The Philosophy of History Part 2

Hence the nature of brutes is simple--that of angels two-fold--that of men three-fold.

The third part of human consciousness, the body--its organic laws, powers, and properties, the philosopher must leave to the naturalist. It is only when it has reference to the higher parts of consciousness that its properties can be made the matter of his investigation. The soul and the mind form the fit and peculiar subject of his enquiries. To the mind belong the faculties of will and understanding--to the soul, those of reason and imagination. Schlegel observes it is remarkable that the three different species of mental alienation correspond to the three parts of human consciousness. Thus monomania springs from some error deeply rooted in the mind--frenzy is the disorder of a soul that has broken loose from all the restraints of reason; and idiotcy arises from some organic defect in the brain. The last is the effect of physical, the two former the consequence of moral, and frequently accidental, causes. The author lays it down as a general principle, subject, however, to many modifications and exceptions, that in man mind or thought predominates--in woman soul or feeling prevails. Hence in marriage, which is a sacred union of souls, the deficiencies in the psychology of either s.e.x are happily and mutually supplied. On this subject, Schlegel has some of the most touching and beautiful reflections, which a loving heart and a n.o.ble fancy have ever inspired.

Imagination (Einbildungs-kraft) is the inventive faculty--Reason (Vernunft) the regulative--Understanding (Verstand) the penetrative, or in a higher degree the intuitive--and the Will (Wille) the moral, faculty. To these primary faculties, or as the author styles them, these main boughs of human consciousness, four secondary faculties are subservient--the memory--the conscience--the pa.s.sions or natural impulses, and the outward senses. The memory is the intermediate faculty between the understanding and the reason--the conscience the intermediate faculty between the reason and the will--the pa.s.sions or natural impulses the intermediate faculty between the will and the imagination--and the outward senses form the connecting link between the imagination and the body.

Reason is the regulative faculty implanted in the soul. In real life, it corresponds to what we commonly call judgment, and is that faculty by which the transactions of men are regulated, and the resolutions of the will are brought to maturity, whether in sacred or secular concerns. In science, Reason is the dialectical or a.n.a.lytic faculty, by which the discoveries of Imagination and the perceptions of the Understanding receive a definite form--the faculty of a.n.a.lysis, arrangement, and combination. Reason in itself is not inventive--it makes no discoveries--it is rather a negative than a positive faculty--but it is the indispensable arbitress, to whose decision Understanding and Imagination must submit their various productions.

Imagination, on the other hand, is the inventive faculty in art, poetry and even science. No great discovery, says the author, can be made even in the mathematics, without imagination. This a.s.sertion may strike us as strange; but we must remember that Leibnitz declared he was led to his great mathematical discoveries by the aid of metaphysics; and that imagination necessarily enters into the composition of a great metaphysical genius, few will be disposed to question. Here, however, if I may be allowed to offer an opinion, Schlegel does not appear to me to have traced, with sufficient distinctness, the boundaries between imagination and understanding.

Understanding is the faculty of apprehension--it penetrates into the inward essence of things, and discerns the manifestations of the divine or human mind in their several revelations and communications.--Thus the naturalist, whose eye searches into the inward life of nature--the statesman, who can fathom the most deep-laid plans of a hostile policy--the theologian, who can discover the most hidden sense of Scripture, may be said to possess in an eminent degree, the faculty of understanding.

Will is the other faculty implanted in the mind of man--the faculty on whose good or evil direction that of all the other faculties of mind and soul essentially depends. Independently of the moral direction of the will, its innate strength or weakness, its steadiness or vacillation, proportionably augment or diminish the power of all the other faculties.

How far moderate abilities, when directed by a firm, tenacious, perseverant will can avail--to what a degree of success they may sometimes lead, daily experience may serve to convince us.

Originally all these faculties, will and understanding, reason and imagination, were harmoniously blended and united in the human consciousness; but since, at the fall of man, a dark spirit interposed its shadow betwixt him and the Sun of Righteousness, disorder and confusion have entered into his mind and soul, and troubled their several faculties. Thus the understanding often points out a course which the will refuses to follow; and the will, on the other hand, is often disposed to pursue the good and right path, were the blind or narrow understanding competent to direct it. Not only are will and understanding in frequent collision with one another, but each is at variance with itself. What the will resolves to-day it shrinks from to-morrow! How often does the understanding view the same subject in a different light at different times! How much do time, circ.u.mstance, and humour, place the same truth in a clearer or obscurer aspect! The same opposition is observable betwixt reason and imagination. Where fancy is the strongest in the house, how often doth she spurn the warnings of her more homely and unpretending sister--reason. Again, where reason has the ascendancy, what groundless aversion, and paltry jealousy does she not frequently evince at the superior nature of her brilliant sister! Or, to drop this figurative language, how often do we behold a man of lofty imagination very deficient in practical sense; and again, in your man of strong sense, how frequently dull and pedestrian is the fancy! In real life what a deplorable schism exists between poets and artists on the one hand, and men of business on the other! What mutual contempt and aversion do they not frequently exhibit! Well, this schism is nothing else than the external realization of the inward conflict between reason and imagination.

With respect to the four secondary faculties--memory--conscience--the natural impulses--and the outward senses--faculties, which, as the author says, cannot from their importance be termed subordinate, but should rather be called subsidiary or a.s.signed;--Schlegel shews that, as regards the first, the decay of the memory precedes the decline of the reason, and its sudden and entire loss brings about the extinction of the latter faculty. In the same way the deadness of the conscience argues the utmost depravity of the will. The conscience is the memory of the will, as the memory is the conscience of the understanding.

"The natural impulses," says Schlegel, "where they appear exalted to pa.s.sion, are to be regarded as nothing else but the motions of a will, that has been overpowered by the false illusions of imagination. The middle position of the impulses betwixt the will and the imagination, as well as the abused co-operation of those two faculties in any pa.s.sion or sensual gratification, become habitual, is apparent particularly in those inclinations which man has in common with the brute, and where the viciousness lies only in their excess or violence."[22] "Aspiration after infinity is natural to man, and belongs essentially to his being.

Whatever is defective or disorderly in his impulses, consists only in their unbounded gratification--in the perversion of that aspiration after infinity towards perishable, sensual, material, and often most unworthy, objects; for that aspiration, natural as it is to man, where it is pure and genuine, can be gratified by no sensual indulgence and no earthly possession."[23] In the brute, the gratification of the natural appet.i.tes is regular, uniform, subject to no vicissitudes or excesses, and entails no injury on his nature, because undisturbed and unvitiated by the false illusions of imagination.

Lastly, with regard to the outward senses, there are, philosophically speaking, but three, sight, hearing, and touch--for under the last, taste and smell are included; and it is remarkable how these severally correspond to the three parts of human consciousness. The sight is pre-eminently the sense of the mind--hearing the sense of the soul--while the touch is peculiarly the sense of the body; the sense given to the body for its special protection and preservation. The loss of the first two senses the body can survive--but it perishes with the utter extinction of the last. Those expressions in common parlance, a good artist-like eye--a fine musical ear--prove the close connexion which mankind has always felt to exist between the outer senses and the higher faculties of man.

"Had the soul," says the author, "not been originally darkened and troubled--had it remained in a clear, luminous repose in its G.o.d--then the human consciousness would have been of a far more simple nature than at present; for it would have consisted only of _understanding_, _soul_, and _will_. Reason and imagination, which are now in such frequent collision with the will and understanding, as well as with each other, would then have been absorbed in those higher faculties. Even the conscience would not then have been a special act, or special function of the judgment--but a tender feeling--a gentle, almost unconscious pulsation of the soul. The senses and the memory, those ministrant faculties which, in the present dissonance of the human consciousness, form so many distinct powers of the soul, would, in its state of harmony, have been mere bodily organs."[24]

So much for the author's psychology--let us now proceed to the ontological part of the work.

To the Supreme Being, will and understanding belong in a supreme degree; in him they exist in the most perfect harmony--will is understanding, and understanding will. But with no propriety can the faculty of reason be ascribed to the Deity; and it is remarkable, says the author, that nowhere in Holy Writ, nor in the sacred traditions of the primitive nations, nor in the writings of the great philosophers of antiquity, is the term reason ever used in reference to Almighty G.o.d. It is only among a few of the later, degenerate, and rationalist sects of philosophy, the Stoics for example, that the expression _Divine Reason_ is ever met with. If such an expression is incorrect or unsound, with still less fitness and decorum can the faculty of imagination be a.s.signed to the G.o.d-head--the very term would shock the understandings, and revolt the inmost feelings, of all men.

The Deity reveals himself unto men in four different ways--in Scripture, (including of course its running and necessary commentary, ecclesiastical Tradition);--in Nature--in Conscience, and in History.

"Holy Writ," says the author, "as it is delivered to us, and as it was begun and founded three-and-thirty centuries ago, does not exclude the elder sacred traditions of the preceding two thousand four hundred years; or the revelation, which was the common heritage of the whole human race. On the contrary, it contains very explicit allusions to the fact that such a revelation was imparted to the first man, as well as to that patriarch who, after the destruction of the primeval world of giants, was the second progenitor of mankind. As the sacred knowledge, derived from this revelation, flowed on every side, and in copious streams over the succeeding generations of men, the ancient and holy traditions were soon disfigured, and covered over with fictions and fables; where, amid a mult.i.tude of remarkable vestiges and glorious traits of true religion, immoral mysteries and Baccha.n.a.lian rites were often intermixed, and truth itself, as in a second chaos, buried under a ma.s.s of contradictory symbols. Thence arose that Babylonish confusion of languages, sagas, and symbols, which is universally found among the ancient, and even the primitive nations. In the great work of the restoration of true religion, which accordingly we must regard as a second revelation, or rather as a second stage of revelation, a rigid proscription of those heathen fictions, and of all the immorality connected with them, was the first and most essential requisite. But in that gospel of creation, which forms the introduction to the whole Bible, that elder revelation, accorded to the first man and to the second progenitor, is expressly laid down as the ground-work; and in this introduction, we shall find the clue to the history and religion of the primitive world--nay, it is the true Genesis of all historical science."[25]

Now with respect to the secondary or more indirect modes, by which the Deity communicates himself to men, the author observes that "Nature, too, is a book written on both sides, within and without, in which the finger of G.o.d is clearly visible:--a species of Holy Writ, in a bodily form--a glorious panegyric, as it were, on G.o.d's omnipotence, expressed in the most vivid symbols. Together with these two great witnesses of the glory of the Creator, scripture, and nature--the voice of conscience is an inward revelation of G.o.d--the first index of those other two greater and more general sources of revealed truths; while History, by laying before our eyes the march of Divine Providence--a Providence whose loving agency is apparent as well in the lives of individuals as in the social career of nations--History, I say, const.i.tutes the fourth revelation of G.o.d."[26]

We have next to consider the conduct of Divine Providence in the education of the human race. How do we educate the boy? We first endeavour to awaken his sense--then we cultivate his soul, or his moral faculties; while at the same time, we aid the gradual unfolding of his understanding. It is so with the divine education of mankind. In the primitive revelation, indeed, the first man received the highest intellectual illumination; an illumination which, though at his fall it was obscured by sin, still s.h.i.+nes with a shorn splendour through all the history and traditions of the primeval world. When, however, by the abuse he had made of his great intellectual powers, man was successively deprived of all those high gifts with which he had been originally endowed; when by the errors of idolatry, he had lapsed into a state of intellectual infancy; then it was necessary that his sense should first be awakened to divine things; and this was accomplished in the Mosaic revelation. But this revelation was only preparatory to another, destined to renovate the soul of humanity, and gradually illumine its intelligence. This regeneration of the moral faculties of man was achieved immediately and directly by Christianity; for, without this moral regeneration, any sudden illumination of the intellect would have been hurtful rather than beneficial to mankind. Under the benign influence of Christianity, the scientific enlightenment of the human mind has been wisely progressive; but it seems reserved for the last glorious ages of the triumphant church to witness the full meridian splendour of human intelligence. Then the great scheme of creation will be fulfilled; and the intellectual light, which played around the cradle, will brighten the last age, of humanity.

Let us now proceed to consider Nature in herself, and in her relations to G.o.d, to the spiritual intelligences, and to man.

Nature was originally the beautiful, the faultless work of the Almighty's hand. But the rebel angel in his fall brought disorder and death into all material creation. Hence arose that chaos, which the breath of creative Power only could remove. Thus, according to the author, a wide interval occurs between the first and second verse of Genesis. "In the beginning," says the inspired historian, "G.o.d made heaven and earth," that is, as the Nicene Creed explains it, the visible and invisible world. "And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep." But that void--that darkness--that chaos proceeded not from the luminous hand of an all-wise and all perfect Maker--but from the disturbing influence of that fiend whom Holy Writ hath called, with such unfathomable depth, the "murderer from the beginning." Hence Schlegel terms him in his sublime language, "the author or original of death"--(Erfinder des Todes).

On a subject of such vast importance, I presume not to offer an opinion: but I must merely content myself with the humble task of a.n.a.lysis. It may be proper to observe, however, that this opinion of Schlegel's would seem, from a pa.s.sage in the work of the great Catholic writer--Molitor, to be consonant with the tradition of the ancient synagogue. "The Cabala," says he, "was divided into two parts--the theoretical and the practical. The former was composed of the patriarchal traditions on the holy mystery of G.o.d, and the divine persons; on the spiritual creation, and the fall of the angels; _on the origin of the chaos of matter, and the renovation of the world in the six days of creation_; on the creation of man, his fall, and the divine ways conducive to his restoration."[27]

"Death," says Schlegel, "came by sin into the world. As by the fall of the first man, who was not created for death, nor originally designed for death, death was transmitted to the whole human race; so by the preceding fall of him, who was the first and most glorious of all created Spirits, death came into the universe, that is, the eternal death, whose fire is inextinguishable. Hence it is said: 'Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the earth was without form, and void'--as the mere tomb-stone of that eternal death; 'but the Spirit of G.o.d moved over the waters, and therein lay the first vital germ of the new creation.'"[28]

But if such is the origin of Nature, how is its existence perpetuated, and what will be its final destiny?

Nature, as was said above, is a book of G.o.d's revelation, written within and without. The outer part of this sacred volume attests the supreme power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator in characters too clear and luminous to be unperceived or misread by the dullest or the most vitiated eye. The inner pages of this book comprise a still more glorious revelation of G.o.d--but their language is more mysterious, and much which they contain seems to have been wisely withheld, or rather withdrawn from the knowledge of mankind. It was this acquaintance with the internal secrets of Nature, derived partly from revelation, and partly from intuition, which gave the men of the primitive, and especially the ante-diluvian, world such a vast superiority over all the succeeding generations of mankind. But it was the abuse of that knowledge, also, which brought about in the primeval world a Satanic delusion, and a gigantic moral and intellectual corruption, of which we can now scarcely form the remotest idea. But this key to the inward science of Nature, which was taken away from a corrupt world, that had so grossly abused it, seems now about to be restored to man, renovated as his soul and intelligence have been by a long Christian education.

The physical researches of the last fifty years, especially in Germany, lead the enquirer more and more to the knowledge of this important truth, stamped on all the pages of ancient tradition, and never effaced from the recollection of mankind, to wit, the action of spiritual intelligences on the material world. The nature of this action is briefly adverted to in the following pa.s.sage (among many others to the same purport), in the Philosophy of Life. "It is especially of importance," says the author, "for the understanding of the general system of Nature, to observe how the modern chemistry mostly dissolves and decomposes all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different forms of elements of air, and thereby has taken away from Nature the appearance of rigidity and petrifaction. There are every where living elemental powers hidden and shut up under this appearance of rigidity.

The quant.i.ty of water in the air is so great that it would suffice for more than one deluge; a similar inundation of light would occur, if all the light latent in darkness were at once set free; and all things would be consumed by fire, if that element in the quant.i.ty in which it exists, were suddenly let loose. The salutary bonds, by which these elemental powers are held in due equilibrium, one bound by the other, and kept within its prescribed limits, I will not now make a matter of investigation; nor now examine the question, whether _these bonds be not perhaps of a higher kind than naturalists commonly suppose_."

The great apostle of the Gentiles represents all Nature as sighing for her deliverance from the bondage of death. "Every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even now." Some chapters in the Philosophy of life may be considered as one luminous commentary on that text. My limits will permit me to cite but one pa.s.sage.

"That planetary world of sense, and the soul of the earth imprisoned therein, is only apparently dead. Nature only sleeps, and may again be awakened: and sleep is, if not the essence, yet a characteristic mark of Nature. Every thing in Nature hath this quality of sleep; not the animals merely, but the plants also sleep; and in the course of the seasons on the surface of the globe, there is a constant alternation between waking and slumber."... "That soul, he continues, which slumbers under the prodigious tomb-stone of outward nature--a soul, which is not alien, but half akin to us--is divided between the troubled, painful reminiscence of eternal death, in which it originated--and the bright flowers of celestial Hope, which grow on the borders of that dark abyss. For this earthly Nature, as Holy Writ saith, is indeed subjected to nothingness--yet without its will, and without its fault: so it looks forward in expectation of Him who hath so subjected it--it looks forward in the hope that it may one day be free--one day have a share in the general resurrection and consummate revelation of G.o.d's glory; and for this last great day of future creation Nature anxiously sighs, and yearns from her inmost soul."[29]

I will now wind up this a.n.a.lysis with the following pa.s.sage, in which the distinctive peculiarities of the different parts of ontology are shortly stated: "The distinctive characteristic of nature is sleep, or the struggle between life and death; the distinctive characteristic of man is imagination (for reason is a more negative faculty); the distinctive characteristic of the intelligences superior to man is restless, eternal activity, implanted in the very const.i.tution of their being; and the distinctive characteristic of the Deity, in relation to his creatures, is infinite condescension."

Such is a brief summary of some of the princ.i.p.al observations in the psychological and ontological parts of the Philosophy of Life. And in this summary it has been my intention not so much to give an a.n.a.lysis of those parts, as to convey to the reader a clue for the better understanding of many pa.s.sages in the work I have translated. The remaining parts of the "Philosophy of Life" are devoted to a variety of ethical, political, and aesthetic reflections, which it is unnecessary to enter into here.

Scarce had Germany recovered from the enthusiasm which this work, (the Philosophy of Life) excited; when its ill.u.s.trious author delivered, in the year 1828, the following course of Lectures on the "_Philosophy of History_," which are now presented to the reader in an English garb.

Defective as may be the medium through which the English reader becomes acquainted with this work, he will be enabled to form on it a more impartial, as well as more enlightened, judgment than any the translator could p.r.o.nounce; and he will, therefore, only venture to observe that it has been considered in every respect worthy of its author's high reputation.

Towards the close of the year 1828, Schlegel repaired to Dresden; and that city, where the torch of his early enthusiasm had been first kindled, was now to witness its final extinction. He delivered in this city, before a numerous and distinguished auditory, nine lectures on the "Philosophy of Language," (Philosophie der Sprache), wherein he developed and expanded those philosophical views already laid down in his "Philosophy of Life." This work is even more metaphysical than the one last named--with untiring wing, the author here sustains his flight through the sublimest regions of philosophy. This production displays at times a gigantic vastness of conception which almost appals--we might almost say, that this mighty intelligence had in his ardent aspirations after Immortality, burst his earthly fetters--or that Divine Providence, judging a degenerate world unworthy of hearing such sublime accents, had called him to continue his hymn in eternity. On Sunday, the 11th of January, 1829, he was, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, preparing a lecture, which he was to deliver on the following Wednesday.

He had in his former lectures spoken of Time and Eternity--he had called Time a distraction of Eternity--he had adverted to those ecstacies of great Saints, which he called transitions to Eternity. He was now in this lecture discoursing of the different degrees of knowledge attainable by man--of the perception--the notion--and the idea. He began a sentence with these remarkable words:--"Das ganz vollendete und vollkommne verstehen selbst aber"--"But the consummate and the perfect knowledge"--when the hand of sickness arrested his pen. That consummate and perfect knowledge he himself was now destined to attain in another and a better world; for, at one o'clock on the same night, he breathed out his pure and harmonious soul to heaven.

His death, though sudden, was not unprovided. He had ever lived up to his faith--through his writings there runs an under-current of calm, unostentatious piety; and I know no writer more deeply impressed with a sense of the loving agency of Providence. A gentleman, well acquainted with some of his most intimate friends, has a.s.sured me that, for some time prior to his death, he had prosecuted his devotional exercises with more than ordinary fervour; and that on the morning of that Sunday on which his last illness seized him, he had been united to his Lord in the Holy Communion--a presage and an earnest, let us hope, of that intimate union he was destined to enjoy in the long and cloudless day of Eternity!

The melancholy news of his death, when conveyed to his distinguished friend--Adam Muller, then at Vienna, gave such a violent shock to his feelings, that it brought on a stroke of apoplexy, which terminated his existence. A chain of the most exalted sympathies had united those souls in life--what marvel if the electric stroke, which prostrated the one should have laid low the other!

Frederick Schlegel married early in life the daughter of the celebrated Jewish philosopher Mendelsohn. This lady followed her husband in his change of religion. Mrs. Schlegel is one of the most intellectual women in Germany--she is advantageously known to the literary world by her German translation of Madame de Stael's Corinne; and report has ascribed to her elegant pen several of the poems in her husband's collection.[30]

In conclusion, I will endeavour to recapitulate the obligations which literature and science owe to the great man, whose literary biography I have attempted to sketch.

To have, in common with his ill.u.s.trious brother, established a system of broad, comprehensive, synthetic criticism, by which the principles of ancient and modern art were unfolded to view--by which we were introduced into the intellectual laboratories of genius, made to a.s.sist at the birth of her mighty conceptions, and by whose plastic touch the great works of ancient and modern poetry were in a manner created anew:--to have unlocked the fountains of the old Germanic minstrelsy, and refreshed the poetry of his age with a new stream of fictions:--to have been among the first to do for philology what the Stagyrite had done for natural history; by cla.s.sifying languages not according to their outward form, but their internal organization, not according to a specious, though often delusive, etymology, but according to grammatical structure: to have deciphered the mysterious wisdom of old days, and with admirable tact to have caught the spirit of the primitive world, as disclosed in its sagas and its symbols, its poetry and its philosophy: next to have evoked from the dust the better philosophy of ancient Greece, and presented her venerable form to the renewed love and respect of mankind, partly by an admirable translation of portions of Plato,[31]

partly by luminous critiques, and partly again by the example of his own philosophy, in form as well as spirit so eminently Platonic: then, in the field of modern history, to have traced the rise and progress of the European states, the genius of their civil and political inst.i.tutions, the causes and effects of their moral and social revolutions, with an extent of learning, a spirit of impartiality, and a depth and comprehensiveness of understanding, unsurpa.s.sed by preceding writers, and in his own age rivalled only by his ill.u.s.trious countryman--Goerres: lastly, to have put the crowning glory to a life so full of glorious achievement by his last philosophical works, where a strong and broad light is thrown upon the mysteries of psychology, where the most important questions of ontology are treated with equal boldness and sublimity of thought, and magnificence of fancy, while even on physics many bright hints are thrown out, which a deeper science will know one day how to turn to account: such are the the services which this ill.u.s.trious man has rendered to the cause of literature and philosophy.

Living in an age which is only an epoch of momentous transition from the adolescence to the virility of the human mind, he was evidently, together with some other chosen spirits of his time, the precursor of an era of Christian philosophy, when, to use the language of a young, but very distinguished French writer,[32] "the sterile dust of futile abstractions will be swept away, and the antique faith will appear crowned with all the rays of science." "Already," continues the writer just quoted, "even infidel science, astonished at her own discoveries, which disconcert alike ideology and materialism, begins to suspect

"There are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in that philosophy."[33]

THE

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of G.o.d; so far as this relates to science.

Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

To point out historically in reference to the whole human race, and in the outward conduct and experience of life, the progress of this restoration in the various periods of the world, const.i.tutes the object of the Philosophy of History.

In this way, we shall clearly see how, in the first ages of the world, the original word of Divine revelation formed the firm central point of faith for the future re-union of the dispersed race of man; how later, amid the various power, intellectual as well as political, which in the middle period of the world, all-ruling nations exerted on their times according to the measure allotted to them, it was alone the power of eternal love in the Christian religion which truly emanc.i.p.ated and redeemed mankind: and how, lastly, the pure light of this Divine truth, universally diffused through the world, and through all science--the term of all Christian hope, and Divine promise, whose fulfilment is reserved for the last period of consummation--crowns in conclusion the progress of this restoration.

Why the progress of this restoration in human history, according to the word, the power, and the light of G.o.d, as well as the struggle against all that was opposed to this Divine principle in humanity, can be clearly described and pointed out only by a vivid sketch of the different nations, and particular periods of the world; I have alleged the reasons in various pa.s.sages of the present work. With this view, I have, for the purpose of my present undertaking, availed myself, as far as these discoveries lay within my reach, of the rich acquisitions which the recent historical researches of the last ten years have furnished for the better understanding of the primitive world, its spirit, its languages, and its monuments. Besides the well-known names mentioned with grat.i.tude in the text, of Champollion, Abel Remusat, Colebrooke, my brother, Augustus William Von Schlegel, the two Barons Humboldt; and for what relates to natural history, G. H. Schubert; I have to name with the utmost commendation for the section on China, Windischmann's Philosophy; and for what relates to the Hebrew Traditions, drawn from the esoteric doctrines and other Jewish sources of information, which are here most copiously used, I have been much indebted to a very valuable work which appeared at Frankfort, 1827, ent.i.tled "The Philosophy of Tradition," and which reflects the highest honour on its anonymous author.[34] To these I might add the names of Niebuhr, and Raumer; but in the later periods of history, we are not so much concerned about new researches on certain special points as about a right comparison of things already known, and a just conception of the whole. In the Philosophy of History, historical events can and ought to be not so much matter of discussion, as matter for example and ill.u.s.tration; and if on those points, where the researches of the learned into antiquity are as yet incomplete, any historical particulars should, in despite of my utmost diligence, have been imperfectly conceived or represented, yet the main result, I trust, will in no case be thereby materially impaired.

The following sketch of the subject will shew the order of the Lectures, and give a general insight into the plan of the work. The first two Lectures embrace, along with the Introduction, the question of man's relation towards the earth, the division of mankind into several nations, and the two-fold condition of humanity in the primitive world.