Here
under follows the transcription of chapter 9B of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's
The
Foundations of the 19th Century, 2nd ed., published by John Lane, The
Bodley Head, 1912.
CONTENTS
|
233
B. HISTORICAL SURVEY
Dich
im Unendlichen zu finden,
Musst
unterscheiden und dann verbinden.
GOETHE.
THE
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL LIFE
It is impossible to give a comprehensive view of a large number of facts
unless we classify them, and to classify means first of all to distinguish
and then to unite. Our purpose, however, will not be served by any kind
of artificial system, and all purely logical ones are of this nature: this
is obviously the case in the classification of plants, from Theophrastus
to Linnaeus, and it is equally so in the attempts to group artists in schools.
Some arbitrary treatment, it is true, is inevitable in systematic classification,
for System is an evolution of the thinking brain and serves the special
needs of the human understanding. It is therefore essential that this ordering
understanding should take into consideration not merely units but as large
a number of phenomena as possible, and that the eye should see as keenly
and accurately as possible: in this way the result of its activity will
combine a maximum of observation with a minimum of subjective additions.
We admire the acuteness and the knowledge of men like Ray, Jussieu, Cuvier,
Endlicher: above all we should admire their sharpness of sight, for it
is the subjection of thought to intuition that distinguishes them; the
intuitive (i.e., perceptive) grasp of the whole with them forms
the basis of the classification of the parts. Goethe's warning first to
distinguish and then to unite, we must therefore supplement by the observation
that only he who surveys a Whole is capable of making distinctions within
it. It was in this way that the immortal Bichat founded modern Histology
— in this connection a most instructive
234 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
example.
Till his time human anatomy was merely a description of the separate parts
of the body, as they are distinguished by their various functions; he was
the first to demonstrate the identity of the tissues of which the individual
organs, however various, are built up, and this rendered rational anatomy
possible. Just as no great advance was made until his time, for the simple
reason that the individual organs of the body had been regarded as the
unities to be distinguished, so we too toil and moil over the individual
organs of Teutonism, that is to say, its nations, and overlook the fact
that we are here face to face with a unity, and that, in order to understand
the anatomy and physiology of this collective entity, we must first recognise
the unity as such, but then “isolate the various tissues and investigate
each of them, no matter in what organ it is found, in order finally to
study each single organ in its peculiar characteristics.“ * Now in order
to gain a vivid conception of both the present and the past of Teutonism
we should need a Bichat to classify the whole material and then to place
it rightly, i.e., naturally classified, before our eyes. And since
no such man is at present to be found, let us do the best we can for ourselves.
We must, of course, refrain from all those extremely prevalent but false
analogies between the animal body and the social body, and learn the general
method from men like Bichat: first of all to fix our eye upon the whole,
then upon its elementary parts, disregarding for the moment all that is
intermediate.
The various manifestations of our life can be classified, I think, under
three comprehensive heads: Knowledge, Civilisation, Culture. These are
in a way “elements,“ but of so complex a nature that it would be well to
break them up further at once, and the following
* Anatomie Générale, §§ 6 and 7 of the preceding
Considérations.
In the above sentence I have freely summarised Bichat‘s views.
235 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
Table may be regarded
as an attempt to give a very simple classification:
Knowledge:
-
Discovery
-
Science
Civilisation:
-
Industry
-
Economy
-
Politics and Church
Culture:
-
Weltanschauung,
or Philosophy, including Religion and Ethics
-
Art
Bichat's fundamental anatomical Table became a lasting possession of science,
but gradually it was very much simplified and by this means there was a
great gain in perspicuity; in the case of my Table the opposite procedure
may probably have to be followed: my desire to simplify has, perhaps, prevented
me from recognising a sufficient number of elements. Bichat, of course,
by his classification, laid the foundation of a comprehensive work and
a whole science; I, on the other hand, am merely setting down in all modesty,
in this my last chapter, a thought which has been of service to myself
and may be so to others; but I do not claim that it possesses scientific
importance.
But before making a practical use of my classification I must briefly explain
it. This will obviate misunderstandings and serve to meet objections. Moreover,
I can only prove the value of the division into Knowledge, Civilisation
and Culture if we are agreed as to the significance of the individual elements.
I take Discovery to mean the enriching of knowledge by concrete facts:
in the first place we have to consider the discovery of ever greater portions
of our planets, that is, the practical extension in space of the material
of our knowledge and creative activity. But every other extension of the
boundaries of our know-
236
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
ledge is likewise
discovery: the study of the cosmos, the revelation of the infinitely small,
the excavation of buried ruins, the discovery of hitherto unknown languages,
&c. — Science is something essentially different: it is the methodical
elaboration of that which has been discovered into conscious, systematic
knowledge. Without something discovered, that is, without concrete material
— given by experience, accurately determined by observation — it would
be merely a methodological phantom; vanishing it would leave us with only
its mantle as mathematics and its skeleton as logic. It is just science,
however, that is the greatest promoter of discovery. When Galvani's laboratory
attendant saw the leg-muscles of a sensitised frog quiver, he had discovered
a fact; Galvani himself had not noticed it at all; * but when this great
scientist was told of the fact, there flashed through his brain a brilliantly
intellectual thought, something altogether different from the gaping astonishment
of the attendant or the unknown current that passed along the frog's leg:
to him with his scientific training was revealed the vision of extensive
connections with all kinds of known and still unknown facts, and this spurred
him on to endless experiments and variously adapted theories. From this
example the difference between science and discovery is obvious. Aristotle
had already said, “first collect facts, then unite them by thought“; the
first is discovery, the second science. Justus Liebig, whom I quote in
this chapter with the greatest pleasure, since he stands for all that is
most thorough in science, writes as follows: “All (scientific) investigation
is deductive or aprioristic. Empirical inquiry in the ordinary sense does
not exist at all. An experiment which is not led up to by a theory, i.e.,
by an idea, stands to natural investigation in the same
* Galvani tells this with an honesty worthy of imitation in his De
viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentatio.
237
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
relation as jingling
with a child's rattle does to music.“ * This applies to every science,
for all science is natural science. And although the boundary-line is frequently
difficult to draw — i.e., difficult for the man who has not been
present at the work in the laboratory — yet it is absolutely real and leads,
in the first place, to the recognition of the important fact that nine-tenths
of the so-called scientists of the nineteenth century were merely laboratory
assistants who either, without having any prior idea, discovered facts
by accident, that is to say, collected material, or slavishly followed
the ideas proclaimed by the few pre-eminent men — (a Cuvier, a Jacob Grimm,
a Bopp, a Robert Bunsen, a Robert Mayer, a Clerk Maxwell, a Darwin, a Pasteur,
a Savigny, an Edward Reuss, &c.) — and did some useful work, thanks
solely to the light and leading of such men. We must never lose sight of
this “lower“ boundary of science. Nor must the upper boundary be forgotten.
For as soon as the mind ceases, as in Galvani's case, to co-ordinate observed
facts by a “prior idea“ and thus to organise them into knowledge which
is the result of human thought — but raises itself beyond the material
which discovery has provided to free speculation — we are dealing no longer
with science but with philosophy. This transition is so great that it is
like springing from one planet to another; here we have two worlds as wide
apart as the difference between the tone and the air-wave, between the
expression and the eye; in them the irremediable, insuperable duality of
our nature manifests itself. In the interests of science, which cannot
grow to be an element of culture without philosophy, in the interests of
philosophy, without which science is like a monarch without a people, it
is desirable that every educated person should be clearly conscious of
this boundary.
* Francis Bacon von Verulam und die Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften,
1863.
238 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
But there has
been and still is an infinite amount of sinning in this very respect; the
nineteenth century was a witches' kitchen of notions jumbled together,
of unnatural endeavours to unite science and philosophy, and those who
made this attempt could, like the witches' brood in Faust, say of
themselves:
-
If lucky our hits,
-
And everything fits,
-
'Tis thoughts, and
we're thinking. *
The thoughts of course
are in accordance, for there is no such thing as lucky hits; things never
fit. So much with regard to the meaning of Science. As for Industry, I
should personally be inclined to include it in the group Knowledge, for
of all human vital activities it stands in the most direct dependence upon
knowledge; it is, like Science, based at all points upon discovery, and
every “industrial“ invention signifies a combination of known facts by
means of a “prior“ idea, as Liebig said. But I am afraid of provoking needless
contradiction, since industry is, on the other hand, the very closest ally
of economic development, and accordingly a decisive factor of all civilisation.
No power in the world can hold back an accomplished fact of industry. Industry
is almost like a blind power of nature: it cannot be resisted, and although
it may seem to have the submissive obedience of a tamed animal, yet no
one knows to what it may lead. The development of the technique of explosives,
of rifles, of steam-engines are examples and proofs. As Emerson pointedly
says, “Engineering in our age is like a balloon that has flown away with
the aeronauts.“ † On the other hand, the example of printing is of itself
enough adequately to show how direct is the reacting influence of industry
upon knowledge and science. By Economy I understand the whole economic
condition of a people; even when
* Bayard Taylor's translation.
† English Traits: Wealth.
239 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
conditions of
culture are high, it is frequently a very simple affair, as, for example,
in the earliest days in India; often it develops to extreme complexity,
as in ancient Babylon and among us Teutons. This element forms the centre
of all civilisation; its influence extends upwards as well as downwards,
and stamps its character upon all manifestations of social life. Certainly
discoveries, science and industry contribute mightily to the shaping of
the economic conditions of life, but they themselves both draw the possibility
of their rise and continuance from the economic organism and are furthered
or hindered by it. Thus it is that the nature, direction and tendency of
a definite economic system can exercise upon the collective life of the
people a stimulating influence of unparalleled greatness, or may paralyse
it for ever. All Politics — our dogmatic friends may say what they like
— are based finally upon economic conditions: politics, however, are the
visible body, economic conditions the unseen ramification of veins. This
changes but slowly, but if it has once changed — if the blood circulates
more sluggishly than formerly, or if, on the contrary, it begets new anastomoses
and brings new vigour to every limb — then politics too must follow suit,
whether they will or not. However much appearances may deceive us, a civic
community never springs into prosperity because of, but in spite of its
politics. Politics alone can never offer to a civic community a perpetual
guarantee of vigour — for proof look to later Rome and Byzantium. England
is supposed to be the political nation above all others, but if we look
more closely we shall find that all this political mechanism is intended
to
fetter the specifically political power, and to give free rein to the other
unpolitical, living forces, especially the economic: Magna Charta
itself denotes the annihilation of political justice in favour of free
jurisdiction. All politics are in their essence merely
240
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
reaction, and
in fact reaction against economic movements; it is only secondarily that
they grow to a threatening force, though never to one that is finally decisive.
* And though there is nothing in the world so difficult as to discuss general
economic questions, without talking nonsense — so mysteriously do the Norns
(Acquiring, Keeping, Utilising) weave the destiny of nations and their
individual members — we can nevertheless easily realise the importance
of economy as the predominant and central factor of all civilisation. Politics
imply not only the relation of one nation to the others, and not merely
the conflict within the State between the circles and persons that seek
to obtain influence, but also the whole visible and, so to speak, artificial
organisation of the social body. In the second chapter of this book (vol.
i. p. 143) I have defined law
as arbitrariness in place of instinct in the relations of men to each other;
now the State is the essence and embodiment of collective, indispensable
and yet arbitrary agreements, while Politics are the State at work. The
State is, as it were, the carriage, politics the driver; but this driver
is at the same time cartwright and constantly mending his vehicle; occasionally
he upsets it and must build a new one, but he possesses for this purpose
no material but the old, and thus the new vehicle is, but for trifling
external details, usually a mere repetition of the former — unless indeed
economic progress has in the meantime contributed some material that was
not there before. In this tabular list Church is classed with politics:
no other course was open to me; if the State is the essence of all arbitrary
agreements, then the “Church,“ as we usually and officially understand
the word, is the most
* I take the word “reaction“ not in the sense of our modern party appellations,
but in the scientific sense, that is, a movement which is the result of
a stimulus; but the difference is not so very great: our so-called “reactionaries“
resemble more closely than they imagine the spontaneously quivering frog-legs
of Galvani‘s experiment.
241
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
perfect example
of super-refined arbitrariness. For here it is not merely a question of
the relations between man and man; the organising tendency of society lays
its grip upon the inner personality of the individual and prevents him
even there — as far as it can — from obeying the necessity of his nature;
for it forces upon him as Law an arbitrarily established, minutely defined
confession of Faith, and, in addition, a fixed ceremonial for the lifting
up of his heart and soul to God. To prove the need for Churches would be
to carry owls to Athens, but this will not shake our conviction that we
have here laid our finger upon the sorest spot of all politics, upon the
spot where they reveal their most perilous side. In other ways politics
might commit many really criminal mistakes, but in this respect there is
very great temptation to commit the most serious of all crimes, the real
“sin against the Holy Spirit,“ I mean, Violence to the inner man, the robbery
of personality. My next group I have entitled “Weltanschauung“ *
(perception of the problems of life) not “Philosophy,“ for this Greek word
(loving wisdom) is a miserably pale and cold vocable, and here we require
above all colour and warmth. Wisdom! What is wisdom? I hope I shall not
be compelled to quote Socrates and the Pythian priestess to justify my
rejection of a Greek word. The German language has here, as it frequently
has, infinite depth; it feeds us with good thoughts which are bountifully
provided, like the mother's milk for the child. Welt meant originally
not the earth, not the Cosmos, but mankind. † Though the eye roam through
space, though thought may follow it like the elves who
* There is no equivalent in English. “Personal philosophy“ comes nearest
to it: one might almost paraphrase the word as “way of looking at life‘s
problems.“ The author‘s meaning is sufficiently clear from the context.
Elsewhere I have rendered the word by the very comprehensive English term
“philosophy.“
† A collective noun formed from wër, man, and ylde,
men (Kluge: Etymologisches Wörterbuch).
242 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
ride on sunbeams
and girdle the earth without effort, yet man can only arrive at knowledge
of himself, his wisdom will ever be only human wisdom; his Weltanschauung,
however macrocosmically it extends itself in the delusion of embracing
the All, will ever be but the microcosmic image in the brain of an individual
man. The first part of this word Weltanschauung throws us imperatively
back upon our human nature and its limits. Absolute wisdom (as the Greek
formula would have it), any absolute knowledge however small, is out of
the question; we can only have human knowledge, only what various men at
different times have thought that they knew. And now, what is the human
knowledge? The German word answers the question: to deserve the name knowledge,
it must be Anschauung (intuitive perception). As Arthur Schopenhauer
says: “In truth, all truth and all wisdom rest finally on intuitive perception.“
And because this is so, the relative value of a Weltanschauung depends
more upon power of seeing than upon abstract power of thinking, more upon
the correctness of the perspective, upon the vividness of the picture,
upon its artistic qualities (if I may so express my meaning), than upon
the amount seen. The difference between the intuitively Perceived and the
Known is like the difference between Rembrandt's “Landscape with the Three
Trees“ and a photograph taken from the same point. But the wisdom that
lies in the word Weltanschauung is not yet exhausted; for the Sanskrit
root of schauen means dichten (to invent poetically); as
Rembrandt's example proves, schauen, far from being a passive reception
of impressions, is the most active exercise of the personality; in intuitive
perception every one is of necessity a poet, otherwise he “perceives“ nothing
at all, but merely reflects what he sees, after the mechanical fashion
of an
243 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
animal. * Hence
the original meaning of the word schön (related to schauen)
is not “beautiful,“ but “clearly visible, brightly lighted.“ This very
clearness is the work of the observing subject; nature is not clear in
itself, it remains, in the first instance for us, as Faust complains, “noble
and dumb“; similarly the image in our brain is not illuminated from without:
to see it accurately a bright torch must be kindled within. Beauty is man's
addition: by it nature grows into art, and chaos into intuitive perception.
Here Schiller's remark concerning the Beautiful and the True holds good:
-
Es ist nicht draussen,
da sucht es der Thor;
-
Es ist in dir, du
bringst es ewig hervor. †
The ancients, it is true, thought that Chaos was a past, outworn stage
of the world. As even Hesiod writes:
-
First of all Chaos
arose;
so we are to suppose
that there followed a gradual development to more and more perfect form,
but, in the face of cosmic nature, this is evidently an absurd conception,
since nature is obviously nothing if not the rule of law, without which
it would remain utterly unrecognisable; but where Law prevails, there is
no Chaos. No, it is in the head of man — nowhere else — that Chaos exists,
until in fact it is shaped by “intuitive perception“ into clearly, visible,
brightly illuminated form; and it is this creative shaping that we have
to describe as Weltanschauung. ‡ When Professor Virchow and others
boast that our age “needs no philosophy,“ inasmuch as it is the “age of
science,“ they are simply extolling the gradual return from form to chaos.
But
* Cf. the thorough discussion at the beginning of chap. i. on “Man
becoming man“ (vol. i. pp.
14-27).
† It is not without; that is where the fool seeks it; It is within, thou
art ever bringing it to light.
‡ For its close relation to art, see vol. i. p.
15.
244
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
the history of
science convicts them of falsehood; for science was never more intuitive
than in the nineteenth century, and that can never be except with the support
of a comprehensive philosophy; in fact the two provinces have been so much
confused that men like Ernst Haeckel actually became founders of religious
theories — that Darwin is constantly striding along with one foot resting
upon pure matter and the other upon alarmingly daring philosophical assumptions
— and that nine-tenths of living scientists believe as firmly in atoms
and ether as a painter of the Trecento in the tiny naked soul that flits
away from the mouth of the dead. If robbed of all philosophy man would
be bereft of all culture, a great two-footed ant. Concerning Religion I
have already said so much in this book, pointing on more than one occasion
to its importance as philosophy or as an element of philosophy, that I
may venture to omit all that I might still have to say upon the subject.
Genuine, experienced philosophy cannot be separated from genuine, experienced
religion; the words denote not two different things, but two tendencies
of mind, two moods. Thus, for example, in the case of the contemplative
Indians, we see how religion almost completely merges into philosophy,
while cognition consequently forms its central point; whereas in the case
of men of action (Saint Paul, Saint Francis, Luther) faith is the axis
of their whole philosophy, and philosophical cognition is like an almost
disregarded peripheric boundary-line. The difference which here appears
so startling does not in reality reach any great depth. The really fundamental
difference lies between the idealistic and the materialistic way of viewing
life's problems — whether as philosophy or religion. * In the section on
the rise and growth of Teutonic philosophy up to Kant these various relations
will, I hope, become perfectly clear,
* See vol. i. p. 230,
vol. ii. p. 19, &c.
245 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
and it will be
seen, in particular, that ethics and philosophy are inseparably bound together.
The connections in the downward direction, between Philosophy and Science,
between Religion and Church, are obvious; the relationship with Art has
already been mentioned. Regarding Art, the meaning that must be assigned
to the word in our Indo-European world, and its great importance for Culture,
Science and Civilisation, I must refer the reader to the whole first chapter.
I think that the meaning of the terms employed in my tabular list is now
clear. It must be admitted at once that in so summary a method much remains
uncertain; but the loss is not great; on the contrary brevity constrains
us to think accurately. Thus, perhaps, I may be asked under what heading
medicine falls, since some have regarded it as an art rather than a science.
But there is here, I think, a wrong use of the word art, a mistake made
also by Liebig when he asserts that “99 percent of natural investigation
is art.“ Liebig bases his assertion upon the fact that imagination is an
important factor in all higher scientific work, and secondly, that mechanical
inventions are of decisive importance in every advance of knowledge: but
imagination is not art, it is merely its instrument, and the implements
that serve science, though artificial, belong absolutely and obviously,
in their origin and purpose, to the sphere of industry. And the frequently
emphasised advantage of the intuitive glance in the case of the doctor
only establishes a relationship with art, which occurs in every sphere
of life; medicine is and remains a science. Education, on the other hand,
when regarded as a matter of schools and instruction, belongs to “Politics
and Church.“ By it minds are moulded and firmly woven into the many-coloured
web of convention; there is nothing which State and Church desire so ardently
as the possession of the schools, and nothing
246 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
about which they
quarrel so obstinately as they do about their claims to the right of influencing
them. In the same way every manifestation of social life can, without artificial
forcing, be fitted into my short tabular list.
COMPARATIVE
ANALYSES
Whoever will take
the trouble to pass in review the various civilisations which are known
to us, will find that their remarkable divergence is due to differences
in the relations between Knowledge, Civilisation (in the narrower sense)
and Culture, and, to be more minute, is determined by too great insistence
upon neglect of one or the other of the seven elements. No study is more
likely to throw alight upon our own peculiar individuality.
We find in Judaism,
as always, a very extreme and therefore instructive example. Here Knowledge
and Culture, that is to say, the terminal points, are wanting; in no province
have the Jews made discoveries; science is under a ban except where medicine
has been a paying industry; art is absent; religion a rudiment; philosophy
a digest of misunderstood Helleno-Arabian formulas and spells. On the other
hand, the comprehension of economic relations was abnormally developed;
in the sphere of industry they had little inventive talent, but they exploited
its value in the cleverest manner; politics were unexampled in their simplicity,
because the Church usurped the monopoly of all arbitrary decisions. I do
not know who it was — I think it was Gobineau — that called the Jews an
anti-civilising power; on the contrary, they were, like all Semitic half-castes,
Phoenicians, Carthaginians &c., exclusively a civilising power. Thence
the peculiarly unsatisfactory character of these Semitic peoples, for they
have neither root nor blossom: their civilisation is neither based upon
a knowledge slowly acquired by themselves and consequently really
247
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
their own, nor
does it grow into an individual, natural, necessary culture. We find the
very opposite extreme in the Indo-Aryans, for here civilisation seems to
be reduced, so to speak, to a minimum; industry carried on by Pariahs,
economy left as simple as possible, politics never launching forth upon
great and daring schemes; * on the other hand, remarkable diligence and
success in the sciences (at least in some) and a tropical growth of culture
(philosophy and poetry). Regarding the richness and complexity of Indo-Aryan
philosophy and the sublimity of Indo-Aryan ethics I need say nothing more
— in the course of this whole work I have kept the eye of the reader fixed
upon them. In art the Indo-Aryans did not possess anything like the creative
power of the Hellenes, but their poetical literature is the most extensive
in the world; in many examples it is of the sublimest beauty and of such
inexhaustible richness of invention that the Indian scholars had to divide
the drama into thirty-six classes with a view to creating order in this
one branch of poetical production. † In the present connection, however,
the most important observation is the following. In spite of their achievements
in the sphere of mathematics, grammar &c., the culture of the Indians
considerably surpassed not only their civilisation but also their knowledge;
hence they were what we call “top-heavy,“ all the more so, since their
science was almost purely formal and lacking in the element of discovery,
that is to say, it lacked the real material, or at least did not acquire
new material to nourish the higher qualities and to keep the faculties
constantly exercised. Here we notice something which will force itself
again and again upon our attention, that Civilisation is a relatively indifferent
central mass, while close relations of mutual correlation
* Or only very late — indeed, when it was too late.
† See Rajah Sourindro Mohun Tagore: The Dramatic Sentiments of
the Aryas (Calcutta, 1881).
248 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
exist between
Knowledge and Culture. The Indian who possesses very little capacity for
empirical observation of nature, possesses likewise (and, as I hope to
show, for that very reason) little artistic creative power; on the other
hand, we see the abnormal development of pure brain activity conducing
on the one hand to an unexampled richness of imagination and on the other
to an equally unrivalled brilliancy of the logical and mathematical faculties.
Again, the Chinese would provide us with an altogether different example,
if we had time at present to extricate this wain from the mud in which
our national psychologists have so firmly embedded it; for the fairy tale
that the Chinese were once different from what they are now — inventive,
creative, scientific — and suddenly some thousand years ago changed their
character and remained thenceforth absolutely stationary, is one which
others may swallow: I will not. This people to-day lives a most thriving,
active life, shows no trace of decline, swarms and grows and prospers;
it was always the same as it is to-day, otherwise nature would not be nature.
And what is its character? Industrious, skilful, patient, soulless. In
many respects this human species bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish,
especially in the total absence of all culture, and the one-sided emphasising
of civilisation; but the Chinaman is much more industrious, he is the most
indefatigable farm-labourer in the world, and in all manual work he has
infinite skill; besides, he possesses, if not art (in our sense) at least
taste. It becomes, it is true, more questionable every day whether the
Chinaman possesses even moderate inventive talent, but he at least takes
up anything that is conveyed to him by others, so far as his unimaginative
mind can see any practical value in it, and thus he possessed, long before
us, paper, printing (in primitive form), powder, the compass, and many
other things. * His learning keeps pace with his
* It is now proved that paper was invented neither by the Chinese
249 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
industry. While
we have to be contented with encyclopaedias in sixteen volumes, the fortunate,
or shall I say unfortunate, Chinese possess printed encyclopaedias of one
thousand volumes! * They possess more complete historical annals than any
people in the world, a literature of natural history which surpasses ours
in extent, whole libraries of moral handbooks, &c., ad infinitum.
And what good does it all do them? They invent (?) powder and are conquered
and ruled by every tiny nation; two hundred years before Christ they possess
a substitute for paper, and not long after paper itself, and up to the
present they have not produced a man worthy to write
nor
by the Arabians, but by the Aryan Persians (see the section
on “Industry“); but Richthofen — whose judgment is of great value owing
to its purely scientific acuteness and independence — inclines to the belief
that nothing which the Chinese possess “in the way of knowledge and methods
of civilisation“ is the fruit of their own intellect, but is all imported.
He points to the fact that, as far as our information reaches back, the
Chinese never knew how to use their own scientific instruments (see China,
1877, i. 390, 512 f., &c.), and he comes to the conclusion (p. 424
f.) that the Chinese civilisation owes its origin to former contact with
Aryans in Central Asia. In connection with the view which I am advocating,
his detailed proof that the remarkably great cartographical achievements
of the Chinese only go so far as the political administration had a practical
interest in perfecting them, deserves our best attention (Chinai.
389); all further progress was excluded, since pure science is a cultural
idea. M. von Brandt, a reliable authority, writes in his Zeitfragen,
1900, pp. 163-4: “The supposed inventions of the Chinese in early antiquity
— porcelain, powder, the compass — were introduced to China at a late period
from other countries.“ Moreover, it is becoming clearer and clearer from
the works of Ujfalvi that races which we (in company with the Anthropologists)
must describe as “Aryan,“ formerly were spread over all Asia and dwelt
even far in the interior of China. The Sacans (originally an Aryan tribe)
ware driven out of China only about 150 years before Christ. (Cf.
Ujfalvi‘s Mémoire sur les Huns blancs in the periodical L‘Anthropologie,
1898, pp. 259 f. and 384 f., as also an essay by Alfred C. Haddon in Nature
of Jan. 24, 1901, and the supplementary essay of the sinologist Thomas
W. Kingsmill on Gothic Vestiges in Central Asia in Nature,
April 25, 1901.)
* This is the lowest computation. Karl Gustav Carus asserts in his Über
ungleiche Befähigung der verschiedenen Menschheitsstämme für
höhere geistige Entwickelung, 1849, p. 67, that the most comprehensive
Chinese encyclopaedias number 78,731 volumes, of which about fifty would
go to one volume of our ordinary dictionary.
250 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
upon it; they
print practical encyclopaedias of many thousand volumes and know nothing,
absolutely nothing; they possess detailed historical annals and no history
at all; they describe in admirable fashion the geography of their own country
and have long possessed an instrument like the compass, but they never
go on voyages of exploration, and have never discovered an inch of land.
Nor have they ever produced a geographer capable of widening their horizon.
One might call the Chinaman the human machine. As long as he remains in
the villages which the community itself manages, occupied with irrigation,
mulberry culture, rearing of children &c., the Chinaman inspires us
almost with admiration; within these narrow limits, of course, natural
impulse, mechanical skill and industry are sufficient; but whenever he
crosses these boundaries, he actually becomes a comical figure; for all
this feverish industrial and scientific work, this collecting of material
and studying and book-keeping, these imposing public examinations, this
elevation of learning to the highest throne, this fabulous development
under State support of industrial and technical art, lead to absolutely
nothing; that which we have here, in the life of the community, called
culture — the soul — is lacking. The Chinese possess moralists, but no
philosophers; they possess mountains of poems and dramas — for with them,
as with the French of the eighteenth century, writing poetry is the fashion
and part of a gentleman's education — but they never possessed a Dante
or a Shakespeare. *
* The worthlessness of Chinese poetry is well known, only in the shortest
forms of didactic poetry has some pretty work been produced. Regarding
music and the musical drama Ambros says in his Geschichte der Musik,
2nd ed. i. 37: “China really gives one the impression that the culture
of other peoples is reflected in a mirror that caricatures.“ After diligent
research in the literature of its philosophy I cannot believe that China
possesses a single real philosopher. Confucius is a kind of Chinese Jules
Simon: a noble-minded, unimaginative, moral philosopher, politician and
pedant. Incomparably more interesting is his antithesis Lâo-tze and
the school of so-called Tâoism which
251
HISTORICAL
SURVEY
This example is obviously extremely instructive, for it proves that culture
is not in itself a necessary product of knowledge and civilisation, not
a consecutive evolution, but depends upon the nature of the personality,
upon the
groups
itself around him. Here we encounter a really original, captivating philosophy,
but it, too, aims solely at practical life and is incomprehensible unless
we understand its direct relation to the special civilisation of the Chinese
with its fruitless haste and ignorant learning. For Tâoism, which
is represented to us as metaphysics, theosophy or mysticism, is quite simply
a nihilistic reaction, a desperate revolt against the Chinese civilisation,
which is rightly felt to be useless. If Confucius is a Jules Simon of the
Celestial Empire, Lâo-tze is a Jean Jacques Rousseau. “Away with
your great knowledge and your learning and the people will be a hundred
times happier; discard your spurious charity and your moralising, and the
people will once more, as before, display childlike love and human kindliness;
give up your artificial institutions and cease hungering after riches,
and there will be no more thieves and criminals“ (Tâo Teh King
i. 19, 1). This is the tone of the whole, obviously a moral, not a philosophical
one. This results on the one hand in the construction of Utopian States,
in which we shall no longer be able to read and write, but shall live happily
in undisturbed peace, without any trace of hateful civilisation, at the
same time inwardly free, for, as Kwang-tze (an eminent Tâoist) says:
“Man is the slave of all that he invents and the more he gathers round
him, the less free are his movements“ (xii. 2, 5); or, on the other hand,
this train of thought leads to a view which has probably never been proclaimed
with such force and conviction — to the doctrine that the greatest motive
power lies in rest, the richest knowledge in lack of learning, the most
powerful eloquence in silence, and the most unerring certainty in unpremeditated
action. “The highest achievement of man is to know that we do not know;
to fancy that we know is a sign of disease“ (Tâo Teh King
ii. 71, 1). It is difficult briefly to summarise this mood — for I cannot
call it anything else — simply because it is a mood and not a constructive
thought. These interesting writings must be read, so that we may gradually,
by patient application, overcome the repellent form and penetrate to the
heart of those sages who mourn for their poor Fatherland. We shall not
find metaphysics, in fact no philosophy at all, not even materialism in
its simplest form, but much information regarding the appalling nature
of the civilised and learned life of the Chinese and a practical moral
insight into human nature, which is as profound as that of Confucius is
shallow. This negation marks the highest point of what is attainable by
the Chinese spirit. (The best information is to be found in the Sacred
Books of China, vols. iii., xvi., xxvii., xxviii., xxxix. and xl. of
Max Müller‘s Sacred Books of the East; vols. xxxix. and xl.
contain the Tâoist books. Brandt‘s small work, Die Chinesische
Philosophie und der Staats-Confucianismus, 1898, may serve as an introduction.
I do not know of any one who has given an account of the real nature of
Tâoist philosophy.)
252 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
individuality
of the people. The Aryan Indian, with materially limited knowledge and
inadequately developed civilisation, possesses a Titanic culture of eternal
importance; — the Chinaman, with a detailed knowledge of gigantic dimensions
and an over-refined, feverishly active civilisation, possesses no culture
at all. And just as we have failed after three centuries to impart knowledge
to the negro or to civilise the American Indian, so we shall fail in our
endeavour to graft culture upon the Chinaman. Each of us in fact remains
what he is and was; what we erroneously call progress is the unfolding
of something already present; where there is nothing, the King loses his
rights. This example reveals another point with particular clearness, and
I should like to emphasise it in order to supplement what I formerly said
about the Indians: that without culture, i.e., without that tendency
of mind to an all-uniting, all-illuminating philosophy, there can be no
real knowledge. We can and should keep science and philosophy apart; certainly;
but it is obvious that without profound thought no possibility of extensive
science can arise; an exclusively practical knowledge, directed to facts
and industry, lacks all significance. * This is an important fact and it
is supplemented by another drawn from our experience of the Indo-Aryans,
that, conversely, when the supply of the material of knowledge stops, the
higher life of culture comes likewise to a standstill, and becomes ossified
— this being due, in my opinion, to the shrivelling up of creative power;
for the mystery of existence remains ever the same, whether we contemplate
much or little, and at every moment the extent of the Inscrutable corresponds
exactly to that of the Investigated; but questioning wonder and with it
creative imagination are dulled by the Familiar
* As Jean Jacques Rousseau pointedly says: Les sciences règnent
pour ainsi dire à la Chine depuis deux mille ans, et n‘y peuvent
sortir de l‘enfance (Lettre à M. de Scheyb, 15.7.1756).
253 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
and unchanging.
Let me give a proof of this. Those great myth-inventors, the Sumero-Accadians,
were brilliant workers in the sphere of natural observation and of mathematical
science; their astronomical discoveries reveal remarkable precision, i.e.,
prosaically sure observation; but prosaic though they might be, the discoveries
evidently stimulated the imagination powerfully, and so in the case of
this people we see science and myth-building going hand in hand. The practical
talents of this people are proved by their fundamental economic and political
institutions, which have come down to us; the division of the year according
to the position of the sun, the institution of the week, the introduction
of a duodecimal system for commerce in weighing, counting, &c.; but
all these thoughts testify to an unusual power of creative imagination,
and we may conclude from the remnants of their language that they were
peculiarly predisposed to metaphysical thought. * We see in how manifold
ways the threads are interwoven — how absolutely decisive is the nature
of the special racial individuality with its contrasts and unalterable
character.
Unfortunately I cannot continue this investigation further, but I think
that even these extremely meagre indications will provide subject for much
reflection, and lead to the recognition of many facts which are of importance
for us at the present time. Now if we again take up our tabular list and
look around to find a really harmonious man, beautifully and freely developed
in all directions, there is no one in the past but the Hellene whom we
shall be able to name. With him all the elements of human life shine in
the fullest splendour; discovery, science, industry, economy, politics,
philosophy, art; in every province he stands the test. Here we see before
us a really “complete man.“ He did not “develop“ from the Chinaman, who
even when Athens
* See vol. i. p. 420, note
3.
254 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
was at the zenith
of her glory was toiling with superfluous diligence; * he is not an “evolution“
of the Egyptian, although he felt a quite unnecessary reverence for the
latter's supposed wisdom; he does not signify an “advance“ upon the Phoenician
peddler, who first acquainted him with certain rudiments of civilisation;
no, it was in barbarous regions, under definite, probably hard conditions
of life, that a noble human race made itself still nobler, and — for this
is even historically demonstrable — by crossing with related but individualised
branches of the main stock, acquired talents of a most various nature.
This human being at once revealed himself as the man that he was to be
and to remain. He developed quickly. † The inherited discoveries, inventions
and thoughts of the world had led in the case of the Egyptians to a dead,
hieratic science, united to an absolutely practical, unimaginative, honest
religion; in the case of the Phoenicians to commerce and idolatry; in the
case of their neighbours the Hellenes, exactly the same impulses led to
science and culture, without the just demands of civilisation having to
suffer. The Hellene alone possesses this many-sidedness, this perfect plasticity,
which has found artistic expression in his statues; hence he deserves greater
admiration and reverence than any other man, and he alone can be held up
as a pattern — not for imitation but for emulation. The Roman, whose name
is in our schools linked to that of the Hellene, is almost more one-sided
in his development than the Indian; while in the case of the latter culture
had gradually consumed all vital
* More than two thousand years before Christ begin the historical annals
of the Chinese. (Addendum: This is a wide-spread error; at most eight hundred
years before Christ.)
† In a lecture delivered before the British Association on September 21,
1896, Flinders Petrie expresses the opinion that the oldest Mycenean works
of art, for example the famous golden cups with the steers and cows (from
about the year 1200 B.C.). were in respect of faithful observation of nature
and mastery of workmanship equal to any late work of the so called period
of splendour. (With regard to this Pelasgian-Achaean culture, cf.
Hueppe: Rassenhygiene der Griechen, p. 54 f.
255 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
powers, in the
former every other gift had been from the first suppressed by political
cares — the work of legislation and the work of statecraft. He was so fully
occupied with the task of civilisation that he had no strength left for
knowledge or for culture. * In the course of his whole history the Roman
discovered nothing, invented nothing; and here too we see the aforementioned
law once more at work, that mysterious law of the correlation of knowledge
and culture; for when he had become master of the world and began to feel
the monotony of a life devoid of culture, it was too late; the welling
fountain of originality, that is, of freely creative power, had absolutely
dried up in him. His strong, one-sided political work presses heavily enough
upon us even to-day, and deludes us into attaching to political things
a predominant and independently informing significance, which they are
far from possessing, and which they claim only to the prejudice of life.
THE
TEUTON
This digression from
China to the Sumero-Accadians leads, as I think, to a fairly clear conception
of our own personality and its necessary development. For we may utter
it without hesitation; the Teuton is the only human being who can be compared
to the Hellene. In him, too, the striking and specifically distinctive
character is the simultaneous and equal development of knowledge, civilisation
and culture. The many-sided and comprehensive nature of our capacities
distinguishes us from all contemporary and all former races — with the
single exception of the Hellenes; a fact which, by the way, is an argument
in favour of the presumption that we are closely related to them. But that
is why a comparative distinction is in this case of the greatest value.
Thus, for example, we may surely assert that culture was the
* See
vol. i. pp. 34 and 35.
256 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
predominant element
in the Greeks; they possessed the most perfect and most original poetry,
out of which the rest of their art grew, and that, too, at a time when
their civilisation still bore the stamp of the love of splendour — the
appreciation of beauty in spite of the elements of dependency and barbarism
— a time when their thirst for knowledge was scarcely awakened. At a later
period their science suddenly made a great and ever-memorable advance,
and that, too, needed the direct and happy stimulus of sublime philosophy
(here again the correlation!). With these unrivalled achievements of the
Hellenes their civilisation lagged far behind. Athens, it is true, was
a manufacturing city (if this expression does not offend too dainty ears),
and the world would never have had a Thales or a Plato had not the Hellenes
as economists and crafty, enterprising merchants won for themselves wealth
and leisure; they were in every sense a practical people; yet in politics
— without which no civilisation can last — they did not reveal any particular
talent, such as the Romans did; Law and State were in Athens the shuttlecock
of the ambitious; nor must we overlook the phenomenon of the directly anti-civilising
measures of the most durable Greek State, Sparta. It is obvious that with
us Teutons matters are essentially different. Our politics, it is true,
have remained, even to the present day, clumsy, rude, awkward; yet we have
proved ourselves the greatest State-builders in the world — and this would
lead us to suppose that here, as in so many things, it was imitation rather
than lack of ability that stood in our way. Goethe asks with a sigh: “Who
is fortunate enough to become conscious in early life of his own self and
its proper connection apart from outside forms?“ * Not even the Hellenes,
and we much, much less. Our gifts have developed better, because more independently,
in the whole economic sphere (commerce, trade,
* Wilhelm Meister‘s Lehrjahre, Book vi.
257 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
agriculture perhaps least of all) and
reached a splendour hitherto unknown; it has been the same with industry,
which quickly followed suit. What are Phoenicians and Carthaginians with
their caravans and their miserable ware-houses and sweating system, in
comparison with a Lombardic or a Rhenish city-league, in which shrewdness,
industry, invention and — last but not least — honesty go hand in hand?
* In our case, therefore, civilisation, the whole sphere of real civilisation,
forms the central point; a good characteristic, in so far as it promises
durability, but a somewhat perilous one, in that we run a risk of becoming
Chinese, a risk which would become a very real one if the non-Teutonic
or scarcely Teutonic elements among us were ever to gain the upper hand.
† For our unquenchable desire for knowledge would at once be enlisted in
the service of mere civilisation, and thereby — as in China — fall under
the ban of eternal sterility. The only safeguard against thus is culture,
which confers on us dignity and greatness, immortality, indeed — as the
ancient Greeks were wont to say — Divinity. But in our gifts culture does
not possess the predominant importance which the Hellenes assigned to it.
For its importance in Hellenism I refer to my remarks in the first chapter.
No one can say of us that art moulds our life, or that philosophy (in its
noblest sense as a way of viewing life's problems) plays as great a part
in the lives of our leading men as it did in Athens, not to speak of India.
And the worst feature of the case is, that that element of culture which,
to judge from countless manifestations of Celto-Slavo-
* See
vol. i. p. 112
f.
† The
German in particular shows in many respects a dangerous tendency to become
Chinese, for instance, in his mania for collecting, in his piling up of
material upon material, in his inclination to neglect the spirit for the
letter, &c. This tendency was noticed long ago, and Goethe laughingly
told Soret of a globe belonging to the time of Charles V., which bore,
as a gloss upon China, the inscription: “The Chinese are a people resembling
the Germans very much!“ (Eckermann, 26.4.1823).
258 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
Teutonism, is
most highly developed among us (and at the same time an ample substitute
for the artistic and metaphysical talent which the majority of us lack),
I mean Religion, has never been able to tear off the straitjacket which
— immediately upon our entrance into history — was forced upon it by the
unworthy hands of the Chaos of Peoples. In Jesus Christ the absolute religious
genius had entered the world; no one was so well adapted to hear this divine
voice as the Teuton; the present spreaders of the Gospel throughout Europe
are all Teutons; and the whole Teutonic people, as the example of the rude
Goths shows (vol. i. p. 553),
seizes upon the words of the Gospel, repelling all foolish superstition,
as we see from the history of the Arians. And yet the Gospel soon disappears
and the great voice is silent; for the children of the Chaos will not abandon
the sacrifice by proxy which the better spirits among the Hellenes and
the Indians had long ago rejected, and the pre-eminent Prophets of the
Jews had centuries before laughed out of court; all kinds of cabalistic
magic and metamorphosis of matter from the late, impure Syro-Egypt came
to be added; and all this, embellished and supplemented by Jewish chronicle,
is henceforth the “religion“ of the Teutons! Even the Reformation does
not cast it off, and so becomes involved in an irreconcilable contradiction
with itself; this throws the preponderance of the importance of the Reformation
into a purely political sphere, that is to say, into the class of forces
which are merely civilising, whereas all that it accomplishes in the sphere
of culture is an inconsistent affirmation (redemption by faith — and yet
retention of materialistic superstition) and a fragmentary negation (rejection
of a portion of the dogmatic accretions and retention of the rest). * In
the
* Luther especially never frees himself in this connection from the toils
of religious materialism; he — the hero of faith — “eliminates faith so
much from the Lord‘s Supper“ that he teaches the doctrines that even the
unbeliever breaks with his teeth the body of Christ. He therefore accepts
what Berengar and so many other strict Roman
259 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
want of a true
religion that has sprung from, and is compatible with, our own individuality,
I see the greatest danger for the future of the Teuton; this is his vulnerable
heel; he who wounds our Achilles there will lay him low. Look back at the
Hellene! Led by Alexander, he showed himself capable of conquering the
whole world; but his weak point was politics; being gifted with extravagant
talents even in this respect, he produced the foremost doctrinaires of
politics, the most ingenious founders of States, the most brilliant orators
on State affairs; but the success which he achieved in other spheres failed
him in this: — he created nothing great and lasting; that was why he fell;
it was solely his pitiful political condition that delivered him over to
the Romans; with his freedom he lost his vital power; the first harmoniously
complete human being was a thing of the past, and naught but his shadow
now walked upon the earth. I think that in respect of religion we Teutons
are in a similar case. A race so profoundly and inwardly religious is unknown
to history; we are not more moral than other people, but much more religious.
In this respect we occupy a position between the Indo-Aryan and the Hellene;
our inborn metaphysical and religious need impels us to a much more artistic
(i.e., more illuminating) philosophy than that of the Indian, to
a much more spiritual and therefore profounder one than that of the Hellenes,
who surpass us in art. It is this very standpoint which deserves to be
called religion, to distinguish it from philosophy and from art. If we
tried to enumerate the true saints, the great preachers, the merciful helpers,
the mystics of our race, if we were to inquire how many have suffered torture
and death for their faith, if we were to investigate the important part
played by religious conviction in all the most
Catholics
had bravely opposed a few centuries before, and what would have filled
not only the earliest Christians but even men like Ambrosius and Augustine
with horror. (Cf. Harnack: Grundriss der Dogmengeschichte,
§ 81.)
260 HISTORICAL
SURVEY
important men
of our history, we should find the task endless; our whole glorious art
in fact develops round religion as its centre, just as the earth revolves
round the sun; it develops only partly and outwardly round this and that
special Church, but everywhere and inwardly around the longing, religious
heart. And in spite of this vigorous religious life we show from the first
the most absolute want of unity in religious matters. What do we find to-day?
The Anglo-Saxon — impelled by his unerring vital instinct — clings to some
traditional Church, which does not interfere in politics, in order that
he may at least possess religion as the centre of his life; the Norseman
and the Slav dissolve themselves into a hundred weakly sects, well aware
that they are being led astray, but incapable of finding the right path;
we see the Frenchman languishing in dreary scepticism or the most foolish
humbug of fashion; the Southern Europeans have now fallen a prey to the
most unvarnished idolatry, and are consequently no longer classed among
cultured races; the German stands apart and waits for a God to descend
once more from Heaven, or chooses in despair between the religion of Isis
and the religion of imbecility called “Force and Matter.“
In the various sections I shall have to return to many points to which
I have here alluded; in the meantime it is sufficient if, in paving the
way for a further comparative characterisation of our Teutonic world, I
have revealed its most pre-eminent quality, and at the same time its most
perilous weakness.
A few pages back I invoked the Bichat of the future; now we reach a point
where we can offer him some indications concerning the historical development
of the Teutonic world up to the year 1800. That we shall do by glancing
successively at each of the seven elements which we adopted in order to
get a more comprehensive view of the whole field.
End of page. Last update:
March 29th, 2004.
