I
_De omnibus dubitandum_
There are but few orthodox Hegelians left among philosophers nowadays,
yet Hegel is still supreme over the minds of our contemporaries. It
may even be that certain of his ideas have taken deeper root nowadays
than when Hegelianism was in full bloom: for instance, the conception
that history is the unfolding of the idea in reality, or, to put it
more briefly and in terms more familiar to the modern mind--the idea of
progress. Try to convince an educated person of the contrary: you are
sure to be worsted. But, _de omnibus dubitandum,_ which means in other
words, that doubt is called upon to fulfil its mission above all in
those cases where a conviction is particularly strong and unshakable.
Therefore one must admit, whether he will or no, that progress so
called--the development of mankind in time--is a fiction.
We have wireless telegraphy, radium and the rest, yet we stand no
higher than the Romans or the Greeks of old. You admit this? Then,
one step further: although we have wireless telegraphy and all the
other blessings of civilisation, still we stand no higher than red-or
black-skinned savages. You protest: but the principle compels. You
began to doubt: then what is the use of drawing back?
For myself, I must confess that the idea of the spiritual perfection
of savages entered my mind but lately, when, for the first time for
many years, I looked through the works of Tylor, Lubbock and Spencer.
They speak with such certainty of the advantages of our spiritual
organisation, and have such sincere contempt for the moral misery
of the savage, that in spite of myself stole in the thought: Is it
not exactly here, where all are so certain that no one ever examines
the question, that the source of error is to be found? High time to
recall Descartes and his rule! And as soon as I began to doubt, all my
former certainty--of course I fully shared the opinion of the English
anthropologists--disappeared in a moment.... It began to appear that
the savage indeed is higher and more important than our savants,
and not our materialists only, as Professor Paulsen thinks, but our
idealists, metaphysicians, mystics, and even our convinced missionaries
(sincere believers, not the profit-mongering sort), whom Europe sends
forth into the world to enlighten the backward brethren. It seemed to
me that the credit transactions common among savages, with a promise
to pay in the world beyond the grave, have a deep meaning. And human
sacrifices! In them Spencer sees a barbarity, as an educated European
should. I also see in them barbarity, because I also am a European
and have a scientific education. But I deeply envy their barbarity,
and curse the cultivation which has herded me together with believing
missionaries, idealist, materialist, and positivist philosophers, into
the narrow fold of the sultry and disgusting apprehensible world. We
may write books to prove the immortality of the soul, but our wives
won't follow us to the other world: they will prefer to endure the
widow's lot here on the earth. Our morality, based on religion, forbids
us to hurry into eternity. And so in everything. We are guessing, at
the best we are sicklied with dreams, but our life passes outside
our guesses and our dreams. One man still accepts the rites of the
Church, however strange they may be, and seriously imagines that he
is brought into contact with other worlds. Beyond the rites no step
is taken. Kant died when he was eighty; had it not been for cholera,
Hegel would have lived a hundred years; while the savages--the young
ones kill the old and ... I dare not complete the sentence for fear of
offending sensitive ears. Again I recall Descartes and his rule: who
is right, the savages or we? And if the savages are right, can history
be the unfolding of the idea? And is not the conception of progress
in time (that is the development from the past to the present and
to the future) the purest error? Perhaps, and most probably, there
is development, but the direction of this development is in a line
perpendicular to the line of time. The base of the perpendicular may be
any human personality. May God and the reader forgive one the obscurity
of the last words. I hope the clarity of the foregoing exposition will
to some extent atone for it.