Lecture I
18 October, 1904
Goethe has said that
the best thing about History is the enthusiasm it arouses, leading
to encouragement to like deeds. In a certain sense all knowledge and
all understanding have their true value only when they emerge into
life. In History, it is necessary to look very far back in order to
find the causes of later developments. Just as, to understand
individual branches of external evolution — for instance, in
building of bridges and roads — we must cling to the fact that
these are the fruits of achievements in individual sciences, such as
Mathematics and Physics, so also we see everywhere in actual History
the fruits of earlier happenings. What comes to expression in our
lifetime has its origin in far back ages.
We are now going to
study a section of time, upon which many do not care to look back, a
time which they would prefer to delete from History as “the dark
Middle Ages.” And yet in it we are facing an important section of
History — barbaric peoples, knowing nothing of Civilisation
and Art, appear on the arena. These tribes, pressed back by the
Mongols from their dwelling-place in the Russia of to-day, pushed on
far towards the west. We will follow the struggles and destinies of
these peoples; then our path will lead us on to the discovery of
America, to that point of time at which the Middle Ages merge into
the modern epoch, to the time of the great discoveries, when that
invention took place which probably had the deepest significance of
all, the invention of Printing; the time in which Copernicus gave us
a new picture of the world. This evolution led mankind from the
folk-migrations to the discoveries of the modern age.
It is much more
difficult to point out, in History, the relation between cause and
effect, than it is in Chemistry or Physics; for cause and effect
often lie far apart.
Not until to-day have
men regarded mutual tolerance for the various confessions of faith,
as a requisite condition of culture. Yet, as early as the 3rd
century before Christ, there existed in India a reciprocal respect
and tolerance for the most diverse faiths, as a monument of King
Asoka proves. The Christian feeling which sprang up later, in the
Roman Empire, shed its influence over the whole of the Middle Ages;
but its origin lay neither in the Roman Empire nor in Germania, but
in a closed order of the little Jewish race the Essenes. Before we
can understand what influence the Middle Ages have upon us, we must
first grasp what it is that flows to us from them. An eminent Roman
writer, Tacitus, has preserved for us in his Germania, a
picture of that race which settled in the Germany of to-day. He
describes them as separate tribes, similar in speech, and, though
regarding themselves as different races, yet appearing very much
alike to the outsider. He found out what was common to them all and
gave them the general name of Germani.
Now if we examine the
folk-soul of these Germanic tribesmen, we are confronted by the
difference between them and the Greeks and Romans. In the
construction of their soul-qualities, there is an important
chronological difference. Greek culture with its incomparable Art,
marks a particular point in human evolution. We saw that
before the conquest by the invading Hellenes, there was in
Greece a very ancient race, something like the later Germani; these
were the Pelasgi, who lived in a community of freedom. After
the immigration of the Hellenes, we find two strata of population,
victors and vanquished, the contrast of free and unfree. From the
folk-migrations and the conquests sprang Greek authority. Hence it
follows that only a small section of the population had any share in
the assets of culture. Another result was the low value set upon
work; even artistic work was considered unworthy of the free Greek
citizen. It was through this contempt for work that Greece went
under. This culture of the Greeks, unrivalled in many points; was a
culture only possible among conquerors. The Roman Empire is a
history of continual conquests; when it could conquer nothing more,
it went to pieces.
The distinguishing
Germanic characteristic impressed itself, in all its component
parts, before conquest, and did not allow itself to be
subjugated by contact with other races. Its evloution stood firm in
face of conflict.
Thus we see the
development of the folk-spirit completed in the Greeks after,
in the Romans during and in the Germanic before, the
great historical struggles. If we are to study their
characteristics, we must distinguish more accurately these racial
groups in Central Europe. Three races come under
consideration. In Spain, France, Ireland and Southern Germany, we
find, first of all the ancient race of Celts. They were driven from
their original dwelling-place by the Germani. Then came the Slavs,
from the East, and forced the German tribes farther back. Thus we
find in the Germani, hemmed in by the other two races, a strong
intermingling of Celts and Slavonic blood. And this mixture of the
Celtic and Slavonic element, influenced the whole culture of the
Middle Ages.
When we look back into
the far past we see a great and remarkable culture of the ancient
Celts. Even to this day the Celtic blood shows itself as active,
energetic, mentally alert, inclined to revolutionary impulses. To
the Celtic race we owe magnificent poems, songs and scientific
ideas. It was the Celts who gave the stimulus for the legends
elaborated by German poets in the Middle Ages — Roland,
Tristan, Parsifal, etc. This remarkable race has almost disappeared,
either pressed farther westward, or amalgamated with the
Germanic.
The outstanding
features of the Germanic character are courage, the roaming
spirit, and a strong feeling for Nature. In it are developed the
domestic and martial virtues, practical efficiency and activity
directed to useful ends. Hunting and cattle-rearing formed the chief
occupations of the Germani; they had only a few simple poems,
derived from older races. In its fundamental qualities, the Germanic
character remained as it was in the age of barbarism. Within the
Germanic element rise the driving forces of a contrasted evolution.
A noticeable change took place during the Middle Ages. Greece had
developed its sublime Art, Rome its life of Rights, and the concept
of the state. The simple Germanic conception of law was based on
quite different premises. In Rome, judgment was given on a basis of
property-relationships, especially with reference to land or realty.
The complicated ideas of justice in the Roman State were derived
from the endeavor to bring harmony between the free citizen and the
land-owner. All the contention between plebians and patricians, the
fighting of the Gracchi, even the party-struggles of the later
Republic, were struggles for the rights of the free citizen as
opposed to those who gained possession of power because they were in
possession of land. Nominally, equal rights in the State pertained
to every Roman citizen. Yes, even in the later epoch of the Empire,
every emperor possessed nominal rights in the State, because he
united in his person, the rights of all free citizens, and exercised
them in their stead.
Such factitious ideas
were alien to the simple Germanic conception of justice. The special
value of free citizenship met with no legal recognition. What
evolved from these points of view was club-law, the right of the
stronger; he was the mightiest who could make his right felt by
force. To begin with, it was physical strength which asserted
itself; then everyone must submit and adapt himself to the stronger.
The fruit, however, of what was prepared in the Germanic age,
appeared later as the right of the free personality, conditioned by
nothing but self-acquired proficiency. This is clearly marked in the
founding of the Cities. This development of the cities, which took
place in the 11th century throughout the whole of Western Europe,
presents a significant phenomenon. Whence did they arise? They were
founded by those who, feeling themselves oppressed by the
land-owners, sought a place where they could enjoy, undisturbed,
what they owed to their own activity, to their personal activity.
The free citizen of ancient Rome relied upon his title; his rights
depended upon it. In the Middle Ages, the title of citizen was of no
value; only that counted, which a man acquired for himself. The
struggles for independence and freedom which the princes and knights
carried on, were merely the expression of a struggle for free
personality. It was not like this either in ancient Greece or in
ancient Rome. It was a significant transition stage.
Why then did people
gather together in the Cities? The reason was, in the first place, a
material consideration; they wished to be free from oppression, in
order to direct their activity to what was useful, to material
gain.
And it was from this
city-culture — but not from these new foundations — that
there arose in Italy, on the scene of an ancient dying civilisation,
the mighty poet-personality of the Middle Ages — Dante. In the
Germanic cities, the first inventions were practical: the compass,
gunpowder, and finally, the fruit-bearing event of the invention of
printing. All this, which led to a complete transformation of
conditioins, was born out of the practical achievements of man. At
first sight, that may seem very far-fetched, but — as already
emphasised — cause and effect in History lie far asunder. An
example may illustrate this.
In 1846, Franz
Palecky, the Czech historian, referred to the reform movement of the
Middle Ages, in his work on the Czech race in the 15th century. Long
before the so-called Reformation, this movement was tentatively
considering a re-organisation of the Church. Dealing with the
Hussite movement most sympathetically, Polacky, who had himself
taken an active part in the Revolution of 1848, called particular
attention to these currents. In a quite original way, he pointed out
in them what had been developed in the days of city-culture. It is a
common property of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavonic tribes. If we
study the sagas and songs of these peoples, we understand it. They
are distinguished form the sagas of ancient Greece and Rome in that
they depict what the human heart can suffer, and what redeems
it.
This is the feeling
for tragedy. Among the Greeks and Romans, the hero of the
story was he who was externally victorious, not he, who maintained
his soul in uprightness. The heart of the people was always
with him who was outwardly favoured by fortune. It was different
with the Germanic peoples. The heart of the Germanic and Slavonic
races beat for the heroes who externally failed, but whose souls
stood firm. They lived in the soul, in the spirit. Heroes like
Siegfried or Roland, or the king's son Mark, were extolled in the
poems of these races. It is not to the external victories of these
heroes, but ih their courage in suffering and failure, their unbowed
spirit, that homage is paid. Everything gives place to the rectitude
of spirit and soul. In the Imperium Romanum we see courage
and consciousness of justice flourishing; in Greece we see Art; but
with the Germani, it is the life of the soul that confronts us. They
had no images of their gods; no splendid statues, such as the Greeks
had. Their souls worked out the images of their gods; deep
within their hearts they formed their God.
From this tendency of
the races sprang, too, the thought of reformation. To be themselves
collaborators in what faith was to be — that is what these
people desired. A hundred years before Luther, Wycliffe had
introduced a reform movement in England. The folk-spirit demanded
that men should take the Bible into their own hands. From this
spirit the Huss movement also arose. As far back as the early Middle
Ages there were already preliminary efforts in this direction. The
Emperor Henry II, of Saxon lineage, who was later canonised by the
Catholic Church, demanded an ecclesia non romana. Militz, the
inadequately appreciated savant, wrote his book on
Antichrist, while pining in a prison in Prague. That which
came to light in such demands and movements — the emancipation
from external coercion, the spiritual deepening — was claimed
by Palacky for the Slavs: he sees the thought of human kindness, as
expressed by Herder, represented in the Fraternal Fellowship,
developed on Bohemian soil. It lies deep in the nature of the
Germanic races to regard an untrammelled organisation as the
ideal.
It was neither after,
nor during, conquest, that the Germanic character was formed; but
the quality which marked it before this time, was maintained
throughout this stage, and eventually developed to these ideals. The
thought of freedom was evolved during the Middle Ages in spite of
all the counter-currents which gave this period the name of “the
dark Middle Ages.” If to many to-day the Middle Ages appear as a
gloomy epoch, yet it was in the Middle Ages that that was developed
which later, the poets sought, namely, the consciousness of
freedom, a consciousness for which the 18th century fought
bitterly, and with which the struggles of the present day are
concerned.
We must free ourselves
from the state of coercion which many are still bound to-day, though
the consciousness that, as regards the feeling of freedom, all men
are equal, has spread more and more. Men have grasped that by right
no man can be a slave or a bondsman. To-day man feels himself free
by right. But another form of unfreedom, material
unfreedom, has persisted. In ancient Greece, the oppressed, the
vanquished, the slaves, were unfree. Unfree in ancient Rome were
those who had no claim to citizenship, no share in the State. In the
Middle Ages men were made unfree by physical force. None of these
forms could be maintained; economic unfreedom alone persists.
More and more clearly
has the striving for complete freedom of personality shown itself.
The ancient Greek valued distinction or race; the Roman,
distinction of person; modern man attaches value to
capitalism, to a show of wealth. Thus evolution points to the
fall of more and more of those barriers which shut the personality
off from the outside. Then the ground becomes free for the new
ideal. History teaches us that the free man acquires a new value
from out the spirit. The man who fulfils the ideal will be he
who is freed from all these forms of oppression, he who, released
from earthly gravity, can direct his gaze upwards. Only then will
Hegel's words become wholly true: “History is the progress of
humanity to consciousness of freedom.”
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