III. KNOWING AND WILLING

Herder denies that anything in the way of knowledge comes back to the soul out of the platonic fore-world, and abstract egoism, he says, is opposed to truth and the open course of nature. Just as all of the soul’s knowing depends upon obscure stimuli and forces having their foundations in the body and leading to sensations and then to reasoning, so her willing comes from these as a natural sequence of her knowing. Any knowing without willing would be false and incomplete. If knowing is only a deep feeling of truth, who is going to see truth and at the same time be blind to it—know goodness and not will to do it? Every single passion or feeling thus knowing the good would at the same time will the good. Herder is emphatic about the interdependence of these two. Just as no knowing is without willing, no willing is without knowing; they are only one energy of the soul.

This suggests Socrates in the Protagoras, as he argues that men would always do good if they knew the good. “No man voluntarily pursues evil or that which he thinks to be evil. To prefer evil to good is not in human nature.”

Briefly summarizing: Herder finds his stimulus the same everywhere in the material world. It is the principle of life since it impels to self-nutriment and reproduction. It works by the same law in both body and soul. Variations of it in degree are the foundations for individuality and personality. All that is true of feeling for essentially stimulus becomes feeling. Out of all this Herder arrives at the conclusion: “Der tiefste Grund unseres Daseyns ist individuell, sowohl in Empfindungen als Gedanken.”

The distinctive personal and individual character whose foundations have just been traced, according to our author, can not come to its fullest development except as a component part in a larger self-conscious and self-directing entity which he calls “humanity.”

This humanity as a whole, and the relation of the individual to it, is discussed in the collections Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität. An emphatic tone regarding personality and individuality as characteristics of the group pervades these letters.

Existence as a self-conscious being which develops into group consciousness Herder finds rooted in human frailty.

Primitive man, to himself and enigma, he observes, when comparing his visible condition, his natural capacities, his will-power with enduring nature, was forced to a feeling of weakness, to a sense of mortal existence; he finds himself of the earth, a fragile house of clay. Sympathy then and the realization of one’s duty to one’s fellow-men began here.

But the consciousness of frailty led also to a knowledge of our powers and abilities, to a sense of our calling and our duties, and brought us to a deep consideration of human nature.

The group is always striving toward an ideal pattern which is “the character of the race,” and, again, this character is in the individual; for, says Herder, he who does not make the best of himself cannot assist the sum total of the race.

The author states the idea when he says that it is according to the sacred laws of nature that man is a complete unit in himself, and at the same time an important element of groups each a consistent part of larger groups which make the sum total of humanity. Man is friend, citizen, husband, father; fellow-citizen, finally, in the great city of God on earth.

CHAPTER VI
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN HERDER’S CONCEPTION OF DAS VOLK

Herder, by numerous references and discussions, in which he is definite and explicit as to name and theories, shows a thorough acquaintance with the various schools of philosophy which were influential throughout the century in which he lived. Among those whose names occur many times in his works are:

These are philosophers whose expressions of thought left their traces either vaguely or deeply upon the enlightenment period and, as already said, whom Herder knew well. But the doctrines of many of these men converged. Of others, the principles were developed and amplified by successors. The main ideas of the period which enter into Herder’s conception of Volk are found in three great exponents: Leibniz, Shaftesbury, and Rousseau. The influence of each upon Herder will be examined here.