The Philosophy of History, Vol. 2 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

The true progress of Christian enlightenment in the pursuits of philosophy and science, I shall have occasion to mention afterwards. The principle of toleration, which was solidly established by the German treaty of religious peace, became an essential element of social illumination. By degrees this principle was admitted throughout almost all Europe—yet we must observe that its adoption cannot be determined by one uniform, invariable rule in all countries, but that local circumstances, respecting which it is often difficult for the distant observer to come to a right judgment, must and ought to produce numerous modifications in the application of the principle. That wide toleration which in Holland and North America has for a long time incorporated into the state a multitude of petty

sects, would not be practicable or expedient in other countries. The religious liberty which in the Russian Empire is extended even to Mahometans, and to certain tribes of Buddhists and Pagans, would not apply to the circumstances of most other civilized countries. There are in the deep-rooted habits of nations, and in the constitution of individual states, very peculiar, and often apparently singular, circumstances and combinations, which no man should judge of hastily, and according to abstract principles, until he has obtained a close, accurate, and deep insight into the historical condition and situation of a country. Thus while England is intolerant in her Constitution at home, she gives the fullest latitude in Canada to the North American principle of religious freedom; and the whole British Empire in India is founded on toleration—that is to say, on the principle of governing the Indians according to their own laws, manners, customs, and opinions. By this policy the English have become almost complete masters of this great and fertile country; and their enlightened rule forms a strong contrast to the earlier tyranny of the Mahometans, who hold the Indian idolatry in the utmost abhorrence; although that idolatry, amid a chaos of errors and fables, contains many better and higher vestiges of ancient truth, than the mere negative and fanatic superstition of Mahomet. Even the French, when they had a firm footing in India, committed a capital fault

in forming alliances more with the Mahometans than with the native Indian powers.

In Europe, Norway alone, among the Protestant states, has maintained down to our times laws of severe exclusion against every religion differing from the established one—an exclusion which extends as well to Jews as to Catholics; while Spain and Portugal only, among Catholic countries, offer an example of similar intolerance. To abolish suddenly without urgent and overpowering reasons, or some new historical emergency, laws which have thus grown out of the general circumstances of a country, which have existed for ages, and have taken deep root in the manners and habits of life, provokes suspicion, and may occasion danger. But we must not suppose that a severe and exclusive system of legislation, like that existing in Spain, can always counteract the occult and far more dangerous opposition of secret sects and societies. This might be proved, or rendered probable by many facts in the history of those countries during the eighteenth century. In Italy this rigid and exclusive legislation was never carried to the same unqualified extent. Intolerance there never extended to the Jews, nor to the Greek schismatics, and in recent times it does not, as formerly, affect the Protestants. In Germany, toleration was legally established by the treaty of Westphalia, and there the cause of toleration stood in no need of the modern principle of illuminism—the all-stirring

and animating principle of the eighteenth century. But here illuminism in its first negative period was directed against prejudices and abuses of another kind. In certain Protestant countries in the North of Germany, this period of illumination dates from the abolition of trials for witchcraft. And against so modest a beginning not the slightest objection could be urged; for in general the criminal law which the later and already degenerate middle age bequeathed to modern times, afforded ample scope for amelioration, and contained many barbarous edicts that deserved to be abolished. The use of torture, and of un-christian and excruciating modes of execution, were next the objects of Reform. The total abolition of capital punishment, which this legal Reform soon aimed at in its ulterior progress, the experience of mankind has not yet found to be either possible or practicable. Who will be disposed to deny that the many abuses which were now corrected, and the many vulgar prejudices which were refuted or done away with, were especially at the outset, in a great measure such as were truly deserving of that name, and that very many of those reforms were useful and necessary, just and wholesome. It appears, however, sometimes, that barbarous abuses thus hastily and precipitately removed, soon reappear under other forms and denominations. This may easily be the case, where those useful and necessary reforms are confined to the outward surface, and do not penetrate to

the roots, and internal essence of things.—It is worthy of remark, that in the absence of solid and positive principles, the mere removal of abuses—a mere negative course of conduct, will never alone attain the desired end, nor is it in itself always safe and certain. Soon a rash and passionate precipitancy will be apparent in the conduct of affairs—the standard and real term of our exertions will be lost sight of, and things will fall into a ruinous course; and such is the character of that period of transition from the age of illuminism to the time of the French Revolution. Was there a single object, not only in the questions relating to humanity, but in the whole department of public life and general belief, in religion and in government, which was not soon regarded as a prejudice or an abuse?

In Germany, when the Empress Maria Theresa ascended the Imperial throne, the long established peace of the empire, which it had once cost such efforts to secure and preserve, appeared to the new school of philosophy, a ridiculous prejudice of unenlightened, pedantic Burghers of state. But fifty years afterwards, during the atheistic and revolutionary period of the French philosophy, immediately prior to the French Revolution, as well as at its commencement, Christianity, and in fact all religion, was considered as a mere prejudice of the infancy of the human mind, totally destitute of foundation in truth, and no longer adapted to the spirit of the age; monarchy and the whole civilization of

modern Europe as abuses no longer to be tolerated. It was only when men had reached this extreme term of their boasted enlightenment, that a re-action took place. But prior to this, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, and in the ten years immediatedly subsequent, the spirit of the age bore all before it in its irresistible progress. As in ancient times, monarchs had competed for the title of Most Christian, or Most Catholic, so now the potentates pre-eminent for power and understanding, were flattered by the title of enlightened. It is not without a great shock to our feelings, we contemplate the close intimacy which subsisted between a monarch grown grey in the toils of war and the cares of state, a powerful Empress of a Northern court, and the most depraved champions of French infidelity. With respect to the third of those eminent potentates of the age of illuminism, Joseph II., it has never been denied by those most competent to form a correct opinion on this subject, that among the various measures and regulations passed in the short reign of that active emperor, although some are not entitled to the same praise, yet many were really adapted to the exigencies of the age, and have been attended with the most beneficial consequences to industry and to intellectual cultivation. But the serious turn which things afterwards took, the universal convulsion, and remodelling of the world, have long fully demonstrated, that not one or two only, but many of the most active and

enlightened sovereigns of that age, yielded far too much to the prevailing principles of the time, and followed too readily the spirit of that age in its wild, rapid, and all-destructive career.

To the many elements of internal ferment already existing in France, the imitation of English manners under the Regent, which was soon succeeded by an imitation of English literature and philosophy, added a source of equal danger. For to maintain within certain prescribed limits this English philosophy that reduces everything to the experience of sensation, the French wanted that sense of equilibrium innate in the English, and which their constitution had rendered almost instinctive to them; and by means of which in philosophy, as in their internal government, and in their relations with Foreign states, they can keep within bounds; and with them a philosophy, however unspiritual and ungodly, does not so rapidly rush into a headlong and destructive course, as it did in France and in Europe during the atheistical and revolutionary period of literature and science; for the deadly influence of this spirit was not confined to France—the land of its birth—but spread over every country. This is the important and essential distinction between the philosophy of Locke or of Hume for example, which I before designated as the Protestantism of philosophy, in opposition to the thoroughly revolutionary philosophy of French atheism—for though the former by its opposition to all spiritual ideas is of a