education of the human race. How do we educate the boy? We first
endeavour to awaken his sense--then we cultivate his soul, or his moral
faculties; while at the same time, we aid the gradual unfolding of his
understanding. It is so with the divine education of mankind. In the
primitive revelation, indeed, the first man received the highest
intellectual illumination; an illumination which, though at his fall it
was obscured by sin, still shines with a shorn splendour through all the
history and traditions of the primeval world. When, however, by the
abuse he had made of his great intellectual powers, man was successively
deprived of all those high gifts with which he had been originally
endowed; when by the errors of idolatry, he had lapsed into a state of
intellectual infancy; then it was necessary that his sense should first
be awakened to divine things; and this was accomplished in the Mosaic
revelation. But this revelation was only preparatory to another,
destined to renovate the soul of humanity, and gradually illumine its
intelligence. This regeneration of the moral faculties of man was
achieved immediately and directly by Christianity; for, without this
moral regeneration, any sudden illumination of the intellect would have
been hurtful rather than beneficial to mankind. Under the benign
influence of Christianity, the scientific enlightenment of the human
mind has been wisely progressive; but it seems reserved for the last
glorious ages of the triumphant church to witness the full meridian
splendour of human intelligence. Then the great scheme of creation will
be fulfilled; and the intellectual light, which played around the
cradle, will brighten the last age, of humanity.
Let us now proceed to consider Nature in herself, and in her relations
to God, to the spiritual intelligences, and to man.
Nature was originally the beautiful, the faultless work of the
Almighty's hand. But the rebel angel in his fall brought disorder and
death into all material creation. Hence arose that chaos, which the
breath of creative Power only could remove. Thus, according to the
author, a wide interval occurs between the first and second verse of
Genesis. "In the beginning," says the inspired historian, "God made
heaven and earth," that is, as the Nicene Creed explains it, the visible
and invisible world. "And the earth was without form, and void: and
darkness was upon the face of the deep." But that void--that
darkness--that chaos proceeded not from the luminous hand of an all-wise
and all perfect Maker--but from the disturbing influence of that fiend
whom Holy Writ hath called, with such unfathomable depth, the "murderer
from the beginning." Hence Schlegel terms him in his sublime language,
"the author or original of death"--(Erfinder des Todes).
On a subject of such vast importance, I presume not to offer an opinion:
but I must merely content myself with the humble task of analysis. It
may be proper to observe, however, that this opinion of Schlegel's would
seem, from a passage in the work of the great Catholic writer--Molitor,
to be consonant with the tradition of the ancient synagogue. "The
Cabala," says he, "was divided into two parts--the theoretical and the
practical. The former was composed of the patriarchal traditions on the
holy mystery of God, and the divine persons; on the spiritual creation,
and the fall of the angels; _on the origin of the chaos of matter, and
the renovation of the world in the six days of creation_; on the
creation of man, his fall, and the divine ways conducive to his
restoration."[27]
"Death," says Schlegel, "came by sin into the world. As by the fall of
the first man, who was not created for death, nor originally designed
for death, death was transmitted to the whole human race; so by the
preceding fall of him, who was the first and most glorious of all
created Spirits, death came into the universe, that is, the eternal
death, whose fire is inextinguishable. Hence it is said: 'Darkness was
upon the face of the deep, and the earth was without form, and void'--as
the mere tomb-stone of that eternal death; 'but the Spirit of God moved
over the waters, and therein lay the first vital germ of the new
creation.'"[28]
But if such is the origin of Nature, how is its existence perpetuated,
and what will be its final destiny?
Nature, as was said above, is a book of God's revelation, written within
and without. The outer part of this sacred volume attests the supreme
power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator in characters too clear and
luminous to be unperceived or misread by the dullest or the most
vitiated eye. The inner pages of this book comprise a still more
glorious revelation of God--but their language is more mysterious, and
much which they contain seems to have been wisely withheld, or rather
withdrawn from the knowledge of mankind. It was this acquaintance with
the internal secrets of Nature, derived partly from revelation, and
partly from intuition, which gave the men of the primitive, and
especially the ante-diluvian, world such a vast superiority over all the
succeeding generations of mankind. But it was the abuse of that
knowledge, also, which brought about in the primeval world a Satanic
delusion, and a gigantic moral and intellectual corruption, of which we
can now scarcely form the remotest idea. But this key to the inward
science of Nature, which was taken away from a corrupt world, that had
so grossly abused it, seems now about to be restored to man, renovated
as his soul and intelligence have been by a long Christian education.
The physical researches of the last fifty years, especially in Germany,
lead the enquirer more and more to the knowledge of this important
truth, stamped on all the pages of ancient tradition, and never effaced
from the recollection of mankind, to wit, the action of spiritual
intelligences on the material world. The nature of this action is
briefly adverted to in the following passage (among many others to the
same purport), in the Philosophy of Life. "It is especially of
importance," says the author, "for the understanding of the general
system of Nature, to observe how the modern chemistry mostly dissolves
and decomposes all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different
forms of elements of air, and thereby has taken away from Nature the
appearance of rigidity and petrifaction. There are every where living
elemental powers hidden and shut up under this appearance of rigidity.
The quantity of water in the air is so great that it would suffice for
more than one deluge; a similar inundation of light would occur, if all
the light latent in darkness were at once set free; and all things would
be consumed by fire, if that element in the quantity in which it exists,
were suddenly let loose. The salutary bonds, by which these elemental
powers are held in due equilibrium, one bound by the other, and kept
within its prescribed limits, I will not now make a matter of
investigation; nor now examine the question, whether _these bonds be not
perhaps of a higher kind than naturalists commonly suppose_."
The great apostle of the Gentiles represents all Nature as sighing for
her deliverance from the bondage of death. "Every creature groaneth and
travaileth in pain, even now." Some chapters in the Philosophy of life
may be considered as one luminous commentary on that text. My limits
will permit me to cite but one passage.
"That planetary world of sense, and the soul of the earth imprisoned
therein, is only apparently dead. Nature only sleeps, and may again be
awakened: and sleep is, if not the essence, yet a characteristic mark of
Nature. Every thing in Nature hath this quality of sleep; not the
animals merely, but the plants also sleep; and in the course of the
seasons on the surface of the globe, there is a constant alternation
between waking and slumber."... "That soul, he continues, which
slumbers under the prodigious tomb-stone of outward nature--a soul,
which is not alien, but half akin to us--is divided between the
troubled, painful reminiscence of eternal death, in which it
originated--and the bright flowers of celestial Hope, which grow on the
borders of that dark abyss. For this earthly Nature, as Holy Writ saith,
is indeed subjected to nothingness--yet without its will, and without
its fault: so it looks forward in expectation of Him who hath so
subjected it--it looks forward in the hope that it may one day be
free--one day have a share in the general resurrection and consummate
revelation of God's glory; and for this last great day of future
creation Nature anxiously sighs, and yearns from her inmost soul."[29]
I will now wind up this analysis with the following passage, in which
the distinctive peculiarities of the different parts of ontology are
shortly stated: "The distinctive characteristic of nature is sleep, or
the struggle between life and death; the distinctive characteristic of
man is imagination (for reason is a more negative faculty); the
distinctive characteristic of the intelligences superior to man is
restless, eternal activity, implanted in the very constitution of their
being; and the distinctive characteristic of the Deity, in relation to
his creatures, is infinite condescension."
Such is a brief summary of some of the principal observations in the
psychological and ontological parts of the Philosophy of Life. And in
this summary it has been my intention not so much to give an analysis of
those parts, as to convey to the reader a clue for the better
understanding of many passages in the work I have translated. The
remaining parts of the "Philosophy of Life" are devoted to a variety of
ethical, political, and aesthetic reflections, which it is unnecessary to
enter into here.
Scarce had Germany recovered from the enthusiasm which this work, (the
Philosophy of Life) excited; when its illustrious author delivered, in
the year 1828, the following course of Lectures on the "_Philosophy of
History_," which are now presented to the reader in an English garb.
Defective as may be the medium through which the English reader becomes
acquainted with this work, he will be enabled to form on it a more
impartial, as well as more enlightened, judgment than any the translator
could pronounce; and he will, therefore, only venture to observe that it
has been considered in every respect worthy of its author's high
reputation.
Towards the close of the year 1828, Schlegel repaired to Dresden; and
that city, where the torch of his early enthusiasm had been first
kindled, was now to witness its final extinction. He delivered in this
city, before a numerous and distinguished auditory, nine lectures on the
"Philosophy of Language," (Philosophie der Sprache), wherein he
developed and expanded those philosophical views already laid down in
his "Philosophy of Life." This work is even more metaphysical than the
one last named--with untiring wing, the author here sustains his flight
through the sublimest regions of philosophy. This production displays at
times a gigantic vastness of conception which almost appals--we might
almost say, that this mighty intelligence had in his ardent aspirations
after Immortality, burst his earthly fetters--or that Divine Providence,
judging a degenerate world unworthy of hearing such sublime accents, had
called him to continue his hymn in eternity. On Sunday, the 11th of
January, 1829, he was, between ten and eleven o'clock at night,
preparing a lecture, which he was to deliver on the following Wednesday.
He had in his former lectures spoken of Time and Eternity--he had called
Time a distraction of Eternity--he had adverted to those ecstacies of
great Saints, which he called transitions to Eternity. He was now in
this lecture discoursing of the different degrees of knowledge
attainable by man--of the perception--the notion--and the idea. He began
a sentence with these remarkable words:--"Das ganz vollendete und
vollkommne verstehen selbst aber"--"But the consummate and the perfect
knowledge"--when the hand of sickness arrested his pen. That consummate
and perfect knowledge he himself was now destined to attain in another
and a better world; for, at one o'clock on the same night, he breathed
out his pure and harmonious soul to heaven.
His death, though sudden, was not unprovided. He had ever lived up to
his faith--through his writings there runs an under-current of calm,
unostentatious piety; and I know no writer more deeply impressed with a
sense of the loving agency of Providence. A gentleman, well acquainted
with some of his most intimate friends, has assured me that, for some
time prior to his death, he had prosecuted his devotional exercises with
more than ordinary fervour; and that on the morning of that Sunday on
which his last illness seized him, he had been united to his Lord in the
Holy Communion--a presage and an earnest, let us hope, of that intimate
union he was destined to enjoy in the long and cloudless day of
Eternity!
The melancholy news of his death, when conveyed to his distinguished
friend--Adam Mueller, then at Vienna, gave such a violent shock to his
feelings, that it brought on a stroke of apoplexy, which terminated his
existence. A chain of the most exalted sympathies had united those souls
in life--what marvel if the electric stroke, which prostrated the one
should have laid low the other!
Frederick Schlegel married early in life the daughter of the celebrated
Jewish philosopher Mendelsohn. This lady followed her husband in his
change of religion. Mrs. Schlegel is one of the most intellectual women
in Germany--she is advantageously known to the literary world by her
German translation of Madame de Stael's Corinne; and report has ascribed
to her elegant pen several of the poems in her husband's collection.[30]
In conclusion, I will endeavour to recapitulate the obligations which
literature and science owe to the great man, whose literary biography I
have attempted to sketch.
To have, in common with his illustrious brother, established a system of
broad, comprehensive, synthetic criticism, by which the principles of
ancient and modern art were unfolded to view--by which we were
introduced into the intellectual laboratories of genius, made to assist
at the birth of her mighty conceptions, and by whose plastic touch the
great works of ancient and modern poetry were in a manner created
anew:--to have unlocked the fountains of the old Germanic minstrelsy,
and refreshed the poetry of his age with a new stream of fictions:--to
have been among the first to do for philology what the Stagyrite had
done for natural history; by classifying languages not according to
their outward form, but their internal organization, not according to a
specious, though often delusive, etymology, but according to grammatical
structure: to have deciphered the mysterious wisdom of old days, and
with admirable tact to have caught the spirit of the primitive world, as
disclosed in its sagas and its symbols, its poetry and its philosophy:
next to have evoked from the dust the better philosophy of ancient
Greece, and presented her venerable form to the renewed love and respect
of mankind, partly by an admirable translation of portions of Plato,[31]
partly by luminous critiques, and partly again by the example of his own
philosophy, in form as well as spirit so eminently Platonic: then, in
the field of modern history, to have traced the rise and progress of the
European states, the genius of their civil and political institutions,
the causes and effects of their moral and social revolutions, with an
extent of learning, a spirit of impartiality, and a depth and
comprehensiveness of understanding, unsurpassed by preceding writers,
and in his own age rivalled only by his illustrious countryman--Goerres:
lastly, to have put the crowning glory to a life so full of glorious
achievement by his last philosophical works, where a strong and broad
light is thrown upon the mysteries of psychology, where the most
important questions of ontology are treated with equal boldness and
sublimity of thought, and magnificence of fancy, while even on physics
many bright hints are thrown out, which a deeper science will know one
day how to turn to account: such are the the services which this
illustrious man has rendered to the cause of literature and philosophy.
Living in an age which is only an epoch of momentous transition from the
adolescence to the virility of the human mind, he was evidently,
together with some other chosen spirits of his time, the precursor of an
era of Christian philosophy, when, to use the language of a young, but
very distinguished French writer,[32] "the sterile dust of futile
abstractions will be swept away, and the antique faith will appear
crowned with all the rays of science." "Already," continues the writer
just quoted, "even infidel science, astonished at her own discoveries,
which disconcert alike ideology and materialism, begins to suspect
"There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in that philosophy."[33]
THE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the
restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to
science.
Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully
understood and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is
attained.
To point out historically in reference to the whole human race, and in
the outward conduct and experience of life, the progress of this
restoration in the various periods of the world, constitutes the object
of the Philosophy of History.
In this way, we shall clearly see how, in the first ages of the world,
the original word of Divine revelation formed the firm central point of
faith for the future re-union of the dispersed race of man; how later,
amid the various power, intellectual as well as political, which in the
middle period of the world, all-ruling nations exerted on their times
according to the measure allotted to them, it was alone the power of
eternal love in the Christian religion which truly emancipated and
redeemed mankind: and how, lastly, the pure light of this Divine truth,
universally diffused through the world, and through all science--the
term of all Christian hope, and Divine promise, whose fulfilment is
reserved for the last period of consummation--crowns in conclusion the
progress of this restoration.
Why the progress of this restoration in human history, according to the
word, the power, and the light of God, as well as the struggle against
all that was opposed to this Divine principle in humanity, can be
clearly described and pointed out only by a vivid sketch of the
different nations, and particular periods of the world; I have alleged
the reasons in various passages of the present work. With this view, I
have, for the purpose of my present undertaking, availed myself, as far
as these discoveries lay within my reach, of the rich acquisitions which
the recent historical researches of the last ten years have furnished
for the better understanding of the primitive world, its spirit, its
languages, and its monuments. Besides the well-known names mentioned
with gratitude in the text, of Champollion, Abel Remusat, Colebrooke, my
brother, Augustus William Von Schlegel, the two Barons Humboldt; and
for what relates to natural history, G. H. Schubert; I have to name with
the utmost commendation for the section on China, Windischmann's
Philosophy; and for what relates to the Hebrew Traditions, drawn from
the esoteric doctrines and other Jewish sources of information, which
are here most copiously used, I have been much indebted to a very
valuable work which appeared at Frankfort, 1827, entitled "The
Philosophy of Tradition," and which reflects the highest honour on its
anonymous author.[34] To these I might add the names of Niebuhr, and
Raumer; but in the later periods of history, we are not so much
concerned about new researches on certain special points as about a
right comparison of things already known, and a just conception of the
whole. In the Philosophy of History, historical events can and ought to
be not so much matter of discussion, as matter for example and
illustration; and if on those points, where the researches of the
learned into antiquity are as yet incomplete, any historical particulars
should, in despite of my utmost diligence, have been imperfectly
conceived or represented, yet the main result, I trust, will in no case
be thereby materially impaired.
The following sketch of the subject will shew the order of the Lectures,
and give a general insight into the plan of the work. The first two
Lectures embrace, along with the Introduction, the question of man's
relation towards the earth, the division of mankind into several
nations, and the two-fold condition of humanity in the primitive world.
The subjects discussed in the seven succeeding Lectures are as
follows:--the antiquity of China, and the general system of her
empire--the mental culture, moral and political institutions, and
philosophy of the Hindoos--the science and corruption of Egypt--the
selection of the Hebrew people for the maintenance of Divine revelation
in its purity--the destinies and special guidance of that nation--next
an account of those nations of classical antiquity, to whom were
assigned a mighty historical power, and a paramount influence over the
world--such as the Persians, with their Nature-worship, their manners,
and their conquests--the Greeks, with the spirit of their science, and
dominion--and the Romans, together with the universal empire which they
were the first to establish in Europe. The next five Lectures treat of
Christianity, its consolidation and wider diffusion throughout the
world--of the emigration of the German tribes, and its consequences--and
of the Saracenic empire in the brilliant age of the first Caliphs. Then
follows an account of the various epochs and the various stages of the
progress which the modern European nations have made in science and
civil polity, according to their use and application of the light of
truth vouchsafed to them. So the subjects here treated are--the
establishment of a Christian imperial dignity in the old German
empire--the great schism of the West, and the struggles of the middle
age and the period of the Crusades, down to the discovery of the New
World, and the new awakening of science. The three following Lectures
are devoted to the Religious Wars, the period of Illuminism, and the
time of the French Revolution.
The eighteenth and concluding Lecture turns on the prevailing spirit of
the age, and on the universal regeneration of society.
We have yet to make the following observations with respect to this
undertaking, in which we have attempted to lay the foundations of a new
general Philosophy.
The first awakening and excitement of human consciousness to the true
perception and knowledge of truth has been already unfolded in my work
on "the Philosophy of Life."
To point out now the progressive restoration in humanity of the effaced
image of God, according to the gradation of grace in the various periods
of the world, from the revelation of the beginning, down to the middle
revelation of redemption and love, and from the latter to the last
consummation, is the object of this Philosophy of History.
A third work, treating of the science of thought in the department of
faith and nature, will with more immediate reference to the Philosophy
of Language, comprehend the complete restoration of consciousness,
according to the triple divine principle.
It is my wish that this work should as soon as circumstances will
permit, speedily follow the two works "The Philosophy of Life," and "The
Philosophy of History," now presented to the Public.
_Vienna, Sept. 6th, 1828._
CONTENTS
OF VOL. I.
Memoir of the Literary Life of Frederick Von Schlegel. iii
Author's Preface. lxxix
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTION.
LECTURE II.
On the dispute in primitive history, and on the division of
the human race. 40
LECTURE III.
Of the Constitution of the Chinese Empire.--The moral
and political condition of China.--The character of Chinese
intellect and Chinese science. 86
LECTURE IV.
Of the Institutions of the Indians.--The Brahminical caste,
and the hereditary priesthood.--Of the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls, considered as the basis of Indian
life, and of Indian philosophy. 126
LECTURE V.
A comparative view of the intellectual character of the
four principal nations in the primitive world--the Indians,
the Chinese, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews;
next of the peculiar spirit and political relations of the
ancient Persians. 167
LECTURE VI.
Of the Hindoo Philosophy.--Dissertation on Languages.--Of
the peculiar political Constitution and Theocratic Government
of the Hebrews.--Of the Mosaic Genealogy of
Nations. 202
LECTURE VII.
General considerations upon the nature of man, regarded
in a historical point of view, and on the two-fold view
of history.--Of the ancient Pagan Mysteries.--Of the
universal Empire of Persia. 245
LECTURE VIII.
Variety of Grecian life and intellect.--State of education and of
the fine arts among the Greeks.--The origin of their philosophy and
natural science.--Their political degeneracy. 281
LECTURE IX.