I
De omnibus dubitandum
There are but few orthodox Hegelians left among philosophers nowadays, yet Hegel is still supreme over the minds of our contemporaries. It may even be that certain of his ideas have taken deeper root nowadays than when Hegelianism was in full bloom: for instance, the conception that history is the unfolding of the idea in reality, or, to put it more briefly and in terms more familiar to the modern mind—the idea of progress. Try to convince an educated person of the contrary: you are sure to be worsted. But, de omnibus dubitandum, which means in other words, that doubt is called upon to fulfil its mission above all in those cases where a conviction is particularly strong and unshakable. Therefore one must admit, whether he will or no, that progress so called—the development of mankind in time—is a fiction.
We have wireless telegraphy, radium and the rest, yet we stand no higher than the Romans or the Greeks of old. You admit this? Then, one step further: although we have wireless telegraphy and all the other blessings of civilisation, still we stand no higher than red-or black-skinned savages. You protest: but the principle compels. You began to doubt: then what is the use of drawing back?
For myself, I must confess that the idea of the spiritual perfection of savages entered my mind but lately, when, for the first time for many years, I looked through the works of Tylor, Lubbock and Spencer. They speak with such certainty of the advantages of our spiritual organisation, and have such sincere contempt for the moral misery of the savage, that in spite of myself stole in the thought: Is it not exactly here, where all are so certain that no one ever examines the question, that the source of error is to be found? High time to recall Descartes and his rule! And as soon as I began to doubt, all my former certainty—of course I fully shared the opinion of the English anthropologists—disappeared in a moment.... It began to appear that the savage indeed is higher and more important than our savants, and not our materialists only, as Professor Paulsen thinks, but our idealists, metaphysicians, mystics, and even our convinced missionaries (sincere believers, not the profit-mongering sort), whom Europe sends forth into the world to enlighten the backward brethren. It seemed to me that the credit transactions common among savages, with a promise to pay in the world beyond the grave, have a deep meaning. And human sacrifices! In them Spencer sees a barbarity, as an educated European should. I also see in them barbarity, because I also am a European and have a scientific education. But I deeply envy their barbarity, and curse the cultivation which has herded me together with believing missionaries, idealist, materialist, and positivist philosophers, into the narrow fold of the sultry and disgusting apprehensible world. We may write books to prove the immortality of the soul, but our wives won't follow us to the other world: they will prefer to endure the widow's lot here on the earth. Our morality, based on religion, forbids us to hurry into eternity. And so in everything. We are guessing, at the best we are sicklied with dreams, but our life passes outside our guesses and our dreams. One man still accepts the rites of the Church, however strange they may be, and seriously imagines that he is brought into contact with other worlds. Beyond the rites no step is taken. Kant died when he was eighty; had it not been for cholera, Hegel would have lived a hundred years; while the savages—the young ones kill the old and ... I dare not complete the sentence for fear of offending sensitive ears. Again I recall Descartes and his rule: who is right, the savages or we? And if the savages are right, can history be the unfolding of the idea? And is not the conception of progress in time (that is the development from the past to the present and to the future) the purest error? Perhaps, and most probably, there is development, but the direction of this development is in a line perpendicular to the line of time. The base of the perpendicular may be any human personality. May God and the reader forgive one the obscurity of the last words. I hope the clarity of the foregoing exposition will to some extent atone for it.