strict law, and the law of equity in its application to
History, and according to the idea of divine justice.--Commencement
of the Christian dispensation. 318
ERRATUM.
At the 7th line from the top of page xxxviii (Life of Schlegel)
instead of "put forth by party spirit," read "put forth by ignorance
or party spirit."
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTION.
"And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep; but the Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters." GEN. i. 2.
By philosophy of history must not be understood a series of remarks or
ideas upon history, formed according to any concerted system, or train
of arbitrary hypotheses attached to facts. History cannot be separated
from facts, and depends entirely on reality; and thus the Philosophy of
history, as it is the spirit or idea of history, must be deduced from
real historical events, from the faithful record and lively narration of
facts--it must be the pure emanation of the great whole--the one
connected whole of history, and for the right understanding of this
connexion a clear arrangement is an essential condition and an important
aid. For although this great edifice of universal history, where the
conclusion at least is still wanting, is in this respect incomplete, and
appears but a mighty fragment of which even particular parts are less
known to us than others;--yet is this edifice sufficiently advanced, and
many of its great wings and members are sufficiently unfolded to our
view, to enable us, by a lucid arrangement of the different periods of
history, to gain a clear insight into the general plan of the whole.
It is thus my intention to render as intelligible as I possibly can the
general results and the connection of all the past transactions in the
history of the human race; to form a true judgment on the particular
portions or sections of history, according to their intrinsic nature and
real value in reference to the general progress of mankind, carefully
distinguishing what was injurious, what advantageous, and what
indifferent; and thereby, as far as is possible to the limited
perceptions of man, to comprehend in some degree that mighty whole. This
perception--this comprehension--this right discernment of the great
events and general results of universal history, is what might be termed
a science of history; and I would have here preferred that term, were it
not liable to much misconception, and might have been understood as
referring more to special and learned inquiries, than the other name I
have adopted to denote the nature of the present work.
If we would seize and comprehend the general outline of history, we must
keep our eye steadily upon it; and must not suffer our attention to be
confused by details, or drawn off by the objects immediately surrounding
us. Judging from the feelings of the present, nothing so nearly concerns
our interests as the matter of peace or war; and this is natural, as in
a practical point of view they are both affairs of the highest moment;
while the courageous and successful conduct of the one insures the
highest degree of glory, and the solid establishment and lasting
maintenance of the other may be considered as the greatest problem of
political art and human wisdom. But it is otherwise in universal
history, when this is conceived in a comprehensive and enlarged spirit.
Then the remotest Past, the highest antiquity, is as much entitled to
our attention as the passing events of the day, or the nearest concerns
of our own time.
When a war, indeed, carried on more than two thousand years ago, in
which the belligerent parties have long since ceased to exist, when
every thing has been since changed--when a long series of historical
catastrophes has intervened between that period and our own; when such a
warfare, offering as it does but at best a remote analogy to the
circumstances of nearer times, and consequently possessing no immediate
interest, has been investigated by the mighty intellect of a Thucydides,
pourtrayed by him in the highest style of eloquence, and unfolded to our
view with the most consummate knowledge of mankind, of public life, and
of the most intimate relations of Government; such a warfare then
retains a permanent interest, and is a lasting source of instruction. We
love to dive into the minutest details of an event so widely removed
from us--and such a study is to be regarded and prized as highly useful,
were it only as an exercise of historical reflection, and a school of
political science. This remark will equally hold good, when the internal
feuds of a less powerful state have been analyzed and laid open by the
acute perspicacity and delicate discrimination of a Machiavelli. And
still more, perhaps, when a great system of pacification, like that
which Augustus gave, or promised to give to the whole civilized world,
and established for a certain period at least, has been fathomed by the
searching eye of a Tacitus, and by his masterly hand delineated in its
ulterior progress and remoter effects; shewing, as he does, how that
surface, apparently so calm, concealed numberless sources of
disquiet--an abyss of crime and destruction--how that evil principle in
the degenerate government of Rome became more and more apparent, and,
under a succession of wicked rulers, broke out into paroxysms more and
more fearful.
As a school of political science and historical reflection, the study of
these and similar classical historical works is of inestimable
advantage. But independently of this, and considered merely in
themselves, all those countless battles--those endless, and even, for
the greater part, useless wars, of which the long succession fills up
for so many thousand years the annals of all nations, are but little
atoms compared with the great whole of human destiny. The same, with a
slight distinction, will hold good of so many celebrated treaties of
peace in past ages, when these have lost all interest for real life and
the present order of things;--treaties, which though brought about by
great labour, and upheld by consummate art, were yet internally
defective, and sooner or later, and often quickly enough, fell to pieces
and were destroyed.
From all these descriptions of ancient wars, and treaties of peace, no
longer applicable or of interest to the present world or present order
of things, historical philosophy can deduce but one, though by no means
unimportant, result. It is this--that the internal discord, innate in
man and in the human race, may easily and at every moment break out into
real and open strife--nay, that peace itself--that immutable object of
high political art, when regarded from this point of view, appears to be
nothing else than a war retarded or kept under by human dexterity; for
some secret disposition--some diseased political matter, is almost ever
at hand to call it into existence. In the same way as a scientific
physician regards the health of the body, or its right temperature, as a
happy equipoise--a middle line not easy to be observed between two
contending evils--we must ever expect in such an organic imperfection a
tendency to, or the seeds of, disease in one shape or another.
Political events form but one part, and not the whole, of human history.
A knowledge of details, however great and various it may be, constitutes
no science in the philosophic sense of the word, for it is in the right
and comprehensive conception of the whole that science consists.
As the greater part of the nine hundred millions of men on the whole
surface of the earth, according to the highest estimate of a hazardous
calculation, are born, live and die, without a history of them being
possible, or without their reckoning a fraction in the general
history--so that the extremely small number of those called historical
men, forms but a rare exception--so there are nations and countries,
which in a general comparative survey of nations, serve but as a mark or
evidence of some particular stage of civilization, without of themselves
holding any place in the general history of our species, or conducing to
the social progress of mankind, or possessing any weight or importance
in the scale of humanity.
There is a point of view, indeed, from which the matter appears under a
different aspect, and is really different. To the all-seeing eye of
Providence, every human life, however brief its duration, however
apparently insignificant, presents a point of internal development and
crisis, consequently a species of history, cognizable and visible to
that Eye only, and therefore not entirely without an object. But this
point of view belongs to another order of things, and is no longer
historical--it has reference to the immortal destinies of the human
soul, and the connection of the present life with another world
invisible to us. But our historical science is limited to the department
of man's present existence; and in our historical enquiries we must not
lose sight of this principle.
But the internal development of mind, so far as it is historical,
belongs as much as the external events of politics to the department of
human history, and must by no means be excluded from it. Among these
rare exceptions of historical men, must be named that ancient master of
human acuteness who was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and who
perhaps holds not an humbler or less important place in this exalted
sphere than the conqueror himself, although this philosopher, whose
genius embraced nature, the world and life, was by his own
contemporaries less honoured and celebrated than by a remote posterity.
Here in our western world, and long after the kingdoms founded by the
Macedonian conqueror had disappeared, and were forgotten, Aristotle for
many centuries reigned the absolute lord of the Christian schools, and
directed the march of human science and human speculation in the middle
age. Whether he were always rightly understood and studied in the right
way is another question, for here we are speaking of his overruling
influence and historical importance. Nay, in later times, he has
materially served the cause of the better natural philosophy founded on
experience, in which he himself accomplished things so extraordinary for
his age, and was originally, and for a long while, the guide and master.
The first fundamental rule of historical science and research, when by
these is sought a knowledge of the general destinies of mankind, is to
keep these and every object connected with them steadily in view,
without losing ourselves in the details of special enquiries and
particular facts, for the multitude and variety of these subjects is
absolutely boundless; and on the ocean of historical science the main
subject easily vanishes from the eye. In history, as in every branch of
mental culture, the first elementary school--instruction is not merely
an important, but an essential, condition to a higher and more
scientific knowledge. At first indeed it is merely a nomenclature of
celebrated personages and events--a sketch of the great historical eras,
divided according to chronological dates, or a geographical plan--which
must be impressed on the memory, and which serves as a basis preparatory
to that more vivid and comprehensive knowledge to be obtained in riper
years. Thus this first knowledge stored up in the memory, and necessary
for methodizing and arranging the mass of historical learning to be
afterwards acquired, is more a preparation for the study of history,
than the real science of history itself. In the higher grades of
academic instruction, the lessons on history must vary with each one's
calling and pursuits--one course of historical reading is necessary for
the Theologian, another for the lawyer or civilian. To the physician,
and in general to the naturalist, natural history, and what in the
history of man is most akin to that science, will ever be the most
captivating. And the philologist will find a boundless field for enquiry
in special antiquarian researches, particularly now when, in addition to
classical learning and the more common oriental tongues, the languages
and historical antiquities of the remoter nations of Asia have attracted
the attention of European scholars, and the original sources are
becoming every day more accessible.
Even the sphere of modern political history, from which for the
practical business of government so much is to be learned, will be found
equally extensive--when, besides the modern classical works, we look to
the countless multitude of private memoirs and other historical and
political writings; especially at a time and in a world where even
periodical publications and newspapers have become a power and an art or
a science, and society itself falls more and more under the sway of
journalism. If in this department of politics and statistics, we add
also the number of unprinted documents, we shall find that the archives
of many a state would alone furnish occupation for more than a man's
life.
In all such special departments of historical science, the great whole
of history is made subordinate to some secondary object; and this cannot
be otherwise. It may even be advantageous for the profounder knowledge
and more skilful exposition of universal history that we should
seriously investigate some particular branch of history; and, in a
science so various, select some special subject for more minute enquiry;
but this can never be done without some decided predilection--some
almost party bias towards the subject. Yet such special enquiries are
only preparatory or auxiliary to the general science or philosophy of
history--but not that science itself. Thus at the outset of my literary
career, I devoted a considerable time to a very minute study of the
Greeks--[35] and subsequently I applied myself to the Hindoo language
and philosophy, at that time more difficult of access than at the
present day.[36] In the struggles of life, and amid the public dangers
of our times, I was alive to a patriotic feeling for the history of my
own country, and recent times; and, perhaps, there are some among my
present hearers who remember the historical lectures I delivered in this
spirit eighteen years ago in this imperial city.[37] It is now my wish,
and the object I propose to myself, to discard all antiquarian, oriental
or European predilections for particular branches of history, and to
unfold to view, and render completely clear and intelligible, the great
edifice of universal history in all its parts, members and degrees.
The first fundamental rule here laid down, with respect to the mode of
treating general history--namely to keep the attention fixed on the main
subject, and not to let it be distracted or dissipated by a number of
minute details--concerned more the method of historical science. The
second rule regards the subject and purport of history, and stands in
more immediate connexion with the first portion of this work--that
relating to primitive history. This second fundamental rule of
historical science may be thus simply expressed:--we should not wish to
explain every thing. Historical tradition must never be abandoned in the
philosophy of history--otherwise we lose all firm ground and footing.
But historical tradition, ever so accurately conceived and carefully
sifted, doth not always, especially in the early and primitive ages,
bring with it a full and demonstrative certainty. In such cases, we have
nothing to do but to record, as it is given, the best and safest
testimony which tradition, so far as we have it, can afford; supposing
even that some things in that testimony appear strange, obscure and even
enigmatical; and perhaps a comparison with some other part of historical
science--or, if I may so speak, stream of tradition, will unexpectedly
lead to the solution of the difficulty. Extremely hazardous is the
desire to explain every thing, and to supply whatever appears a gap in
history--for in this propensity lies the first cause and germ of all
those violent and arbitrary hypotheses which perplex and pervert the
science of history far more than the open avowal of our ignorance, or
the uncertainty of our knowledge: hypotheses which give an oblique
direction, or an exaggerated and false extension, to a view of the
subject originally not incorrect. And even if there are points which
appear not very clear to us, or which we leave unexplained--this will
not prevent us from comprehending, so far at least as the limited
conception of man is able, the great outline of human history, though
here and there a gap should remain.
This matter will be best explained by an example that will bring us at
once to the subject we propose to treat. Let us imagine some bold
Navigators (and what we here suppose by way of example has more than
once actually occurred) touching at some island inhabited by wild
savages in the midst of the great ocean between America and Eastern
Asia. This island lies, we suppose, at a very great distance from either
Continent, and the same will hold good of it, though there be a group of
islands. These savages have but miserable fishing-boats made of hollow
trunks of trees, by which it is not easy to conceive how they could have
been transported so far. The question now naturally occurs how has this
race of men come hither?--
A Pagan natural philosophy, which even now dares often enough to raise
its voice, would be very ready with its answer: "There, it would say,
you see plainly how every thing has sprung from the pap of the
earth--the primitive slime--there is no need of the far-fetched idea of
an imaginary Creator--these self-existing men of the earth--these well
known autocthones of the ancients--these true sons of nature--have risen
up or crawled out of the fruitful slime of the earth."
A deeper physiological science would, independently of every other
consideration, and looking merely to the natural organization of man,
scout this wild chaotic hypothesis respecting his origin from slime. For
this organic frame of the human body, which has become a body of death,
is still endowed with many and wonderful powers, and still encloses the
hidden light of its celestial origin.--Without, however, entering
further into this enquiry, which falls not within the limits here
prescribed, let us rather tacitly believe that although, as the ancient
history saith, man was formed out of the slime of the earth; yet it was
by the same Hand which invisibly conducts each individual through life,
and has more than once rescued all mankind from the brink of the abyss,
that his marvellous body was framed, into which the Maker himself
breathed the immortal spirit of life. This divine in-dwelling spark in
man, the Heathens themselves, notwithstanding the opinion about the
autocthones, recognized in the beautiful tradition or fiction of
Prometheus; and many of their first spirits, philosophers, orators and
poets, and grave and moral teachers, have in one form or another, and
under a variety of figurative expressions, borne frequent and loud and
repeated testimony to the truth of a higher spirit, a divine flame,
animating the breast of man. This universal faith in the heavenly
Promethean light--or as we should rather say, this spark of our
bosoms--is the only thing we must here pre-suppose, and from which all
our historical deductions must be taken. With the opposite
doctrine--with the absolute unbelief in all which constitutes man really
man--no history, and no science of history, is possible; and this is the
only remark we shall here oppose to an infidelity that denies the
existence of every thing high and godly. For the question respecting the
creation of man, or as atheism terms it, the first springing up of the
human race, is beyond the limits of history, and must be left to the
decision of revelation and faith; for the question can be reached by no
history, no science of history--no historical research. History begins,
as this will be presently shown, with man's second step; which
immediately follows his concealed origin antecedent to all history.
To recur now to the example already given of an island situated in the
middle of the ocean, with its savage inhabitants and their miserable
fishing-boats--the real solution, as experience has really proved, of
this apparent difficulty is, on a nearer acquaintance with the subject,
easily found. If, for example, the language and traditions of this rude,
savage, or at least degraded, tribe, are minutely studied and
investigated, then so striking a resemblance and affinity will be found
with the languages and traditions of the races in either of the remotely
situated continents, that the most sceptical mind will hardly entertain
a doubt respecting the common origin of both; for this community in
language and traditions is too strong, too strikingly evident, to be
ascribed with any degree of probability to the sport of accident. This
truth now once firmly established, (for a community of language,
tradition and race among all the nations of the earth is a truth almost
unanimously received and acknowledged by those historical enquirers most
versed in nature, and most learned in philology of the present age,) it
becomes a mere matter of indifference, or one at least of minor
importance, how and in what way this originally savage, or at least
barbarized tribe first arrived hither; and it were a mere waste of
labour to select, among the hundred conceivable or inconceivable
accidents and possibilities which may have occasioned or led to this
arrival, any particular one as the best explanation, and to found
thereon some ingenious hypothesis, how the land on both sides may have
been differently situated, before a closer connexion with this little
island was broken off by the destructive floods; or in which of the last
great catastrophes of the earth that disjunction may have taken place.
We may leave such conjectures to themselves, and, satisfied with the
main result, proceed further in the historical investigation and survey
of the earth. For, in truth, the earth's surface more narrowly and
carefully examined, furnishes in reference to man and his primitive
history, far other and weightier problems than those involved in the
example first selected.
It is generally known that in a great many places situated in various
parts of the earth, in the interior of mountains and even on plains,
sometimes near the surface, and sometimes at a greater or less depth in
the interior of mountainous chains rising to a very great elevation
above the level of the sea, there are found whole strata of scattered
bones belonging to animal species either actually existing, or which
formerly existed and are now totally extinct--the chaotic remains of an
all destroying inundation that immediately remind us of the general
tradition respecting the great Flood. In other places again extensive
layers of coral, sea-shells, marine plants, and other products of the
sea, imbedded in the firm soil, prove these tracts of land to have been
an ancient bottom of the sea. According to all appearance, these are not
only monuments of one great natural revolution, but these elemental
gigantic sepulchres of the primitive world offer to the mind many and
various problems which more nearly, indeed, regard the earth, but as
that planet is the habitation of man, have in consequence an indirect,
but proximate, reference to mankind and their earliest history. A single
example will best serve to point out among so many things, which are no
longer perhaps susceptible of explanation, that which is of most moment
to the historian; as well as the limits within which he should keep.