The Philosophy of History, Vol. 1 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

The primitive inhabitants of Greece were in general extremely rude and barbarous in their manners and tenets; until the noble race of Prometheus, the sons of Deucalion, who had come from the regions of Mount Caucasus, and colonies still more civilized that had emigrated from Phœnicia, Egypt, and other countries of Asia, exerted their beneficial influence, and gave by degrees an entirely new form and fashion to the people of Greece, and even to the country itself. For that region, which afterwards presented so beautiful an aspect, which was so richly endowed, and splendidly embellished by the hand of Nature, was, until it had been well cultivated and fertilized, and until the power of boisterous elements had been subdued, a complete wilderness, and the scene of many violent revolutions of nature; which were very naturally considered as a sort of partial and feeble imitation of the destructive and universal flood of elder times, when water was the all-prevailing element on the earth. In Greece there was an old obscure tradition, of the original existence of a continent called Lectonia, which occupied a portion of the subsequent Greek sea, and of which the islands form now the only existing remains; the rest of the continent having been sunk and destroyed, at the very time when the Black Sea, which had been originally connected with the Caspian, burst through the Bosphorus, and precipitated its waves into the Mediterranean. At this very remote period, all Thessaly was one vast lake, till, in a natural catastrophe of a similar kind, the river Peneus burst its way through a defile of rocks, and found an outlet into the sea. The lake Copais in Bæotia in an inundation overflowed the whole circumjacent flat country in the time of Ogyges; and thus the name and tradition of Ogyges served afterwards to designate the epoch of those early floods. At a later period, and when the civilization of the Greeks was more advanced, in the true flourishing era of their power and literature, the two principal races among this people, the Ionians and the Dorians, were completely opposed to each other in arts and manners, in government, modes of thinking, and even in philosophy. Athens was at the head of the Ionic race; Sparta took the lead in the Doric confederacy; and this internal discord did not a little contribute towards the utter ruin of Greece, and towards the consummation of that internal and external anarchy that dragged all things into its abyss.

Now that we enter upon that period when all the great political events have been sufficiently described, and partly, at least, set forth with incomparable talent, by the great classical historians of antiquity; by a multitude of writers that have borrowed from that source, or have worked upon those lofty models; it would be idle to repeat what is universally known, and to recount, in long historical detail, how, after contests and struggles of less importance, the glory of Greece burst forth in all its lustre in her resistance to Persian might; how, soon after, she exhausted her best strength in the great Peloponnesian civil war betwixt Sparta and Athens, and how both those states ruined themselves in the idle ambition of maintaining the [Greek: êgemonia] as they called it, or the superiority and preponderance in the political system of Greece;—how, after the short dominion of the Thebans under their single great man, Epaminondas, the Macedonians became lords of the ascendant, and ruled for a longer time with despotic sway;—and finally how Greece obtained an apparent freedom under the generous protection of Rome, and was soon after reduced to a state of permanent vassalage under her prefects and her legions. This instructive and, we may well say, eternal history may be read, studied, and meditated on in all its ample details and living clearness in the pages of the great classical historians of antiquity. The knowledge of all these historical facts must be here pre-supposed, and I must confine myself to a rapid and lively sketch of the intellectual character and moral life of the Greeks, in their relation to the rest of mankind, and according to the place which they occupy in universal history.

In this point of view, all that is universally interesting in the character, life, and intellect of the Greeks will be best and most easily classed under three categories. The first is the divine in their system of art, or the mythology that was so closely interwoven with their traditions and their fictions, their whole arrangement of life, their customs, and political institutions; and which so much excites our astonishment and admiration. The second is their science of Nature—a science so natural to them, and which embraced all the objects of Nature and the world, as well as of history, and even man himself, with the utmost clearness of perception, sagacity of intellect, and beauty and animation of expression—a science that, from its earliest infancy down to its complete perfection in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, has established the lasting glory of the Greeks, and has had a deep and abiding influence on the human mind, through all succeeding ages. The third and last category, in this portrait of the Greek intellect and character, is the political rationalism in Greece's latter days, founded on those maxims and principles which had finally triumphed after the most violent contest of parties, and under which the state was entirely swayed by the arts of eloquence and the power of rhetoric, now become a real political authority in society. All that can be said truly to the honour of the ancient Greek states, and their Republican virtues, has been briefly noticed above. Their decay and general anarchy, and final subjugation by Rome, may be well accounted for by the decline of the Greek philosophy, and the consequent corruption of morals and doctrine—by that dominion of sophists, unparalleled at least in ancient history, and whose pernicious art of a false rhetoric was the bane of public life, government, and all national greatness.

The marvellous and living mythology in the glorious old poetry of Greece justly occupies here the first place, for all arts, even the plastic arts, had their origin in this first Homeric source. And this fresh living stream of mythic fictions and heroic traditions which has flowed, and continues to flow, through all ages and nations in the West, proves to us, by a mighty historical experience, which determines even the most difficult problems (and this has been universally acknowledged in Christian Europe), that all classical education—all high intellectual refinement, is and should be grounded on poetry—that is to say, on a poetry which, like the Homeric, springs out of natural feelings, and embraces the world with a clear, intuitive glance. For there can be no comprehensive culture of the human mind,—no high and harmonious development of its powers, and the various faculties of the soul; unless all those deep feelings of life—that mighty, productive energy of human nature, the marvellous imagination, be awakened and excited, and by that excitement and exertion, attain an expansive, noble and beautiful form. This the experience of all ages has proved, and hence the glory of the Homeric poems, and of the whole intellectual refinement of the Greeks, which has thence sprung, has remained imperishable. Were the mental culture of any people founded solely on a dead, cold, abstract science, to the exclusion of all poetry; such a mere mathematical people—with minds thus sharpened and pointed by mathematical discipline, would and could never possess a rich and various intellectual existence; nor even probably ever attain to a living science, or a true science of life. The characteristic excellence of this Homeric poetry, and in general of all the Greek poetry, is that it observes a wise medium between the gigantic fictions of oriental imagination, even as the purer creations of Indian fancy display; and that distinctness of view, that broad knowledge and observation of the world, which distinguish the ages of prosaic narrative, when the relations of society become at once more refined and more complicated. In this poetry, these two opposite, and almost incompatible, qualities are blended and united—the fresh enthusiasm of the most living feelings of nature—a blooming, fertile, and captivating fancy, and a clear intuitive perception of life, are joined with a delicacy of tact, a purity and harmony of taste, excluding all exaggeration—all false ornament—and which few nations since the Greeks, none perhaps in an equal degree, certainly none before them, have ever possessed to a like extent.

This poetry was most intimately interwoven with the whole public life of the Greeks—the public spectacles, games, and popular festivals were so many theatres for poetry: nay music and the gymnastic exercises were the ground-work, and formed almost the whole scope, of a high, polite, and liberal education among the Greeks. Both were so in a very wide, comprehensive and significant sense of the term. The gymnastic struggles, the peculiar object of the public games, and where the human frame attained a beautiful form and expansion by every species of exercise—the gymnastic struggles had a very close connection with, and may be said to have formed the basis for, the imitative arts, especially sculpture, which, without that habitual contemplation of the most exquisite forms afforded by these games, could never have acquired so bold, free, and animated a representation of the human body. Music, or the art of the Muses, included not only the art of melody, but the poetry of song. Still the plan of Grecian education and refinement was ever of too narrow and too exclusive a character; and when, at a later period, rhetoric came to form one of its elements, the Greeks considered it (what indeed it never should be considered) as a sort of gymnastic exercise for the intellect, a species of public spectacle, where eloquence, little solicitous about the truth, only sought to display its art or address in the combat. And in the same way philosophy, when the Greeks attained a knowledge of it, came to be regarded, according to the narrow and exclusive principles of their system of education, as nothing more than a species of intellectual melody, the internal harmony of thought and mind—the music of the soul; till later, by means of the sophists and popular sycophants that deluded their age, it sunk into the all-destructive abyss of false rhetoric, which was the death of true science and genuine art, and which, in the shape of logic and metaphysics, had as injurious an influence on the schools as a false political eloquence had on the state and on public life. That principle of harmony which formed the leading tenet of the primitive philosophy of Greece before the introduction of sophistry, was not an ignoble,—it was even a beautiful, idea, although it might be far from solving the high problems and questions of philosophy, or satisfying the deeper enquiries of the human mind.

It was from these public games, popular festivals, and great poetical exhibitions, which had such a mighty and important influence on the whole public life of the Greeks, and which served to knit so strongly the bonds of the Hellenic confederacy, that, by means of the odes, specifically designed for such occasions, the theatre, and the whole dramatic art of the Greeks, derived their origin. This poetry, which is less generally intelligible to other nations and times than the Homeric poems, because it enters more deeply into the individual life of the Greeks, does not display less invention, sublimity, and depth of art, from that ideal beauty which pervades its whole character, and from its lofty tone of feeling. Even the Doric odes of Pindar, amid their milder beauties, rise often to the tragic grandeur of the succeeding poets, or to the comprehensive and epic fulness of the old Mæonian bard.

No nation has as yet been able to equal the charm and amenity of Homer, the elevation of Æschylus, and the noble beauty of Sophocles; and perhaps it is wrong even to aspire to their excellence, for true beauty and true sublimity can never be acquired in the path of imitation. Euripides, who lived in the times when rhetoric was predominant, is ranked with the great poets we have named by such critics only, as are unable to comprehend and appreciate the whole elevation of Grecian intellect, and to discern its peculiar and characteristic depth. It is worthy of remark, as it serves to show the general propensity of Grecian intellect for the boldest contrasts, that these loftiest productions of tragedy, and which have retained that character of unrivalled excellence through all succeeding ages, were accompanied by the old popular comedy which, while its inventive fancy dealt in the boldest fictions of mythology, and in the humorous exhibitions of the Gods, made it its peculiar business to fasten on all the follies of ordinary life, and to exhibit them to public ridicule without the least reserve.

That the sensual worship of Nature, the basis of all Heathenism, and more particularly so of the Greek idolatry, must have had a very prejudicial influence on Greek morals; that the want of a solid system of Ethics, founded on God and divine truth, must have given rise to great corruption even in a more simple period of society; and that this already prevalent corruption must have increased to a frightful extent in the general degradation of the state—is a matter evident of itself; and it would be no difficult task to draw from the pages of the popular comedy we have just spoken of, and from other sources, a terrific picture of the moral habits of the Greeks. Yet I know not whether such a description would be necessary, or even advantageous, for the purpose of this Philosophy of History—the more so, as it would not be difficult to draw from similar sources of immorality, and from the now usual statistics of vice and crime, a sketch of the moral condition of one or more Christian nations, that would by no means accord with the pre-conceived notion of the great moral superiority of modern times. We may thus the more willingly rest contented with a general acknowledgment of the great moral depravity of mankind, which exists wherever mighty powers and strong motives of a superior order do not counteract it, and which must have broken out more conspicuously there, where, as among the Greeks, the prevailing religion was a Paganism that promoted and sanctioned sensuality. In regard to the poetry and plastic arts of the Greeks, it must even strike us as a matter of astonishment that it is in comparatively but few passages, and few works, this Pagan sensuality appears in a manner hurtful to dignity of style and harmony of expression. It would not at least have surprised us, had this defect been oftener apparent, when we consider the doctrines and views of life generally prevalent in antiquity; for it was in most cases, less the sterner dictates of morality that prevented the recurrence of this defect than an exquisite sense of propriety, which even in art is the outward drapery that girds and sets off beauty. Besides, a mere conventional concealment cannot be imposed as a law on the art of sculpture; our moral feelings are much less offended by the representation of nudity in the pure noble style of the best antiques, than by the disguised sensuality which marks many spurious productions of modern art. In poetry and in art, at least in the elder and flourishing period, the Greeks have, for the most part, attained to internal harmony—in philosophy they were much less fortunate—and least of all in public life, which was almost always distracted, and at last utterly jarring, dissonant, and ruinous.

I called the science of the Greeks a natural science, and in this quality, which it possessed in so eminent a degree, it affords us the highest instruction, and is of itself extremely interesting; for in its origin, this science proceeded chiefly, almost exclusively, from nature—pursued a sequestered and solitary path—a stranger to poetry and to the mythology which was there predominant, far removed from public and political life—and often even in an attitude of hostility towards the state. The physical sciences, and particularly natural history, were created by the Greeks—so was the science of medicine, in which Hippocrates is still honoured as the greatest master; and geometry and the ancient system of astronomy were handed down to posterity, considerably enlarged and improved by the labours of the Greeks. In the second place, Grecian science may be denominated a natural science, because, as it directed its attention successively to the various objects of the world, of life, and to man himself, it ever took a thoroughly natural view of all things, and even in self-knowledge, in practical life, and in history, sought to seize and comprehend the nature of man, and to unfold the character of his Being, with the utmost precision of language, and according to conceptions derived exclusively from life. Thus when Plato and his followers direct their philosophical enquiries to objects lying beyond, and far exalted above, the sphere of Nature and real life, we must regard these inquiries as exceptions from the ordinary practice of Grecian intellect, and from the ruling spirit of its speculations; in the same way as the expeditions of Alexander the Great form an exception from the usual routine of Grecian politics. Lastly, Grecian science may be denominated a natural science, because philosophy, founded on the old basis of poetry and classical culture, allied to history, and the language and symbols of tradition, assumed in general a form clear, beautiful, animated, and eminently conformable to Nature and the mind of man; and however much this philosophy may at times have been lost and bewildered in the void of a false dialectic, it still never perished in the petrifying chill of abstract speculations. And even Plato, though his philosophy so far transcended the ordinary sphere of Grecian intellect, had been well nurtured in Hellenic eloquence, art, and culture—and, in all these, was himself the greatest master.