Here
under follows the transcription of the introductory to the first division
of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's
The Foundations of the 19th Century,
2nd ed., published by John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1912.
CONTENTS
|
ciii
FOUNDATIONS
OF THE
NINETEENTH
CENTURY
civ
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1
FIRST PART
THE ORIGINS
Und keine Zeit und keine
Macht zerstückelt
Geprägte Form, die
lebend sich entwickelt.
GOETHE.
2
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3
DIVISION I
THE LEGACY OF THE ANCIENT
WORLD
Das Edelste, was wir besitzen,
haben wir nicht von uns selbst; unser Verstand mit seinen Kräften,
die Form, in welcher wir denken, handeln und sind, ist auf uns gleichsam
herabgeerbet. — HERDER.
INTRODUCTORY
HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES
“THE WORLD,“ says
Dr. Martin Luther, “is ruled by God through a few heroes and pre-eminent
persons.“ The mightiest of these ruling heroes are the princes of intellect,
men who without sanction of diplomacy or force of arms, without the constraining
power of law and police, exercise a defining and transforming influence
upon the thought and feeling of many generations, men who may be said to
be all the more powerful the less power they have, but who seldom, perhaps
never, ascend their throne during their lifetime; their sway lasts long,
but begins late, often very late, especially when we leave out of account
the influence which they exercise upon individuals and consider the moment
when that which filled their life begins to affect and mould the life of
whole peoples. More than two centuries elapsed before
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PRINCIPLES
the new conception of the Cosmos, which
we owe to Copernicus, and which was bound to revolutionise all human thought
from its foundations, became common property. Men as important among his
contemporaries as Luther said of Copernicus that he was “a fool who turned
upside down the whole art of astronomia.“ Although his system of the world
was already taught in antiquity; although the works of his direct predecessors,
Regiomontanus and others, had prepared everything that made the last discovery
inevitable, so that one might safely say that the Copernican system was
only awaiting for its completion the spark of inspiration in the brain
of the “most pre-eminent“; although it was here not a question of baffling
problems in metaphysics and morals, but of a simple and, moreover, a demonstrable
conception; although no material interest whatever was threatened by the
new doctrine, much time was needed for this conception, which was in so
many important respects of a revolutionary character, to travel from the
brain of its author into that of a few other privileged men, and, ever
spreading, finally take possession of the whole of mankind. It is well
known how Voltaire in the first half of the eighteenth century fought for
the recognition of the great triad — Copernicus, Kepler, Newton — but as
late as the year 1779 the worthy Georg Christoph Lichtenberg felt himself
compelled to undertake a campaign in the Göttingisches Taschenbuch,
against the “Tychonians,“ and it was not till the year of grace one thousand
eight hundred and twenty-two that the Congregation of the Index authorised
the printing of books which teach that the earth moves!
I make this statement
in advance that the reader may comprehend in what sense the year 1 is here
chosen as the starting-point of our age. It is no random date, chosen for
reasons of convenience, or because the outward course of political events
had stamped this year as
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PRINCIPLES
particularly noteworthy; it has been
adopted because the simplest logic compels us to trace a new force back
to its origin. It is a matter of “history“ how slowly or how quickly it
grows into an effective power; the actual life of the hero is, and cannot
but be, the living source of all subsequent developments.
The birth of Jesus
Christ is the most important date in the whole history of mankind. * No
battle, no dynastic change, no natural phenomenon, no discovery possesses
an importance that could bear comparison with the short earthly life of
the Galilean; almost two thousand years of history prove it, and even yet
we have hardly crossed the threshold of Christianity. For profoundly intrinsic
reasons we are justified in calling that year the “first year,“ and in
reckoning our time from it. In a certain sense we might truly say that
“history“ in the real sense of the term only begins with the birth of Christ.
The peoples that have not yet adopted Christianity — the Chinese, the Indians,
the Turks and others — have all so far no true history; all they have is,
on the one hand, a chronicle of ruling dynasties, butcheries and the like:
on the other the uneventful, humble existence of countless millions living
a life of bestial happiness, who disappear in the night of ages leaving
no trace behind; whether the kingdom of the Pharaohs was founded in the
year 3285 or in the year 32850 is in itself of no consequence; to know
Egypt under one Rameses is the same as to know it under all fifteen Ramesides.
And so it is with the other pre-Christian nations (with the exception of
those three — of which I shall speak presently — that stand in organic
relation to our Christian epoch): their culture, their art, their religion,
in short their condition may interest us, achievements of their intellect
or their
* The fact that this
birth did not take place in the year 1, but in all probability some years
before, is for us here of no special consequence.
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PRINCIPLES
industry may even have become valuable
parts of our own life, as is exemplified by Indian thought, Babylonian
science and Chinese methods; their history, however, purely as such, lacks
moral greatness, in other words, that force which rouses the individual
man to consciousness of his individuality in contrast to the surrounding
world and then — like the ebb and flow of the tide— makes him employ the
world, which he has discovered in his own breast, to shape that which is
without it. The Aryan Indian, for example, though he unquestionably possesses
the greatest talent for metaphysics of any people that ever lived, and
is in this respect far superior to all peoples of to-day, does not advance
beyond inner enlightenment: he does not shape; he is neither artist nor
reformer, he is content to live calmly and to die redeemed — he has no
history. No more has his opposite, the Chinaman — that unique representative
of Positivism and Collectivism; what our historical works record as his
“history“ is nothing more than an enumeration of the various robber bands,
by which the patient, shrewd and soulless people, without sacrificing an
iota of its individuality, has allowed itself to be ruled: such enumerations
are simply “criminal statistics,“ not history, at least not for us: we
cannot really judge actions which awaken no echo in our breast.
Let me give an example.
While these lines are being written (1897], the civilised world is clamorously
indignant with Turkey; the European Powers are being compelled by the voice
of public opinion to intervene for the protection of the Armenians and
Cretans; the final destruction of the Turkish power seems now only a question
of time. This is certainly justified; it was bound to come to this; nevertheless
it is a fact that Turkey is the last little corner of Europe in which a
whole people lives in undisturbed prosperity and happiness. It knows nothing
of social questions, of the bitter
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HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES
struggle for existence and other such
things; great fortunes are unknown and pauperism is literally non-existent;
all form a single harmonious family, and no one strives after wealth at
the expense of his neighbour. I am not simply repeating what I have read
in newspapers and books, I am testifying to what I have seen with my own
eyes. If the Mohammedan had not practised tolerance at a time when this
idea was unknown to the rest of Europe, there would now be idyllic peace
in the Balkan States and in Asia Minor. Here it is the Christian who throws
in the leaven of discord; and with the cruelty of a ruthlessly reacting
power of nature, the otherwise humane Moslem rises and destroys the disturber
of his peace. In fact, the Christian likes neither the wise fatalism of
the Mohammedan nor the prudent indifferentism of the Chinese. “I come not
to bring peace, but a sword,“ Christ himself said. The Christian idea can,
in a certain sense, be said to be positively anti-social. Now that the
Christian has become conscious of a personal dignity otherwise never dreamt
of, he is no longer satisfied with the simple animal instinct of living
with others; the happiness of the bees and the ants has now no charm for
him. If Christianity be curtly characterised as the religion of love, its
importance for the history of mankind is but superficially touched upon.
The essential thing is rather this: by Christianity each individual has
received an inestimable, hitherto unanticipated value — even the “hairs
on his head are all numbered by God“ (Matthew x. 30); his outward
lot does not correspond to this inner worth; and thus it is that life has
become tragic, and only by tragedy does history receive a purely human
purport. For no event is in itself historically tragic; it is only rendered
tragic by the mind of those who experience it; otherwise what affects mankind
remains as sublimely indifferent as all other natural phenomena. I shall
return soon to
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the Christian idea. My purpose here
has been merely to indicate, first, how deeply and manifestly Christianity
revolutionises human feeling and action, of which we still have living
proofs before our very eyes; * secondly, in what sense the non-Christian
peoples have no true history, but merely annals.
HELLAS,
ROME, JUDEA
History, in the higher
sense of the word, means only that past which still lives actively in the
consciousness of man and helps to mould him. In pre-Christian times, therefore,
it is only when it concerns peoples which are hastening towards the moral
regeneration known as Christianity that history acquires an interest at
once scientific and universally human. Hellas, Rome, Judea alone of the
peoples of antiquity are historically important for the living consciousness
of the men of the nineteenth century.
Every inch of Hellenic
soil is sacred to us, and rightly so. On the other side of the strait,
in Asia, not even the men had or yet have a personality; here, in Hellas,
every river, every stone is animate and individualised, dumb nature awakes
to self-consciousness. And the men by whom this miracle was performed stand
before us, from the half-fabulous times of the Trojan War on to the supremacy
of Rome, each one with his own incomparable physiognomy: heroes, rulers,
warriors, thinkers, poets, sculptors. Here man was born: man capable of
becoming a Christian. Rome presents in many respects the most glaring contrast
to Greece; it is not only geographically but also mentally more distant
from Asia, that is, from Semitic, Babylonian and
* It
is altogether erroneous to think one must attribute such effects not to
the awakened soul-life, but merely to race; the Bosniac of pure Servian
descent and the Macedonian of Grecian stock are, as Mohammedans, just as
fatalistic and anti-individualistic in their mode of thinking as any Osmanli
whatever.
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PRINCIPLES
Egyptian influences; it is not so bright
and easily satisfied, not so flighty. Possession is the ambition of the
people as it is of the individual. The Roman mind turns from the sublimely
intuitive in art and philosophy to the intellectual work of organisation.
In Greece a single Solon, a single Lycurgus in a way created fundamental
laws of State as dilettanti, from purely individual conviction of what
was right, while later a whole people of glib amateurs forcibly took the
supreme power into their own hands; in Rome there grew up a long-lived
community of sober, serious legislators, and while the outward horizon
— the Roman Empire and its interests — continually widened, the horizon
of internal interests grew most perilously narrower. Morally, however,
Rome stands in many respects higher than Greece: the Greek has from the
earliest times been what he is to-day, disloyal, unpatriotic, selfish;
self-restraint was foreign to him and so he has never been able either
to control others or to submit with dignified pride to being controlled.
On the other hand, the growth and the longevity of the Roman state point
to the shrewd, strong, conscious political spirit of the citizens. The
family and the law that protects it are the creations of Rome. And indeed
this is true of the family in the narrower sense of an institution laying
the foundation of every higher morality, as well as in the extended sense
of a power which unites the whole of the citizens into one firm state capable
of self-defence; only from the family could a permanent state arise, only
through the state could that which to-day we call civilisation become a
principle of society capable of development. All the states of Europe are
grafts on the Roman stem. And however frequently of old, as to-day, might
prevailed over right, the conception of right is our inheritance from the
Roman. Meanwhile, just as the day is followed by the night (the sacred
night, which reveals to our eye the secret of other
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PRINCIPLES
worlds, worlds above us in the firmament
of heaven and worlds within ourselves, in the depths of our silent hearts),
so the glorious positive work of the Greeks and Romans demanded a negative
completion; and this was provided by Israel. To enable us to see the stars,
the light of day must be extinguished; in order to become truly great,
to attain that tragic greatness which, as I have said, alone gives vivid
purport to history, man had to become conscious not only of his strength
but also of his weakness. It was only by clear recognition and unsparing
accentuation of the triviality of all human action, the pitiableness of
reason in its heavenward flight, the general baseness of human feelings
and political motives, that thought was able to take its stand upon a totally
new foundation, from which it was to discover in the heart of man capacities
and talents, that guided it to the knowledge of something that was sublimer
than all else; Greeks and Romans would never by their methods have reached
this sublimest goal; it would never have occurred to them to attach so
great importance to the life of the single individual. If we contemplate
the outward history of the people of Israel, it certainly offers at the
first glance little that is attractive; with the exception of some few
pleasing features, all the meanness of which men are capable seems concentrated
in this one small nation; not that the Jews were essentially baser than
other men, but the grinning mask of vice stares at us from out their history
in unveiled nakedness; in their case no great political sense excuses injustice,
no art, no philosophy reconciles us to the horrors of the struggle for
existence. Here it was that the negation of the things of this world arose,
and with it the vague idea of a higher extra-mundane vocation of mankind.
Here men of the people ventured to brand the princes of this earth as “companions
of thieves,“ and to cry out upon the rich, “Woe unto
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PRINCIPLES
them that join house to house, that
lay field to field till there be no place, that they may be placed alone
in the midst of the earth.“ That was a different conception of right from
that of the Romans, to whom nothing seemed more sacred than property. But
the curse extended not merely to the mighty, but also to “them that are
wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight,“ and likewise to
the joyous heroes, who “drink wine,“ and have chosen the world as their
sporting place. So speaks an Isaiah already in the eighth century before
the birth of Christ. * But this first outcry against what is radically
evil in man and in human society rings louder and louder in the course
of the following centuries from the soul of this strange people: it grows
in earnestness, until Jeremiah cries out, “Woe unto me, O mother, that
thou hast given me birth!“ Finally the negation becomes a positive principle
of life, and the sublimest of prophets suffers on the cross out of love.
Now it matters not whether we adopt the attitude of a believing Christian
or simply that of the objective historian; one thing is certain, that in
order to understand the figure of Christ, we must know the people who crucified
Him. One point of course must be kept in mind: in the case of the Greeks
and Romans their deeds were their positive and permanent achievement; in
the case of the Jews, on the other hand, it was the negation of the deeds
of this people that was the only positive achievement for mankind. But
this negation is likewise an historical fact, a fact indeed that has “grown
historically.“ Even if Jesus Christ, as is extremely probable, was not
descended from the Jewish people, † nothing but the most superficial partisanship
* See
Isaiah, chaps. i. and v.
† For
the proof that Christ was no Jew (in the sense of Jew by race) and also
for the exposition of his close relation to the moral life of the real
Jewish people, see chap. iii.;
chap. v. then deals more fully with
the Jewish people.
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PRINCIPLES
can deny the fact that this great and
divine figure is inseparably bound up with the historical development of
that people.
Who could doubt it?
The history of Hellas, that of Rome, and that of Judea have had a moulding
influence upon all centuries of our era and still had a living influence
upon the nineteenth century. Indeed they were not merely living, but also
life-retarding influences, inasmuch as they obstructed our free view into
the purely human sphere in many directions by a fence of man‘s height.
This is the unavoidable fate of mankind: what advances him, at the same
time fetters him. And so the history of these peoples must be carefully
noted by any one who proposes to discuss the nineteenth century.
In the present work
a knowledge of pure history, of the chronology of the world, has been assumed.
I can attempt only one thing here, viz., to define with the greatest possible
brevity what are the most essential distinguishing marks of this “legacy
of the old world“. This I shall do in three chapters, the first
of which treats of Hellenic art and philosophy, the second
of Roman law, and the third of the
advent of Jesus Christ.
PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY.
Before concluding
these introductory remarks, one more warning! The expression, this or that
“had to“ happen, slipped from my pen a moment ago; perhaps it will recur
in what follows. Thereby I am far from admitting that the philosophy of
history has any right to dogmatise. The contemplation of the past from
the point of view of the present admits the logical conclusion that certain
events “had to“ happen at that time, in order that the present should become
what it has become. The subtle question as to whether the course of history
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might have been different from what
it was would be out of place here. Scared by the dreary clamour of so-called
scientism, most of our modern historians have handled this subject with
timidity. And yet it is clear that it is only when considered sub specie
necessitatis that the present acquires an instructive significance.
Vere
scire est per causas scire, says Bacon; this way of viewing things
is the only scientific one; but how shall it be successfully applied if
necessity is not everywhere recognised? The phrase “had to“ expresses the
necessary connection of cause and effect, nothing more; it is with such
examinations as these that we men gild the main beams of our narrow intellectual
sphere, without imagining that thereby we have flown out into the open
air. The following should, however, be borne in mind: if necessity be a
shaping power, then round this central point wider and wider circles form
themselves, and no one can blame us if, when our purpose demands it, we
avoid the long circuitous path, in order that we may take our stand as
near as possible to the axis which while causing motion is itself hardly
moved — that point where what appears to be an arbitrary law almost merges
into undeniable necessity.
End of page. Last update:
June 29th, 2003.
