The Philosophy of History, Vol. 1 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

In the age of Saturn, the first race allied to the Gods lived in peace and happiness, and were blessed with eternal youth; the earth poured forth her fruits and gifts in spontaneous abundance, and even the end of human life was not a real or painful death, but a gentle slumber into another and higher world of immortal spirits. But the next generation in the age of Silver is represented as wicked, devoid of reverence for the Gods, and giving loose to every turbulent passion. In the Brazen age this state of crime and disorder reached its highest pitch; lordly violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper and their instruments and utensils of brass, and even, in the construction of their edifices, they made use of copper; for as the old poet says, "black iron was not then known;" a circumstance which we must consider as strictly historical and as characteristic of the primitive nations. Between this and the following age, the better heroic race of poetical and even historic tradition is somewhat strangely introduced; and the whole series of generations is closed by the Iron age, the present and last period of the world—the term of man's progressive degeneracy.

This idea of a gradual and deeper degradation of human kind in each succeeding age appears at first sight not to accord very well with the testimony which sacred tradition furnishes on man's primitive state; for it represents the two races of the primitive world as cotemporary; and indeed Seth, the progenitor of the better and nobler race of virtuous Patriarchs, was much younger than Cain. However, this contradiction is only apparent, if we reflect that it was the wicked and violent race which drew the other into its disorders, and that it was from this contamination a giant corruption sprang, which continually increased till, with a trifling exception, it pervaded the whole mass of mankind, and till the justice of God required the extirpation of degenerate humanity by one universal Flood.

In the Indian Sagas, the two races of the primitive world are represented in a state of continual or perpetually renewed warfare:—wicked nations of giants attack one or other of the two Brahminical races that descend from the virtuous Patriarchs; generous and divinely inspired heroes come to their assistance, and achieve many wonderful victories over these formidable foes. Such is the chief subject of all the great epic poems, and most ancient heroic Sagas of the Indians. In conformity to their present modes of thinking, and to their present constitution of society, they describe that fierce race of giants as a degraded caste of warriors; and they even give that denomination to many nations well known in later history, such as the Chinese, who bear the same name with them as with ourselves; the Pahlavas, who were a tribe of the ancient Medes and Persians, corresponding to one of the two sacred languages of ancient Persia—the Pahlavi—and the Ionians or Yavanas according to the Asiatic denomination of the primitive Greeks. It may even be a matter of doubt, whether a regular caste of warriors, and an hereditary priesthood, according to the very ancient system of the hereditary division of classes, did not exist in the primitive world. However great may be the chronological confusion evinced in these poems and Sagas, however much, perhaps, of later history may have been interwoven into their ancient narratives, and however much of poetical embellishment and gigantic hyperbole the whole may have received, the leading features of historic truth may still be distinguished with certainty in the chequered tablet of tradition. For the hostility of two rival races in the primitive world, considered in itself, and independently of adventitious circumstances, must be looked upon as a positive and well authenticated fact. It might perhaps be proved before the tribunal of the severest historical criticism that poetry, that is to say, primitive historic tradition clothed with the ornaments of poetry—is often much nearer the truth in its representations of the primitive world than a dull Reason, that draws its estimate of probability from mere vulgar analogies, and which sees or affects to see every where only stupid and brutish savages.

A circumstance which we must never lose sight of in this inquiry is that man did not suffer an immediate and entire loss of those high powers with which he had been endowed at his origin; but that the loss was gradual, and that for a long time yet he retained much of those powers, and that it was indeed the fearful abuse of those faculties in his last stage of degeneracy which produced that enormous licentiousness and wickedness spoken of in Holy Writ. And this is the real clue to the whole purport of primitive history, and to all that appears to us in it so full of enigma. This leading subject of primitive history—the struggle between two races, as it is the first great event in universal history, is also of the utmost importance in the investigation of the subsequent progress of nations; for this original contest and opposition among men, according to the two-fold direction of the will, a will conformable to that of God, and a will carnal, ambitious, and enslaved to Nature, often recurs, though on a lesser scale, in later history; or at least we can perceive something like a feeble reflection or a distant echo of this primal discord. And even at the present period, which is certainly much nearer to the last than to the first ages of the world, it would appear sometimes as if humanity were again destined, as at its origin, to be more and more separated into two parties, or two hostile divisions. And as the greatest of German philosophers, Leibnitz, admirably observed that the sect of atheism would be the last in Christendom and in the world; so it is highly probable that this sect was the last in the primitive world, though stamped with the peculiar form which society at that period must have given to it, and on a scale of more gigantic magnitude.

On this important subject we have another observation to make, which refers more properly to an incidental circumstance in primitive history; for our great business is with the moral and intellectual progress of man. But even in respect to this more important object, the circumstance which we allude to should not be passed over in silence, as it tends to exemplify, illustrate and confirm the principle we have already had occasion to enforce; namely that we ought not to estimate by the narrow standard of present analogies and vulgar probabilities, all those facts in primitive nature and in primitive history which strike us as so strange, mysterious, and marvellous; provided they be really attested by ancient monuments and ancient tradition. We should ever bear in mind what a mighty wall of separation—what an impassable abyss—divides us from that remote world both of nature and of man. I refer to the unanimous testimony of ancient tradition respecting the gigantic forms of the first men, and their corresponding longevity, far exceeding, as it did, the present ordinary standard of the duration of human life. With respect to the latter circumstance, indeed, there are so very many causes contributing to shorten considerably the length of human life, that we have completely lost every criterion by which to estimate its original duration; and it would be no slight problem for a profound physiological science to discover and explain from a deeper investigation of the internal constitution of the earth, or of astronomical influences, which are often susceptible of very minute applications the primary cause of human longevity. By a simpler course of life and diet than the very artificial, unnatural and over-refined modes we follow, there are even at the present day numerous examples of a longevity far beyond the ordinary duration of human life. In India it is by no means uncommon to meet with men, especially in the Brahminical caste, more than a hundred years of age, and in the enjoyment of a robust, and even generative vigour of constitution. In the labouring class in Russia, whose mode of living is so simple, there are examples of men living to more than a hundred, a hundred and twenty, and even a hundred and fifty years of age; and although these instances form but rare exceptions, they are less uncommon there than in other European countries. There are even remarkable cases of old men, who after the entire loss of their teeth, have gained a complete new set as if their constitution had received a new sap of life, and a principle of second growth. What, in the present physical degeneracy of mankind, forms but a rare exception, may originally have been the ordinary measure of the duration of human life, or at least may afford us some trace and indication of such a measure; more especially as other branches of natural science offer correspondent analogies. On the other side of that great wall of separation which divides us from the primitive ages—in that remote world so little known to us, a standard for the duration of human life very different from the present may have prevailed; and such an opinion is extremely probable, supported as it is by manifold testimony, and confirmed by the sacred record of man's divine origin.

In order better to understand and judge more correctly of the biblical number of years in human life, we ought never to overlook the very religious purport of the symbolical relation of numbers in the divine chronology. We should thus ever keep ourselves in readiness, as, according to the expression of Holy Writ, the hairs on a man's head are numbered—and how much more so the years of his life!—and as nothing here must be considered fortuitous, but all things as predetermined and regulated according to the views of Providence. Again, as the Scripture often mentions that, in the hidden decrees of his mercy, the Almighty hath graciously been pleased to shorten the duration of a determined space of time:—as, for example, a course of irreversible suffering—or on the other hand, hath added a certain number of years to a determined period of grace, or prolonged the duration of a man's life; it behoves us to examine which of these two courses of divine favour be in any proposed case discoverable. In the extreme longevity of the holy Patriarchs of the primitive world—a longevity which as has been long proved and acknowledged, must be understood with reference only to the common astronomical years, the latter course of the divine goodness is discernible, and human life in those ages must be regarded as miraculously and supernaturally prolonged.[42] In the duration of Enoch's life, that holy prophet of the primitive world, whose translation was no death, but which, as the exit originally designed for man, should on that account be considered natural, the coincidence with the astronomical number of days in the sun's course round the earth is the more striking, as in the number of 365 years the number 33 is comprised as the root—a number which, in every respect and in the most various application, is discovered to be the primary number of the earth. For, with the slight difference of an unit, the number of 365 years corresponds to the sum of 333, with the addition of 33; but the number of days strictly comprised in those 365 years amounts to four times 33,000, with the addition of four times 330 days.

With regard to the gigantic stature attributed to the primitive race of men, by the authentic testimony of universal tradition;—a testimony which it is easy to distinguish from mere poetical embellishment or exaggeration—it is singular that those who are otherwise so disposed to apply the analogies of nature to the human species, should in this instance at least hold up the now ordinary scale of human bulk as the only standard of probability and certainty. The remains, more than once alluded to, of that primitive world which has perished, show that of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, the largest of all existing animals, there were originally from twenty to thirty different tribes and species which are now extinct. Of the mammoth, that gigantic animal of antiquity, remains of which are found not only in Siberia and America, but in the different counties of Europe, near Paris, and even in this immediate neighbourhood, a great number of various species have been also proved to have existed from the investigation of these antediluvian remains. Even of animals more familiar to us, bones and other remains have been discovered of a very unusual and truly gigantic size. Bulls' horns fastened together by a front-bone—antlers of stags, and elephants' tusks have been found, which prove those animals to have been of a dimension three, four, and even five times greater than they usually are at present. If in this elder period of organic nature, and of an animal kingdom which has become extinct, this gigantic style was so very prevalent, is it not reasonable to infer a similar analogy in the human species, so far at least as relates to their physical conformation, especially when this analogy is unanimously attested by the primitive Sagas and traditions of all nations?

As regards our sacred writings, I must observe that they tacitly imply and indeed pretty clearly attest the superior stature as well as great longevity of the first men; while, on the other hand, they represent the really gigantic structure of body as an organic degradation and degeneracy, originating in the illicit union of the two primitive races—the Cainites and the Sethites—an union which was the source of universal corruption—as the all-destroying deluge was a mighty judgment brought about by the pride and wickedness of those giants, and was indeed against these principally directed.—Even at a later period, the Scripture speaks of some nations of giants, that, prior to the introduction of the Israelites into the promised land, occupied several of its provinces, such as Moab, Ammon, Bashan, and the country about the primitive city of giants—Hebron. These tribes are represented as celebrated for valour indeed, yet as inclined solely to warfare, wild, and wicked; and even the individual giants, that appear in the age of Moses and in the history of David, are described as peculiarly monstrous from their great corporal deformity. The only savage tribe now existing, (as far as our present knowledge of the globe can enable us to speak,) possessed of a very uncommon, enormous and almost gigantic stature—the Patagonians of America, are at the same time noted for their personal deformity. With them it is the upper part of the body that is of such a disproportionate length, for when seen on horseback they appear to be real giants, and hence they were so accounted at first. When on a closer inspection we see the whole length of their bodies in the attitude either of standing or of walking, we perceive indeed they are of the very extraordinary height of from seven to eight feet, but not of that gigantic stature which the first impression led us to suppose, and which may so naturally have given rise to exaggerated accounts.

After all this, and what has been above stated, I need say no more than frankly declare that, as to these two points, the extraordinary longevity and gigantic stature of the first men,—I never could have the courage to raise a formal doubt against the plain declaration of Holy Writ, and the general testimony of primitive tradition. The full explanation, the more correct conception, and the perfect comprehension of these two facts are perhaps reserved for a later period, and the investigations of a deeper physical science.

There exist also monuments, or rather fragments of edifices, of the most primitive antiquity, which, as they are connected with the subject under discussion, are here deserving of a slight notice. I allude to those Cyclopean walls, which are to be found in several parts of Italy, and which those who have once seen will not easily forget, nor the singular stamp of antiquity they bear. In this very peculiar architecture, we see, instead of the stones of the usual cubical or oblong form, huge fragments of rock rudely cut into the shape of an irregular polygon, and skilfully enough joined together. Even the great, and often admired, subterraneous aqueduct, or Cloaca of ancient Rome is considered as belonging to this cyclopean architecture, remains of which exist also near Argos and in several other parts of Greece. These edifices were certainly not built by the celebrated nations that at a later period occupied those countries; for even they regarded them as the work and production of a primitive and departed race of giants; and hence the name which these monuments received. When we consider how very imperfect must have been the instruments of those remote ages, and that they cannot be supposed to have possessed that knowledge in mechanics which the Egyptians, for instance, display in the erection of their obelisks; we can easily conceive how men were led to imagine that more vigorous arms and other powers, than those belonging to the present race of men, were necessary to the construction of those edifices of rock.