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LECTURE V
PROBLEMS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY
LECTURE V
PROBLEMS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY
Up to this point we have dealt with the periods of culture, with their general psychical character, with the psychic mechanism displayed in them, and with the way in which these epochs conform- to certain laws which indicate the presence of a certain dominant which, supported by a constantly rising psychic force, tends toward an ever increasing soul-differentiation. Hitherto it has been a limited sphere of observation to which our thoughts have been confined: the study of the development of great communities of men, that is to say, of nations. And there was another limitation: the subject hinged exclusively on that normal national development which we observe in a nation when we follow it through its slow and uninterrupted growth-processes from the lower to the higher and highest stages of civilization. It is seen that the point in question is a decidedly isolated one, — a condition which does not correspond entirely to the growth of the American nation, as it constantly unfolds itself before our astonished eyes, while the growth of the German nation, on the other hand, is probably the best example of the application of the principle under discussion.
It is clear that this limitation was necessary in order the more logically to deduce the principles aimed at. In regard to the difficulties of scientific problems we still keep to the old rule, Divide et impera ; and, without making a definite and a conscious use of the isolating method, we should, in the most important questions bearing upon the science of history, fail to make real progress.
It is evident, however, that an isolating mode of speculation, though somewhat shut off from outer influences, — this can never be quite completely done, — opens the way toward deeper problems : modes of abstraction are but different ways of arriving at certain conclusions by means of given objects of study. But in our case the direct and self-evident relations between communities of men demand of us to press forward toward an understanding of those relations. It could not he otherwise; every well-grounded view of human affairs must needs partake somewhat of the nature of universal history.
On entering now the limitless field of universal history, the speaker feels it incumbent upon him to declare that he does it with the greatest diffidence. Whoever thinks along historical lines and has a fair knowledge of some period of universal history, e.g. of the history of a single nation, will be overcome with a feeling of awe at the prodigious many-sidedness and endless significance of human activities. And as a result of this feeling gentle stirrings of the mind are aroused, which take form in sacred admiration of the achievements of mankind ; a noble yet dangerous devotion to the grandeur of the human race takes possession of us. If I take into consideration the course of German history, break it up into generations all the way back to the time of the heroic struggles of Arininms in the Augustan age, hardly sixty generations, who have been the makers of the historical life of the German nation as it is known to us, I can imagine my sixtieth ancestor marching out with a German spear and looking with defiant mien across the Rhine, and my fiftieth ancestor putting behind him the great river and invading triumphantly the carefully guarded regions subject to the Roman yoke. From thence to my day there are but fifty pairs of hands, but fifty changes of blood. What have they not gone through, these generations, down to then-remote grandson, who, accustomed to the air of close rooms, a brain-worker whose muscles have grown flabby from lack of constant exercise, has just crossed the vast ocean in order to speak to a foreign people, and yet in many respects to children of the same forefathers, of the life of his own nation during the course of the centuries I Let us imbue our minds with the feeling of this magnificent past, which is none the less concentrated in us, so as to be thoroughly sensible of its tremendous, and so to speak, "omnipotent force."
And yet, looked upon from the point of view of universal history, what are two thousand years, and what is the short life of a nation ? May we not, in consideration of the historical eternity of past millenniums and millions of years, apply to every nation, even to the most long-lived one, the sentence by which the psalmist expresses the transltoriness of the individual: " What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? "
We cannot enter into problems of universal history, unless we do it with the earnestness of religious feeling, else the standard of the methods which may be used will be completely obsolete and consequently fail in the application.
From the examination of the different periods of culture and their connection, we are led on into the domain of universal history by the question : What are the external moments which, for the time being, cause a special accumulation and intensity of new stimuli, and which, in spite of a dissociation of the psychic functions, finally bring out in a nation an increased force of analysis and synthesis, a new form of the dominant, and with that a new period of culture ?
The points thus brought into question are in the first place those of the inner development of human society. And they spring for the most part from political and economic evolution. Following now the rise of most of the great periods of culture in German history, we may see that they correspond with the transition leading to domiciliation, to the exchange and barter of natural produce, to finance, and at last to the feverish economic conditions of today ; and if we examine other national . evolutions in the same way, we find in general a similar result.
At the same time we are struck by a moment, which, it is true, has already been described, but which must be emphasized once more : the transitions leading to new periods of culture which often succeed changes in economic and social life. The economic life of any period of culture manifests a decided similarity to the instinctive and impulsive actions of single individuals; it seems that the bulk of all economic actions become mechanical, and because of constant repetition assume the form of a sort of social autonomy. As compared with the higher intellectual life, economic activity bears in many respects the stamp of the vegetative, at least after certain general habits have been developed and so long as these are adhered to. But what results when, because of certain inner changes, particularly of the overgrowth of some departments of industry, sharp changes set in ? In this case a great many customs which had become automatic will be subjected to a new socio-psychic analysis; if actual disturbance takes place, then feelings and aspiration make themselves known, which, in part, vitalize and bring about dissociation. It is a process which, looked upon from the point of view of individual psychology, has its exact counterpart ; this process explains how periods of economic changes easily become the starting-point for the higher psychic changes, the more so when they are accompanied by social upheavals. For where has there been an economic revolution without the resulting social readjustment ?
All that has been said explains how economic and social changes become and ought to become general-psychic transitions; but it does not explain why, according to all known historical experience, there are connected with some of these economic revolutions certain psychic changes which are always the same, — why, for instance, the rise of finance is regularly connected with the transition to individualism. And there is another thing to be taken into consideration. An economic revolution not only creates a psychic dissociation, but, corresponding to its special character and at the same time intensifying the dissociation, produces in every instance numbers of new spe-. cific stimuli and germinations of associations. New conditions of will and purpose, changes of sentiment, and so forth set in which tend to modify decidedly the higher forms of intellectual life. It would be a study of great value to establish, by comparative work in universal history, what are the constantly recurring economic factors of each period which are so uniformly followed by the development of other higher intellectual values.
We cannot enter upon such an examination at this time. It is sufficient in this connection to recall, from what has been said, that in the inner national development the psychic values of new periods of culture come into existence as a rule along with economic and social changes.
We see that this is the doctrine of Karl Marx, the theory of the so-called, though roost unhappily so-called, historical materialism. But does it give a sufficient explanation of all the phenomena, or even of all the inner phenomena, of socio-psychic progress ? Not at all. In German history we have a most instructive example of progress toward a new period, the transition to subjectivism of about 1750, when an explanation based on socio-economic causes
— though these elements enter into the count — is entirely unsatisfactory. In this case mental and moral forces played an important role. And why should not this be true ? These elements: the development of the new ideals of education, at first of the " homme du monde" then of the " well-bred " ; the increase of irverest in everything printed, the development of an incredibly productive journalistic and newspaper literature; the possibility of an ever widening circle of friendship due to the newly won leisure ; the growth of a vast literature of ethnology and travel; the expansion of men's idea of time and space due to travel and exploration, — all these forces entered into the sum of influences which compelled the change.
Consequently the doctrine of Marx and his school is utterly inadequate even if we attempt to measure the mental and moral progress of a community. But it would, of course, be going too far simply to deny the great importance of their theory. And it is quite clear that, from the steady development of the national dominant and especially from the incidents of economic growth, material and hence social progress is the basal motive of general advance. All other causes are incidental and remain nothing but very important exceptions to the rule : that thus a nation, which would develop when isolated only out of itself, would chiefly be an example of the correctness of Marx's theory, which we can of course acknowledge only within certain limits.
But where shall we find an isolated nation ? It is one of the characteristics of the socialists' doctrines that, conscious or unconscious of it, they have looked upon the people in this sense. This has been the case in Germany from Fichte to Marx, and from Thunen to Rodbertus.
But, historically speaking, no nation is thus isolated. On the contrary, as far as we can penetrate into the mist of the remote past, all communities of men, great and small, are, partly in a hostile, partly in a friendly way, closely associated with then- neighbors. And thus it is evident that the scheme of development as hitherto discussed will remain the same, but that a thousand other motives may still be woven into this firm canvas of the past, — motives of advance, of recession, of highest acceleration, and of destruction.
If we would understand thoroughly the operation of these elements each by itself, they must first be minutely characterized.
I do not refer here so much to the influence of external occurrences, of sudden changes of environment, of earthquakes, inundations, and-slides/"«and the like, or even of subjugation and of political, sometimes even bodily, destruction by a human foe. They have of course most effectually determined the fate of the different nations; and what bard of ancient times, what political historian of to-day, would let slip the opportunity of describing these epochs and catastrophes ? But viewed from the standpoint of the psychology of history, such convulsions mean no more than, from the physiological point of view, is meant by staggers, tuberculosis, and other diseases of cattle. They destroy certain socio-psychic individuals, at niost whole nations, and at least thwart and limit them in their full development. From the point of view of historical evolution in its typical sense, they signify nothing; and they regain their importance only when we attempt minutely to describe that particular part of the great world known to us, not so much when we try to comprehend it in broad outline.
Of far greater importance for our purposes are those examples of universal inter-relation which have been given us in the projection by one community of men upon another of their ideals and methods, so that a permanent change takes place. Therefore it is of importance to determine on what conditions and in what forms such influences are actually exerted.
We have here to deal with two things: the ways in which those influences, are brought to bear upon other peoples, and the form they assume. The first point leads to the study of the history of the inter-relations of communities of men, and thus to a field of exceedingly different possibilities, to classify and to understand which, is at least one of the greatest tasks of universal history. As regards the second point, however, a double division seems not to be out of place. The form of the transmission of influence can either be men themselves or any human products. We have an example of the first instance, cited above, in the wandering of the nations, at least in so far as it left two or more peoples dwelling permanently together; the second is indicated by the transference tools, inventions of all kinds, and especially through purely intellectual values such as monuments, language, and writings (hieroglyphics, alphabetical writings, musical notation, etc.). So it may pass for a law, that at all times the elements of that culture which is more instinctive and apparently more constituent, especially those things which apply to the economic and social life, have been more difficult to transfer, the means not being so readily at hand. From this it follows that the course of universal history has taken the direction in which the transmission of the higher elements of culture was easiest.
But is it possible to systematize, by following certain mathematical formulas, the numerous combinations and permutations of the imaginable ways and forms of transmission, and take a quick survey of them as a system ? Hardly. Only a full and broad experience will enable us to see clearly the essentials of the problem, and then only a very simple and elementary survey of the process of transmission may, as I suppose, be gained. Research in this field, in so far as it relates to the point of view already indicated, has only begun ; for the greater part is but the description of the outer appearance of things, without even an endeavor to picture the real inner, underlying life. The way of mediation may lead either through space or time, and in the first case we might speak of receptivity, in the second of renaissance. The means of mediation may be single or manifold, intermittent, continuous, one-sided, lying open only to the initiative of the one community in question, or two-sided,— distinctions which occasionally may be traced to special climatic and geographic conditions as well as special culture-differences. And according to this we shall be able, when using the picture of a well-known psychic process, to speak with reference to these processes of osmotic phenomena of diosmosis, endosmosis, and exosmosis. But as regards the instruments of transmission, the most important distinction seems to be the one between short and long duration. To those of short duration belongs the individual; to those of long duration, the race and the art of writing. Upon those of long duration is founded the possibility of an at least partial revival of an already extinct culture, hence renaissance of every sort, — one of the most remarkable phenomena of human development.
It is evident that thus far everything else rather than a theory of the ways and means by which universal history is " made" has been discussed ; it suffices, however, if the main problems in question have been in some measure touched upon. How very much is there still to be done in this line ; how the gold nuggets, as it were, of great scientific discoveries lie in the streets ready for every one who will but pick them up!
But this brings us little further on our way except that perhaps the problem lends itself more readily to solution when its kindred themes have been cleared up. We may inquire as to the effect of the extension of space, measure of time, and for the possible psychic results of the transmission of older ideas to younger peoples. These questions are in some measure already answered by what has been said ; at the same time general-psychic knowledge helps us, at least in part, to obtain a correct formulation of the problems under consideration. In regard to the expansion of culture-ideas through space, it seems that for an isolated influence there is no limit to its territory, though really it is, as a rule, subject to the field of activity in which it has existence.
If this proposition bears the impress of the self-evident, it is nevertheless worthy of remark that it has also proven to be right, where, the question is one of the transference of complete sums of objects, even of whole cultures. But these influences do not permeate the whole new community, but only those members of it who have special relations to them or enter into special connection with them. And, indeed, that holds good for periods of receptiveness as well as renaissances. For instance, the reception by other European cultures of the chivalric ideals of the twelfth century of the North of France and Provence presupposed the existence of knighthood, with its economic and political basis, or at least germs of the same; and the different revivals of the classics were only possible where there was a certain admiration for ancient civilization, which admiration was either taught the people by a great monarch or by intellectual leaders who looked up to the ancients or who fancied that they were re-living the life of antiquity.
These are but a few cursory observations on the space-question, — also the sociological problem which requires attention here might be supposed to be closely associated with that of space, — observations which come to mind in any study of the elements of civilization which one age inherits from its predecessors; how much clearer, how much more important for the proper estimate of the individual case, would be the picture of that question of space, if it could but comprise the experiences of the whole of known human history.
Just as important, and perhaps of still greater consequence for the general knowledge of the psychic agency in the course of history, is the consideration of the time-measure of the influences of inheritance. And it seems almost without exception that this measure of time, tested by the time-measure of the inner process of the evolution of the receptive human community, appears to have been quickened. Frequently we get the impression that there has been a complete overthrow of certain cultures; judging by this impression, we might indicate the general psychic effect of the inner processes of development as continuous, while that of transmissions might be termed catastrophic. The explanation of this distinction has already been made possible by what hits already been said to-day, at least as far as the more universal transmissions are concerned. The latter are either enforced, and in this case they are introduced by compulsion, that is at an increased rate; or they are spontaneous, and in this case they only develop themselves when the receiving community desires them fervently, consequently again at an increased rate. We may be certain from what has been shown that, social temperatnents being for the moment considered the same, among several human communities, the time-element of that community will be shortest which accepts the greatest amount of foreign influences. This is an observation which explains a great deal in Greek history when we compare it with the fates of later nations, as for instance of the French. But those considerations lead us to the threshold of another difficulty, namely, the question of what the effect, the psychic effect, of transmissions on the receiving community is. And our starting-point is a few elementary laws of psychology, especially those of association. The law of analogy is the first that engages our attention: in every mental and moral process there is a totality or a completed process, in such a manner that the recurrence of one part of this totality brings the recurrence of the whole. Besides these laws another one must be mentioned: mental impressions
1 Von Lipps theory: " Psychology," p. 41. are not strongest when the contrast between receptivity and the force of impression is greatest, but when the contrast is intermediate, so that the power of impression and weak receptivity are not isolated and thereby repelled. The result thus far of our observations is easily derived: where the ways and means of transference bring to a community not only single moments, but the bulk of a foreign culture, the tendency arises to adopt not only the single, but also the whole of this culture and to blend it with one's own culture. And secondly, this tendency to assimilation only becomes effective on condition that the foreign culture, compared with the indigenous culture, does not show too sharp distinctions of the psychic force, and thus destroy the equilibrium of the two cultures.
Both these conclusions are fully confirmed by all well-established historical facts. It is one of the best-known historical phenomena that nations in very low stages of culture are ruined by the importation of very high cultures, and that nations of a high culture adopt with difficulty even single elements of lower cultures. It need hardly be mentioned of how great and universal significance these facts are: the first reveals the general law of productive universal-historic combination ; the second shows how far within this combination the inner socio-psychic development of the single-historic community, that is to say, the succession of the periods of culture, is preserved. Hence the result is a universal-historical connection, modified only by a succession of typical developments of great communities.
Having got the result, it is possible to say something more exact and yet general about the more intimate psychic effect of foreign influences in human communities. The decisive question is, of course, in what proportion those transmissions are to the inner-psychic mechanism of the periods of culture. The principle of proportion is already established by the simple conclusions, which have just been drawn from universal-individual, as also from socio-psychic, laws: this mechanism, dependent very much on the succession of the periods of culture, may suffer slight variations and derivations, especially an intensification of their tendencies ; but abrogated they will never be. It is the same with the external influences on one human life; they can certainly be of great importance, but it is beyond their power to remove all that psychic mechanism which leads from the spiritual life of the youth to that of manhood and hence to old age.
In general we can derive by way of psychology the fact — and experience confirms this derivation — that outer socio-psychic influences of an opposing tendency to those within at one time tending toward dissociation, at another toward concentration of the native forces, in the psychic mechanism, will remain without decided effect; their influence is, naturally, much greater when they are applied along the lines of the natural-psychic mechanism. Dissociation of existing mental and moral conditions tends to produce change from one to another period of culture. Of how great importance for the development of European individualism was the Roman Renaissance of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and how important was the Hellenic revival of the eighteenth century for the rise of German subjectivism !
But the application of external influences is of the greatest importance, not only on the efficients of dissociation, but also for those of concentration when the psychical mechanism runs a parallel course. These influences do not enter largely into the analysis of the new moral elements, which are stirred up by the operation of a great number of new stimuli in the socio-psyche; the struggle for the growth of a new dominant, which takes place here in its pro-foundest and most productive forms, is chiefly supported out of the means and forces of the innate and intensive development. And it seems as if it depended on this connection and on still more profoundly working factors, that the underlying basis of the dominant once given cannot be removed by external influences. But in this domain a clarifying influence which operates on the established order of development does not seem to be excluded; e.g. the process within the Franconian and Carolingian ornamentation, which led to a somewhat naturalistic conception of the (animal) objects reproduced, a process characteristic of the transition to the symbolism of the Middle Ages, was supported by the purifying influences of antique ornamentation.
It will thus be seen that the time required for the development of the inner socio-psychic is decidedly shortened by the intrusion of foreign influences.
But external influences, it appears, tend synthetically to build up rather than to dissolve the various elements of a community in the form of a new dominant; certain parts and even whole psychic characters of former cultural epochs, if their spirit be in harmony with the principles of the new dominant, take on, as it were, new life. In consequence of the influx of strong foreign influences, a sort of socio-psychic indigestion is produced, and great historiographic art is required to describe accurately such a condition, with its complications and tendencies, so that the reader may really enter into the spirit of the time. If this process of change is complete, a new social psyche appears, bearing the signs and the marks of older or foreign generations.
This is an important and in a special sense a universal-historical process ; important traits of influential characters of the past are thus reproduced in present-day life; the new combination contains whatever is immortal in human affairs.
This is a phenomenon which invites us once more to study the characters of the great men, heroes of history. Axe they not, also, hearers of influences, which, since they are individual, present to the new social psyche a half-foreign appearance? Must not the influence of these men upon a present-day culture be subjected to a similar analysis to that which was applied to the more general foreign influence ? Only in the course of this analysis the position of the individuals is quite different. And thus it will be true for them, too, that whatever they have contributed of their own natures to the community is immortal and continues to live in the historical influences of this community on the socio-psyches of other times and places.
But let us pause a moment. Is there a fundamental difference between the psyche of the hero and that of the lowest member of a community, one who toils at his humble task and is perhaps only capable of physical exertion ? No: we are all men alike, and there is in each of us a creative spark, even if it be only that of imitation, and only with the results of this talent do we enter into the everlasting history of our race.
But it is time that we draw from these general observations certain conclusions as to the way history ought to be studied and taught. Let us accept the general explanation given above, in so far as this has been shown to be well grounded, leaving out all that rests only on probability.
The full historical comprehension of a single change or of a single phenomenon, with their historical significance, can only be acquired from the most general principles, that is to say, from the application of the highest universal-historical categories. These, however, are all summed up in the one great truth, that the general historical moment, the meaning of the unity of history, is not to be looked for so much in the apparently important historical events in these, occurrences, whose transmission through time and space is checked by the difficulty of unknown ways and unprepared forms, but in the liquid, as it were, ethereal elements which are destined to influence universal history through long periods of time. These are the products of the higher intellectual activity, moral and religious principles, art, poetry, and science; these are the influences which become the chief constituents in the great stream of world history. Along with these, though of secondary importance, must be classed political history, social and economic conditions and activities.
The consequence is, as every single historical event must be valued according to these highest principles, that special history, the history of individual nations, must not be valued and appraised according to the canons of economic, social, or constitutional history, but according to the standards of the highest intellectual attainments, else it would never appear what individual peoples have stood for or still represent in universal history. Hence a theory of the character and the course of a cultural age must not be based (even if the conviction were firmly fixed that this character and course were correctly defined by economic and socio-political moments) on the history of economic conditions and of society as fundamental permutations; but, on the contrary, its principles of classification must be dependent on the highest intellectual life. Cultural ages must be defined and arranged, not by the nature of the roots of things, but by their fruitage. It is the more necessary to reform our methods in this because, according to the earlier view, the analysis of the history of a people is apt to do violence to the principle of intimate connection between the very beginnings of a particular civilization and its later flower and fruit. Within the highest psychic life, the facts and incidents in the domain of purely imaginative activity, say of poetry, music, and especially of plastic art, seem to lend themselves most readily for use in the marking off of the boundaries of particular periods. The reasons, both practical and theoretical, of this we shall discuss presently. In accordance with these principles, that positive doctrine of the cultural ages, which I have now for the first, time deduced, is constructed ; the application of these ideas has been made in my " German History."
But is this the end of it ? Not in the least. I have already indicated wherein lies the deficiency. A careful revision must be made, the results of the study of other national growths as well as the discoveries in one's own national history must be assimilated and digested. A sort of subjection to the laws found to apply to other peoples must be acknowledged ; for it has been found that the succession of the stages of the history of one nation is the same for all other nations. Yet there is no kind of doubt that, according to the nature of the new method as well as because of the condition of things, these principles of classification are more German than otherwise, and that the final method must be made more universal.
An infinite amount of work has still to be done, a work which shall seize upon that which is of importance for universal history in the growth of the various states and set it forth in its true colors. Such an undertaking, if truly accomplished, would be free from all bias, all restraint such as is ordinarily imposed by one's former views of what ought to have been the ruling moments in the history of the several peoples.
But a further problem, and a difficult one too, must be met by way of preparation for such a work. Are the cultural ages, hitherto discovered and applied in German history, all that exist and all that the intelligent student might look for ? Do they embrace the whole field from the beginning to the end ?
The question must be answered in the negative. As to the future, we Germans hope (and. justification of this hope may be found in Roman history) that the number of the culture-epochs is not yet exhausted. To complete the cycle which seems to have been the rule in other civilizations, still other epochs are required. If this is true, a great held of effort lies ahead of us, a field which might be called that of historical science interpreter, as it were, of over-ripe cultures; to be able to work in this domain one must study carefully the Roman, the Indian, and the Chinese cultures. Still, all this must not be considered as being all-important. First, because one likes best to study those cultures of the past whose typical forms clear up more satisfactorily the development and present condition of the great states of to-day. And again, because decadent cultures — and those mentioned above are certainly to be regarded thus — can be understood only when their earliest stages of development lie open before us. And just these lowest stages are those about which we know the least in all these instances, and therefore those which require most accurate description and interpretation, for the reason that the later periods of national growth present a decidedly different picture from that of their earlier stages; and it is the study of both pictures which, perhaps more than any other, clears up the inner motifs of the decadence.
Thus, if we would fill out the cycle of culture-epochs, as our study of German history suggests, we must turn our attention backward to the beginnings of recorded history, and if we apply here the canons of modern historical science, considering at the same time the inter-relations of the various branches of the subject, we shall find two conditions which require attention : —
1. German history reaches back into an age which we may call at first sight that of ethnological culture ; it is well known that for the conditions of the old Germans, as we know them from Caesar and Tacitus, we find numerous parallels in present conditions of people of so-called lower culture, as, e.g., the Kaffirs, or, to mention an American Indian tribe, the Tlinkits. 2. The question of finding still other cultural ages, further removed from us than those at present known to German history, is therefore identical with the task of discovering from the enormous materials of modern ethnology whether degrees of psychic development of such a nature exist as to permit existing material to be embodied with them, without doing violence to established principles of classification. And the answer to this question would signify, as can easily be seen, the harmonizing of history and ethnology and at the same time the classification of the lower peoples now living, and their arrangement in their proper place in the course of universal history, which would again signify the full development of an ordered science of world-history. We see from what has been deduced how important is the problem which has just been stated. But how can it be solved ?
Any amount of investigation of the conditions of early social life, of family and clan organizations, would fail to give an adequate basis for the formulation of the principles of a history of lower cultures. Indeed, to understand these, one must take the same point of departure as for higher cultures : the highest functions of psychic life are those which must be investigated.
But among these one has particularly to be singled out in order that we may clearly com- pretend all its psychological bearings. This is imaginative activity. The imagination is that special psychological function in which new thought-unities take their origin, that is, the beginning of both synthetic concepts, which again come into existence only after the break-ing-up process of analysis. In these changes we also first mark the appearance of a new dominant. Therefore it has become possible to say of the single individual,1 " The tendency of the imagination shows in the most direct manner what experiences and associations have gained the upper hand, and thus what sort of a character he is." But what has been said here of the individual-psychic being may be applied quite as appropriately to the socio-psychic being.
If thus the question about the enumeration of the periods of low culture — or, what is the same thing, the problem of the analysis of the vast ethnological material on the line of historic categories— if reduced to an inquiry concerning imaginative activity, it will be found that we must rely mainly on the plastic arts. A brief review of the materials of ethnography seems to
1 Von Lipps, p. 126. be necessary at this point. The requirements, both practical and scientific, demand in this review a consideration only of those parts of the vast material which are subject to the fewest exceptions, and analogous elements which characterize the growth and development of all peoples at certain stages of their existence. We must also take examples of imaginative activities which are not modified so positively by the influence of the various languages. Otherwise, how would it be possible, with our limited means, to carry out the comparison? Such examples, however, are only to be found in the field of art.
The history of art furnishes us with the examples with which to make our comparisons. And there are still other practical reasons for studying these subjects. As is known, we cannot, from the general ethnological material, divide off a historic section or subdivision, because the material, considered from the universal-historical point of view, is wanting in the first of all necessary elements, that is chronology, either absolute or relative. Historically we know too little of the nations, whose cultural possessions are shown in our museums, to be able to distinguish easily between the products of each nation which come from older times and those which were added from later or neighboring; peoples.
The spade and pickaxe are our main reliance in the study of prehistoric times. Archaeology is concerned chiefly with civilization in its lower stages ; but while looking for the signs of primitive culture in the earth, we also find in these hidden records, as they are laid bare to our view, the necessary facts for the establishment — though sometimes none too securely — of a new chronology reaching into far remote ages of the past. Thus earlier and later culture-epochs are clearly traced within the limits of ages hitherto regarded as beyond the reach of modern investigation. By the terms "earlier" and "later" it is not meant that our knowledge of prehistoric nations covers their whole civilization. It is well known, indeed, that all the work done at the various localities in the East only brings to light certain classes of monuments — those done in the most durable of materials and those which have been in some way protected against the forces of disintegration Besides, all that has come to light thus far deals almost exclusively-with the artistic side of life, with plastic art in particular.
This is for us the salient point. If we look backward, we find the chronology necessary for the historical analysis of ethnological data can only be drawn from prehistoric times; but the latter furnish satisfactory materials only for plastic art. The chronology of this material, however, even if it were of a nature to extend our knowledge of the other branches of prehistoric activity, could be applied only to that of plastic art. And finally: if all the data for all branches existed both in archaeology and ethnology, and if all the languages of the different nations could be mastered equally well by one and the same investigator, we should still be able, on account of the vastness of the material, to make only a beginning, and this beginning would, because of general psychological laws, be in the field of imaginative effort. So we should have finally to do first just what our materials now enable us to do intelligently — judge the past through its artistic side.
Again all roads lead to Rome. So much the better if only this seeming unity enables us to solve our problem the more readily. But this requires a systematic working-through of all the monuments of northern, middle, and southern-Europe, along with those of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. This will give rise to comparative study of the various peoples along the lines of their development — chiefly as expressed in the various forms of art. If it appears that all these civilizations have advanced along parallel lines, — which seems highly probable, — then shall we have a canon of history which may be applied to the other ethnographic groups. "When this has been accomplished, we may estimate the importance to world-history of each individual community or nation. A scientific Weltgesehichtc can then be written.
Such a universal history remains, of course, the final aim and end of all historical science. And it can be way of transcendentalism toward general results and easy solutions. Hence there is all the more reason to emphasize empirical and methodical efforts to reach a true answer. But this can only be attained (and this, not the materials of knowledge, is our goal to-day) when we approach the subjects in question entirely free from prejudice. How long has it been since the day when tradition restricted one to the written sources! And even to-day a similar opinion comes occasionally to the surface — a notion which belongs only to the past of historical science. It has been seen what an extraordinary importance now attaches to the investigation of prehistoric times, a field of activity so much despised a few decades ago. And looked at from a methodological point of view, is not a monument, which personifies a portion of the past, to be far more highly prized from the epistomological point of view than the story of any occurrences indirectly, and perhaps incorrectly, related ? And has not every prehistoric monument which takes a prominent place in the history of fine arts a greater documental value in proportion as it fixes, not only one moment of a past important action, but all moments of it ? We must be cautious, but also intellectually free, in the rarefied air of the problems of universal history.
It is, however, time to face the last but not least important phase of the subject. Do the examples dealt with really embrace all the problems of universal history ? Are there not other and more difficult ones?
This must be unreservedly answered in the affirmative. Indeed, all the questions in point here, within certain limits, refer to suppositions, which are simplified by isolation. These suppositions, intentionally formulated somewhat too strongly, are: the national course of human history and the normal course of national developments. Has history, as far as we are able to observe it, really taken its course in normal, — that is to say, from the beginnings to the very perfection of individual development, — progressive national cultures ? Or has this occurred only in certain arbitrarily chosen examples ? It is as if one would require that a forest should consist only of trees which had gone through the whole process of growth, from the very beginning to their final decay — i.e. the course of a normal tree. But there are trees which are propagated by grafts and from shoots; and then not every tree conies to its full maturity. It is not different in the life of a community. Indeed, the example of the tree and the wood teaches us how fitting and necessary is the method of isolating things. What would plant biology have amounted to if one had been required to study each individual plant rather than the normal, typical growth ?
But it is an established fact that the course of universal history can by no means be determined, or even described, by means of the principle of special individualist research, in so far as I am acquainted with this class of writing. It seems a matter of course that we should only follow up in the most careful manner the vast subject, and that we cannot reconstrue it and draw conclusions of any kind from it after the manner of logical deduction. In the course of our observations, certain great complications have not received due notice, though in a general way they have not been excluded from the schemes laid down. In this class belong certain parts of every migration of nations and of every colonizing movement.
This is a point which it is certainly worth while to touch on here, in the historic metropolitan seaport of the New World. What is it that makes the history of the United States one of the most interesting subjects for every historian ? I think it is the fact that on the same ground two interesting psychic currents of general significance have crossed and are still crossing each other: the incidents of psychic revolution of such national elements as one finds in national migration, and such as undergo at the same time that peculiar change of the national character which is always connected with the appearance of colonizing movements. The inhabitants of the German empire of today are, in their ideals of culture, of a twofold habit of mind: according as they belong to the old native country, which is situated westward from the Elbe and which they have occupied for at least fifteen hundred years, or to those colonial territories, eastward from the Elbe, which were wrested from the Slavonic inhabitants only five hundred years ago. We Germans understand very well the distinction between the Berlin and the Cologne types, between the young squire from the country east of the Elbe and the manufacturer of the West — between Prussia, the Eastern State, and the other States ; it is the distinction of the plucky, more energetic disposition, with a natural bent to rule, and the more yielding, indolent class — the distinction between the colonial and indigenous character. It is the same distinction that exists between the Englishman and the American, indigenous and colonial Anglo-Saxons, a fundamental distinction for American history. For the original Irishman, German, Swede, Roman, Slav, becomes in the United States a colonial.
But this is not all. For the culture of this great country and its people the principles of psychic transformation of the migration of nations hold good. Here, on colonial soil, nation stands beside nation, though the Anglo-Saxons are in the ascendency, and they all act and react upon each other. This is a process which again modifies the national character, already strongly differentiated from the original by colonial conditions. These influences, reenforced by geographical and political forces, will continue until new common purposes and ideals are attained.
This process is being worked out in the very light of history; and thousands of sources, foreign relations, the constitution, social growth and change, poetry, all speak out and prophesy concerning things present and to come. What a wonderful task for a historian to follow up these psychic changes, these innumerable combinations and decompositions, and to project from them the picture of a great and united future! This idea cannot be even outlined in the short space of a lecture on the general character of universal history. Could this undertaking even be carried to conditions a problem of world-history ?
Vast and. inexhaustible are the sources of universal history. Whoever tries to survey it will certainly shrink back in the very beginning from the task of bringing all its treasures together and from attempting to sort them all for himself, especially if he but pause to think how little men know of their past, to say nothing of their ancestry. How we labor and puzzle ourselves, trying to find out how and when the human race came into existence ! Herder's idea was that God separated all human kind from the rest of animate nature and breathed into them the spirit of reason,—the greatest act of the whole process of creation. How many millions of years may have passed since man began to separate himself from other organic life of which he was to become the master. And how many ages have passed into that eternity which separates us from man's first attempt to approach with timid steps (from stimulus or association) the beginnings of that extremely complicated subject: evolution, which has become for us the very basis of our thought.
Of all these millenniums we know but ten thousand years. And yet we try to penetrate into the very birth-chamber of human life ? Does not the feeling of the psalmist again steal over us, as in the beginning of our lecture ? With profound reverence we approach the altar of humanity. But this must not prevent us from investigating with the sharp critical mind which the passing centuries have given us what we reverently worship. One thing must be avoided if we would not stumble: the mixing of our wishes and our judgment, the intermingling of feelings produced by our sense of the sublime and the magnificent, with the results of judicious and painstaking investigation. It has been in this spirit that the various phases of the great subject have been treated in this course of lectures; and as scientific students we need not despair of the final solution of many of the great problems of universal history. May we not press forward with the battle-cry of the greatest of all German humanists: perrumpendum -dum est tandem ! Perrumpendum est ! THE CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY
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