The interpretation of history

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. History and the Writing of History . . i

n. The Customary Philosophy of History . 47

Chapter II The Customary Philosophy Of History

It is only at a very early stage of human development that the desire for knowledge, so far as it exists at all, is confined to what previously existed; it is soon extended to the why and the how. Men are no longer satisfied with facts, more or less hidden, more or less credible; they demand to understand their causal connection. They fight against the conception of chance as the motive force in the universe, and strive to discover some determining law of which it is the visible expression. Those who related the story of the past were conscious of this desire, and strove to satisfy it by passing from a naive chronicle of events to a pragmatic historical method, in which they developed one event from another, explained one by another, and described one as conditioned by another. From the examples already given in the preceding section, whose number could easily be increased, it can be seen how arbitrary this connection and interpretation, as a matter of fact, was in almost every case, and to what extent it was dominated by the subjective feelings and opinions of the narrator. Human longing for knowledge was not arrested by the pragmatic method of historical description. It pretended to offer an explanation of isolated phenomena while neglecting altogether the notion of a universal story, of which the narration of the historian represents only a part. Long

'47 before the conception became definite it was dimly realized by men that all human existence is a unified process, in which the concrete events that are the subject of written history are but incidental features. They felt a keen desire to advance from arithmetic to algebra, from the action of one individual or group of individuals to a universal formula that should include the regular course of human action as a whole. Thus the transition was made from historical writing proper, the narration of events with a definite space and time, to the philosophy of history.

We need not dig very deep to find the source of the philosophy of history. " Singly or collectively," as Lacombe ^ correctly observed, " it displeases us to be the sport of chance." In other words, we think causally, and our intellect cannot rest until it has assigned to every phenomenon that it perceives such a cause as seems adequate at the stage of knowledge which has been reached, and can without glaring contradiction be fitted into the current system of ideas and judgments. It is frequently maintained, and repeated without examination, that the philosophy of history, both the word and the thing, originated with Voltaire.^ Baudrillart proved this to be an error.^ He proved that, two centuries before Voltaire, Jean Bodin consciously developed a philosophy of history. But he failed to notice, or at least to mention, that the " philosophy of history " was

'R. Rocholl, "The Philosophy of History: a critical account of the attempts to create it," Gottingen, 1878, p. 66. Rocholl gives Bagehot as his authority for " the appearance of the term in Voltaire (Paris edition of 1822)."

'Baudrillart, "Jean Bodin et Son Temps," Paris, 1853.

also first used by Bodin. He casually remarks that " Phllo the Jew might be called a philosophic historian." ^

The philosophy of history is an attempt to give a rational explanation of historical events. It endeavours to discover the law that regulates them, and to trace a meaning in its operation that introduces logical order into the events of the past, illuminates the present, and casts some light upon the future. There can be no worthier task for the human mind. But it has hitherto been attempted with most inadequate means and by most faulty methods.

The philosophy of history must proceed from the assumption that history is governed by some law. Even chance would be such a law; but if chance had to be regarded as the law of history, its philosophy would end where it began. It could have nothing more to say were it once established that human affairs were governed by blind unregulated accident. A round nought at the bottom would be all that could be made of such a sum. This is a conclusion which has not, so far, been reached by a philosopher of any standing. Every one has proceeded on the assumption that there must be some rational meaning in the life of man as displayed in his history, and devoted himself simply to discovering and expressing what that meaning is. Hardly one has thought it necessary to investigate the theoretical basis and justification of the assumption.

Nevertheless, the demand that history — that is to say, that human hfe — must possess a meaning intelligible to man is nothing more nor less than anthropomorphism. Self-observation teaches man that every conscious act of will is preceded by some thought and directed to some purpose. He cannot imagine a man's acting without this conscious exercise of will and purpose, unless he be drunk, sleep-walking, or mad. Generalizing, then, from his own subjective experience, he applies it to the realm of phenomena, from which it was not deduced, and to which it does not apply. Human life, looked at as a whole, seems to him to be continuous activity, and he seeks for its meaning as though it were, like an afternoon call or an Easter holiday, the outcome of human reflection and human will, and not the outcome of a combination of forces operating outside the sphere of human will and consciousness. He goes on in the same way to assimilate humanity to the individual, and to identify its becoming, being, and doing with that of the individual; and thinks that, just as he can say in the case of the action of a man, *' What does he mean by it? " he can say to the course of history as a whole, " What does humanity mean by it? "

He does not notice what arbitrary and unproved assumptions are contained in this question. It premises that the events composing the fabric of history are fulfilled in accordance with a predetermined purpose. But purposive action is only conceivable as guided by an idea and a will conscious of that purpose and of reasons for pursuing it. In what consciousness is there developed the idea of a purpose governing the historical action of mankind and a will directing it to this purpose?

Not in the consciousness of a man, for no man acts from any conscious purpose save the fulfillment of some immediate need, whether he be the greatest or the meanest : the conqueror who lays the world in ruins at his feet and builds it up anew, who leads his armies across three continents, murdering, harrying, and laying waste by fire and sword ; the discoverer, who binds a new force of nature to the service of mankind, and carries civilization a step further on its way; or the day labourer, whose activity provides for the satisfaction of his own wants and creates the material for his own support and that of the community as a whole. The connection between his action and the course of the total life of man, of which he is not conscious, determines it as little as do the distant consequences and remote effects of which he has no suspicion. Moreover, only a small portion of mankind were affected by the greatest deeds, whether of individual personalities or of nations, which history records, such as the destruction of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great, the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, the establishment of Christianity among the Gentiles by the Apostle Paul, and the discovery of America by Columbus; the great majority have been entirely unaware of them at the time. If they have exercised any influence upon their destiny, it has been remote and secondary, and it is only by doing violence by facts that a meaning can be sought or found in them relative to the course of human history as a whole.

A developed idea of a rational purpose governing human affairs and a will directed to its fulfilment is not to be found in the consciousness of any actor. There are historical personages who were in their time famed for their foresight, and who are known as the authors of far-reaching and comprehensive schemes and of political testaments. Henry IV. of France dreamed of a federated Europe, Richelieu made the fighting and weakening of the Hapsburgs the one object of French policy for a century and a half, and Frederick the Great left a wide range of advice to his successor. Had the idea of any object of political activity other than the direct advantage of their own country or dynasty entered the minds of these or any other men, they would have expressed it as they did their ideas of the line of policy to be pursued for the profit and aggrandizement of their realm. Had they done so, we should possess reliable information as to the lines and aims of human development, instead of being dependent on the ingenious suppositions and impudent assertions of philosophic historians, who, without any practical experience of action, are always able to give us precise information as to the motives which were unknown to the actors themselves.

I think I have proved that the conception of a purpose governing the historical action of mankind is not present in the consciousness of the actors, nor the outcome of their will. To establish the existence in that action of a rational meaning and an aim, another consciousness must be postulated which knows the aim, conceives the purpose, and excites its will for its realization. Such a consciousness can only exist outside of humanity. It must be situated in a Mind that thinks, develops ideas, can exercise will, and uses men as the ploughman uses the oxen that draw his plough, without knowing why or to what end. But such a thinking and willing Mind above and beyond humanity would be God. Now, the philosophy of history could only rest upon a scientific basis had the course of history itself displayed such a conception of purpose at work as finds no place in the consciousness of man, and involves the assumption of God as consciously directing the unconscious action of mankind. But its actual procedure has been the exact opposite of this. The existence of God was from the beginning taken as proved, and as postulating the conception of a purpose in history; after this artifice the reality of the conception no longer requires to be proved by historical facts, since it can be referred back to God, whose existence has already been assumed.

The problem involved in the question as to the meaning of human action was not at first apparent to the philosophic historian. It is like the flask that Loki cunningly set before Thor, and which he in vain tried to empty. He did not see that it was the ocean that he was trying to drain. Humanity is a portion of the universe. Its destiny is bound up with, and dependent on, the universal. There was a world before man; there will be a world after him. If human existence has a meaning, the existence of the universe must have a meaning too. The appearance and future disappearance of humanity is a trivial episode in the eternal origination and disappearance of the solar system and life-bearing planets. One episode in a process cannot have a meaning if the process Itself has none. If the warp and woof of the universe is a chaos of eternal forces, contending without aim or purpose visible to human reason, it is obviously vain to look for any rational aim or purpose in human existence, or in any life that comes into being for a moment when matter in the form of primary vapour thickens to form a heavenly body, lasts for a while, and is doomed to dissolution when matter passes from the heavenly body back to the condition of primary vapour. As a matter of fact, the philosophy of history undertakes to lift the veil that shrouds the great secret of the universe, and tries to catch hold of it by the nearest corner — the one which covers the history of human life. Could it but succeed in demonstrating that the development of mankind upon the earth is directed towards a rational purpose, and prove the attainment of this purpose to lie along the line of the actual movements of mankind in the course of their history, it would thereby have reached a point from which a far further view of eternity could be gained.

We could then proceed logically from the rational aim of human development to a rational purpose in the universe as a whole, and find a satisfactory answer to the question why energy is perpetually flashing across the universe ? why the heavenly bodies pursue an endless round of rising and setting? why life and consciousness arose in the cosmos? what is the meaning of the world? However the philosophy of history may appear to deduce the conception of purpose solely from the actions of man, it really undertakes the solution of the riddle of the universe, and its solution is the same as that with which mankind originally tried to satisfy their desire to know. Humanity silenced the earliest demands of its reason to comprehend natural phenomena by pleasing inventions, arrived at by means of the method of analogy. The world must be the work of an inconceivably clever and powerful artist, as implements of stone, weapons, clothes, and huts were the handiwork of clever men. Thunder and lightning, the roar of the winter storm, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, represented the anger of some tremendous warrior, who threatened men with death and destruction, after the fashion of the enemies, animal and human, to whom they were accustomed. All primitive religion is to some extent the outcome of the need for assigning a rational meaning and comprehensive cause to the phenomena of the external world. Imagination steps in where certain information falls short. Until the human mind has learned to observe facts patiently, with an attention sternly disciplined, It will accept any convenient notion that happens to be presented to it.

Before it arrives at testing its hypotheses by continual comparison with reality, experiences are arbitrarily combined and uncritically generalized Into stories. Any correction of these stories Is resisted as an Inconvenient disturbance of a comfortable habit of thought. The mythology which Invents gods In the likeness of men, In order to explain the world, introduces the conception of a rational purpose Into history in order to shield J mankind from the horror of Its Incomprehensibility. A philosophy of history which tries to Interpret history by means of preconceived opinions Is not a gamble, as Simmel ^ calls " metaphysical speculations about history," but theology, as Trezza correctly observes.^ The

^ Georg Siramel, " Problems of the Philosophy of History," Leipzig, 1892, p. 105.

^Trezza, quoted by R. Rocholl (op. cit., p. 229): "There has hitherto been no philosophy of history, for the theological method introducing a divine providence or a rule of law that is entirely foreign has no claim to be such."

assumption of Gods, or of a God, released men from that time forward from the necessity of searching further explanation. God is an answer to everything, a way out of every difficulty. The beginning of all things? God! The purpose of all existence ? The knowledge and worship of God. The meaning of human life? A preparation for the eternal service of God. The philosophy of history merely waves the torch of religion across the darkness that it pretends to light up. It decrees that the progress of history is directed by God. Human action has a purpose laid down by God. This purpose is the attainment of goodness, virtue, justice, and wisdom by means of the subjugation of evil. Nationalities are forms through which humanity must pass in a perpetually ascending scale of freedom and morality. This unctuous doctrine has been put forward in almost every philosophy of history up to the present day, in complete disregard of the innumerable facts that prove such dogmatism to be the most senseless twaddle. For one Lingard, who candidly admits that History represents the sorrows heaped upon all men by " the passions of the few," there are ten Bancrofts crying with uplifted eyes that " History is a divine power that cannot be falsified by human interpolations." William von Humboldt declares : " The historian must believe in the governance of the universe." Schelling sees in history as a whole " a continuous revelation of the Absolute gradually accomplishing itself." Krause confidently preaches that " History describes the temporal revelation of God," and the dominant idea of Bunsen's philosophy of history is sufficiently expressed in its title, " God in History."

" Much the same way the preacher spoke, Only with slightly different phrases." — (Faust.)

But the preacher assigns his wisdom to divine revelation, while the historians maintain that their view Is drawn from the facts of history. But their attitude to these facts, one and all of them ! They treat them as the gardener of a French park treats his box-hedges. They clip them, improve them, and alter them, until they assume the shape that they have determined upon from the beginning. They approach history with the preconceived notion that it declares the purposeful ruling of God, and overlooking or omitting whatever does not harmonize with, or absolutely contradict, this view, they arbitrarily and forcibly twist the rest Into the shape they want.

The theologians are really the most honest In their procedure. They resort to faith without any beating about the bush, and so avoid the necessity of convincing the critical understanding. They set up their assertions, and triumphantly cast a verse from the Bible In the teeth of any heretic who ventures to dispute them. Anyone godless enough to question the authority of the Bible Is damned, and the most they can do Is to pray for the salvation of his soul. The first and most distinguished of this class of philosophic historians Is St. Augustine,' who, in his principal work, " De CIvitate Dei," undertook to discover and relate the meaning of all human history. There are two kingdoms, the divine and the earthly. " The kingdom of God is that whose citizens we long to be, with the love inspired In us by Its founder. The citizens of the earthly kingdom prefer their Idols to the founder of the heavenly kingdom." ^ The kingdom of God is that of the pious and true believers, the earthlykingdom that of heathens and heretics. " Thus the two different kingdoms have been created by two different kinds of love : the earthly by the love of self rising to a contempt of God, the heavenly by a love of God rising to contempt of self." ^ "We have no assurance that mankind was at the time of Arphaxates removed from the worship of the true God, but the kingdom or society of the impious may be dated from the impiously arrogant attempt to build a tower reaching to Heaven." ^ "A premonition of the kingdom of God may be noted . . . at the time of the patriarch Abraham, after which it becomes more pronounced." * The kingdom of God was fully revealed to man at the coming of Jesus Christ. Since His mortal pilgrimage, the earthly kingdom, which serves Satan, the fallen angel who rose in rebellion against God, has fought obstinately, but with everweakening strength, against the kingdom of God, which will at the end of time finally conquer the earthly kingdom ; the number of the saints determined by God will be fulfilled, and after the elimination of evil from the earth, mankind will be admitted to full communion with God. The life of humanity upon earth lasts seven of God's days of a thousand years each. The first day lasts from the creation of Adam to the Flood, the second from the Flood to Abraham, the third from Abraham to David, the fourth from David to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, the fifth from the Babylonian captivity to the Advent of Christ. Since Christ mankind has been

^ " De Civitate Dei," xi. i. " Ibid., xiv. 28.

^ Ibid., xvi. 10. * Ibid., xvi. 12.

living in the sixth day. At the close of the sixth day the Last Judgment and the Resurrection will take place, and the seventh day will begin God's day of rest — the Sabbath that has no end/ St. Augustine's chronology is not perfectly exact. The third day does not include a full thousand years, but only fourteen generations, which became much shorter after the time of the patriarchs than they were from Adam down to the Flood, and in the time of Abraham. St. Augustine is also careful to remark that he cannot answer for the duration of the sixth day. He wished to avoid the possibility that six hundred years hence^ — he wrote his book on the Kingdom of God in a.d. 400 — his calculations might be falsified by the non-arrival of the Last Judgment. The sixth day is " nullo generationum numero metienda " — not measurable by any number of generations — because it stands in Holy Writ; " non est vestrum scire tempora quae pater posuit in sua potestate " — " it is not yours to know the things which are in the hand of the Father." This did not prevent Christianity in A.D. 1000 from expecting the end of the world, the termination of the sixth day, and beginning of the Sabbath according to St. Augustine. But when the awful day, expected with mortal fears, passed by without anything remarkable happening, the reputation of the prophets who had followed Augustine in dating the Sabbath for the year 1000 did not suffer at all. Real faith is not perturbed by facts that prove to be ridiculous — it passes them by or interprets them in some other way.

The plan of the philosophy of history of the Bishop of Hippo places it outside the reach of rational criticism.

^ " De Civitate Dei," xxii. 30.

One can hardly Investigate seriously such dogmatic assertions as those concerning the revolt of Satan against God, the seven days of the world, and the Resurrection and Last Judgment on the eve of the seventh day. St. Augustine records the pious fairy-tale of his own invention with fervour, and does not trouble at all about its truth. His sole source is the Bible. He accepts every word literally. He regards Adam, his sons and descendants, Noah and Abraham, as historical personages. He believes in Methusaleh's 969 years. His mode of thought and his logic may be estimated from passages like the following: " Of all visible things, the greatest is the world: of invisible, the greatest is God. That the world is, we see; that God is, we believe. Our belief that God made the world rests on the testimony of no less a witness than God Himself. Where have we heard Him? In no less place than Holy Writ, where His prophet has said, ' In the beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth.' " ^

For him a verse in the Bible is proof of the existence of God, and a sufficient explanation of the origin of the universe. The only ancient history that has any value or existence for him is the history of the Jewish people. He turns away from the past of all the rest of mankind with perfect indifference. The account of Christ in the Gospels is for him strict historical truth. The coming of Christ, of which the greatest peoples of the earth knew nothing, and which seemed to the majority of his own contemporaries, living in the scene of His activity, an event so unimportant that it Is not recorded by one impartial contemporary witness — this is to him

^ " De Civitate Dei," xi. 4.

CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 6i

the greatest event in history, and its sole essential content. The growth and decay of nations, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the struggle in the community for power and dominion, the rise and modifications of public institutions, are to him matters of complete indifference, except in so far as they can be connected with the ostensible preparations for, and spread of, Christianity, its battles and its victories. What are race-migrations, wars, or revolutions ? Why linger over them ? why inquire as to their origin and development? why seek for a law governing their progress ? All that has no significance. On the one side are the faithful who believe in Jesus, on the other the servants of the devil, who will know naught of Him. Between the two camps there is irreconcilable enmity, until in the fulness of time there comes the Last Judgment, and all history is brought to its sacred conclusion with the triumph of the kingdom of God over Satan and his crew.

Such is the philosophy of history as expounded by St. Augustine. It is a supplement to the Bible and the Catechism. It is based upon revelation, and scorns earthly proofs. It has nothing to do with reason. Anyone who doubts or denies is a heretic, deserves only the treatment the Church reserves for such. It is understandable that the Middle Ages should have reverently followed in the steps of the Bishop of Hippo, and built up their history upon his interpretation. It is less comprehensible that he should have pointed out the way which the philosophy of history has followed down to recent times. Bossuet was a Bishop of the Roman Church, so it need excite no surprise to find him occupying quite the same point of view as his African brother.

He, too, divides history into seven epochs, though he assigns their limits somewhat differently. With the Bishop of Meaux, the third period extends down to Moses, the fourth to Solomon and the building of the first temple, the fifth to the return of the Jews from Babylon, the sixth to the birth of Jesus, and the seventh down to the last day. The two first parts of his " Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle " are devoted to the people of Israel, with a few casual remarks on the peoples with whom they came in contact, and by whom their destinies were influenced. We have to wait for the third and shortest section for any fuller treatment of the Asiatic world powers, of the classical nations, and of Western Europe generally, down to the time of Charlemagne; but Bossuet justifies this to his own satisfaction by saying: " These kingdoms have for the most part a necessary connection with God's chosen people. God made use of the Assyrians and Babylonians to chastise His people, of the Persians to restore it, of Alexander and his immediate successors to protect it, of Antiochus Epiphanes and his successors to test it, of the Romans to maintain it in freedom against the Syrian kings, bent only on its destruction. The Jews remained under the power of these same Romans down to the time of Jesus Christ. When they denied and crucified Him, divine vengeance used the unconscious Romans as the instrument for the extermination of the thankless race. Having resolved at a certain time to gather all peoples together into a new community, God joined land and sea under the sway of this empire. One of the most powerful instruments of Providence for the free spread of the Gospel was the intercourse thus afforded between the many different peoples, who ceased to be strangers to one another when they were brought together under the dominion of Rome." ^

The blind faith of the Middle Ages makes it little astonishing that the medieval historians — Ekkehard, Bede, Isidor of Seville — accepted, as did Bossuet, the seven epochs of St. Augustine, and the four world powers of the prophet Daniel. It is, however, amazing to find Bossuet's views expounded with solemn earnestness down to recent times. Johannes von Miiller declares with an assurance that admits of no doubts, " Jesus Christ is the key to the history of the universe." Schelling says almost in the same words : " Christianity is the centre and key of all history." Fichte is, as usual, rather nebulous and mystical, but if his pronouncement at the close of his " Characteristics of the Present Age " be correctly interpreted, he anticipates as the end of history the realization of the Christianity of the Gospel according to St. John, the kingdom of heaven upon earth, a spiritual kingdom of love. Unlike the clerical historians, he never cites the Bible; his knowledge is wholly drawn from the depths of his own inner consciousness. " The philosopher who concerns himself, as a philosopher, with history follows up the a priori clue to the cause of the world, which is clear to him apart from history. His conclusions are already established prior to and independent of history, which is to him useless as a method of proof." ^ A philosophy of history

^ Bossuet, " Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle a Monseigneur le Dauphin," part iii., chap. i.

° J. S. Fichte, " The Characteristics of the Present Age," collecteci works, edited by J. H. Fichte, Berlin, 1846, vol. vii,, p. 139.

which can unerringly establish the object and meaning of history without studying it is indeed the chef d'oeiivre of intellectual gymnastics.

Of course, a juggler who is clever in the use of dialectic, and unscrupulous enough to combine, without criticism, events that are glaringly discrepant, can readily draw a historical picture in which every event refers back to Jesus and depends upon Christianity. But by the same inventive sophistry it could be proved that the course of universal history up to 1492 was only a preparation for the discovery of America, which has determined its course ever since; or, to push the joke a little further, to find the meaning of history and its obvious aim in the invention of the game of Skat, with the Persian War, the destruction of the Roman Empire, the dissolution of the Spanish world-monarchy, the Thirty Years' War, the French Revolution, and the campaign of 1870 as its preliminary stages. The whole course of history can in this fashion be referred to any event whatsoever, only provided that events are arranged and selected accordingly, some being omitted and an unreal importance assigned to others.