THE ANCIENT HEBREWS
Herder applies his studies to the Hebrew people as he finds them in their earliest habitations. From his analysis of formative forces and of the peculiar personality resulting from these influences we have what follows: The physical features of the lands with which the Hebrews were familiar were varied enough to give them a rather complete natural history of the earth. They understood the subsiding of water that left mountains above them and valleys in between these. They saw that waters coursed through the valleys and made fertile plains. They knew how springs gush forth from rocks and trees grow on the banks of rivers. They knew both the sea and the desert. The summer sun brought calm waters and the cold winds forged fetters of ice. The palm tree and the cedar, the olive and the grape, grew in these lands. The variety of animals seems to imply a wide and varied expanse of territory.
The crane, the turtledove, the eagle, the raven, the stork, the ostrich, the lion, the wild ox, perhaps the elephant and the rhinoceros, as well as most of our common domestic birds and other animals, frequented these environments.
Herder conceives of this entire milieu as a world in which the dawn of human life was arising out of dark night, and giving way to the broad daylight in which water and air, earth and sea, mountain and forest, were in the fullest view and most powerful working. The strong contrasts of oriental skies wrought through light and darkness their sharpest outlines.
The mild climate was perhaps the most beautiful in the world, and produced the simplest needs of life with little labor on the part of the inhabitants. With fertile river valleys in addition, which furnished grazing lands, it was natural that one of the earliest grades of civilization should arise here—the shepherd folk.
Although these people had a civilization that was early circumscribed, it nevertheless presupposes some cultivation. Even the shepherd state cannot exist without arts and fixed customs. The Hebrews in this shepherd state had developed family bonds and fixed the ruling power of the father in domestic life. They had domesticated animals, and developed tender feelings toward them.
Let us look at the moral and mental traits due to this physical and social environment.
The eye developed clearness and acuteness, a vivid sensitiveness; it saw every leaf, every blade of grass, the plains and valleys, the waters in outline and expanse, the planets and the broad ether in which they hung, and it distinguished every movement. The ear heard the delicate rustlings of branches and bows, as well as the roar of winds, the smallest raindrop, and the rush of mighty waters. Every sense was thus developed to a finesse which left no phenomenon of nature unobserved.
These sense impressions were impregnated with the feelings and carrying these effects of feelings they passed onward to the mind and made mental pictures of a kind which correspond to the character of the imprint made by the feelings. Then these made-over pictures were given back to the world in the sublime language found in the Old Testament. It is in these pictures, in this investing of free nature with the power to feel, that we see the texture and depth of feeling which are an essential part of the personality of this group.
They saw the dawn rising out of darkness. They felt that the phenomenon was due to a cause superior to any power in man. They could not account for the beginnings of mankind. The consciousness of limitations of their own knowledge and the awe for the unknown first cause turned the actual darkness and dawn and full daylight into chaotic emptiness, a ray of light at the beginning of creation and a completed work at the end of six days—a wonderful personality directing it all. They saw the trees and the plants thriving in their own spheres, and they attributed to them life impulses given them by the sympathy and love and directing force of special geniuses, the messengers of God. The stars were light; they had undeceiving brightness and constant courses. They stamped the sense impression of them with the feeling of worshipful joy, of rhythm which became music and dancing, and so it was that the stars became the daughters that shouted about the throne of the Great Ruler. At times they assigned to them the sense of power for defense in well-ordered numbers of individuals, and the stars became an army ready to do battle for God. Again they were his willing servants and messengers. They saw the heavens stretching from horizon to horizon, and everything in creation working in its own sphere with regularity and order. Their own feeling for system, harmonious working in family and tribal circles, pictured God in paternal relations; a householder who stretched his great tent by fastening it to the outmost borders of the earth, and opened and arranged therein the treasures of his household. They heard a light rustle of leaves and imprinted upon it the feeling of gentleness and kindness, and it became a messenger of God, an angel. They heard the thunder and their shuddering gloom translated it into the voice of an angry God. They listened to their own heartbeats and transferred their rhythm to their own speech, for we may account for the free light rhythm in their songs by comparing it with the systole and diastole of the heart and the movements of the breath in the physiological processes of inspiration and expiration.
Their national pride and national joy found expression in collective song which might either glorify God or invoke their own well-being. Such song is at one and the same time inspiration and expression.
In general, their poetic language draws concise analogy between the objects of creation and the qualities and attributes of the creator of these things. It lingers over single images, repeats them, wonders at them, and finally gives them forth with a vigorous tongue incapable of empty words.
These souls so entirely formed by the sights and sounds of nature blended with inner feeling give a secret, mystical significance touched with the finest spiritual sense to the pictures and parallels which they produce. We have here a peculiar race type living close to crude nature, an individuality which is shaped by this primitive milieu and which expresses itself in sharp and strong outlines in its art. The most marked feature of this individuality is the spontaneity in its expression.
The common factors to be drawn from this exposition, which contribute to the interpretation of Herder’s general conception of Volk are:
1. The physical environment of both groups was primeval nature; i.e., a material world that had undergone very few of the changes which may be wrought by the arts and crafts of what we term higher stages of civilization.
Kurz wir sind mit Denkart, Sprache, Sitten des Jahrhunderts so weit aus Ossians Natur heraus, als unsre Städte, Höfe, Palläste, Schulgebäude keine Schottische rauhen Gebürge, unsre Gesellschaftskreise und Zerstreuungen im Museum kein Tanz unter rauschenden Bäumen.[12]
Als Gesetzgeber wirkte Moses auf den Geist seines Volks mit Riesenstärke. Dass er sie zum Acker- und Hirtenvolk machte, und so viel es seyn konnte, Handel u. Eroberung ausschloss. Land- und Hirtenmässig ist ihre Poesie dem grössten Theile nach. Ländlich sind ihre Bilder, im Hirten- und Ackerleben der grösste Reichtum ihrer Sprache.[13]
2. Both races were subject to powerful control by this physical environment:
Alle Gesänge solcher wilden Völker weben um daseiende Gegenstände, Handlungen, Begebenheiten, um eine lebendige Welt.[14]
Und alle hat das Auge gesehen! Die Seele stellt sie sich vor! Das setzt Sprünge und Würfe:[15]
Ihre Ideen sind voll starker Contraste, voll Licht und Dunkel, voll Ruhe und Arbeit: dies ist der Character des morgenländischen Himmels, und des Genius seiner Nationen.[16]
Wenn die Biblischen Dichter von den Schneegüssen des Libanon; vom Thau des Hermon; von den Eichen Basans; vom prächtigen Libanon, und angenehmen Carmel reden; so geben sie Bilder, die ihnen die Natur selbst vorgestellt hat.[17]
3. Among both, their ideas of God and their religion were interwoven with personified nature:
Darthula. Ein Gesang an die Mondgöttin (Mona, Mana, μήνη) vielleicht der schönste, der je im Mondschein gesungen worden.[18]
Solche Bilder und Ideen, als uns auch nur die ersten Kapitel Moses gewähren. Hier ist als ob Einer der Elohim selbst, der Genius der Menschheit unsichtbar lehrte .... und singet den Menschen, seinem unsichtbaren Vater und Schöpfer gleich.[19]
4. Both were races of people with keen, strong, exact senses:
.... der rauhe Schotte Ossian? Er sang lebendig, und stürmte also in den kurzen Augenblicken lebendiger Stimme auf Herz und Ohr; für matte Augen im Lehnstuhl, .... wollte er nie in der Welt solche schöne klassische Augenweide schaffen.[20]
Bilderrede und Gesang also sind die beiden Hauptforten der Poesie der Ebräer; .... sie sind Poesie fürs Auge und Ohr, durch welche beide sie das Herz besänftigen oder bestürmen.[21]
5. The members of both races had, as innate characteristics, rapid and direct interaction between sensation, feeling, imagination, and expression:
Wir sind freilich in der ganzen Denkart unsres Jahrhunderts zu weit von Ossian ab. Mehr an eine Kette raffinirter Vorstellungen, leichter Abstraktionen angenehmer Pensées und Reflexionen gewöhnt, fals an den rauhen Schrei der Leidenschaft, kühner Hinwürfe einer starkgetrofnen Einbildung, und einer wüsten, starken Gestalt der Seele.[22]
Seine Muse ist Tochter der Natur auf ihren wildesten Höhen erzogen, aber rasch, kühn, edeln Ansehens, nur mit natürlichem Reitze geschmückt und im Tanze der Natur hinfliegend.[22]
Sehen Sie Hiob. Die Erde war ein Pallast.... Der Ocean ward, wie ein Kind, gebohren und gewindelt: das Morgenroth handelte, die Blitze sprachen.[23]
6. In general, the texture resulting from control of the individual by forces of nature unchanged by human interference is in both peoples fitly correlated with functioning; i.e., spontaneity is innately and intrinsically their nature.
Homers Rhapsodien und Ossians Lieder waren gleichsam impromptus, weil man damals noch von Nichts als impromptus der Rede wusste.[24]
Nun ist bei den Ebräern beinahe Alles Verbum: d.i. alles lebt und handelt.[25] Alles in ihr ruft: ... ich lebe, bewege mich, wirke. Mich erschuffen Sinne und Leidenschaften, nicht abstrakte Denken und Philosophen.[26]
With all these points in common, Ossian’s people and the ancient Hebrews, as portrayed in Herder’s analysis of their poetry, differ from each other as races in religion and in social customs. They show us different habitats. They depict different historical epochs and scenes. But that which is common in all this difference is, according to Herder, that each has a personality of its own which characterizes its art.
In jedem Lande bildet sich der Volksgesang nach innern und äussern Veranlassungen der Nation. Ossians Gedichte bezeichnen den Herbst seines Volkes. Die Blätter färben und krümmen sich; sie falben und fallen. Der Lufthauch, der sie ablöset, hat keine Erguickung des Frühlinges in sich; sein Spiel indessen ist traurig ... angenehm mit den sinkenden Blättern.[27]
Gesetzt, wir konnten alles dies wissen; singen wir denn für Juden die sich für das einzige Volk Gottes hielten?... Von allen Völkern der Erde abgesondert, brachte es seinem Schutzgott Nationalgesänge.[28]
Es verdient fast nicht bemerkt zu werden ... dass man die poetischen Bilder und Empfindungen keines Volks und keiner Zeit nach dem Regelmaas eines andern Volks, einer andern Zeit zu beurteilen, zu tadeln, zu verwerfen habe.[29]
CHAPTER V
FOUNDATIONS OF INDIVIDUALITY AND PERSONALITY IN HERDER
Herder as philosopher was concerned more with practical and concrete applications of his principles than with dogmas and abstract theories. The following brief investigation of purely philosophical discussions is made with a view of determining how he applies his philosophy to this definite anthropological conception.
In his Gespräche über Spinozas System Herder sets forth much of his own religious philosophy. A passage in the second dialogue substitutes for the word “attributes” the word “forces” in expounding one of Spinoza’s postulates. The passage then reads: “The Godhead reveals itself in an infinite number of forces and in an infinite number of ways.” It is with the word for forces that we are concerned at this point—Kraft, Kräfte.
This same word Herder uses in discussing the fundamental life-principle in the world at large, which is the theme of his first few sections in the essay entitled: Vom Erkennen und Empfinden in ihrem menschlichen Ursprunge und den Gesetzen ihrer Würkung. These Kräfte, these “modifications of God,” find their impulse to operate in a stimulus, beyond the material form of which Herder cannot go.
Herder’s philosophy plants itself from the beginning quite firmly on material foundations. He says that in the qualities which are constantly designated by such words as heavy, thrust, fall, movement, rest, strength, even power of inertia, is implied a life-principle, a soul. Any close observation of nature must show that the great working power of nature is everywhere the same, and it is the analogy between the processes of the material world in general and the phenomena in the human organism in particular which can give the clearest insight into the great life-principle. This study by analogous reasoning is not artificial, Man cannot avoid feeling the similarity between himself and external nature. Human beings must of necessity, he continues, vitalize everything about them with their own feelings.
The feelings then are strongly instrumental in man’s interpretation of the world about him.