The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures

by Friedrich von Schlegel

The universal deluge, of which the whole surface of our globe presents so many and so great traces and proofs, forms a partition-wall, sternly separating the earliest races of men from the subsequent generations. Of the former it is only probable that they were very different from the latter, not only in their manner of life, but also in their physical and intellectual powers and endowments, and likewise, perhaps, in the nature and mode of their moral corruption and depravity. My remarks, therefore, may well be confined to this side of that great partition-wall. The next great catastrophe, which is both expressly given out as a divine retribution (and, as such, can be proved from profane history as much, though not so universally, as the former), is the so-called Babylonian confusion of tongues and the dispersion of nations. This, and that which is so inseparably connected with it, the confusion of mythical ideas and legends, is rather hinted at than fully and clearly detailed. The time, too, is not given, though the locality is expressly mentioned. It is the same one which, according to all other historical statements, was the very spot of Western Central Asia, where that contagious malady of the lust of conquest first arose, or, if we may be allowed the expression, where this unhappy invention was first made. This dispersion of nations, however, was its natural punishment, since every unity which is either politically false or intellectually untrue, must terminate in chaotic dissolution. This historical fact is distinctly traceable in the world of the ancients among the West Asiatic, South European, and North African nations which dwell around the shores of the Mediterranean. Here we can scarcely find our way out of the labyrinth of traces of reciprocal relationship which abound, in their medley of cognate languages and their chaos of legends, so remarkably agreeing, and yet frequently so inconsistent in their ideas of nature, their far-reaching theogonies, and the divine origination of their heroic families. These chaotic contradictions, however, in which the poetry of heathendom indulged without restraint, gradually undermined the old popular belief, and led, consequently, at a later period, to a very favorable result.

For by this means the Greeks—to whom our present remarks apply especially and pre-eminently—gained free space for the unshackled development of a philosophy which, though it may have run and wandered through many systems of error, yet in so far as it was an honest and sincere search after truth and certainty, served and deserves to be considered as a preparation and introduction to a higher knowledge and the adoption of revelation. For because of this intellectual development (and the fact serves to prove that a pure sensibility to the beautiful, and a clear and pregnant thought on human life and on nature, is ever highly pleasing to God), the Greeks were chosen as the second people of the world, to be the medium and the instruments of the further diffusion of revelation in the course of the development of humanity.

In political life, the erroneous tendency of the Greek mind was to the abuse of liberty and to anarchy. When this evil had been carried to its wildest extreme, it was overtaken by its natural penalty (which inwardly follows close upon its track), in the armed supremacy of Macedon (which, however, was only a brief paroxysm), and the final subjugation of Greece to the Roman yoke. Among the Romans both forms of political evil met together, and were closely connected with each other. To escape from domestic anarchy, they entered on a victorious career of foreign conquest and aggrandizement; and when intestine dissension had reached its greatest height, a perfect despotism was established, both at home and in the provinces.

We recently remarked that the whole of that mixture of ideas, confusion of legends and traditions, and that continual alternation between anarchy and despotism, which in the olden times of heathendom ran through its whole course of development, from the first dispersion of nations to the establishment of the Roman empire over the world, immediately applies to and is only to be understood of the West Asiatic and South European races. In the East of Asia, two great nations or empires, which together make up a third, if not the half, nearly, of the population of the whole earth, have remained in a great measure free from and uninfluenced by it. It would almost seem as if the Almighty, with some special design, had kept and reserved them unto these last times. For three if not four thousand years India has preserved unchanged its institution of castes, and all its essential customs and laws. The very fact that this ancient empire, so extensive, so abundant in riches, and so singular in its nature, and with a civilized population equal to that of the whole of Europe put together, should be now conquered and held in subjection by the sea-ruling isles of Britain, which the ancients named the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, and described as the ultimate limits of the habitable world, is one of the most remarkable signs of our days. That in such great historical events, and such singular juxtapositions, there rules some grand and mysterious design of the Mind which regulates the course of human affairs, we can not but feel; only we shall greatly err if we precipitately determine its particular nature. The wiser and the safer course is to look forward with attentive expectation to its further development. Already has this remarkable approximation of the extreme East and West led to important consequences. The enlargement of our historical information, by the sources discovered in the East, has alone been so considerable as to give greater coherence and consistency to our knowledge of the earlier, and, indeed, of the very earliest times, and of the origin of mankind, and to have afforded a growing testimony and a strong confirmation of the truth of the sacred narrative.

The Celestial Empire too, with its monosyllabic language, remained until very recently within its walls separate from and never mixing with the rest of the world. Although China has been several times subjugated by northern conquerors, it has, nevertheless, continued in all essential respects the same. But now, in these modern times of universal ferment and of change throughout the political world, China, too, has been set in movement, and has become so far a conquering power, that she who in the earlier centuries of Christianity was only known by name, through fable, has become the immediate neighbor of two great European powers.

The close of the ancient history of the Eastern world, in its westerly regions, is formed by the tragic overthrow of the Jewish people and the fearful destruction of Jerusalem; events which are properly described, as also they were long previously announced, as a partial judgment on an individual nation. And in this light and in similar colors they are, moreover, depicted even by heathen writers. Few things in the whole course of history furnish so singular and striking a phenomenon as this total dissolution of the Jewish nation. The dispersion over all parts of the earth, for so many centuries, of a people that has exercised so great and so decisive an influence on the progress of ideas and the higher cultivation of the human mind, both naturally and scientifically, makes a sad and melancholy impression on our minds. With so much the more of reason, then, may we regard it as a sign of the times, and one, too, full of good promise and of bright and cheerful hope, if this long and cruelly-oppressed people seems suddenly to be aroused again or awakened from its degradation, and in manifold ways evincing an intellectual, moral, and social activity, begins to partake of a more liberal development and culture. And on one account the fact appears still more consolatory. Such a reawakening of this long ill-treated and degraded race is, in their oldest prophecies, fixed for the last decisive days of the world’s history.

In the medieval period of modern history we meet with all the elements of the Christian state. The idea of a pure monarchy also was here carried far higher toward perfection, and much more manifoldly developed than in heathen antiquity. But the civil and spiritual powers soon came into collision, and in their mutual conflict were alike guilty of despotic encroachments on each other. In this sad dissension the whole state of things fell more and more into a new kind of anarchy. And in the same way, in our own times, after a great part of the Christian world had, in sentiment at least, reverted to heathenism, then as a natural consequence of the ruling tone of thought and opinion, there was a great relapse into the double evil of a wild and fatal popular anarchy, and of a still more destructive military despotism. And the whole history of the old heathen world is nothing but one continual alternation between these two evils.

In the Christian West, indeed, both now and in the middle ages, the predominant tendency to error inclined toward the side of anarchy. Among the Mohammedan nations, on the contrary, from the very earliest days of their religion, the despotic lust of conquest has been, as it were, an inborn and homebred hereditary failing. It was indeed fed and encouraged by their national creed. But here also the greatest changes have taken place. The largest and most powerful of all the Mohammedan empires, that, viz., in India, is entirely overthrown, and scarcely a vestige of it remains in these times. By a natural revolution of things, the first irresistible conquerors are now themselves conquered and brought under the yoke of others. And so, too, on the other and western side of their once wide rule, they who formerly threatened the existence of civilized Europe are now dependent upon, essentially mixed up with, and owe their political existence to, European policy and the balance of power. This total change of the relative position of the Mohammedan states in general belongs undoubtedly to the characteristic signs which so peculiarly mark and distinguish our own age.

In the three centuries of modern history which fill up the interval between the middle ages and the revolutionary epoch of our own days, the moral constitution of the monarchy has been far more fully and clearly developed than in any previous era. But the most striking event of this period of history is furnished by the sad and melancholy phenomenon of the religious wars. These were the lamentable consequence of the schism in the faith, not indeed by any indispensable and necessary law, nor even as its natural, but still its perfectly explicable, result. In those lands where, as in England and France, there existed a weaker party of either side, which had either been fully conquered or was kept under by oppressive civil disabilities, this unhappy phenomenon assumed the most revolting appearance. But the same state of things took a very different turn in Germany. Here the religious disputes terminated in a higher and a nobler result. In a long and fruitless struggle of thirty years, which wasted and consumed the best energies of the nation, the two contending parties were taught, that with so nicely-balanced strength, no decisive result either way was to be expected. Coming at length to a wiser mind, they acknowledged their respective rights, and by a peaceable compromise they agreed to live together in the same social community. This great and famous religious peace, which, considered merely in the light of a treaty of general pacification, is a master-piece of policy, without equal or parallel, and serving for the basis for all subsequent treaties and questions of peace, is become for Germany a species of inborn national necessity, and, as it were, a second national character. She finds in it a full and perfect compensation for many disadvantages she labors under as compared with other lands, while she has acquired from it a great and important position in the world of the future. Considered with regard to the whole world, one can not well avoid ascribing to this indestructible religious peace in Germany a still higher importance, however little it is commonly understood or regarded in this light. Indeed, we can not but look upon it as the precursor, with hopeful promises, of a far greater and completer religious peace—a peace, I mean, which shall reconcile not only all differences in the faith, but also that more universal and more pervading dissension between faith and unbelief; the quarrel between science and faith being first adjusted, and unity restored thereby between them, and, consequently, also to life. But to effect this object, God, who wills nothing but peace and unity, must take the upper hand and be stronger than man, who loves and desires strife, or, at least, without loving and seeking it, is still ever relapsing into it.

In such or some similar way a religious view of universal history, and of the divine order therein, admits of being developed; which, however, can not be truly done with too much of scientific rigor, or by violently introducing into its plans any arbitrary and, consequently, false designs and purposes.