is a merit which he claimed for himself, and which his followers claim for him not only in con- tradistinction to Hegel but to the historical school. The founders of that school held in almost equal aversion the abstract pro- positions of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and the grandiose formulfB of the philosophers of their own day ; and so over against the " rights of man," " law of nature," and extem- porised " constitutions " of the Eevolutionists on the one hand, and the fanciful constructions of Schelling and the logical leger- demain of Hegel on the other, they placed what they deemed historical reality ; they said. Let us sweep away all these abstrac- tions and formulee regarding nations and their governments, and cleave to fact alone, which will be found to be this, that there are no absolute laws or universal ideal formulee — that all truth and good in social and political matters is relative and parti- cular — that what is right and proper for one time or people is not so for others — that institutions " are not made but grow " — that laws to be of any value must be the products of the in- stinctive and emotional life, the prevalent habits and wants of a community, and not of the deliberate and reflective wisdom of a few of its members. The highest historical generalisation to which this school could rise — the only one of any considerable height indeed on which it could consistently venture — was precisely that to which Krause attached so much importance, — viz., that social develoj)ment is an organic growth, closely analogous to individual development. Vast beyond all descrip- tion and praise as its services to historical study have been, this thought has been the sum and substance of its general historical philosophy. No wonder, then, if some or even most of its members have made too much thereof, which there is little doubt they have done. The followers of Krause are justified in charging them with having treated what is a free and moral organism as if it were a physically necessitated organism, with having eliminated liberty from social life, and with having re- 494 BOOK II. — GERMANY. ferred to blind instincts and the fatalistic action of habits what is due to reason and voluntary agency. On the other hand, it may, I think, be maintained with truth, that while the implicit denial of the free and moral character of historical growth was no necessary or legitimate consequence of the principles or method of Savigny and his disciples, its recognition was an inconsistency in Krause. It was natural, considering their circumstances and feelings, for at least the earlier representatives of the histori- cal school to overlook that social growth may or may not be organic, but is most certainly voluntary ; they were not, how- ever, logically necessitated to fall into any such error ; they were not bound to anything which the comparative and in- ductive method of research did not establish, and that might and ought to have led them all, as it has led many of them, to a full acceptance of the fact of national freedom and responsibility. But Krause professedly derived his theory of the ages of hu- manity purely from the a priori idea of life ; and it is difficult to see how, consistently with that view, their evolution, suc- cession, and whole character could be other than necessary. Freedom is a fact which cannot be deduced a priori. Further, finite liberty is represented by Krause as so absolutely depen- dent on the infinite liberty of God, and the human life as so comprehended in the divine life, as to render his assertions of man's freedom, and of man's responsibility for the evil which arises from the abuse of that freedom, singularly perplexing. In fact, his panentheism, I fear, has not succeeded in straining out all the evil of pantheism, while taking up into itself all the good that is therein, but shows itself defective and inconsistent just where pantheism has so generally proved itself morally vicious. He has fully and explicitly accepted the plain testi- mony of consciousness and of conscience in favour of freedom, responsibility, personality ; but he has also accepted a method of reasoning and a number of principles with which that testimony cannot be reconciled. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the Krausean philo- sophy of history includes many merely fanciful elements. That must be evident from the summary of it which has been given. KRAUSE. 495 The reader acquainted with the speculations of Origen, will have observed that the boldest of them have been appropriated by Krause as if they were demonstrated truths. He deemed thought to consist of what he called Schauen, intuition, vision ; and certainly if what he has told us about solar and planetary humanities be true, his Schauen or vision must have been of the most piercing kind, putting to utter shame the astronomers with all their telescopes. 496 CHAPTER XL HEGEL.^ I PROCEED to the consideration of the Hegelian philosophy of history. It is a part of the greatest philosophical system which has appeared since that of Kant. However far one may be from being a disciple of Hegel, it is impossible to refuse to acknowledge that a richer treasure-house of philosophical thoughts scarcely exists than that formed by his eighteen volumes. Sir Alex. Grant has felicitously said that " to borrow philosophy from Hegel's 'History of Philosophy/ is like bor- rowing poetry from Shakespeare, a debt that is almost inevit- able ; " and the remark may be extended to all the other great works of Hegel, the ' Phenomenology of the Mind,' the ' Logic,' the ' Encyclopedia of Science,' the ' Philosophy of Law,' the ' Philosophy of History,' the ' -Esthetics,' and the ' Philosophy of Eeligion,' It is very possible, after honest study of Hegel, to doubt altogether the legitimacy of his method, to disapprove of many of his conclusions, to be conscious of great defects, to be often unable to make out what he means ; but quite impossible to deny to him an extraordinary wealth of thoughts which can be understood, and which are of the most profound and precious kind. It is a simple matter of duty to recommend students of philosophy to make themselves acquainted with Hegel ; for, however anti-Hegelian they may find reason to become, he, if they 1 The two best biographies of Hegel are 'Hegel's Leben, Supplement zu Hegel's Werken,' 1844, by Rosenkranz ; and 'Hegel und seine Zeit,' 1857, by R. Haym. His philosophy has produced works without number, explanatory, critical, apologetic, antagonistic, &c. One of the most genial and mature is Dr Hutchison Stirling's ' Secret of Hegel, ' which has given a highly beneficial im- pulse to philosophical study in this country. What Dr Stirling, however, regards as the secret of Hegel, is probably no more than a very imperfect simile. HEGEL. 497 would ever form for themselves a pliilosopliy worthy of the name, is the thinker of the century from whom they will require to borrow most ; and in philosophy, no less than in the special sciences, much borrowing is indispensable, even to the most original — a truth which Hegel well knew and fully acted on, bor- rowing the thoughts of every man whom he believed to have had much thought in him, and by re-thinking, making them always his own, and often truer and completer than they were before. The Hegelian is of all philosophies that in which the spirit of system is strongest. It claims to be all-comprehensive, and to find for everything the one place which is proper for it. Every- thing, in fact, according to it, is but a particular phase, a definite moment of one thing and one process, and can appear only where it does. Thought alone is, for it moves itself by an inherent principle from the absolute first of pure being into everything. All that is, the material and the moral world, nature and history, science, art, and religion, are but stages of an idea apart from which they have no existence, parts of a thought which philosophy enables us to re-think, and so in a way to re-create. There are three chief stages in the evolution of this thought ; for, first, it moves through all those universal notions which underlie both nature and mind, and which they presuppose — and in this stage it is the subject of the science of logic ; and then, secondly, it, this same thought, particularises itself, and projects itself out of itself, and passes through the various spheres of nature, mechanics, physics, organics — and in this part of its course it is the subject of the philosophy of nature ; and finally, it frees itself from nature, the state of otherness to itself, and returns upon itself as free spirit, as conscious reason, not accomplishing, however, its complete deliverance into perfect freedom and the knowledge of itself as the truth of all being before it has gone through all the stages of individual life, and realised itself in many outward forms, with which stages and forms the philosophy of spirit is con- versant. One of the forms in which the concrete conscious spirit realises itself is the State, and the philosophy of history is that part of the philosophy of spirit which traces the evolu- tion of reason manifesting itself as the State. 2 I 498 BOOK II. — GERMANY. The Hegelian philosophy is then, it will be observed, pro- foundly and essentially historical throughout. Its one subject is a vast process or movement, of which what is called history is only a stage. Logic, in which may be included metaphysics, and even mathematics, is a history, although one elevated above time and particularity — the history of the eternal and universal processes of the pure idea ; and each physical science is a history of some part of the progress of the idea on its way through na- ture towards consciousness, as each mental science is a history of some part of its course through human life and society, towards absolute fulness and perfection of knowledge and existence. Now there is perhaps a truth, and even a great truth, in this view. There is a world of verities, accessible in some degree to the mind of man, beyond the created world, — there are absolute truths which cannot be thought of as otherwise than certain before a particle of matter or any finite spirit was called into being — truths essential to intelligence as such, and therefore truths which must from all eternity have belonged to the self- existent intelligence. Then the matter of the universe may have passed through various phases before the stellar bodies and our planet were formed and arranged as at present ; and in these vastly remote epochs of time the laws of mechanics and chemis- try may have alone ruled, and the former may have even ruled before the latter, although the reverse could not have happened. The order which astronomy traces must have originated before any period of time to which geology can go back, and geology and the various branches of paleontology are conversant with a long series of ages in the history of the earth prior to the history of man. It is not unreasonable therefore to think, with Hegel, of the universe both of nature and of mind as a vast process, an evolution, a history ; nor unreasonable to believe that the sciences may be so arranged by the co-ordinating power of an elevated philosophy as to exhibit the orderly and rational sequence of all the stages of this process, so that to the scientific man they shall be the successive chapters of the book of the history of the uni- verse, and to the religious man the successive chapters of the book of the revelation of God in creation. On the contrary, everything leads us to believe this thought true, and one of value HEGEL. 499 for general philosophy, and of special value for the philosophy of history. It cannot be without influence on the historical phil- osopher to be taught to see that the history which he studies, the progress which he traces, is a form or instance of a wider history, a wider progress ; that man, in the exercise of his free- will, follows a direction on the whole conformed to that which nature has followed since its creation under the constraint of undeviating physical law ; and that, notwithstanding essential differences, the more recent and the narrower history has many remarkable resemblances, and many intimate relations, to the older and broader history. But Hegel goes far beyond all this, and takes up a much more extreme position, when he resolves all that is into the moments or stages of the idea. Here we cannot follow him ; and so far from being helped to understand the place and significance of history by being told that it is one of these stages of the idea, we are, on the contrary, involved thereby in manifold grave perplexities. The Hegelians, Gans and Eosenkranz, for example, tell us that Hegel's Philosophy of History has a great advantage over all others, in that it is connected with a system of thought logically elaborated even to its minutest members, and can exhibit the logos of history as a phase of the same process and obedient to the same law of dialectic movement as the logos of nature, of the soul, of law, of art, &c. But, obviously, whether this is to be regarded as an advantage or not, must be dependent on whether or not the logical elaboration of the general system of thought is correct, and especially whether or not its funda- mental principle is true. If we cannot accept the system as a system, if we dispute the soundness of its basis and the vali- dity of its method of construction, the very closeness of the connection between the whole and its parts must be a disad- vantage, a source of dissatisfaction to us, in our study of any particular part, as in that case each part involves the difl&culties of the whole. It is no advantage to us, but the reverse, to be told that history is a particular stage in the movement of the idea according to a certain logical process, if we cannot admit that there is any such thing as that idea which is made the substance of all thought and all existence, and if we cannot 500 BOOK II. — GERMANY. admit that any such process as that according to which it is said to determine itself is legitimate. It sounds well to hear Hegel himself declare at the commencement of his ' Philosophy of His- tory' that the only presupposition he has to make — the only thing he has to take for granted, — is that there is reason in his- tory — that history is a rational process. All the comfort, however, is in the sound. For the reason which he presupposes is reason in the Hegelian sense — is just the Idea become con- scious and working out its own freedom. It is a reason which is but a form of the one subject of his philosophy. To presup- pose it, is consequently to presuppose the whole of that philo- sophy; and at least the whole of it up to the point reached by the Idea before it becomes the theme of the 'Philosophy of History.' The philosophy of Hegel pretends to resolve all into reason and to deduce all from reason ; to be demonstrated from begin- ning to end ; to start with the absolute first, the simplest notion of reason, pure being, being so pure as to be nothing at all, and thence to derive all knowledge and evolve all reality, in a con- tinuous process of reasoning from abstract and implicit to con- crete and explicit, everywhere determined by the principle of the identity of contraries — the principle that each thought and thing has in it the opposite of itself, that all position is likewise negation, that in affirming itself a thought or thing likewise denies itself, but instead of thereby destroying itself, reconciles itself to itself in a new concrete positive thought or thing which is all the richer and more complex for the negation of the pre- vious one, and which is in turn no sooner posited than rejected with a like result as before, so that the process has no stop nntil the truth of all knowing and being is completely evolved. Thus, according to Hegel and his followers, " a diamond-net " is woven which let down into the universe takes it all up ; a dia- lectic elaborated which connects, arranges, and explains aU the elements of thought and existence, nature in all its departments, the soul in all its phases, history in all its stages, politics, art, religion, science. The present is not the place to examine these pretensions. jVIy task is merely to estimate the worth of Hegel's philosophy HEGEL. 501 of history, and I wish to separate that as much as possible from his general philosophy. At the same time, there must be no doubt as to the completeness of my rejection of the Hegelian view of reason and its evolution. To me that reason seems to be not only something above human apprehension, but to be the contradiction and destruction of all human intelligence, and its evolution to be the reversal of the fundamental laws of valid thought : to me the Hegelian dialectic seems from beginning to end no diamond-net, no solid and substantial thing, but an in- tellectual cobweb or rope of sand. I have read what the most distinguished Hegelians have written to the contrary ; but, with all possible respect for the zeal and talent of men like Rosen- kranz, Erdmann, Michelet, Kuno Fischer, Vera, and Stirling, I think they have done little to elucidate, and still less to vindi- cate, Hegel's extraordinary ratiocination.^ As this is a mere statement of opinion, made simply to inform the reader that in my view the Hegelian philosophy of history is not the better but the worse for its connection with the Hegelian dialectic and the Hegelian philosophy in general, I do not wish that any value should be attached to it in itself. But is it not confirmed by history ? Is the day of Hegelianism not obviously already near its close ? In Germany, although it has still numerous and dis- tinguished adherents, — more, perhaps, than any other philosophi- cal school, — they are with the rarest exception men advanced in life, and long known as writers, men whose characters were formed under social influences which have lost their power, and men who with all their talents can make no disciples ; they are veteran oflicers destitute of an army and incapable of gaining a recruit. Hegelianism is rapidly dying in Germany. It is ^ Among works which expose the unsatisfactory character of the essential principles of the Hegelian method and system I may mention the following : Trendelenburg, 'Logisclie Untersuchungen' (1840, 3dAufl. 1870), and 'Dielogische Frage in Hegel's System ' (1843) ; the very able recent vindication of these * Investigations ' by Kym under the title of ' Trendelenburgs Log. Untersuchungen und ihre Gegner in the Ztsch. flir Phil.,' Bd. liv. Hft. 2, and the ' Philos. Monats- hefte, ' iv. 6 ; Ulrici's ' Ueber Princip und Methode der Hegel'schen Philosophic (1841) ; Karl Ph. Fischer, ' Speculative Charakteristikund Kritik des Hegel'schen Systems' (1845) ; E. v. Hartmann, ' Ueber die dialektische Methode,' 1868; and the book of Hayni already referred to, 'Hegel und seine Zeit.' Dr Stirling's criticism of tlie latter work, however, is, so far as regards Haym's representation of Hegel as inspired by the " ideal of a Hellenic Cosmos," as just as it is vigorous. 502 BOOK II. GERMANY. making some converts at Naples, is studied at St Louis, and talked about at Oxford,^ but it has little chance of taking a firm root or widely spreading anywhere. The objections to Hegelianism are unfortunately not merely speculative. It is consistent with it, so far as consistency can be predicated of such a system, that it should be able to incor- porate any moral or religious doctrine — able to deduce the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, the Lutheran doctrine of the sacraments, and even the Eomanist doctrine of the immaculate conception (the latter is, of course, no deduction of Hegel's own) — and yet, even while doing so, to leave it doubtful whether there is a God or a future for the individual soul. Hegel claimed for his philosophy that it was not only a support of conservatism in politics, but of orthodoxy in religion; and yet whether he should be described as theist, pantheist, or atheist, is a point on which not only his foes but his disciples are divided, so that you have Hegelians of every shade of religious opinion, each man believ- ing himself faithful to the system of the master. This must be the fault of the system. It is absurd to say that Hegelianism is not responsible for the religious aberrations of its adherents, and that the Hegelian left party, both the largest and most talented Hegelian party, has wilfully rejected the light that is in Hegel. It is utterly impossible that a great number of able men, whose days and nights have been spent in the enthusiastic study of Hegel, should have been able to deny that his teaching was theistic, unless it were exceedingly obscure and ambiguous where obscurity and ambiguity are least permissible. After careful consideration of the so-caUed declarations of Hegel in favour of the divine personality, and of what has been said by Kosenkranz, StirKng, and others to prove him a theist, I con- tinue to believe the Hegelians of the left the truest interpreters of their master on this point, although their practical aims are altogether different ; and as this conclusion is also that of Ahrens, Baader, Chalybaus, J. H. Fichte, C. Ph. Fischer, Herbart, 1 The Clarendon press has recently sent forth an excellent translation of the Logic which forms the first part of Hegel's ' Encyclopaedia, ' with elegant and interesting 'Prolegomena,' by W. Wallace, M. A., Fellow and tutor of Mertou College, Oxford. i HEGEL. 503 Hoffmann, Krause, Leonhardi, H. Eitter, Sengler, Sigwart, Staudenmaier, Trendelenburg, Ulrici, and Weisse, earnest and competent students of Hegel, 1 cannot but think that even if erroneous the cause must be some grave fault of Hegel's own, some central and inextricable confusion, some fundamental am- biguity. It is, in fact, the case that Hegelianism, although the most elaborate of all idealistic systems, presents only the feeblest of barriers even to materialism. It is true that thought is placed by it before matter, and matter is represented as the stage of a process of thought ; but since the thought which is placed before matter is unconscious thought — thought which is neither subject nor object, which is therefore not real thought, nor even so much as a ghost or "phantasm of thought, — matter is still the first reality, the first actual existence, and the power in matter, the tendency in it to rise above itself, the root and basis of spirit subjective, objective, and absolute. It is only through holding to a personal and conscious, a living and perfect reason, as the true first, that we can keep off materialism, and such unthinkable thought as the pure thought of Hegel is no real defence against it ; and that Feuerbach and so many others should have been Hegelian ideabsts one year and materiaKsts the next was quite what might have been anticipated. Hence I cannot regard even the Grand Etre of Comte as a more unworthy substitute for the true God than the idea of Hegel, which begins as being equal to non-being, and ends as absolute spirit, the last result of the pro- cess of universal becoming — a spirit which, as it has evolved itself out of nothing, may, like Budha, evolve itself again into nothing, into Nirwana. It would be a poor choice if we were shut up to accept either the empty and self- contradictory con- ception in which the universe of matter and of mind is said by Hegel to commence, or that which is said to be their ultimate result, or even both and the whole process between, as Deity. If it be said, as of course it will be, that pure being is but the first of Hegel's logical explanation and not the actual first, the answer is obvious that such an assertion as that the order of reason is not that of reality is for an Hegelian intellectual suicide, the admission that he is prepared to treat absolute thought as badly as his opponents argue he treats common 504 BOOK II. — GERMANY. thouglit, willing to make game of the reason as they maintain he makes game of the understanding, as little honest with his own logic as they affirm he is with formal logic — an admission which resolves Hegelianism into a big and bad joke. The result of the obscurity, ambiguity, or whatever it may be called, of the Hegelian idea of God, has natiirally been that He- gelian authors have given us philosophies of histories, or at least hints towards such, from almost every possible point of religious view, orthodox and heterodox, theistic, pantheistic, and atheistic, according as they belong to the right, the left, or the central party. While from the extreme right more than one historical system has come decidedly churchly, even decidedly Romanis- ing, from the extreme left have come others violently anti-Chris- tian, painfully irreligious ; and between these two extremes all intermediate grades of religious belief have found expression in general conceptions as to the course and significance of human history. Through Hegel's own 'Philosophy of History' there flows a deep religious spirit. This is quite compatible and consistent with what I have just said as to the religious character and bear- ing of his system. The most widespread and the most wonder- ful of all the religions of the East, Budhism, is believed by many of those best able to judge to be essentially atheistic; but although Budhism should be, as it seems to be, resolvable into atheism, although its fundamental principles involve atheism, it would be unjust to regard Budhists as atheists in spirit and feeling. No- where, perhaps, beyond the pale of Christendom, has the religious spirit found truer expression than in the saints of Budhism. If millions of men can thus stultify themselves and accept a creed the fundamental principles of which are in such contradiction to its practical spirit, it is in nowise incredible that even a Hegel should have done the same. I am far, therefore, from brinfrins against the man Hegel the charge which I think has been fairly urged against the philosopher Hegel, or rather against his sys- tem. I am content merely to say, that if he meant to deduce theism, his system has not allowed of his giving a distinct and adequate expression to his meaning ; and that his disciples have often deduced from it very different conclusions, which they have attempted to apply to the philosophical elucidation of history. HEGEL. 505 I most cheerfully recognise that, although the reason which he speaks of as in history is, as a phase of the idea, a reason which I cannot believe in, and still less regard, as the providential Rea- son which presides over human affairs, almost all that he says of that reason is admirably true of Divine Providence, the actual logos of history ; that his philosophy of history must be ranked among those which have best borne out the claim to be a The- odicy, a vindication of the ways of God to man, which have done most to show that the history of the world is the product of an infinite and active reason, which has made use of all finite vo- litions, interests, and activities, as its instruments to accomplish a great and holy end. As already said, it is no part of my work to discuss the Hege- lian method in itself, but only to show how it has affected the Hegelian philosophy of history. One way in which it has done so has been unnaturally to separate the chief developments of history, and unnaturally to exclude some of the most important from the province assigned to the philosophy of history. It is a consequence of the Hegelian method that everywhere in the Hegelian philosophy we find division by three. It has three great divisions — the Logic, the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Spirit; each one of these divides itself in a threefold way, and each subdivision thus obtained has its three parts, &c. Thus the Philosophy of Spirit includes the doctrines of the sub- jective, objective, and absolute mind ; and the doctrine of the subjective mind comprehends anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology; the doctrine of the objective mind — legal right, morality, and ethical obedience ; and of the absolute mmd — art, religion, and philosophy. Now the philosophy of history is that part of the philosophy of spirit which traces the evolution of reason in the State ; it is, that is to say, a part of the doctrine of the objective mind, and consequently has nothing properly to do with the histories of the phases of absolute mind — with the developments of art, religion, and philosophy. These developments lie outside of the province of the philosoj^hy of history, and that philosophy cannot, consistently with its place in the Hegelian system, treat of them at all. They must not only belong, but exclusively belong, to aesthetics, the phil- 506 BOOK II. — GERMANY. osophy of religion, and tlie history of philosophy. Now this is not only an error, but an error of the most serious kind. It makes an adequately comprehensive philosophy of history im- possible. It shows that, consistently with Hegelianism, consis- tently with the triplets of its dialectic process, no such phil- osophy can be written ; for it is not more essential that all the chief developments of human activity should be traced separately than that they should be combined and connected. In fact, the great difficulty, the chief problem of the philosophy of history is, not the analysis into distinct developments and the tracing of the course of each of these, difficult and important as that is, but the subsequent synthesis of them, the exhibition of how they act and react on each other, and concur to a common aim, and the discovery of the laws which are involved in the general movement of human history. But unless the whole Hegelian method and system be false, such a synthesis is, in the phil- osophy of liistory, impossible. Any attempt to compass it must be for Hegelianism an inconsistency. It may assert that the separate developments will coincide or correspond, — that art or religion at least, if not philosophy, wall have the same epochs, will pass through the same stages, as political life ; and Hegel has done this both in his ' Esthetics ' and ' Philosophy of Eeligion : ' but this is not enough ; the assertion and even the proof of the correspondence of the separate developments is not historic syn- thesis, which involves a real bringing together of all the elements and developments of human life, so as to exhibit throughout the succession of generations and events their interdependence and interaction. This is not to be found in Hegel ; and it would be an inconsistency if it were to be found. In this respect the inferiority of Hegel to Comte is decided. The Hegelian view, then, of the philosophy of history is, from the cause indicated, essentially narrow and imperfect ; and it can neither be extended nor corrected. It is true that a well- known Hegelian, Professor Michelet of Berlin, in a correspon- dence with a Swedish Hegelian, Borellius, has made an attempt to remedy the defect, to get over the difficulty. He would con- sider the phenomenology of the spirit as the first part of the Hegelian philosophy, the whole system of science as the second HEGEL. 507 part, and history as the third and last part. But if this delivers from one difficulty, it involves in others still worse. For unless both the phenomenology of spirit and the philosophy of history are not only assigned their new positions, but allowed at the same time to retain their old ones, the whole system is disorgan- ised, and instead of there being three sciences of the subjective mind, and three sciences of the objective mind, there can only be two. Michelet would give them each two places, but surely that is a kind of plurality of offices for which nothing can be said. It is not two philosophies of history we want, but one which shall be adequate. Besides, it is altogether un-Hegelian to close with a philosophy of history. It is a direct contradic- tion to suppose that after the idea has attained to a full realisa- tion of the absolute, it should still have to pass through the phases of history. To represent the absolute as issuing in his- tory is to represent it as absorbed in history or as no absolute at all. Having insisted on this, it is necessary for us, in justice to Hegel, to add that the very phases of humanity which have been thus separated by the self-evolution of the dialectic from the province of the philosophy of history, are those whose histories he has traced in the ablest and most instructive way. Art, re- ligion, and philosophy are all conceived of by him in an essen- tially historical manner ; and he has so treated them all as un- doubtedly to enrich historical science. The ' ^sthetik ' is the most attractive of all his works, and wonderfully rich in positive knowledge and original remarks. Probably no other great specu- lative philosopher has had an equally extensive acquaintance with all the forms of art, been so familiar with the chief poets of different ages and nations, travelled so much simply to enjoy beautiful landscapes, buildings, statues, and paintings, visited so diligently the concerts, theatres, galleries, &c. ; and probably no other great speculative philosopher has had a more manifoldly susceptible and profound emotional nature. It is in the result- ing mastery over the materials as a whole, in the direct and liv- ing relationship of his mind to an extraordinary number of the products of art in every department, that his chief merit lies. He certainly knew the fads quite otherwise than a Hutcheson, or 508 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Alison, or Jeffrey ; and he tries to deal with the whole of the facts, instead of merely trying to excogitate answers to the two abstract questions — What is beauty ? and, How is it perceived ? The part of Hegel's own work which so far corresponds to theirs I do not find very original or remarkable, but rather essen- tially a skilful restatement of ideas previously expressed by Schiller, W. von Humboldt, Solger, and especially Schelling. What is abstract and general is least his own and of least worth ; the more he deals with details the more interesting and valuable are his remarks. There is, however, a simple grandeur about his leading generalisation as to the development of art which has made it celebrated. He regards art as the effort by which the Spirit seeks to realise the Idea through a sensuous medium, — " The spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dowei", A new earth and new heaven," — and finds that the ideal and the material are so related that it must have three distinct forms, which correspond to the three great epochs of history. When matter predominates, when the colossal and bizarre prevail, and thought struggles painfully, feebly, confusedly through, art is in its symbolical form, and such is the art of the oriental world, that of India and of Egypt. When the idea finds for itself in matter a clear and adequate expression — when it is in such equipoise with the medium of its manifestation that there is perfect beauty of form, while yet what is deepest and finest in the spiritual life does not disclose itself — then art is classical in form, and such was the art of Greece and Eome. When this equipoise is dis- turbed, but in favour of the spirit — when spirit predominates and makes of matter ever increasingly its mere sign, and dis- plays ever increasingly its inner and finer life — then art is romantic, and such is the art of the modern or Christian world. The different arts themselves correspond more or less to these three forms and their epoch, so that architecture is characteristic of the obscure, symbolical, oriental form ; sculpture of the clear, definite, beautiful, Grecian form ; and painting, music, and poetry, of the varied, deep, and subtle romantic or Christian form. The spirit of each epoch, nevertheless, pervades and HEGEL. 509 characterises all the varieties of art. There is a sublimity in this generalisation which it is impossible not to admire. Its truth, however, its applicability to all the facts, may be probably more than doubted. Art aims of its very nature at perfection in execution, at the complete expression of thought or feeling through arranging and shaping material substances, through colour, and sound, and language ; and the measure of its success determines whether the art is good or bad, but not its form or kind. The ideas of one form or kind may be simpler than those of another, as of classical than modern art, and the work of expressing them may be in consequence easier, and, as a rule, more successful ; but, whether the ideas be crude or subtle, simple or complex, art invariably seeks their perfect expression through the appropriate sensuous media. The material and the ideal in art change together, so that their relationship to each other never essentially changes ; and hence the principle which determines what are the great epochs in the development of art must be drawn, not from that relationship, but from the nature of the ideal itself, which cannot be known dialectically, but only through the historical study of its phases. The facts, I think, confirm this view of the inaccuracy, or at least inadequacy, of the Hegelian formula. Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and not a little even of Hindoo poetr}^, does not answer to the description of symbolical art, and a vast amount of what is most distinctive in all the varieties of modern art cannot be naturally reduced under the category of romantic. The assertion that the dif- ferent arts are characteristic of different epochs is utterly un- tenable. Architecture, for instance, does not belong even in degree more to the oriental than to the classical and Germanic world, nor music and poetry more to the latter than to the two former. The Hegelian formula is therefore, although sug- gestive of not a little remunerative thought and research, merely a splendid failure. The real w^orth of Hegel's work, however, is not dependent on the truth of that formula, but on the rare depth of his insight into the manifold individual phases of art, and of the conditions, spiritual and physical, out of which they have historically arisen.^ ^ Perhaps in no department have the Hegelians distinguished themselves more 510 BOOK 11. — GERMANY. His ' Philosophy of Religion ' seems to me neither so profound nor valuable as his ' Esthetics ' ; it is, however, very remark- able, and will always be spoken of with respect and gratitude, even by those who are most convinced that religion can only be studied aright when studied in accordance with the rules of ordinary scientific induction. Eeligion he regards as the effort of the soul to realise its* unity with the Absolute or Divine, — " God only to behold, and know, and feel, Till, by exclusive consciousness of God, All self annihilated, it shall make God its identity." The phases of religion are viewed as so many stages in the development of the consciousness of this unity, and its chief stages are, of course, argued to be three in number ; they are designated the religions of nature, of the individual spirit, and of the absolute spirit. In the first of these stages, God or the Absolute is felt as natural being, natural power — and this stage has itself three steps : that of magic, represented by Fetichism, Shamanism, Lamaism, and Budhism, in all which religions God is confounded with nature or individual man ; that of imagination, represented by Brahminism, in which God is distinguished from man and nature, as the substance one and identical from its multiple and transient manifestations ; and that of light and symbol, represented by the religions of Persia and Egypt, both species of dualism, which exhibit God as asserting His spiritual ascendancy over nature, and so becoming the object of the religions of spiritual individuality. This second class of religions, in which the Divine is viewed as subject, has likewise three representative forms : Judaism, the religion of sublimity ; Greek polytheism, the religion of beauty ; Roman polytheism, the religion of the practical understanding. than in {esthetics. Hotho, Rosenkranz, Rotscher, Ruge, Schasler, and Vischer, have all written works of permanent value on beauty and art. The ' System der -(Esthetik ' of Weisse was published before Hegel's ' ^sthetik,' and is in the main an independent work. It is exceedingly to be regretted that there is no account in English of what the Germans have done for aesthetical science. The German scholar will find abundant information in the ' Geschichte der ^sthetik' (1858) of Zimmermann, the ' Geschichte der ^iSthetik in Deutschland ' (1S63) of Lotze, and the * Kritische Geschichte der .^sthetik' (1872) of Schasler. HEGEL. 511 The absolute spirit after passing through tliese forms conies to know itself as such ; and in this self-knowledge God is reconciled with the world and man, and apprehended as essentially Triune, — Father, Son, and Spirit. This absolute religion is Christianity, and it differs from absolute philosophy only in form or expres- sion ; it is the same in substance. Now, probably here, too, neither the general nor subordinate divisions are accurate, nor consequently the notions on which they proceed ; but Hegel's l^enetration into the character and significance of the religions which he passes under review, and his grasp of their relation to one another, are certainly always richly suggestive, and very often truthful. Unfoi-tunately his treatment of Judaism and Christianity is by far the least satisfactory part of his work, and vitiated by grave faults both of omission and commission. Both in the ' Esthetics ' and * Philosophy of History,' he betrays a strangely mean conception of the significance of the Jewish nation ; but his injustice reaches its culminating point in the ' Philosophy of Eeligion,' when he gives a lower place to Jewish monotheism than to classical polytheism. His explanation of Christianity seems to me essentially erroneous in spirit, method, and aim, and yet even through it the light breaks wonderfully at many points. As to the history of philosophy itself, the most decided op- ponents of Hegel, and those who assign least value to what he has done in other departments, have joined in warm recognition of his services in this. He originated a new epoch in its study, which has been amazingly fertile in admirable works, and yet his own remains unequalled after all the others have drawn freely from its spirit and substance. The part devoted to Greek philosophy is an immortal masterpiece. And although the thought that the succession of philosophical systems in history is identical with that of the categories in logic is doubtless false, as the force of facts has compelled some Hegelians to admit, ^ ■■ E. g., Schwegler and Zeller, whose inconsistency in making the concession mentioned has been indicated by Stirling in ' Annotations ' to his translation of the former's 'History of Philosophy,' and more fully shown by M. C. Monrad in a Latin epistle addressed to the latter — 'De vi logica? rationis in describenda philosoyjhise historia.' li Drs Stirling and Monrad had taken in hand to examine and refute Professor Kym's ' Hegel's Dialcktik in ilirer Anwendung auf die 512 BOOK IT. — GERMANY. inconsistent and indeed fatal as the admission is, still Hegel lias indicated even the general course of man's search after the absolute, after ultimate truth, better than any other person. While, then, he has been led by the evolutions of his dialectic to an erroneous separation of the elements of history, and an erroneous abstraction of some of the more important of them from the province of the philosophy of history, he has so far redeemed the error by his masterly historical treatment of them thus separated and abstracted. He has also often allowed truth to prevail over system. Logically he was bound to ex- clude the consideration of religion, art, and speculation from his treatment of history — really he has not done so ; and we find not only some beautiful pages expressly on their connection,^ but the oriental world described chiefly through its religion, and the Greek world chiefly through its art. We now come to the direct examination of what he himself regarded as a philosophy of history. He gave a first outline there- of in the last twenty paragraphs of the ' Philosophy of Right,' published in 1821, and lectured on the subject in the five ses- sions of 1822-23, 1824-25, 1826-27, 1828-29, 1830-31. From his very fragmentary manuscripts of these lectures, and the note- books of his students, the earliest edition of the ' Philosophic der Geschichte ' was worked up, after Hegel's death, by Gans, in 1837; and a second enlarged and improved edition by the philosopher's son, Charles Hegel, since distinguished as an historian, in 1840. Both editions are before us ; but the second (containing as it does the important preface of Gans to the first edition), is alone necessary. It is requisite to give a condensed statement of the contents of this work before proceeding to its criticism. History is of three kinds — original, reflective, and philosophi- cal ; original, when derived directly from observation, when an author describes what he has himself seen, heard, and lived amidst ; reflective, when personal experience is transcended, and the historian has to use such powers of diligence, insight, criticism, and generalisation as he possesses on materials sup- Gescliichte der Philosopliie,' they would probaLlj' have found their task a little more difficult. . 1 Phil. d. Gesch., GO 66. HEGEL. 513 plied by others, in order to form and convey a representation of some past epoch, of some special phase of human life, or of the general course of events in a country, or even in the world ; and philosophical, when it unfolds the rational development of the universal spirit in society. Spirit is the opposite of matter, and its essence is freedom, as that of matter is gravity. The final cause of history is that the spirit may know itself as free ; and to reach this goal, the spirit avails itself of the appetites, passions, private interests, and opinions of individuals and peoples so cunningly, as always to secure profit to itself out of their loss, evolving from their gratification and excesses the principles of truth and justice designed to regulate and restrain them. From time to time it manifests itself in great men, world-historical individuals, whose private aims are its pur- poses ; and these men are not to be judged by the same rules of conduct as others, — such mighty forms must trample down many an innocent flower. Indeed, the happiness or misery of individuals is no essential element in the rational order of the universe ; over them accident and particularity are allowed by the reason to exercise their monstrous power. Those persons who form "ideals" of truth, justice, and liberty, as applicable to the individual units of the social mass, and who condemn, in consequence, what is as not what it ought to be, are superficial, fault-finding, and envious : the real world is just what it ought to be ; the real is rational, and the rational real. The eternal reason being immanent in the minds of men, the general ideas or substantial principles of religion, art, philosophy, and the state, are immanent in their actions, and in essence simple and eternal, although their forms are variable and temporary. The last of these ideas — the state — is the basis of all the others, the centre of all the concrete elements of social life, the moral whole out of which the individual possesses no worth. It is freedom mani- fested and organised ; for only when the individual will unites with the universal will, as found in the laws and institutions of a nation —only when mere personal convictions do not rule, but the spirit realises itself outwardly in some positive, definite, special form as its own law — is there true or rational freedom, which is thus no mere natural property, no operation or result 2 K 514 BOOK II. — GERMANY. of free choice determined simply by reflection, no abstract indeterminate principle, but a real and definite condition of being possible only in a state, the embodiment of a determinate and particular spirit, the spirit or genius of a people, a stage in the development of the universal spirit. It follows that the state may be said to be the object of history, — the succession of states, the object of universal history. The world-spirit, in virtue of its character and inherent activity, does not give rise to mere change, nor to a recurrent series of changes, a cycle of changes, nor does it show the direct and quiet growth of organic life ; but it works towards the complete manifestation of its own substance, and towards self-consciousness by a reluctant and stern struggling against itself — a slow, painful, and gradual advance ; and nations — states — are the stepping-stones in its march through time, the stages in its career of conflict and victory. It quits one only to enter another, and has no sooner fully unfolded itself within the limits of a nationality, than it begins to break them down as too narrow, in consequence of which the nation decays and dies, but the spirit gains new strength and a wider comprehension of itself. Where there are no states properly so called, there may be families, clans, and peoples — there may be migrations, wars, and revolutions — there may be remarkable events and considerable culture ; but there can be no history. History began to be written as soon as true states appeared — as soon, therefore, as history itself began ; and the periods, whether centuries or millennia, which peoples may have previously passed through, are to be regarded as in their own nature ante-historical. They lie beyond the pale of history and of the philosophy of history. The character of peoples is prefigured in the character of the earth ; and as there are non-historical peoples, there are also non-historical countries. Nature is external to history, yet its necessary basis, and must be rated neither too high nor too low. The extremes of heat and cold both exert a power which prevents the self-development of spirit, and hence the temperate zone is the true theatre of history. Australia and the islands in the Southern and Pacific oceans are physically immature ; America is at the best but an echo of the Old World ; Africa HEGEL. 515 shows only undeveloped spirit in bondage to the powers of nature ; Asia and Europe are alone historical. Excluding Siberia as belonging to the frigid zone, the rest of Asia is divisible into a massive upland, great river-plains, and a combination of upland and valley in the sea-bordered countries nearest to Europe and Africa. The rearing of cattle is the business of the uplands, and there the patriarchal principle rules society, — agriculture of the river-valleys, and there pro- perty divides men into lords and serfs, — commercial activity characterises the coast countries, and is accompanied by civil freedom. Geographical distinctions are less marked in Europe, which consequently accommodates itself more readily to all the movements of the spirit. The course of the sun is a symbol of the course of the spirit ; and as the light of the physical sun travels from east to west, so does the light of the sun of self-consciousness. Asia is the determinate east or absolute beginning, and Europe the deter- minate west or end of history. Its great moments, stages, or epochs, are three in number — the Oriental, the Greco-Eoman, and the Modern or Germanic. In the first, the spirit slumbers ignorant and unconscious of that freedom which is its very essence, and patiently submits to civil and spiritual despotism, so that one only is free, and the rights of individuals are un- known : in the second, the spirit is awake to these rights in some, but not in all forms ; it has a partial consciousness of its true nature, and some, but not all, are free : in the third, the spirit knows itself as what it is, as essentially free, and knows that all have inherent rights to rational freedom. In the first, the infinite and substantiality predominate ; in the second, the finite and individuality; and in the third, the infinite and finite, the substantial and individual, are united, are recon- ciled. The history of the oriental world begins with China, the characteristic principle of which is a material unity of organisa- tion which excludes individual reflection, will, and energy in every sphere of life. All that can be called subjectivity or individuality is absorbed in the person and will of the emperor, the father of the nation, who has the same absolute and compre- 516 BOOK II. — GERMANY. liensive power over its members which each father has over the members of his own family. Hence, while science is in a certain way greatly fostered, there is no free scientific research ; while art in some of its branches is most ingeniously and diligently cultivated, it remains servile and imitative ; while the code of manners is elaborate, there is no real morality of the heart and conscience; and while there is a complicated religious ceremonial most strictly observed, there is no sense of a spiritual life, of the soul's personal relationship to a spiritual world, the emperor alone being regarded as in connection with heaven, and that a connection not spiritual but physical and magical, or Fo — pure nothing — being set up as God, and con- tempt for personal existence as the highest perfection. Instead of the material and outward unity characteristic of China, there is found in India the most marked diversity. But this diversity is also material and outward, a division of society into masses according to external differences of occupation and civil condition, into castes fixed by an eternal arbitrary will through the mere fact of birth ; and hence its distinctions, far from being the natural result of individuality, show that the spirit in India has not attained to the consciousness of any such thing as a proper personal life, freedom, inward morality. This rigid separation of men by external distinctions being carried into morality and religion as well as into civil life, so that what are virtue and piety in one caste, are vice and impiety in another, shuts out the Hindoo people from truth at every point, and condemns them to a slavery of soul as well as of body so com- plete, that there is no escape from it. Further, while China is the region of prosaic commonplace understanding, India is that of extreme sensibility and unregulated imagination. The spirit is there in an inebriate and delirious dream, revelling in a maze of wildest extravagance, clearly conscious of nothing, confusing together what is most sacred and what most gross, sublime truths and ludicrous absurdities, spiritualising sense and sen- sualising spirit, regarding the universal as particular, and the particular as universal, apprehending nothing steadily and firmly, but everything as some other thing than itself. Its dream has found embodiment in the monstrous medley of HEGEL. 517 pantheism, naturalism, and idolatry which constitutes Brah- minism. In Buddhism, the most widely extended of religions, the same fundamental principle is to be met with but in a modi- fied form ; the spirit shows itself in a natural, not an inebriate dream-state, and the whole social and political life is, like the religious life, calmer and more settled. This faith has spread through China, and given to the Chinese mind a faint degree of spirituality not originally belonging to it. It regards the ultimate or supreme existence as abstract nothingness, union with which, or the highest perfection, is only obtainable through the annihilation of all desire and activity ; and presents as types of this perfection and objects of worship human beings — de- parted Buddhas or living Lamas, — who are adored, not on account of their particular individuality, but of the universal essence therein embodied. The peoples of Eastern Asia are isolated and stationary; Western Asia is related to Europe, and like it the subject of development, and of political and social revolutions. Persia was the first strictly historical nation. It was an empire in the same sense that Germany or the realm of Napoleon were empires, being composed of a number of states united by general enactments, yet each retaining a character, laws, and habits of its own. In Persia, the spirit first frees itself from that substantial unity of nature which is unintelligible, uncon- ditioned, and indeterminate, and gets recognised as the light, — not a particular existence, but pure manifestation — not merely the most universal material element, but also spiritual purity and goodness, — a principle which involves the consciousness of its opposite, darkness, evil, and of the power and obligation to prefer light to darkness, good to evil. In India, the highest spiritual notion, Brahm, is that of an abstract unity, the one being of nature, which is no object of consciousness ; but in Persia this abstract being becomes an object of consciousness under the form of sensuous intuition ; and this intuition, being that of light, as what only manifests what bodies are in them- selves, as substance which leaves what is special intact, as a unity which rules individuals, only that they may develop and realise their individuality — at once connects many nations, and 518 BOOK II. — GERMANY. allows them free growth, the full play of their distinctive pecu- liarities. Among the many nations belonging to the Persian empire, one, the Jewish nation, makes the remarkable advance of discarding the limitation of sensuous intuition, while con- tinuing clearly to apprehend the absolute being as an object of consciousness. Nature and spirit are separated ; the former is depressed from a primary to an altogether subordinate position, and the latter exalted as the alone essential truth ; their con- ciliation is not yet thought of That spirit and nature should be thus distinguished and the pre-eminence given to spirit, con- stitutes a decided progress ; it is, nevertheless, the natural con- sequence of the rigidity and exclusiveness of the mode of dis- tinction, that all previous religions, all other gods, should be denounced as utterly false — that only one people should be acknowledged to be God's people — that the morality enjoined should be, although strict and exalted, narrow and intolerant — and that the political life should be at once proud and feeble. Egypt unites the elements which in the Persian empire appear separately, — the sensuous among the Babylonians and Syrians, the spiritual among the Phcenicians and Jews. The Stoic Chseremon thought the Egyptian religion mere materialism — the Neoplatonists regarded it as an allegorical spiritualism ; and contradictory as these views may seem, they must be combined in order to give us the full truth. In Egypt, spirit is matter, and matter spirit ; the spirit feels itself shut up in matter, and strives, with a blind restlessness, to liberate itself from it. The symbol is the presentation of this self-contradiction and of the problem which it involves ; and we meet with it everywhere in the architecture, hieroglyphics, stories, customs, and religion of Egypt. By its very nature Egypt is an enigma. Its true sym- bol is the Sphinx, — itself a riddle, an ambiguous form, half brute and half man, which shows the spirit as beginning to rise above and look beyond nature while yet imbedded and im- bruted in it. Its last word is the inscription of the goddess at Sais, — " I am that which is, which was, and which will be, and no one has lifted my veil. The fruit which I have produced is Helios." The veil was lifted by the Greek Apollo. " Man, know thy- HEGEL. 519 self" — Helios — that which is clear to itself — is the solution of the enigma of Egypt. When CEdipus, says the legend, an- swered the riddle of the Sphinx with the word man, the monster cast itself over the rock. The mystery of Egypt— the mystery of the whole East — emerges into the light, and finds its explanation in Greece. The childhood of history has now passed away, with its vagueness and want of insight, its depend- ence and credulity, and the spirit manifests itself in all the freshness and fulness of youthful life. Greece is the world's youth ; and it is no accident that its story begins with Achilles, the ideal youth of poetry, and ends with Alexander, the ideal youth of reality. In Greece we first feel ourselves at home, for here man first felt himself man, first burst the bonds of the dark powers of nature, first dared with clear head and un- troubled heart to study the causes, laws, and ends of nature, and mould her materials as he willed ; here spirit emancipated itself and attained free individuality, which is the word that denotes what is most fundamental and characteristic in Greece. The formation of this principle was favoured and stimulated by the configuration of the country, the proximity of the sea, the mixture of races, the number of independent towns, by com- merce, colonisation, and war, by the whole physical, political, and social situation. Hence Greek individuality never became absolutely free, self-caused, spiritual ; it was always conditioned by nature, always influenced from without ; it displayed itself only in the transformation of the materials supplied by nature into the expressions of its own conceptions and dispositions : in other words, Greek genius was essentially artistic. The im- pulse of a central idea, of an internal necessity, urged it inces- santly to elaborate natural materials — marble and metal, colour and sound, movements of the body, language, thoughts — into images of beauty, harmonious structures, true works of art. All the products of its activity, even the culture of the indi- vidual, the religion, and the political constitutions, may be characterised as works of art. The Greek trained and moulded his own physical being into a work of art from the same motive which made him fashion a stone into a statue. The gods of the mysteries were driven out of Greece by the gods of art, 520 BOOK II. — GERMANY. — those concrete, special, human characters, those finite, plastic forms, devoid of all oriental monstrosity and deformity, which are still able, by the charm of beauty, to exercise a strange attraction on imaginative natures, which still haunt the regions of poetry, and are still objects of sesthetic devotion. The polit- ical work of art, the state, was necessarily democratic in form, its members neither feeling dependent on some one individual will, as in the East, nor on the abstract universal will of the state itself, as at Kome. The notion of the state in the abstract was alien to them ; what they knew and cared for was Athens, Sparta, this definite form of social life, this particular union of citizens, of men free' to enjoy and educate themselves, and able to leave manual toils to slaves. In the earliest and genuine form of their freedom the Greeks lived in and for their country without subjective reflection, without subjecting the public laws and customs to the test of individual conscience and judg- ment ; but this phase of thought was soon reached — the sophists introduced and the philosophers continued it — and Greece ra- pidly dissolved and decayed in consequence. All wished to govern, none to obey. The towns were torn asunder by fac- tions, the country by civil war. The possession of conspicuous talent or merit sufficed to insure a man's exile or imprisonment. The perfect bloom of Greek life lasted only about sixty years. Its whole history, like that of every world - historical nation, consisted of a period of growth, a period of maturity, and a period of decay : in the first, it gradually unfolded its own peculiar principle of individuality ; in the second, it maintained and spread that principle by external conquest; and in the third, through unfaithfulness to its own and the admission of a foreign principle, it became ever more and more diseased. The transition from Greece to Eome is one from poetry to prose, from a graceful ideal life to a life of obedience to positive law with a definite aim, from joyous youth to austere manhood. Rome gathers all the gods into one pantheon and all human units into one state, incorporates individuals and nations into one vast person, and subordinates and sacrifices everything to this universal existence, to the furtherance of Eoman policy. What is most characteristic of Eome is the combination of HEGEL. 521 abstract universality with extreme personality — of conflicting princii:)les, which make the internal history of the nation a long struggle between two factions, and its external history a heart- less unrelenting pursuit of dominion. The antithesis involves from the first essentially contradictoiy elements, whose in- herent incompatibility becomes gradually more apparent, until at length individuality gains ascendancy to such an extent that the community can only be kept from dissolution into its com- ponent atoms by external constraint, by despotism, the absolute sway of a single will. It was not Csesar that destroyed the Eepublic, but necessity. The Empire continues and completes what the Eepublic began. It breaks the heart of the world, causes it to feel the nothingness of natural life, drills and dis- ciplines it into aversion to what reality has to offer, and thereby drives the spirit back into the depths of its own inner being, compels it to know itself in its essential nature as a spirit, and to seek satisfaction in a spiritual empire. Such an empire was revealed and founded by Christ — a Man who is a God, God who is man — in whom God is recognised as Spirit, and the reconcilia- tion of the world is accomplished. In Him the idea of eternal truth is apprehended, the essence of man perceived to be spirit, and the fact realised that only by deUverence from finiteness, by purification from speciality, by self-surrender to pure self-con- sciousness, can truth, the end of life, be attained ; that end be- comes henceforth not to know man as at Athens, but to know the spirit, to live as spirit. Those who would so live are the members of the Christian Church, the realm of the spirit, the kingdom of God. But only slowly and with difficulty does the Christian principle pervade society. Men are still destitute ot true insight and morality, and unable, especially in the secular relations of life, to act according to truth with the freedom which properly belongs to spiritual beings, and hence the spiritual kingdom, has to assume the form of an ecclesiastical kingdom with authoritative rulers. The seed deposited by Christianity required to be developed in the German world after it had overspread the Eoman world and incorporated its culture. This new world or epoch may be called the old age of spirit ; but it is an old age not of weakness 522 BOOK II. — GERMANY. like that of nature, but of ripeness and strength ; it is the ful- ness of time, the end of days ; for in its principle, the truth in Christ, every aspiration of the soul has satisfaction provided for it. At the commencement of the epoch, however, the principle is still abstract and recognised only in the strictly religious sphere, the inner shrine of the heart ; it has not yet penetrated into, far less thoroughly leavened and transformed, secular existence. The whole epoch must be divided into three periods. The first begins with the German migrations and ends magnifi- cently with the vast empire of Charlemagne. It is character- ised by a rude union, a superficial and external combination, of the spiritual and secular, by want of cohesion and consistency, and by a powerful tendency towards particularity, towards the breaking up of all properly generic and universal social relations into accidents and conventions, private rights and special privi- leges. While this tendency is operating in the "West, there arises in the East a supplemental and counteractive movement, the Mohammedan, which has as its principle fanaticism for an ab- stract thought, the absorbing desire to see the will of the abso- lute one, Allah, before whom all limits and distinctions except faith itself vanish as worthless, prevail to the annihilation or sub- jection of everything else. In the second period the coarse unity of the first is broken up ; the Frank empire divides into nations ; individuals revolt against the authority of the law, but are com- pelled to seek for protection from powerful men who become their feudal lords ; and the Church as spiritual separates from the State as secular, yet shows itself thoroughly secular, sensu- ous, and selfish. The antithesis of the Church and State, the struggle of the one as a theocracy against the other as a feudal monarchy, is the cardinal point on which medieval history turns ; but both institutions are also internally inconsistent, self-contra- dictory : the Church, because it materialises the absolute even to the extent of presenting Christ in a piece of consecrated bread, holds the laity dependent on priests and saints for communica- tion with God, in direct violation of the fundamental truth of Christianity, the essential unity of the divine and human, and labours by shameful means to acquire wealth while professing to despise it ; the State, because its nominal head, the emperor, HEGEL. 523 has no real authority — because nothing can be more unfaithful than the so-called feudal fidelity, its foundation, depending as that does on arbitrary choice or sentiment — and because in the characters of its individual members the revolting spectacle is displayed of piety united with crime, the sincerest religious devotion with barbarous ignorance and the wildest and vilest passions. Instead of Christian freedom there is thus, on the one hand, the most degrading bondage — and on the other, the most immoral anarchy. The history of medieval Christendom is that of the development of its self-contradictions, and it cul- minates in the Crusades, when Europe, in its blindness, goes forth to seek the living truth of spirit in a tomb. It finds the tomb, but is met as it were with the old words, " Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, but is risen." The immediate result is discontent and doubt, but these are succeeded by a general awakening of the mind, a new interest in science and art, bold adventures, great geographical dis- coveries, remarkable inventions, and at length a revolution in the whole system of men's thoughts. Thus the third or final epoch of the modern or German world is introduced. Spirit now becomes conscious of its freedom, and the antithesis of Church and State begins to vanish. Man recognises that the spiritual can only be realised through the secular, and that the secular must be developed out of the spiritual ; that states and laws are merely the manifestation of religion in the relations of the actual world. This truth has been proclaimed both by the Protestant Eeformation and the French Eevolution ; to convert it into fact is the task which the nations of Europe have before them, and which each of them is accomplishing with more or less success in its own way. "We have now before us a general view of Hegel's pliilosophy of history. It is impossible to deny to it either grandeur or value, but criticisms and objections present themselves at all points. We can only give expression to a few of these, but may, nevertheless, as well begin at the beginning. What is the object of the philosophy of history? Universal history itself, says Hegel. And that answer is at least not false, if Hegel will only adhere to it, which, however, he will 524 BOOK II. — GERMANY. take care not to do, because a great deal less than universal history is far too big for his formulae. But, letting that pass for the moment. What is history ? The answer of Hegel is, the development of spirit. Spirit is the basis of history, the sub- stance of history ; and matter or physical nature requires to occupy the attention of the philosophical student of history only so far as it is related to spirit. Hegel forgets to ask, How far is it related to spirit ? How and to what extent do climate, soil, and food, the appearances of nature, geographical situa- tion, and physiological qualities, influence the development of the human mind, and determine the course of human history ? The pages which treat of " the geographical basis of universal history," cannot with any propriety be referred to as containing such an inquiry, consisting, as they do, of a series of ingenious but dogmatic assertions of analogies a,nd affinities between the physical features of countries and the mental peculiarities of their inhabitants, some of which are doubtless true and sugges- tive of useful research, although the greater number of them appear to be fanciful and misleading. In Hegel's Philosophy of History there is not only no serious scientific inquiry, but absolutely nothing which deserves the name of inquiry at all, into the influence of physical agencies on history. Instead of undertaking the investigation of that difficult subject, Hegel satisfies himself with oracularly declaring that " Nature ought not to be rated either too high or too low" ("Die Natur darf nicht zu hoch und nicht zu niedrig angeschlagen werden ") — a safe utterance, certainly, but yet a rather disappointing one when found to be really all that so wise a man has got to say on such a question. He has, in fact, either so overlooked what the question involves, or treated the little of what he has seen it involves in so capricious and unscientific a way, that all who are inclined to believe the physical factors of history powerful and pervasive factors, must regard his philosophy of history as mainly a castle in the air. Far from being, as some of its eulogists say, a proof of the vanity and worthlessness of historical philosophies — like those of Comte, Buckle, and Draper — it is a vindication of their existence, the evidence of their necessity. So long as philosophies of history are written with views of the HEGEL. 525 relationship of nature to history so superficial as those of Hegel, others will be written resolving all the facts and movements of history into physical causes and laws. Then, what is the spirit which Hegel speaks of, and what does it develop ? We are told that it is the " idea " or " reason," the infinite substance and energy of the universe, the essence and truth of things ; and that what it develops is the conscious- ness of itself in time. When history is described, therefore, as the development of spirit, that is equivalent to describing it as the growth, in self-consciousness, of the idea, that strange some- thing which is equal to nothing, but has the power of becoming everything, and actually accomplishes the feat. It is, conse- quently, not with the history of men and women, nor with the history of peoples, that the philosophy of histoiy has to do, but with the history of the self-consciousness of, speaking meta- physically, the idea, or, religiously, God. This idea, or God, or idea on the way to be God, or God going through the stages of the idea in order to come to the knowledge of itself or Himself, has to become finite in men, or rather in great men — Socrates, Pericles, Alexander, Csesar, Luther, — and in nations, or rather in celebrated nations — China, India, Greece, Eome, and the Germans ; and its history is the alone subject of the philosophy of history. What a monstrous and absurd conception ! And yet Hegel, in his Philosophy of History, starts with it, claims to have a right to assume it as being already demonstrated in his other works. Fortunately we know what Hegelian de- monstration means. It is not proof, deduction, in the ordinary and only legitimate sense of the terms ; it cannot be reduced to syllogistic forms, does not obey syllogistic laws ; it presupposes a false separation of the reason from the understanding, and, under the pretence of checking the presumption of the latter, allows the former the most extraordinary liberties, and, in par- ticular, exemption from the logical laws of thought, the axiom of identity, and the principle of contradiction. Hegel could not fail to be conscious that he was setting aside, in his argumenta- tion, the authority of the syllogism, and breaking one or other of its laws every few minutes; but, being a man not easily daunted, he calmly claimed to have a right to do so. It was 526 BOOK II. — GERMANY. not he who was wrong, it was the syllogism, which might be good enough for the ordinary understanding and common people, but was no valid criterion of speculative reason, or obligatory standard for true philosophers. In fact, "with a boldness worthy of a better cause," finding the syllogism his enemy, he declared open war against, and made a direct assault on, the syllogism. But, as was to be expected, he hurt himself more than he hurt the syllogism. The reasoning which he employed against it was so unfair and feeble as to show that the cause which needed such reasoning was desperate, and that the dia- lectic which pretended to be above the necessity of conforming to the laws of the syllogism was a delusion. The so-called demonstrations of the peculiar logic of Hegel have in them nothing formidable or entitled to credence. Their conclusions must be judged of in and by themselves. Let us so judge of that particular conclusion which is supposed to disclose the character of spirit. Spirit, Hegel tells us, is the antithesis of matter ; the essence of spirit is freedom, while that of matter is gravity : spirit is free because it has its centre in itself, and matter gravitates because it tends to a centre ; spirit has its essence in itself, and matter has its essence out of itself. Now, even these are assertions which Hegel has not only failed to prove, but which are not likely ever to be proved. But what are we to think when Hegel adds that freedom, the essence of spirit, is not actually, but only potentially, in spirit — that spirit tends to be free, but is for very long not free — that it first attained freedom among the German nations under the influence of Christianity? It is sufficiently perplexing to hear that the essence of matter is not in matter, and that the essence of mat- ter is the result of a tendency to unity, a striving to attain a centre ; but it would be still more so to be told that the essence of matter only belongs to some portions of matter peculiar to China or Japan, being only potentially, i.e., not at all, in other matter ; — and it is precisely in this way that Hegel speaks of spirit. It is, in fact, a direct contradiction to say that freedom is the essence, the sole truth, of spirit, and also that it is the result of the process of the development of spirit. The contra- HEGEL. 527 diction might have been avoided had freedom not been identi- fied by Hegel with the consciousness of freedom ; for in that case he might have said that the essence of spirit was freedom, and the end of spirit the consciousness of freedom; but he expressly holds that freedom is the consciousness of freedom, and that the consciousness of freedom is freedom. Tliis view is the natural consequence of a psychological doctrine which he has expounded in Section IV. of the Introduction to the 'Phil- osophy of Eight ' — viz., that the will is a kind of thought, and not a special or separate spiritual power. Eepeatedly and expressly Hegel affirms that the end or pur- pose of historical development is freedom, and he invariably re- presents the course of the development as a series of stages in the growth of freedom. How happens it, then, that so many writers have urged as the most serious objection to which his historical philosophy is liable that it is necessitarian, fatalistic ? Is this ignorance ? Is it mere perversity ? Some Hegelians think so. But no. The only ignorance shown is on the part of those who have the simplicity to rest in the words of Hegel as if he used them in the plain honest way of a Hobbes or a Locke. There is no doubt that he tells us the will is free ; but neither is there any doubt that he tells us the will is free means merely that the will is wiU. The will is free as will. As weight cannot be separated from matter, as weight is matter ; so freedom cannot be separated from will, so freedom is will. Now, if this be the case, it is certainly wonderful that there should be any want of freedom in history, or any possibility of growth in freedom ; but, when language is so used, it is not in the least wonderful that many should hold that the word necessity might have been substituted for freedom and been equally appropriate. Further, not only, according to Hegel, is freedom the will, but the will itself is thought ; freedom is not what is commonly called freedom, but the consciousness of freedom, and even the consciousness of a kind of consciousness — the self-consciousness of the absolute. Now, when a man plays in this fashion with words, it is of little consequence which words he uses ; and al- though he may produce marvellous effects in making one thing pass for another, no trust can be put in what is manifestly Intel- 528 BOOK II. — GERMANY. lectual conjuring. And still further, it is not men nor nations which, according to Hegel, are free, but the spirit, which reveals itself only in a few men and a few nations. On these and other grounds, little value is to be attached even to his most explicit declarations of belief in freedom. Whether he really believed in it or not in a true sense, must be determined mainly by ex- amination of his entire exposition of the course of events. But it seems to me, whenever it comes to that, his defenders find little, if anything, to say ; while the case of those who charge him with the suppression of freedom in history becomes over- whelming. He undoubtedly everywhere speaks of freedom, but he nevertheless explains everything as necessary ; not a place is left for a single historical event out of the sphere of the logical evolution of the only substantial spirit in liistory : the freedom of the idea is seen to be at the most its spontaneity ; true freedom to be, in fact, according to Hegel, identical with absolute necessity. In some remarkable pages Hegel insists that the final cause of history is gradually realised through the conflict of the pas- sions, private aims, and selfish desires of men and nations, which the universal reason, in its cunning, uses and sacrifices for its own advantage. Underlying private passions and individual views there are universal principles, which are gradually evolved by the very activity of warring desires and intellects. This general truth leads Hegel to the assertions that the state is the result of the evolution of these latent objective and universal principles out of subjective and particular passions and interests, and that great men are the founders of states ; and these asser- tions to a number of observations on states and great men which are of the most dubious character. All the more danger- ously, because darkly and vaguely, optimism, hero-worship, acquiescence in might as right, and the necessity of war, are suggested to be profound philosophical truths. Cousin in France, and Carlyle in England, have employed in the service of the same dogmas far greater literary skill and even greater force of reason ; indeed no one could well be more superficial and sophistical than Hegel on all these points. The justice due even to the errors indicated, demands, it seems to me, that they HEGEL. 529 sliould be criticised as presented by Cousin or Carlyle rather than by Hegel. The final cause of history is said to be freedom. If Hegel used the term freedom in the ordinary sense, it would be valid to object to this affirmation, that freedom is essentially a means and not an end ; that the spirit is free not for the mere sake of being free, but in order to follow what is true, and practise what is good. By using the term, however, in a sense of his own, he escapes from this objection. He means by freedom the idea of the world-spirit, and by its attainment the evolution of all that the world-spirit contains, the manifestation of all that it is capable of. The world-spirit, however, seems to contain only thoughts, although it can make use of desires and passions to evolve and express its thoughts. It seems to be in itself mere intelligence ; its freedom is but an evolution of intelligence, a process and product of consciousness. It is free in virtue of being conscious of freedom, instead of conscious of freedom in virtue of being free. Now, the realisation of its freedom being, according to Hegel, the history of the world, the latter itself is made to be simply a growth of consciousness, a process of thought, the successive apprehension of a few great ideas through which the absolute reaches self-knowledge. The millions of individuals, the multitude of nations, which do not embody these ideas, have no historical worth ; the few individuals and nations which do, have historical worth only in so far as they embody these ideas. Feelings, desires, deeds, institutions, have in them- selves no direct historical worth. Truly the spirit must be very cunning, and very cruel and selfish besides, for what it contrives to sacrifice to itself is nearly the whole of humanity and history. And to what end ? All in order that the spirit may learn that two propositions about itself are not quite true, and that a tliird is true — these propositions being such that it is most wonderful how so cunning a spirit could ever have been ignorant of their character. Whence all this waste ? Wliy, instead of creating humanity, and sacrificing the most of it, and toiling slowly and painfully through nations and ages, did the spirit not create Hegel alone, and find out what it wanted at once ? Hegel's historical philosophy is intimately and inseparably 2 L 530 BOOK II. — GERMANY. connected with his political philosophy. He regards the state as the object of history — the succession of states as the object of universal history. I have already had to object in Kant and others to this view, and need only say now, that in Hegel it was the necessary consequence of a thoroughly false conception of the relation of the state to society. Wishing to resist and defeat liberalism, the principle of which he fancied to be the suprem- acy of mere self-will, he fell back on the obsolete pagan notion that man exists for the state, and not the state for man ; and maintained that the general will realised in the state is the essential law of reason, that all morality lies in the individual or subjective will surrendering itself to that general or objective will, and even that in such self-surrender consists all true freedom. He turned his absolute idealism in the political sphere into a crass realism; insisted that philosophy had no right to get beyond what was, but had only to seek to compre- hend it; denounced those who ventured to criticise political institutions, and to say this or that ought or ought not to be, as superficial sophists ; and advised the government — a government which certainly needed no advice of the kind — to look after them. What is rational is real, and what is real is rational.^ It is not wonderful that the then Prussian Government should have admired very much this rosy view of real existence and cavalier way of treating radicals and reformers, or that it should have filled the chairs of philosophy in the universities and the pulpits of the churches with men who were willing to teach so pleasing a doctrine; but the futility of the whole procedure should have been seen through long before now, and those per- sons who still believe that Hegel did much either to refute a false liberalism, or to serve the cause of true social order, cannot be remarkable for political perspicacity. When Hegel taught the supremacy of the will of the state, and, in fact — like Hobbes — deified the state, he simply taught in another form the false- * I object to the use which Hegel makes of this maxim in his ' Philosophy of Law;' not because I overlook what he has said about "reality" or "actuality" in the logic, but because I think what he there wrote did not warrant the politi- cal application to Fries and others ; nor fiom inattention to what he has said in explanation in the introduction to the ' Encyclopaedia,' but because I find the explanation altogether insufficient. HEGEL. 531 hood which lie pretended to coufute. Few democrats have ad- vocated so explicitly the supremacy of particular will ; for few of them have failed — so far as mere words are concerned — expressly to maintain, that not the will of individuals, but the laws of universal reason, ought to rule in human affairs ; whereas Hegel expressly identifies with these laws, with divine will, the will of the state, which may be just as capricious, selfish, unscrupulous, and cruel as the will of a very wicked man, and is, perhaps, seldom as honourable and just as the will of a really wise and good man. The creed of Hegel was not a wise conservatism, demanding due respect for moral authority, but a political pan- theism, absorbing all rights and liberties, and logically leading to fatalism, to acquiescence in might as right, to the glorification of all successes, however brutal or unjust.^ The world-spirit, or the spirit of history, according to Hegel's teaching, is not to be found wherever men are, but always build- ing up or breaking down some particular nation which it en- counters on its path from the East to the West. It is ever in some positive definite form, some individual state, and ever moving forward in a single straight line. It is the one subject which produces and passes through in succession the various phases of faith and culture, always shedding its old skin before it assumes a new. It left China for India, India for Persia, &c., and has never inhabited two places at once nor one place twice. Now, is this true or false ? Is it fact or fiction ? Is it a conclu- sion which thought has established and can vindicate, or a delu- sive poetical Vorstcllung which thought cannot and will not own ? To me it seems to be the latter. The spirit which per- vades history moves, according to my view, not along a single line but over a vast surface. It is present with all humanity, and in its movement all humanity moves. It did not require to leave China in order to occupy itself with India, Egypt for Greece, Italy for Germany. History includes the coexistence as well as the succession of states. It is the vast complex of human facts in space and time ; and although it may be specially interesting at one point in one age and at another point in 1 In the above remarks, I refer only to the principles and spirit of Hegel's polit- ical philosophy, not to its contents, in which there is much to admire. 532 BOOK II. GERMANY. another age, the interest of the whole is always greater than the interest of any part. Hegel erroneously finds the principles of progress, not in principles which underlie the general elevation of the intellectual and moral condition of mankind, but in those which divide mankind into nations. He makes of progress a fact which is not for the common good of all, but only for the special advantage of the last comer; so that China with its hundreds of millions of people must remain for ever on the lowest step of the ladder of history, and all the other nations must remain on the particular steps to which the spirit raised them in its passing visit — that spirit or Geist having finally settled in the German mind. The farther west a nation lies the higher it must be ranked, although the more western nation may have disappeared ages ago, and the more eastern may be as flourishing to-day as it ever was. Thus Hegel was reduced to treat Egypt as more modern than any of the historical nations of Asia, the civilisation of China as inferior to that of Assyria, and the mythology of Greece as a nobler product of spirit than the theology of India or even of Judea. He represented the stages of culture more as juxtaposited in space than superim- posed in time, a later stage being not historically evolved from or historically based on its antecedent stage, but only logically subsequent to it. Thus logical evolution fails to coincide with historical evolution. In fact, Hegel's whole conception of his- torical progress as a logical evolution, the moments of which are represented by a linear series of nations, is a crowded nest of absurdities. We naturally next inqviire if he has succeeded in correctly determining the epochs of history, He sometimes distinguished four ages of the world — the Oriental, the Greek, the Roman, and the German — and sometimes three, by treating the Greek and Eoman periods as a single age. The threefold division seems not only to be demanded by the dialectic rhythm, but decidedly to be preferred in itself. Almost any two of the great Asiatic nations appear to have been more profoundly dis- tinguished from each other than were Greece and Eome. A classification which represents India as less unlike China than Eome was unlike Greece, can hardly be entitled to serious con- HEGEL. 533 sideration. The fourfold division conforms better to the assumed analogy between the course of human history and individual life which Hegel borrowed from Herder — the Orientals seeming to represent childhood, the Greeks youth, the Eomans manhood, and the Germans old age — but it corresponds worse to the reality. We may confine our attention, accordingly, to the three- fold division, the more especially as the chief objections to it apply equally to the other. According to this division the great stages of history are, — (1 .) the Oriental, in which substan- tiality so predominates that only one is free ; (2.) the Classical, in which individuality prevails and some are free ; and (3.) the Modera or Germanic, in which individuality and substantiality are combined and harmonised, and all are free. Does, then, this formula truly and adequately apply ? I think not, for various reasons. And first, because it confines and contracts history to the deeds and destinies of a few nations within a comparatively narrow belt or band of the earth — the temperate zone. That is the same sort of error as it would be for an astronomer to main- tain that only a few of the biggest and brightest of the stars in a particular quarter of the heavens were the proper objects of his science, or for a zoologist to argue that he ought to study lions and tigers, but not rats and mice. No science is entitled to make such exclusions as the Hegelian science of history does. The whole history of science teaches that if we would comprehend what is great, we must not despise what is little. It is not mammoths and mastodons, but nummulites, which tell the geologist how old the Alps are. Next, in order to get his formula to apply, Hegel cuts off untold centuries from the early history of mankind ; and this also, it seems to me, he had no right to do. He begins with China when its character was, according to his own account, fully formed and immobilised ; but history, certainly, cannot have begun with a unity of a hundred or two hundred millions of men. Humanity must have had a long existence before what Hegel calls its childhood. This primeval existence lies entirely outside of the formula. Hegel will have nothing to do with it, or with the ethnological, philological, and historical 534 BOOK II. — GERMANY. research through which alone any knowledge of it can be looked for ; he deliberately excludes as irrelevant all investigation into origins. We can only in part excuse this error on the ground that such investigation was in his time but little known or prac- tised, for various of his contemporaries accepted, and lived, and worked in the light which he rejected. It was contemporaries of Hegel who first applied with full consciousness of what they were doing the critical and comparative method to biology, language, law, and history ; and it is disappointing to find Hegel on this point so far behind them, so completely shut out from the truth by his own hand and system. An historical philo- sophy which refuses to inquire into the beginnings of ^human life, law, language, art, and religion, is self-condemned. Its method is hopelessly unscientific. Third, Hegel's formula is faulty, because it assumes that history is near its close — that there is no new age to be passed through. That assumption was most convenient for his dia- lectic, and most consistent with his political doctrinarianism ; it was, none the less, one rather presumptuous to make, and one which it is rather hard to accept. We naturally wish better reasons for concluding history nearly exhausted than that the dialectic is inadequate to determine the principle of the future, and that the political creed of a new age could hardly, owing to the spirit's dislike to repeat itself, be what was "real and rational" in Berlin in 1820. Had he confessed the incompetency of his philosophy to deal with the future, little could have been said ; but implicitly to deny the future, to con- strue and formulate history as if it were complete, was a very serious step. Herbart has maintained that humanity is still in its infancy — that only a small segment of history has as yet been traversed. I venture not to say that he was right, but I ask if we can prove him to have been wrong — if we can so trace and measure the orbit of history as to know with any close ap- proximation to certainty at what precise point we at present are in relation to the whole, or even whether we are nearer its end than its beginning, I fear we must confess that we cannot — that "we have but faith, and cannot know." And yet there seems to me to be considerable reason for believing that the HEGEL. 535 end of history is still a long way off. The earth, when interro- gated by science, reveals to us the annals of an antiquity so vast, that numbers are almost inadequate to express it, but through every age and epoch of which there has been a purpose working directly or indirectly towards man, preparing for his ap- pearance, preservation, and welfare, and conditioning his destiny. It seems incredible that when it has taken so many ages to erect the theatre, the drama itself should be so short and feeble, as it must be were the history of humanity cut short at present. But why speak of the history of humanity ? Humanity has not as yet had a history. Men have had a history ; nations have had a history ; humanity has had none. It is only the nations of Europe that are in possession of a common life, a common character and culture, and that are all travelling together on the same route and in the same direction, although one may be lagging a hundred years or so behind another ; so that to write a general history of them, to trace the growth of a European civilisation, is in some degree possible. But out of Europe there is nothing of the kind. Nations stand completely isolated from one another, or in mere external contact with one another, each embodying a distinct form of life, and resting on the re- cognition of distinct principles — each acting in obedience to impulses peculiar to itself, and proceeding on a different course than its neighbours. It is in Europe alone that we see the rise, the dawnings, of a history higher than individual or national — a truly human history, comprehending many nations united in the bonds of brotherhood, and fulfilling a common destiny. There is reason, however, to believe that all nations will yet be linked together, and called on to contribute what is in them to the development of our race and the good of its members. The whole course of events decidedly tends and advances to that end, Europe, until comparatively recent times, was broken up into isolated societies, which had neither interest nor sympathy in each other ; the feudal nobility, the clergy, and the boroughs, had laws essentially different from one another ; their manners were equally different : there were, properly speaking, no nations ; there were no general interests, no union, no pervad- ing life. That has, however, been done away ; the barriers of 536 BOOK II. — GEEMANY. class have been overthrown; nationalities and peoples have risen on their ruins ; and now at length the aspirations of men extend far beyond even national boundaries ; and the brother- hood of European nations, their solidarity, their mutual depend- ence, is a generally recognised fact. Will the process cease here, or will it, as all other natural and spiritual processes are seen to do, go on to its legitimate issue ? I cannot understand why humanity alone should fail to accomplish what its consti- tution and the character of its development declare it to have been designed for. On the contrary, it seems to me that just as a man of sufficiently clear and profound intelligence living in the fourteenth or fifteenth century — these two great centuries of transition— might have confidently foretold the fall of the medieval feudalism, and the rise of modern nationalities on its ruins ; so any man whose eye can take a truthful account of the nature and tendencies of religious, social, and political move- ments in the present, as well as scan the past, and grasp the principles which have regulated it, may clearly discern that human life will yet manifest itself as a united and universal thing. " For as the earth bringeth forth her buds, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations." If so, however, humanity must be still very far distant from its goal ; and to say that no change can occur in the future as great as that which separated the oriental from the classical world— Egypt from Greece — must be an unprovable, if not improbable, assertion. Finally, the Hegelian formula applies badly even to the com- paratively small portion of history which it professes to compre- hend and characterise. Hegel has shown a great deal more caution and good sense than consistency or thoroughness in imposing on history so little as he has done. Although it be a fundamental principle of his philosophy that all the categories of the logic should be found both in nature and spirit — that the whole logic should pervade and enclose both " as a diamond net " — he has wisely refrained from attempting to apply that principle in detail, or, in other words, from attempting to make apparent how the system of the categories conditions and explains the HEGEL. 537 facts of history. He left that task to those whose historical sense was less keen and clear than his own. He not only does not force on history all the categories and formulae he was logically bound to do, but silently drops almost the whole of them, very much to the advantage, in my opinion, of his subject, although naturally to the regret of thorough Hegelians, some of whom have given themselves a great deal of worse than useless trouble to introduce into history the categories which Hegel prudently left outside. Indeed, as to the subdivisions of the philosophy of history, Hegel, we are told by his son, made some alterations on them in every reading of the course, " sometimes, for example, treating Buddhism and Lamaism before and some- times after India ; sometimes reducing the Christian world more closely to the Germanic ; sometimes taking in the Byzantine empire, and so on." While Hegel thus kept his philosophy of history free to a far greater extent than could have been antici- pated from intermixture with the distinctive peculiarities and contents of his logic, he unfortunately could not afford to keep it entirely free and pure. He was bound to convince himself and others that the social as well as the physical world could be reduced to order on his principles, and made to yield its secrets at the touch of his method. He was bound to show that the universal spirit, in its march through time towards the realisation of its aim — rational freedom — moves according to dialectic rule and in dialectic rhythm, and so manifests itself in three great stages or epochs, such as those described. A general triplicate formula was far less than was required by his system, and the very least that he could offer. Now, whence is the particular formula with which he has j)resented us drawn ? WeU, partly from experience, and partly from the Hegelian logic. It is a rough generalisation of the facts of history, and yet a generalisa- tion of this kind had to be discovered, or Hegelianism would not have been true. Here we touch on a fault which goes all through the Hegelian philosopliies of nature and of spirit. All through both, the method is neither a priori nor a posteriori, neither deductive nor inductive, but a bad mixture of both. It is certainly not a priori or deductive in any strict or proper sense ; for the facts are looked to, even looked to first, and the 538 BOOK II. — GERMANY. formulsB by which they are at length united are in a sort of way suggested b}' themselves. On the other hand, it is no more properly inductive ; for while the facts are consulted, they are consulted in order to obtain from them a particular kind of response, demanded by the necessities of a system. The actual process followed, therefore, in obtaining generalities, is thoroughly bad — neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, neither one thing nor another, but a blending and consequent confusing of two processes which are both legitimate in themselves, and which may verify one another, but only through coinciding after an independent application of both. It is this undoubtedly illegitimate mode of procedure which has brought Hegelianism into such bad reputa- tion with physicists, with cautious, inductive psychologists, and also with historians devoted to minute research. Its method is not the method of research. We may easily understand, there- fore, that the great founders of the so-called historical school — a Savigny, Niebuhr, Miiller, and Dahlman — were from the first decidedly anti-Hegelian as to historical views and principles, although in the main at one with Hegel in political sympathies ; and that still those best entitled to be called their successors are equally so, whatever may be their political tendencies. The general historical formula of Hegel — his law of three states — I have already examined in itself, when treating of Cousin, who adopted it ; and I have shown, I think, that to affirm substantiality and infinity distinctive of the East, indi- viduality and the finite of Greece and Eome, and the conciliation of the substantial and the individual, the infinite and the finite, to be the task of modern Europe, is to use very vague and ambiguous language, which cannot be made precise and definite without being seen to be false. That in the East one, in Greece and Eome some, and in modem Europe all are free, is an asser- tion which can hardly require to be proved inaccurate. The oriental, classical, and Christian worlds cannot be summed up in single words and phrases like these. The term substantiality, for example, entirely fails correctly to characterise Asia. In order that it may seem to apply even to China, Hegel is com- pelled to draw a most one-sided and imaginative picture of Chinese life ; to multiply quite mythical statements to the effect HEGEL. 539 that the will of the emperor is regarded as the sole moral and political law — that intention, motive, subjective disposition, are not taken into account in the estimate of actions — and that no worth or significance is attributed to the individual apart from the state, to a man simply as man ; to overlook the feudal epoch of Chinese history and that of the division of the coimtry into separate principalities ; and to ignore that Lao-tse and his fol- lowers assigned a very subordinate position to the state, and taught individual independence in a manner not unlike the Stoics — that Yang-Choo went so far as to represent the true law of life to be "Each man for himself" — that Mih-Teih re- solved all virtue into the internal principle of " universal mutual love " — that even Confucius only inculcated respect for tradition, and established institutions on the ground that they indicated and embodied the moral principles which each individual could easily find within himself, and that he insisted on sincerity of thought and rectitude of heart as the indispensable conditions of all good conduct, personal, domestic, and civil — that " heaven sees according as the people see ; heaven hears according as the people hear," is a doctrine inculcated in the sacred books of China — that the highly honoured Mencius was a very advanced democrat — and, in a word, that the Chinese conception of the state was by no means what Hegel described, yet remarkably Hegelian, and that the Chinese conception of heaven was not unlike the Hegelian conception of Geist. " He who knows his own nature, and that of all things, knows what heaven is ; for heaven is, indeed, the inward essence and life of all things." If the term be thus defective even as regards China, it is much more so as regards other Asiatic nations. It has no appearance of applicability to Vedic India ; and even Brahminical India, if its higher life be judged of from its own products instead of from Hegel's account of them, would require to be placed, not iu the first, but in the third so-called epoch of history. Tlie term is quite inappropriate to Judea — a nation in which freedom was surely not confined to one person either under the Judges or Kings. So far as regards matter, the chief defect of Hegel's philosophy of history is one arising directly from the method — viz., the 540 BOOK II. — GERMANY. stress which it lays on the characterisation of nations by words like substantiality, individuality, material unity, material di- versity, light, symbol, &c. Nations cannot be thus arranged and labelled like the bottles and boxes of an apothecary. The attempt to do so must lead, and did lead Hegel, to many narrow and unjust judgments. It may not be incompatible, however, with the formation of a still greater number of most profound and truthful judgments, and such undoubtedly abound in Hegel's book. He had vast power of mastering reality ; and it is truly wonderful to what an extent he succeeded in mastering it, working as he did with a method so burdensome and erroneous. The followers of Hegel have laboured assiduously in the field of history as in all other departments of knowledge. Thus, in the history of philosophy, Eosenkranz,^ Michelet,^ Schwegler,^ Marbach,* Lassalle,^ Feuerbach (in his Hegelian period),^ and still more Erdmann,^ Zeller,^ and Kuno Fischer,^ have rendered services worthy of most grateful recognition. Prantl,^'' has written the only work which deserves to be called a history of logic — a work of enormous erudition. Henning," Mtiller,^^ Hinrichs,i3 Michelet,^* Feuerlein,!^ Saling,i^ and especially ^ Geschichte der Kant'schen Philosophie : 1840. Sclielling : 1843. Hegel's Leben : 1844. Diderot's Leben und Werke : 1866, &c. 2 Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland, 1837-38, &c. ' Geschichte der Philosophie im Umriss : 1848. * Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie : 1838-41. 6 Die Philosophie Herakleitos' : 2 Bde : 1845. ® Geschichte der neuern Philosophie von Baco v. Verulam bis Spinoza: 1833. Entwickelung, Darstellung, iind Kritik der Leibnitzischen Philosophie : 1837. Pierre Bayle : 1838. ' Geschichte der neuern Philosophie : 1834-53, &c. 8 Die Philosophie der Griechen : 2 Anfl. : 1858, &c. ^ Geschichte der nenern Philosophie : 2 Auf. : 1865, ff., &c. ^° Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande : 1855-70. ^^ Principien der Ethik in historischer Entwickelung : 1824. ^^ Der Organismus und die Entwickelung der politischen Idee im Alterthum : 1839. ^' Geschichte der Rechts- nnd Staatsprincipien seit der Keformation, &c. : 1848-52. Die Konige : 1852. ^* Naturrecht, Bd. ii. allgem. Eechtsgeschichte, &c. *'• Die philosophische Sittenlehre in ihren geschichtlichen Hauptformen : 1857-59. ^^ Die Gerechtigkeit in ihrer geistgeschichtlichen Entwickelung: 1827. HEGEL. 541 Gans,^ and Lassalle,^ have thrown light on the history of ethical and political ideas. The history of £esthetics and the arts has been elucidated by works of Hotho,^ Eosenkranz/ Shasler,^ &c. The relationship of Baur and Strauss to Hegel is well known. Their critical researches into the history of religion initiated a movement which has been at least amazingly pro- ductive of theories and questions, if not of definite and certain results. Besides attempting to apply their master's principles to the separate developments of history, Hegelians have also attempted philosophically to comprehend and expound general history. Sometimes they have confined their attention to a part of this vast field — as, for example, Carove to the French Eevolution,^ Sietze to Prussia,^ Gans ^ and Michelet ^ to recent history. Some- times they have philosophised on history as a whole — as, e.g., Christian Kapp in ' Das concrete Allgemeine der Weltgeschichte,' 1826 ; and Cieszkowski in his ingenious ' Prolegomena zur Histo- riosophie,' 1838. In Appendix C. an account will be given of these last two works. I shall there also indicate in what respects the historico-philosophical views of Eosenkranz, Michelet, and Lassalle differ from those of Hegel, ^ Das Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwickelung : 4 Bde. 1824-35. 2 Das System der erworbenen Rechte : 1861. 3 Geschichte der deutschen und niederlandischen Malerei : 1842-43, &c. 4 Die Poesie und ihre Geschichte : 1855. 5 Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik : 1872. « Riickblick auf die Ursachen der Franzosischen Revolution und Andeutung ihrer welthistorischen Bestimmung : 1834. 7 Grundbegriff Preussischer Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte : 1829. 8 Vorlesungen llbev die Geschichte der letzten funfzig Jahre : 1833-34. >* Die Geschichte der Menscheit in ihreru Entwickelungsgange seit dem Jahre 1755 bis auf die neuesten Zeiten : 1859-60. 542 CHAPTER XII. SCIIELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. Let us now return for a moment to Schelling. We have seen how philosophy in his hands passed through a remarkable number of phases in a very short time ; how in the course of some sixteen years it assumed five or six forms so distinct that they may almost be regarded as separate philosophies. He began his philosophical career as a disciple of Fichte, an ex- positor of that thinker's system of subjective idealism, the distinctive character of which was the deduction of the universe from the Ego. Subjective idealism, however, he rapidly stretched out, so to speak, into the idealism of the Natur- philosophie, which maintains that the Ego may be deduced from nature no less than nature from the Ego, and that reason is bound to attempt the twofold deduction. This was obviously a position of most unstable equilibrium — a seat between the two stools of subjective and objective idealism ; and it was natural that Schelling should soon seek a safer resting-place, which he did — and for a while believed he had found, in an absolute idealism resting on an absolute reason, a reason wholly one and self-identical, which proceeds from the com- plete indifference of subject and object, of the ideal and real. That he might have found work enough for the rest of his life in endeavouring to prove this point of view, that all is in reason and may be derived from reason, a true one, — in determining the relation of nature and mind to each other, and to the absolute identity — and, in a word, in logically explaining the universe, — the writings of Hegel abundantly testify ; but in the very treatises in which he expounded this phase of his philo- sophy, an element appeared which speedily led him into an SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. 543 altogether different path than that followed by Hegel. From " intellectual intuition " he passed on to " vision in God," and from that to the unlimited indulgence of theosophic fancy. For thirty years after the publication of the * Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom,' Schelling, who had previously sent forth his compositions with a most lavish hand, allowed only a few brief and comparatively unimportant writings to see the light, and displayed great aversion even to having what he spoke reported. But few and far between as were the utterances by which his silence and secrecy were broken, they were suffi- cient to show that he was persevering in his theosophic course ; and, at the same time, aiming at the construction of a system which would complete his own past philosophical development and supplant Hegelianism, which reigned without a rival during the whole period of his retirement. In 1841 — ten years after Hegel's death, and in the 67th year of his own age — he was induced to leave Munich for Berlin, to attack Hegelian- ism in its stronghold, and to expound the results of his long- continued and carefully-concealed meditations. The moment was opportune ; for dissension had already begun to reign in the Hegelian camp, and impartial judges had already begun to see that the history of philosophy was not to end with Hegel, while no one had appeared to replace him. I must not speak of the immense excitement caused by Schelling's presence in the Prussian capital, of the enthusiasm or the envy, of the hopes which were only imperfectly fulfilled or the hostilities not to be justified. He died on the 20th of August 1854. We have now ample materials for the knowledge of the last phase of his philosophy — that which he brooded over so long — in the four volumes which compose the second division of his collected works.^ The few brief and general remarks which I have to 1 There is a careful account of tlie positive philosophy of Schelling by Eggel — "Schelling's Philosophy of Revelation " — in the first vol. of the 'Studien und Kritiken ' for 1 863 ; and a still better by Professor H. Beckers of Munich—" On the Significance of the Schellingian Metaphysics ; a contribution to the deeper understanding of Schelling's doctrine of potences or principles " — in vol. ix. of the * Abh. d. Bay. Akad. d. Wiss. ' E. von. Hartmann has pointed out very ingeniously the resemblances and diff"erence3 between this system on the one hand, and those of Hegel and Schopenhauer on the other, in an essay published in the ' Philosophische Monatshefte ' (and also separately) in 1869, under the 544 BOOK II. — GERMANY. make on the system expounded in these volumes are intended merely to indicate its relation to the philosophy of history. It was, then, as I have said, a system which Schelling meant should continue and complete his past philosophical develop- ment. It was not to contradict or exclude the philosophy of nature or of identity, but to take them up into itself and to supply what they wanted. His previous philosophy, he held, was true, so far as it went ; but it did not go more than half-way towards an explanation of the universe. It was a purely rational philosophy, and consequently a merely negative philosophy, capable only of explaining the logical relations of things, and necessarily leaving out of account the real in them. From overlooking this circumstance, Hegel, according to Schelling, had involved himself in errors without number, and brought philosophy into the most grievous position. Being a man of merely mechanical intellect without originality or genius, after having borrowed the principles which he (Schel- ling) had discovered, he had toiled laboriously at the task of elaborating them into a complete philosophy, not seeing that no mere philosophy of thought could be complete. Hence, attempt- ing the impossible, he had often been compelled to abandon pure thought for arbitrary imaginations, and to have recourse to strange shifts and downright sophistry to conceal his failures. Hence his system was partly a plagiarism and partly a carica- ture, and at the most a mere episode in the history of specula- tion. The evil it had done, Schelling undertook to remove and remedy, by supplying the necessary complement to his own past or negative philosophy, a positive philosophy — one which, when conjoined with the other, would constitute the complete and absolute truth ; for whereas the negative philosophy, start- ing from reason, and proceeding solely according to the necessary laws of reason, could reach only, so far as existence is concerned, since reason cannot create reality, a negative result — God merely in idea — this positive philosophy starting with what the negative title of '* Schelling's Positive Philosophy as Unity of Hegel and Schopenhauer." There is no evidence that Schelling borrowed from Schopenhauer. That he was greatly influenced by Baader has been amply and repeatedly shown by Professor Fr. Hoffmann. SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. 545 philosophy had led up to without being able to lay hold of and secure — viz., primordial and transcendental Being, which is in the last and highest instance Will,^ would proceed as the philo- sophy of will as well as of thought to incorporate and geneti- cally explain, not merely sensuous experience, but experience as a whole ; to receive an actual and active God, the Lord of all Being, as its object ; and to follow religion through all its phases, both in its complete and incomplete form — or, in other words, both as mythology and revelation. Accordingly, more even than the Hegelian philosophy, it claims to be an historical philosophy It represents the universe as a process which is actual and not merely logical, which is free as well as necessary ; or, in other words, as a history carried on in and by God. It does so with an ability and ingenuity, a wealth of learning and a sug- gestiveness, which have not generally, I think, received justice, but also with extreme rashness and fancifulness. In the his- tory of religious philosophy, and in the philosophy of religious history, it will always be entitled to occupy a prominent place. No philosophy has ever assigned to religious history equal importance. It seeks its confirmation at every step in the religious consciousness of humanity, and strives to teach us to understand the history of that consciousness according to its inward essence and ultimate principles. At the same time, it is very far from being a philosophy of history, or even from including a philosophy of history, in any usual or proper sense of the expression ; and I may not venture to do more than to indicate in the briefest manner what materials for reflection the historical theorist has to look for in the four volumes devoted to the exposition of the last or positive phase of Schelling's philosophy. The first volume consists of two books, — the former of which is an " Historical and Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology," and the latter, an " Exposition of the Eational Philo- sophy." The Introduction to Mythology consists of ten lec- tures delivered by Schelling in the last years of his residence at 1 The agreement tetween Sclielling and Schopenhauer as to the place of the Will in philosophy is the root of almost all the other resemblances which their S3'stems bear to each other. 2 M 546 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Municli and the first years of his residence at Berlin. They describe and criticise the various modes in which mythology had previously been treated, exhibiting with great clearness and ingenuity wherein they had failed, and in a fair and even generous spirit what they had accomplished. They show that Schelling had carefully read and deeply studied all that was most worth reading on the subject of mythology, and had formed his own conclusions slowly and laboriously. They are remarkably rich in suggestions of new problems, in questions previously unasked ; and SchelHug was not mistaken in think- ing that to propose new problems is often more serviceable to science than to solve old and recognised difficulties. Now the development of mythology is itself an historical fact of a magni- tude and importance which can scarcely be exaggerated; and all attempts to explain this fact — that is to say, all philosophies of mythology — fall immediately within the scope of the philosophy of history. They are all more or less successful solutions of some of the most obscure but also most momentous of historical problems. A critical account of these attempts, so learned, so ingenious, so profoundly suggestive, and so generally just, as that of Schelling, must accordingly be of no slight value to the historical philosopher, whatever may be the merits or demerits of the particular theory explicitly maintained or tacitly implied to be true. He critically rejects the opinion that mythology is poetry (or has no truth in it), and all forms of the theory that it is allegory (has truth in it, but not in it as such), whether Euhemeristic, moral, or physical, as well as the cosmogonical or philosophical interpretation proposed by Heyne, and the philosophico-philo- logical by Hermann ; he maintains that mythology is no inven- tion either of individuals or nations, but true as such, as reli- gious reality and experience, as a doctrine and history of the gods ; and, to bring out the full meaning of this position, sub- jects the views of Hume, Voss, Creuzer, &c., to a searching scrutiny, especially signalising the labours of Creuzer as having historically proved that the various forms of polytheism had been developed out of a primitive monotheistic religion. He further argues that the division of speech and rise of nations SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. 547 were not the causes of, but due to the transition from, primitive monotheism to polytheism, and that mythology is a necessary theogonic process, in which, with the gradual development of the doctrine of the gods, peoples and languages arose in regular order. The substance of his reasoning on the origin of nations has been reproduced by Professor Max Miiller in a better and briefer form than I could attain, and I shall avail myself of what he has written. " It was Schelling, one of the pro- foundest thinkers of Germany, who first (?) asked the question. What makes an ethnos ? What is the true origin of a people ? How did human beings become a people? And the answer which he gave, though it sounded startling to me when, in 1845, I listened at Berlin to the lectures of the old philo- sopher, has been confirmed more and more by subsequent re- searches into the history of language and religion. To say that man is a gregarious animal, and that, like swarms of bees, or herds of wild elephants, men keep together instinctively, and thus form themselves into a people, is saying very little. It might explain the agglomeration of one large flock of human beings, but it would never explain the formation of individual peoples. Nor should we advance much towards a solution of our problem if we were told that men break up into peoples as bees break up into swarms, by following difi'erent queens, by owing allegiance to different governments. Allegiance to the same government, particularly in ancient times, is the result rather than the cause of nationality ; while in historical times, such has been the confusion produced by extraneous influences — by brute force or dynastic combinations — that the natural development of peoples has been entirely arrested, and we frequently find one and the same people divided by difi'erent governments, and different peoples united under the same ruler. Our question, what makes a people? has to be con- sidered in reference to the most ancient times. How did men form themselves into a people before there were kings or shep- herds of men ? Was it through community of blood ? I doubt it. Community of blood produces families, clans, possibly races ; but it does not produce that higher and purely moral feeling which binds men together and makes them a people. 548 BOOK II. — GERMANY It is language and religion that make a people ; but religion is even a more powerful agent than language. The languages of many of the aboriginal inhabitants of Northern America are but dialectic varieties of one type, but those who spoke these dialects have never coalesced into a people. They remained mere clans or wandering tribes ; they never knew the feeling of a nation, because they never knew the feeling of worshipping the same gods. The Greeks, on the contrary, though speak- ing their strongly marked, and I doubt whether mutually intelligible dialects, the ^olic, the Doric, the Ionic, felt them- selves at all times, even when ruled by different tyrants, or broken up into numerous republics, as one great Hellenic people. What was it, then, that preserved in their hearts, in spite of dialects, in spite of dynasties, in spite even of the feuds of tribes and the jealousies of states, the deep feeling of that ideal unity which constitutes a people ? It was their primitive religion; it was a dim recollection of the common allegiance they owed from time immemorial to the great father of gods and men ; it was their belief in the old Zeus of Dodona, the Panhellenic Zeus. Perhaps the most signal confirmation of this view, that it is religion even more than language which supplies the foundation of nationality, is to be found in the history of the Jews, the chosen people of God. The language of the Jews differed from that of the Phoenicians, the Moabites, and other neighbouring tribes, much less than the Greek dialects differed from each other. But the worship of Jehovah made the Jews a peculiar people, the people of Jehovah, separated by their God, though not by their language, from the people of Chemosh (the Moabites), and from the worshippers of Baal and Ashtaroth. It was their faith in Jehovah that changed the wandering tribes of Israel into a nation. ' A people,' as Schelling says, ' exists only when it has determined itself with regard to its mythology. This mythology, therefore, cannot take its origin after a national separation has take place, after a people has become a people ; nor could it spring up while a people was still contained, as an invisible part, in the whole of humanity ; but its origin must be referred to that very period of transition before a people has assumed its definite existence, and when it is on the point of SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. 549 separating and constituting itself. The same applies to the language of a people; it becomes definite at the same time that a people becomes definite.' " ^ The historical speculation which Max Miiller thus skilfully condenses will^be found by those who turn to the pages of Schelling himself to have been presented by him with remarkable ingenuity and ability. Its elaboration and advocacy are both admirable ; scarcely anything has been left undone which was needed to produce conviction of its truth. Whether it has been conclusively established or not, however, is a question which I shall leave for consideration until I come to treat specially (in my concluding volume) of the relation of mythology and philosophies of mythology to the science of history. In the last lecture of the Introduction, Schelling himself treats of the connection between the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of history. His views on the subject may be thus summarised. Wliat the science or philosophy of history is has not yet been clearly apprehended by any one. There can, indeed, be no philosophy of history unless history itself is a whole — unless, that is to say, it is bounded, or has a beginning and an end ; and no philosophy of history has as yet shown itself able to assign to history either beginning or end. The philosophy of mythology is the first system which has suc- ceeded in distinguishing historical time from antecedent time, and consequently in fixing its commencement. The distinction of time into historical and prehistorical time is insufficient, because, as commonly understood, it is not a real distinction, does not signify that there is any essential or inherent differ- ence between these two portions of time, but merely that we have less knowledge of the one than of the other, that records are wanting in regard to the one which are to be found in regard to the other. History thus going back altogether in- definitely, divisions of its course into epochs according to formulae like that of Hegel must be futile ; and, in fact, any true comprehension of it must be impossible. A sufficiently profound study of mythology, however, solves the difficulty, by showing that historical time begins with the completed separa- 1 Introduction to the Science of Religion, 145-149. 550 BOOK II. GERMANY. tion of peoples, aud that prehistorical time is the period during which their separation is taking place, during which the transi- tion from primitive monotheism to polytheism is occurring. The content of prehistorical time is mythology itself — a neces- sary theogonic process ; the content of historical time is a suc- cession of free facts and events of a more external and worldly character. Historical time is thus really and essentially sepa- rated from prehistorical time, and instead of going indefinitely back into the past, has a distinct commencement. Prehistorical time itself is similarly preceded by a time essentially different from it — the time of the primitive, undivided, and unaltered monotheism, a time of complete historical immobility, when every day was like every other. This last may be called abso- lute prehistorical time; while that in which mythological results are realised, and in which a real progress or history takes place, although it be one essentially different from that with which we are familiar, may be distinguished from it by the designation of relative historical time. The time in which history is included is thus an organic system with parts or members distinctly differentiated from one another ; and the philosophy of mythol- ogy is, if history be taken in the widest sense, simply the first and most indispensable part of a philosophy of history. If its problems can be solved, a new and brilliant light must be cast upon the whole course and purpose of human development, since all historical speculations and researches lead back to the obscure region which is its province — the %fovos abriXog. The second book of the first volume — the " Exposition of the Eational Philosophy " — consists of fourteen lectures which were never delivered from the professorial chair, and which, indeed, were written only shortly before their author's death. It is an exposition of the possibilities which reason finds to be neces- sarily involved in the notion of heing (exclusive of the affirma- tion of existence), and as these possibilities underlie and condi- tion reality, it may be regarded as the foundation of the Positive Philosophy. It is consequently of prime importance for the understanding of the last phase of Schelling's general philosophy ; but it contains exceedingly little which can be said to belong in any sense or form to a philosophy of history, — nothing, indeed, SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. 551 except the curious argumentation in lecture twenty-one, which endeavours to reconcile belief in the plurality of human species with belief in human unity, through the hypothesis of the species having a common relation to a man who was himself of no species, but a true, typical, and exclusively individual man ; and the reasons given in lecture twenty-three for holding that the State is not a product but a condition of freedom ; that its origin is to be sought not in a contract but in the natural exten- sion of the authority exercised by the father of a family ; that its diversity of forms is the necessary consequence of its vary- ing relations to society ; that it is a means and not an end (a truth which Christianity first made manifest) ; and that even the most perfect State cannot be the final cause of history. The first book of the second volume, consisting of six lectures on Monotheism, contains as little properly historical speculation as that of which I have just spoken. It compares and contrasts the idea of monotheism with the ideas of abstract theism and of pantheism. It endeavours to show that abstract theism is an empty and inconsistent notion, which must logically issue either in dualism or pantheism ; that pantheism is a defective and superficial notion, which confounds a mere moment or stage of the existence of Deity with His whole or perfect existence ; and that true monotheism supplants and overcomes pantheism by including it while showing its insufficiency, by distinguishing what in God is God from what in God is not God. How this is done, — how Schelling distinguishes in God an eternal ground or nature which is in itself dark and unintelligent, three moments or potences, and three persons — the Father, Son, and Spirit — which proceed from the three potences in the process by which the Divine Mind displays itself in ruling creatively over its nature, — I must leave unexplained ; as also how the exitetence of an archetypal, premundane, and immanently divine world is accounted for by the co-operation of the potences and the ex- istence of the actual world of experience by their separation and conflict. Suffice it to say that the entire theogonic process in creation is held to have found its consummation in man, and that he is described as the unity and product of the divine potences. In creation, these potences, having issued separately 552 BOOK II. — GEKMANY. from the absolute existence, appeared in antagonism ; but in man they are combined and reconciled, and in him God at once completes and harmonises nature and produces an express im- age of Himself Like God, man is free ; he has within him a certain degree of creative power ; and the desire arises within him to exercise his power as his own, to exist and act in and for himself. He yields to this desire, and by so doing loses dominion over himself and over the potences within him. These by this fall are again separated and cast into conflict and begin a new creative process, the mythological process, analogous to that which generated the first creation, although it takes place not in the bosom of God but of man. The same potences which successively appeared in the first creation rise and rule in the same order in the second creation, and require again to be recon- ciled. The history of consciousness thus repeats that of the world. Mythology is an ideal reproduction of cosmogony. This is why so many have supposed it to be a disguised physical philosophy. In the following book, which consists of twenty-two lectures, we have a detailed exposition of the mythological process itself The starting-point is represented as having been an imperfect kind of monotheism, in which God was thought of as one only, because others had not yet presented themselves to the mind ; and not as involving a negation of more than one, not as ex- cluding plurality. Had it been true monotheism, the whole series of mythologies could only be thought of as the stages of a process admitting neither of rational explanation nor of moral justification. It must have been a monotheism of which poly- theism was not the contradiction but the natural development. True monotheism is not to be sought for at the beginning but at the end of the mythological process. That process, as has been said, takes place in consciousness. It is not, however, a mere process of consciousness, the moments of which are simply phases of consciousness, or stages of knowledge or faith, but a process through which consciousness must necessarily pass in virtue of coming under the sway of the succession of real powers, divine potences. The history of the gods is thus, ac- cording to Schelling, not merely a subjective but an objective SCHELLING, BUNSEN, AND LASAULX. 553 history, the key of which is to be found, not in men's imagina- tion, feelings, conjectures, but in the nature of the Absolute Being. Around this thought he combines, with amazing in- genuity and a most learned industry, into one vast system, pre- historic Sabaism, the creed and constitution of China, the wor- ships of Babylon, Persia, and Arabia, and the mythologies of Phoenicia, Egypt, India, and Greece, everywhere " in the strange play of fabling fancy hearing the oracular voice of primal Being, and in the poem wove by human thought tracing the image of the eternal God." The last two volumes expound "the philosophy of revela- tion." The third volume introduces the subject, — its first book treating of the relation of the negative and positive philosophies, and the second of the relation of the philosophy of mythology to the philosophy of revelation. The revelation is not to be comprehended without the mythology, which is the gradual process of development by which the revelation is introduced and prepared. Consciousness, which is at first absolutely in the grasp of the potences, and moves under their impulse or attraction without intelligence or choice, is slowly set free, and learns to reason and doubt, to set itself over against its objects, and to take account both of them and of itself. In the Greek mythology the whole mythological process is repeated, repro- duced, summed up, but its gods no longer despotically rule the mind ; and when in the Greek mysteries the history of these gods is converted into a subject of philosophical contemplation, mythology begins to transcend itself in comprehending itself, and the deliverance of the spirit from the grasp of the potences, with the subjection instead of nature to spirit, is accomplished. The consideration of the Grecian mysteries is therefore the most suitable introduction to the philosophy of revelation. That philosophy, as expounded in the fourth volume, has for its special task to explain, by means of the principles brought to light in the philosophy of mythology, the person and work of Christ. His pre-existence in heathendom and Judaism as the second potence or Logos, whose work it is to control, subdue, and reorganise the second potence or nature until it is perfectly conformed to the Father's will, is insisted upon ; Christianity is 554 BOOK II. — GEEMANY. represented as the unity of Judaism and heathendom, yet as possessed of a truly supernatural or revealed content which reason cannot apprehend a 'priori, but must receive from a self- denying faith in order to comprehend ; and the development of the Church founded on the life, doctrine, and death of Christ, and ruled by the Spirit, is described as proceeding from within in a course which presents an image and reflex of internal his- tory, as having for goal the perfect redemption of all things from sin, and their perfect restoration to God, and as passing through three epochs or ages — that of negative unity, that of division, and that of positive unity — which were prefigured by the apostles Peter, Paul, and John ; Peter being the representa- tive of the Catholic Church, Paul of the Protestant Church, and John of the Christianity of the future. The " positive " philosophy of Schelling thus sought to take up into itself at once all religion and all history. It regarded religion as the essential content or substance of history, and aimed at being the philosophy of history through being the philosophy of religion. While looking upon history as — to use the words of Chalybiius — " not confined within the usual limits of the historical, but stretching from the beginning to the end, from eternity to eternity," it yet found it to divide, according to the inherent character of the religious process which pervades and constitutes it, into two great periods — the ante-Christian and the post-Christian — and each of these periods into three chief epochs. The philosophy of mythology was consequently for Schelling, at the close of his career, the philosophy of history before Christ ; the philosophy of revelation that of history after Christ ; and the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history blended into one. I may have dwelt too long on a philosophy of history of so peculiar a character as the positive philosophy of Schelling, and I shall leave it entirely to the reader himself to judge of its worth, only remarking, that it has exerted a considerable power on theological speculation in Germany ; that one French work, at least, of genuine abihty — the ' Philosophic de la Liberte ' of M. Charles Secretan — bears profound traces of its influence; that one of the most distinguished students of the sciences of SCHELLING, BUKSEN, AND LASAULX. 555 language and religion, Professor Max Mliller, has warmly ac- knowledged his obligations to it ; and that that great scholar and noble-natured man, Baron Bunsen, whose historical philo- sophy falls next to be considered by us, was one of those who valued it at the highest, although he never accepted it as a whole, nor attempted to imitate the bolder flights of its illus- trious author. " A narrower sphere was mine : to look into The human soul, and on a lower path Follow thy lofty march ; with reverent ear Catch up the hoary echoes of the tale Of human fates, and from the law of growing Spell out the meaning of the finished growth ; The fragments of the primal human speech From Asia scattered to the land of Nile, The rigid stony lines in mystery veiled, Quaint hierogljrphics of the soul, whence sprang Light in long centuries, and religious hope To a deep-brooding people, and the awe, Mother of wisdom, which in soul and nature Felt the full Godhead — all that sacred lore Which filled with wonder and with pious fear The wise of Hellas, folly later deemed By the cold scoffers of barbaric Rome, Of this somewhat to me the Muse revealed. That I one arm of Time's far- stretching sea Might know, one ring upon the jewelled hand Of Truth might touch ; and what she showed to me. The primal deed and thought of men, behold, I dedicate to thee. Would that thy soul Might find itself in what is no less thine Than mine ; and, from the larger field displayed. Tempt a new flight o'er larger realms of thought !" ^ II. No man, perhaps, if we except only the wise and good Prince who long lived among us a blameless and beautiful life full in the " fierce light that beats around a throne," has done so much to strengthen the union between Great Britain and Germany as Baron Christian-Charles- Josiah Bunsen (1791-1860) ; and the incidents of his career are probably as well known, his writings as much studied, and his memory as revered, in this country as 1 From the " Dedication to Schelling," prefixed by Bunsen to the fourth volume of ' Egypt's Place in Universal History, ' and translated by C. H. Cottrell. 556 BOOK II. GERMANY. in his native land. It will suffice, therefore, simply to refer those who wish for biographical details to the Memoir by his widow — one of those works which, as Max Miiller has finely said, " have aU the importance of an Ecce Homo, showing to the world what men can be, and permanently raising the ideal of human life." Bunsen's ' God in History, or the Progress of Faith in a Moral Order of the World' (1857-59), although the last work he completed, was one of the first which he conceived. The thought which is central in it was that which was central in his life ; was the thought which gave vitality and unity to all his intel- lectual labours, manifold as they were — which directed, almost from cliildhood until death, the faculties of his singularly perfect mind, and shaped the purposes of his singularly pure and aspir- ing soul, — " the thought sublime " planted " Deep in the holiest-holy of his heart, That he miglit well employ His strength upon God's praise, Catching some far ken of His glorious ways Through the long march of the uncounted days; "^ the thought to which he gave solemn expression in a prayer written in his twenty-fifth year, a few days after his marriage : " Eternal, omnipresent God, enlighten me with Thy Holy Spirit, and fill me with Thy heavenly light. What in childhood I felt and yearned after, what throughout the years of youth grew clearer and clearer before my soul, I will now venture to hold fast, to examine, to represent. The revelation of Thee in man's energies and efforts, Thy firm path through the stream of ages, I long to trace and recognise, as far as may be permitted to me, even in this body of earth. The song of praise to Thee from the whole of humanity, in times far and near — the pains and lamentations of earth, and their consolation in Thee — I wish to take in clear and unhindered. Do Thou send me Thy Spirit of truth, that I may behold things earthly as they are, without veil and without mask, without human trappings and empty adornment, and that in the silent peace of truth I may feel and recognise Thee." The plan of life-study which he had ^ From the characteristically admirable translation of Professor J. S. Blackie. See Memoir, i. 32. BUNSEN. 557 laid before Niebulir in the previous year shows how wide and precise, even at that time, were his views as to the method in which he ought to seek the realisation of his purpose — how well he was aware that his end could only be reached through a combination of the resources of philology, history, and philo- sophy, far more accurate and elaborate than had ever up to that time been attempted. His 'Egypt's Place in Universal History,' his various treatises in the department of ecclesiastical history, his liturgical collections, his linguistic essays, his Bibel- werk, &c., may be regarded as so many parts of a whole, which was never completely evolved from the ideal germ there deline- ated. The " philosophical aphorisms " in the first edition of ' Hippolytus and his Age ; ' the two volumes of ' Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History applied to Language and Eeligion,' into which these aphorisms were expanded in ' Chris- tianity and Mankind;' and the three- volumed work 'God in History,' may be regarded as successive stages in the develop- ment of the idea itself, — the last being the most perfect, and that in which it will be proper for us here to consider it. Of course it is only with the leading principles of the book that we are concerned ; and as Bunsen has himself presented these principles in a connected form in the 'General Philosophical Introduction,' our task is, in this case, much easier than usual. The argumentation of Bunsen is, then, to the following effect. The rmiverse is to philosophers, if we consider only what is essential in their systems, ever one of two things — either a product of accident or an embodiment of thought. If the for- mer, their view of the universe is atheistical or godless, and leaves no room for the existence of a power of moral determina- tion ; it necessarily involves not only the denial of the divine presence and thought in creation, but the denial also of a moral law and order in history : if the latter, their view is theistic ; it assumes that a creative idea unifies and pervades all the varieties of phenomena. The theistic view includes, however, two doctrines, and even two contradictory doctrines — viz., deism, and what is loosely called pantheism. Deism, while representing God as the cause of the world and of man, sepa- rates both from Him by an infinite chasm, and regards Him as 558 BOOK IT. GEr.MANY. existing wholly apart from, and in unconditional antithesis to, the development in space and time, nature and history. Pan- theism, strictly so called, overlooks that God has a substantive, self-active, conscious being, which transcends all space and time, and identifies Him with the whole of things filling space and happening in time. In this form it satisfies neither reason nor conscience. But the term pantheism is often used to designate the doctrine that God, although the eternal, unchanging, self- adequate Eeason and Will, yet lives and works continually in nature and history, only with the difference of the finite and the infinite. And this, says Bunsen, is alone the truth. In order to discover how God lives and works in humanity — in order to discover law in the succession of events — philosophy is indispensable ; for without its aid we cannot determine in what progress consists, or where it is to be found, nor separate what is essential in the facts from what is accidental ; but it can only succeed if organically combined with philology and history. " The principle of the progress of humanity necessarily has its root in the law of divine self-manifestation. It is the highest object of the philosophical theory of mankind to exhibit this law. But the solution of this problem in a concrete form sup- poses a methodical organic union of three distinct operations. The first is the philosophical or speculative, as to the leading principles and general method. The second is the philological, for sifting and previously organising the facts contained in the historical records, of which language is not only the vehicle, but itself the principle and primitive monument. The third is the historical, which organises these facts definitively, according to the principle of development." The modern German school, Bunsen thinks, was the first to propound, with a clear conscious- ness of what they implied, these questions. Is there such a thing as progress in the history of the human race ? If so, wherein is it visible ? What is its formula 1 " To find a true and positive, not negative, solution of the problem of the philosophy of history, may be said to have formed, and to continue to form, consciously and unconsciously, the ultimate object of that great effort of the German mind which has produced Goethe and Schiller in literature; Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in BUNSEN. 559 philosophy ; Lessing, Schlegel, and Niebuhr iu criticism and historical research." This end is one which can only be attained if we start from the assumption of a moral order of the world and the essential unity of the human race, and follow a method neither purely speculative nor purely historical, as the former does not bring us into contact with the actual facts, and the latter does not show us the law of their development. The German and the English modes of procedure require to be united. The German philosophy of mind must be applied to historical realities ; and no other method will avail than that which is fundamentally Baconian. The laws of evolution must be sought for iu the historical phenomena lying before us, by a gradual process of analysis and synthesis of our materials ; but they cannot in themselves be in essence anything but an appli- cation of the universal reason and the universal conscience to the great world-wide facts of man's consciousness of God in history. Our author is thus led to treat next of the self-consciousness and the God-consciousness, and to insist on what may, perhaps, be regarded as the central principle of his historical philoso- phy, — viz., that man's consciousness of God is the prime and constant motive force in the history of nations — the vital breath of the progress of the human race towards truth and justice — the original instinct of humanity, which, unfolding it- self progressively from the unconscious to the conscious, gives rise to all language, political arrangements, and culture. Hu- manity is not merely the aggregate of individuals, for it has a principle of evolution of its own, and advances according to the idea divinely placed within it, yet it advances only through the instrumentality of individuals, " Personality is the lever of the world's history." Just as the phenomena of the consciousness of God develop themselves in humanity in an organic series, so the various individuals who from time to time have imparted fresh life to the race form a progressive series. " History has been fruitful of good only in so far as it has been the result of the harmonious action and reaction of two poles, the life of the individual and of the community. The consciousness of the race resides only in individuals, but resides in them in proper- 560 BOOK II. — GERMANY. tion as the true collective consciousness of mankind at large is revealed in them. All that is great takes its rise from the indi- vidual, but only in so far as he offers up his individual self to the whole." The process of historical development is also characterised by the action and reaction, the co-operation and antagonism, of intuition and reflection, of popular religious con- sciousness and philosophical religious investigation. A threefold division of history into epochs is determined by the relation of these two things to each other ; the first epoch being that of the formation of language and myths : the second, that of the forma- tion of nations, science, and art, where individuality is in con- flict with common intuition ; and the third, that of the recon- ciliation of reflection with faith through science and art — or of the unity of the good, true, and beautiful. Bunsen proceeds to insist that the antithesis between thought and will — the contrast between the preponderance of the intel- lectual or of the practical side of human nature — is conspicuous in the development of nations. The religious consciousness not only gives rise to knowledge, arts, letters, and science, but mani- fests itself in the life of society, and in the State as the supreme organised and legal society. "It will not be contested," he says, "that the ideal of this consciousness has found its three great historical depositaries in three nationalities : in the He- brews during the earliest epoch ; in the Hellenes during the second ; in the Germans during the third. But it is likewise an historical fact, that in each of these three epochs, these three depositaries of the leading thoughts of mankind have been con- fronted by three great historical representatives of action. Side by side with the Semitic Hebrews, advance, through the successive stages of their national development, the Zoroastrian Iranians — first as Bactrians, then as Medes and Persians. Se- mitism, for the first time, takes the shape predominantly of action in that ofi'shoot of Semitic intuition, the world-conquer- ing Arabian Mohammedanism. By the side of the Hellenes, with their intellectual creativeness, and their devotion to liberty, stand the Eomans, with their genius for legal organisation and for universal government. Finally, by the side of the Germans, we behold, first, the cognate Komanic races, and then the BUNSEN. 561 kindred English. On this subject another remarkable fact im- mediately forces itself on the eye. All the chosen vessels of thought have been federal nations — all the chosen vessels of act have been nations of a single polity ; in accordance with a law of universal history which will find its full accomplishment only in the true federal state." In concluding his ' General Philosophical Introduction,' Bun- sen gives an outline of the rest of his work. " Our second book will exhibit the leading features of the religious consciousness of the Hebrews ; the third will be chiefly devoted to that of the pre-Christian Aryans of Eastern Asia, introduced by a survey of their precursors in the primitive Asiatic world — the Egyptians, Turanians, and Chinese ; the fourth, to that of the pre-Christian Aryans in Asia Minor and Europe, including the Hellenes, the Eomans, and the Teutons. In the fifth book, we shall consider the religious consciousness of the Christian Aryans ; and in the sixth, take a general retrospect of the results to which our inves- tigations have conducted us. In our historical surveys we shall, as far as possible, adopt the following method. Our de- lineation of each national type of religious consciousness will begin with the jjopular intuition of the Kosmos, and end (so far as this point may, in fact, be reached in the particular instance) with the philosophical speculation. But between these two comes the consideration of the political institutions, the artistic crea- tions, and the cultivated literature, whether that of speculation, poetry, or prose." The work is not meant, Bunsen distinctly explains, to be a philosophy of universal history on the prin- ciples he has stated. The philosophy of history must be both more and less than the historical elucidation of the course of man's religious consciousness. It must be " more, in so far as, starting from the highest point on which the foot can be planted, its task is to discover and exhibit the universal laws that regu- late the unfolding of man's nature, and to demonstrate their application not alone to religion, but also to language, art, science, and politics ; and less, in so far as it is not its task to enter into the historical delineation of the leading personages and ideas with which the history of man's religious conscious- ness has to concern itself." 2 N 562 BOOK II. — GERMANY. While, then, Bunseu believed that in the Introduction, which I have summarised, he had exhibited the principles and plan of a philosophy of history, he was fully aware that in the work itself — the actual exposition of the growth of the religious consciousness — he had not wrought out such a philosophy. He did not mean his book to be a philosophy of history ; and we must not find fault with it for being only what it was meant to be. At the same time, he believed he was doing much more than merely tracing the history of a special phase of human development. The religious consciousness seemed to him to be not merely one among a number of co-ordinate historical forces, but the central, regulative, and even creative, principle of his- tory, the objective truth corresponding to it being nothing less than the divinity manifesting and incarnating itself in humanity. The development of the religious consciousness — of faith in a divine moral presence and order, — necessarily, he held, involved, impelled, and directed — necessarily gave law and aim to — progress in every other sphere, whether of truth, beauty, or goodness ; or, in other words, whether in science, art, or moral and political achievement. To trace the history of the religious consciousness of mankind from nation to nation, was therefore, in his eyes, to approximate somewhat closely to an exposition of the philosophy of history. As to the way in which he has traced its liistory and described its various phases — the organic series of its phenomena presented in the faith and worship of the chief peoples of the world — it is scarcely necessary to say that there is much that is admirable, — large- ness of conception, devoutness of spirit, openness to truth, a wide and ready sympathy with all that is good, critical bold- ness, fertility of suggestion and invention, and an intellectual acquisitiveness of gigantic reach. It must also, however, I fear, be said, that it is far from a faultless way. His work is cer- tainly, with all its merits, far from a perfect work. Even as to research and the statement of facts, it is most unequal ; and the thinking, in many places so fresh and true, is in others troubled and capricious, and at times is lost altogether in the most barren metaphysical phraseology, as a stream is dried up in a desert. A pantheistic taint makes itself widely felt. And mere con- BUNSEN. 563 jectures are too often presented as the definitively ascertained results of critical and historical investigation. It was perhaps the chief merit of Bunsen in connection with historical science, to have seen so clearly the necessity of the combined and methodical application of history, philology, and philosophy in order to solve its leading problems ; and in parti- cular, to have realised so fully the power and significance of comparative philology as an instrument of historical investiga- tion. Endowed in a high degree with the linguistic faculty — early conversant with the results of the wonderful series of linguistic researches which had been carried on by an unbroken succession of inquirers from Leibnitz to W. von Humboldt — skilled in many of the varieties of human speech, and knowing a good deal about almost all, — he recognised, with a compre- hensiveness and distinctness which had never before been equalled, that language, properly studied, would yield a harvest of historical results of extreme richness and interest ; that it was itself a far older, more trustworthy, and more important historical record than anything written in it ; and would, were it submitted to a true method of investigation, disclose epochs of intellectual and creative life which must otherwise have re- mained impenetrably concealed. And he was not content either to allow the conviction to lie barren in his mind or to give it a mere general expression in words ; but he devoted long years of earnest toil to the study of the languages of Egypt, Asia, and Europe, and called in to his help the abilities of younger and less multifariously burdened men, such as Max Mliller, Aufrecht, Charles Meyer, Lepsius, &c., expressly in order that he might prove that in the successive deposits of speech there have been preserved strata of mental existence, many of which are far older than any written or monumental records, yet which are " as well defined as those of geology, and infinitely more intelligible, because intellectual themselves, and carrying in themselves their order of succession by their own law of development." His marvellous enthusiasm and industry could not have been better employed than they were, even although they may not at all points have been rewarded \Yith. complete success, in attempting to show, by the comparison and analysis of the 564 BOOK II. — GERMANY. forms of human speech, that language has had but one prin- ciple of formation and law of growth ; that its fundamental unity establishes what our religious records postulate, — viz., that the human race is of one kindred, one descent, and that human civilisation is an organic whole, not a patchwork of incohe- rent fragments, not " an inorganic complex of various develop- ments, starting from numberless beginnings, flowing in isolated beds, and destined only to disappear and make room for others, running the same course in monotonous rotation " ; that its origin can be explained neither by an exclusive materialism nor an exclusive spiritualism, while it presupposes the priority of thought to matter, the action of intellect on sense ; that from the first it was a product of reason and no mere imitation of natural sounds or utterance of joy or grief, desire or fear ; and that its course of evolution has been a reproduction and con- tinuation of that creation, proceeding from the inorganic to the organic, and within the organic from unconsciousness and vague generality to consciousness and individuality. The languages of the primitive formation — monosyllabic languages, like the Chinese — he has represented, as decidedly inorganic, each word implicitly containing the power of a complete phrase in itself, so that thought is, as it were, confined and pulverised in the sepa- rate inert molecules which compose the vocabulary ; those of the secondary formation — the agglutinative, or Turanian lan- guages — as exhibiting peculiarities analogous to the character- istics distinctive of the incomplete organisation of vegetables ; and the inflected languages, whether Semitic or Iranian, as com- pletely and spiritually organised. Such is, perhaps, the thread of thought which connects all the linguistic researches in his ' Egypt's Place in Universal History ' and his ' Christianity and Mankind.' These researches had consequently a common aim, and that one of the grandest which could be conceived. That they were in the main but the work of a pioneer, Bunsen himself was fully aware ; that they have cleared ways for others into vast regions which had not unnaturally been believed in- accessible, can no more be reasonably doubted, than that they display magnificent powers both of conception and execution can be fairly denied. BUNSEN. 5G5 Comprehensive as were Bunsen's views of tlie method of his- torical philosophy, they were not comprehensive enough. He regarded man too exclusively as a spiritual being, and gave in- sufficient attention to his physical nature and its relationships ; he studied him merely as language and religion show him to be, and overlooked what geology, biology, and, in particular, ethno- logy, have to tell concerning him. He was quite correct in thinking that in language and religion we may find memorials of a period in human history long prior to the existence of the simplest written records ; but the assumption that we have in them absolutely the oldest historical monuments, and that they together even tell us all that is to be known of the primeval life of man — an assumption which certainly underlies Bunsen's reasoning — is obviously unwarranted. It is indubitable that the earth has preserved in its stony tablets countless tiny and feeble creatures which lived millions of ages before man ap- peared on its surface ; and there can be nothing, therefore, inhe- rently improbable in supposing that it may have preserved traces of human agency older than any word or belief which compara- tive philology or the science of religions can, discover. In fact, the problems of historical philosophy, as I shall in next volume carefully show, can only be solved by the combined and meth- odical application of the resources not of three but of all the sciences. It will be sufficient merely to indicate as erroneous the notion of Baron Bunsen that the philosophy of history is a peculiarly German science, its problem having been first clearly and pro- foundly apprehended by the modern German school. That school neither apprehended the problem of the philosophy of history first nor clearly. This work ought to be itself, however, a sufficient proof that the philosophy of history, little advanced as it may as yet be, is no exclusively German achievement, but the product of the intellectual labours of at least the four most cultivated European nations during the last two centuries. The least satisfactory portion of Bunsen's historical specula- tions is that which relates to the general laws of human devel- opment. The division of history into three epochs, of which the first was represented by the Hebrews and Zoroastrian 566 BOOK II. — GERMANY. Iranians, the second by the Greeks and Eomans, and the third by the Germans, the Eomanic peoples, and the English ; the attribution of speech and mythology to the first epoch, of poetry, statuary, and civil policy to the second, of science to the third ; and the distribution of nations into intellectually creative and practically energetic — into vessels of thought and vessels of ac- tion — according as they are federal or unitive, — are all obviously grounded on the hastiest of inferences from some confused apprehension of a very few facts. Why should the Turanians and Khamites have been dropped out of account ? Why the peoples who spoke the inorganic languages which preceded the organic ? How were the Hebrews specially concerned in the formation either of language or mythology? Were the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Arabs before Mohammed, decidedly inferior as regards energy of action to the Bactrians, Medes, and Persians ? Were the Greeks not highly distinguished in almost every kind of action? Did Greece accomplish less even in science than Germany has yet done ? Is the religious superiority of the third to the second epoch not as great as its scientific superiority ? Is it quite certain that Germany has added more to the world's trea- sury of thought than France or England ? Can Switzerland and the United States be justly described as vessels of thought but not of action ? Bunsen overlooks all such questions, and leaps to his conclusions, regardless of all the rules and barriers of induction, with a rapidity and rashness which Eichte and Schelling themselves have seldom surpassed. III. The contributions of Ernst von Lasaulx ^ to the philosophy ot history display a spirit in various respects kindred to that of Bunsen — profoundly religious yet most independent, extremely learned and a little fanciful, keenly susceptible to impressions from every phase of existence, and full of earnest moral aspira- tions. In one feature, however, the two men were very unlike. Bunsen was of a remarkably joyous and hopeful disposition, and 1 As to his life and character, see ' Eriunerungen an Ernst von Lasaulx,' von Dr H. Holland. Munchen, 1861. EKNST VON LASAULX. 567 amidst all the evils of the present never despaired of the future. He saw in history as much the realisation of the moral order of the world as in the physical universe the realisation of the laws of gravitation and of light : and he had the firmest confidence in the approach of a new period of social life based upon religion ; in which the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of God, and the triumph of the divine principle upon earth is to be manifest and universal. A vein of melancholy, on the con- trary, seems to have pervaded the nature of Lasaulx, and his historical associations are tinged with sadness and gloom. A vivid and painful consciousness of the conflict between the real and the ideal, and an intense perception of how much is vain and illusory in human affairs, have left their traces on bis pages. He does not absolutely despair of the future ; but he is so alive to the tragic side of existence, to those appearances of things which have given rise to all fatalistic and pessimistic theories, that he cherishes no high or steady hope of a noble and beauti- ful life being gradually realised by society on earth. It may be said of him not less truly than of Bunsen, that the philosophy of history was the goal to which all his studies tended; and unfortunately, still more truly, that he has left only fragments of such a philosophy. Indeed, even these fragments refer chiefly to classical antiquity, the part of history with which he was most completely conversant, and by which he judged, perhaps, too much of all the rest. Most of them are to be found among the ' Abhandlungen der philosoph-philologischen Classe der Koniglich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.' I may specially mention the essay on " The Geology of the Greeks and Komans, a contribution to the philosophy of history," in the sixth volume; that on " The History and Philosophy of Marriage among the Greeks," in the seventh volume ; and that on " The Philosophy of Koman History," in the ninth volume. The lec- ture " On the Course of the Development of Greek and Ptoman Life, and on the Present State of German Life," was delivered before the Academy on the 25th of August 1847, but was pub- lished separately. The treatise, however, in which his general historical theory is most distinctly and comprehensively deline- ated, appeared in 1856, and is entitled 'Neuer Versuch einer 568 BOOK II. — GERMANY. alten auf die Walireit der Thatsachen gegriindeten Philosophie der Geschiclite.' These compositions are exceedingly attractive reading. The thoughts in them seem to well up without effort from the overflowing fulness of a richly-stored memory, a fresh and vigorous judgment, and a noble spiritual nature. In every page we feel the breath and motion of two currents of intellec- tual life, the classical and the romantic, conspiring and com- mingling as they have seldom done, yet without destroying the individuality of him in whom they met. It must be added, however, that we miss in his writings due development and systematic completeness of thought, accurate analysis either of facts or conceptions, and often adequate proof of the opinions enunciated. I require to take Professor von Lasaulx's "New Essay" as the basis of my exposition of his theory. It is very characteristic to find that he begins it — not by endeavouring to determine what the philosophy of history is, or what its method is, or how it is related to other sciences, but — by laying down certain pro- positions — seven in number — as its presuppositions, with which, however, it has in reality only so far to do as it is capable of proving them. That history has its beginning and end in the unity of the creative love of God ; that it is an organism inclusive of manifold lesser organisms ; that it is related to the entire universe of spiritual beings ; that its course is governed by laws ; and that the greatest things in it have grown out of small and despised germs, — are statements which, so far as true, admit of historical proof, and the business of the philosophy of history is not to assume but to establish them. The first proposition affords a good example of how reckless in assumptions a man is apt to become when he has once persuaded himself that the assump- tion of principles is the legitimate and necessary commence- ment of science. " In the philosophy of history, as in every genuine science, and in all human life, the chief thing, and that which is decisive of everything else, is to proceed from God, and to treat Him as what is first, nature as what is second." Now, that God is first and nature second — that all truth pro- ceeds from Him and tends to Him — is most certain ; but surely it does not necessitate the belief of any such folly and error ERNST VON LASAULX. 569 as that a chemist ought not to begin the study or teaching of chemistry either with chemical compounds or chemical elements, but with God. Our author rests the possibility of the philosophy of history chiefly on two affirmations. The first is, that an objective un- derstanding has impressed itself on things, and that the subjec- tive understanding of man is capable of apprehending that objective understanding which belongs to God. It seems to me much more correct to say, that the subjeetive understanding of man is capable of tracing in outward things peculiarities of con- stitution and arrangement, which it is warranted, and even bound, to regard as the impressions of an objective understand- ing. When we state the truth thus, we see at once that science needs no theological presupposition. It starts from its appro- priate facts — from experience — although it may end by showing that the facts are such that they must have originated in the Divine Mind. The second affirmation is, that so much of the history of modern Europe has already run that it is possible to see the lines of direction of the entire movement converging to a single end, and to draw a probable conclusion regarding the future from the past, founded on the analogy of the lives of modern nations to those of antiquity. It does not seem to me, however, that it is necessary to assume anything even in this respect. We know that a considerable portion of history has run, and in a particular course ; and if we find that we can so far explain that history, and account for the course it has fol- lowed, we shall have a science of history, even although incap- able of calculating or foreseeing the future of humanity, just as in geology we have a science of the history of the earth, how- ever little it may be able to tell us about the future of the earth. A science may be real, so far as it goes, and yet neces- sarily very incomplete. It is, I may further observe, a marked defect in the historical generalisations of Lasaulx, that they rest so much on mere analogy, which can never afford more than probable evidence ; that they almost invariably turn on paral- lelisms or resemblances of the kind, concerning which Bacon says that " they are, as it were, the first and lowest steps towards the union of nature, and do not immediately establish any 570 BOOK II. — GERMANY. axiom, but merely indicate a certain relation of bodies to each other." He is far too ready to conclude that because modern history has been similar to classical history in certain par- ticulars, it will be similar to them in others. In fact, it may be maintained that almost all the errors into which he has fallen spring from, or at least are closely associated with, his treat- ing the histories of Greece and Kome as normal and typical histories — standards by which all other histories may be mea- sured. Lasaulx eloquently insists that the whole of humanity is to be regarded as a single man with one nature and life, one body and soul, one general will and reason ; that each man is only man by virtue of being a member of the human race, or a son of man ; that humanity unfolds itself into tribes and nations, each of which has a true individuality of character correspond- ing to that of its founder, and, in conformity with the laws of biology, passes, like universal humanity, from birth to death through the four stages of childhood, youth, manhood, and old age; that, in like manner, every organic creation of man, all languages, religions, arts, sciences, towns, states, and systems of states, gradually develop and exhaust the sum of vitality allotted to them, gradually grow and flourish until they have reached maturity, and then gradually decay and die ; and that life diffuses itself from within outwards, from below upwards, but decay from without inwards, from above downwards — so that, as far as society is concerned, the course of its progress is in the ascending scale of peasant, citizen, soldier, priest, noble, and prince, while that of its dissolution is in the reverse order. He approves of Bacon's remark, that " in the youth of a state arms do flourish, in the middle age of a state learning, and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a state mechanical arts and merchandise." So was it, he says, in Greece and Eome, and so is it, he fears, in Germany. In the very pre- valence of speculation he perceives a reason for distrust. Theory does not precede but follow action. When nations have mainly done their work, they begin to take account of it before passing away. The age of thinkers is later than that of doers, of philo- sophers than that of heroes, of critics than that of artists. Now, ERNST VON LASAULX. 67l all these views, were there time to examine them, might be shown to contain error, more or less, along with truth ; but Lasaulx, from want of analytic power, fails to detect any of their erroneous elements. He seldom, indeed, distinguishes what is only generally from what is entirely true. Had ho lived, however, through 1866 and 1871, he would probably at least have ceased to fear that philosophy and criticism had ren- dered Germany unfit for war. His remarks on the geographical and historical relationships of Africa, Asia, and Europe to one another, on the descent and characteristics of their inhabitants, and on the significance and development of languages, need not detain us. He describes the movement of men, animals, plants, and pestilences from east to west as an objective law of life, the movement of the earth and planets on their own axes from west to east causing, he thinks, the stream of life and atmospheric influence to flow in the opposite direction. It does not seem to have occurred to him that an enormous number of facts appear at least to prove that animals and plants have radiated from many specific centres, or that a good enough reason may be given for plagues ordinarily spreading into Europe from the east or south-east without there being any necessity for having recourse to the supposition of a special law. If the localities in which the con- ditions and causes which generate plagues like the black death and cholera coexist and concur are to the east of Europe, it seems superfluous to call in a special law to account for these diseases coming from that quarter instead of from the west, j)ar- ticularly as in the latter case they would require to cross the Atlantic even if generated in America, and if in Asia a conti- nent and two oceans. War is another thing which our author strenuously af&rms to be a divine and universal law. He fully accepts the saying of Democritus, noXs/ios m-arno rravruv. All the great revolutions in history, all important advances in culture? appear to him to have been introduced by wars between the eastern and western, southern and northern nations. In dis- cussing the speculations of Cousin, I have already had occasion to separate the error from the truth in this opinion. War be- tween man and man is no mere continuation, no necessary 572 BOOK II. — GERMANY. consequence, of the elemental strife of nature or of the struggle of all organised beings for existence. A war like that recently witnessed between France and Germany, instead of being a result either of the rerum concordia discors sung by ancient poets, or of the struggle for existence dwelt on by modern natu- ralists, is an example of a kind of discord which certainly cannot be shown to be an essential condition of harmony and which in- volves a reckless waste of the means of existence. I must not do more than simply state the formulae in which Lasaulx would include the various phases of human develop- ment. That of religion is, he maintains, progress from the pantheistic systems of the east, and the polytheistic systems of the west, to the monotheistic system of the Jews and Arabs, and from abstract monotheism to the Trinitarian doctrine of Christianity, which is not a national but a universal religion. He does not prove — what, however, clearly needs proof — that these forms of religion really represent stages of history, — that Greek polytheism, for example, preceded Jewish monotheism. As to general political progress, he adopts the formula of Hegel, that in the east only one is free, while in the Greco-Eomau world some, and in the Germanic world all, are free ; and as to the succession of govermnents or political constitutions, a for- nmla based on Aristotle's distribution of them into three proper and three perverted forms, according to which the order of their appearance is monarchy, despotism, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, ochlocracy, the last of which ends in complete anarchy. He has not shown that the facts warrant either of these formulae ; and I quite disbelieve that he could have done so. The arts have arisen, he thinks, in the following order ; Architecture, sculpture, and painting (the arts of form), music, poetry, and prose (the arts of expression). He left the proof to a special treatise on the philosophy of art which he contem- plated, but did not execute. Philosophy he describes as issuing from religion, and passing through doubt either into subjective despair or objective reconciliation with religion ; obviously a most inadequate account of its course, even if correct so far as it goes, which is probably not the case. The section of his treatise which he devotes to the heroes of ERNST VON LASAULX. 573 humanity cannot be said to be a careful and philosophical dis- cussion of their significance in history ; but it is a very beautiful glorification of their services, and, in the main, most true. He treats somewhat fully of the decline and fall of nations. He admits that a people may have its life crushed out at any stage of its career by the violence of a stronger people, and he in- dicates that many peoples never outlive infancy, owing to external conditions being unfavourable ; but the thought on which he chiefly dwells is, that nations, no less than individuals, must in the course of nature die of age ; that to each nation there has been allotted a certain amount of vitality which must gradually develop and manifest itself in the formation of speech, the growth of religious convictions, the building up of a constitution and policy, in military achievement, in morality, artistic pro- duction, and metaphysical speculation ; but which is thereby, of necessity, gradually exhausted, so that the nation has no sooner reached maturity, than its powers begin to fail, and a process of decay sets in which inevitably ends in dissolution. For this favourite thought of his I can find no adequate evi- dence. The nations which can even seem to have died of age are but few. I doubt, indeed, if any nation can be shown to have died merely of age — merely of internal decay. It is certain that if Greece had been sound within she would have made a better resistance to the Eomans ; and that if the vital powers of Kome had not been sapped, she would have driven back the Goths ; but it is not certain — it is not the fact — that Greece and Eome died merely because they had reached the end of their lives. No satisfactory proof that they could never by any possibility, or in any circumstances, have recovered themselves, had they been left to themselves, has ever been pre- sented, and is not likely ever to be presented. Then, where is the warrant for supposing that a nation has a certain definite vitality in it like an individual ? There is none. It is a mere figure of speech to talk of the birth of a nation, or of what a nation brings with it into the world at birth. A nation is to some extent born every day. It is continually being renewed. Every new man brings with it some addition, every new generation a vast addition, to the store of a nation's potential 574 BOOK II. GERMANY. vitality ; and the sources of intellectual and moral improve- ment remain open from age to age. It is a fallacy to attribute to a collective existence, whose parts are continually changed by substitution, what belongs to a single being in virtue of its parts being continuously developed by growth. And of all improbable causes of the decay of nations, the least probable, perhaps, is the alleged exhaustion by heroic, and wise, and pious men, of the life originally inherent in them. Great and good men bring life to nations, and deprive them of none. Nations die, in fact, not through the operation of any fatalistic law, but because they reject life. In their lowest state the appeal may be made to them, Why will ye die ? Lasaulx seeks to determine — and with this attempt he con- cludes his treatise — at what stage of life the most highly cul- tivated nations of Europe, and in particular Germany, are now standing ; but he comes to no definite conclusion. He sees in regard to speech, religion, social morality, and political life, manifold signs of increasing exhaustion and corruption, and yet indications that modern European humanity is substantially sound at the core, while Christianity suggests and sustains the highest hopes. There is nothing specially characteristic in this part of his teaching. 575 CHAPTER XIII. LAZAliUS, LOTZE, AND HERMANN. In France, at least for the last hundred years, political interests have exerted a stronger injEluence on the intellectual life of the nation than philosophical interests ; while in Germany, during the same period, the opposite has been the case. Hence a fact which must have obtruded itself on the mind of every reader of this work — the significant and characteristic fact — that while in France historical theory has been almost always the offshoot of political theory, in Germany it has almost always grown out of philosophical theory. In tracing the development of historical speculation in France, we find ourselves naturally led — we may almost say compelled — to associate nearly every historical system which comes before us with some one or other of the political parties which have in that country struggled for civil and social supremacy ; in tracing the development of historical speculation in Germany, we are as naturally constrained, on the other hand, to refer the succession of systems which present themselves for consideration to the succession of philosophical schools which have there claimed intellectual supremacy. I shall not at present inquire into the cause of the remarkable circumstance just mentioned, nor shall I even indicate how it explains, as it undoubtedly does explain, many of the distinctive differences between French and German historical philosophy ; I shall do both when I come to take a general survey of the course of historical speculation in its whole length and breadth. At present I desire it merely to be observed, that while almost every historical theory which has appeared in Germany has had its root in a philosophical system, all the philosophical systems 576 BOOK II. — GERMANY. of Germany liave not borne historical theories. With those which have not done so, I have, of course, no concern. It is only in so far as a general philosophy has included philosophy of history that I can treat of it in this work ; and only if it has included a general philosophy of history — an essentially devel- oped and complete historical system — that I can treat of it in this volume. I must therefore pass over sub silentio not only a vast number of most eminent philosophical thinkers, but en- tire philosophical schools. Thus I can here take no account of Baader and his followers. I cordially recognise the great ability and significance of Baader as a metaphysician, a moralist, and, above all, as a speculative theologian. I know nothing which would be so likely to quicken and invigorate our theology — which is in a dismally feeble and torpid state at present — as an earnest study of the Christian mystics, and particularly of Baader, the last great philosophical theosophist, and perhaps the greatest of all. If his professed followers be few, those whom he has influenced, from Schelling downwards, are many, and indeed comprehend nearly all the profounder theological thinkers of Germany during the last thirty years. We miss, however, in Baader's writings even an outline of what can with any propriety be called a philosophy or science of history. We find merely a number of affirmations and hints which might be utilised by a philosophy of history, or which might even possibly be so combined, developed, and applied as to contribute in a considerable degree towards the formation of a philosophy of history of a similar character to that which we owe to Krause ; but to do this would require great skill, and has not yet been attempted. When we come to discuss how historical science is related to theology, it will be necessary to examine some of the positions taken up by Baader; but at present — when dealing only with general systems — we pass him by. It is not otherwise as regards Schopenhauer and his followers. There is no more significant phenomenon in the history of recent German philosophy than the rapid spread of this school during the last few years, and the popularity of the writings which have issued from it ; but a philosophy of history it has not yet pro- LAZARUS, LOTZE, AND HERMANN. 577 duced, and is not likely, perhaps, to produce. In two respects only has Schopenhauer claims to a place in the present work. He has argued that there can be no such thing as a science of history, because the phenomena of history can only be co- ordinated, not subordinated — are so essentially individual that they cannot be generalised and classified — and are so variable and yet monotonous that there is no permanent truth or real instruction in them,^ These bold negations require, of course, to be refuted. As Schopenhauer, however, is by no means the only person who has denied the possibility of a science of history — as his reasoning is even by no means the most plausible which has been employed to prove that there can be none — I must discuss the general problem itself, and state and examine his arguments along with those of others. He interests us much more by his general view of the character of human life and history — by his gloomy and cynical pessinusm. Pessimism is no new thought, but one almost as old as reflection, and which has in no age failed to find some measure and form of expres- sion ; but Schopenhauer was the first speculative thinker, at least in Europe, to develop it into a distinctly philosophic shape, and to maintain, vi^ith the clearest consciousness of what he was doing and the most thorough conviction, that it was the true and adequate theory of man's course and destiny. His absolute pessimism, which daringly pronounced the world the worst pos- sible, has been toned down by Von Hartmann to what may, for distinction's sake, be called a relative pessimism, which does not refuse to admit that the world is the best possible, while still holding that it is worse than would have been none at all, — which recognises progress and improvement in history, yet regards it as on the whole an essentially irrational process, the successive epochs of which are so many stadia of illusion, — which rejects the doctrine that pleasure is a merely negative state, and that pain alone is positive, being the necessary ground and char- acteristic of life, yet fully endorses the words of Sophocles, — " Mt) <(>vvai rhv airavra vikS \6yov to S', eiri] iKatfj--»;^.'- 6 , /u.V THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 3 1205 00062 9145 Jpl; 0002715514