Recent Developments in European Thought

by Unknown

The history of the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which was almost a blank half a century ago, may now be tentatively reconstructed. The vast mass of official correspondence, judicial decisions, and legal documents, taken in conjunction with the evidences of religion, science, and art, reveal a startlingly modern society a thousand years before Rameses and two thousand years before Pericles. Babylonia proves to have been to the ancient East what Rome was one day to be to Europe. The Tel-el-Amarna letters prove the unchallenged supremacy of its culture over vast areas, and the revelation of the religious debt of the Jews sets the Old Testament in a new frame. So rapid is the pace of excavation and interpretation that all but the most recent narratives of the Ancient East are out of date. If we master Leonard King's sumptuous volumes on Babylonia and the latest edition of the first volume of Eduard Meyer's incomparable History of Antiquity, we need go no farther afield.

Scarcely if at all less remarkable has been the discovery of an advanced civilization in Crete in the second and third millenniums before Christ. While in Egypt and Mesopotamia the frontiers of knowledge were pushed back, in Crete an unknown world was brought to light. Its romantic interest was intensified by the establishment of an historic foundation for one of the most celebrated legends of the ancient world. How the Minotaur devoured the tribute of youths and maidens in the labyrinth, how Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a sword to slay the Minotaur and a thread to retrace his steps, was known to every Greek child and has thrilled the imagination of the centuries. The exploration of the city called by Homer 'Great Knossus' was among the ambitions of Schliemann; but it was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans, whose labours have outlined a series of chapters in Cretan history extending two thousand years before the destruction of the palace about the year 1400. Though the Minoan language still defies attack, the frescoes, sculptures, and objects of art tell their tale of a luxurious and peace-loving community, closely connected with Egypt and forming one of the main sources of the Greek culture of a later age.

Most of us are old enough to remember the thrill of excitement when Susa and Knossus, if not Tello or Thebes, yielded up their romantic secrets; but the generation now growing to manhood may experience similar emotions as it watches the ghost of the Hittite Empire materialize before its eyes. The meagre references in the Old Testament have been supplemented by Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, revealing an important Power in Northern Syria and Asia Minor for a thousand years before it was swallowed up by Assyria. During the last twenty years Hittite remains, marked by crude vigour rather than by a sense of beauty, have been discovered all over Asia Minor and in the northern reaches of the great Mesopotamian plain. In 1911 the British Museum undertook the excavation of Carchemish on the Euphrates, the capital of the North Syrian sector of the Empire; but the most precious results have been achieved by Winckler at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the Cappadocian portion of the Hittite dominions, which yielded a library of 20,000 tablets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now stored in the museum at Constantinople. A few bilingual inscriptions have furnished valuable clues; but the world still eagerly awaits the coming of a new Champollion to unlock the doors of the treasure-house. Winckler himself died in 1913; but in 1915 the Austrian Professor Hrozny startled the world by proclaiming his conviction that Hittite was an Indo-European language. Whether or no his contention is confirmed, orientalists of both hemispheres are hot in pursuit, and it is no rash prophecy that within a decade scholars will read Hittite as they now read cuneiform and hieroglyphics, and new chapters of incalculable importance will be added to the story of the Ancient East.

The recovery of the political and religious history of the empires surrounding Palestine has run parallel with the application of critical methods to the Jewish scriptures. To read Ewald's History of the People of Israel, which was regarded as dangerous by pious folk in the middle of last century, is to realize the progress of Semitic studies. The great revolution in our conception of the Old Testament which rendered Ewald out of date was accomplished by Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the History of Israel. That the arrangement of the Canon was utterly misleading, that the Prophets were earlier than the priestly code and that the Psalms for the most part were later than both, was proclaimed in the writings and lectures of Vatke and Graf, Kuenen and Reuss; but it was not till their discoveries were confirmed and elaborated by Wellhausen that they won their way, and it was generally recognized that their reconstruction alone rendered the religious development of the Jews intelligible. This outline was shortly after filled in by Stade in the first critical history of Israel; but his emphasis on the falsity of tradition was overdone, and subsequent critics, while accepting the late redaction of the law, have argued that parts of it are far older, in substance if not in form, than Wellhausen and his disciple were prepared to allow.

The history of the Jews owes much less to archaeological research on the arena of their historic life than Egypt or Mesopotamia. No splendid buildings or sculptures have been brought to light, and the inscriptions are few. But British, American, and German excavators have flashed light far back into the third millennium, and a partial excavation of Jerusalem has revealed a network of prehistoric tunnels and aqueducts. The historic life of Gezer has been minutely revealed by Macalister, with the strata of seven cities reaching back to the neolithic age. The most piquant result of his excavations has been to rehabilitate the Philistines, the makers of the most artistic objects found in the debris of two thousand years. Far more light, however, has been thrown on the religious customs and beliefs of the Jews by discoveries beyond their borders. The notion firmly held by our fathers that Israel was one of the oldest of civilizations and formed a world by itself has vanished into thin air; for an older and vaster civilization has been discovered to which she owed not only her science but the larger part of her religion. The dimension of the debt to Babylonia has been and continues to be fiercely argued by conservative and radical critics; but its recognition has sufficed to revolutionize the study of early Israel and to provide a new background for the religious history of the world. The relation of the beliefs and practices of the Jews to those of other branches of the Semitic family was boldly explored by Robertson Smith, and has lately been illuminated by the epoch-making volumes of Sir James Frazer on the Folklore of the Old Testament.

The history of Greece, like the history of the Jews, presents a very different aspect to that which was offered to the readers of Grote, Thirlwall, and even Curtius. Schliemann's discoveries at Troy, Tiryns, and Mycenae unearthed Mycenaean civilization and gave an incalculable impetus to archaeological research; but the brilliant amateur was almost pathetically incompetent to interpret the treasures he had brought to light, and much of his work has had to be done again by Dörpfeld. Despite the achievements of archaeology, however, the period before Solon remains very dark. Barely second in importance to the discoveries of Schliemann was the Aristotelian treatise on the Constitution of Athens, which was given to the world in 1891 by Sir Frederick Kenyon and has been most authoritatively interpreted by Wilamowitz, the greatest of living Hellenists. With the growing mass of new literary material, inscriptions, coins, and papyri, the exploration of sites, the recovery of innumerable objects of art and fresh light streaming from Asia Minor and Crete, new attempts to write the history of Greece have been made. Professor Bury's narrative, at once scientific and popular, has summarized for English readers the assured results of research; but the most authoritative survey is that contained in the Greek volumes of Eduard Meyer's vast survey of antiquity. 'For the great tasks of history', he writes, 'salvation is only to be found when it becomes conscious of its universal character, in ancient as well as in modern times. Only by treating Greece in connection with the Mediterranean peoples can its real nature be seized.' This colossal task, which proved beyond the strength of Duncker, has been performed by the Berlin Professor, the only scholar of our time who could have accomplished it single-handed. The dazzling picture of Athenian democracy painted by Grote has faded away; and Beloch, following in the footsteps of Droysen, dwells with greater satisfaction on the diffusion of Greek influence through the conquests of Alexander.

Greek culture has received no less attention than Greek politics. The Homeric problem continues to exert an irresistible attraction. Every expert from Wilamowitz to Gilbert Murray and Walter Leaf adds to our comprehension of the epic; but no positive results have been established, and Holm uttered the gloomy prophecy that we shall never know whether Homer existed, who he was, or what he wrote. On the other hand we have gained a deeper insight into the early mind and soul of Greece, thanks in large measure to a group of English scholars with Jane Harrison at their head. Rohde's Psyche, the most illuminating treatise on any branch of Greek religion, has traced the conception of immortality through the ages. The later editions of Zeller's Philosophy of the Greeks, first published in 1851, kept pace with the progress of scholarship, and remains one of the glories of German scholarship. The more recent work of the Austrian Gomperz has won almost equal popularity, without placing its predecessor on the shelf. In the realm of literature the most interesting event has been the recovery of the poems of Bacchylides and Herondas, fragments of Sappho and Pindar, Euripides and Sophocles and Menander; and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which have already produced undreamed-of treasures, may well have in store for us further glad surprises. The attempt to assess the influence of economic factors, courageously undertaken by Böckh and somewhat neglected after his death, has in recent years been renewed, with the fruitful results familiar to us in Zimmern's realistic picture of Athens in the fifth century.

The history of Roman studies since Niebuhr is largely the record of the activity of a single man. The most personal and popular of Mommsen's works, the Roman History till the death of Caesar, the greatest effort of his genius though not of his scholarship, was published as far back as 1854, and carried his name all over the world. He next turned to special departments of research, pouring forth in rapid succession his treatises on Chronology, Coinage, the Digest, and above all the Staatsrecht, the largest and in his opinion the most important of his works, and perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise in historical literature. Meanwhile the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, which he edited for the Berlin Academy, was the main occupation and the most enduring monument of his life. He had devoted himself to Latin epigraphy and had edited the Sammite and Neapolitan inscriptions before the publication of the Roman History. The first instalment of the Corpus appeared in 1863, and the great scholar lived to hail the appearance of nearly twenty volumes, half of them edited by himself. The Inscriptions rendered possible a history of the Empire, and the whole world hoped that the master would write it; but he contented himself with a survey of the provinces. The closing years of his life were devoted to a gigantic treatise on Roman Criminal Law, and to editions of Jordanes, Cassiodorus, the Theodosian Code and the Liber Pontificalis, thus enlarging the sphere of his operations till Rome was swallowed up in the Middle Ages. His publications extended over sixty years. There is no immaturity in his early works and no decline in the later. The imaginative and critical faculties met and balanced, large vision mating with a genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of a classical civilization of which scholars have dreamed ever since Scaliger has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before Mommsen was like modern Europe before Ranke. We may truly say of him, as was said of Augustus, that he found it of brick and left it of marble.

Mommsen, like Ranke, was the founder of a school; and his inspiration has been felt by every worker in the field of Roman studies. His successors naturally confine themselves to some special province or period. Gaetano de Sanctis is far advanced in the most ambitious history of the Republic that has been attempted in the last half-century. Ferrero's Greatness and Decline of Rome, though frowned on by scholars, aroused world-wide interest by interpreting the fall of the Republic in terms of economics and psychology. The political and social crises which fill the century from Sulla to Augustus, he argues, were due to the change of customs caused by the augmentation of wealth, expenditure, and needs. Of greater value are the attempts to fill in different sections of the vast canvas of Imperial Rome, such as Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made by Fustel de Coulanges in La Cité Antique, which offered a complete interpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious but more convincing pictures of religious life have been painted by Warde Fowler, while the civilization of the Empire has been successively analysed in the fascinating and authoritative works of Friedländer, Boissier, and Dill. Meanwhile archaeology contributes a steady stream of new material. Boni's excavations in the Forum and on the Palatine have produced sensational results. The unveiling of Pompeii moves slowly forward, and that of Ostia, the port of Rome, has begun. The resurrection of Herculaneum should be witnessed by the next generation if not by our own.

A more difficult because a more controversial problem than the Roman Empire is its contemporary, the early Christian Church. In the middle decades of last century Baur treated the rise of Christianity as an historical phenomenon, leaving his hearers to determine for themselves whether it was human or divine; but his influence proved more enduring than his writings. Weiszäcker, his successor at Tübingen, in his Apostolic Age, described with consummate scholarship and passionless serenity the life and organization of the early Christian communities. The necessity of a careful study of the soil out of which Christianity has grown is now generally recognized, and great scholars such as Schürer and Pfleiderer have re-created the religious atmosphere into which Christ was born. The constitution of the primitive Church, too long hotly discussed by the champions of rival sects, has been studied with welcome impartiality by Lightfoot and Hatch. But no man, alive or dead, can boast of such achievements as Harnack. His History of Dogma, his vast survey of Christian Literature till Eusebius, his narrative of the Expansion of Christianity before the conversion of Constantine, are inseparable companions of the student who means business. The treasures of the catacombs have been revealed by De Rossi, to whom we also owe the publication of the Christian Inscriptions of Rome. The history of the early Christian communities in the outlying provinces of the Empire has been enriched by Ramsay's explorations in Asia Minor. While the best work naturally goes into monographs, comprehensive narratives are occasionally attempted by scholars of the first class. Renan's sparkling volumes have enjoyed immense popularity, and some of them may still be read with profit; but, like his History of the Jews, they belong rather to literature than to science. If we desire a readable summary of the scholarship of the last half-century we may turn to the Volumes of the Catholic Duchesne or, better still, to those of the late Professor Gwatkin.