3. History should be a portraiture, more or less extended, of the
evolution of the human species.
This is claimed to be the "scientific" view of history. It was tersely
expressed by Alexander von Humboldt in the phrase: "The history of the
world is the mere expression of a predetermined, that is, fixed,
evolution."[6-3]
It is that advocated by Auguste Comte, Draper and Spencer, and a few
years ago Prof. Gerland, of Strasburg, formulated its basic maxim in
these words: "Man has developed from the brute through the action of
purely mechanical, therefore fixed, laws."[7-1]
The scientist of to-day who hesitates to subscribe to these maxims is
liable to be regarded as of doubtful learning or of debilitated
intellect. I acknowledge that I am one such, and believe that I can show
sound reasons for denying the assumption on which this view is based.
It appears to me just as teleologic and divinatory as those I have
previously named. It assumes Evolution as a law of the universe, whereas
in natural science it is only a limited generalization, inapplicable to
most series of natural events, and therefore of uncertain continuance in
any series. The optimism which it inculcates is insecure and belongs to
deductive, not inductive, reasoning. The mechanical theory on which it
is based lacks proof, and is, I maintain, insufficient to explain
motive, and, therefore, historic occurrences. The assumption that
history is the record of a necessary and uninterrupted evolution,
progressing under ironclad mechanical laws, is a preconceived theory as
detrimental to clear vision as are the preoccupations of the theologian
or the political partisan.
Any definition of evolution which carries with it the justification of
optimism is as erroneous in history, as it would be in biology to assert
that all variations are beneficial. There is no more certainty that the
human species will improve under the operation of physical laws than
that any individual will; there is far more evidence that it will not,
as every species of the older geologic ages has succumbed to those laws,
usually without leaving a representative.
I am aware that I am here in opposition to the popular as well as the
scientific view. No commonplace is better received than that, "Eternal
progress is the law of nature;" though by what process eternal laws are
discovered is imperfectly explained.
Applied to history, a favorite dream of some of the most recent teachers
is that the life of the species runs the same course as that of one of
its members. Lord Acton, of Oxford, in a late lecture states that: "The
development of society is like that of individual;"[8-1] and Prof.
Fellows, of the University of Chicago, advances the same opinion in the
words, "Humanity as a whole developes[TN-2] like a child."[8-2]
The error of this view was clearly pointed out some years ago by Dr.
Tobler.[8-3] There has been no growth of humanity at large at all
comparable to that of the individual. There are tribes to-day in the
full stone age, and others in all stages of culture above it. The
horizons of progress have been as local as those of geography. No
solidarity of advancement exists in the species as a whole. Epochs and
stadia of culture vary with race and climate. The much talked of "law of
continuity" does not hold good either in national or intellectual
growth.
Such are the criticisms which may be urged against the historical
methods now in vogue. What, you will ask, is offered in their stead?
That which I offer is the view of the ethnologist. It is not so
ambitious as some I have named. It does not deal in eternal laws, nor
divine the distant future. The ethnologist does not profess to have been
admitted into the counsels of the Almighty, nor to have caught in his
grasp the secret purposes of the Universe. He seeks the sufficient
reason for known facts, and is content with applying the knowledge he
gains to present action.
Before stating the view of the ethnologist, I must briefly describe what
the science of Ethnology is. You will see at once how closely it is
allied to history, and that the explanation of the one almost carries
with it the prescription for the other.
It begins with the acknowledged maxim that man is by nature a gregarious
animal, a _zoon politikon_, as Aristotle called him, living in society,
and owing to society all those traits which it is the business of
history, as distinguished from biology, to study.
From this standpoint, all that the man is he owes to others; and what
the others are, they owe, in part, to him. Together, they make up the
social unit, at first the family or clan, itself becoming part of a
larger unit, a tribe, nation or people. The typical folk, or _ethnos_,
is a social unit, the members of which are bound together by certain
traits common to all or most, which impart to them a prevailing
character, an organic unity, specific peculiarities and general
tendencies.
You may inquire what these traits are to which I refer as making up
ethnic character. The answer cannot be so precise as you would like. We
are dealing with a natural phenomenon, and Nature, as Goethe once
remarked, never makes groups, but only individuals. The group is a
subjective category of our own minds. It is, nevertheless,
psychologically real, and capable of definition.
The _Ethnos_ must be defined, like a species of natural history, by a
rehearsal of a series of its characteristics, not by one alone. The
members of this series are numerous, and by no means of equal
importance; I shall mention the most prominent of them, and in the order
in which I believe they should be ranked for influence on national
character.
First, I should rank Language. Not only is it the medium of intelligible
intercourse, of thought-tranference,[TN-3] but thought itself is
powerfully aided or impeded by the modes of its expression in sound. As
"spoken language," in poetry and oratory, its might is recognized on all
hands; while in "written language," as literature, it works silently but
with incalculable effect on the character of a people.[10-1]
Next to this I should place Government, understanding this word in its
widest sense, as embracing the terms on which man agrees to live with
his fellow man and with woman, family, therefore, as well as society
ties. This includes the legal standards of duty, the rules of
relationship and descent, the rights of property and the customs of
commerce, the institutions of castes, classes and rulers, and those
international relations on which depend war and peace. I need not
enlarge on the profound impress which these exert on the traits of the
people.[10-2]
After these I should name Religion, though some brilliant scholars, such
as Schelling and Max Mueller,[10-3] have claimed for it the first place
as a formative influence on ethnic character. No one will deny the
prominent rank it holds in the earlier stages of human culture. It is
scarcely too much to say that most of the waking hours of the males of
some tribes are taken up with religious ceremonies. Religion is,
however, essentially "divinatory," that is, its chief end and aim is
toward the future, not the present, and therefore the impress it leaves
on national character is far less permanent, much more ephemeral, than
either government or language. This is constantly seen in daily life.
Persons change their religion with facility, but adhere resolutely to
the laws which protect their property. The mighty empire of Rome secured
ethnic unity to a degree never since equalled in parallel circumstances,
and its plan was to tolerate all religions--as, indeed, do all
enlightened states to-day--but to insist on the adoption of the Roman
law, and, in official intercourse, the Latin language. I have not
forgotten the converse example of the Jews, which some attribute to
their religion; but the Romany, who have no religion worth mentioning,
have been just as tenacious of their traits under similar adverse
circumstances.
The Arts, those of Utility, such as pottery, building, agriculture and
the domestication of animals, and those of Pleasure, such as music,
painting and sculpture, must come in for a full share of the
ethnologist's attention. They represent, however, stadia of culture
rather than national character. They influence the latter materially and
are influenced by it, and different peoples have toward them widely
different endowments; but their action is generally indirect and
unequally distributed throughout the social unit.
These four fields, Language, Government, Religion and the Arts, are
those which the ethnologist explores when he would render himself
acquainted with a nation's character; and now a few words about the
methods of study he adopts, and the aims, near or remote, which he keeps
in view.
He first gathers his facts, from the best sources at his command, with
the closest sifting he can give them, so as to exclude errors of
observation or intentional bias. From the facts he aims to discover on
the above lines what are or were the regular characteristics of the
people or peoples he is studying. The ethnic differences so revealed are
to him what organic variations are to the biologist and morphologist;
they indicate evolution or retrogression, and show an advance toward
higher forms and wider powers, or toward increasing feebleness and
decay.
To understand them they must be studied in connection and causation.
Hence, the method of the ethnologist becomes that which in the natural
sciences is called the "developmental" method. It may be defined as the
historic method where history is lacking. The biologist explains the
present structure of an organ by tracing it back to simpler forms in
lower animals until he reaches the germ from which it began. The
ethnologist pursues the same course. He selects, let us say, a peculiar
institution, such as caste, and when he loses the traces of its origin
through failure of written records, he seeks for them in the survivals
of unwritten folk-lore, or in similar forms in primitive conditions of
culture.
Here is where Archaeology renders him most efficient aid. By means of it
he has been able to follow the trail of most of the arts and
institutions of life back to a period when they were so simple and
uncomplicated that they are quite transparent and intelligible. Later
changes are to be analyzed and explained by the same procedure.[12-1]
This is the whole of the ethnologic method. It is open and easy when the
facts are in our possession. There are no secret springs, no occult
forces, in the historic development of culture. Whatever seems hidden or
mysterious, is so only because our knowledge of the facts is imperfect.
No magic and no miracle has aided man in his long conflict with the
material forces around him. No ghost has come from the grave, no God
from on high, to help him in the bitter struggle. What he has won is his
own by the right of conquest, and he can apply to himself the words of
the poet:
"Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet,
Heilig gluehend Herz?" (_Goethe_).
Freed from fear we can now breathe easily, for we know that no _Deus ex
machina_ meddles with those serene and mighty forces whose adamantine
grasp encloses all the phenomena of nature and of life.
The ethnologist, however, has not completed his task when he has defined
an _ethnos_, and explained its traits by following them to their
sources. He has merely prepared himself for a more delicate and
difficult part of his undertaking.
It has been well said by one of the ablest ethnologists of this
generation, the late Dr. Post, of Bremen, that "The facts of ethnology
must ever be regarded as the expressions of the general consciousness of
Humanity."[13-1] The time has passed when real thinkers can be satisfied
with the doctrines of the positive philosophers, who insisted that
events and institutions must be explained solely from the phenomenal or
objective world, that is, by other events.
Sounder views prevail, both in ethnology and its history. "The history
of man," says a German writer, "is neither a divine revelation, nor a
process of nature; it is first and above all, the work of man;"[13-2] an
opinion reiterated by Prof. Flint in his work on the philosophy of
history in these words: "History is essentially the record of the work
and manifestation of _human nature_."[14-1] In both sciences it is the
essentially human which alone occupies us; it is the _life of man_.
Now men do not live in material things, but in mental states; and solely
as they affect these are the material things valuable or valueless.
Religions, arts, laws, historic events, all have but one standard of
appraisement, to wit, the degree to which they produce permanently
beneficial mental states in the individuals influenced by them. All must
agree to this, though they may differ widely as to what such a mental
state may be; whether one of pleasurable activity, or that of the
Buddhist hermit who sinks into a trance by staring at his navel, or that
of the Trappist monk whose occupations are the meditation of death and
digging his own grave.
The ethnologist must make up his own mind about this, and with utmost
care, for if his standard of merit and demerit is erroneous, his
results, however much he labors on them, will have no permanent value.
There are means, if he chooses to use them, which will aid him here.
He must endeavor to picture vividly to himself the mental condition
which gave rise to special arts and institutions, or which these evolved
in the people. He must ascertain whether they increased or diminished
the joy of living, or stimulated the thirst for knowledge and the love
of the true and the beautiful. He must cultivate the liveliness of
imagination which will enable him to transport himself into the epoch
and surroundings he is studying, and feel on himself, as it were, their
peculiar influences. More than all, chief of all, he must have a broad,
many-sided, tender sympathy with all things human, enabling him to
appreciate the emotions and arguments of all parties and all peoples.
Such complete comprehension and spiritual accord will not weaken, but
will strengthen his clear perception of those standards by which all
actions and institutions must ultimately be weighed and measured. There
are such standards, and the really learned ethnologist will be the last
to deny or overlook them.
The saying of Goethe that "The most unnatural action is yet natural," is
a noble suggestion of tolerance; but human judgment can scarcely go to
the length of Madame de Stael's opinion, when she claims that "To
understand all actions is to pardon all." We must brush away the
sophisms which insist that all standards are merely relative, and that
time and place alone decide on right and wrong. Were that so, not only
all morality, but all science and all knowledge were fluctuating as
sand. But it is not so. The principles of Reason, Truth, Justice and
Love have been, are, and ever will be the same. Time and place, race and
culture, make no difference. Whenever a country is engaged in the
diffusion of these immortal verities, whenever institutions are
calculated to foster and extend them, that country, those institutions,
take noble precedence over all others whose efforts are directed to
lower aims.[15-1]
Something else remains. When the ethnologist has acquired a competent
knowledge of his facts, and deduced from them a clear conception of the
mental states of the peoples he is studying, he has not finished his
labors. Institutions and arts in some degree reflect the mental
conditions of a people, in some degree bring them about; but the
underlying source of both is something still more immaterial and
intangible, yet more potent, to wit, Ideas and Ideals. These are the
primary impulses of conscious human endeavor, and it is vain to attempt
to understand ethnology or to write history without assigning their
consideration the first place in the narration.
I am anxious to avoid here any metaphysical obscurity. My assertion is,
that the chief impulses of nations and peoples are abstract ideas and
ideals, unreal and unrealizable; and that it is in pursuit of these that
the great as well as the small movements on the arena of national life
and on the stage of history have taken place.
You are doubtless aware that this is no new discovery of mine. Early in
this century Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote: "The last and highest duty of
the historian is to portray the effort of the Idea to attain realization
in fact;" and the most recent lecture on the philosophy of history which
I have read, that by Lord Acton, contains this maxim: "Ideas which in
religion and politics are truths, in history are living forces."
I do claim that it is timely for me to repeat these doctrines and to
urge them with vehemence, for they are generally repudiated by the
prevailing schools of ethnology and history in favor of the opinion that
objective, mechanical influences alone suffice to explain all the
phenomena of human life. This I pronounce an inadequate and an
unscientific opinion.
There is in living matter everywhere something which escapes the most
exhaustive investigation, some subtle center of impulse, which lies
beyond the domain of correlated energy, and which acts directively,
without increasing or diminishing the total of that energy. Also in the
transformations of organic forms, there are preparations and propulsions
which no known doctrine of the mechanical, natural causes can interpret.
We must accept the presence of the same powers, and in a greater
degree, in the life and the history of man.[17-1]
It may be objected that abstract ideas are far beyond the grasp of the
uncultivated intellect. The reply is, consciously to regard them as
abstract, may be; but they exist and act for all that. All sane people
think and talk according to certain abstract laws of grammar and logic;
and they act in similar unconsciousness of the abstractions which impel
them. Moreover, the Idea is usually clothed in a concrete Ideal, a
personification, which brings it home to the simplest mind. This was
long ago pointed out by the observant Machiavelli in his statement that
every reform of a government or religion is in the popular mind
personified as the effort of one individual.
In every nation or _ethnos_ there is a prevailing opinion as to what the
highest typical human being should be. This "Ideal of Humanity," as it
has been called, is more or less constantly and consciously pursued, and
becomes a spur to national action and to a considerable degree an
arbiter of national destiny. If the ideal is low and bestial, the course
of that nation is downward, self-destroying; if it is lofty and pure,
the energies of the people are directed toward the maintenance of those
principles which are elevating and preservative. These are not
mechanical forces, in any rational sense of the term; but they are
forces the potent directive and formative influence of which cannot be
denied and must not be underestimated.
Just in proportion as such ideas are numerous, clear and true in the
national mind, do their power augment and their domain extend; just so
much more quickly and firmly do they express themselves, in acts, forms
and institutions, and thus enable the nation to enrich, beautify and
strengthen its own existence. We have but to glance along the nations
of the world and to reflect on the outlines of their histories, to
perceive the correctness of the conclusion which Prof. Lazarus, perhaps
the most eminent analyst of ethnic character of this generation, reaches
in one of his essays: "A people which is not rich in ideas, is never
rich; one that is not strong in its thinking powers, is never
strong."[18-1]
I claim, therefore, that the facts of ethnology and the study of racial
psychology justify me in formulating this maxim for the guidance of the
historian: _The conscious and deliberate pursuit of ideal aims is the
highest causality in human history._
The historian who would fulfil his mission in its amplest sense must
trace his facts back to the ideas which gave them birth; he must
recognize and define these as the properties of specific peoples; and he
must estimate their worth by their tendency to national preservation or
national destruction.
This is the maxim, the axiom, if you please, which both the ethnologist
and the historian must bear ever present in mind if they would
comprehend the meaning of institutions or the significance of events.
They must be referred to, and explained by, the ideas which gave them
birth. As an American historian has tersely put it, "The facts relating
to successive phases of _human thought_ constitute History."[18-2]
I am aware that a strong school of modern philosophers will present the
objection that thought itself is but a necessary result of chemical and
mechanical laws, and therefore that it cannot be an independent cause.
Dr. Post has pointedly expressed this position in the words: "We do not
think; thinking goes on within us,"[19-1] just as other functions, such
as circulation and secretion, go on.
It is not possible for me at this time to enter into this branch of the
discussion. But I may ask your attention to the fact that one of the
highest authorities on the laws of natural science, the late George J.
Romanes, reached by the severest induction an exactly opposite opinion,
which he announced in these words: "The human mind is itself a causal
agent. Its motives are in large part matters of its own creation. * * *
Intelligent volition is a true cause of adjustive movement."[19-2]
For myself, after what I have endeavored to make an unbiased study of
both opinions, I subscribe unhesitatingly to the latter, and look upon
Mind not only as a potent but as an independent cause of motion in the
natural world, of action in the individual life, and, therefore, of
events in the history of the species.
Confining ourselves to ethnology and history, the causative idea, as I
have said, makes itself felt through ethnic ideals. These are
influential in proportion as they are vividly realized by the national
genius; and elevating in proportion as they partake of those final
truths already referred to, which are all merely forms of expression of
right reasoning. These ideals are the _idola fori_, which have sometimes
deluded, sometimes glorified, those who believed in them.