THE DEVELOPMENT TO HUMANITY
[1. THE CONCEPT 'HUMANITY.']
The question, Do we live in an enlightened age? was answered by Kant, with reference to his own time—which, as is well known, laid claim to the distinction—flatly in the negative. He added, however, that the age was doubtless one of increasing enlightenment. One might, perhaps, be even more justified in raising a similar question with reference to the relation of our own and of preceding ages to a universally human culture, and in answering: We are on the way to this goal, but are still far from having actually reached it. Indeed, in view of human imperfection, it may be doubted whether we will ever be able to reach it, unless the imperfection itself be included as an element in such a culture. The ambiguity of the word 'humanity' is such that it may signify human weaknesses as well as human sympathy and other virtues. It was in the latter, the more favourable, sense of the term that Herder, even in his day, attempted, in his "Ideas," to portray the history of mankind as an "education to humanity." This expression suggests that history manifests only a ceaseless striving toward true humanity; the goal itself lies beyond the reach of possible experience.
Now, a survey of the course of progress described in the preceding chapters may well cause us to doubt whether the presupposition from which Herder set out in his reflections on the philosophy of history is correct. The assumption that factors preparatory to the development to humanity are already to be found in the original nature of man—indeed, even earlier than this, in the general conditions of his natural environment—is not beyond question. Neither primitive nor totemic man shows the faintest trace of what we should, strictly speaking, call humanity. He gives evidence merely of an attachment to the nearest associates of horde or tribe, such as is foreshadowed even among animals of social habits. In addition, he exhibits but occasional manifestations of a friendly readiness to render assistance when danger threatens at the hands of strangers.
It is not until the heroic age that we encounter phenomena such as might properly be interpreted to indicate the gradual rise of feelings of humanity. But if we take into account the entire character of this age, we are more inclined to contrast it, precisely when it reaches its zenith, with all that we to-day understand by humanity. Consider, for example, the sharply demarcated State organizations of the heroic era, its depreciation of strange peoples, and its repudiation of universal human ties, brusquely expressed during times of war in its treatment of the enemy and, during times of peace, in slavery. The question as to whether and in how far the beginnings of our ideas of humanity reach back into the past and prevail at lower levels of culture, is confronted with a serious difficulty. Conceptions such as these are obviously themselves products of a long development and have been in constant flux. The concept 'humanity' suffers from an ambiguity which has attached to it ever since the time of its origin, and which has in no wise diminished as the word has acquired broader meanings. The word humanitas, which in later classical Latin was practically equivalent to our concept 'human nature,' in both its good and its bad connotations, acquired an additional meaning in the language of mediæval scholars. During this period of strong partiality for abstract word formations, the term came to be used also for the collective concept 'mankind,' that is, the Roman genus hominum—a concept independent of value judgments of any sort. Thus, the word passed over into our more modern languages with a twofold significance. Although the German language developed the two words Menschlichkeit and Menschheit, corresponding to the conceptual distinction just indicated, the two meanings were again combined in the foreign word Humanität. This is exemplified by Herder's phrase, Erziehung zur Humanität (education to humanity). For, in using this phrase to sum up the meaning of history, Herder meant that the striving which underlies all history was not merely for the development of the qualities of humanity (Menschlichkeit), in the highest sense of the term, but also essentially for their gradual extension to the whole of mankind (Menschheit).
But, whatever our opinion concerning the possible success of such striving and concerning the relation of its two phases, there can be no doubt that the concept 'humanity,' which has become common property among civilized peoples, combines an objective with a subjective aspect. On the one hand, 'humanity' means the whole of mankind, or, at any rate, a preponderant part of it, such as may be regarded as representative of the whole. On the other hand, 'humanity' is a value-attribute. It has reference to the complete development of the ethical characteristics which differentiate man from the animal, and to their expression in the intercourse of individuals and of peoples. This latter thought incorporates in the term 'humanity' the meaning both of 'mankind' and of 'human nature,' although it ignores the secondary implication of human imperfection which 'human nature' involves and takes into account only its laudable characteristics. Humanity, when predicated of an individual, means that he transcends the limits of all more restricted associations, such as family, tribe, or State, and possesses an appreciation of human personality as such; in its application to human society, it represents a demand for an ideal condition in which this appreciation of human worth shall have become a universal norm. This ideal, however, is subject to growth, and, like all ideals, is never completely realizable. Hence the following sketch of the conditions which succeed the age of heroes and gods cannot undertake to do more than point to the phenomena that give expression to the new motives that dominate this later period. Sharp demarcations are in this instance even less possible than in the case of the earlier stages of human development. The more comprehensive the range of human strivings and activities, the more gradual are the transitions and the more fully are the underlying motives—precisely because they involve the universally human—foreshadowed in the natural predispositions and impulses of man. Tendencies to esteem man as man, and a willingness to render him assistance, are not foreign even to the primitive mind. Even at the beginnings of human culture there are present, dimly conscious, those tendencies out of which the idea of humanity may finally develop. Moreover, every later advance seems to lead in the direction of this conception. The transition from tribe into State, the changing intercourse of peoples, and the spread over wide regions of the mental creations of a single people, of language, religion, and customs—all these phenomena are obviously steps on the way to the idea of humanity and to its permanent incorporation into all departments of human endeavour. Neither in its rise nor in its further changes, moreover, does this new idea entail the disappearance of previous conditions or of the psychical factors involved in their development. On the contrary, humanitarian culture takes up into itself the creations of preceding eras, und allows them to take firmer root. Thus, the idea of a cultural community of peoples has not weakened, but, so far as we may conclude from the past course of history, has strengthened and enriched, the self-consciousness of separate peoples and the significance of the individual State. The dissemination of cultural products has not resulted in their decrease. National differences have led rather to the increase of these products, and have thus enhanced the value attaching to the spiritual distinctiveness of a people and of the individual personality. That we may here, even more than in the case of the earlier periods of cultural history, speak only of relative values, needs scarcely be remarked. Humanitarian development includes a vast number of new conditions, in addition to those that underlie the preceding stages of culture. Since, moreover, the synthesis at which this development aims is everywhere still in the process of becoming, the way itself is for the time being the attainable goal. We may neither be said to be on the way to humanity, if we mean by this a condition in which none but humanitarian interests prevail, nor does a humanitarian age, in the sense of the exclusion of more restricted human relations, appear at all within the field of vision disclosed to us as a result of past history. As a legacy from the primitive era, man has permanently retained not only the general needs of individual life but also the most restricted forms of family and tribal organization. In like manner, it will be impossible for an age of humanity ever to dispense with the more limited articulations of State and society that have arisen in the course of cultural development. Scarcely any general result stands out as more certain, in a retrospective survey of our investigations, than the fact that, while every period discards as worthless a vast number of products, some of which were valuable to an earlier age, there are other products which prove to be imperishable. From this point of view, that which precedes is not merely preparatory to the further course of development but is itself the beginning of the development. The immediate beginning, however, is veiled in obscurity. The earlier age is ever unconsciously preparing the way for one that is to come. The clan of primitive tribal organization had no idea of a coming State, nor had the ancient demon worshipper any notion of a cult of rewarding and punishing celestial deities, yet State and deity cult could not have arisen except for clan and demon-belief. Similarly, the earlier modes of collective life possessed the idea of humanity only in the form of a hidden germ. Hence we may not properly describe these preparatory stages, which exhibit phenomena of a different and, in part, an entirely dissimilar sort, as a development to humanity. The term applies rather to an age in which the idea of humanity, having come to clear consciousness, exercises an influence upon the various phases of culture, and is entertained by a sufficiently large portion of mankind to insure its permanent effectiveness. But even with this limitation the development may not be regarded as one of uninterrupted progress. However widely disseminated the humanitarian idea may come to be, there will remain localities and levels of culture to which it has not penetrated. But, inasmuch as peoples of very different cultural stages enter into relations with one another, the possibility is open for such a turn of events as will obscure the idea of the development to humanity for long periods. That such deviations from the path of progress have frequently occurred in the past is certain; that they are never to occur in the future is scarcely probable. For this reason one can scarcely hope to do more than to show that, in spite of such retrogressions, the development to humanity forms a generally connected whole, and that here also psychological law is regnant.
That such law prevails is at once evident from the fact that of the two conceptions which we have found to be involved in the idea of humanity, the external and objective concept expressed by the collective term 'mankind' is historically the earlier; the concept referring to inner characteristics, and associated in the consciousness of the individual with clearly defined value-feelings, follows only gradually. We might express this relationship by the phrase, Mankind must prepare the way for human nature. This does not imply that isolated manifestations of the latter might not long precede the rise of the idea of mankind—indeed, must necessarily have preceded it, in so far as a predisposition is concerned. It means merely that human nature did not, as a matter of fact, attain to its complete development, nor was it able to do so, until after the idea of the unity of mankind had progressed beyond the stage of vague impulses or of recognition on the part of but a few individuals in advance of their age. In other words: The collective concept 'mankind,' as representing, not merely a generic term created by the intellect, but a real totality ultimately uniting all its members in a social whole, preceded the concept 'human nature,' as connoting a recognition of universal human rights to which each of the members of the human race may lay claim, and of duties which he, in turn, owes to human society. The case could not be otherwise. Unless the idea of mankind were already present in some form, even though this be at the outset inadequate, the requirement that an individual give expression to humanitarian sentiments would be impossible, since there would be no object of the activity. If we consider the sequence of the various phenomena involved in the development to humanity, we find a striking agreement between history and the results to which our analysis of the concept 'humanity' has led us. The earliest of the phenomena here in question dates far back to the beginnings of the events known to us through historical monuments, and consists in the rise of world empires. Though the term 'world empire' is sometimes used to refer merely to a great kingdom that results from the absorption of a number of separate States, such a use of the word does not do justice to its meaning. The idea of world empire really comes into existence only at the moment when such a kingdom lays claim to embracing the terrestrial part of the universe, and therefore the whole of mankind, however much this claim may represent a mere demand which has never, of course, actually been realized. The very fact of the demand, however, itself involves the conscious idea of a unity embracing the whole of mankind. Moreover, the endeavour to realize this ambition follows with inner necessity in the case of all political organizations that call themselves world empires, particularly at the period of their zenith and of an increasing consciousness of power. This leads to further important results, which, though at first doubtless not consciously sought, nevertheless later increasingly become the object of voluntary endeavour. Though externally retaining the traditional political organization, the world empire required an extension of the institutions of law and of administration that had thus far prevailed in the more limited State. A similar change gradually took place in connection with intercourse and its fostering agencies, and subsequently in connection with language, customs, and religious beliefs. Thus, it was the world empire that first prepared the way for world culture, only meagre beginnings of which existed in the period of a more restricted political life. The extension of wants and of the means of their satisfaction was first evident in the field of commerce, though a similar tendency came more and more to prevail in the various departments of mental life. Pre-eminent among these interests was the one which is the most universal and is based on the most common needs, such as are experienced by all members of human society, namely, religion. Thus, as one of the last of the creations possessing universal human significance, world religion makes its appearance. The preceding age did not progress beyond national religions. However much the mythological elements of cult, in particular, may have travelled from one people to another, these elements were assimilated by the national religions. Inasmuch as these religions continued, on the whole, to preserve their own identities, the fact that any elements were of foreign origin very soon disappeared from the folk-consciousness. Not until the period which we are now discussing do we find religions that lay claim to being universal. Even though this claim may remain a mere demand, just as in the case of the world empire, it is precisely as such that every historical world religion has asserted its influence. This striving for universality is far keener in connection with world religion than it is in the case of world empire and world culture. In comparison with this endeavour to become universal, the fact that no period ever witnessed merely a single world religion is relatively unimportant, though not to be overlooked in considering the spiritual needs of mankind. Disregarding subordinate religions and such as are of less significance for culture as a whole, there are at least two great world religions, Christianity and Buddhism. These have asserted themselves side by side, and will presumably continue further to maintain themselves, inasmuch as they correspond to sharply defined characteristics of universal world culture. Finally, world culture and the world religions form the basis of world history, a third element in the collective consciousness of mankind. If we understand by 'world history,' not the political or cultural events that simultaneously run their independent courses, but the historic consciousness of mankind itself, combining the idea of mankind as a unity with that of the development of this unity in accordance with law, then world history, in this, the only accurate meaning of the term, is the last of all the factors involved in the idea of humanity. Since the individual who is developing in the direction of the ideal of humanity mirrors all other aspects of human nature, world history ultimately becomes for him the gradual realization of the idea of humanity. Thus, world empires, world culture, world religions, and world history represent the four main steps in the development to humanity.
[2. WORLD EMPIRES.]
Even in the midst of the spiritual forces dominating the heroic age there are phenomena that foreshadow a development transcending the limits of this period. Of these phenomena, none is more prominent than the striving for world dominion. The first battles of early political organizations, and the victories over conquered peoples, led to an enhanced consciousness of power on the part of the individual State. This consciousness found expression, first in strife between neighbouring dominions, and later, as soon as one of these had gained the supremacy, in the establishment of an empire including many separate States. Such an impulse to transcend the limits of the single State is so natural and so directly prefigured in the motives to individual action that we come upon it wherever any historically active political organizations have arisen. In the realms of western Asia, such attempts are to be found from the time of the Sumerian and Accadian States down to the struggle of Babylon and Assyria for the rulership of the world. Egypt had a succession of dynasties which at first glance might seem to simulate a unified history, but which in reality represents the transference of supreme power from one State or city to another, and along with this the growing ambition for a single all-embracing dominion. The same phenomenon appears in the struggle of the Greek and Latin tribes for hegemony, and also in the foundation of the great Persian kingdom of the Achæmenidæ; the latter gave way to the world empire of Alexander, which, though of short duration, was never again equalled in magnitude; succeeding it, came the world empire of the Romans, the last that could properly lay claim to the name.
It is in Egypt, on the one hand, and in the succession of West-Asiatic kingdoms, on the other, that the first stages of this development of a world kingdom out of the dominance of one powerful State over a number of vassal States are clearly exhibited. The struggle for supremacy, in which vassal might elevate himself to the position of ruler and lord be reduced to vassal, and in which newly immigrant peoples often took a decisive part, immeasurably enhanced the striving to extend the sphere of dominion. This development reached its culmination when the supreme ruler of a power that dominated a very considerable number of vassal States expressly asserted the claim of being ruler of the world. The fact that such a claim was made wherever a supremacy of this sort came into existence under conditions of relatively limited intercourse, testifies to the immanent necessity of the development. Wherever the domain of such an empire approximated the limits of the known world, the universal State was conceived as including also the rest of the inhabited earth. This conception came to expression in the title which the ruler regularly assumed. He laid claim to being the king of kings, the overlord of the world, the ruler of the 'four quarters of the earth.' Through a reversal of that process of transference by which the characteristics of the terrestrial State were carried over, in deity cult, to the divine State, the ruler of the terrestrial State now himself became a god. This accounts for the surprising uniformity with which the idea of a god-monarch arose wherever that of a world monarch was developed. In the pre-Babylonian realms of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, the ruler erected his own image, as an object of worship, in the temple; in the land of the Pharaohs, the heads of the sphinxes placed in front of the temples bore the features of the monarch. Even Alexander the Great commanded that the Egyptian priests greet him as a son of the god Amon Re; after acquiring the authority of the great Persian kings, he demanded from those about him the external signs of divine adoration. Similarly, the Roman emperors of the period from Diocletian down to Constantine. In spite of their inclination toward republican offices and customs, which by their very nature militated against such ceremonial, these emperors accepted the idea that the world ruler should be worshipped in cult. As the god-idea gained increasing power, however, deity cult itself presented a counteracting influence to the fusion of the ideas of world ruler and deity. A rivalry arose between god and ruler. The king whose omnipotence led to his deification repelled the ruler of heaven, and the ruler of heaven and earth, on his part, refused to tolerate any rival of earthly origin. This led to a temporary compromise in which the ruler, though not himself regarded as a deity, was nevertheless held to be the son of a god, as well as the agent who executed the divine will. Or, after the pattern of hero myths, and in remote resemblance to ancestor cult, the ruler was believed to enter into the heaven of gods upon his death, so that it came to be only the deceased ruler who received divine adoration. The later rulers of Babylon, for example, called themselves the sons of Marduk, who was the chief god of Babylonia, and the features of this deity were given to the image of Hammurabi. The Roman emperors, on the other hand, from the time of Augustus on, were accorded divine reverence after death. When the king, realizing the exalted character of divine majesty, finally came to feel himself entirely human, these practices vanished. The emperor now became either the mere representative of the deity or one who was divinely favoured above other men. Hence the development terminates in a formula of royalty which has even yet not disappeared—the formula, "by the grace of God."
The development which we have described progressed continuously from beginnings that were almost contemporary with those of States until it eventuated in the world State. What, we must now ask, were its motivating forces? We cannot ascribe it to a craving for power which overmasters the ruler of the single State as soon as he has successfully conquered a foreign territory and a foreign people. Doubtless this factor was operative, yet it was obviously an effect rather than a cause, although an effect which, in the reciprocal relations of impulses, itself forthwith became a cause. But the immediate and decisive factors that led to the idea of establishing a world State, are to be found only partly in the motives underlying the extension of the single State into a world State, and in the results connected with the attainment of this ambition. These motives and results were, in the first instance, of an external nature. They consisted in the fact that the world State enjoyed increased means of subsistence and power by reason of the tribute which it received from subjugated provinces or from vassal States. Tributes of grain and cattle, of precious stones and metals, and especially of valuable human material, were placed at the command of the Pharaoh, or of the Babylonian or Persian monarch, for the building of his canals, his temples, and his palaces, for military services, and for an officialdom more directly subject to his will than were free-born natives. Everything which the single State required for its maintenance was demanded in a heightened degree by the world empire. Thus, it was the concentration of the means of subsistence and power that led to the displacement of the single State by the world empire, just as it was the same influence, on a smaller scale, that gave to the State its ascendancy over the earlier tribal organization. In extending its authority over wider and wider territory, the world empire itself finally perished as a result of the increasing difficulty in unifying its forces. It either broke up into separate States or a similar process of expansion started anew within the same boundaries, beginning now with one of the erstwhile vassal States and now with a new tribe that migrated into the territory. The first of these changes is illustrated by the Babylonian-Assyrian empires; the other, by the catastrophes suffered almost contemporaneously by the realm of the Pharaohs, through the influx of the Hyksos, and by Babylon, at the hands of the conquering hordes of the Hittites. The same phenomena recur in the partition of the empire of Alexander the Great and in the downfall of the Roman world empire. Unless world empires degenerate into a mere semblance of universal dominion, as did the Holy Roman Empire, they obviously become the more short-lived in proportion as history comes to move the more rapidly. Hence the Napoleonic attempt to revive the old idea in a new form became a mere episode. The single State finally triumphed over the world empire, and everything goes to show that the idea of an all-embracing world empire is little likely to recur unless the continuity of history is to be seriously interrupted.
It thus appears that the idea of establishing a world empire is not to be accounted for solely in terms of a constant striving to augment the means of power. Such endeavour prevails now, no less than formerly, in every State that has in any way attained to an independent development of its power. At the present time, however, none but at most an occasional Utopian dreamer adheres to the idea of creating an all-inclusive world State. Even where this occurs the idea is completely antithetical to that of earlier times. The ideal which is at present proposed for the distant future involves, not the extension of any single State into a world State, but rather the dissolution of existing States and the establishment of a society of universal peace among nations, such as would render entirely superfluous any instruments of power on the part of the State itself. But we have further evidence that the impulse to increase the means of power could not have been the only, nor even the decisive, factor in the development of the idea of a world empire. This evidence is to be found in the fact that, while a world empire never existed except as an idea, the age in which this idea dominated history regarded the world empire as a reality. Hence there must have been other motives, of an ideal nature, to bridge over the chasm between idea and reality in such wise as to identify the former with the latter. Though it is possible to urge, in explanation, that the knowledge of the real world was at that time limited, this does not solve the problem. Even though the Babylonian king might have felt satisfied to call himself the ruler over the four quarters of the earth because practically all countries of which he had knowledge in the four directions of the wind paid tribute to him, this of itself is not adequate to account for the fact that he regarded the universality as absolute and not relative. Over and above the fact of a limitation of knowledge, there was requisite particularly the idea of the unity of the world, and the application of this idea to the reality given in perception. This idea of unity is similar to that of the absolute unity of the world-order whose centre is the earth, an idea that dominated the astronomical conceptions of antiquity. Both ideas, that of a world empire embracing the whole of mankind and that of a universe whose centre is the earth and whose boundary is the crystal sphere of the heaven of fixed stars, sprang from the same mythological world-view that also found expression in the conception of a divine State projected from earth into heaven. To these gods, with a supreme deity at their head, belonged the rulership of the world. Whenever a change in the city that formed the centre of the terrestrial world empire resulted in a new supreme deity, the conditions of the earthly kingdom were all the more faithfully mirrored in the divine kingdom, for the other gods became, as it were, the vassals of this supreme deity. This mythological picture, projected from the earth to heaven, was necessarily reflected back again to earth. Herein lies the deeper significance of the idea that the ruler of the world empire is himself a god, or, at the least, a person of divine lineage and the representative of the supreme guardian deity of the kingdom. It is precisely because of this connection with mythological conceptions that world empires were but transitory. The period of their zenith and, more particularly, the period in which they possessed a fair degree of stability, coincided absolutely with the time at which deity myth was at its height. In the age of a waning deity belief, it was only the influence of numerous elements of secular culture, combined with a high degree of adaptability to the conditions of individual States, such as the Roman mind acquired under the conjunction of unusual circumstances, that enabled the idea of a world empire to be again carried into realization, within the limits which we have set to the term. Proof of the inner connection between the idea of a world empire and a mythological conception of the world, is to be found even in the case of Diocletian, the last powerful representative of the idea of a world kingdom. Diocletian not only invested the Roman emperor with the attributes of the Oriental world ruler of ancient times, but also claimed for himself the worship due to an earthly Jupiter.
[3. WORLD CULTURE.]
Inasmuch as the world empire belongs essentially to the age of deity cults, it is not so much a realization of the idea of humanity as a preparation for it, presaging a development beyond that of the single State. That this is the case manifests itself even in the temporal sequence of the phenomena. For it is at most anticipatory elements of the idea of humanity that are embodied in the world empire. With the disintegration of world empires, however, partly as their after-effect and partly as the result of their dissolution, we find phenomena of a new sort—those comprehended under the term world culture. In so far as the rise of world empire involves factors that lead to world culture, these affect primarily the material aspect of the life of peoples—world intercourse, the resulting multiplication of needs on the part of peoples, and the exchange of the means for the satisfaction of these needs. The spiritual phases of culture, which outlast these external and material phases, make their appearance more particularly at the time when the world empire is approaching its end. Since, however, it is these spiritual phases that are of predominant significance, world culture as a whole is to be regarded as an after-effect of world empire rather than as a direct result toward which the latter has contributed. The reason for this is not far to seek. It lies in the one-sided striving for the acquisition of external means of power, and in the consequent despotic pressure which the world empire, particularly in ancient times, brought to bear upon its separate members. It is also connected, however, with the fact that the dissolution of world empires usually brings in its wake migrations and a shifting of peoples. Even within the culture of the ancient Orient, the spread of the elements of myth and saga, as well as of the products of art and science, came especially with the destruction of earlier world empires and the reconstruction of others. The empire of Alexander the Great led to what was perhaps the greatest epoch of world culture in the history of civilization, yet the latter was conditioned, not so much directly by this empire, as by its disintegration at the time of the Diadochi. Similarly, the downfall of the last world empire that may properly lay claim to the name—the Græco-Roman kingdom—likewise resulted in a great cultural movement, due in part to the shifting of peoples which took place at this time, though more especially to the spread of Christianity. Here, again, the fact that the world empire was preparatory to world culture is substantiated. For the dying world empire employed even the last powers over which, in its final agony, it still had control, to pave the way for the world religion that was taking its rise.
Nevertheless, as a result of the tremendous resources which, in the beginnings of a higher civilization, were possessed by the world empire alone, there was one field in which the period of such empires was directly creative and in which it set an example to future ages. I refer to the technique of mass and to the monumental art connected with it. The streets, viaducts, and magnificent edifices of the period of the Roman emperors have long aroused the wonder and admiration of later generations, as monuments of a power that had unlimited means at its command. The constructions of the Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, and Persian world empires lacked the artistic execution which the influence of Greek art made possible to the constructions of the Romans. We have now come to know, however, that the former were not surpassed by the latter in the immensity which resulted from the consciousness, on the part of the builders, that they had countless human forces at their disposal. The canals and roadways of the Egyptian and Babylonian monarchs, moreover, also give clear evidence that the needs of agriculture and commerce were provided for in a way that would have been impossible, in these early stages of world culture, except through the resources at the command of a world State. The extension of intercourse resulting from world empire is to be regarded as at least a partial factor in the transition to the institution of money. It exercised an influence also toward the development of a system of writing, whose purpose it was to communicate the decrees of government to officials and vassals, and to preserve a record of the deeds of rulers and of the laws enacted by them. In this wise, the material aspects of world culture exerted an influence upon the mental aspects, whose direct expressions are speech and writing.
As regards the relation of speech and writing, the two fundamental elements of all culture, the culture of individuals and world culture show an important difference. In the culture of individuals, of course, speech long precedes writing, verbal expression being crystallized into writing only after a relatively high level of culture has been attained. In world culture, on the other hand, writing paved the way for verbal intercourse. The reason for this difference lies in the fact that speech is a natural product of the direct intercourse of individuals who are sharing a common life. Writing, however, is an invention by which individuals seek to disseminate and to preserve the ideas embodied in speech far beyond the spacial and temporal bounds that limit oral communication. Hence, communication in writing is the first step from folk culture to world culture. The simplicity of the characters which it employs enables it to pass from one people to another and from one generation to the next even more readily than does the speech of commerce. For though the latter is of a more universal character than the many separate mother tongues, it asserts itself only with difficulty in competition with them. The history of cuneiform writing is especially instructive as regards the point under present discussion. The Semitic people, whose migration to Babylonia succeeded that of the Sumerians, lost all knowledge of the Sumerian language, but they preserved the written texts as sacred. In the course of folk migrations, cuneiform writing likewise penetrated to the coast regions of Asia Minor, although in this instance it was continually used to express new idioms not to be found in the land of its origin. Letters have been found representing a correspondence between certain Babylonian kings and Egyptian Pharaohs, and dating from the fifteenth century before Christ. These letters, called Tel-el-Amarna letters after the place of their discovery, are a remarkable testimony to the fact that the demands of commerce gradually cause speech to follow in the wake of writing, even though the means which the Babylonian employs to make his cuneiform writing intelligible indicates that his Egyptian correspondent possessed only a slight acquaintance with the Babylonian language.
It was not until a much later time that any language of intercourse and literature became sufficiently widespread to be called a world language, even in that relative sense which attaches to all universal terms of this sort. This occurred, in the case of the Greek language, under the rule of the Diadochi. In this instance, again, the first advance in the direction of world culture followed, in the main, upon world empire. For, though we must admit that the empire of Alexander was of altogether too brief a duration for such a purpose, it is nevertheless true that it witnessed only the beginnings of a world dominance of Greek language and culture. Taking into account the narrow limits of the cultural world of that period of history, there has been no age since that of the Diadochi concerning which we would be prepared to say that it attained to so widespread a dissemination of a uniform culture. The striving beyond a national to a world culture which took place at that time was, of course, the fruition of far earlier tendencies. The fact that the Greek colonies retained the language and customs of the mother country was itself a preparatory step. Following the train of colonists were individual travellers, whose desire for knowledge led them beyond the regions where the Greek language was known. Even in that early day, Pythagoras and Xenophanes, Herodotus and Xenophon, Democritus and Plato made extensive travels throughout the lands bordering on the Mediterranean. Alexander's expedition to India, a country which had up to that time been regarded as a marvellous fairyland, marked the culmination of the journeys to remote regions which had, at the outset, been undertaken by individuals. Nevertheless, the spread of the impulse to wander remains of primary significance for the Hellenistic period. The warrior, the tradesman, and the physician share this impulse with the scholar and the artist. In the age of tribal organization, it was the tribe or clan that travelled to distant places, its object being to escape the pressure of want and the need threatened by the exhaustion of the hunting-grounds or the soil; in the heroic age, it was the people as a whole who left their homes, either because they were crowded out by enemies or because they were eager to assert their power by establishing cities and States; in the age under present consideration, it is the individual who is seized with the longing for travel, his purpose being to find elsewhere more favourable opportunities for the exercise of his vocation, or, perhaps, to see the world, and thus to enlarge his field of experience and his knowledge. The large and rapidly growing cities that spring up into centres of the new world culture attract the people of all lands, as do also the ancient and far-famed seats of intellectual culture. In Alexandria, Pergamus, Athens, and, finally, in Rome, there mingle representatives of all races—of the Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, and Italic peoples. Greek is the language of common intercourse. Alexandria, however, gradually displaces Athens as the chief seat of science. The latter comes to be fostered, not by Greeks, but, in large part, by individuals of other nationalities, particularly those of the Orient.
This new world culture possesses two distinctive characteristics. The first of these consists in a growing indifference to the State as such. The second, antithetical to the former and yet most closely related to it, is a high appreciation of the individual personality, connected with which is a tendency on the part of the individual to develop his own personality and to assert his rights. That which the public values undergoes a change. The emphasis shifts, on the one hand, from the State to a culture which is universally human, and thus independent of State boundaries; it passes, on the other hand, from political interests, in part, to the individual personality and, in part, to universal spiritual development. Thus, world culture is at once cosmopolitan and individualistic. As respects both these characteristics, however, the interest in humanity finds expression in a transcendence of the limits of a single people. Here, again, preparatory stages will be found far back in Greek culture. As early as the time of the Sophists, individuals, wandering from city to city as travelling teachers, proclaim the spirit of personal freedom and the dependence of all social institutions and ties upon the will of the individual. When we come to the Epicurean and Stoic schools, which reach over into the period of early world culture, the idea of humanity in both its aspects receives its classic expression, though with differing emphases, conditioned by the ethical and religious needs as a whole. Similar conditions prevail in the positive sciences. In natural science, which reached its first classical development in the Alexandrian period, an interest in universal natural laws, as discovered in astronomy and mechanics, occurs side by side with an absorption in descriptive observations of the most detailed sort. History fluctuates between attempts at an abstract schematization of the epochs of political development, after the pattern of the Aristotelian classification of the forms of the State, and biographical accounts of dominating personalities and their deeds. Similarly, philology combines the grammatical disputes of the Peripatetic and Stoic schools—disputes as yet unfruitful in their abstract generalities—with that minute pursuit of literary studies which has since given the period the discreditable name of 'Alexandrianism.' Art also manifests this coincidentia oppositorum. The monumental edifices of this epoch exhibit a tendency toward the colossal, whereas sculpture is characterized by a painstaking and individualizing art of portraiture; the drama portraying the pompous action of ruler and State, appears alongside of the play of civic intrigue and the mime.
As the result both of inner dissolution and of the aggression of new peoples who were just entering upon their political development, Hellenistic world culture underwent disintegration. It first split up into Greek and Roman divisions, in correspondence with the partition of the Roman world empire and that of the Christian Church connected with it. Except the fact of the separation itself, nothing shows more significantly how far both divisions were from possessing a world culture than does the decline of that indispensable means of common culture, language. The West preserved meagre remnants of the Latin civilization, the East, fragments of the Greek civilization. In the course of the centuries, the clergy of the West developed a class of scholars who were out of sympathy with the prevailing tendencies toward national culture. In the East, the barbarian nations, which the Church barely succeeded in holding together, exercised a benumbing influence upon culture; cultural activity, therefore, sank into a dull lethargy. The ancient world empires, whose last brilliant example, the monarchy of Alexander, had formed the transition to the first great world culture, gave place, at this later time, to world religion. As the result of struggles which, though long, were assured of ultimate success, world religion subjected the political powers to its authority. Destined, in the belief of peoples, to be imperishable, this religion outlived the changing forms of the secular State, and was the only remaining vehicle of world culture, fragmentary as this may have been. But the inner dissolution to which the last of the great world empires, that of Rome, succumbed, overpowered also the Church as soon as the latter endeavoured to become a new world State and insisted on the duty of believers to render obedience to it. When this occurred, the world culture fostered by it necessarily proved too weak to assimilate the new tendencies which were beginning to manifest themselves. Conditions were ripe for the striving to achieve a new culture. In contrast with the ideal of the Church, this culture was concerned with the actual world, and therefore felt itself related to the cultural idea of antiquity. Thus arose the culture of the Renaissance. In it, we again have a world culture in the true sense of the word, even though it was shared, at the outset, only by the ambitious and the educated, as had, indeed, also essentially been the case with its prototype.
The culture of the Renaissance formulated its ideal by reference both to the past and to the future. It sought to revive the world culture of the Græco-Roman period, but yet to give to the latter a content suited to the spirit of the new age and to the tasks awaiting it. Hence the Renaissance was not merely a rebirth, as its name might suggest, but a new world culture. Though possessing many traits in common with the older culture of Hellenism, it bore, in an even greater measure, its own peculiar stamp. The most noteworthy feature common to the two was their combination of universalism and individualism—a feature that is, perhaps, characteristic of world culture as such. Apparently both universalism and individualism become more prominent with the course of time. During the period of the Renaissance, the cultivation—one might almost say the cult—of the individual personality probably reached the highest point that it had as yet attained. The human monster, who violated without compunction all laws of propriety and custom, and the ascetic zealot, who sacrificed himself for a visionary ideal, could both alike arouse admiration because of the uniqueness of their characters. Along with this emphasis of individual personality, there flourished social ideals of a religious and a political nature. It was under this influence that the reformation of the church began its work and that new political theories and Utopian accounts of a happy future for the human race made their appearance. In still another respect does the age of the Renaissance appear to be a genuine revival, in an enlarged world, of the Hellenistic period. Again the individual is overpowered by the impulse to travel, and, as a consequence, the age of great geographical discoveries is inaugurated. The voyages of the great discoverers—of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Magellan—were the result, for the most part, of personal initiative. And, though other motives may have lurked in the background, the discoverers themselves were chiefly inspired by that desire to wander which, more than a century earlier, had led the Venetian Marco Polo to travel alone in the distant lands of eastern Asia.
But, in certain essential particulars, the later period of world culture possessed a character all its own. The basis of culture was no longer a world State, but a world Church. No longer, moreover, was there an indifference to the State, as had been so generally the case in Hellenistic times. A heightened political interest was everywhere beginning to be manifest. That which long continued to give this period its unique stamp was the struggle between State and Church. The social impulses tended in the direction of a new political order, and to a certain extent, even at this time, toward a social reconstruction. The world culture of this period, moreover, sustained a completely altered relation to language, that universal vehicle both of mental life and of the material culture which grows up out of the intercourse of peoples. It was not a world language, such as results naturally from the authority of a world empire, that constituted the basis of the new cultural unity. On the contrary, the latter was dependent upon a multiplicity of languages, which gave expression to the mental individuality of peoples just as did the national States to the diversity of particular political and social interests. The influence of more extensive educational activities made itself felt. The forms of commerce and of the interchange of the mental products of nations were manifold, yet education rendered the means of material and intellectual intercourse common property so far as this was possible and necessary. Thus, world culture itself acquired a new foundation. A world language must of necessity be an active and a living language, and, in view of the fact that all social institutions are historically conditioned, it can attain its supremacy only through the influence of a world empire. Hence every world culture whose basis is a unity of language, in the sense of a world language, is doomed to be transitory. Fragments of such a culture may survive, but it itself must perish along with the language by which it is sustained and, more remotely, with the political power by which the language is upheld. All this is changed as soon as world culture is established on the basis of a multiplicity of national tongues as well as of national States. Then, for the first time, may world culture become more than merely an occasional epoch of history; thenceforth it may enjoy a permanent development. With this in mind, one may say that the period of the Renaissance laid the foundation for a new form of world culture, whose characteristic feature is that combination of humanistic and national endeavour which is still prevalent throughout the civilized world.
[4. WORLD RELIGIONS.]
One of the most significant marks of the heroic age is the existence of national religions. Just as each race possesses its own heroes, so also does it have its own gods, who are reverenced as its protectors in wars with foreign peoples. True, gods and their cults may occasionally pass over from one people to another. Wherever there is an assimilation of foreign cults, however, all traces of origin disappear; the gods who are taken over from other peoples are added to the company of native gods, and enrich the national pantheon. So far as these conditions are concerned, world empires bring few changes. At most, they expressly subordinate the gods of conquered lands to the god of the ruling city, and thus prepare for the idea of an all-comprehensive divine State corresponding to the universal terrestrial State. The decisive step in the completion of this development is taken only under the influence of the world culture that grows up out of the world empire. The special national deities that represent the particular interests of individual peoples then inevitably recede in favour of gods and cults sustained by universal human needs, in which case the cults are, on the whole, identical, even though the deities bear different names.
It is of importance to note the motives that led to the first steps toward the realization of a universal human religion. They were identical with the very earliest incentives to religion, such as prevailed among all peoples on the very threshold of the belief in demons and gods. For, after the disappearance of political interests, to which the national gods owed their supremacy, it was again two experiences that occupied the foreground—sickness and death. During the period of Hellenistic world culture, the occupation of the physician was held in especial esteem. Connected with this was the fact that the cult of Æsculapius, the god of healing, grew from small beginnings into a cult whose influence extended over distant lands. Even more marked was the increase in the influence of those cults that centred about a world after death and the individual's preparation for it. The origin of these cults was connected both with the needs of this life and with the desire for endless joy in the beyond. In view of their identical development, how could it have escaped notice that, whatever formal differences there might be, the Grecian Demeter, the Phrygian Cybele, and the Phœnician Astarte were alike in nature? Even more than was the case with the Greek mysteries, these Oriental cults carried over into the cults of the beyond, into which they developed, certain ecstatic and orgiastic elements of ancient vegetation cults. All the more readily, therefore, were the latter cults incorporated into the deity cults, inasmuch as these had as their concern the satisfaction of human needs generally. But conditions were ripe for a still further advance. As has been suggested, the national and State interests which fettered man to the actual world of his environment gave way to interests transcending this world. In proportion as this occurred, however, did the life of the present, deprived of its former values, relinquish all cherished desires in favour of that heavenly world possible to all men regardless of class, calling, or nationality. This change was antithetical to the innate fear of death, and yet was its own final product. All these cults thus became redemption cults. To be redeemed from the evil of the world—the desire of deeper religious minds—or, after the enjoyment of the good things of this life, to receive still greater happiness after death—a hope doubtless entertained by the majority then as now—such was the primary object of the cults of these supranational gods. National cults had fashioned the gods in the image of man, even though exalting them with all the power of the mythological imagination into the superhuman and the unapproachable. At this later period, all efforts were directed toward bringing these anthropomorphic gods nearer to man as regards the activities in which they engaged, and particularly as regards the experiences which they underwent. No figure in the later Greek pantheon better lent itself to such a purpose than did Dionysos. Like the female deities representing Mother Earth, this male deity originated in the ancient field and fertility cults. Later, however, he became more and more transformed by legend into the ideal of a striving and suffering deity, who, after a horrible death, arose to new glory. Related to Dionysos were other deities who likewise became supreme in the Hellenistic age—Mithra, Attis, Osiris, and Serapis. All of these were gods who had been redeemed from pain and anguish, and were therefore capable, in their sympathy, of redeeming man.
In its beginnings, Christianity also was one of these religions of redemption. Over five hundred years before its rise, moreover, there had already appeared in the Far East a religion in which the same thought occupied the foreground. I refer to Buddhism. With reference to the steps by which Buddhism attained its supremacy, our only data are the controversies of the philosophical schools that participated in the development. These controversies make it probable that the basal motives involved were similar to those that were later operative in the cultural world of the Occident. There were also essential differences, however, traceable to the fact that the various Brahmanic systems had a common religious substratum, and that Hindoo thought had attained to a fairly advanced stage of philosophical development. One fact is doubtless universal—the appearance of a redemptive religion marks the decadence of an old and the rise of a new period of culture. Beginning with the Hellenistic period, therefore, and continuing with increased strength during the Roman world empire, there was a transition from a national to a humanistic culture. World religion was a more decisive indication of this crisis than were any of the other elements of world culture, or than was even world empire, which prepared the way for world culture. The old gods could no longer satisfy the new age, unless, at any rate, they underwent marked transformations. The age required new gods, in whom national traits were secondary, as they were in life itself, and universal human characteristics were supreme. It was particularly the unique worth of the individual human personality, without regard to birth, class, and occupation, which this period of transition from the national to the humanistic ideal emphasized. Hence the obstacles which the surrounding world placed in the way of personal endeavour were inevitably felt the more deeply in proportion as the values of the narrower community life disappeared. A change in mood took place within the consciousness of the age, as it so often does within that of the individual, and this change was enhanced by the contrast of emotions. The world lost the values which it had thus far held, and became a place of evil and suffering. In contrast with it, there loomed up a yonder world in which the desired ideals were believed to meet fulfilment. This mood, of course, did not continue permanently. World religion was of inner necessity forced to adapt itself to the earthly life in proportion as State and society again acquired a more fixed organization. But, just as the strata of the earth's crust retain the effects of a geological catastrophe long after it has passed, so spiritual life continues to exhibit the influence of upheavals that have occurred in the transitions from age to age, even though the spiritual values themselves have undergone many changes. In this respect, world religion manifests a conserving power greater than that of any other product of mental life.
There are only two world religions, in the strictest sense of the term, Buddhism and Christianity. Confucianism, which might perhaps be included so far as the number of its adherents is concerned, is a system of ethical teachings rather than a religion. Hence, when we take into account the vast number of Chinese peoples, Confucianism will be found to embody a great number of different religious developments, the most important of which are the ancient ancestor cult and Buddhism, the latter of which penetrated into China from elsewhere. The faith of Islam is a combination of Jewish and Christian ideas with ancient Arabian and Turanian traditions. As such, it has brilliantly fulfilled the mission of bringing a cultural religion to barbarian or semi-barbarian peoples, but it cannot be credited with being an original religious creation. Judaism finally formed a supremely important element of Christianity, one whose influence would appear to have been absolutely indispensable. In itself, however, it is not a world religion, but is one of those vanquished cults which struggled for supremacy in the pre-Constantinian period of the Roman world empire.
But what, let us ask, were the powerful forces that gave these two great world religions their supremacy? Surely it was not merely their inner superiority, though this be in no way disputed. Nor was it simply propitious external circumstances, such, for example, as the fact that Constantine made Christianity the State religion. Doubtless there were a great number of co-operating factors, foremost among them being the desire for a purely humanistic religion, independent of nationality or external position in life. And yet this also could not have been of decisive significance—precisely such a longing was more or less characteristic of all the religious tendencies of this transitional period. Moreover, this leaves unexplained the peculiarities of each of the two great world religions. These are in complete accord as regards their universal, humanistic tendency, but are just as different in content as is a Buddhistic pagoda from a Gothic cathedral. As a matter of fact, these world religions are also cultural religions. Back of each of them is a rich culture, with characteristics peculiar to itself, even though its basal elements are universally human. Hence it is that these two world religions are not merely expressions of a striving for a universally valid religious and moral ideal, in the sense in which such a striving is common to mankind as a whole; it should rather be emphasized that they reflect the essentially different forms which this striving has assumed within humanity. Buddhism, in its fundamental views, represents the highest expression to which the religious feeling of the Orient has attained, while Christianity, as a result of the conditions which determined its spread, has become the embodiment of the religious thought of the Occidental world. To appreciate this fact we must not allow our minds to be diverted to the tangled profusion of beliefs in magic and demons which Buddhism exhibits, nor to the traditional and, in part, ambiguous sayings of the great ascetic himself. If we would discover the parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, we must hold ourselves primarily to the ideas that have remained potent within the religion of Buddha. True, the worlds which these religions disclose to our view differ, yet in neither case had religious feeling up to that time received so exalted an expression. In Buddhism, as in original Christianity, human life is regarded as a suffering, and this underlies both the irresistible impulse to asceticism and repentance, and the hope for unclouded bliss in the future. The Christian of the primitive church looks forward to the speedy return of Christ, and to His inauguration of an eternal, heavenly kingdom. In contrast with this, it is as a prolonged migration through animal bodies, alternating with rebirth in human form, that the Hindoo thinker conceives that great process of purification by means of which sense is finally to be entirely overcome and man is to partake of an undimmed knowledge of the truth, and, with this, of supreme and never-ending bliss. This is the true Nirvana of Buddha. Nirvana does not represent the nothingness of eternal oblivion, but an eternal rest of the soul in pure knowledge, a peace which puts an end to all striving, just as does the heaven for which the Christian hopes. The difference between Nirvana and the Christian heaven is merely that, in the one case, the emphasis falls on knowledge, whereas, in the other, it is placed on feeling. This distinction, however, is not absolute. Buddha, also, preaches love of one's neighbour—indeed, sympathy with every suffering creature; and the Christian, as well as the Buddhist, seeks the knowledge of God. Moreover, ideas of purification are necessarily involved in redemptive religions, and hence are to be found in Christianity no less than in the world religion of the Orient, though in a different form. The Occidental Christian, swayed by his prompter emotions, images in the most vivid colours the agonies of the damned and the purification of the sinners in need of redemption. The patient and peace-seeking Oriental entertains the conception of a prolonged suffering that leads gradually, through the light of knowledge, from the debasement of animal existence to a state of redemption.
A further feature which differentiates these kindred religious developments is their relation to the contemporary philosophy which affected them. Buddhism grew out of philosophy, and then became a folk religion. In its spread, it became transformed from an esoteric into an exoteric teaching, continually absorbing older elements of folk belief. Its ethical basis never entirely disappeared, yet it became more and more obscured by a multitude of miracle-legends and magical ideas. Christianity, on the other hand, began as a folk religion and, in so far, as an exoteric teaching. But, in entering into the strife of religions and into the controversies of the thought-systems of the Hellenistic-Roman period, Christianity passed under the control of philosophy. Precisely because it lay outside the realm of philosophy, it was subjected to the influence of the various schools, though it was most decisively affected by Platonism and Stoicism. Inasmuch as philosophy itself had its setting in a superstitious age, it was the less able to purify Christianity from the belief in demons, miracles, and magic which the latter, as a folk religion, embodied from the very outset. Nevertheless, philosophical thought supplemented the real meaning of religious statements with an idealized interpretation. This gave birth to dogma, which consisted of a peculiar combination of esoteric and exoteric elements, and for this very reason assumed a mystical character. Hence it is that Buddhism, which sprang from philosophy, never possessed any real dogmas in the sense of binding norms of faith, whereas Christianity, which originated as a folk religion, fell a prey in its dogmatization to a theology which prescribed the content of belief.
These two world religions, which dominate the main centres of spiritual culture, do not, surely, owe their supremacy over other religious cults to the external conditions of their origin. Indeed, these conditions differ in the two cases. To account for the pre-eminence of the two religions we must look to the religious and moral nucleus which they possess in the sayings and teachings as well, also, as in the ideal lives of their founders. In spite of all differences, there is a similarity of character between the prince who wandered about as a beggar, preaching to the peoples the salvation which pure knowledge brings to him who renounces all external goods of life, and the man of the common people who pronounced blessings on the poor and the suffering because they are prepared above others to find the way to heaven. Another remarkable coincidence is the fact that the religious communities which they inspired sought to deprive them of the very characteristic which opens human hearts to them; they were real persons who lived and to whose deeds and sufferings their contemporaries bore testimony. What, as compared with them, are the redeeming gods in the pantheon of the various nations—Dionysos, Mithra, Osiris, or even Serapis, whose worship was established by the Ptolemies under the driving power of ideas of extensive political authority? The need of a living god whose existence was historically attested led irresistibly to the elevation of the man into a god. Thus, though in an entirely different world-setting and with a completely changed hero-personality, the process through which deities were created at the beginning of the heroic age was repeated. At this later period, however, it was not the universal type of idealized manhood that was regarded as the incarnate deity, but a single ideal personality. This purely human deity was no longer bound by national ties; he was not a guardian of the State and a helper in strife with other peoples, but a god of mankind. For every individual he was both an ideal and a helper, a saviour from the imperfections and limitations of earthly life. With this process of deification, the religions whose central object of cult was the suffering individual who secures for himself and for mankind redemption from suffering, opened their doors also to the gods and demons of earlier ages. Thus, there penetrated into Buddhism the Hindoo pantheon, together with the beliefs in magic and spirits which were entertained by the peoples converted to Buddhism. The Christian Church did not finally supersede the earlier heathen folk belief until it had assimilated the latter in the conceptions of demons and the devil, in the cult of saints, and in the worship of relics, the last-mentioned of which also constituted an important element of Buddhism.
In the case of Christianity, there was still another factor which prepared the soil for the new religion. This factor was due either to a direct transference or, as is probable so far as the main outlines of the history of the passion are concerned, to the real similarity of this event with the legends, prevalent in all parts of the earth, of the death and resurrection of a deity. Such legends everywhere grew up out of vegetation cults, which date back to the beginnings of agriculture. The hopes centred about a world beyond caused the cults based on these ideas to incorporate the soul cults. The latter then displaced the original motives of vegetation cults. In this way, higher forms of soul cult were developed, as exemplified by the ancient mysteries and by the related secret cults of other peoples. The exclusive aim now came to be the attainment of salvation from the earthly into a heavenly world. It was thought that this goal would be the more certain of attainment if, yielding to the old association of the mystical and secret with the magical and miraculous, the circle of initiated cult companions were narrowly limited. But how different is the form which this very ancient legend of a god who suffers, dies, and rises again assumes in the suffering and death of Christ! Jesus was a real person, whose death on the cross many had witnessed and whose resurrection his disciples had reported. Moreover, the cult of this crucified Saviour was not enveloped in a veil of secrecy. The redeeming god did not wish to win heaven merely for a few who had gained the privilege through magical ceremonies. The Christian heaven was open to all, to rich and poor, though especially to the poor, who were to receive in the beyond a rich compensation for the good things denied them upon earth. It is but natural that this new cult, with its vastly deeper and more vital significance, and with the strength which it nevertheless continued to draw from the old traditional legends, won for itself the allegiance of the new world with its strivings for a greater security in life as in death. Even some of the Roman soldiers, coming from their Saturnalian or Sacæan festivals, may, perhaps, have felt strangely moved upon seeing re-enacted, as a terrible reality, that which in their country was a playful custom, representing a survival of a once serious cult and ending in the mimic death of the carnival king. It was obviously in recollection of these very prevalent festivals that the coarser members of the crowd gave to him who was crucified the name "King of the Jews." The appellation was exactly suited to heighten the contrast between the joyous tumult of such mimic cults and this murderous reality.
The above scene was prophetic of the entire subsequent development of the new religion. That Christianity became a world religion was not due merely to the depth and sublimity of its spirit—these were hidden under a cover of mythological elements, from which Christianity was not free any more than were other religions. Christianity gained its supremacy, just as did Buddhism, in its own way, through a capacity to assimilate auxiliary mythological conceptions to an extent scarcely equalled by any of the previous religions. The very fact that the latter were national religions precluded them, to a certain extent, from incorporating alien ideas. It was not only mediæval Christianity that took over a large part of the earlier belief of heathen peoples. Even present-day Christianity might doubtless be called a world religion in this sense, among others, that, in the various forms of its beliefs and professions, it includes within itself, side by side, the most diverse stages of religious development, from a monotheism free from all mythological elements down to a motley collection of polytheistic beliefs, including survivals of primitive ideas of magic and demons.
But there is another phenomenon in which the spirit of Christianity comes to expression even more significantly than in its capacity to adapt itself to the most diverse stages of religious development. Here, again, there is a similarity between Christianity and the other great world religion, Buddhism. The belief of Hindoo antiquity in a populous heaven of gods was very early displaced, in the priestly wisdom of India, by the idea of "the eternal, unchangeable" Brahma. We here have an abstract deity-idea from which every trace of personality has disappeared. It was under the influence of this priestly philosophy that Buddha grew up, and his esoteric teaching, therefore, did not include a belief in a personal deity. Meanwhile, the ancient gods had continued to maintain their place in popular belief, though their original character was obscured by rankly flourishing ideas of magic and demons. This state of affairs was due to the fact that there was no longer a supreme deity who could give to mythology a religious basis. In the religious movement which began with Buddha, however, the latter himself came to be a supreme deity of this sort, the old nature gods and magic demons becoming subservient to him. The god-idea had been etherealized into the abstract idea of a superpersonal being, but its place was taken by the human individual exalted into a deity. Christianity underwent the same crucial changes, though in a different manner. In the philosophy of the Greeks, the personal deity of popular belief had been displaced by a superpersonal being. Plato's "idea of the good," the Aristotelian Nous, which, as pure form, holds sway beyond the boundaries of the world, even the Stoic Zeus as the representative of the teleological character of the world order, and, finally, the gods of Epicurus, conceived as indefinite forms dwelling in nebulous regions and unconcerned with the world—all manifest the same tendency either to elevate the personal deities of the heroic age into superpersonal beings, or, as was essentially done by Epicurus, to retransform them into subpersonal, demon-like beings. In contrast with this tendency, Jesus, as the representative of a religious folk belief, holds fast to the god of ancient tradition, as developed in the Jahve religion of the Israelites. Indeed, it is in the conception of Jesus that this god receives his deepest and most personal expression, inasmuch as he is conceived as a god of love, to whom man stands in the relation of son to father. This conception of the relation of God to man Christianity sought to retain. But history is not in accord with this traditional view. Cult and dogma alike testify that in this case also the deity came to be superpersonal from an early period on. To cult, which is always concerned with personal gods, Christ became the supreme deity; in the Catholic Church, there came to be also a large number of secondary and subsidiary gods, who sometimes even crowded the Christ into the background, as is exemplified particularly by the cult of the Virgin Mary. Dogma, on its part, cannot conceal the fact that it originated in philosophy, which is destructive of personal gods. For dogma ascribes attributes to the deity that are irreconcilable with the concept of personality. The deity is represented as eternal, omnipotent, all-good, omnipresent—in short, as infinite in all attributes that are held to express his nature. The conception of the infinite, however, contradicts that of personality, for the latter demands a character that possesses sharply defined attributes. However comprehensive our conception of personality may be, limitation is necessarily implied; the concept loses its meaning when associated with the limitless and the infinite. Even though dogma may continue to maintain that belief in a personal God is fundamental to Christian faith, such a belief is nevertheless self-contradictory; the union of the ideas 'personal' and 'god' must be understood as a survival within the era of world religions, where many such survivals occur, of the god-idea developed by national religions.
The truth is that the transformation of the personal god into a superpersonal deity is probably the most important mark of world religion. National religion displaced the subpersonal demon in favour of the personal god; in world religion, the personal god is exalted into a superpersonal deity. At this point there is a very close connection between world religion and world culture. As the idea that the universe is bounded by a sphere of fixed stars must give way to the conception of the infinitude of the universe, so also does world culture transcend the limits imposed upon it by the preparatory world empire, whose own origin was the State. World Culture, as we have seen, comes to signify a cultural unity of mankind, such as includes the national States. Similarly, world religion strives toward the idea of a deity who is superpersonal, and who, though only in so far as he is superpersonal, transcends the world of experience. The foundations of this concluding stage in the development of religion had long been laid by philosophy. In religion itself, the culmination was actually attained with the recedence of the deity in cult; in theology, it came with the ascription to the deity of attributes of absoluteness and infinitude, even though the deity-conception did not clearly emerge from a mystic incomprehensibility rendered inevitable by the combination of contradictory ideas.
Though the transition from a personal god to a superpersonal deity is the decisive characteristic that marks a world religion, there is closely connected with it a second distinctive feature. In Christianity, indeed, it was the latter that prepared the way for the idea of the non-personal character of God. The fact to which I refer is that, in addition to the non-personal deity, there is believed to be a personal god in the form of an exalted human individual. Cult continues to require a personal being to whom man may come with his needs and desires. And by whom could his trouble be better understood than by a deity who himself lived and suffered as a man? In Buddhism, therefore, as well as in Christianity, the god-man became the personal representative of the non-personal deity, not as the result of any external transference, but in consequence of the same inner need. The god-man is a representative in more than one respect. Cult honours him as the deity who dwelt upon earth in human form, and who represents the godhead; it turns to him also as the human individual who represents mankind before God. Back of these two ideas of representativeness that dominate belief and cult, there is still a further, though an unrecognized, need for a representative. The religious nature requires that there shall be a personal god as the representative of him who has been exalted into a non-personal deity and has become inaccessible. The infinite god posited by the religious intellect is unable to satisfy the religious nature that is pressed by the cares and sufferings of finitude. Herewith the way is opened for a development whose course is determined by the changing relations into which the two aspects of the concept 'god-man' enter with one another. On the first stage, the divine aspect of the god-man overshadows the human character. At this period, it might appear as though world religion merely substituted a new god for the older gods. Though the superpersonal deity receives recognition in dogma, and the development, therefore, marks an important religious advance over the age of gods, the cult is directed to the person of the god-man. Then comes a second stage, in which the human aspect of the concept 'god-man' occupies the foreground. The god-man becomes an ideal human being who succours man in the afflictions of his soul, but who does so not so much by his divine power as by the example of human perfection which he represents. At the third stage, the god-man finally comes to be regarded as in every respect a man. It is recognized that, through the religious movement which bears his name, he indeed prepared the way for the idea that the deity is a non-personal source of being, exalted above all that is transitory. Nevertheless, the god-man is conceived as an ideal man only in the sense in which one may speak of any ideal as actual. Hence, the world religion derives its name from him not so much because of what he himself was as because of that which he created. From this point of view, it is eventually immaterial even whether or not Jesus or Buddha ever lived. The question becomes one of historical fact, not one of religious necessity. Jesus and Buddha live on in their religious creations. That these creations, to say nothing of any other proofs, point back to powerful religious personalities, the unbiased will regard as certain, though from this third point of view the question is of subordinate importance.
A world religion may lay claim to being such not merely on account of its wide acceptance, but also because of its ability to incorporate the elements of other religions. In a similar manner, and more particularly, a world religion is one that includes within itself elements representing past stages of its own development. Historically considered, religious elements are juxtaposed in such a manner that the religious life of the past is mirrored in the present. Hence the religion can at no time emancipate itself from its historical development. It is just as impossible to return to the religious notions of earlier times as it is to transform ourselves into the contemporaries of Charlemagne or even of Frederick the Great. The past never returns. Nevertheless, it is universally characteristic of mental development, particularly within the sphere of religion, that the new not only continues to be affected by the old, but that the more advanced stages of culture actually embody many elements of the past. That these be permitted to exist side by side with higher conceptions, and that there be no limiting external barriers in either direction, is all the more demanded by world religion inasmuch as the independence of State and society, which its very nature implies, presupposes, first of all, the freedom of personal belief.
Inasmuch as it possesses a universal human significance, religion cannot escape the change to which everything human is subject. This appears most strikingly in the undeniable fact that the fundamental idea of the two great world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, has in both cases changed. I refer to the idea of salvation. We do not, of course, mean to deny that an individual may either permanently or temporarily return to the religious ideas of the past with a fervour which again reinstates in him impulses that have long since disappeared. Nevertheless, the present-day idea of salvation is no longer identical with that which animated the primitive Christian Church when it looked forward to the return of its Saviour. Christianity is a religion of humanity. Precisely for this reason, it, in every age, took up into itself the feelings and aspirations representing the ideal spiritual forces of that age. All that was permanent in the midst of this change was really the religious impulse as such, the feeling that the world of sense belongs to an ideal supersensuous order—a feeling for which world religion seeks external corroboration in the development of religion itself. In distinction from national religions, which sprang from an infinitely large number of sources, a world religion requires a personal founder. To this personality is due also the direction of the further development of the religion. Thus, the final and most important characteristic of world religion is the fact that it is pre-eminently an historical religion. It is historical both in that it has an historical origin, and in that it is constantly subject to the flux of historical development.
[5. WORLD HISTORY.]
The meaning attached to the term 'world history' clearly shows how firmly rooted is the anthropocentric view of the world in connection with those matters that are of deepest concern to man. World history is regarded as the history of mankind—indeed, in a still narrower sense, as, in the last analysis, the mental history of mankind. If facts of any other sort are taken into account, this is not because they are an essential part of the subject-matter, but because they represent external conditions of historical events. The justifiability of this point of view may scarcely be disputed. If the purpose of all historical knowledge is to understand the present condition of mankind in the light of its past, and, in so far as we also attribute to this knowledge a practical value, to indicate the probable course of the future, then the history of mind is the immediate source of historical knowledge. If this be true, it follows that the essential content of history consists in those events which spring from the psychical motives of human conduct. Moreover, it is the nexus and change of motives underlying such conduct that lends to events the inner continuity which is universally demanded of history.
But the very meaning which is universally associated with the term 'world history' itself includes two very different conceptions. For, even when the field of history is limited to the events connected with mankind, as those which are of greatest importance to us, there remains a further question. Is history to deal with the whole of mankind, or is it to be restricted merely to those peoples that have in any way affected the course of the mental history of humanity? As is well known, most of the works on world history have been confined to the more restricted field. For them, world history is an account of cultural peoples, whose activities are shown by a continuous tradition and by existing monuments to form a relatively connected whole. But there have also been more comprehensive works, which have felt it necessary to include at least those cultural and semi-cultural peoples who attained to some independent mental development, as did the peoples of the New World prior to the time of Columbus. Back of this uncertainty arising from the ambiguity of the concept 'mankind' lies a deeper-going confusion due to the no less ambiguous meaning of the concept 'history.' However much we may associate the word 'history' primarily with the traditional limits of historical science, we may not entirely put aside the broader meaning, according to which it includes everything which may at all be brought into a connected order of events. For we also speak of a history of the earth, of the solar system, of an animal or a plant species, etc. Now, with this wider connotation of the idea in mind, we cannot fail to recognize that the conditions that still prevail among certain races, and that doubtless at one time prevailed among all, are such that, while they would not concern historical science in its more restricted and familiar sense, they would demand consideration if the term were taken in its broader meaning. From the latter point of view, the condition of a primitive people of nature is no less a product of history than is the political and cultural condition of present-day Europe. But there is nevertheless a radical difference between the two cases. The historically trained European understands, to a fairly great extent, the external circumstances that have led to present conditions. He is conscious not merely of the present but also of its preceding history, and he therefore looks forward to the future with the expectation of further historical changes. The man of nature knows only the present. Of the past he possesses merely fragmentary elements, legendary in character, and much altered by the embellishments of a myth-creating imagination; his provision for the future scarcely extends beyond the coming day. Hence, we should scarcely be justified in unqualifiedly calling peoples of nature 'peoples without a history.' In the broader sense of the term, they have a history, as well as have the solar system, the earth, the animal, and the plant. But they lack a history in the narrower sense, according to which historical science includes among 'historical' peoples only such as have had some special significance in the development of mental culture. That even this limitation is variable and uncertain need scarcely be mentioned. The past shows us many instances in which hordes that were previously unknown, and were thus, in the ordinary meaning of the term, peoples without a history, suddenly stepped into the arena of the cultured world and its history. The colonial history of the present, moreover, shows that the characteristics and the past development of races occupying regions of the earth newly opened to cultural peoples, have not been, and are not, without influence upon the course of history. It should also be remembered that between an historical tradition comprehending the entire cultural world and recollection limited to the immediate past, there are a great number of intermediate stages. These stages are dependent primarily upon the forms of social organization, though also upon other cultural factors. Peoples that have failed to advance beyond a tribal organization may frequently have traversed wide regions of the earth and yet have preserved at most certain legendary elements of the history of these migrations, although retaining myths, cults, and customs indefinitely. On the other hand, wherever a national State has arisen, there has developed also a national tradition, intermingled with which, of course, there have long continued to be mythological and legendary elements. But the tradition, even in this case, relates exclusively to the particular people who entertain it. Strange races are as yet touched upon only in so far as they have directly affected the interests of those who preserve the tradition. Indeed, such races continue to have but an inconspicuous place in tradition until the establishment of world empires and of the partly anticipatory colonial and trade interrelation of peoples. Hence it is not until the rise of world empires that we find the transition to world history in the sense in which the term is most commonly employed to-day. In so far as world history involves a transcendence of the history of a single people but nevertheless a limitation to the circle of cultural peoples who are more or less generally interrelated, it is a direct product of world culture. Such a history includes all peoples who participate in world culture and excludes all those who have no share in it.
Considered from a psychological point of view, the different meanings of the concept 'history' in its relation to the various stages of mental culture, clearly show a fluctuation between two ideas which, though opposite, nevertheless mutually imply each other. On the one hand, there is the purely objective conception of history. History, in this case, is regarded as a course of events of such a nature that the specific occurrences may be brought by an external observer into an orderly sequence of conditions and results. On the other hand, history has been conceived as a course of events, which not only exhibits an orderly sequence from an objective point of view, but which is also subjectively experienced as a nexus by the individuals concerned. In the one case, history is a reconstruction, on the basis of external observation, of the inner connection of phenomena; in the other, it is the conscious experience of the latter connection. Mankind exemplifies all possible transitional stages between these two extremes—history as merely objectively given, and as experienced both objectively and subjectively. Indeed, it is even true to say that, as a matter of fact, none but such transitional stages actually occur. Even the horizon of primitive man includes a narrow circle of consciously experienced history. On the other hand, man is ever far from attaining to a self-conscious grasp of his own history in its entirety. Thus, that which is in a high degree characteristic of world religion is true also of world history. Within the conscious horizon of each individual very different levels of historical consciousness are represented, even in the case of the cultural peoples who participate more or less actively in the course of world history. Here, as in world religion, we find that what was developed in a sequence during the course of ages continues to remain, at any rate roughly speaking, in juxtaposition. Moreover, even apart from this, we never survey more than a segment of the entire nexus of historical factors. One of the most important tasks of the historian consists in tracing the chain of events back to motives which are, in part, inaccessible to superficial observation, and, in part, indeed, remain of a problematical nature even when we believe that, through inference, we have gained an approximately true conception of them. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that immediate knowledge be complete in order that there may be a consciously experienced nexus of events such as is demanded for the content of history proper. It is merely necessary that some interconnection be actually experienced and that its relations be directly apprehended. This knowledge, moreover, must possess sufficient power to influence decisively the actual course of events.
This narrower conception of history brings historical events into relation with the human will. The will is really a phase of conscious experience. It is necessary, however, to single it out for special discussion, because of the fact that popular opinion either regards it as the exclusive factor in history or else stresses it so one-sidedly that the causal view, required in principle even for individual consciousness, threatens to vanish entirely from the conception of historical life. Naturally, the will does not become an influence definitely affecting the course of events until individuals have become consciously aware of the interconnectedness of historical life. Whenever, therefore, an exaggerated importance is attached to the function of volition, the conscious intervention of individual personalities in the course of events readily comes to appear as the decisive feature that distinguishes the historical from the prehistorical stages of human development. But this is erroneous in both its implications. Even the life of primitive peoples of nature is not entirely unaffected by individual personalities, whose influence may be more or less permanently operative even after they themselves have been forgotten. On the other hand, the will acts of individuals constitute but one factor among the many which determine historical life. Moreover, inasmuch as every particular volition is conditioned by motives inherent in the general constitution of individual consciousness, it is subject to the same psychical causality that dominates human consciousness in general. The criterion for differentiating historic from prehistoric existence, therefore, is not the influence of a personal will upon the life of the group, but rather the fact that the conscious experience of historical continuity includes a recognition of the effect of individual personalities upon the destinies of peoples. The advance to such an insight is inaugurated by world empires, in which the vicissitudes of peoples first begin to form a unified history; it reaches its completion in world culture, which creates a common mental heritage for mankind, and thus engenders the consciousness of a universal community.
Of the various elements of world culture that give impetus to this development, the world religions occupy the foremost place. In extent and permanence they surpass not only the world empires but also all other forms of material and spiritual interchange between peoples. However much the traditions associated with world religions may be interwoven with mythological and legendary elements, they nevertheless constitute a bond whose primary effect is to arouse among peoples who may otherwise be widely different in culture and history, the idea of a universal human community. The peoples of Eastern Asia, for example, though exhibiting marked political differences, were united by Buddhism into a community of religious thought, in which they became conscious that, in spite of differences of race and of history, they possessed a similar religious and ethical temper. If we compare the Brahmanic doctrines with the sayings of such teachers as Confucius and Lao-tsze, we are struck particularly by the similarity of ethical trend as well as by the divergence of this trend from that of Occidental thought. In its idea of a community of faith, Islamism likewise brought the consciousness of unity to numerous peoples of barbaric culture—to a more limited extent than Buddhism, it is true, but for this reason all the more forcefully. Of Christianity, it is even more true that, from the very beginning, it took as its guiding principle the belief that in the eyes of God there is no distinction either of race or of class and occupation. Hence it has regarded missionary activity among heathen peoples as a task whose purpose it is finally to unite the whole of mankind beneath the cross of Christ. Thus, world religion destroyed the barriers erected by the preceding national religions, and took as its aim the unification of men and races into an all-embracing community. To the adherent of a national religion, the race that believed in a different god was strange and hostile; both characteristics, strangeness and hostility, were included by the Greek in the term 'barbarian.' The Christian speaks of heathen who have not as yet beheld the light of pure truth, but for him there are no barbarians. The god to whom the Christian prays likewise rules the heathen world, and to the heathen, also, the gospel is preached. True, we find a recurring limitation in that it is only the Christian who is a brother to Christians. Nevertheless, it is prophesied of the heathen that they will at one time be received into the brotherhood of the disciples of Christ. At the end of time, there is to be but one shepherd and one flock upon earth. Thus, in the missionary activity which the Christian recognizes as his calling, the assertion, All men are brothers, is based on the two ideas, All Christians are brothers, and All men are destined to become Christians.
It was on the basis of the Christian tradition that science first attempted to treat history, not as the history of a single people or, at best, as a number of histories of successive or contemporaneous races and States, but as true world history. At the outset, world history was objective in character. The underlying thought was that the whole of mankind was controlled by a single idea which governed all events, and that the task of humanity consisted in carrying this idea into realization. Augustine's Civitas Dei was the first attempt at a world history based on the idea of the religious vocation of mankind. That this exposition is limited to the legendary history of the Israelitic people, supplemented by the history of Jesus as transmitted in the Gospels, and by the Apocalyptic prophecies of a future world, should not cause surprise. The limitation is due to the fact that the idea of humanity is considered solely from the religious point of view. The Church, as the institution about which religion centres, is glorified by Augustine's work as the divine State. The adoption of this religious viewpoint causes the history of mankind to appear as record, not of human experiences that come as a result of human striving and activity, but of events that are from the very beginning divinely foreordained.
Nevertheless, Augustine's remarkable work long continued to determine the general direction of conceptions relating to the history of mankind. Up to the eighteenth century, religious development was regarded as establishing the only connection between the various periods of history. The sole exception to this occurred in the case of Giambattista Vico. In his New Science (1725), Vico sought to combine the development of language and of jurisprudence with that of religion. True, the question regarding the origin of the State and the causes of changes in constitutions had concerned men from the time of the early Sophists on. Particularly during the Hellenistic period and at the time of the Renaissance, such inquiries were of focal interest, as a result of the great political changes that were then taking place. Yet, whenever the underlying laws of such changes were sought, it was the single State that formed the basis of investigation; by comparing its vicissitudes with those of other States, the attempt was made to arrive at a general law along some such line as the Aristotelian classification of States into monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, etc. There was hardly ever a suggestion that the historical sequence of civilizations and of States was a connected process intelligible in causal or teleological terms. Religion alone was conceived as a phenomenon which was, on the one hand, independent of the limits of a single people, and yet, on the other, subject, in its development, to law. The idea that Christianity was destined to be a world religion, together with the fact that it had originated historically and had spread widely, did not admit of any other interpretation. Within this Christian circle of ideas, moreover, the historical development and growth of religion were, quite naturally, brought into connection with the world beyond, in which the development was thought to await its completion. The religious philosophy of history thus terminated in a prophecy whose culmination was the final triumph of Christianity. The Age of Enlightenment, after effecting a unification of Christianity with the religion of reason, again made the world of historical experience the scene of triumph. This triumph was held to consist in the ultimate development of Christianity into a religion of reason—a conception in which the idea of the destiny of Christianity to become a world religion undergoes a philosophical transformation which recurs even in the writings of Kant.
Apart from this transformation, which was only partially complete even in the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of religious development that grew up in connection with Christian thought involves two presuppositions. The first of these is that the pathway of mankind was determined by God, and not voluntarily chosen by man himself. It is not to religious thought that the characteristic features of the development must be ascribed. The development, moreover, is not immanent in religion; it is the result of external causes. The second presupposition is that this development follows a preconceived plan; it embodies a purpose—indeed, it expresses purpose in the very highest degree precisely because it proceeds from the will of God. Even the co-operation of individuals in the fulfilment of this plan is but the result of divine predetermination, or happens because God has made known His purposes to these individuals. Thus, this course of thought leads with inner necessity to the conception of revelation. This conception combines two essentially irreconcilable ideas, offsetting each by the other. The religious destiny of man is thought to lie outside his own control: it is imposed upon him from without, and is communicated to him in the form of an illumination which he receives from the supersensuous world. Thus, religious development itself becomes a supersensuous process, which falls beyond the possibilities of the ordinary means of human knowledge. As its goal lies in the supersensuous, so also is the development itself a supersensuous process that extends over into the world of sense.
But at this point the religious view of world history necessarily came into sharp conflict with the philosophical view, though the latter had in certain respects appropriated the idea, developed by the former, of a teleological direction of human destinies. The philosopher, always trusting the guidance of his own reason, might admit both a goal and a plan, but that these should be inaccessible to the lux naturalis, as the philosophy of the Enlightenment called rational knowledge in distinction from lux supranaturalis, or revelation, he could not concede. The logical outcome of this course of thought was an auxiliary concept which appeared to surmount the difficulty, and also possessed the happy characteristic of leaving every one free to retain, along with the natural light, as much or as little of the supernatural thought of an earlier period as he might deem wise. This auxiliary concept was that of education—a conception that would readily suggest itself to an age vitally interested in pedagogical questions. The thought here involved represents merely a special application to this particular instance of the idea that the world is governed by a personal deity. Thus it came about that, from the time of Locke and Leibniz down to that of Lessing and Herder, the favourite conception of history was that of an education of mankind. But it is significant that the very work whose title incorporates this idea, Lessing's Education of the Human Race, really ends by displacing it. True, as a result of Biblical tradition, the idea of education is here brought into connection with the thought that the Jewish race is the chosen people of God. Freed from this connection, however, and applied to mankind in general, the idea of education, in Lessing's work, becomes that of self-education, or, what is the same thing, that of a development determined by the general laws of mental life. Hence conditions were ripe for the further advance made by Herder, in his Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind. Though frequently lapsing, in his discussions of details, into the transcendent teleology of the preceding period, Herder nevertheless did away in principle with the restriction of the history of mankind to religious development, substituting for the latter the development to humanity.
Thus was determined the programme which historical science, at about the same time, accepted as its own—the programme of a universal history, whose task did not consist in presenting a loosely connected series of the histories of separate States, but in describing the common participation of peoples and States in the development of a universal culture. Furthermore, the way was cleared for the philosophical position that history is not, as was once thought, the expression of a predetermined plan whose purpose is that of a divine education, but that it is the result of laws immanent in historical life itself. Though variously expressed and partly obscured by surviving ideas of the preceding period, this is the fundamental conviction common to the nineteenth-century philosophers of history. It received its most complete expression in the writings of Hegel, not merely in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, but in his entire philosophy, which reflects throughout a broad historical outlook. History had by this time come to be regarded as a strictly self-dependent development of ideas in which each advance proceeds with rigid logical necessity from that which went before. In other words, it was thought of as a development of reason in time, or, in the phraseology of a religious world-view, as the living development of God himself. God is no longer conceived as a transmundane being who guides the destinies of mankind according to a preconceived plan. On the contrary, He is represented as immanent in the world. His innermost nature is described as the world-reason, and this is said to be unfolded particularly in the history of mankind.
However superior this conception may be to the preceding semi-mythological and semi-rationalistic theory of a divine education, it is clearly apparent that it was the outcome of a continuous development, characterized, we may doubtless say, by strict logical necessity. Antecedent to it were, first, the conception that this world is a preparation for the kingdom of God, and, later, the thought that life is an education in accordance with a predetermined plan. That the Hegelian conception is the result of such a development is evident from the very fact that it continues to regard the destinies of mankind as guided by a plan. This plan has, from stage to stage, merely passed from transcendence to immanence, inasmuch as it is finally thought to be present to the mind of the philosopher who interprets the meaning of history. Hence this later philosophy of history resembles the earlier in still another respect. Ultimately, both are more concerned with the future than with the past, thus being at once history and prophecy. Even at the later period, the central question to whose answer everything else is preparatory concerns the final goal toward which mankind is striving. Hence it is that the philosophers of this age are led time and again to divide the total life of humanity into periods inclusive of past, present, and future, precisely as did the world-plan of Augustine, whose basal conception was the idea of redemption. Since these periods are not derived from the progress of events, but are for the most part imposed upon it in conformity to the dictates of logic, the course of history is mapped out by reference to logical categories. Each of the great cultural peoples is portrayed as representing a specific idea, and, disregarding everything that might disturb their sequence, these ideas are arranged in a logical series. Thus, Hegel begins his reconstruction of history with an account of the Chinese as the people who possessed the earliest civilization. He does so, however, not because Chinese culture was as a matter of fact the earliest, but because it has apparently been more stable than other cultures, as well as more closely bound up with rigid external forms. Correspondingly, all succeeding stages of history are arranged by Hegel according to the principle, on the one hand, of a progress from bondage to spiritual freedom, and, on the other, of a transition from finite limitation to a striving for the infinite. This philosophy of history should not be criticized for its lack of knowledge concerning the beginnings of culture. Its fundamental error lies in the fact that, in tracing the development of mankind, it is guided, not by the rich concrete actuality of events but by a logical schematism which is in large measure imposed upon history, and only to a far less degree abstracted from it. That which was once a plan prescribed by God for mankind here at length becomes a plan elaborated by philosophers.
Without question, therefore, a philosophy of history must henceforth adopt a different course. True, it cannot dispense with principles that are in a certain sense external to history itself. Yet the function of such a philosophy would appear to consist in considering historical life from the point of view of the purposes that come to realization within it, and of the values that are created on the various levels of historical culture. Such a teleology of history—indeed, in the last analysis, every teleology—must be preceded by a causal investigation, which begins, here as everywhere, by entirely ignoring purposes and values. Now, history is really an account of mental life. As such, it gives consideration to physical factors only in so far as they furnish the indispensable basis of mind. Hence the direct approach to a philosophy of history which aims, not to acquire a knowledge of reality from a priori concepts but, conversely, to derive ideas from reality, is a psychological account of the development of mankind. Although the concrete significance of the particular, as such, precludes the historian from disregarding it, everything that is merely particular should be ignored by one who is giving a psychological account of events. The aim, in this latter case, should be that of discovering the determining motives of historical life and its changes, and of interpreting these by reference to the universal laws of mind. Supplementing this aim should be the endeavour to gain, so far as possible, an insight into the laws that are immanent in history itself. Our first three chapters have attempted to give an account of the development of folk consciousness during the periods that, for the most part, preceded self-conscious historical life. But neither this account nor the bare outline which our final chapter gives of the beginnings of the development to humanity must pretend to be a substitute for, or in any way to represent, a philosophy of history. The difference between an investigation such as ours and a philosophy of history is precisely the same as that which distinguishes a psychological description of mental life in general from a philosophical interpretation. But, if anywhere, it is especially in the field of history that a psychological analysis, concerned primarily to understand life in its actual occurrence, must precede questions regarding the meaning of events and the value which individual historical characters possess as respects both themselves and their permanent influence. In other words, we may henceforth demand that any philosophy of history which seeks to contribute to our understanding of the questions just mentioned, should be based on a psychological account of the development of mankind.
The point that we would emphasize is not that the philosophy of history has failed, in the past centuries, to find a satisfactory solution of its problem, and that its failure was inevitable. To the historical mind there is a far more important consideration. This consists in the fact that, when freed from its original mythological and teleological connections, the general conception of a history of mankind developed during these centuries has given clear definition to the idea of humanity in its most universal form. Humanity, it has been shown, includes within itself all antecedent social phenomena—peoples and States, religion and culture. This entire social complex has been subsumed under the principle that law is immanent in all history.
[INDEX]
Prepared by Dr. Alma de Vries Schaub on the basis of the German Index compiled by Dr. Hans Lindau.
Abraham,[45], [154], [355], [361], [384], [435];
and Isaac, [435]
Adornment, [21], [86], [100], [105], [110], [120], [131], [449] ff.
Adventure, Märchen of, [279] f., [395]
Æsculapius, [439]
Agamy, [36], [169], [181]
Age,
of the development to humanity, [470] ff.;
of heroes and gods, [281] ff.;
of personalities, [320];
of primitive man, [11] ff.;
the totemic, [116] ff.
Age-groups, [41], [51], [131]
Agricultural ceremonies, [135]
Agriculture, [126] f., [140], [486];
Animals in, [120] f., [124]
Alexandrianism, [490]
Allegories, [421] ff.
Amulets, [86], [227] ff., [292], [439], [451]
Anabaptists, [444]
Ancestor,
Animal, [117], [132] f., [204], [230] ff.;
Demon, [467];
Human, [204], [214], [230] ff.;
Totem, [186]
Ancestor cults, [205], [230] ff.
Ancestor theory, [361] f.
Ancestor worship, [117], [186] f., [204], [214], [410], [480]
Ancestral spirits, [419]
Animals,
Breeding of, [120], [289] ff., [420];
Domestic, [120], [289] ff., [420];
Sacred, [121];
Soul, [83], [190] ff., [214], [368], [412] f.;
Totem, [117] ff., [131] ff., [143], [188] ff., [193], [200], [260], [412] f.;
Transformations into, [133], [272] ff., [412] f.
Animal cult, [117], [136]
Animal dance, [464]
Animal fable, [272]
Animal mask, [95], [105], [135]
Animal names, [187] f.
Animal sacrifice, [210] f., [433] f.
Animal totem, [117], [138] f., [186], [214]
Animism, [139], [193], [204] f.
Anthropology, Prehistoric, [14] f.
Anthropophagy, [31], [209] f.
Arbitrator, [331]
Architecture, [261], [451] ff.
Art, [94] ff., [104], [256] ff., [322], [448] ff., [490];
Formative, [100] ff., [256] f.;
Imitative, [107] f.;
Memorial, [23] f., [107] f.;
Miniature, [453];
Musical, [262] ff., [456] ff.
Aristotle, [12] f., [19], [350], [504], [517]
Asceticism, [198]
Augustine, [516], [521]
Aversion, [194]
Awe, [194]
Bachofen, J.,, [34] ff.
Baptism, [444] f.
Barter, [168];
Secret, [10], [21], [31] ff., [55], [120];
Marriage by, [157]
Beyond, Belief in a, [394] ff., [412], [420] f., [423] ff., [431], [495], [502]
Blessedness, [396], [403] f., [406]
Blood,
Relation of soul to, [191], [206] ff., [213];
Taboo of, [200], [210]
Blood-magic, [191]
Blood-relationship, [208] f.
Blood-revenge, [163], [314], [333], [339] ff., [344] ff.
Blowpipe, [100] f., [104]
Boat, [129]
Boomerang, [27] f., [125], [177]
Bow and arrow, [16], [26] ff., [33], [49], [112], [124]
Breath, Relation of soul to, [192] f., [205] ff., [212] f., [242]
Bücher, Karl, [267]
Buddha, [381] f., [425] f., [498] f., [504], [507]
Buddhism, [10], [478], [496] ff., [515]
Bull-roarer, [99] f., [181], [266]
Burial, [216] ff., [397]
Bush soul,
Capture, Marriage by, [154] ff., [163], [168]
Castle, [324] f., [327], [452]
Castration, [290] f., [294] f.
Cattle-raising, [120], [124], [137] f.
Causality, [92] f.
Cave, [22] ff., [106], [108]
Celestial cults, [251]
Celestial märchen, [275] f.
Celestial mythology, [76], [80], [91], [130] f., [134] ff., [140], [189], [220], [246], [258], [355] ff., [419]
Celestial phenomena, [304] ff.
Ceramics, [30], [80], [135], [259] f.
Ceremonies,
Intichiuma, [185] f., [188] f., [244] ff.;
Sanctification, [442] ff.;
Vegetation, [135] f., [189], [249], [418] ff
Chaos, [388], [390], [392]
Chief wife, [45]f., [168] ff., [316]
Chieftain, [121], [134], [195], [233]
Chieftainship, [119], [125], [233], [314], [332]
Christianity, [10], [478], [496] ff., [515] f.
Church and State, [491] f.
Churingas, [177], [181], [185], [190], [204], [221], [224] ff.
Circumcision, [445]
Cities, Foundation of, [311], [323] f.
Clan names, [141] ff.
Classes, Differentiation of, [125], [311], [316] ff.
Club, Men's, [41], [47], [119], [131], [173] f., [255], [312], [409]
Coat of arms, [143], [232]
Colonization, [300] f.
Common property, [248], [317] ff.
Community labour, [136], [247] f.
Compurgator, [335]
Conception totemism, [176], [180] ff., [189] f., [191], [193]
Conjuration, [269], [427] f.
Conscience, [329], [431]
Consecration gift, [438] ff.
Constitution, [349] ff.
Contract, Marriage by, [158] f.
Cord magic, [86] f., [202], [415], [440]
Corporeal soul, [82], [191] f., [205] ff., [211] ff., [216], [221] f., [406]
Corroboree, [184], [464]
Cosmogony, [370], [385] ff., [393], [404]
Cosmopolitanism, [489]
Counter-gods, [370]
Counter-magic, [84], [105], [201], [203], [444] f.
Counting, Systems of, [304] ff.
Couvade, [198]
Creation-myths, [388] ff.
Cremation, [218] ff., [397]
Crouching graves, [218]
Cults,
Ancestor, [117], [204]f., [230] ff.;
Celestial, [251] f.;
of the dead, [452];
Deity, [205], [325], [414] ff., [424] ff.;
Demon, [249] ff.;
Hero, [204];
Magic, [416] f.;
Mystery, [420] ff., [502];
of saints, [178] f.;
of the soil, [245] ff.;
Soul, [421] f., [502];
Totemic, [236] ff.;
Vegetation, [135], [243] ff., [250] f., [294], [418] ff.
Cult associations, [119], [136], [143], [161], [179] f., [255]
Cult ceremonies, [90]
Cult practices, [426] ff.
Cult songs, [96], [267] ff., [461]
Custom, [350]
Dance, [90], [95] f., [104], [249], [262] ff., [449], [457];
Ceremonial, [264];
Ecstatic, [249], [264], [418], [423]
Dance-song, [95] f.
Dead,
Disposal of the, [81], [215] ff., [234] f., [238] f., [397], [405];
Realm of the, [398] ff.;
Sacrifice to the, [238] ff., [253] f., [433] f.
Deaf and dumb, The, [59] f.
Death, [81] f., [494]
Debt, [343]
Degeneration theory, [225], [353]
Deity cult, [205], [325], [414] ff., [424] ff.
Deity saga, [384] f.
Demon battles, [370], [404] f.
Demon cult, [249] ff.
Demons, [75] ff., [81] ff., [105], [196], [201], [203], [217] f., [221] f., [224], [236], [263] f., [284] f., [351] ff., [361] ff., [387] ff., [418] ff.;
and the epic, [458] f.;
and heroes, [283] ff., [369], [372] f., [454];
Vegetation, [441]
Destiny, [366]
Development, Theory of, [353] ff.
Devourment, Märchen of, [276] ff.
Differentiation of classes, [125], [311], [316] ff.;
of vocations, [311], [321] ff.
Digging-stick, [26], [100], [120], [124], [126] f.
Dionysian mysteries, [447]
Discoveries, Geographical, [492]
Divination, [441] f.
Divine State, [329], [373], [388], [411], [416], [494]
Dog, [22] f., [124], [290]
Domestic animals, Breeding of, [120] f., [289] ff.
Drama, [9], [462] ff., [490]
Dreams, [189] f., [193], [205] f., [401], [407]
Dress, [21];
Origin of, [85] ff., [120], [126], [131], [133], [449]
Duel, [336]
Dwelling, [21] ff., [106]
Dwarf peoples, [19], [77] f., [115], [353]
Eclipse of the sun, [81]
Ecstasy, [249], [397], [423] f., [434]
Education and history, [519]
Elysium, [403] f.
Emotion, [81], [92] f., [105], [114], [264], [268], [356], [367] ff., [423], [466], [468] f.;
as related to magic, [93]
Endogamy, [118], [149], [151], [166]
Enlightenment, [11], [470], [517]
Epic, [9], [280], [450], [457] ff.
Ethnology, [5] f., [122]
Eunuchs, [294]
Evil magic, [274]
Exogamy, [46], [118], [144] ff., [163] ff., [183], [196], [289] f.
Family, [12]f., [34] ff., [235], [311] ff.;
Joint, [153], [312] ff.;
The original, [12];
Single, [313], [315]
Father-right, [36], [314]
Fear, [81], [92], [194], [200], [224], [370], [400]
Fetish, [186] f., [214], [220] ff., [352] f., [439], [454]
Fetishism, [139], [186] f., [204], [352]
Fire, [30] f., [124];
Acquisition of, [30] ff;
Kindling of, [49], [292];
Lustration by, [201] f., [218] ff., [243], [338], [407], [443] f., [446];
Solstice, [202];
Trial by, [243], [338]
First-fruits, Sacrifice of, [440] f.
Flood, Universal, [391] ff.
Flood saga, [391] ff.
Flute, [97], [266]
Folk psychology,
History of, [1] ff.;
Methods of, [6] f.;
Problem of, [3] f.;
relation to ethnology, [5] f.;
relation to general psychology, [3];
relation to philosophy of history, [522] f.
Food,
of primitive man, [24] ff.;
Prohibitions on, [199] f.
Forest-dwellers, [19], [122], [395]
Formative art, [99] ff., [256] f.
Fortitude, [242] f., [247]
Foundation of cities,
[311], [323] ff.
Frazer, J. G.,, [38], [152], [189] f.
Fusion, Racial, [111], [288] f.
Gathering of food, [24] f., [124], [140], [144]
Genetic psychology, [4]
Gesture language, [58] ff., [69]
Gestures,
Graphic, [62] f,;
Pointing, [61] f.;
Significant, [63]
Gift, [432]ff.;
Consecration, [438]f.;
Marriage by, [158], [163]f.;
Votive, [438] f.
Gift theory of sacrifice, [240], [432] ff.
Gillen, Messrs. Spencer and, [18], [38], [188]
Gods,
Abode of, [364], [366];
Age of heroes and, [8] f., [121], [235] f., [281] ff.;
Battles of, [370], [388] f., [404] f.;
Belief in, [285] f.;
Characteristics of, [282] ff., [362] ff.;
Cult of, [205], [325], [414] ff., [424] ff.;
Decline of, [365];
and demons, [366] f., [369], [459];
Development of, [362] ff.;
Images of, [223] f., [247], [450], [453]f.;
Judgment of, [337];
of the moment, [362] ff.;
Origin of, [350] ff., [364] ff., [369];
Particular, [362] ff.;
Perfection of, [364] f.;
Personality of, [236], [366] ff.;
of the present, [234];
Saga of, [228], [374] f., [384] f.;
Superpersonal, [390], [467], [504] ff.
God-man, [506] f.
Greek language and culture, [488] ff.
Grimm, Jacob, [459]
Graves, Crouching, [218]
Group-marriage, [38], [41] f., [44] f., [48], [168] ff., [316]
Guardian animal, [190], [232]
Guardian deity, [325], [501]
Guardian spirits, [178], [369]
Guide, [407] f.
Guilt, [203], [253], [430]
Gynocracy, [35] f.
Hades, [398], [401], [404]
Hammurabi, Code of, [330], [338], [343], [347], [411]
Harvest, Sacrifices in connection with, [440] f.
Heart and soul, [207]
Heaven, [395], [404]
Heavens,
Mythology of the, [76], [80], [91] f., [130] f., [134] f., [140], [189], [220], [246], [258], [355] f., [419];
Phenomena of the, [304] ff.
Hegel, [520] f.
Helios, [358] f.
Hercules, [376] f., [382], [407]
Herd, [52], [121]
Herder, [52], [470], [472], [519]
Hermes, [407] f.
Hero, [9], [281] ff,;
Cult of the, [204];
and demon, [283] ff., [369], [372] f., [454];
and god, [282] ff., [364], [369] ff., [454]
Hero saga, [228], [356], [374] ff.
Heroic age, [281] ff.
Heroic song, [9]
Hillebrand, Karl, [1]
Historical consciousness, [478]
Historical religion, [509]
History, [510] ff.;
and saga, [377] ff.
Hobbes, Thomas, [11] f., [34], [36], [111]
Hoe, [120], [126] f., [134]
Hoe-culture, [134], [138], [246], [248], [250], [289]
Horde, [52], [120], [145], [180], [237], [302], [471], [511]
Horse, [293]
Hospitality, [341]
Hostage, [343]
Howitt, A. W., [18], [37]f., [142], [188]
Human nature, [471] f., [475]
Humanity, [9], [470] ff.;
Ideal of, [410]
Hunting, [24] f., [140], [144];
Use of dog in, [22] f.
Hut,
Conical, [261], [451];
Pole, [261];
Spherical, [261]
Hymns, [385], [393], [430], [461], [465]
Ideals, Religious, [410]
Ideas,
of a beyond, [393] ff., [420], [423] ff., [431], [495];
Concrete, [72];
Mythological, [74]
Idols, [131]
Images, Divine, [223] f., [447], [450], [453] f.
Imitation of animals, [95]
Immortality, Belief in, [233], [394] ff., [412], [420] f., [423] ff., [431], [495], [502]
Imprisonment, [342] ff.
Individual rulership, [287], [313]
Individualism, [489], [492]
Infanticide, [43] f., [175], [237]
Infinitude, [505] f.
Instruments,
of concussion, [265];
Musical, [97] ff., [265] f., [457], [468];
Stringed, [97] f., [266];
Wind, [265] f.
Initiation ceremonies, [202], [241] ff., [247]
Intelligence of primitive man, [109] ff.
Intichiuma ceremonies, [185] f., [188] f., [244] ff.
Islamism, [10], [316], [497]
Javelin, [124] f.
Joint family, [153], [312] ff.
Jordan festival, [203], [446]
Judaism, [497]
Judge, [331] ff., [347];
Appointed, [331];
in the underworld, [403]
Judgment of the gods, [337]
Judicial functions, Division of, [348] f.
Justice, Administration of, [331] ff.
Jus primæ noctis, [46], [168]
Jus talionis, [345] ff.
Kant, [470], [517]
Kern, H., [55]
Kidneys, as vehicles of the soul, [209], [211] f., [221], [434] f., [445]
Kiss, [242]
Klaatsch, Hermann, [15]
Knife, [131], [449]
Kollman, Julius, [77]
Labour,
Community, [136], [247] f.;
Degradation of, [321] f.;
Division of, [49] f., [300];
Equalization of, [322] f.
Landscape painting, [456]
Lang, Andrew, [153], [187]
Language, [53] ff., [137];
Gesture, [58] ff., [69]
Lawgivers, [307] f.
Lazarus and Steinthal, Messrs., [2]
Legal system, [327] ff.
Legends, [381] ff., [421] f.;
Mura-mura, [231];
of redemption, [382] f.;
Religious, [381];
of saints, [381] ff., [464]
Lessing, [414], [519]
Lie, [63], [114]
Lippert, Julius, [205], [231]
Liturgy, [463], [465] ff.
Loin cord, [85] ff.
Lustration, [201] ff., [219] f., [252] f., [338], [407], [412], [443] ff.
Magic,
Belief in, [75] ff., [81], [84] ff., [92], [94] f., [105], [376] f., [434] ff.;
Cord, [86] f., [202], [415], [440];
Evil, [274];
Imitative, [354];
Protective, [85], [449]
Magic staff, [335] f.
Magic test, [337] f.
Magical offering, [440]
Magical transference, [201] ff.
Magician, [84] f., [330], [378]
Man, E.H., [79]
Mankind and human nature, [471] f., [475]
Mannhardt, W.., [249], [292], [441]
Märchen, [270] ff.;
of adventure, [279] f., [395];
Celestial, [275] f., [395];
of devourment, [277] ff.
Märchen-cycle, [380]
Märchen-hero, [356], [375] ff., [387], [459]
Märchen-myth, [270] ff., [387] ff., [413], [458] f.
Mark community, [309] f.
Market, [327], [463]
Marriage, [12], [34] ff., [89];
by barter, [157];
of brother and sister, [118], [148] ff.;
by capture, [153] ff., [163], [167] f.;
by contract, [158] f.;
by gift, [158] f.;
Group, [38], [41] f., [44] f., [48], [168] ff., [316];
Modes of contracting, [155] ff., [172] f.;
Pirrauru, [168] ff.;
by purchase, [158] f.;
Single, [51]
Mask, [95], [105], [135], [262] ff.
Maternal descent, [35] ff., [47], [146] ff., [165], [173] f., [196] f., [314]
Maternal rule, [35], [314]
Martin, Rudolf, [50]
McLennan, J. F., [145], [153]
Meal-times of primitive man, [24]
Medicine-men, [83] f., [89], [105], [180], [223], [233], [254] f., [330], [341], [409]
Memorial art, [24], [107]
Men's club, [41], [47], [119], [131], [173] f., [255] f., [312], [409]
Metempsychosis, [412] ff.
Migrations, [111], [287] f.;
Folk, [126] ff., [164], [288] f.;
Tribal, [120], [138], [191], [488]
Military organization, [310]
Milk industry, [137] f., [289], [296] f.
Mimic play, [459], [462], [490]
Monogamy, [34], [36], [43], [46] ff., [89], [114], [167], [169] ff., [311] ff.
Monotheism, [77], [225], [231], [353] ff.
Monumental edifices, [452], [490]
Morality, Primitive, [114] f.
Morgan, Lewes, [38], [152]
Mother-right, [34] ff., [314]
Müller, Max, [225]
Mummy, [207]
Mura-mura legends, [176] f., [231]
Murder, [339] f., [346]
Music, [95] ff., [264] ff., [449], [456] f., [464], [466] ff.;
Absolute, [468]
Musical instruments, [97] ff., [265] f., [457], [468]
Mystery cults, [420] ff., [502]
Myth, [75] f., [375] f., [384] ff., [413] ff.;
Celestial, [76], [80], [91], [130] f., [134] ff., [140], [189], [220], [246], [258], [355] ff., [419];
Cosmogonic, [385] ff., [404];
and cult, [414] ff.;
Märchen-, [270] ff., [387] ff., [413], [458]f.;
Theogonic, [384] ff.;
of the underworld, [397] ff.;
of world destruction, [391] f.
Mythical hero, [379]
Mythology, Nature, [76]
Narrative, [270] ff.
Nature, Man of, [11] ff.
Nature-demons, [370]
Nature-mythology, [76]
Neanderthal skull, [14] f.
Nirvana, [499]
Nomads, [120], [138], [419]
Novel, Short, [464]
Numbers,
Sacred, [305], [407];
Social organization and, [304] ff.
Oath, [335] f.
Offering, [432] ff.
Oracle, [442]
Ordeal, [336] f.
Orders, [255]
Organization,
Military, [310];
Political, [302] ff.;
Tribal, [117] ff., [132], [140] ff., [152]
Ornamentation, [100] ff.
Other-world ideas, [394] ff., [410], [420] ff., [431], [495], [502]
Painting, [106] ff., [456], [468]
Palace, Royal, [452], [454], [481]
Pasha, Emin, [114]
Passion plays, [463], [465]
Particular gods, [362] f.
Paternal descent, [37], [146] ff., [173] f., [196] f., [314]
Paternal rule, [35], [314]
Patriarchal family, [313]
Patriarchal period, [35] f.
Penal law, [338] ff.
Penitential psalm, [430] f.
Personalities, Age of, [320]
Personality, [489], [505]
Phallus cult, [212]
Philology, [2], [53],
[490]
Philosophy, [354], [496], [504], [518];
of history, [519] ff.
Pirrauru marriage, [168] ff.
Plant totem, [134], [176], [184], [188] ff., [192], [199], [214], [245]
Platform disposal of the dead, [216], [405]
Plough, [134], [138], [248], [289] ff., [298]
Poison,
Arrow, [26];
Plant, [25] f.
Poetry, [267] ff., [457]
Pole-houses, [261]
Political organization, [302] ff.
Polyandry, [42] ff., [167], [171] f., [313]
Polygamy, [41] f., [47], [166] ff., [312]
Polygyny, [42] ff., [139], [167], [170] ff., [312], [315] f.
Polytheism, [80], [355], [357], [371]
Pottery, [30], [80], [135], [259] f.
Praise, Hymns of, [430]
Prayer, [427] ff.;
Penitential, [430] f.;
of petition, [427] f., [439];
of thanksgiving, [429] f., [439]
Prehistory, [13] f., [451]
Preusz, K. Th., [242], [435], [464]
Priesthood, [321], [330], [332]
Priests' Code, [200], [210], [329], [345], [432]
Primitive man, Discovery of, [11] ff.
Property, [47], [114], [120], [138], [173] f., [195] f.;
Common, [248], [317] ff.;
Private, [298], [300], [317] ff.
Prophetic signs, [442]
Promiscuity, [36], [38], [169], [181]
Prohibition of certain foods, [199] f.
Protection, Right to, [340] ff.
Protective magic, [85]
Psyche, [205] f., [212] ff., [217], [220], [241], [405]
Punishment, [338], [342], [404], [406] f., [431];
and sacrifice, [433]
Puppet show, [464] f.
Purgatory, [407] f., [412]
Purification, [201] f., [219] f., [499];
Rites of, [201], [443] f.
Cf. Lustration.
Pygmies, [19], [77] ff., [115], [353]
Rain-magic, [253], [268]
Rain priests, [249], [263], [268]
Rattle, [100], [266]
Ratzel, Friedrich, [5]
Realm of the dead, [396] f., [400]
Reconciliation, [432]
Redemption, [410], [447], [495] f.;
Legends of, [381];
Religions of, [496]
Reformation, [492]
Refrain, [96] f., [104]
Relationship, Malayan system of, [38] ff.
Religion, Origin of, [75] ff., [282] ff.
Religious ideals, [410]
Renaissance, [455] f., [491] f., [517]
Retribution, Idea of, [401], [408], [411], [413]
Revelation, [518]
Rhythm, [103] f., [268] f.
Rights, Equality of, [320]
Rings, Exchange of, [87]
Root languages, [68] f.
Roskoff, G.G., [75]
Rousseau, J.J., [12]
Rulership, Individual, [287], [313]
Sacredness, [195] f., [199]
Sacrifice, [253] f., [295] f., [427], [431] ff.;
Animal, [210] f., [433] f.;
to the dead, [238] ff., [253] f., [433] f.;
Human, [210], [433] ff., [440], [447];
of reconciliation, [432]
Sacrificial animal, [210] f.
Sacrificial feast, [446] f.
Saga,
Deity, [384] f.;
Flood, [391] ff.;
Hero, [228], [356], [374] ff.
Saints,
Legends of, [381] ff., [464];
Worship of, [178] f.
Sanctification, [427];
Ceremonies of, [442]
Sanctuary, [341] f.
Sarasin, F. and P., [19], [49], [75], [90]
Satisfaction of wants, [448] f.
Satyric play, [464]
Scapegoat, [203]
Scarab, [229]
Schmalz, E., [60]
Schmidt, Wilhelm, [78] f., [114], [353]
Schultze, Leonard, [88]
Schweinfurth, Georg, [18] f., [77]
Science, [449], [489] f.
Scott, W. R., [60]
Sculpture, [261], [453] ff., [490]
Secret barter, [10], [21], [31] ff., [55], [120]
Secret societies, [254] ff.
Secondary wives, [45], [168] ff., [316]
Self-education, [519]
Self-mutilation, [294] f., [434]
Sex totemism, [119], [176], [182] f., [186] f., [190], [193]
Sexual organs and the soul, [211], [434], [445]
Shadow soul, [192] f., [205] f.
Shamans, [84]
Shame, Feeling of, [88]
Shield, [125], [131]
Sickness, [81], [83] ff., [90], [494];
Demons of, [82] f., [105], [236]
Sin offering, [432] f.
Single marriage, [51]
Skull, [217];
Neanderthal, [14] f.
Slave, [154], [156]
Slavery, [139]
Smoke, [220]
Snake society, [256], [269]
Social psychology, [4]
Society, Primitive, [50] ff.
Soil, Cults of the, [245] ff.
Solstice festivals, [420]
Solstice fire, [202]
Song, [95] ff., [104], [267] ff., [449], [458], [460] ff.;
of praise, [430];
Work, [268] f., [461]
Soul,
Breath, [192] f., [205] ff., [212] f., [242] f.;
Corporeal, [82], [191] f., [205] ff., [211] ff.; [216], [221] f., [406];
Ideas of the, [190] ff., [394] ff.;
and kidneys, [209], [211] f.;
Shadow, [192] f., [205] f.;
Vehicles of the, [207] ff., [211] f., [221], [434] f., [445]
Soul animals, [83], [190] ff., [214], [368], [412] f.
Soul belief, [204] ff.
Soul cults, [421] f., [502]
Souls,
Exchange of, [242];
Transmigration of, [412] ff.
Sound and meaning, [65] ff.
Spear, [125]
Speech, [496] f.
Spencer and Gillen, Messrs., [18], [38], [188]
Spencer, Herbert, [187], [205], [231]
Spirit villages, [396]
Sprinkling, [203], [445] f.
State, [8] f., [119], [285] f., [287], [303], [472] ff.;
Church and, [491] f.;
Divine, [329], [373], [388], [411], [416], [494];
Forms of the, [349], [517]
Steinen, Karl von den, [102]
Steinthal, H., [2], [68]
Stipulation, [334]
Stringed instruments, [97] f., [266]
Stuhlmann, Franz, [114]
Substitute, [435]
Sun, Eclipse of the, [81]
Sweat-lodges, [252]
Sword, [131], [299]
Symbolism, [334], [422], [447]
Symmetry, [103] f.
Taboo, [131] f., [193] ff., [203], [219], [341];
on foods, [199] f.;
on relations by marriage, [196] ff.
Talisman, [89], [104], [227] ff.
Tattooing, [21], [87], [131], [135], [255], [257] ff., [451]
Teleology, [522]
Temple, [195], [324] f., [450], [452] f., [465], [467], [481]
Theft, [114];
of women, [46]
Theogony, [384] ff., [417]
Thinking, Primitive, [68] ff.
Tippamalku, [168] ff.
Torture, [344]
Totem, [8], [116] ff., [203] f., [412] f.;
Inanimate, [177], [185] ff.
Totem animal, [117] ff., [131] ff., [143], [188] ff., [193], [200], [260], [412] f.
Totem friendships, [162] ff.
Totem poles, [143] f., [232] ff.
Totemism, [116] ff.;
Animal, [117] ff., [131] ff., [138] f., [175] ff., [193], [214], [245], [412] f.;
Conception, [176], [180] ff., [189] f., [191], [193];
Individual, [119], [175], [178] ff., [187], [189] f.;
Plant, [134], [176], [184], [188] ff., [192], [199], [214], [245];
Sex, [119], [176], [180], [182] f., [186] f., [190], [193];
Tribal, [177] ff., [187]
Trade, [121], [300] f., [452]
Transference, Magical, [201] ff.
Transformation into animals, [133], [272] ff., [412] f.
Transmigration of souls, [412] ff.
Tribal division, [117] f., [141], [143], [159] ff.
Tribal migrations, [120], [138], [191], [488]
Tribal organization, [117] ff., [132], [140] ff. [152]
Tribal warfare, [119] f., [123], [125]
Tylor, Edward, [205]
Underworld, [397] ff., [402] ff.
Unity of the world, [483]
Universalism, [492]
Usener, Hermann, [361] f.
Vegetation ceremonies, [135] f., [189], [249], [418] ff.
Vegetation cults, [135], [243] ft, [250] f., [294], [418] ff.
Vegetation demons, [441]
Vessels, [30], [49]
Vico, G., [516]
Vision, [407], [442]
Vocations, Differentiation of, [311], [321] ff.
Votive offering, [438]
Wagon, [292] ff.
Wants,
Freedom from, [110], [114];
Satisfaction of, [448] f.
Warfare, [33], [111], [209];
of the gods, [370], [388] f., [404] f.
Water,
Lustration by, [201] ff., [219] f., [252] f., [338], [443] ff.;
Trial by, [338]
Weapons, [26] ff., [120], [124] f., [131], [133], [299]
Week, [305]
Wergild, [163], [339]
Westermann, D., [58], [68]
Wheel, [291] f.
Wife,
Chief, [45] f., [168] ff., [316];
Secondary, [45], [168] ff., [316]
Wind instruments, [265] f.
Witchcraft, [338]
Work-songs, [268] f., [461]
World, Unity of the, [483]
World culture, [477], [484] ff., [512]
World destruction, Myths of, [391] f.
World empires, [476], [478] ff., [484] ff., [493], [512]
World history, [474] f., [478], [509] ff.
World language, [487], [493]
World religions, [10], [477], [491], [494] ff.
Writing, [486] f.