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Karl Lamprecht

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

FIVE LECTURES ON THE MODERN
SCIENCE OF HISTORY

KARL LAMPRECHT, Ph.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

E. A. ANDREWS

THE -MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
I905

All rights rtunttd

By the macmillan compajty.

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1905.

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In jfattfjful Mtmotz

PREFACE

The following addresses were published in
Freiburg, Germany, during the autumn of 1904,
under the title, "Moderne Geschichtswissen-
echaft." The English translation is the work
of E. A. Andrews, who secured the aid of Dr.
Felix Kriiger of the department of philosophy
of the University of Leipzig in the matter of
psychological terms; Dr. Max Lisner also lent
valuable aid. Professor William E. Dodd, of
Randolph-Macon College, Virginia, gave the
whole a careful revision. To all of these both
the author and the translator take this means
of expressing their hearty thanks.

Like everything else in this world, this little
book has its raison (Titre and its special occa-
sion. As to the former, the author felt that
in his work on the " History of Germany" he
had carried his investigations far enough into
the different culture-epochs to justify him in
formulating and presenting to the public his
ideas as to the content of history and the true

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PKEFACE

method of writing it. The immediate occasion
came in the form of an invitation to take active
part in the Congress of Arts and Sciences which
met in St. Louis during the World's Fair.
There the first lecture was delivered. Being
called on also to deliver some addresses on the
occasion of the celebration of the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Columbia
University, New York, in October of the same
year, it seemed proper to follow up there the
same line of thought. In this way originated
the last four chapters of the book. Another
incentive was given in the literature of recent
psychological science, particularly in von Lipps'
* Outlines of Psychology," — a book which
seemed to invite a further application of the
laws of psychology to the science of history.

CONTENTS

Historical Development and Present Char-

acter of the Science of History

Tine OiewieRAL Cottrhe of German History

from a Psychological Point of View

TTT.

The Transition to the Psychic Character

OF the German Present; Universal Mech -
anism of Psychic Periods of Transition . 89

IV. Psychology of the Periods of Cttltttre in

General , , , , , , . , 135

V. Problems of Universal History . . . 181

uigi

LECTTJEE I

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND PRESENT
CHARACTER OF THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY

WHAT IS HISTORY?

LECTURE I

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND PRESENT CHAR-
ACTER OF THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY

History is primarily a socio-psychological
science. In the conflict between the old and the
new tendencies in historical investigation, the
main question has to do with social-psychic, as
compared and contrasted with individual-psychic
factors; or, to speak somewhat generally, the
understanding on the one hand of conditions, on
the other, of heroes, as the motive powers in the.
course of history. Hence, the new, progressive
and therefore aggressive point of view in this
struggle is the socio-psychological, and for that
reason it may be termed modern. The individ-
ual point of view is, on the other hand, the
older, one that is based on the championship of

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

a long-contested, but now, by means of countless
historical works, a well-established position.

What is, then, the cause of these differences ?
Personal preference, or the special endowments
of individual investigators? The reaction of
feeling against former exaggerations of the
one or the other principle? Assimilation to
other trends of thought, philosophic or scien-
tific, of the science of history? Nothing of
the kind. Rather, we are at the turn of the
stream, the parting of the ways in historical
science.

In order to understand better the process that
is going on let us consider the following contrasts
of the day.

Take first, a period in which all men, within
a relatively small community, such as we see in
the beginnings of a nation, are absolutely of the
same psychic equality, so much so that they in
action and feeling can be said to stand side by
side as examples of the same endowments.
Then take another age in which, within a given
community of much greater extent, each indi-
vidual differs in kind from all others, so that —
even more than is at present the case — his

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 6 x ^

volitions and sensations differ radically from \
those of his fellow-men. i

It is clear, then, that we have here the two
poles of human activity whose influences must
give different results in any study of the currents
of life that we call historical psychic existence,
the life embraced within the limits of these
poles. In the first case the treatment would
yield only a delineation of the life of units;
for the treatment of the collective psychic exist-
ence would produce as a result only a sum
of the already known, — the psychic existence
of the individual. In the second case we should
indeed take a glance first at the psychic life of
the unit from which it would be seen that it by
no means included the character of the life of
the many, but rather that the collective psychic
life fertilized by the marked deviations of the
individual within itself is quite a thing in itself,
with its peculiar psychic or socio-psychic char-
acter ; and that to this spiritual life of the whole,
the psychic activity of the individual is in such
a manner subordinate as to be dominated by it
for the best and highest ends. J

One sees, therefore, that the first case of the

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

coexistence of persons psychically quite iden-
tical would result in a purely individual psy-
chology ; the second case of coexistence of
absolutely differentiated persons would result in
a radically socio-psychological historical method
i^of treatment.

But the instances just given never occur in
perfection. However, the connections formed
among them constitute principles in the course
of history and historical science; the pole of
similarly organized persons appears in the begin-
ning of cultural development as the principle
r of lower culture, while the pole of dissimilar
units reveals itself as underlying higher cultures,
for the simple reason that the trend of evolu-
tion is toward progressive differentiation and
. integration of the human soul.
^ If on the results of the examples cited and
deduced in a purely psychological manner are
based the main principles of every development
of historical treatment from the lowest to the
highest, one finds corresponding to them, in
the various civilizations of the world, the same
course of history, descriptive or scientific. It
begins always with the individual-psychological

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 7

investigation of the past, and arrives finally at
a markedly social-psychological point of view.
In a word it is the course of events which begins
with the heroic poem and ends with the history
of civilization. If we paint the panorama of
this historiographic development rather more
vividly and minutely, it will be seen that the
individuals of the lower stages of civilization
have as little consciousness of the conditions that
are characteristic of them, as of the difference
between these conditions and those of other
stages of civilization. The English, French,
Italian, and, in particular, the German poet
of the Golden Age of Medievalism who worked
over the materials of classic antiquity trans-
ferred them unconsciously to the conditions
of his own age. JEneas became a knight, and
Dido a fair chatelaine. It was only the be-
ginning of modern times, the closing centuries
of dying medievalism, that brought the dawn of
a comprehension of the differences of various
cultural conditions, and therefore in our opinion
a quickened of the historical difference of
the periods of civilization in general* Similar
observations might be made in the history of

WHAT IS HISTORY ?

ancient peoples and in the cultural phases of
eastern Asia. Everywhere the beginnings of
socio-psychological historical comprehension are
coincident with the emancipation of individ-
uality from mediaeval restraint in order to enter
on the so-called new age with the more rapid
process of its own differentiation.

But before this stage is reached centuries have
elapsed, and centuries in which history was un-
derstood only in the individual-psychologic sense,
merely as the product of single distinguished
individuals. And correspondingly the forms of
historical tradition are purely individual. Al-
most everywhere there appear two forms which
may be taken as typical, — genealogy and the
heroic poem.

A characteristic beginning! Whence arises
its dual nature? In both instances we are
concerned with the memory of single persons,
particularly of ancestors. But in the one case
the barren record is taken from the purely
prosaic reality of a natural pedigree, in the other
the single individual is selected and his deeds
immortalized in poetic form with an exaggerated
objectivity. How does this difference arise?

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 9

We are here face to face with a radical division
in the historical point of view, one which occurs
in all ages in higher as in lower stages of culture.
It can be characterized as the difference between
Naturalism and Idealism* In the first instance
reality is followed closely, held fast, copied. To
this belong the rapid offhand sketches, the
journalism of to-day in so far as it serves as the
annalistic medium of news ; and, finally, statistics.
In the other case there intervenes between the
simultaneous photographic and phonographic
impression of occurrences and their collective
reproduction, time, and with time, memory.
Memory, with its thousand strange associations,
abbreviating, rounding off, and admitting of
outer influences and inner prejudices ; in a word,
memory is the artist that individualizes and
remodels its subject. For what else is idealism
but the retrospective treatment of a theme into
which the personal note enters, — indeed with
intention, — whereby the flood-gates are opened
to the whole intellectual current of personality
proper? Hence in higher states of culture, in
the case of differentiated individuals, the per-
sonal style arises and with it the personal work

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10 WHAT IS HISTORY?

of art; while in lower states of culture, with
individuals of similar proportions, and from the
simultaneous work of the many, the impersonal,
the typical timestyle will arise, and with it the
art work of this particular style.

This explains, then, for the beginnings of his-
torical tradition the growth of naturalistic and
realistic forms side by side. As a naturalistic form
there appears by preference the genealogy; as
idealistic, the heroic poem. And with this the
roots of the contention of ages are laid bare as to
whether a historical work is a work of art or not.
It will always be a work of art in so far as, even
in naturalistic transmission, at least in higher
cultural stages, the influence of personal elements
cannot be avoided. And it will be peculiarly
a work of art as soon as, in the case of an im-
portant theme, the imagination can bring forth a
composition by means of idealizing retrospection.
So that, when the de legeferenda is uttered, one
can only advise that to every historical work of
our time, not only unconsciously but consciously,
the character of a work of art should be given.

But genealogy and the epic are not the only
forms of individual-psychic tradition. Together

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 11

with them and with increasing cultural growth
and intellectual leisure, others come to the fore.
If it be possible to follow the progress of human
events not only through the forms of tradition,
as required in genealogy and epic poetry, but
more intensively, by means of the written letter,
the chisel and the stilus, pedigrees and epics
will be superseded — if, indeed, they do not
disappear at once — by annals and chronicles.
And even these forms can be improved upon.
In the history of every human community,
the inevitable moment comes in which reason,
based on increasing experience, attempts inde-
pendently to classify and control the world of
phenomena, in which the logical conclusion
begins gradually to yield to induction, and the
miraculous to the causal principle ; and if, with
this, there begins a really scientific mastery of
the outward world, then this too takes hold of
historical tradition. And the direction it follows
is both naturalistic and idealistic.

In the first instance tradition is ransacked
for new sources ; when found, these are brought
to light in a cleai-cut literary form. With
untiring zeal the whole field is worked over,

12 WHAT IS HISTORY?

and a careful consideration of isolated events is
entered upon of which the object is to show
each single occurrence to be indisputably genu-
ine ; it is then polished up, rubbed clear of its
rusty casing, and presented to the world.

On the other hand, there is great need for the
enormous accumulations of the classified and
isolated traditional data produced by the un-
ceasing mills of naturalistic criticism ; these data
must be turned to account as material for a
more general positive structure of history with
its divisions and emendations. Of course this
is, to be done under the direction of an authori-
\ tative and constructive mind, and not without
I the aid of the imagination. How else is a con-
trol of the enormous material possible? But
the mere memorizing of details and a link-
ing together of particulars, a handling such as
was referred to, is clearly proved to be im-
possible. It is necessary that we employ some
means of mechanical combination of the parts
of the huge world of facts which knowledge
alone can supply, certain forms of criticism to
classify the mass of material and thereby con-
trol it. And naturally this constructive criti-

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 13

cism must deal in the first place with individuals
who may still be considered as the only funda-
mental psychic motor powers of history. If
their deeds, their single achievements, and the
collective achievements of single persons, — if
these can be regarded as parts of a completed
series of facts in official service or in an inde-
pendent profession, they must be grouped accord-
ing to a system which does not overlook the
universal course of things and which makes the
whole only the more intelligible. This is the /
origin of Pragmatics.

But the Divide et impera embraced in the
application of the pragmatic principle proves
itself to be insufficient in the face of the mass
of traditional material, continually increasing
in scope as it does. Above those groups which
Pragmatism has thus formed to facilitate the
handling of events, above the whole survey" 1
of heroic deeds, incidents of wars or diplomatic
negotiations, we see appearing by degrees the
outlines of a better system of classification of
material, a system which groups series of events
of entire ages within the domain of whole na-
tions and families of nations. As, for example,

WHAT IS HISTORY?

the outlines of certain oft-recurring incidents in
the history of the Papacy, or the types of simi-
lar occurrences in the development of the Prus-
sian monarchy, or the main characteristics of
religious movements in all respects alike and
which are to be detected in the piety of all
denominations of Protestantism. It is clearly
possible to follow these also in the paths of
formative criticism far beyond the simple domain
of Pragmatism. The common landmarks, too, of
historical happenings, especially when pragmati-
cally grouped, can be massed together on the
higher plane. With this accomplished, the work
of the historian begins at the point where the de-
velopment of the so-called historic theory of ideas
sets in. The term « idea " arises from the appli-
cation of the word to the historic elements com-
mon to these masses, so that the idea asserts itself
as a form of higher thought integration. And in
western culture, as far as investigation permits
of a time limit, it is in its purely historiographic
beginnings to be first found in the historical
works of the last half of the eighteenth century. 1

1 Cf ., of recent date, Heussi, " Church History and its Writ-
ing." Johan Lorenz von Mosheims. Gotha, 1904.

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 15

One naturally asks here, had these higher
forms of integration from the beginning a closer
connection with the naturalistic or idealistic con-
ception of history? It is of interest to know
that these comparatively abstract forms of in-
tellectual activity had, for purely psychological
reasons at first, the closest connection with ideal-
istic historical description. Allied with this is
the fact that this activity, having developed along
quite primitive lines to a higher plane, was yet
capable of assuming at times a transcendental
character. The ideas which were made the basis
of the understanding of the greatest historical
concatenations by isolation and abstraction of the
elements common to them, did not appear as
human ideas, but were rather divine powers
holding sway behind these events, permeating
and determining them, as emanative and associ-
ative forms of the absolute working through the
fates of men. It was a sort of idealistic historical
treatment which slowly took shape in Germany
in the course of the second half of the eighteenth
century, which then, owing to Schelling, passed
over into the great idealistic philosophy of Ger-
man Romanticism, to which from the point of

WHAT IS HISTORY?

view of the profoundest theory of life Ranke
paid homage as long as he lived, and which,
starting from all these points of its develop-
ment, became a constituent part of all the higher
historical training of the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile the strictly epistemological char-
acter of the theory of the idea had certainly
been recognized, and not least clearly at the
beginning of the great discussions of historical
methods in the early nineties of the last cen-
tury, and which have not yet entirely ceased.
It can truly be said that to-day, practically no
one believes in the transcendency of historical
ideas, — that is, not fully, nor even in the Ranke
sense, — but that, on the other hand, the useful-
ness of the conceptions contained in them for
the grouping of the greater individual-psychic
series of events is generally conceded.

While the individual-psychological treatment
of history has been thus gradually developed to
the state of perfection which marks it to-day, it
had long had its limits, and — as far as the main
principles of historical comprehension are con-
cerned — its substitution in the form of a socio-
psychological treatment had begun and had been
proved to be necessary.

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 17

In the course of the latter part of the seven-
teenth, but more especially in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, all the peoples of western
European culture passed through stages in which
the most marked psychic differentiations took
place in the individual members of these com-
munities. A certain time-spirit dominated all
these nations in which the civilization of the new
American world had its origin ; it is the spirit
which may rightly be called that of Subjectiv-
ity. Not uniformity but variety of the subjec-
tive perfection of the individual is the ideal of
to-day. And the collective culture of our time
rests on vast working corporations of individu-
als who are no less vastly differentiated each in
themselves.

For us it is a well-known state of affairs, this
product of nervous activity which has character-
ized the last six or seven generations, and it is
superfluous to describe it in detail. But it would
not be inappropriate to trace once and for all,
logically and clearly, the consequences of these
changes as well for the character of historical
science of the present as for that of the immediate
future. The result is that for such a time as

■

*8 WHAT IS HISTORY?

this only that kind of historical comprehension is
adequate which, side by side with the individual

r~ psychological, admits also the socio-psychologi-
cal treatment, the consideration of the evolu-
tion of the collective psychic products of human
communities — a treatment which does not merely
allude occasionally to this admission, but main-
tains consistently and unconditionally, that for
every case of historical investigation the socio-
psychological forces are the stronger, and there-
fore those that properly determine the course of
things; that, consequently, they include the oper-

L ation of the individual-psychic forces. Granted
that this is the universal formulation of jthe now
necessary point of view as it is carried out to-day
not only in the field of historiography (in some
instances with a clear insight into its conse-
quences), but as seen in the new sciences and
new methods which it has made to bear fruit,
e.g. sociology, or prehistoric excavations ; yet it
would be a mistake to assume that the revo-
lution in this direction took place suddenly or
that it has even now reached . its completion.
Rather has it gone forward slowly in the course
of at least a century and a half, if we reckon

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 19

according to events in Germany. And the re-
sulting views have been shown, though in
steady conflict with the older individual-psychic
opinions, to be invincible in spite of the marks
of immaturity and a lack of definiteness borne
on their face. They stand forth, nevertheless,
with a breadth, a logical cohesion, and an inward
completeness which it has been beyond the power
of the bitterest hostility to weaken or to remove.

If I carry the study further to the contem-
plation of the evolution of Germany, because
this is most familiar to me, and because, I believe,
by keeping to a narrower limit, in the short
time assigned to me, we may gain greater
clearness and a more plastic form, I must not
fail to mention the honored name of Herder, the
hundredth anniversary of whose death has just
been fittingly observed by Germans throughout
the world. In the realm of Germanic cultures,
and even beyond it, Herder stands as the creator
of the conception "Folk soul" (the psyche of
the masses). He was the first to admit the
importance of. the socio-psychic demands for
the proper historical comprehension of the
most important of all human communities, —

WHAT IS HISTORY?

nations, — and to draw from these the necessary
conclusions. But he did it, 1 not in a calm,
entirely emotionless and intellectual spirit of
research, hut rather by leaps and with all the
enthusiasm of the explorer. His was a psychic
attitude toward the new-found inexhaustible
material of the socio-psychic interrelations. But
to reproach Herder on this score would betray
an extremely small socio-psychic understanding.
When communities have made rapid progress
toward a higher spiritual existence, it is not in a
rational manner or with purely intellectual age-
marks of the thought process. Rather with
youthful feelings of anticipation, with an ec-
static presentiment of dimly felt combinations,
are the portals of a new epoch entered. Science
becomes a prophecy, philosophy turns to poetical
metaphysics. That was the character of the
great German period of subjectivity that began
with Klopstock, and ended in the spreading
branches of the philosophy of identity — the
period to which Herder, as one of its first great
phenomena, belongs. Therefore Herder's enthu-
siastic grasp of the socio-psychic elements of

1 See his 44 Ideas concerning the History of Mankind."

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 21

history does not stand alone. It is the prop-
erty of the whole epoch and dominates the char-
acteristic movement of the time — Romanticism.
The advance step in all this was a clearer view
of the vast combinations of the phenomena
of the mass-psyche — an advance which brought
one to describe vital points poetically, in part
or wholly so. But there was not the clear com-
prehension of the constituent elements of the
mass-psychic or even of the elementary disen-
tangling of combined phenomena.

It has been reserved to the so-called history-
of-civilization method to attempt the description
of socio-psychic phenomena, and Freytag, Riehl,
even Burckhardt, devoted themselves to this task.
Since the last decade of the last century, however,
this method has gradually grown out of date.

That no progress was made in historical
method during a long period may be traced to
the existence of too great a mass of material
to deal with. To this another cause must be
added. The first great subjective period which
had begun with 1750 ended about 1820, at
latest 1830; then about 1870 to 1880 another ,
epoch begins, the second period of subjectiv-

■

! 22 WHAT IS HISTORY?

ism. In the interval, however (since 1820,
at latest), the conquests of the first period
began to be not so much developed as intel-
lectualized. Enthusiasm yielded to reflection,
the anticipative comprehension of rationalism.
It is the rebound in which, in the domain of
natural science, the period of natural philosophy
was replaced by the recent development of me-
chanics; the change by which, in the field of
mental sciences, the old rationalism of the
Aufklarung, as it had been developed in the
generations following 1680, again became con-
spicuous, though with alterations. The outcome
of this movement in the science of history, which
had run aground in the impotent epigonism of
art and poetry, as in the barren historicism of
the mental sciences of the period of 1860 to 1870,
was the reappearance of the individual-psycho-
logical method. But the socio-psychological
point of view was not yet sufficiently well
grounded to maintain its supremacy. In the
competition of these rival influences, Ranke grew
to be a master of his art. This coincidence, in
a certain sense most fortunate, and at all events
peculiar in its way, gives to him and his works

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 23

a position all their own. The individual-psycho-
logic point of view now gains the ascendency
more completely, though not so much because
of Ranke as of his disciples, especially von Sybel.
There was no longer any particular importance
attached to the efforts of those who thought and
worked according to the history-of-civilization
method; these were not opposed because they
were not considered as of more than passing
significance. It was a time of almost purely po-
litical activity: the nation yearned with every
fibre of its soul for the long-coveted political
unity. Such works as the political history of the
old German empire by Giesebrecht, or Droysen's
"History of Prussian Polity," may be cited as
important phenomena in this connection. Why
should they not have preferred political history
which, to a certain extent, was the individual-
psychologic method, to all other forms of history?
This explains for the most part the fact that the
advance in the socio-psychological interpreta-
tion of events, made in the meantime by other
peoples, e.g. the French in the philosophy of
Comte, met with small acceptance in Germany.
But the last decades of the nineteenth century

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

brought the rebound. The years 1870 and 1871
released men from their great anxieties concern-
ing the national life and unity ; the development
of internal culture comes prominently now to
the front. And that happened at the very
dawn of a new period of modern psychic exist-
ence. The rise of political economy and tech-
nology, the rapid development of freedom of
trade all over the globe, the victories of science
in the realm of nature, even to penetrating into
the confines of the inner life: all this and a
host of other less important phenomena yielded
an untold amount of new stimuli and possibilities
of association, and with that an unheard-of ex-
tension of psychic activity as then existing.
But of this more in another lecture. The
result was a marked differentiation of intel-
lectual activity, and with it the renewed and
determining advance of the socio-psychic ele-
ments. This was evident along the whole line
of scientific endeavor, especially in the rise of
sociology and anthropology during the last
decades, with their far-reaching consequences
and accompanying phenomena. In the domain
of history, this meant a fresh start in the writ-

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE

ing of histories of civilization in so far as the
development of method was energetically taken
in hand; description alone was no longer the
watchword, but an intelligent comprehension.

It was now a question of following up the
complex phenomena of the socio-psychic life, the
working out of the so-called national soul in its
elementary parts. The first step on this path
would necessarily lead to the immediate analysis
of the phenomena that appeared within the exist-
ence of great communities of men, that is to say,
chiefly of nations. Hence the proving and de-
tailed characterization of socio-psychic eras within
this domain: this was the next step. We can
see how this was done by Burckhardt who, in
his history of the culture of the Renaissance, was
the first to point out the great psychic difference
between the so-called Middle Ages and the periods
of higher culture. Thus a master hand deter-
mined and depicted one of the most marked
phases in the rhythmic movement of the culture-
epochs of a nation. From this point the way
must lead on to a statement of the course of a
whole series of cultural ages. This has been
attempted in my " German History."

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

But this is only the beginning of an intensive
sociopsychological method. In this blocking
out of the culture-epochs, the elements of the
socio-psychic movements, as such, are not analyzed,
but simply touched upon and the time indicated
in which great movements find their origin.
When this is once well done, the question arises
whether for these ages of culture there is one
common underlying psychic mechanism, and if
so, of what nature it is, and what is the aggregate
of these underlying, yet apparent, psychic ele-
ments. And if these problems are solved, there
appears further a last yet perhaps provisional
question, namely, whether the psychic elements
referred to are really elementary in the sense that
they are to be found in the results of modern
psychology as hitherto known.

This is not the place to analyze or attempt
to solve the questions thus raised; but the
means of finding an answer will be pointed
out in the later lectures, at least in so far as
to prove that, for the mechanism of the great
socio-psychic movements, the same elements and
laws hold good of which proof is given in recent
psychological investigation, and with that of the

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 27

discovery of the elementary psychic energy proper
to the historical movement. At this point there
arises, in consequence of the preceding statement,
another question. If modern historical science
would penetrate to the innermost springs of
universal history, find them to be in certain
psychic conditions, does it act thus in conform-
ity with the universal tendencies of the time,
and has it accordingly the prospect of a whole-
some duration and development? Here is the
first difficulty to be solved. The second is as
follows : if modern historical science as thus set
forth is in accord with the spirit of the time,
what is then its relation to and effect on other
sciences ?

For those who are acquainted with the intel-
lectual movements of western Europe the first
question — that of a more intensive study of all
phenomena, a closer acquaintance with nature —
is easy enough to answer. An impressionism
which at first took hold of the external phe-
nomena with a certainty of touch hitherto un-
known was followed in the field of mental
sciences and imagination by a psychological im-
pressionism that discovered and revealed the

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

depths of the psychic life which till now had
lain concealed under the threshold of con-
sciousness. This spirit brought, in regard to
natural sciences, an intensity of observation
which appeared almost to threaten those me-
chanical theories which, during centuries of ener-
getic research, had stood as true and sufficient
for all further progress in investigation. In this
course of psychic progress the historical science
of socio-psychology takes its place as a matter
of course ; it is nothing but the application of
greater intensity of observation to historical
material. And there is prospect, therefore, of a
further development of this idea, not only on
western and middle European soil, but, since the
new psychic existence is due chiefly to the vast
extension of association and stimuli which arise
from the new technical, economic, and social
culture, it will establish itself everywhere where
western civilization prevails, as is actually being
shown to-day in the new world and in Japan.

If socio-psychological history is of such grow-
ing importance, the more, then, does its relation-
ship to other sciences call for consideration, even
though but few words can be devoted to it.

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 2*

Foremost and clearest is its connection with J
psychology. History in itself is nothing but
applied psychology. Hence we must look to
theoretical psychology to give us the clew to its } .
true interpretation.

How often, indeed, has not psychology been "1
named the mechanics of mental science, in par-
ticular of the science of history? But the ap-
preciation of this connection and the practical
application of it are quite different things. For
the latter it is necessary that the study of his-
torical phenomena be extended to the most ele-
mentary occurrences and processes, — even those
processes with which psychology has primarily
to do. It is characteristic of the progress of sci-*^
ence during the period of subjectivism of about
1750 or that at the beginning, at least, neither
history nor psychology was understood. Of how
little importance was psychology when books
like Creutzer's "Essay on the Soul" and the
fruitful but primitive journalism of the decades
of Sentimentalism and the " Sturm und Drang "
periods tried at least to set it free from the old
traditional metaphysical theories. A universal
genius like Kant was right to refrain from taking

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

part in such primitive beginnings, and this stage
of philosophy corresponded to that of history.

r Psychology and historical science begin to
approach each other about 1800, under the influ-
ence of the new ideas of the time ; but they were
as yet far from meeting ; between them still lay
heavy and bulky masses of scientifically unana-

^ lyzed psychic matter.

How different it is to-day in the first decade
of a new period of subjectivism, which in so
many of its parts seems to be a restoration of
the old, only in a higher stage of development.
To-day psychology looks back on two generations
of investigators who delivered it from the deadly
grasp of metaphysics and made it an indepen-
dent science. Wundt followed Herbart. And
now a younger, a third, generation is at work
perfecting and amplifying the results obtained.
These results, however they may vary and
become matters of dispute, according to the
direction of investigation, permit a profound
insight into the legitimate course of individual-
psychic life, such as was denied to our prede-
cessors. The most important results of all
this investigation for the historical student are

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 31

recorded in the works of Wundt, Ebbinghaus,
Munsterberg, Lipps, — collections of data which
have already become indispensable to the allied
sciences.

This is a condition of things extremely helpful
to historical science in the socio-psychic direction.
If one penetrates into the depths of historic 1
causation, it will be found that psychology has
prepared the way and has become a safe guide
to the historian who wishes to make known his
discoveries in formulae in which they may be
fitly expressed.

In this way have psychology and historical
science entered into partnership. The partition
between them is giving way, and certainly one
may say — if it may thus be expressed — that
psychology increasingly serves as a mechanical
force to history. -J

But the relations of the two sciences are by no
means thus completely described. Just as along
with the psychology of the normal adult there
must be kept in mind that of childhood and old age
in order that the antithetic character of all psychic
processes, the full extent and the whole circle
of the potentiality of the human psyche, as far

32 WHAT IS HISTORY?

as the individual is concerned, may be appreciated
and the corresponding biological functions be ob-
served, so it is necessary to obtain a full compre-
hension of the meaning of the socio-psychological
process in history in order to proceed in a man-
ner quite analogous. In this instance psychology
is dependent on history, and only from an inten-
sive investigation of the cultural periods of man-
kind as a whole are the data attainable which will
enable one to recognize the antithetic tendencies
of the human mind in its whole empiric compass.

Thus we get a starting-point from which the
relation of modern historical science to the other
mental sciences may be explained. These may
be divided into applied, such as theology, juris-
prudence, political economy, politics, etc., and
into constitutive, history of language, literature,
art, etc. It is clear that the constitutive branches
simply disappear as parts of modern historical
science . For if the latter concerns itself with
the investigation of the dominating social psyche
of the times in question, and with its chang-
ing forms during the various ages of culture,
it can only do this by taking a survey of all
its embodiments in history from time to time.

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DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 33

These are to be found in language, in poetry, and
art style), in science and philosophy, the
climax of intellectual attainment, argumentation,
etc. And correspondingly, socio-psychological
history is the universal foundation of all these
sciences, and these are related to it as amplifying
and special sciences. Put even more is this the
case with the relation to the applied mental
sciences. For the latter, which have reference
to a certain given psyche of a certain cultural
period, require a general knowledge of this
period, which leads to the socio-psychological
science of history. _J
Historical science therefore plays a double' - '
part : (1) as the basis of the practical as of the
theoretical mental sciences, and (2) as stimulus
to a historical method within the range of psy-
chology. It is a position which is quite normally
conditioned by the fact that psychic movements
pass, as regards time, far more rapidly than
physical movements, and that the change ap-
pears to us qualitatively different on that account^
If in their relations the psychic developments
of a given time had corresponded to the physical,
only one mechanism would be needed to domi-

WHAT IS HISTORY?

nate them both; for they would have shown a
hundred thousand and more years ago the same
character as they show in the traditional records
of to-day. Now it is well known that where the
conception of life is in question, that this is not
the case; for example, in animal and plant
organisms. In human life, i.e. in history, a
moment of much quicker change of phenomena
intervenes. How is it to be controlled ? It can
only happen in that psychology as a psychological
mechanism is allied with a functional idea of the
time and becomes at once variable. And this
functional idea historical science must supply.
Through this it grows to be an evolutionistic
psychology fully suited to the actual course of
things and as such the basis of mental sciences,
both theoretical and applied.

Is not the relation of historical to natural
science determined by the last few remarks,
even if these are only general propositions?
I think so, if one does not indeed include
physics and chemistry in the historic point of
view, — sciences the objects of which belong to
the passing moment. However, if one does
this, nothing remains but to admit that there

DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE 35

are biological agencies even in inorganic nature ;
with this we are driven out of the sphere of
science into the atmosphere of hypothetic philos-
ophy, into the metaphysical mode of thought.

It is not necessary to transcend the bounds of
our subject, to pass over the border line that di-
vides philosophy and science. But one thing has
been determined by these reflections, — that the
modern science of history has opened up for
itself a vastly greater field of endeavor and con-
flict and that it will require thousands of dili-
gent workers and creative minds to open up its
rich and in many respects unknown regions, and
to cultivate them successfully.

LECTURE n

THE GENERAL COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY
FROM A PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

LECTURE n

THE GENERAL COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY
FROM A PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

For some months now I have been in the
midst of this nervous, rushing American life.
From every side one is impressed by the sense of
vastness, of incalculable possibilities. I have
peered into new forms of historical existence,
which, though I may not altogether comprehend
them, have yet been suspected and vaguely felt.
Still the effect of this vastness, the impression it
makes upon the mind, was hardly dreamed of
before I left Europe three months ago.

But I wish to speak to you of the old world,
not of the new ; and not simply of the passing
things of this old world; rather of its recent
progress won by strenuous effort in a particular
field, that of historical science — possibly also of
some labor of my own in this field. It is with
the greatest diffidence that I venture in this

WHAT IS HISTORY?

company of trained specialists to treat historical
problems of the first importance to us all. But
after all, Uhland's line holds good for every
German, — " The brave Swabian knows no fear."
And as for the historian there is always one
recourse open to him if he would make himself
more easily understood, the one that was origi-
nally his first weapon : he can examine his sub-
ject and begin to describe.

And so let me introduce to-day the problems of
recent historical science, of which I shall speak
again in later lectures, by telling you the story
of my own people, from about 500 B.C. up to the
present time. " The story of the German nation
in one hour ? " I hear you ask. Yes, in one hour.
And it depends a little on the nature of the
questions that will occupy us in a later lecture
(taking it for granted that the venture can be
made), how the story can be told in a single hour.

In the last centuries befor e, and the first af ter,
the birth Of Chri st we me elTwi th th e Germans,
for the most part our common ancestors, in a
j5syuhiu condition which on closer~view is very
amazing to" us of later growth. Their imagi-
nation, to begin with this mosT symptomatic of

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY

all psychic functions, rich in accordance with the
output of their strength, does not show itself in
any poem, any drama, any musical composition,
any piece of sculpture or painting. And yet it
is active in the highest degree. It includes, at
bottom, all the above-named kinds of imaginative
activity at one and the same time ; there was no
song that was not accompanied by gesticulation
and plastic pose of the body, as by a musical
handling of language ; no solemn function that
did not take a poetically musical form ; no crea-
tion of plastic art in which mimic motifs sug-
gesting speech and modulation had not made
. themselves felt. With this universality of imagi-
native activity, its forms of expression are of
course always accompanied by all the lofty ele-
ments of existence; as, for instance, birth, be-
trothal, marriage, death ; the primitive economic
life of the household, — of justice, morality, —
the changes of nature in spring and autumn and
the feelings they call forth ; above all, in the great
festivals of intercourse with the gods. "Here
were the gods themselves accounted as present on
solemn occasions; they were greeted with joy
and escorted to the villages and the dwellings of

WHAT IS HISTORY?

the people ; they were offered hospitality and
accompanied on their way. Sometimes a youth,
sometimes a maid, was deemed worthy of the
honor of representing in human form the super-
human ; and where they fell short of such bold
materialization, they at least led forth in solemn
procession animals dedicated to the gods. The
divinity was received with high honors when
for the exercise of his divine calling on earth he
became visible to human sense. Who has not
heard of the chariot of the god of plenty,
Nerthus, which, drawn by kine, went through
the land in spring to take possession of the
newly awakened earth? At every fresh land-
mark there greeted him the solemn procession
of husbandmen, and to the accompaniment of
rhythmic movements were attuned the songs of
praise and gladness." 1

What was the underlying element of this
wonderful psychic attitude, of this primitive unity
of imagination, — which, though occasionally in-
terrupted, was yet appearing everywhere, — with
its influence evident in all phases of existence ?

X K. Lamprecht, " German History," Vol. I, 8d. ed., 1902,
p. 177.

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 43

To this period, to the Germans of the little
tribal communities, of which there were about a
hundred in the nation, to the warrior who lived
contentedly in the setting made by the natural
organization of his race, and in the fulfilment
chiefly of genealogic duties, — to him the world
was not yet something conceivable, capable of
portrayal, but only such as he saw before him,
and hence the image of it in his mind was simple,
palpable. No matter what important affair of
life had to be dealt with psychically, it was not
described in definite terms and made fast by con-
victions. It was reprod uced allegorically, and
its meaning repeated in psychic functions which
expressed it externally by means of symbols.
Let us describe otherwise this condition so foreign
to our comprehension and therefore not easily
accessible. The mental scaffolding of any sort
of idea, or anysort of volition, was at once""per-
sonified in a significant acti on, and app eared

symhn1i7ftH in t.hp fnrriT^f^^jrnn.giTin.t.TVP ^.tivit.y

whose influence was as yet little refracted in rays.
I'hus intuition and thought coincided, and mental
culture, the psychic existence of the timeTTobk
a symbolic form.

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

Symbolism, therefore, in the sense j ust described,
is the true mark, the characteristic peculiarity of
these earlier periods of history. To this, as to all
central phenomena, all single psychic activities
are subordinate: thinking resolved itself into
analogous conclusion, the proper intellectual func-
tion of symbolism; volition found expression
in transactions before the court and the com-
munity, in the form of an elaborately developed
symbolic jurisprudence; lastly, the emotions in
their most exalted form, religion, put their stamp
on the forms of the intuitive philosophy just
described. And as the main functions, so were
its derivations symbolic in their most important
and permanent developments, — language, art,
philosophy, morals, and customs. Legal symbol-
ism took hold of morals ; indeed, the latter was
completely controlled by it. Philosophy melted
into mythology, which transformed the most
important phenomena of nature and human
life into a world of gods, who lived behind these
phenomena, creating and guiding them, — an
exalted type of visible reality. Art, limited to
simple cloth patterns, was made to express that
element of the world of phenomena which, earli-

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 45

est of all, took shape in the minds of men, —
rhythm, movement; and in moments of con-
scious exaltation, language fell in with this
rhythmic usage in its peculiar Germanic fashion,
by an interweaving of the parts, and by a heavy
stress not so much on the beautiful in form as
on significance of the contents.

Therefore, however difficult it may be to dis-
tinguish from among the meagre information
of this time the earlier and later tendencies of
development, there existed a great unity of the
psychic life. And we can see how it finds
expression in a particular personal ideal, whose
acts in turn reacted powerfully upon the general
thought of the community. In this world of
symbolic life the individual vanishes ; he becomes
at once the actor in a universal psychic life,
becomes part of the whole, a coequal member
of a community side by side with others of the
same standing.

It is, in fact, what distinguishes the external
Germanic culture. We see the nation without T
a bond that could hold it together politically
become divided into a great number of tribal
communities, — of clans. The approach toward

WHAT IS HISTORY?

intellectual equality of individuals brought no
tendency to a closer union of the whole, as is
certainly required by a division of labor and by
labor unions ; and this was favorable to a differ-
entiation of individual activities in the later
stages of culture. Still, the tribal communities
turn out to be not simple but complicated forma-
tions. They consist in a number of hundreds;
^and in these the German actually lived. And the
hundreds bear distinctly a genealogic character,
are at bottom great families or clans. In the
family, therefore, is the German quite at home ; it
encircles him with its uninterrupted life, and
within this he is accounted only a specimen, not
an individual ; he is subject to the system of blood
vengeance with the psychic point of view which
puts every individual on exactly the same level;
in his personal preferences, in friendship and
enmity, he is bound by the bonds of family
life; he appears to the outsider, and according
to our views also in purely personal matters, as
if he were interchangeable with any of his equals,
as if he were but a function.

And this contraction, or rather almost com-
plete negation, of what we call personality, in

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY

the natural division of the family, shows the
manner in which the individual can be made use
of in the building up of a state, in the constitu-
tion of the tribal community. The state is the
army, and citizenship is comradeship, — comrade-
ship in the sense of complete subjection to the
whole ; in the sense of an almost complete loss
of personality even for the prominent hero.

Upon this comrade-like and natural connec-
tion is based the most modern of all these insti-
tutions, the home of an agricultural unit.

According to families and hundreds land is
apportioned out as booty among comrades ; hence
the form taken by primitive farming strongly
resembles communism. After all these impres-
sions, can we wonder that the Romans thought
the Germans in appearance scarcely distinguish-
able from each other, with great similarity of
physiognomy? that their greatest ethnogra-
pher, Tacitus, founded on this similarity in out-
ward appearance the definite statement of a
" gens propria et sincera et tantum sui similis " ?

But two or three centuries after Tacitus this
little world was set in motion not only exter-
nally, but psychically. And five to six centuries

WHAT IS HISTORY?

later we find a markedly new psychic attitude,
^Srhich lasts on into the eleventh century, and
which is distinguished from tEe earlier in all
respeCtsT— a radical distinction, what did not
the migration of nations mean for the German ?
The breaking up of an old, the opening up, if
not at once constructing, of a new world. The
German language still bears in its broadest
features, in the adoption of expressions for a
better management in house and garden, in
meat and drink, the ineradicable traces of the
influences which emanated from the satiated
culture of the empire into whose long-cherished
peace the Germans burst with destruction in
their hands. But side by side with these more
common and even to-day occasionally controllable
results, appear a countless number of the finer
influences, perhaps on that account the more ef-
fectual in their operation on the Germanic soul.

m the sad moral and intellectual conditions
in the Merovingian kingdom, as in the Germanic
dominions on the Mediterranean, we see that in
the first place an almost complete dissociation of
the psyche took place. What had been ordered
and was pleasing in the eyes of the Lord came

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 49

to naught. What had been significant with
transcendentally symbolic conceptions passed
away. Like a rushing flood carrying ruin upon
ruin with it, the fierce waves of a foreign culture
burst in, destroying what existed ; these are far
from being easily controlled and brought within
new spheres of restraint. Only very gradually
a new element eliminated itself and quiet is re-
stored. And there appears above the floods of
this older culture now vanishing, and finally ooz-
ing away altogether, a new world, a type not
essentially Roman, but a derived Germanic cul-
ture brought up to a higher level.

Let us view this new culture a little more
closely. The older age had known as its chief
signs of imaginative activity, and at the same
time, artistic reproduction of the physical and
psychic world of phenomena, the dirge and
embroidery. In the dirge they celebrated the
deeds of the heroes by giving expression, mimic,
musical, and poetic, to their feelings, as Taci-
tus reports of Armenius, "canitur adhuc bar-
baras apud gentes." In the embroidery they
had seized and held fast in the field of plastic
art the rhythmic motifs of movement. In the

WHAT IS HISTORY?

place of these forms of imaginative activity we
see, since the migration of nations, other forms
appear and flourish in certain internal changes
down to the eleventh century, — the epic and the
so-called symbolic decorative style. The oldest
form of the epic is the heroic song, of which we
have one still preserved in the " Hildebrandslied,"
from the pre-renaissance, the ninth century, a tale
of the great deeds of a hero, recited with voices up-
lifted and accompanied by gesticulations, a tale
brief, terse, and almost dramatic in form. Such
a form could only have developed in the time of
the migration; the oldest names belong to the
migration, the bearers of which are known to us
.in abundant tradition. But since the eighth, if
not the seventh, century this form, already de-
caying, yields to another, the legend-song, which
tells of great men and bold deeds, but with
loving minuteness of detail in later times, not
seldom with almost the precision of anecdote —
very near in its whole conception to reality,
which it reflects poetically. This is a form
which flourished in the last centuries of the age
with which we are now concerned, the height of
its development being reached about the year

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 61

900 a.d. Later there arises the tendency to be-
come more circumstantial ; it is marked by a taste j
for animal-lore, and ends on the one side in the _
realistic rime chronicle devoted to the handling^!
of the present, on the other in the jest-poem
the thirteenth century, as characterized by Gott-
fried Hagen's " Book of the Town of Cologne,"
and, though in Latin, by " Discourses on Mar-
vels" by Casarius von Heisterbach, as also by
the thousand legends of the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries.

This development of the epic runs parallel/
in plastic art with that of symbolic decoration.
Here we see how the embroidery pattern of the
former age gradually took on animal shapes till
snakes, quadrupeds, and birds come to be
represented, though very much distorted in^
movement.

And then we can observe how, out of the
transition forms, the animal gradually emerges
and becomes plain to us ; in the beginning they
appear only in general outlines, typical, however,
in a positive sense of the word, so that quadru-
ped and bird and fish — but not special families
of these species — may be distinguished. But

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52 WHAT IS HISTORY?

after the seventh and eighth centuries, as if
bursting out of a protecting husk, certain types
emerge from these representations of universal
kinds ; out of the quadruped, a dog or a deer ; out
of the bird, a goose or an eagle. Even these
were by no means conceived realistically, as one
would be led to expect from the heraldic designs
of the age. Faint traces of something new appear,
which, in the course of the tenth century, blos-
som out into a glorious art, — plant decoration.
The typical rendering of the moving animal is
followed by that of the immovable, — the vege-
table ; again we note the general forms, so that
leaf and stalk, though not of a particular species
of tree or plant, become recognizable, whereas
the actuating motif of the decoration of the pre-
ceding age finds expression in the most grace-
ful, wavelike movements of branches and twigs.
Here also, in the course of the eleventh century,
a more pronounced individualization sets in.
Tree, bush, and plant, weedlike and slender up-
springing forms, can be distinguished, till, in a
time closely following, even flowers and trees —
and amongst the trees, oaks and birches — stand
out; the taste of the time finally rises high enough

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 53

to choose for the tone of the object represented
the local color rather than one taken at ran-
dom, vivid and garish, and which in animal
decorative work advances to the proportionally
marked realism of the present-day heraldic
figures.

One recognizes at once in how nearly parallel
courses plastic art and poetry have developed,
which, indeed, in these* centuries were repre-
sented within the national development only by
epic and decorative art. To one of the first
periods of heroic song and animal decoration,
there followed a second of the legendary lay
and plant ornament, and the feature uniting
them is that of an increasing nearness to reality,
even when, at the close of the whole age, they first
succeed in reproducing the symbols of the world
of phenomena rather than that of individuals.

But is this feature not the same that distin-
guishes the whole imaginative activity of the
new period from that of the preceding, prehis-
toric, Germanic age, except that the dividing
line between the time before and after the migra-
tion is more marked than that of the seventh to
the ninth century ? For if the artistic concep-

WHAT IS HISTORY?

tion of the world of facts had not advanced, even
as far as to represent roughly the animal in
motion, could it master anything besides the
motif for movement in itself ?

We have a fair example of this when a child,
before the age at which he reproduces man and
beast, draws with the pencil nothing but repre-
sentations of movement, the strokes which are
due to the unconscious, rhythmic guidance of his
hand, and yet characterizes them as certain defi-
nite animals, — cats, dogs, horses, etc. If the
reproduction of the psychic world be not ad-
vanced to the point of narration, must not this
appear in the symbolic recital of the feelings of
the hero, and in the pathetic reproduction of these
feelings by means of the dirge ? It was the cor-
respondence of these feelings with the represen-
tation, that characterized primitive symbolism,
just as the correspondence of visible movement,
with the personal rhythm of the artist, belongs
to this time. The following age, which we may
now call that of symbolism, brings the resolving
of feelings and movements into a shape of which
the essence and kind appear in general outlines ;
it gives us the epic and decorative art.

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 55

With these observations, rather minute and
detailed, we have recognized at once the funda-
mental difference of the earlier and later periods.
The prehistoric ages embraced centuries of un-
conscious living in and with nature, whether it
be the nature of the external physical life of
phenomena, or the inward stirrings of the psyche.
In the later ages man begins to give forth from
himself these phenomena in a slow dawning of
consciousness, he begins to appreciate them as
objective facts given from out of the ego, and
starting from this appreciation he learns to
dominate them as an objective. This is a stage
in the evolutionary process which has come in
the course of German development, and the single
phases of which form the period of the more
strictly national growth.

But was the prehistoric age really so entirely
unconscious of the nature of things and of the
psyche? Is its separation from later ages ab-
solute? All historical experience forces us to
answer these questions in the negative. If we
could know the conditions of still earlier ages of
Germanic life than the so-called prehistoric age,
we should find that there was an even greater

WHAT IS HISTORY?

unconsciousness of certain aspects of things,
and it is only in its character as the earliest
known period that the prehistoric age appears
absolute, — from which we have to calculate
as with a given thing that cannot be further
resolved into parts.

If we return to the period of the third to the
eleventh century, to the age of symbolism, a
more careful scrutiny shows that all further
phenomena of this time, internal and external,
depend on the character of the psychic essence
as we have known it hitherto.

Is there need now to say that persons and
things lived and behaved after the very simplest
f fashion ? The statesman and warrior was a hero
first, according to the ideal of the oldest epic
song, and later, according to the demands of
tradition and the art of poetry. The Teuton,
just becoming the German, begins to appear as
a type and to recognize himself as belonging to
a peculiar race, at the same time plastic art had
advanced to the complete reproduction of organic
types. And these are the poles, hero and nation,
within which developed the political history of
the period treated, — a development and vitali-

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 57

zation of psychic qualities which are never
understood without a deep knowledge of his-
torical culture. Hence at the time of the
self-recognition, since the beginning of the
ninth century, say, the Romance and Ger-
manic nations begin to grow up independently,
each drawing sustenance from the great Caro-
lingian power. Political history resounds again
with heroic deeds and heroic song; diplomatic
transactions bear the impress of the personal
relation between hero and hero; the relations
of the Papacy to Charlemagne are regulated by
the promises of the Carolingian monarch that
he would always continue loyal to St. Peter, and
the traditions of the foreign policy of this time
would have become epic in form if the Church,
in keeping with the idea of Catholic succession,
had not turned men's attention toward the work
of the annalist. For what do we learn of Charle-
magne through the national epic? Campaigns
against the heathen and the Moslem, expedi-
tions to Jerusalem, and a thousand other things
which tradition, in so far as it corresponds to
reality, rather surrounds with numberless illusive
suggestions, than expresses in plain words.

58 WHAT IS HISTORY?

f - * But between the individual and the national
commonwealth, when it is, for the first time,
built up from internal forces, even though weakly
propped, there appear a thousand forms of activ-
ity that plainly show the coming in of a new
period to succeed that of symbolism. The in-
dividual breaks the bonds of tutelage, if not
of the family, at least of the clan ; he gains more
freedom, though, according to our view, he is
still subordinate to the old influence to a marked
degree. He begins, however, to manage for him-
self economically, in an organization which bears
the stamp of communistic and clannish domina-
tion ; in political matters he is freer still. The
state of the old tribal community with its close
military comradeship exists no longer; it has
given place to a more extended state-system.
And over this there stretches, at least in the
last centuries of this period, the one great
national state. This new and greater state is
not, properly speaking, a creation of the people
out of their own resources, but a formation
which is due in large measure to admiration for
the splendor of the Roman Empire, therefore
it takes the name of an empire, and its great

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY

head surrounds himself with all the known
forms and ceremonies of the departed Caesars,
which is the reason it could never be of lasting
benefit to the people living under it. Yet the
emperor succeeded in buttressing up this state
by winning to its support the one growing
nation it embraced, so that it outlived even the
times of symbolism. It was characteristic of this
period that moral standards were still determined
by the earlier notions of restraint, though to
moderns they might appear free enough ; it was
possible, therefore, to found upon this primitive
morality an enduring relationship between the
state and the nation : it was the principle of loy-
alty so characteristic of the Germans. Out of
this grew feudalism, that unique system which
depended so much upon the sense of devotion to
one's superior — a system which proved to be one
of the most enduring known to European history.

The period of the eleventh and twelfth centu-
ries brought a tremendous social change ; from
early medievalism we pass to late mediaevalism,
out of the age of the typical to the conventional
psychic life.

Would this new period which continues on

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

into the fifteenth century appear in the light
of a mass-psychological treatment (which deals
radically and comprehensively with the nar-
rower range of German history) as a period
equally well defined and distinguished by real
force and breadth of inner human interest, with
that of symbolism ?

One may well doubt it, for a survey of German
history leaves the question open whether these
centuries are not to be considered as a last epoch,
a transition period from the age of types to that
of individualism, embracing the fifteenth to the
eighteenth centuries.

Be that as it may, in German history this
period is so full of life and so crowded with
activity, that from the artistic point of view it
would in any case be advisable to consider it by
itself.

In order to come to a better understanding of
the period, it would be well in this instance not
to start with the statement of the psychic core
of the new time, but with matters of its more
external, economic, and political nature. Thus
two great series of events demand our atten-
tion : one of which reaches back into the period

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY

just discussed — the development of territorial
rule; the other is that of the early city life
and conditions.

The first settlement of the Germans was in
homesteads and villages; peasant conditions
were everywhere quite similar even to the
extent of an almost equal distribution of the
land, and thus things remained for a long
period. But during the rule of the later Mero-
vingians there began the breaking up of this
comparatively fixed condition. There arose an
aristocracy of great landowners, far superior to
the great mass of average owners ; and to be a
large landowner was to be at the same time a
territorial ruler ; because for uniform cultivation
of great tracts of land a rational economic life
is necessary, which can only be reached by the
employment of capital, which first makes its
appearance in the higher stages of civilization.
Great landed estates at the period now under
consideration could only be made to pay by
farming out the land to others. But these
others, before the day of fairly plentiful capital,
could not become independent farmers under
contract of periodic payment for the land in use,

WHAT IS HISTORY?

but must meet their obligations by serving in
person and paying in kind. Hence came their
personal dependence on the lord of the soil,
and, in consequence, their political standing
became that of the serf. The development was
not that of great landownership and subletting,
but of territorial lordships and serfdom.
/ It was a process that had vast psychic conse-
/ quences. A social change began to take place, in
/ the course of which the favored lord of the soil
/ had leisure to take up intellectual pursuits, to
live more intensely from the psychic point of
view. It was a state of things which embraced
at least a part of the clerical landowners, above
all, the monasteries, say, from the ninth and
tenth centuries on.

And this movement runs parallel with, and
was alike cause and result of, a genuine accept-
ance of Christianity. How extraordinary had
been those earliest stirrings of Christian piety :
a spirit of asceticism expressed in the strangest
castigations of the flesh and a faith in the
miraculous which, limited by no consciousness
of causality, thought it could remove mountains !
And yet how mighty were the results of this

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 63

spiritual current! It burst forth similarly in
France and Italy and swelled the tide of living
waters on the waves of which the awakening lust
of dominion of the popes of the eleventh century
was borne onward till it exceeded in importance
that of the old western primate of the Roman
curia. Then Gregory VII, with wonderful politi-
cal foresight, formulated the programme of this
power, and making use of the reform move-
ment which had spread in the meantime, raised
it, especially in Germany, with heavy pressure
on the temporal powers to be the acknowledged
system of the Church.

During this time a change had taken place in
the domain of territorial supremacy and serf-
dom; and this gave a political basis to a new
intellectual life. The landlords had not been
content with developing under their control a
uniform class of farming sub-tenants. With the
serfs bound to them by the obligations of service,
they had classified these duties in grades and in
this way set going a new movement Hence
there arose above the inferior cultivators a caste
of superiors pledged to military service, who kept
aloof from the lower order, strove to form a

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

degree of nobility in vassalage, gradually develop-
ing the ideal of the horseman, the military re-
tainer. These are the good times of the rise of
Ministerialism, the golden age of the first Stauffer
period, when a Frederick I, with the help of his
vassals, subjected northern Italy financially, and
a Henry VI, with the same help, found himself
able to rule over southern Italy and Sicily. But
at a critical moment of German political history,
when full of hastily formed plans for a campaign
in the East and for the founding of imperial
power along the Mediterranean, he died in the
prime of life, to the great sorrow of the nation.

These were all events which must have
aroused the great masses of the people and
given them new conceptions of things; above all,
the Ministerials. What could seem unattainable
when vassals of the empire, whose children
received the Emperor's permission to marry,
might become counts, princes, and dukes in the
new wonderland, Italy? All life had appar-
ently become an adventure, and the more so
because in the process of the development of
territorial rule, even the subordinate peasants
grew to be economically independent and respon-

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 65

sible beings. And out of the villages of the
fatherland thousands and thousands of the young-
est and best suited for colonizing purposes were
sent into the East, into the countries beyond the
Elbe, and along the Danube, to found that new
Germany which composes two-fifths of the na-
tional possessions of the present time.

These are events which followed each other in j
rapid succession. Having an agrarian basis, I
they were at once the forerunners of a last
purely agrarian culture, the culture of the days
of chivalry of the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies.

But these were not the exclusive tendencies of
the time. Side by side with them other equally
important events were occurring, out of which a
primitive financial system, an early Burgertum,
an early town culture, arose. It is impossible
to show here in detail in what manner this
second series of developments took shape, because
almost every one of the known or supposed
events has been variously described and esti-
mated. To enter into a criticism of these state-
ments and judgments would mean a reversal of
the entire economy of these lectures, even if the

WHAT IS HISTORY?

remarks could be kept quite general. In such
a case, moreover, our present conclusions would
have to be tested by scrutinizing comparison
with the results of careful investigation in similar
fields outside the sphere of Western Europe,
which, so far as the Germans are concerned, has
not been done. So that in this connection it
may suffice to say that in the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries the towns had been by no means
unimportant in mutual reaction with the above-
mentioned changes of territorial rule, which had
permitted a surplus to be produced, and so led
the way to a primitive formation of capital.
These towns, with their early patriciate, with
their commercial guilds and industrial unions,
arose as a noticeable element of new national
life, and in the course of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries developed for the first time
a really middle-class culture.

If at this juncture we review the results of the
gfeSt ""econo mic a nd political evuutH ~o"f~the new
peno^ 7IEeycan be summed up in the two words,
chivalry and bourgeoisie. But w ho, at t.hft snnnd
oTthe se words^yill not tbi*A af. nnp q pf t.hp, great,
mtellectual value associated with them L Here,

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on the one side, we have the times of knight-
errantry and armed bands equipped foFgallant
adventure; on the other, resound~the songs~of
Walther von der Vogelweide, — songs winch tell
of German customs Imd of the kin^dpmjs jpiti-
able plight ; we have agam the graver lines of
Wolfram von Eschenbach ; and Hartmann von
Aue tells his tale with the flowing ease and grace
of his wonderfully adaptive rhythmic measure.
And the ideas thus made known to us in lyric and
epic poetry, and which serve a many-sided didac-
tic purpose, also find expression in plastic art.
In miniatures we are shown the knight and the
lady in the gracefully conventional pose of the
time, — a mass of delicate lines of beautifully
falling drapery enfolding the form, which with
all its power seems born for self-abnegation.
And from lofty pedestals there look down upon
us statues telling of a satiated existence, as, for
instance, in those of the choir of Naumburg
Cathedral of the later years of the period of
love-minstrelsy, no longer adorned with the con-
ventional smile alone, but rather showing the
slight beginnings of portraiture, — already tend-
ing toward a more realistic expression. It is at

WHAT IS HISTORY?

once the period of clumsiness and grace, the latter
becoming in the end the permanent element
which marked the Romanesque (transition)
style in architecture. With it came the decora-
tive principle already strongly felt; e.g. the
heraldic lion and the wreath of rue, from which
sprang the virginal Gothic style, with its delicate
features of early purely naturalistic decoration
in imitation of the lesser plant forms. This
jfeWc^fs followed by another not less impor-
tant, — that of the early bourgeoisie. The town
families gradually free themselves from the
influences of chivalry which at first held
them fast. Gottfried von Strassburg ceases
to sing in his amorously frivolous way; the
poetic prose of a pious mysticism resounds yet
louder. For the old pietism of a formal asceti-
cism, the religious fashion o f the tenth and
eleventh cent uries, is past. It was supersed ed^
by contemplation and a belief "Si the working of
TnirscteB T^y hTnggn qg or>n y 88 that iCTvghpr
and final form of Gebundenheit gains sway; in
a rapture of self-abnegation the soul tries to
approach into the presence of GocT Still the
V "cares of tins world remain as before, and out of

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 69

these comes progress. Poetry descends to satire
and farce and lends itself to coarsest and realistic
description, however much in the folk-song the
spirit of prehistoric times is retained. And
plastic art, lending itself to the rapid develop-
ment of Gothic architecture, begins in sculpture
and painting to reproduce in detail the visible
world, — almost to a primitive mastery of por-
traiture ; it even attempts, by a tentative linear
perspective, to create space for the third dimen-
sion, and also to produce local color effect,
chiefly in a complementary use of unbroken
tones. — J

It is a new epoch ; a thousand signs announce
it. And it is clear that chivalry and citizenship,
knight and burgher, turn away from the older
forms of expression and hence from the soul of
the period of symbolism. But do they under-
stand the world actually and individually in the
sense of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of
the Reformation and the Renaissance? Em-
phatically, no! Men are still separated from
that great day by a world of progress.

Granted that men are no longer " typical," still
less are they already " individual " ; they move

WHAT IS HISTORY?

in the intermediate stage of the conventional.
Political and social forms show it. Neither
knighthood nor middle class of the fourteenth
and a part of the fifteenth centuries is free, but
both are still in the leading-strings of the social
forms of chivalry, and given over to superficial
ideals of education. T here arises here a tendency
to emphasize the " maze," to be moderate as con-
trasted with the coarser outbursts of the primi-
tive passion of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
BuTthis moderation is at first only superficially
understood, and expresses itself in rules of eti-
quette. The burgher is socially freer than the
peasant of his time ; but their convivial habits
are subjected to regulations compared with
which the archaic drinking customs of the Ger-
man student of to-day appear as the height of
voluntary caprice. And how restrained by con-
vention is every effort of the imagination !
Nothing is more characteristic than that men
are not acquainted with the individual portrait,
and the literary portrait in the form of biography
and autobiography is almost unknown.

However, the psychic stirrings of the age
press on to a progressive freedom. The fif-

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 71

teenth century rushes on like a torrent to
where its waters fall into the abyss of a deeper
and broader river-bed. The current becomes
•confused, whirlpools form; nearer and nearer
is heard the roar of the cataract, till at last
clouds of foam dash upwards as in a veil and, at
the same time, proclaim the presence of the
cataract. In fact we approach, in the course
of the fifteenth century, one of the most marked
phases in the course of German national develop-
ment: the age of individualism beginning to
dominate the nine succeeding generations, — to
the middle of the eighteenth century. And with
it commences what we call modern times. '

It is an age that can here be briefly described j
because it is better known. The true centre of
its first period is the deliverance from the bonds
of pietistic, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical conven-
tions of the Middle Ages, while its second stage is
dominated by the victory of the lumen naturale,
of reason, in the movement which bears the
name of the Aufklarung, and at the same time
by the first great development of the natural J
sciences. In what consists the principle that
unites these two phases internally? Can it be

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

characterized as an entire emancipation of reason
to the full limit of its present active intellectual
potentiality? Is it a question of a complete
breach with the earlier time, and with its arti-
cles of faith? a rationalization of the world
without exceptions?

It is evident that in the development of
thought a new stage has been reached. The
analogical conclusion, the conclusion following
on the comparison of only two things, even in
the later Middle Ages, often the conclusion of
even scientific thought, is no longer considered
sufficient ; accumulated experience demands com-
parisons which can be extended to a great num-
ber of objects. The inductions! conclusion grows
out of analogy, and causality expels the miracu-
lous. 'But it is a process which in the course of
the whole period is by no means closed.

As the mark of transition to a higher form of
causal consciousness, these centuries experienced
the horrible reactionary movement of the perse-
cution of witches. Again and again mechanical
science, then in its beginnings, had to assert
itself with considerable strength against the
idea of the miraculous. And as late as the

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 73

eighteenth century even wide-awake minds be-
lieved in the uncanny power of good and evil
spirits. It was, therefore, only a step forward
to a higher causal consciousness which took
place, not emancipation. Hence the most
conservative among the new confessions and
churches, the Lutheran, felt impelled to
preserve intact the idea of the Sacrament as
necessary for Christian salvation. Hence the
more advanced Reformed Church did not at
once take the final step of complete secession.
And for the same reason even natural science
continued to work in complete harmony with
the highest conceptions of the Christian revela-
tion, in particular with the conception of God as
the extreme limit of thought.

H by means of all these phenomena this period
is sharply divided off from the years following
1750, it is clear, on the other hand, what its
gains signify compared with earlier psychic con-
ditions. Above all, the individual, now a child
of God, has free intercourse with his Heavenly
Father, limited only by the mediation of Christ.
There was no longer any mediation through the
clergy and the host of mediaeval saints, con-

WHAT IS HISTORY?

fessors, and penitents. And still more, the in-
dividual, thrown back on himself, looked round
him for the first time with unfettered gaze
in this glorious and fruitful world. By the
simple light of reason he tried to illuminate it ;
a natural law arose, a natural religion, and the
doctrine of a common-sense education.

It is true that at the same time, under an
increasingly one-sided development of the func-
tions of a rapidly growing reason, the imagina-
tive and poetic side of the mind and soul was
neglected ; indeed, even the development of the
will was retarded. So that the individual ap-
peared by himself — isolated — as a microcosm
separated from all others. But were not the
results stupendous, nevertheless? The Aufkla-
rung of the eighteenth century is indisputably
marked by a pronounced levelling, a character-
istic style of its own, which, properly speaking,
was the sum total of the results of the period,
and which, because in itself homogeneous, con-
tinues to work itself out with unabated strength
in our minds to-day, far more than the majority
of people suspect.

And, at least in the beginning, this new,

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 75

later so purely intellectual, psychic life was
alive and distinctly progressive in all other
directions. The political history of the sixteenth
century shows, in spite of all its conditioning
by religious motives, a clearness in the working
out of the will, which is lost later only in the
increasingly complicated cunning of an intel-
lectualistic diplomacy. In poetry it comes out
in a reproduction of the psychic life which
deals with satire of a realistic nature, on
the socio-psychic side and with attempts at
the psychic drama, on the individualistic side.
In plastic art, especially in the true understand-
ing of painting, the advance is extraordinary;
linear perspective is developed almost to the
point of a perfect mastery of its details; the
light problem, at first very summarily con-
sidered, is, by the Dutch schools of the seven-
teenth century, at least in certain conditions of
simple phenomena, artistically handled, and
in the world of color we have accordingly
a richness which had hitherto never been
dreamed of.

If we inquire about the immediate causes of
all these phenomena which we class together

WHAT IS HISTORY?

under the name of an individualistic psychic life,
an almost exclamatory answer is forced upon
us. What incredible upheavals of material and
political culture, what extensions of the moral
and mental horizon, have not the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries brought about! In the
towns from the fourteenth century on, under
the fertilizing influence of the nation's new
connection with ^the great currents of the
world's trade, an economic impulse was given
which was second to nothing in the nineteenth
century, and probably superior. And corre-
sponding to this one sees a thousand new
political phenomena, — the development of an
early spirit of adventure; the breaking up of
the socialistic character of the trade and craft
unions ; a shifting of the lines of caste in the old
patriciate and guilds ; the development of menial
work in the shape of domestic service and ap-
prenticeship ; the formation of a proletariat ; the
upheaval of constitutions ; the striving after the
levelling process of a new policy and a coarse
communism. Outside of the cities spring up nu-
merous states which first assume the rSle of a
patriarchal, then rationalistic, absolutism ; dissat-

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 77

isfaction prevails among the people, and social
revolutions come and go without effect; a
reactionary servitude is finally forced on the
lower classes, the duration of which would only
be determined by the weakness or strength of
the classes involved. Out of all this there
developed a class of nobles which, carried away
with the foreign ideal of Vhomme du monde,
sought the court of their gracious sovereigns,
but without cherishing any state policy of their
own. Add to this those events of universal
significance, — the voyages to the Indian seas,
the discovery of America ; the acquaintance with
the peculiar mediaeval culture of Peru and
Mexico; the acceptance of the Copernican sys-
tem ; the discoveries of Galileo ; Huygkens's in-
vestigations ; Newton's explanation of the orbit
of the planets ; and finally Leibnitz's views of
the world of nature and of history, and we have
some of the dynamic forces underlying the new
age.

These were impulses which brought to the
universal psychic life, particularly of the earlier
years of the new epoch, an untold amount of
new stimuli, new possibilities of association,

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78 WHAT IS HISTORY?

new developments of the will, new fields for
the imagination. And we can well understand
how they at first brought confusion. Not a
new illumination, rather a dissociation of the
existing psychic world was the first conse-
quence. In the chaos of the struggle between
old and new the intellect staggered, the pas-
sions became overheated, the conscience was
disturbed, and untold conflicts occurred between
existing and growing rights. But nevertheless,
between the cracks and crevices of an exploded
I culture, the new civilization steadily pushed its
way forward, though at first misunderstood,
laughed at, ridiculed ; in the plastic and graphic
arts there appears a new naturalism, a science
of the lumen naturale arises, and a belief in the
filial relation to God which nearly approached
transcendentalism takes the place of the old
more dependent faith. And when these new
1 phenomena had somewhat developed, new psy-
I chic values appear. Who would now wish to
dispense with God's Word as seen in Luther's
mind and doctrine ? who would leave out of the
count the new knowledge of the state and na-
ture, of man and the world ? As men became

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COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 79

conscious of the new values, they used them" - '
industriously in accordance with the harmonious
development of a cultural life which appeared
to them infinitely higher than the old. A new
psychic ideal rose victorious over the dissocia-
tive soul processes of the early time ; the new
idealism in art accepted the naturalistic gains
of the time and applied them in its own way.
New philosophies came to the front, and all the
phenomena of this new world so transformed by
science and discovery are subjected to them,
and pietistic ceremonials grew out of the soil
of the old as well as the new churches. In
fact, the picture of a psychic revolution rises up
before us, exorcised into existence by means of
a new material and social culture, and a marked
extension of the intellectual horizon ; it is, more-
over, the picture of contented accomplishment
of victory won by the undisputed powers of the I
mind.

Quite different appear at first sight the pro-
cesses which, about the middle of the eighteenth
century, made the transition from the individ-
ualistic period to that which goes by the name
of the age of Subjectivism, a new and more

WHAT IS HISTORY?

extended socio-psychic period. It is a period
in which creative work still goes on; for such
personalities as Herder and Goethe, Schiller and
Kant, still live with and in us. This epoch, the
first part of which begins with the appearance
of the so-called sentimentality, continues on
through the Sturm and Drang, Classicism and
Romanticism, Realism and degenerate Imitation,
down to the seventies of the nineteenth century,
to be followed by the beginnings of a second
subjective period, the psychic phenomena of
our own time.

This new age was introduced by no sort of
visible revolution. By the middle of the six-
teenth century, at latest, the great international
highways of trade had been turned aside from
Germany. Central Europe sank economically
into a lethargy, while the states and countries
along the Atlantic coast began to rise eco-
nomically. Hamburg and the Netherlands were
the only German states to profit by this change.
The decline of the German character, above all
of the German middle class, now sets in ; it was
hastened, and in a certain sense brought to a
close, by the terrible losses of the Thirty Years'

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 81

War. The age of powerful stimulus and uni-
versal historic achievement by the nation was
past. People withdrew within themselves, and
the sinking level of national culture gave rise
to an invasion of Germany for generations to
come of a foreign civilization with all its dis-
organizing effects.

But among all these characteristic phenomena
there was formed, about 1650, the substratum of
a new culture and of a future higher psychic
existence. The middle-class citizen was deprived
of an undivided interest in his economic calling,
yet not impoverished ; living partially on capital
which escaped the destructive hand of the Thirty
Years' War, he commanded many hours of lei-
sure, and he made use of them for his own spir-
itual and intellectual improvement. Hence the
rise, by degrees, of the greater part of the
so-called cultivated class, who about the year
1700 had spread over all parts of Germany,
the more important because, besides the purely
bourgeois professions, the greater part of brain-
workers, officials and savants, and not a few of
the nobility contributed to its rise. It was not

the purely political, rather, in many respects, it

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82 WHAT IS HISTORY?

was a purely intellectual, soil of a new psychic
life corresponding with the essential spirit of the
time, to which were added more and more,
chiefly by means of reading, an incalculable

i amount of new stimuli.

The first half of the eighteenth century wit-
nessed the rise in Germany of more than two
hundred and fifty newspapers and magazines
suited to the needs of an educated public. And
what was not discussed in these magazines!
Everything which was of interest to this age
of improvement, — poetry and philosophy, the
latter after the methods of Leibnitz, and things
more practical and political, too. In the course
of a thousand communications the curtain was
drawn aside and the events and conditions of
Europe began to come again into full view. The
public was taught to search the globe with its
gaze even to the farthest horizon of the ethno-
graphical world.

There were stimuli from which arose by
degrees a new psychic disposition ; the more so
as it allied itself with strong reactionary feel-
ings against the bald intellectualism of the dying

f age. It is true that every period at its close

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY

tends to intellectualize the new achievements of I
its culture. Thus the later Middle Ages end
with rationalization of the Gothic architecture
in a flamboyant style; in music there was]
hardly anything left but counterpoint the-
matic work; and philosophy wound up in
scholasticism. But the individualistic period,
which is characterized by an innate leaning
toward the cult of reason, inclined to this
rationalization, seeking especially an understand-
ing of the innermost soul-phenomena. What
was more natural than that the reaction on the
other hand should be the more pronounced and
lead straight on to the new period? Pietism,
sentimentality, Storm and Stress, are some of the
elements belonging here. They freed from long
servitude the functions of the psychic life which
sought a response in another psyche in feeling
and will. Now they burst forth with enthusiasm
and introduced the new period of Subje ctivism.
Now these were the psychic functions which first
characterize the personality of the time as sub-
ject-matter. Its emotional life develops from
the cult of friendship of the earlier days down
to the all-embracing national enthusiasm of the

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

nineteenth century ; and just as, from its cult of
the will, arises at first the idea of the genius of
power (Kraftgenies), so later follows the iron
policy of Bismarck.

Thus we come to recognize with great clear-
ness — for there are thousands of sources of
tradition — the process of the transition from
one age to another, and the impetus of psychic
dissociation whence are derived the complete and
characteristic dominant of modern times. We
can see how individuals who are in the full
current of the movement are subject to count-
lea, new stimuli, and, being particularly sua-
ceptible to them, are not at first able to control
this overwhelming influence. Again we see how
they change psychically. Being, so to speak, no
longer their own masters, they become too easily
open to suggestion, whether it be that they, if
of a tolerably creative nature, succumb to auto-
suggestion, and become thereby a prey to the
exaggerated conception of their own achieve-
ments, or yield to the stress of sentimental
negation and romantic irony, to " Weltschmerz "
and pessimistic tendencies ; or, be it that they,
inclining to socio-sensations, are influenced by

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 85

the new phenomena of the psychic life to such a
degree that their judgment degenerates into the
cult of genius, and their will becomes automatic
in the direction of personal capricious imaginings
and incomplete solutions of these moral problems
which, with the appearance of every new psychic
life, burst forth in overwhelming waves. But
where such a strong and nearly pathologic action
of new influences do not occur, we see the per-
sonality constantly weakened ; with the self-sac-
rificing spirit of the investigator of new things,
they yield completely to the new stimuli in

order to master them.

These are conditions which chiefly character-
ized the years of 1750 to 1780, and again from
1800 to 1810 and even later. In them, just
through this renunciation and readinessfor sug-
gestion, we gam a new^ deeper insight than ever
before into the wor ld of nature and spir it. In 1
art the first transitions to a realistic control of
light appear ; in poetry the more profound sys-
tematizing of the altruistic affectives, and, as the
functions of the will are gained, these find expres-
sion chiefly in the new psychological drama ; in
the mental sciences the " folk soul," the popular

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86 WHAT IS HISTORY?

psyche, is revealed, which sets in motion expe-
ditions into the domain of socio-psychic inves-
tigation, and with this discovery there runs
parallel the endeavor to place psychology in
general as a pure science outside of the domain
of metaphysical influence. The beginnings of
marked improvements in jurisprudence and poli-
tics are at once evident; the conception of in-
dividuality as a socio-psychical element leads to
a new conception of public life, which, by means
of the intermediate stage of personal control, is
to work itself up to the constitutional forms of
cooperative work for all. And legal procedure
no longer appears as the fruit of a constitution
imposed from above, but as the result of the
operations of the popular mind.

A new life such as this bursts forth in a thou-
sand shapes, and there was no side of the national
development from the lowest to the loftiest that
was not enriched by it.

The years are fast drawing near which will
gather into sheaves the luxuriant, growing seed-
lings and store them safe in the granaries of
national progress. After the Storm and Stress
come the Classicism of Schiller and Goethe, the

COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY 87

philosophy of Kant, and the state-reforms of
Prussia following the collapse of the year 1806.
Romanticism, which developed out of the long-
continuing undercurrents of the Storm and Stress
at the end of the eighteenth century, was suc-
ceeded by the Realism of the thirties and the
political unification of the nation as wrought
out in the years 1848 and 1866 to 1870. Men
began to understand themselves, and also this
new subjective existence, which, so unmistak-
able and real, had grown out of the time of
psychic dissociation of the earlier years of the
century. And with it the great idealistic phe-
nomena of the period began : the immortal crea-
tions of Schiller and Goethe, Ideal philosophy,
realistic natural science, the unification of the
nation to an economic life of unheard-of signifi-
cance, the political and constitutional formation
of the empire.

We have now reached our goal. The period
just described, that of Subjectivism since the
seventies of the century just past, must inevi-
tably be followed by another just beginning.
And that cannot now be discussed in full. But
it is hoped that the contents of this lecture have

WHAT IS HISTORY?

been such as to give us a general survey of the
development of the Germans as a nation. An-
other question has been raised, and all the more
definitely, for we have advanced into later times
with increasing material at command : this will
claim our attention at our next meeting. The
question of greatest general interest, which arises
here not only for Germany but also for other
countries, is whether similar psychic processes
mark their historical development, such as those
described under the terms Symbolism, Typism,
Conventionalism, Individualism, and Subjec-
tivism.

It is plain, therefore, that we are now con-
fronted with the problem of the psychic mech-
anism of the periods of culture. That such a
question can be put, appears evident from the
materials now available. How is it to be an-
swered, and how solved ? The next lecture will
be an attempt to show this by means of the mar
terial already in use, as well as by taking into
consideration the latest socio-psychic changes.

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LECTURE III

THE TRANSITION TO THE PSYCHIC CHAR-
ACTER OF THE GERMAN PRESENT; UNI-
VERSAL MECHANISM OF PSYCHIC PERIODS
OF TRANSITION

LECTURE in

THE TRANSITION TO THE PSYCHIC CHARACTER
OP THE GERMAN PRESENT ; UNIVERSAL MECH-
ANISM OF PSYCHIC PERIODS OF TRANSITION

We have outlined the development of the
German people from its very beginning to the
nineteenth century, and have noted how all out-
ward events get the impress of their time and
epoch. We saw that, after an age of symbol-
ism in psychic life, say down to the third cen-
tury A.D., there followed an era in which every-
thing conformed to certain types, say down to
the Salic line of emperors ; that this again was
followed by the conventionalism of the Hohen-
staufen and of the later Middle Ages ; that
afterwards the mighty era of individualism set
in with the Reformation and the Renaissance,
which was in turn succeeded by the so-called age
of the Auf klarung ; that finally there ensued, tak-
ing its origin about the middle of the eighteenth
century, the era of subjectivism, — including the

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

movements of Sentimentalism and Storm and
Stress, of Classicism and Romanticism, — the
first period of which ended about the year 1870.
We belong to-day to its second period, which, it
seems, is already approaching its end.

In this rapid enumeration of the vast psychic
changes which are included in the course of
these ages, we have always tried to follow up
one particular moment, paying more and more
attention to it as the sources continued to
increase, the moment in which the transition
of one age into the other took place. Our
presentiment, at first vague,— typical events of
the psychic mechanism of transition constantly
recurring, — finally took the shape of definite
assumption, so that to test it by facts seemed
to be essential.

It is evident at first sight that recent facts
which mark another transition are of special
importance for such a test, since we have now
so much better material for observation. We
have, therefore, discussed this point more at
length and in more detail than usual. It is
especially the transition to our present period of
history that brings us to the point in question.

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 93

It is highly instructive and it also serves our
purpose to observe more closely the changes
which have led to our own epoch. I have
delayed a discussion of these phenomena until
to-day, in order to enter somewhat more into
detail.

A consideration of these events requires,
even in so short a time as we have at our dis-
posal, a somewhat general characterization of
the psychological mechanics which underlies
them, and this, as I think it will be shown, at
least in so far as the nature of our data will
allow, is identical with the psychological mo-
ments which have attended the earlier tran-
sition epochs of our history, a fact which is not
surprising, since the whole process is certainly
the outcome of general psychological laws.

The stage of evolution at which the Ger-
man people have arrived was brought about
through most radical economic, social, and
political changes — changes which go back as far
as the last decades of the eighteenth century.
There appeared, even at that early date, in the
country as well as in the towns, something
of the modern " Unternehmerthum " (spirit of

WHAT IS HISTORY?

enterprise); the owners of manorial estates
in the northeastern part of Germany engaged
in a considerable corn-export, especially to Eng-
land, changed their wealth into capitalistic form,
and began to sever the seigniorial and patriarchal
relations with their villagers, looking toward the
development of a class of agrarian wage-workers ;
the rising industrialists of the middle classes
founded here and there their manufacturing
plants. But these were only beginnings. Not
till after the wars of independence did a some-
what stronger growth succeed under the influ-
ence of the newly awakened energy and as a
result of a new unifying commercial policy,
which was aimed at by the agrarian legislation
of the Prussian reform-movement. Not until
the years of Eeaction so often misunderstood,
not until after 1848, was there a full develop-
ment of modern industry and capitalistic agri-
culture in Germany.

There appeared at this time, however, strong
indications of what the result of the new system
would be. The rapidly growing class of wage-
workers had as yet made no general movement ;
the enormous emigration of the time testifies

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 95

to the radical social changes going on. The
country noblemen do not seem to have much
changed, though the psychology of the social
groups behind the Prussian government of the
time of reaction is still to be investigated. But
in the towns there sprang up during the forties
a new class of industrial workers, and there
appeared, in contrast to it, a new citizen aristoc-
racy produced by the bourgeois spirit of enter-
prise long since in process of development, —
beginnings of our present system of production.

In the meantime, however, while these politi-
cal and social changes slowly went on, the mo-
mentous political changes of the period of the
unification of Germany gave to the country an
altogether new social and intellectual outlook:
1848 was followed by 1866 and 1870.

After the creation of the empire and after the
establishment of the close reciprocal relations
with Austria, we find a new set of conditions,
which now gave the first opportunity for the
development of inner political and social ideals.
The peace of 1871 was immediately followed by
a turbulent forward move, which was somewhat
stifled by the Berlin Crisis; but there began

WHAT IS HISTORY?

soon afterward, under the cover of a protective
tariff policy, which at once appeared to be indis-
pensable, that growth of German industry which
is still continuing, and which has even given, by
its extraordinary intensity, another character to
the country itself. Still, this development was
not without a bitter after-taste ; agriculture did
not share the fruits of the new situation, because
it suffered by foreign competition, and thus the
social elevation of those dependent upon it has
not been realized.

Under the constant growth of population, a
rapid rise of the entrepreneur classes, of the
bourgeois manufacturers and merchants as well
as of the fourth class, takes place ; the impor-
tance of this movement is evidenced in the for-
mation and growth of other classes. The rise of
new professions changed at the same time the
whole character of the old social classification.
Farmers, artisans, and last, but not least, the
different classes of intellectual workers, so nu-
merous in Germany, and to which belong not
only the so-called liberal professions and the
officials, but also the army officers, all received
an entirely different standing; the semi-sacred-

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 97

ness of the position of the latter classes disap-
pears, and they must now prove their economic
value to the community by their deeds. Socially
and politically the older orders suffered most by
the radical changes which took place.

And yet it is clear that all these effects of the"!
new economic development and class-formations
were by no means the most general and the most
profound. It was more important by far that
the soul of the nation in general had been stirred
up, that the old methods of thought and asso-
ciation had disappeared, and that they were
replaced, for the moment, by a chaos of formi- •
dable extent. This vast psychic and intellectual
revolution was re'enforced by other influences.
The development which took place in Ger-
many was not an isolated one; it had begun
in other lands, too : in the countries of Europe
and beyond the ocean, especially in North Amer-
ica and Japan. The effects of these changes "1 A
were in the main produced by the rise of the
technical sciences, which totally revolutionized
the means of communication : the world appeared
altogether different ; experience was widened in
a thousand directions ; and the foreign policies

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

of nations had to be changed. These psychic
changes were indirectly augmented by the cir-
cumstance that science with vastly increased
activities began to search the remotest corners
of the new domain of experience. Spectro-
analysis is applied to celestial bodies, while the
purely human affairs of this earth are subjected
to all the scrutiny of ethnographical and his-
^ torical science.

It is impossible to enter into the details of all
these changes, and it is not necessary. We can
easily call to mind the most important of them.
What engages our attention here is their psychic
effect, particularly in Germany, though the phe-
nomena, thus limited to a narrow field, will in
most cases be of the same nature as those which
have been observed elsewhere,
f - * The first effect of the revolution is a complete
dissociation of the former socio-psychic condi-
tions. The social changes with the resulting in-
crease of city activity, with its nervous haste and
anxiety, its unscrupulous abuse of individual
energy, progress of the technical arts, and the
extraordinary multiplication of the means of
communication throughout the world, the rapid

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 99

development of all the sciences which deal
directly with man, followed this enlargement of
life : all these and a thousand other moments of
modern development produced a great number
of new stimuli, which neither the individual nor
the community could escape ; for they formed
in their totality, so to speak, a new historical
atmosphere. But the individual as well as the
soul of the people as a whole, being continually
surrounded, besieged, and permeated by a flood
of new impressions, soon lost the former self-
mastery and weakly yielded to the new stimuli.
This went on, in the beginning, under a strong
repulsion of the higher moments of will ; energy
was absorbed in a high degree by the accepta-
tion and augmentation of the new stimuli, and
was thus limited to an energetic volition in
economic life and to a marked receptiveness in
the domains of the higher intellectual culture.
Moral standards 1 and intellect were taxed to the
utmost; they were subjected to the perpetual
assault of the new stimuli. This is the cause
of the general nervous excitement, which now
began and which often came to light in patho-

1 u Anschauung."

100 WHAT IS HISTORY ?

logical investigations, — it was now that neuras-
thenia was discovered as a special form of
disease, — and which has not abated until to-
day, but rather entered into the very psychic
nature of the present and has become a con-
stituent of the excitability 1 or mental attitude
L, of the age.

There appeared hand in hand with this in-
creased irritability, according to the law of
interaction, and as a sort of accompaniment, a
condition of motor-psychic weakness : quick but
shallow excitation of the will and a strong ten-
dency to the enjoyment of excitation became
general, because the much-desired compromise
of excitations was never produced; excitations
followed each other so rapidly that the even
temper of mind, the cequitas animi of the
ancients, was only seldom acquired.

These -were, and partly still are, conditio ns
which can be observed in all departments o f
life, but most distinctly among the entrepreneu r
class and in the new society. The entrepreneurs,
the social and political leaders of the upper
bourgeoisie, are above all typical representatives

1 " Reizsamkeit."

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TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 101

of this modern Reizsamkeit. How does this
class of men despair during great economic crises,
then how rash are they in periods of prosperity !
And how irregular do these people appear in
their pleasures, when, after the excitement of
the day, they repair either to the exciting
charms of color and form in a modern home
or to the modern theatre or concert-hall, where
the mind is kept in constant tension!

Even the laboring classes created under the
new conditions are subject to similar, though
modified, psychic impressions ; up to what degree
is shown by the fact that special forms of
psychosis, as, e.g., the traumatic one, have ap-
peared in that class as well as with their
employers. Have the older classes remained
untouched by the modern psychic state of ex-
citability? We can hardly say positively that
the peasants themselves, since they have ex-
changed their chalk-accounts on the wall-door
for the ledger and begin to read the market
quotations, remain untouched, not to speak of
the artisans, who have been seized by the rush
of industrialism in the cities. What of the intel-
lectual classes ? The new nervosity is winning

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102

WHAT IS HISTORY?

its way among them in various unobserved, and
therefore most devastating, forms.

This Reizsamkeit is something new. It is &
form of socio-psychic dissociation that did not
exist in earlier times; even the forms of dis-
sociation of the first period of subjectivism,
sentimentalism, and romanticism are, in spite of
all typical similarity of the progress of events,
intrinsically different; and it would be one of
the finest and most attractive tasks of mod-
ern socio-psychological detail-investigation to fix
this difference in its minutest variations by
means of an extensive comparison of the two
classes of historical data.

The new and very marked state of soul-life,
brought about under the influence of innumer-
able new stimuli, began immediately to produce
new elements of culture. It is the transition
to the psychic life of recent ivears, as contrasted
with the last appearances of the psychic life of
the first " subjectivistic " period, as contrasted
with the realism of the natural and mental
sciences of the thirties to the sixties of the last
century, as contrasted further with the epi-
gonistic philosophy following Hegel, and of the

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 103

inadequate Rubens-Rembrandt colorists' system
in the domain of painting, as contrasted with
the gilt-edged Liliputian lyric, 1 the professorial-
novel, the feuilleton style, and the theatre of
Paul Lindau in the domain of poetry. This
is, especially in the domain of the imagina-
tion, the transition to open-air painting and im-
pressionism. N
These movements began in Germany as far
back as the seventies; they become clear, de-
cided, revolutionary, and finally victorious in the
eighties. It was the era of a new naturalism in
which one discovers, in the exterior appearance of
things, new features, new sides, and new qualities.
Liebermann and von Uhde were beginning their
careers ; Liliencron was producing his wonder-
fully detailed poetry, the truest to nature yet
known, also his battle songs of 1870. Indeed,
it was the epoch of the new naturalistic novel,
and of the short story with its complete sub-,,
ordination to the minutiae of life. But soon
the devotion, with which it had been applied
to the immediate reproduction of the exterior
world, begins to extend to the inner life ; there

» "Butzenacheibenlyrik."

104

WHAT IS HISTORY?

appears by the side of the physiological im-
pressionism, replacing it partly since the end
| of the eighties, a new psychological art. The
art of painting begins now to seize the im-
pressionist qualities of subjects; and efforts are
made in the novel and drama to portray natural
processes which had hitherto never developed
into consciousness, or to reproduce them in the
mind of the hearer by exciting the feelings;
lyric poetry, too, aims at a most delicate repro-
duction of the stimuli, the audition colorie,
the colored sensations of touch, the sounding
taste, the tasting sense of words. These are
the years of the fully developed naturalism of
the open air, of a fertile lyric of the highest
perfection of form, — the brightest period of
Skarbina and Kiihl, of Stephan George and
, Hofmannsthal.

/ Not only the works of the imagination, but

also those of science, are subordinated to the new
psychic state. The natural scientist and the
psychologist make their investigations under
pressure of an unheard-of nervous tension; the
historian penetrates the depths of the develop-
ment and life of individuals and tries to become

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TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 105

the master of a most refined individual-psycho-
logic method and style. Under these circum-
stances science, having a tendency to minute
division of labor, comes into closest contact
with artistic naturalism; however, the inter-
mingling of the two in Germany was not so
complete as in France. German culture has
not yet produced such a man as Taine, the his-
torical artist of petite documents; nor a Zola, to
whom the novel was an ceuvre scientifique and a
collection only of documents humains. f

As imagination and intellect were worked out
upon the basis of Reizsamkeit, so in the realm of
feeling and of volition we find a similar devel-
opment from the same foundation. By the cir-7
cumstance that the memory could not master
at once the innumerable stimuli, — and from
this comes the complaint of a supposed diminu-
tion of the strength of memory and of an over-
pressure on memory, especially of young people,
— the emotions were touched; a state of con-
tinual excitement was produced, which was but
too easily combined with the general nervous
excitement of the new period. ^

Thus was bred a pathos of the individual,

106

WHAT IS HISTORY?

but a rather shallow one; constant excitement
seemed to be a sign of constant happiness.
Since these formed the basis of the freer devel-
opment of impressionistic art and science, it is
clear that they were again characterized and
made fertile by the same. Shading off into
the almost imperceptible, objective unconscious
growth became the watchword; the slightest
variations in color, the indefinite titillation by
minimal dissonances of the tones, the gentle
rustling audible in the building and the inte-
rior rooms, suggestive silence in conversation,
were sought. By way of contrast people seek
deafening music, a life in the streets filled
with the greatest discords of movement, of
visual phenomena, and of tones ; business-meeir
ings are characterized by craftiness in the set-
tling of material interests, competition and the
idea that " might makes right " take precedence ;
on all sides there is hypertrophy of enjoyment
or of success.

But there was to be found — in spite of these
efforts to build a new home of the soul full of
inner harmony — susceptibility to suggestion
and receptivity to the most important questions

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TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 107

of life. With conservative natures the value
of that which bears the stamp of age, that
which looks old, even, appears all-important, —
what has been done must continue to be done.
Clerical and political feudalism thus remains
triumphant, and there arises by the side of
the archaic forms of intolerance the intolerant
self-advertisement of chauvinism. But to those*
individuals, however, whose temperaments ever
lead them forward to new ideas and new values,
it is given to understand, according to the
strength or weakness of their perception,
the most characteristic criteria of an epoch.^
The first class feel in themselves the over-
whelming impulse to deny, to dispute, even
destroy everything which seems to be novel;
and thus this period begins with pessimism,
whose superior power has been the undoing of
the lives of many, chiefly juvenile, creative
natures, and it closes with the tragic person
of Nietzsche, and the consummation of his
fate, which is to a certain extent typical of
the time. Wherever the desire for negation in
creative natures, who become all too easily
presumptuous, even imagining themselves to be

108

WHAT IS HISTORY?

demigods, 1 turns in the direction of monomania,
and thereby begins to become positive, a fatal
neologism appears, a worship of the novel, of the
extraordinary. Thus the word " sensational"
becomes a fashionable expression, especially in
the first period of Reizsamkeit ; spiritualism and
thaumaturgism, belief in the mysterious, mark its
further progress. Combining neologism and neg-
ativism, we meet the cult of the hateful, of the
decaying, and of the perverse, and a tendency to
psychic prostitution, which is so characteristic
of a considerable part of the early impression-
istic literature, especially of that produced by
women.

Parallel to the auto-suggestion of creative
natures we find the suggestibility, the blind
devotion of receptive individuals, of the masses :
thus is produced a real automatic action of
emotion and of will, and a formation of cliques
and hero-worshippers, and as a result of these
two influences it comes to be the fashion both
to admire and to persecute independent persons.

The socio-psychical side of individualism suf-
fers because of these social tendencies. The

1 " Ubermenschen."

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TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 109

former motives of activity for the average citi-
zen have almost entirely disappeared; former
religious and moral ideals no longer influence
men vitally; an egotism, devoid of higher con-
trol, develops economically, under the badge of
free competition, into formidable proportions and
governs politically, under the mask of a policy
of power (Machtpolitik), not only the tendencies
of expansion of the nations, but also the very
motive and purpose of science.

But have all these forms of dissociation of the
old socio-psychic state been actually completed ?
And have they remained without counter-effects
which annihilated at once a part of their influence,
or prevented its development ? Have the con-
ditions, as described above in their sad and
broken tones, ever actually existed ?

These are questions which can be answered
somewhat in the negative. In the very begin-
ning of the dissociation there set in at once a
process of new formation ; and the very elements
of dissociation are, considered from another
point of view, so to speak, positively charged
and contain creative power. Has there not
arisen, in the last decades of the nineteenth

110

WHAT IS HISTORY?

century, out of the imaginative activity of dis-
sociation, a new and higher naturalism, that of
the impressionist? And has there not arisen
out of the dissociation of the former combina-
tions of volition a new economic view of life and
a hitherto unknown system of national and uni-
versal politics ?
y However, beginning at this point in the pro-
cess, a tendency to build up and to classify sets
in. The social psyche finds again the core of
its life ; it looks for a new vantage-point in the
flood of new phenomena. Thus the movement
is continued under a new dominant note, under
a new order of inner life ; and it can be observed
clearly that this movement, becoming especially
prominent about the year 1890, is continually
gaining ground.

Imaginative activity assumes the lead, and its
outward expression is again especially clear and
significant. In plastic art as well as in poetry a
standard of excellence, especially in the repro-
duction of the natural world, has been reached
which surpasses all former efforts ; the repro-
duction of new life-phenomena, of .the various
soul-activities, was next attempted. But whilst

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TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 111

men thus occupied themselves with practical
psychology, or even almost practical neurology,
the' standpoint was gradually shifted. The
psyche, which, being engaged ordinarily in the
observation of one's own inner life, now becomes
the object of contemplation, begins as it were
to become the subject of its own efforts, and thus
projects its own character on the objective obser-
vation. Thus, when the dissector is about to
dissect himself, the inner life reacts in the shape
of a stronger accentuation of personality. And
so what Wundt calls Apperception begins to
play an important rdle: a new dominant has
been won. This process was at first slow and
sometimes invisible; naturalistic descriptions
partook largely of personal fancy and mood ;
a quiet lyric tone characterizes this class of
work; something harmonious envelopes and
permeates it. Symbolism in painting and lyric
poetry makes its appearance now along with the
revival of the fairy-tale and the dreamlike drama,
a sort of bewitching theatrical illusiveness en-
veloping it all.

But this was not all. Several great masters
— especially those who had, even in the begin-

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112 WHAT IS HISTORY?

ning of the period of general transition, if not
earlier, anticipated the psychic tone of the new
period — had developed a strongly marked style:
Bitzius and Ludwig, Hebbel and Anzengniber,
Feuerbach and Bocklin, Thoma and Klinger,
to name only the most important They found
themselves in full vogue; having attained dis-
tinction in the eighties, they were triumphant
masters before the close of the century. It was
seen that the general yearning was fulfilled in
them, the longing for a new fully developed
personality, embracing and personifying the
elements of the latest culture, for a personal
command over the surging chaos of the new
stimuli.

f* In thousands of cases this longing after new
things took a socio-psychic tone. The demand
of the time was not merely for strong and self-
contained individuals, but for a new system of
morals, a new philosophy, and a new religion ;
the realization of these ideals took the form
of an entirely original poetry. The climax of
these aspirations for a new dominant, which
seems to have been reached during the last five
years, has brought a sort of initial stage of a

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 113

new style in plastic art as well as in poetic J
idealism.

Science has again taken the direction parallel ^
to that of imaginative activity, and is advancing
farther along in this way. Even in the natural
sciences, which, in the course of two centu-
ries, had developed the law of conservation of
energy, as being a general hypothesis seemingly
suited to all phenomena of nature, and being thus
protected from all dissociations of its general
basis, the merciless spirit of the new period
has pointed out many occurrences which seem-
ingly did not agree with this law; e.g. the
catalytic and radio-active phenomena. These
have yet to be subjected to minute research;
and efforts have already been made to establish,
with reference to them, a modern theory of
energy.

It is obvious, however, that, in a time
great psychic changes, the intellectual sciences
would be thrust into the foreground. In this
very domain a strong reaction set in against the
unsystematic, individualistic investigation of the
last decades ; an analysis of the phenomena, to
be made from new points of view, was required,

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114 WHAT IS HISTORY?

and thus one came to the paramount methodical
principle that, in the phenomena of intellectual
life, the innermost, psychologic proceedings
should be clearly understood, so that their re-
duction to general laws might be possible, be it
laws of psychological mechanics or of evolution
or biology. This is the impulse which is coming
more and more to dominate the intellectual
sciences, and the goal is a new synthesis rather
(^than the detail work of the last few years.

When thus the imaginative and intellectual
activities entered into the vast sea of modern
stimuli, taxing their own lines of development
towards new dominants, a general stimulus
seems to have been applied. Men began to
collect their forces again in the several lines of
human endeavor; personal motives and aims
were soon more clearly defined and often not
quite so high-flown; the excessive demands of
the so-called Ubermensch 1 gave place to the
more simple and yet entirely modern postulates
as well of individuals as of the state, and in
society. Ethical movements with high-set altru-
istic aims begin to take form — a universal

1 " tfbermenschentum."

TRANSITION TO PRESENT CONDITIONS 115

peace being one of the chief of these; a so-
called aristocratic feeling or appearance became
the first demand of cultivated society; piety
was no longer considered a luxury ; the former
exchange of aesthetic and religious devotion
disappeared, nobody regretting or perceiving
its loss. The great unifying elements, society
and the state, gain the first place in men's minds,
and that not because of the influence of a distin-
guished personality, like that of Prince Bis-
marck, but as a result of entirely new tendencies
and motives in the lives of individuals. Unrea-
sonable economic competition was first attacked ;
new legislation corresponding to recently de-
veloped social-moral ideals was enacted; men
felt the old avenues of progress, opened by the
laissez-faire policy of the years just passed,
closed by the new ideals of a growing moral
and clerical cosmopolitanism.

These are the latest movements; with this
description we have arrived at the very gates of
the present.

Let us now proceed to the second problem,
whose solution is the concluding part of this
lecture. Out of the detailed description of the

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116

WHAT IS HISTORY?

socio-psychic transitions, which led from the
last period of culture up to the present time,
and out of the descriptions of similar transi-
tions leading from one cultural age to another
(given in the first lecture), we must try to
develop the typical picture of such phenomena
of transition. And this requires us to draw
from the motley crowd of single processes their
psychologic essence. The resulting psychologi-
cal force which is recognized to be at the bottom
of all our observations will then be traced
through all its stages of growth.

In accordance with these requirements note
first the beginnings of the socio-psychic changes.
We see at once in each individual example, be-
cause of an overplus of new forces, the reflex
of a host of influences, — stimuli, events, and
facts. And all these things act more or less
sharply upon the inner life of every contempo-
rary, whether he will or no. The influence of
these stimuli becomes stronger, the more they
are reen forced by the psychic triumphs which
grow out of the contrasting of the effects
of psychic events which have disappeared, or
which are just vanishing, with the new ones.

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 117

Considered from a purely psychological point of
view, what is the outcome of these motor-forces ?

They produce new experiences of self-con-" - ^
sciousness. And there are formed accordingly
new bases of sensation and observation and of
their complexes, further on new relations of the
ego, and finally new contents of ideas, which
correspond to all these new subjects of self-
consciousness. Besides, feelings (which always
accompany these proceedings) are produced, —
aspiration, volition, etc. And these changes of
the contents of self-consciousness as well as of
the phenomena of feeling, which accompany
them, consist in differentiation, modulation, and
shading off of the various classes of sensations
already considered. But does this result, this— J
sum of new contents of self-consciousness and
feelings, produce a new historical life ? Have
we in these a certain precipitate of that new__
life? It is necessary now to go on from the
results and symptoms already observed to the
events themselves. If we do this, there appear,
according to well-known psychological laws, as
active constituents of these events, only sensa-
tions, perceptions, associations, and dispositions.

118

WHAT IS HISTORY?

It is evident that in the psychic processes
themselves, which come into consideration here,
the moment of volition appears somewhat to
recede; less influenced by this and hardly
touched at all by the feeling of aspiration, the
psychic processes take place according to certain

V^.laws. And we therefore see clearly at this stage
of our discussion why t he history of culture in
fthe truest sense has to do less with the compli-
icated psychic processes (as they occur even in
I the most simple activity of will) than with the
/ more self-evident incidents of sensation, percep-
tion, and ass odation. Still more. The last-
named incidents are in fact historically the
more elementary, and, therefore, those most

P easily recognized. The history of culture be-
comes the fundamental branch of historical
research, as it is, above all, and essentially,
based on psychical phenomena and treats only
by the way the particularist tendencies. For in
what other way can a fundamental historical
science be developed, if not by going back to

J the most elementary experiences of the soul-life ?
All the secrets of the natural sciences have not
been unlocked either by a single master key

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 119

such as the philosopher's stone, or by a system
of natural philosophy, but by the solution of
quite elementary problems, such as the inclined
plane or the laws of gravitation.

When, however, in times of transition from
one cultural epoch to another, the excitations of
these elementary incidents throng into the soul
in unusually great numbers and, at the same
time, in unaccustomed forms and in new quali-
ties, the former equilibrium is disturbed. If one - *
distinguishes in the soul-life, considered from the
historical viewpoint, between the actualities of
rising sensations, aspirations, and feelings, and
a feeling which, as it were, governs and regu-
lates them, a certain dominant would seem to
have regulated up to this time the proceedings
of actuality, due to well-known stimuli and inci-
tations. But on the other hand, it turns out
that this is no longer the case. The new era
with its innumerable stimuli creates cMier forms
of psychic experience, which remain foreign to
the old dominant This dominant, so to speak,
the very kernel of personality, yields its fore-
most position, or, at least, loses a part of its con-
trolling influence. -J

120

WHAT IS HISTORY?

As a result, particularly in the field of
intuition, the individual sense-impressions are
no longer so clearly marked : forms of transition
between the single effects of the stimuli begin to
appear. And in the same way in the field of
pure reason, argument and counter-argument, per-
ception and counter-perception, are inextricably
commingled ; reason is superseded by mere sup-
position, by views based on general impressions.
These are dissociations of the former psychical
unity, relaxations of the existing unity-relations
of empirical associations. This breaking-up
process leads gradually to the auto-suggestion of
certain sensations, which are thought to be
especially modern, and of certain judgments, by
which personality appears as being changed in
an arbitrary way ; or it may lead to suggestions
of similar sensations and judgments in an inde-
pendent manner.

A similar process takes place in the domain
[of volition. Here, and especially in the fore-
ground, as it were, of volition, in the aspi-
rations, there stand facing each other two
elements in the inner man: on the one side
the active aspiration, belonging to the dominant

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 121

of the personality, the tendency of the ego ; on
the other the impulses proceeding from the sur-
roundings, a passive compulsion of outer influ-
ences. If these somewhat outward impulses
prevail, or if they are merely marked in a rela-
tively stronger way, there ensues a certain tar-
diness in final decisions, which — whilst the
realization of the aspirations of the ego is
always accompanied by pleasurable feelings —
expresses itself in a painful vacillation and, at
the worst, in pessimism 1 and melancholia. It
may even happen that under the influence of
external things, especially if they come with the
pressing claims of being new, modern, that the
source of aspiration and soul of individuality is
almost choked out ; that, viewed from the stand-
point of the individual, a certain automatic
action of will results; that there arise certain
aspirations which cannot be repelled ; and that,
wherever an epidemic suggestion puts into action
the imitative instinct of the masses, extravagant
modes and mental disorders impel to a universal
madness. Though we certainly shall not lay
down the law that these exterior consequences

1 " Weltachmerz."

122

WHAT IS HISTORY?

have appeared regularly everywhere just at the
point of transition to present-day culture, it even
is evident that they existed in many instances
at earlier transitional periods; that they were
not totally wanting during the last transitions ;
and that, at any rate, a certain dissociation of
^aspirations was characteristic in a general way.
In consequence of these events the manifesta-
tion of individualistic energy often takes a some-
what morbid form ; unsettled and weak already,
the individual is continually excited and, being
in this state, he yields to associations, percep-
tions, and interests which would otherwise be
excluded because of the feeling of lethargy at-
tached to them. The phenomena of negativism,
self-torture, and perverseness belong, to a certain
extent, to this domain. If one goes still more
nearly to the roots of this connection, one re-
marks that the question turns on the energy
of the aim-perceptions. If these remain souS
and well grounded, there arises a very decided
freedom of the will, and abnormal aims
are wanting. If, on the contrary, this sense be
more or less weakened, aspirations are directed,
either in passionate impulsiveness or in blind

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 123

confidence, to aims which would appear under
normal conditions as being at least very difficult
of attainment, if not impossible. Ordinarily, a
vacillation between the attendant feelings sets in,
which produces the most different, often the most
delicately varying, alternations between light-
mindedness and passion. All these phenomenal
— as can be shown from the above — are char-
acteristic of the transition to our presenirday
culture as well as of former transitions. But
this is not all. The motor^onception may, in
such a constellation and under the influence of
contrary notions, retire, so to speak, into itself,
so that nothing remains but an aspiration devoid
of will and force : a general discouragement can
only be the consequence. It is a well-known - ^
fact that this has been the case, at least for a
while, at times of new economic crises and in
similar phenomena, when the compulsion of pas-
sive, exterior counter-tendencies had attained an
especially high degree of power. %

Further, it is very characteristic that in a
psychical epoch almost without a ruling ideal,
bereft, as it were, of its very heart, the tendency
to exhaust one's vital power in the existing

124 WHAT IS HISTORY?

psychic functions manifests itself in an abnor-
mal devotion to externals; one may say, in a
positive sacrifice of individuality. This is the
view which lies at the foundation of every
nationalistic movement in the art of our time.
If, however, this tendency is permitted to go to
extremes, the most remarkable forms of curiosity
arise, — a love for the deformed, the desire to
penetrate into one's own inner life objectively,
a craving for self-torture and self-mutilation,
and, finally, even to commit suicide. And
there is developed in the same way enjoyment
of uneasiness, a sort of painful pleasure, a taste
for dissonance of colors and of tones, delight in
extravagances, in the fortissimo of music, and
in loud and gaudy architecture.

This is why, at the beginning as well as the
end of an epoch of this dissociation, the so-
called mixed sensations play an important part.
These consist in transition feelings between
pleasure and discomfort, because there is a pleas-
ure which consists largely of pain, bitter-sweet
feelings ; e.g. the sensation of greenish yellow, etc.
To this class belongs also the decided develop-
ment of sentimental feelings ; that is to say, the

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STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 125

feelings of deep emotion, of tender sadness,
and especially of humor; and again we have
here the intensification of tragic sensations,
which produced during the nineties of the last
century a short but characteristic growth and
development of dramatic art.

If we try to find, in the general course of
the development, once more the fundamental
motifs of these phenomena, we shall perhaps
agree upon the following: individuality first - ?
yields to the overwhelming influences of a new,
overpowering external world; then comes a
decided reaction, yet without disturbing the
inner counterpoise which marks the limit of
sensation ; the essence of individualism becomes
more stirred up than before. There rise con-
ceptions which, without the former control, lead
to sudden and new judgments ; external impulses
are felt which cause, in consequence of the
absence of sufficiently strong counter-motives,
rash and unusual actions. Under these in-
fluences the ego is itself transformed. Whilst
on one side the new, rich, and varying in-
fluences are overcoming the essence of per-
sonality, on the other that peculiar harmony

126 WHAT IS HISTORY?

which hitherto dominated the more modest
experiences is sacrificed. Devotion, or, more
correctly speaking, the yielding, to the new
stimuli, leads in art to a naturalism which reveals
more deeply than ever before the motives of the
outer as well as of the inner life, which abolishes,
|^ however, as far as possible, the temperament ; as,
for example, in Zola's definition of a work of
art as a coin de nature vu a trovers un tempera-
ment. Yielding to these notions hinders the
formation of collected judgments and at the
same time the inner necessity of formulating
an opinion on the cosmic position of man ;
action becomes subject to sudden impulses and
often degenerates through them to the extremes
of extravagance and weakness,
p To put the whole matter in a few words, we
may say that individuality becomes suggestive in
a very high degree to the external world. And
since this is its constant position, individualism
becomes self-suggestive too ; if it surrenders
to the deceptions of auto-suggestion, it is at
the same time more given over to the effects
of the broad unconscious substrata of the new
psychic life. Therefrom arise again new forms

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STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 127

of intuition, judgments, and acts, and in this
way new spheres of inner life, which lay, up to'
this time, under the threshold of consciousness,
are made distinctly visible : thus admittance is
gained to new shades of sensation, conception,
aspiration, and activity.

But this condition of the soul is dangerous
in itself, and contemporaries, as a rule, recog-
nize that this is the case. But how can it
be remedied ? Given the new world of phe- \
nomena, the immense sum of new stimuli, it
cannot be set aside; it becomes rather the
task of the inner personal life to adapt itself
to surroundings.

For this two things are required. First, a ^
greater breadth of soul must be gained ; that is to
say, the psychic power must be increased, so that
the possibility of the simultaneous absorption of
the new and more various psychic influences arises.
Secondly, the soul must not only absorb this
new world, but govern it from a certain centre.
And thereto is required the complete realization
of two different psychic proceedings. The soul
must know, on one side, how to distinguish, to
separate, and to analyze the new movements and

128

WHAT IS HISTORY?

stimuli. But there belongs to this Divide also
an Impera. Thus the mass of stimuli already
described must be brought together through the
soul, linked together, and despite all difficulties
rendered serviceable to the inner ideal, to the
dominant of personality in a last synthesis, after

I all contradictions have been removed.

^ It can, of course, happen that this way is not
found at once ; and, according to a well-tested
and apparently unbroken rule, the signs of a
transition period appear at this juncture ; and in
the particular instance of the transition to the
culture of the present day, which has quickly
gone by, though it has about lasted through the
life of one generation.

One sees that the necessary psychic breadth,
or, which is the same thing, the new psychic
power of assimilation, is only slowly gained. The
mind k not equal in the beginning to a complete
mastery of the new phenomena. Hardly more
satisfactory have been the attempted analyses
of the phenomena of the present times. The
sense of arrangement and classification is not
yet sufficiently developed ; even in the practical
management of business affairs the number of

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 129

those who do not succeed is constantly increas-
ing. Even more wanting is the command over - !
the new forces. Science sticks to mere descrip-
tion, is devoted to mere objective study; art
pays homage to a naturalism which is grad-
ually becoming barren; idealism lingers in the
same domain, for both imagination and reason
have failed to reach out beyond the transient
and the small detail work and to present the
other departments of human endeavor with new
materials. ^

At the same time, altruism, and all that is \
connected with it, the sense of fellowship among
men, capacity for self-sacrifice, moral idealism,
— all these tendencies are being crowded to the
wall ; egoism rules the day.

If this continues without interruption, it is
quite clear that it must lead to total psychic
decay. Putting aside for the time the aims
and purposes of the present, there remain to us,
in so far as the desires of men go, only the sen-
sual tendencies ; in the matter of feelings, only
those things which aim at the satisfying of sen-
sual impulses; and from the principle of asso-
ciation the memories of past influences alone

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130 WHAT IS HISTORY?

have effect. Even these conditions are changing
for the worse, and we are moving toward a psychic
state which, as we shall see later on, corresponds
in a certain sense to those of a lower stage of
civilization.

Was this — we cannot evade the question at
this point — the sad pathway along which the
highly gifted nations of the past have travelled
to intellectual ruin ?

In modern civilization, and especially in the
phase of it with which we have been dealing, for-
tunately the victory of a new and positive force
seems quite clear. And it is equally clear
also that individual psychic phenomena are mani-
festing themselves, in which this victory has
already been won or in which the struggle is
still going on.

Individuality, so to speak, surprised, pushed
aside, and, for some time, almost annihilated,
/ reasserts itself and develops a new dominant

Let us apply this statement to the important
field of the fine arts. As opposed to the natural-
ism of art and poetry, we find the beginnings of
a fresh idealism, which assimilates well new im-
pressions and utilizes them technically, not for

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 131

mere reproduction, however, but in favor of an
imaginative activity, so that the soul of the artist
speaks through his work.

This is a point which must be treated in some
detail in view of the interest that will probably
be aroused later on in the study of imaginative
activity. According to well-tested rules of
fflsthetics, the normal psyche recognizes the
beauty of an object only when two fixed con-
ditions are satisfied, the impression of the well-
rounded totality of this object and its rhythmical
arrangement. This rhythmical arrangement de-
pends, above all, with regard to single works of
art, upon personal taste ; it corresponds to the
harmony of the psychic content of the individual
soul, which varies widely with different per-
sons : thus in poetry one person prefers dactyls ;
another, anapaests. In the second place, however,
this impression depends upon a socio-psychic
moment, in as far as it expresses or fails to
express the feelings of a given epoch. It is
here a question of style. The real artist lives,
however, in his style ; and a work of art of any
period of well-defined imaginative activity com-
bines within itself socio-psychic and individual-

132 WHAT IS HISTORY?

psychic motifs in such a manner that the former,
as a result of evolutionary influences, is the first
impression received. That is why a great
artist who dominates the world of phenomena
according to his own inborn rhythmic feeling
develops fully only along certain lines of style.
This style is possible only when the correspond-
ing outer world of intellect has come to be domi-
nated by certain fixed ideas whose nature is
fully appreciated and understood.

As in the domain of imaginative activity, so
also in the realm of merely intellectual problems,
a central and unifying idea gains the ascendency.
The shades and degrees of opinion entering into
the compound of present-day thought, the total
impressions of the preceding time, are now ana-
lyzed and classified. Causes and counter-causes
are clearly separated, and one tries to bring
about an accurate evolution of the contents
of the whole; new phenomena are subordi-
nated to a more complete world of ideas,
and the latter, built up after the synthetic
fashion, is crowned by a kind of collection of
higher ideas from which men hope to gain a
better outlook which shall bring a clearer

STRUCTURE OF PSYCHIC CHANGE 133

view of the world, an imaginable, metaphysical
conclusion. fc

Finally, the compound of interests emerges
from the state of vacillating, now thoughtless,
now passionate, treatment to which they have
hitherto been subjected; the difficult question
of "either — or" is put more quickly to indi-
viduals, and decisions come about more rapidly.

And thus the whole psyche is set free, and —
a centre of the total personality being created —
regains its former self-mastery ; it now seeks the
highest pleasure of existence by proceeding, con-
sidering carefully what is possible, to the most
energetic activity of its functions under the
direction of a central dominant. There remains,
as the fundamental condition of a regulated
exercise of the vital powers, the new-won unity
of psychic functions ; and hence one may predict
that a new period of idealism will open ; that is to
say, an idealism of the psychic authority of man
over the outer world. In anticipation of this,
every individual becomes in a high degree active
and happy, feels a sense of pride in his creative
powers, and therefore fortifies himself against
negative reaction, against ennui, the perverse,

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134 WHAT IS HISTORY?

and all those forces which run counter to the
highest human desire.

As we approach a new psychic condition, we
enter upon a state of things decidedly unlike
that which preceded dissociation, already de-
scribed; indeed, an epoch is beginning — a
world of new associations, stimuli, feelings, and
ideals is preparing — which will bring a new era
full of vital energy.

What will be its nature ? This is a question
which brings our investigation out of the isola-
tion which has characterized it thus far, and
which carries us on to the inquiry of the more
general socio-psychic phenomena of the next
lecture*

LECTURE IT

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EPOCHS OF CULTURE

IN GENERAL

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LECTURE IV

PSYCHOLOGY OP THE EPOCHS OP CULTURE IN

GENERAL

Let us recapitulate briefly the psychic pro-
outlined somewhat in detail in the last

lecture.

We have seen how a vast amount of hitherto un-
known, or at least unusual, stimuli forced them-
selves on the minds of men about 1850 to 1880.
We have seen how difficult it was to these minds
to grapple successfully with these new demands.
The first stage began in a sort of coalescing of
the new with the old. At least this was the
case with a number of remarkable intellects. In
the minds of larger groups a mixture of the
new and old forces resulted : a certain senti-
mentality spread abroad; pessimistic, and at
the same time humorous, tendencies developed
abundantly. But a second stage introduced
such a preponderance of new impressions that
this complex attitude disappeared. All gave

137

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138

WHAT IS HISTORY?

^ way before the reenf orced attack : men be-
1 came one with their age. A dissociation of the
I usual groups of conceptions, an uncertainty of
purpose and unsteadiness of will, indeed of the
j feelings in general, were the consequence. The
J dominant of the individual perished, and inner
j consciousness was given up to a hitherto un-
known form of sensation, of imagination, of
associations, and all their tendencies. Moreover,
these unknown forms compared with the pre-
ceding were differentiated, and revealed in part
provinces of the psychic existence which till
! then had remained concealed behind the thresh-
' old of consciousness. It was a time of the
keenest excitement, which in the beginning took
hold of but a part of the nation, and which was
' regarded as both sickly and nervous. But soon
it was understood, together with the general
i stimuli conditioning it, in so far as these came
out of the economic commercial and political
j life, to be universal ; and finally also it was re-
j garded as an unavoidable product of the process
of development. And in place of the word
("nervousness" there appeared a specific condi-
Ition for which the definition "sensitivity" had

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 139

first to be made. But this transition, together
with the recognition of it, was the expression
of the fact that the social psyche of the time,
that of the leading psychic life, was not willing
to submit itself to this sensitivity in its natural-
istic, dissociating effects. Or understanding
the conditions, clearly or instinctively, the ten-
dency was to resist and overcome it. The
formation of a new psychic germ, of a new
dominant of personality, began to grow under
the new conditions of stimuli, association, ten-
dencies, and emotions. The individual man
came to the fore as master of his impressions ;
the idealistic period of a new psychic time
began.

It is a process which in itself in the various
stages of its individual course is certainly of the
greatest interest. But it is not on this account
that we have traced its primary psychic motif
through its very network of muscle and sinews.
It is of far greater interest that it is felt, on
closer inspection, in this same network, as a
systematic process in which the transitions of
earlier periods of culture have merged. There-
fore what has been revealed is the psychic mech-

Z40 WHAT IS HISTORY ?

anism of change in general from one age of
culture to another.

Of course this is not meant in the sense that
every phenomenon of the transition in the
second half of the nineteenth century is a repe-
tition with almost pedantic accuracy of all
former transitions even to the smallest details.
Rather, a more searching investigation yields
as a result that occasionally a whole series of
transitional phenomena fail to reappear, or at
least are less emphasized. Moreover, if we cite
not only German history for comparison, but
take a survey of the transition processes of all
other nations of west and middle European
peoples, as also that of other groups of nations,
for example the Japanese, we find certain dif-
ferences which are, however, only variations such
as one national type differs from another intel-
lectually as well as in ideals and feeling. But
apart from this, similar phenomena of psychic
transitional mechanism reappear continually.

Let us trace this somewhat more carefully
in German history. To begin with, the period
of transition of the individualistic generations
of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries

EPOCHS OF CULTURE 141

up to the earlier subjectivism just after 1750
is exceedingly instructive. In this period, too,
we notice an extraordinary augmentation of
.the stimuli and causes of association; above
all, the rise of a new education of the genera-
tions who were recovering from the total col-
lapse of culture during the Thirty Years' War,
the increase of journals of all kinds since 1725,
the appearance of a most extensive literature
of ethnology and travel, and a thousand other
events closely related to the new psychic stimuli.
These incidents were accompanied by the early
attempts of a triumphant and masterful union
of old and new on the part of some leading
spirits: Leibnitz, Handel, Bach, von Haller —
as was also the case of the earlier spiritual cul-
ture of mingled feelings, — Pietism, Sentimental-
ity. Then comes the outburst of the new, —
Storm and Stress ; loss of all dominants. But in
the midst of this chaos the greatest minds find
salvation by positively asserting their personality,
as also in part by a well-developed hold on the
earlier Hellenistic culture as taught by Kant,
Schiller, Goethe, Beethoven. Yet it has long
been known that these very men did not really

142

WHAT IS HISTORY?

rule their age. The direct route of evolution
was rather one of progressive dissociation in the
so-called first stage of Romanticism. In later
Romanticism came the reaction ; the search for
a new dominant begins. Then Idealistic philos-
ophers come to the fore; science branches out
into new syntheses; the great fight against
Napoleon tightened the sinews of the will, and
the personality of the first half of the nineteenth
century comes into being.

With this the transition from one psychic
period to another is completed ; the further course
of events next claims our attention, yet out and
beyond the possibilities of observation in the
present. Of this the characteristic is an increas-
ing preponderance of intellectual will-power, prop-
erly so-called, the realism of the thirties and the
political aspirations of the forties. And it ends
in a degenerative imitation that revered the
great masterpieces and simply sought to imitate
and elaborate them. It bequeathed to us all the
previous period had to offer, particularly in its
early development, in as far as it furnished here
and there instances of dominants. Therefore, at
firsts preponderance of inclinations, based on pure

EPOCHS OF CULTURE 143

reason and pure volition, contrasted with the
enthusiastic divination and the vague aspirations
of the early times, unquestionably the necessary
symptoms of the complete development of a
new dominant; following this, we note a cer-
tain barrenness and the gradual oncoming of
lifelessness in the new and elaborately rounded
state of affairs.

Let us go back farther into German history,
and we shall find everywhere the same funda-
mental elements of a psychic mechanism, not
only of the transition, but also of the course of
separate periods of culture.

The immediate observation concerning these
phenomena leads us to the period of the Reforma-
tion ; to be historically accurate, into the centuries
of Individualism (fifteenth to eighteenth centu-
ries). And here we need only to call attention to
a few stock phrases in order to show the existence
of an essentially similar psychic mechanism. It
is shown in the rise of finance, and with it, dur-
ing the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth
century, a vast expansion of the boundaries of
time and space with an almost inexhaustible
supply of new stimuli and associations; a dis-

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144 WHAT IS HISTORY?

turbance and disruption of the dominants of the
mediseval world in the fifteenth century; a
thousand petty isolated political and social revo-
lutions, a hitherto unheard-of naturalism in
imaginative activity, an increasing uncertainty
of the emotional life, chiefly in the province
of religious feeling; the rush to what was
new, and the finding of a new dominant in
the Reformation ; the development of the vital-
ity of will and reason in natural law and
rationalistic religion, art, and poetry, and last
the period closes in the epigon-like ideas of the
Aufklarung.

But even if we go back still farther into the
Middle Ages, or even the still more remote past,
the same picture of psychic mechanism appears,
except that here a twofold method of study
agreeing with the double nature of the subject
is necessary. First the religious factor prevails
in the mass-psyche. In the individualistic period
just noticed this phenomenon confronts us on
every hand. It is still more the case, though
the reasons for this may not be entered into
here, in mediseval as in prehistoric times. A
result of this religious bias is the marked one-

EPOCHS OF CULTURE 145

sidedness of the sources. At bottom we have •
exact knowledge of religious movements only; j
this defect is slightly remedied by the fact that *
religion was the very heart of all intellectual ^
development. The second point is this: all
comparative psychology is based on the com-
parison of foreign psychic life with the domestic.
The disappointments of the comparison in general
are smaller in proportion as the foreign psychic
life somewhat resembles that of the individual.
But where the resemblance is not easily detected,
the danger of disappointment increases, and
only very experienced master minds are par-
tially protected from grave errors. In investi-
gating the history of the Middle Ages, and still
more of course of prehistoric times in Germany,
the danger of falling into gross error is very
great.

Yet in spite of these difficulties the psychic
facts, at least of the Middle Ages, bear out the
above claims so clearly that we do well to re-
call certain main features. And their testimony
concerning our claim is decidedly in the affirma-
tive ; mighty changes of stimuli and confirma-
tion of association, together with the rise of

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146 WHAT IS HISTORY?

nationality and the unity of the empire in the
ninth and tenth centuries ; complex feelings and
dissociation of the most marked kind in the
development of the piety of the tenth century ;
asceticism in Lothringia, and Cluny calling aloud
for general reforms ; the winning of a religious
moral and intellectual dominant in the ecclesi-
astical and moral code of Gregory VII, and of
those who built up this system ; the voluntary
application of this system to the methods of
thought in the days of Innocent III ; and finally
the hopelessly pedantic intellectualism of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, all show the
same course of events.

This, then, was the condition of things. The
description of the phenomena of transition, as
given in the preceding lecture, has laid bare the
universal psychic mechanism of the course of the
various periods of culture.

This result is in itself new ; and we shall soon
see to what important consequences it leads for
the further development of the science of his-
tory. But is it a surprise to one well grounded
in psychology, or even to one only acquainted
with the main principles of the subject?

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE

147

I hardly think so. Rather, the impression is
that it could not possibly be otherwise. Besides,
when the functions of socio-psychic mechanism
within the courses of separate cultural periods
are established as essentially similar, the ques-
tion at once arises, in what, then, properly speak-
ing, does the difference of the periods consist ?
This brings us back to the study of two kinds of
factors : first, of that which is called the psychic
dominant ; and secondly, of that which may be
denominated psychic scope, the extent of the
possible phenomena in the psychic life of the
individual as well as in things universal.

Let us explain first the meaning of psy-
chic scope. We note at once the distinction
between conscious and unconscious psychic life.
It is an acknowledged fact that in every soul
innumerable processes of sensation and reflection
take place, without there being any clear or
indeed even recognized consciousness to corre-
spond to them. We know of their existence and
their significance only from the feelings by which
they are accompanied. And we may conclude
from the close texture of these feelings, as also
from other associated phenomena, that the sum

148 WHAT IS HISTORY?

of these processes of unconscious psychic life is
greater by far than the sum of the processes of
that which is conscious.

Do there exist between conscious and uncon-
scious psychic life hard and fast dividing lines ?
Experience teaches us the contrary. These divi-
sions can, by close attention, be shifted, i.e. by
the application of greater psychic force. As a
result of this, the number increases; a change
takes place in the quality of the feelings, con-
cepts, and emotions. It is an experience that
holds good as well for the single individual in
the course of his existence, as for collective in-
dividuals, for communities of men; t.e. socio-
psychic individuals with regard to their own
transformation and their relations to other
communities.

And since the moments of conscious psychic
life in every psychic, normally developed being
are continually on the increase, we distinguish
in the province of this life two spheres, a nar-
row and a wider one. The wider includes those
contents of consciousness which are often trans-
formed into consciousness, and therefore under
corresponding stimuli instinctively reappear in

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 149

these; the narrower circle includes those con-
tents which first become conscious in conse-
quence of specially directed attention, which
may therefore be called contents of attention.

Therefore for both groups, that of the con-
tents of consciousness and that of the contents
of attention, it is an established fact that they
grow with an increasing development of indi-
vidual as of social psychic life, or, in other words,
that in their development an augmenting psychic
force is in operation ; from the immense breadth
of the psychic life, an increasingly large com-
ponent part enters into the work centres, first
of attention, then of the various kinds of con-
sciousness.

But in another sense may we speak of a
psychic scope?

There is a large number of underlying laws of
psychic phenomena which carried to their ulti-
mate conclusion would exclude one another, and
therefore, in fact, are logically contradictory.
The soul is stimulated on both sides by the
world of phenomena outside of it and from out
of its own inner life. And very often, if not
always, there exists a difference between these

150 WHAT IS HISTORY?

classes of stimuli. In the province of association,
a given complex object may be treated as either
unified or as isolated, dissolved, in the expression
of the will ; possibilities and counter-possibilities
appear where there is visible a yearning for that
which is antipathetic to our nature ; the same is
true in the domain of the feelings, above all,
where contradiction of the positive and negative
is evident. Accordingly it is conceivable that
all psychic incidents in individual communities
occur between polaric opposites. The condition
of the individual, like that of the social psyche,
is at all times variable; and the balance of the
functions can easily be shifted from one pole to
another.

We see, then, that in this sense, too, there
exists a psychic scope ; in contrast to that men-
tioned above, which can be characterized as
breadth of consciousness, I should call it func-
tional breadth of the soul. In what relations to
each other do they now stand, historically con-
sidered — this breadth of consciousness and func-
tion? It is very evident that breadth of function
is dependent on breadth of consciousness, for the
latter, the more it increases, the more it shifts

EPOCHS OF CULTURE 151

the poles between which the functions act. Of
course this is not saying that with increasing
breadth of consciousness the functions of mind
operate in increasing contrasts. Rather the
breadth of functions which correspond to the
new breadth of consciousness will be only grad-
ually acquired. And the process in which it
develops is, in psychic social relations, as may
easily be divined, the transition process from one
cultural age to another.

If from this it appears that the capacity for
change of the psychic life in man as in a
community is chiefly dependent on the breadth
of consciousness, it is evident of what peculiar
importance are those changes of stimuli and
association, symptomatic as they are of psychic
changes. The main question, however, which
arises at this point is another. If changes in
the breadth of consciousness take place, indi-
vidual or socio-psychic, according to what prin-
ciple are they worked out ? The solution of this
problem leads us farther along the lines of
historical science.

Before we approach it, there is, however,
another question to be dealt with by the way.

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

If the psyche, as phenomenon, undergoes an
actual change, is it a question of constitutional
modification that modifies at once the biological
character of the soul, or is it only a change in
the manifestation of the same unaltered biologi-
cal type? As the following will show, the
affirmation of the second alternative suffices
for the establishment of the main facts of a
psycho-historical science. But on principle, and
in spite of the prevailing opinion, we decide for
the first of the alternatives. According to all
the analogies at our service we must assume that
certain definite physical or physiological changes
in the visible representation of the soul must
correspond to a changing breadth of conscious-
ness of the human psyche, such as are proved to
be the case with individuals, especially in the
gradual growth of the child's brain. But as
investigations in this domain of science are still
quite in their infancy, we are not justified in
asserting from what has been said above that
man, especially in his spiritual nature, has come
to an absolute physiological standstill ; this
would constitute the most peculiar exception in
historical development.

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153

But to return to our main question. Ac-
cording to what principles do changes in the
breadth of consciousness reach their consum-
mation ?

It is quite clear that in the psychic domain
changes of an exclusively quantitative character
do not take place. For all that is psychic is in
its final, its most vital form of expression of a
qualitative nature. Correspondingly the phe-
nomena which appear, together with increasing
breadth of consciousness, cannot be deduced by
quantitative calculation. Or does any one really
believe it possible to follow the increasing and
shifting breadth of consciousness in the indi-
vidual psychic life to the logical conclusion that
every representative of an individual psychic life
must be first a child, then youth or maid, then
man or woman, ending with old age ? It is a
well-known fact that consequences and effects
of the qualitative order cannot be deduced, that
they must be experienced.

Ji we apply this experience to the socio-psychic
solution of our question, we see how it at once )
resolves itself into a historical problem: the
problem of deducing from the history of the

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154

WHAT IS HISTORY?

most important communities of men the evolu-
tion of the breadth of consciousness. 1

This is the main problem of every scientific
history of mankind. If its solution be at-
tempted, the need of isolating the problem to
certain peculiar cases is pressing; for only in
this way is it possible to gain a proper mastery
of the vast material to be investigated, and
through this, real scientific progress. Isolated
communities of particular importance, of rela-
tively normal development, and easy access to
the traditional sources bearing on them would
have to be carefully studied in order to trace the
course of psychic existence.

In view of these claims, the first thing is to
limit the problem to the developments of national
culture ; for, indisputably, the nation is the
most regular of all great communities of men.
Among the national developments, those which,

1 The qualitative difference of the character of this period
can be easily shown. For, notably, every abstraction is ren-
dered difficult, and in such a task as the one before us it
becomes impossible, if the thing to be apperceived, and that
from which the abstraction should be drawn, belong to one and
the same qualitative continuum.

For the sequence of thought in the last paragraphs, cp.
Lipps's " Guide to Psychology," p. 338.

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 155

in the light of history, offer the longest unbroken
succession of culture epochs must be studied —
nations for the exact investigation of whose
evolution numerous and minute contemporary
sources are available.

If one follows up these requirements, it will
soon appear that, at least in the present condi-
tion of investigation, the history of contempo-
rary nations of middle and western Europe is
the first to be taken into consideration. And if
one seek for the best subject among these, the
choice will probably fall upon Germany. For
which of the nations named could have made
more of itself, wholly without the aid of the
older Mediterranean civilization? And which
of these nations could have been the basis of
such a detailed account as is given in the " Ger-
mania" of Tacitus — the last great testimony of
nearly two hundred years of Roman experience
with the Germans ! It was the expression of the
views of the masters of the ancient world, of
men who had the fullest knowledge of the men
and nations of their time. Tacitus's "Germa-
nia " is both depot and reservoir of an exhaustive
literature of Germany covering more than five

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156 WHAT IS HISTORY?

generations; it is, moreover, the work of an
author who himself knew how to observe, as
few before or after him did, — an international
monument of the first order, which throws a
surprising light on more than a thousand years
of the past of Germany before and after the
Christian era.

These are some of the reasons which have led
me to make German history the starting-point
for scientific historical investigation. But this
is not in the sense that, when, twenty years ago,
I planned a German history, I was clearly
actuated by the above-mentioned reasons. In
undertaking to write that work I was in part
influenced by national enthusiasm, even though
I quickly realized the universal, and particularly
the methodological advantages of this choice;
and if I emphasized the socio-psychic side, it
was due to an instinct which, a quarter of a
century ago, impelled me to analyze the histori-
cal evolution of nations according to their great
periods of culture.

However that may be, on purely empiric lines,
and not influenced by any sort of philosophical
historical doctrines, there came about the classi-

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE

157

fication of German history according to which
my book is planned and which is about two-
thirds finished. 1

At best the idea of individualism, as Burck-
hardt developed it, for the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and as was here and there
already manifest in existing literature, could have
been drawn upon.

But if the course of the cultural periods of

1 This classification, and the peculiar nature of my histori-
cal point of view, have been ascribed to all imaginable sys-
tems and modes of thought already in existence, particularly
those of Comte. He who does his own thinking will only
reserve a smile for such philological efforts. Human prog-
ress, and therefore history, does not advance on the lines
of receptivity, permutation, and combination of that which
already exists ; and every sort of comparison is unmethodical
and unscientific which is based not on socio-psychic, but rather
on individual-psychic elements. For the individual-psychic is,
in its origin, under all circumstances included in the socio-
psychic of the era to which an individual belongs. Whoever
desires to understand the growth of my opinions and their
likeness to those of Comte (and this I do not deny) should
first inquire what elements there are in the socio-psychic con-
stellation of France in the first, and of Germany in the second,
half of the nineteenth century so similar that they could give
rise to similar views. I deny any sort of dependence, direct or
indirect, on Comte, and should this still be insisted on, can
furnish the proof for my opinions from a manuscript preserved
by me dating from my student years; ue. about the end of the
seventies.

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158 WHAT IS HISTORY?

German history, as shown in the second lecture,
be accepted without further question by those
students who really see beneath the surface of
things, — it is not accepted by writers of politi-
cal history, for by admitting it they destroy the
foundations of their intellectual existence, —
there arises the further question whether this
course of development can be shown to have
been followed by other great communities, other
nations.

It is clear at the outset that the answer can
only be given empirically ; that is, by means of
the most extensive investigation of universal
history. Such investigations have not yet been
set on foot. Still, one is quite justified in main-
taining that the history of the nations of an-
tiquity, particularly of the Greeks, took just
such a course as we might expect to find ; the
same thing seems to be true with the nations
of western Europe, as also with the Japanese.
The fact that these evolutions of peoples, so
far separated from each other in time and space,
prove that the processes of growth as seen
among the Germans manifest the presence of
a universal law.

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EPOCHS OF CULTUEE 159

And why should this not be the case? If
throughout the periods of a symbolic typical, j
conventional, individual, and subjective psychic
life, it can be proved that there exist certain
. underlying elements of still stronger forces
which intensify and expand the psychic life,
which deepen and strengthen national conscious-
ness ; if the course of things prove that follow-
ing the early epochs came periods of, at first,
slightly differentiated personality, in which the
differentiation continued to grow, — then this
final result corresponds to universally accepted
experiences of history.

It cannot be expected, though, that in the nor-
mal growth of a people the stages of evolution
should always be the same as those which have
been found for Germany and published in my
" German History." It is quite possible that in
the early attempts at exact limitation of these
culture epochs, a number of errors should creep
in — errors which are not only excusable, but
which must naturally be expected.

In the second lecture of this series I have
endeavored to correct some such errors which
I have detected in the "German History"

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160 WHAT IS HISTORY?

already referrred to. What is of much more
importance is to recognize what is typical in
each period in the stricter sense; this can al-
ways be done in any careful study of a national
growth; the exact boundaries of these epochs
cannot be deduced with absolute certainty. For,
since in the setting up of certain types it is a
question of comparison, there must clearly be,
for the sake of certainty, at least two objects
of comparison. Now the periods of culture
described in my "German History" are not
established with constant reference to the de-
velopment of modern European and ancient
Mediterranean nations, and later also to the
development of Japan; there is a great differ-
ence between pressing forward by the help of
a few guide-posts along one road to a fixed
goal, and seeking the same goal by means of
a number of similar and concentric roads. And
hence there is no question that not all the real
and perfect types of the periods, as set down in
my book, have been traced out ; but these can
only be discovered and properly estimated after
comparison of universal history with that of
Germany has been made, and after more or less

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 161

accurate studies of the various nations have
been made by rejection of the individual and
particular, and by emphasizing moments com-
mon to all classes. By leaving out the indi-
vidual and particular elements! Is the full
meaning of these words clear to us ?

Do we appreciate what an undertaking such
a proposition presupposes? How many ques-
tions bearing not only upon history but also upon
geography — in the widest sense of the word —
are embraced in such a scheme? And what a
part is played by the elements of race and the
application of native endowments? But these
are by no means the only difficulties. We must
consider that almost every psychic process is
capable of different solutions ; e.g. such a simple
fact as the reproduction of associations according
to the principle of similarity permits of a thou-
sand possibilities ; that, according to the relation
between the energy of the conceptions, and the
intensity of the antithetic relations of unity,
innumerable kinds of volition can be developed ;
that the height of psychic power, the gift for
differentiating the stimuli and their after affects,
and the capability of synthesis may be existent

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162 WHAT IS HISTORY?

in very different combinations, and can there-
fore produce entirely diverging forms of psychic
life. Is it possible — one is constrained to ask —
under such an infinitely varied influence, and
cooperation of psychic forces, to suppose at
all that certain fundamental traits can be
common to the development of great human
communities ?

If we want to press the question thus raised,
we must bear in mind that it is not our en-
deavor to maintain or to prove the identity
of the development; the question only turns
on similarity, on the relation of equality and
non-equality. But how can I derive the sense
of equality and non-equality between two or
more objects? By attentively examining each
of these objects by itself, not taking notice of
its place and time, and by putting side by side
the results of this examination of the single
objects? Putting aside all idea of time and
place! That would be equivalent to saying:
In order that I may compare with absolute
methodological certainty, I must take the single
cultural periods of the different great human
communities which correspond to each other

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 163

at first sight, without being obliged to consider
either chronology or terrestrial localization.

If I do that, and if I study more closely the
different eras, there arises at once the question
whether amongst the millions and milliards of
psychic processes, which are already included
within one single era, there can be a single
moment or ruling idea which is common to
this age. As you know, this question is an-
swered in the negative by the representatives
of the school of political history, without their
ever having troubled themselves, however, about
the psychological or cosmic laws which are
important for its solution, even without hav-
ing given any thought to the culture-historical
material which must be made use of if one
would understand these problems of history.
But if we do take into consideration all these
questions, we obtain from the total material not
only the idea of unity, historical and empirical,
but also a general psychologic impression which
absolutely declares and demands such a unity ;
all the simultaneous psychic incidents, the indi-
vidual-psychic, as well as socio-psychic, have a
tendency to approach common similarity.

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164 WHAT IS HISTORY?

The unity of psychic phenomena, embraced in
the material for observation, in the separate
psychic periods being thus indisputable, it may
now be asked, according to what principles shall
these different epochs be compared, as above
described? I can either attempt the compari-
son of objects as a whole, or I can analyze the
object into details, lay bare the elementary
moments, and compare them with each other.
The first kind of comparison is that of the older
history of culture. There would result in this
way, according to well-known psychological and
epistomological laws, only vague similarities.
Thus one might make brilliant generalization,
based on such vague proofs of similarity, on the
relation of the different ages ; but this would be
no exact proof of certain common traits.

If we would attain to this, it is necessary to
choose the method indicated in the second place,
that is to say, in our case, penetrate into the in-
nermost constituent psychic elements of a given
culture. That is what I have attempted in my
characterization of the cultural ages of German
history, and that is the new methodological
feature of my work. Let us suppose that the

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 165

periods of culture now clear to us had stood
the test, not merely — as is really the case —
for German history, but also for the history of
the other nations of the world ; what should we
have gained?

We should evidently have gained for the
characterization of the single cultural ages and
the similarity of their development a sum of
empiric opinions which would be the product
of a synthesis of all experiences which are of
importance for it, and of all counter-causes
which might have been brought forward against
it, which, therefore, would be absolutely valid
throughout the whole extent of available experi-
ence. And these opinions would not be based
on one object that may have been investigated
in a single spacial and temporal certainty, but
on the full understanding of the whole, qualita-
tively defined. Judgments which have been
tested by experience, and refer only to qualita-
tively well-defined objects, are called laws.

What we should have attained, then, is the
proof of a regular course of the socio-psycholog-
ical development within great communities of
men.

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

It is a matter of fact, however, that the proof
of the empiric validity required in the fixing of
the different cultural epochs has not yet been
furnished, though I no longer doubt, judging
from examples taken at random, that this can
be done by comparative investigations in univer-
sal history. Intensive work in special fields is
required, and that means that much time and
patient perseverance must be expended. Before
this direct proof is produced — and I hope to
be able to furnish some of it — there remains
yet another means of assuring one's self of the
probable result. It is that of a more detailed
psychologic contemplation of the course of a
single national-historical series of cultural ages.

The decisive moment from which we must
proceed in such an undertaking is that of the
psychic mechanism of the course of single cul-
ture-epochs. We must remember that herein two
forces are operating side by side: the force of
the world of phenomena, which continually pro-
vides new stimuli and possibilities of association,
and the influence of the social psyche, to which
those phenomena are always subordinated by sepa-
ration (analysis) or by comprehension (synthesis).

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE

What are now the mutual relations of these
two forces?

At first the following opinion may be ad-
vanced. The actual governing power of the
psyche, which we have called above the domi-
nant^ is a deception, after all — it does not exist.
The possibilities which rest in the psyche of
historical, that is to say, outer-psychic activity,
include a wide field, let us say, the superficies of
a sphere. Within this sphere now one segment,
now another, is brought into the foreground of
effect ; this is caused by incitation from the world
of phenomena, which determine the history of
a certain time. The cause of this action, pro-
duced at different times, does not depend upon
the socio-psyche, but upon accidental external
stimuli. History is a kaleidoscope with a cer-
tain number of group-possibilities in elementary
psychic phenomena, and the pictures included
in these possibilities are produced now in this
way, now in that, by merely exterior incitations.
But there is, indeed, a certain centre in every
picture for the individual spectator in conse-
quence of his inborn or inculcated views which
easily lead to the aesthetic manner of treatment

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168 WHAT IS HISTORY?

which we see illustrated again and again in
European historiography ; and there thus appears
the animistic requirement of an impersonifica-
tion of this centre, which again quite naturally
lends importance to the idea of an actually
governing dominant

This way of looking at things, which would
certainly be appropriate in the consideration of
the psychic mechanics of one single cultural age,
and which could hardly be rejected when re-
stricted to so narrow a field of investigation,
proves to be at once insufficient, as soon as we
take up the study of subsequent cultural ages in
any great community. For we see that, accord-
ing to the unanimous verdict of all historical
experience, those ages do not, by any means,
succeed each other accidentally and without
inner connection. They proceed rather within
the line of a continual reinforcement or weaken-
ing of the psychic powers; they correspond to
the development of an increasing or (in the times
of decay) diminishing intensity of the general
dominant

Therefore this dominant is not the expression
of socio-psychic forces, which have been stirred

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 169

from without, — the manometer, as it were, or the
regulator of the steam generator, or of the steam
engine, — but it is something for itself — some-
thing that carries a certain power of development,
which by external influences may be especially
increased or repressed, which, however, can
never be changed in the development of its
innermost character. If we stop here and look
out in the psychic and physical world for analo-
gies of this peculiar phenomenon, we see at once
that it is by no means an isolated one. It is
indeed with a general principle of biology that
we have to do here.

The individual psyche, too, is not merely a
surface over which associations, perceptions, feel- ;
ings, and aspirations rapidly glide, but it is in
the first place an ego. Not one of us is sim-
ply a product of the influences which act upon !
him. Yet every one claims to be an individu-
ality, a character. And no plant or animal, no
living being, can be explained, in its development
through millions of years, solely by the influence
of external causes ; it has its inborn tendency of
development, its own kind, and its special beauty.

It is evident that the question thus touched

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170 WHAT IS HISTORY ?

upon leads immediately to the discussions of the
evolutionary theorists, like Darwin. If the one-
sided mechanical interpretation still prevails with
them, a result of the mechanical development
of the natural sciences for three and a half
centuries and an instructive illustration of the
psychic law of inertia, a similar mechanical
interpolation of the psychic phenomena of life
has enjoyed hut a passing importance. It was
the characteristic method of those years of mod-
ern naturalism in art and science which com-
posed the period of transition to the last epoch
in the history of civilization.

Just during those years of Darwinian suprem-
acy, a high tide of new stimuli had almost totally
enveloped the dominants of socio-psychic, and
therewith also of individual psychic life, with,
one may say, autonomous reactions upon the
stimuli and with aspiration-relations; so that
even experienced psychologists, except those who
belonged to the school of experimental psy-
chology, could hardly discover them. But we
have passed this exceptional time and the indi-
vidual psychic, and therewith also the socio-
psychic dominant is recognized again.

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171

If, however, the individual psychic, as well as
the socio-psychic life, does not develop mechani-
cally, but in the separation and differentiation
of the psychic unity according to its laws, in
consequence of continual growth (and final retro-
gression) of psychic power, then must the inci-
dents of such a development be equivalent to the
single evolutionary examples, in their innermost
and elementary processes ; and as the individual
psyche runs through its specific development in |
the years of the child, of the adolescent, of the
ma^and of the aged, there must exist for the
socio-psyche, too, a canon of development which
runs through, in the unbroken succession, a series
of cultural periods.

These are, considered from a fundamental and
purely psychological standpoint, the elementary
facts which may at present be laid down as
the basis of cultural epochs in history. This
scheme of the study of culture, though not yet
established everywhere by adequate historical
investigation, is, at least, as a result of well-
tested qualities of psychic life, sufficient to rank
as legitimate and authoritative. If this method
is well grounded, and if we put aside the ques-

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172 WHAT IS HISTORY?

tion of its legitimacy, — it is denied by nobody,
— then there arises a further difficulty, to which
a particular, though perhaps exaggerated, inter-
est attaches, — the question as to the relation
of the individual to the cultural age in which
he lives.

It is perfectly clear, though the recognition
of this fact had to be forced from the majority
of German historians after many hard struggles,
that everybody is dependent upon the civilization
in which he lives ; that he is in this sense the
child of his age. This holds good even for the
greatest of men ; and it is just they who have
always recognized it, whilst the negation of this
claim has always come from idealists whose con-
ceptions of the past are most often wide of the
mark. A remarkable condition of our day is the
hero-worship of many of our historians ; these
are the most dangerous enemies of true historical
science. Therefore the question is not, whether
one is dependent upon his surroundings, but how
great and of what kind it is.

If we now consider the peculiarities of high
and low cultural periods, we find the general
psychological proposition that the closer the

~ —

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 173

relations of unity between completed simulta-
neous events and partial events of psychic life,
the more complete the psychic unification. As
is well known, these relations of unity are in
lower cultural periods much more intimate than
in higher grades, because the individualization
of the single persons, in consequence of a still
inferior differentiation of the whole culture,
has made but little progress; therefore the
perception of these relations, by the single
personality, is more uniform, or, expressed in
other terms, the dependency of the individual
upon his age is greater than in highly developed
eras.

To proceed a step further and consider the
highly developed eras, we must note in the first
place that, in whatever form it may be, mostly
perhaps in the advanced grading of their social
classes, they bear in themselves the signs of a long
past. Now the realization of this is, to be sure,
often blunted, even obliterated from mind, or in
its elements of feelings and aspirations, at least,
strongly modified by the surrounding conditions ;
but the fact remains that this element weakens
the psychic effect of the unity-relations, so that

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

a much greater personal breadth of psychic
activity is given to the individual.

But, does one ask, in view of the foregoing
facts, what is the difference in the individual
psychic freedom attainable in the various cul-
tural ages? We want to know whether all
individuals are equally free, especially whether
the heroes — the eminent individuals — are not
totally free. The answer, however, cannot be
simple. We must follow up more closely the
difference between average and eminent individ-
uals, and only then can the general answer be
given: it will depend upon the difference thus
discovered.

Difference between individuals! Is this not
an inexhaustible theme ? Does not the saying,
Individuum est ineffabile, hold good here? No
doubt : innumerable shades of distinctions, from
the one pole of the enlightened, high-minded, and
creative individual down to the darker world
of the simple, the imitative, passive ones, can
be remarked. But there must be, nevertheless,
marked boundaries here as everywhere ; for our
thinking is subject to the economy of simplifica-
tion. We speak especially of those who belong

. »• .►.

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 175

to one of the above-mentioned poles of the
average and of geniuses. And if we make
these and similar differences, do we not pro-
ceed from the difference of the degree in
which the single individuals are governed or
not by the socio-psychic elements of their
time ? At any rate, we single out one group in
particular, and maintain that it shows the least
dependency on the socio-psychic elements of
the time. This is the group of the great ones.
What is, then, the condition of this class?
If we approach the answer to the question
thus given, a standpoint will naturally be
gained for the solution of the problem, "In-
dividual and Culture." The genius is the spe-
cifically creative individual. Every one agrees
to this. But out of which psychic combina-
tion does this creative power come? It is
not that, as Transcendentalists always main-
tain, a special power from heaven, a breath
which is breathed by Elohim personally into
these favored children of destiny after the
general creation of human spirit has been com-
pleted. There is no fundamental difference,
qualitatively considered, between heirs of other

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176 WHAT IS HISTORY?

souls, but only an exceptionally great psychic
strength. This strength, however, may be
portioned out in different ways; either harmo-
niously, so that all psychic qualities and accord-
ingly often all physical qualities, appear to be
enhanced, or unhannoniously, so that one or a
few psychic qualities appear to be augmented at
the cost of others. And according to this we dis-
tinguish harmonious and unharmonious geniuses.

But in our case it is not so much a question of
individual capacity, but of the historical develop-
ment of the same. And here this is evident :
the unharmonious genius can attain to a high
grade of effectiveness in transition times, for its
psychic mechanism is favorable. On the other
hand, the harmonious genius only excels in a
uniformly developed culture. The effective-
ness of genius is dependent on the socio-psychic
constellation. What, on the other hand, is
the case with the so-called " brilliant failures " ?
Here we may say, that neither can the unhar-
monious genius in a perfected culture, nor a
harmonious genius in a time of transitional cul-
ture, find a field suited to his endeavors. Men
of unharmonious genius are effective in a period

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 177

of transitional culture only when they are out
of sympathy with the times; the harmonious
genius is effective only when his general sur-
roundings correspond to his nature.

In short, no matter where we look, the result
is the same: the genius is enveloped by the
period of culture to which he belongs, and he
reaches his full perfection just in proportion as
he is active among the developing tendencies of
his time. These are dependent on the periodic
development of the socio-psychic dominant To
give a concrete example, Prince Bismarck,
one of the greatest of modern geniuses, laid it
down as a law of life with him that unda fert
nec regitur. And Bismarck's work was in a field
usually supposed to be most subject to personal
caprice. And so are we all, great and small,
exposed in similar manner to the conditioning of
socio-psychic forces, and a sort of servitude of the
will runs all through our culture ! Yet how false
would be the general application of this melan-
choly conclusion! True we are in the midst
of certain cultural conditions; we are parts of
the socio-psyche of our time. At the same time
we are parts of that directive force. And that

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

means that, viewed from individual-psychic or
socio-psychic points of view, we are constituent
parts of a complete organism. As with the in-
dividual, so also with every community of men,
there is a great psychic tract, in which anti-
pathetic conceptions, endeavors, and feelings may
make themselves felt. By no means are indi-
viduals or societies cleverly devised books, but
organisms made up of contradictions. But just
as the psychic tract with the individual is not so
extensive that it can include the experience of
the complete sensations of old age in youth, or
of youth in old age, not even in serious patho-
logic cases, so the psychic tract of a great society
of men is not of such a nature that it can be
made to receive the experience of reversed cul-
tural periods. It is even rare that individuals
of one epoch can so emancipate themselves as to
be able to comprehend and absorb the essence of
a past civilization.

But let us linger no longer here with details.
Possibly in the future the elements of historical
evolution bearing on the lines of thought just
considered may be more accurately explained,
perhaps, when the principles of psychology have

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EPOCHS OF CULTURE 179

been applied to universal history. For the
present the grouping of isolated events within
the realm of psychic mechanics and the por-
trayal of certain parts of the processes of the
evolution of single cultural periods are mainly
problems of art, and not scientific analyses.

After this cursory review of the main out-
lines of a history of the various culture-epochs
of the past, we turn with interest to that field
of endeavor which to-day gives most promise
for the future — the field of universal, not indi-
vidual, restricted, history.

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LECTURE V

PROBLEMS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

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LECTURE V

PROBLEMS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

Up to this point we have dealt with the
periods of culture, with their general psychical
character, with the psychic mechanism displayed
in them, and with the way in which these epochs
conform to certain laws which indicate the pres-
ence of a certain dominant which, supported by
a constantly rising psychic force, tends toward
an ever increasing soul-differentiation. Hitherto
it has been a limited sphere of observation to
which our thoughts have been confined: the
study of the development of great communities
of men, that is to say, of nations. And there
was another limitation : the subject hinged
exclusively on that normal national develop-
ment which we observe in a nation when we
follow it through its slow and uninterrupted
growth-processes from the lower to the higher
and highest stages of civilization. It is seen

188

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184 WHAT IS HISTORY?

that the point in question is a decidedly isolated
one, — a condition which does not correspond
entirely to the growth of the American nation,
as it constantly unfolds itself before our as-
tonished eyes, while the growth of the German
nation, on the other hand, is probably the best
example of the application of the principle
under discussion.

It is clear that this limitation was necessary
in order the more logically to deduce the prin-
ciples aimed at. In regard to the difficulties of
scientific problems we still keep to the old rule,
Divide et impera ; and, without making a definite
and a conscious use of the isolating method, we
should, in the most important questions bearing
upon the science of history, fail to make real
progress.

It is evident, however, that an isolating mode
of speculation, though somewhat shut off from
outer influences, — this can never be quite com-
pletely done, — opens the way toward deeper
problems : modes of abstraction are but different
ways of arriving at certain conclusions by means
of given objects of study. But in our case the
direct and self-evident relations between corn-

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 185

munities of men demand of us to press forward
toward an understanding of those relations. It
could not be otherwise; every well-grounded
view of human affairs must needs partake some-
what of the nature of universal history.

On entering now the limitless field of universal
history, the speaker feels it incumbent upon
him to declare that he does it with the greatest
diffidence. Whoever thinks along historical
lines and has a fair knowledge of some period
of universal history, e.g. of the history of a single
nation, will be overcome with a feeling of awe at
the prodigious many-sidedness and endless signifi-
cance of human activities. And as a result of this
feeling, gentle stirrings of the mind are aroused,
which take form in sacred admiration of the
achievements of mankind ; a noble yet dangerous
devotion to the grandeur of the human race takes
possession of us. If I take into consideration the
course of German history, break it up into gener-
ations all the way back to the time of the heroic
struggles of Arminius in the Augustan age, hardly
sixty generations, who have been the makers of
the historical life of the German nation as it is
known to us, I can imagine my sixtieth ancestor

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186 WHAT IS HISTORY?

marching out with a German spear and looking
with defiant mien across the Rhine, and my fif-
tieth ancestor putting behind him the great river
and invading triumphantly the carefully guarded
regions subject to the Roman yoke. From thence
to my day there are but fifty pairs of hands, but
fifty changes of blood. What have they not
gone through, these generations, down to their
remote grandson, who, accustomed to the air of
close rooms, a brain-worker whose muscles have
grown flabby from lack of constant exercise, has
just crossed the vast ocean in order to speak to
a foreign people, and yet in many respects to
children of the same forefathers, of the life of
his own nation during the course of the centuries !
Let us imbue our minds with the feeling of this
magnificent past, which is none the less concen-
trated in us, so as to be thoroughly sensible of
its tremendous, and so to speak, "omnipotent
force."

And yet, looked upon from the point of view
of universal history, what are two thousand
years, and what is the short life of a nation?
May we not, in consideration of the historical
eternity of past millenniums and millions of years,

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 187

apply to every nation, even to the most long-
lived one, the sentence by which the psalmist
expresses the transitoriness of the individual:
"What is man, that thou art mindful of him?"

We cannot enter into problems of universal
history, unless we do it with the earnestness of
religious feeling, else the standard of the methods
which may be used will be completely obsolete
and consequently fail in the application.

From the examination of the different periods
of culture and their connection, we are led on
into the domain of universal history by the
question : What are the external moments which,
for the time being, cause a special accumulation
and intensity of new stimuli, and which, in spite
of a dissociation of the psychic functions, finally
bring out in a nation an increased force of
analysis and synthesis, a new form of the
dominant, and with that a new period of
culture ?

The points thus brought into question are in
the first place those of the inner development
of human society. And they spring for the
most part from political and economic evolution.
Following now the rise of most of the great

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188 WHAT IS HISTORY?

periods of culture in German history, we may
see that they correspond with the transition
leading to domiciliation, to the exchange and
barter of natural produce, to finance, and at
last to the feverish economic conditions of to-
day; and if we examine other national evolu-
tions in the same way, we find in general a
similar result.

At the same time we are struck by a moment,
which, it is true, has already been described, but
which must be emphasized once more : the tran-
sitions leading to new periods of culture which
often succeed changes in economic and social life.
The economic life of any period of culture
manifests a decided similarity to the instinctive
and impulsive actions of single individuals; it
seems that the bulk of all economic actions be-
come mechanical, and because of constant repe-
tition assume the form of a sort of social
autonomy. As compared with the higher intel-
lectual life, economic activity bears in many
respects the stamp of the vegetative, at least
after certain general habits have been developed
and so long as these are adhered to. But what
results when, because of certain inner changes,

■

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 189

particularly of the overgrowth of some depart-
ments of industry, sharp changes set in? In
this case a great many customs which had
become automatic will be subjected to a
new socio-psychic analysis ; if actual disturbance
takes place, then feelings and aspiration make
themselves known, which, in part, vitalize and
bring about dissociation. It is a process which,
looked upon from the point of view of in-
dividual psychology, has its exact counterpart;
this process explains how periods of economic
changes easily become the starting-point for the
higher psychic changes, the more so when they
are accompanied by social upheavals. For where
has there been an economic revolution without
the resulting social readjustment?

All that has been said explains how economic
and social changes become and ought to become
general-psychic transitions; but it does not ex-
plain why, according to all known historical ex-
perience, there are connected with some of these
economic revolutions certain psychic changes
which are always the same, — why, for instance,
the rise of finance is regularly connected with
the transition to individualism.

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190 WHAT IS HISTORY?

And there is another thing to be taken into
consideration. An economic revolution not
only creates a psychic dissociation, but, cor-
responding to its special character and at the
same time intensifying the dissociation, pro-
duces in every instance numbers of new spe-
cific stimuli and germinations of associations.
New conditions of will and purpose, changes of
sentiment, and so forth set in which tend to
modify decidedly the higher forms of intellectual
life. It would be a study of great value to
establish, by comparative work in universal his-
tory, what are the constantly recurring economic
factors of each period which are so uniformly
followed by the development of other higher
intellectual values.

We cannot enter upon such an examination
at this time. It is sufficient in this connection
to recall, from what has been said, that in the
inner national development the psychic values
of new periods of culture come into existence as
a rule along with economic and social changes.

We see that this is the doctrine of Karl Marx,
the theory of the so-called, though most un-
happily so-called, historical materialism.

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191

But does it give a sufficient explanation of all
the phenomena, or even of all the inner phenom-
ena, of socio-psychic progress ? Not at all. In
German history we have a most instructive
example of progress toward a new period, the
transition to subjectivism of about 1750, when
an explanation based on socio-economic causes

— though these elements enter into the count

— is entirely unsatisfactory. In this case
mental and moral forces played an impor-
tant rSle. And why should not this be true ?
These elements: the development of the new
ideals of education, at first of the " homme du
monde," then of the " well-bred " ; the increase
of interest in everything printed, the develop-
ment of an incredibly productive journalistic
and newspaper literature ; the possibility of an
ever widening circle of friendship due to the
newly won leisure; the growth of a vast
literature of ethnology and travel; the expan-
sion of men's idea of time and space due to
travel and exploration, — all these forces entered
into the sum of influences which compelled the
change.

Consequently the doctrine of Marx and his

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

school is utterly inadequate even if we attempt
to measure the mental and moral progress of a
community. But it would, of course, be going
too far simply to deny the great importance of
their theory. And it is quite clear that, from
the steady development of th&^&ational domi-
nant and especially from the incidents of eco-
nomic growth,^aterial and hence social progress
is the basal motive of general advance. All other
causes are incidental and remain nothing but
very important exceptions to the rule : that thus
a nation, which would develop when isolated only
out of itself, would chiefly be an example of the
correctness of Marx's theory, which we can of
course acknowledge only within certain limits.

But where shall we find an isolated nation ?
It is one of the characteristics of the socialists'
doctrines that, conscious or unconscious of it,
they have looked upon the people in this sense.
This has been the case in Germany from Fichte
to Marx, and from Thunen to Rodbertus.

But, historically speaking, no nation is thus
isolated. On the contrary, as far as we can
penetrate into the mist of the remote past, all
communities of men, great and small, are, partly

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 193

in a hostile, partly in a friendly way, closely asso-
ciated with their neighbors. And thus it is evi-
dent that the scheme of development as hitherto
discussed will remain the same, but that a thou-
sand other motives may still be woven into this
firm canvas of the past, — motives of advance,
of recession, of highest acceleration, and of
destruction.

If we would understand thoroughly the opera-
tion of these elements each by itself, they must
first be minutely characterized.

I do not refer here so much to the influence
of external occurrences, of sudden changes of
environment, of earthquakes, inundations, land-
slides, and the like, or even of subjugation and
of political, sometimes even bodily, destruction
by a human foe. They have of course most
effectually determined the fate of the different
nations ; and what bard of ancient times, what
political historian of to-day, would let slip the
opportunity of describing these epochs and catas-
trophes? But viewed from the standpoint of
the psychology of history, such convulsions
mean no more than, from the physiological
point of view, is meant by staggers, tuberculosis,

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194 WHAT IS HISTORY?

and other diseases of cattle. They destroy cer-
tain socio-psychic individuals, at most whole
nations, and at least thwart and limit them in
their full development. From the point of view
of historical evolution in its typical sense, they
signify nothing; and they regain their impor-
tance only when we attempt minutely to de-
scribe that particular part of the great world
known to us, not so much when we try to com-
prehend it in broad outline.

Of far greater importance for our purposes are
those examples of universal inter-relation which
have been given us in the projection by one
community of men upon another of their ideals
and methods, so that a permanent change takes
place. Therefore it is of importance to deter-
mine on what conditions and in what forms such
influences are actually exerted.

We have here to deal with two things : the
ways in which those influences are brought to
bear upon other peoples, and the form they as-
sume. The first point leads to the study of the
history of the inter-relations of communities of
men, and thus to a field of exceedingly dif-
ferent possibilities, to classify and to understand

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 195

which is at least one of the greatest tasks of
universal history. As regards the second point,
however, a double division seems not to be out
of place. The form of the transmission of influ-
ence can either be men themselves or any human
products. We have an example of the first in-
stance, cited above, in the wandering of the
nations, at least in so f it left two or more
peoples dwelling permanently together; the
second is indicated by the transference tools,
inventions of all kinds, and especially through
purely intellectual values such as monuments,
language, and writings (hieroglyphics, alphabet!-
cal writings, musical notation, etc.). So it may
pass for a law, that at all times the elements of
that culture which is more instinctive and ap-
parently more constituent, especially those things
which apply to the economic and social life,
have been more difficult to transfer, the means
not being so readily at hand. From this it
follows that the course of universal history has
taken the direction in which the transmission
of the higher elements of culture was easiest.

But is it possible to systematize, by following
certain mathematical formulas, the numerous

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

combinations and permutations of the imagina-
ble ways and forms of transmission, and take a
quick survey of them as a system? Hardly.
Only a full and broad experience will enable us
to see clearly the essentials of the problem, and
then only a very simple and elementary survey
of the process of transmission may, as I suppose,
be gained. Research in this field, in so far as
it relates to the point of view already indi-
cated, has only begun ; for the greater part is
but the description of the outer appearance of
things, without even an endeavor to picture the
real inner, underlying life. The way of media-
tion may lead either through space or time, and
in the first case we might speak of receptivity, in
the second of renaissance. The means of media-
tion may be single or manifold, intermittent,
continuous, one-sided, lying open only to the
initiative of the one community in question, or
two-sided, — distinctions which occasionally may
be traced to special climatic and geographic
conditions as well as special culture-differences.
And according to this we shall be able, when
using the picture of a well-known psychic process,
to speak with reference to these processes of

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 197

osmotic phenomena of diosmosis, endosmosis,
and exosmosis. But as regards the instruments
of transmission, the most important distinction
seems to be the one between short and long
duration. To those of short duration belongs
the individual; to those of long duration, the
race and the art of writing. Upon those of long
duration is founded the possibility of an at
least partial revival of an already extinct cul-
ture, hence renaissance of every sort, — one of
the most remarkable phenomena of human
development.

It is evident that thus far everything else
rather than a theory of the ways and means by
which universal history is "made" has been
discussed ; it suffices, however, if the main prob-
lems in question have been in some measure
touched upon. How very much is there still to
be done in this line ; how the gold nuggets, as
it were, of great scientific discoveries lie in the
streets ready for every one who will but pick
them up!

But this brings us little further on our way
except that perhaps the problem lends itself
more readily to solution when its kindred

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

themes have been cleared up. We may inquire
as to the effect of the extension of space, meas-
ure of time, and for the possible psychic results
of the transmission of older ideas to younger
peoples. These questions are in some measure
already answered by what has been said ; at the
same time general-psychic knowledge helps us, at
least in part, to obtain a correct formulation of
the problems under consideration. In regard to
the expansion of culture-ideas through space, it
seems that for an isolated influence there is no
limit to its territory, though really it is, as a
rule, subject to the field of activity in which it
has existence.

If this proposition bears the impress of the
self-evident, it is nevertheless worthy of remark
that it has also proven to be right, where the
question is one of the transference of complete
sums of objects, even of whole cultures. But
these influences do not permeate the whole new
community, but only those members of it who
have special relations to them or enter into
special connection with them. And, indeed,
that holds good for periods of receptiveness as
well as renaissances. For instance, the reception

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by other European cultures of the chivalric ideals
of the twelfth century of the North of France
and Provence presupposed the existence of
knighthood, with its economic and political basis,
or at least germs of the same ; and the different
revivals of the classics were only possible where
there was a certain admiration for ancient civili-
zation, which admiration was either taught the
people by a great monarch or by intellectual
leaders who looked up to the ancients or who
fancied that they were re-living the life of
antiquity.

These are but a few cursory observations
on the space-question, — also the sociological
problem which requires attention here might be
supposed to be closely associated with that of
space, — observations which come to mind in
any study of the elements of civilization which
one age inherits from its predecessors; how
much clearer, how much more important for
the proper estimate of the individual case, would
be the picture of that question of space, if it
could but comprise the experiences of the whole
of known human history.

Just as important, and perhaps of still greater

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consequence for the general knowledge of the
psychic agency in the course of history, is the
consideration of the time-measure of the influ-
ences of inheritance. And it seems almost with-
out exception that this measure of time, tested
hy the time-measure of the inner process of the
evolution of the receptive human community,
appears to have been quickened. Frequently
we get the impression that there has been a com-
plete overthrow of certain cultures ; judging by
this impression, we might indicate the general
psychic effect of the inner processes of develop-
ment as continuous, while that of transmissions
might be termed catastrophic. The explanation
of this distinction has already been made possible
by what has already been said to-day, at least as
far as the more universal transmissions are con-
cerned. The latter are either enforced, and in
this case they are introduced by compulsion, that
is at an increased rate ; or they are spontaneous,
and in this case they only develop themselves
when the receiving community desires them fer-
vently, consequently again at an increased rate.
We may be certain from what has been shown
that, social temperaments being for the moment

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considered the same, among several human com-
munities, the time-element of that community will
be shortest which accepts the greatest amount of ;
foreign influences. This is an observation which
explains a great deal in Greek history when we
compare it with the fates of later nations, as
for instance of the French.

But those considerations lead us to the thresh-
old of another difficulty, namely, the question
of what the effect, the psychic effect, of trans-
missions on the receiving community is. And
our starting-point is a few elementary laws of
psychology, especially those of association. The
law of analogy is the first that engages our
attention : in every mental and moral process
there is a tendency to find in active life similar
processes. Again, we have the law of asso-
ciation of experiences : 1 if one mental incident
coincides with another or joins immediately with
a preceding one, they become a totality or a
completed process, in such a manner that the
recurrence of one part of this totality brings the
recurrence of the whole. Besides these laws
another one must be mentioned : mental impres-

1 Von Lipps 1 theory: " Psychology," p. 44.

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

sions are not strongest when the contrast
between receptivity and the force of impression
is greatest, but when the contrast is interme-
diate, so that the power of impression and weak
receptivity are not isolated and thereby repelled.
The result thus far of our observations is easily
derived: where the ways and means of transfer-
ence bring to a community not only single mo-
ments, but the bulk of a foreign culture, the
tendency arises to adopt not only the single, but
also the whole of this culture and to blend it
with one's own culture. And secondly, this
tendency to assimilation only becomes effective
on condition that the foreign culture, compared
with the indigenous culture, does not show too
sharp distinctions of the psychic force, and thus
destroy the equilibrium of the two cultures.

Both these conclusions are fully confirmed by
all well-established historical facts. It is one of
the best-known historical phenomena that na-
tions in very low stages of culture are ruined by
the importation of very high cultures, and that
nations of a high culture adopt with difficulty
even single elements of lower cultures. It need
hardly be mentioned of how great and universal

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 203

significance these facts are : the first reveals the
general law of productive universal-historic com-
bination ; the second shows how far within this
combination the inner socio-psychic development
of the single-historic community, that is to say,
the succession of the periods of culture, is
preserved. Hence the result is a universal-his-
torical connection, modified only by a succession
of typical developments of great communities.

Having got the result, it is possible to say
something more exact and yet general about the
more intimate psychic effect of foreign influences
in human communities. The decisive question is,
of course, in what proportion those transmissions
are to the inner-psychic mechanism of the periods
of culture. The principle of proportion is already
established by the simple conclusions, which have
just been drawn from universal-individual, as also
from socio-psychic, laws: this mechanism, depend-
ent very much on the succession of the periods
of culture, may suffer slight variations and deri-
vations, especially an intensification of their ten-
dencies ; but abrogated they will never be. It is
the same with the external influences on one
human life ; they can certainly be of great

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

importance, but it is beyond their power to
remove all that psychic mechanism which leads
from the spiritual life of the youth to that of
manhood and hence to old age.

In general we can derive by way of psychology
the fact — and experience confirms this deriva-
tion — that outer socio-psychic influences of an
opposing tendency to those within at one time
tending toward dissociation, at another toward
concentration of the native forces, in the psychic
mechanism, will remain without decided effect ;
their influence is, naturally, much greater when
they are applied along the lines of the natural-
psychic mechanism. Dissociation of existing
mental and moral conditions tends to produce
change from one to another period of culture.
Of how great importance for the development of
European individualism was the Roman Renais-
sance of the thirteenth to the sixteenth cen-
turies, and how important was the Hellenic
revival of the eighteenth century for the rise
of German subjectivism !

But the application of external influences is of
the greatest importance, not only on the efficients
of dissociation, but also for those of concentra-

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 205

tion when the psychical mechanism runs a
parallel course. These influences do not enter
largely into the analysis of the new moral ele-
ments, which are stirred up by the operation of
a great number of new stimuli in the socio-
psyche; the struggle for the growth of a new
dominant, which takes place here in its pro-
foundest and most productive forms, is chiefly
supported out of the means and forces of the
innate and intensive development. And it seems
as if it depended on this connection and on still
more profoundly working factors, that the under-
lying basis of the dominant once given cannot
be removed by external influences. But in this
domain a clarifying influence which operates on
the established order of development does not
seem to be excluded; e.g. the process within
the Franconian and Carolingian ornamentation,
which led to a somewhat naturalistic conception
of the (animal) objects reproduced, a process
characteristic of the transition to the symbolism
of the Middle Ages, was supported by the purify-
ing influences of antique ornamentation.

It will thus be seen that the time required
for the development of the inner socio-psychic

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206 WHAT IS HISTORY?

is decidedly shortened by the intrusion of foreign
influences.

But external influences, it appears, tend syn-
thetically to build up rather than to dissolve the
various elements of a community in the form of
a new dominant; certain parts and even whole
psychic characters of former cultural epochs, if
their spirit be in harmony with the principles
of the new dominant, take on, as it were, new
life. In consequence of the influx of strong
foreign influences, a sort of socio-psychic indiges-
tion is produced, and great historiographic art
is required to describe accurately such a condi-
tion, with its complications and tendencies, so
that the reader may really enter into the spirit
of the time. If this process of change is com-
plete, a new social psyche appears, bearing the
signs and the marks of older or foreign genera-
tions.

This is an important and in a special sense a
universal-historical process ; important traits of
influential characters of the past are thus repro-
duced in present-day life ; the new combination
contains whatever is immortal in human affairs.

This is a phenomenon which invites us once

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 207

more to study the characters of the great men,
heroes of history. Are they not, also, bearers
of influences, which, since they are individual,
present to the new social psyche a half-foreign
appearance? Must not the influence of these
men upon a present-day culture be subjected to
a similar analysis to that which was applied to
the more general foreign influence? Only in
the course of this analysis the position of the
individuals is quite different. And thus it will
be true for them, too, that whatever they have
contributed of their own natures to the com-
munity is immortal and continues to live in the
historical influences of this community on the
socio-psyches of other times and places.

But let us pause a moment. Is there a funda-
mental difference between the psyche of the hero
and that of the lowest member of a community,
one who toils at his humble task and is perhaps
only capable of physical exertion? No: we
are all men alike, and there is in each of us a
creative spark, even if it be only that of imita-
tion, and only with the results of this talent do
we enter into the everlasting history of our race.

But it is time that we draw from these gen-

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208 WHAT IS HISTORY?

eral observations certain conclusions as to the
way history ought to be studied and taught. Let
us accept the general explanation given above, in
so far as this has been shown to be well grounded,
leaving out all that rests only on probability.

The full historical comprehension of a single
change or of a single phenomenon, with their his-
torical significance, can only be acquired from the
most general principles, that is to say, from the
application of the highest universal-historical cate-
gories. These, however, are all summed up in the
one great truth, that the general historical mo-
ment, the meaning of the unity of history, is not
to be looked for so much in the apparently impor-
tant historical events in these occurrences, whose
transmission through time and space is checked
by the difficulty of unknown ways and unpre-
pared forms, but in the liquid, as it were, ethe-
real elements which are destined to influence
universal history through long periods of time.
These are the products of the higher intellectual
activity, moral and religious principles, art,
poetry, and science; these are the influences
which become the chief constituents in the great
stream of world history. Along with these,

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 209

though of secondary importance, must be classed
political history, social and economic conditions
and activities.

The consequence is, as every single historical
event must be valued according to these highest
principles, that special history, the history of
individual nations, must not be valued and ap-
praised according to the canons of economic,
social, or constitutional history, but according to
the standards of the highest intellectual attain-
ments, else it would never appear what indi-
vidual peoples have stood for or still represent
in universal history. Hence a theory of the
character and the course of a cultural age must
not be based (even if the conviction were firmly
fixed that this character and course were cor-
rectly defined by economic and socio-political
moments) on the history of economic conditions
and of society as fundamental permutations; but,
on the contrary, its principles of classification
must be dependent on the highest intellectual life.
Cultural ages must be defined and arranged, not
by the nature of the v roots of things, but by their
fruitage. It is the more necessary to reform our
methods in this because, according to the earlier

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210 WHAT IS HISTORY?

view, the analysis of the history of a people is
apt to do violence to the principle of intimate
connection between the very beginnings of a par-
ticular civilization and its later flower and fruit.
Within the highest psychic life, the facts and in-
cidents in the domain of purely imaginative activ-
ity, say of poetry, music, and especially of plastic
art, seem to lend themselves most readily for
use in the marking off of the boundaries of par-
ticular periods. The reasons, both practical and
theoretical, of this we shall discuss presently.
In accordance with these principles, that posi-
tive doctrine of the cultural ages, which I have
now for the first time deduced, is constructed ;
the application of these ideas has been made in
my " German History."

But is this the end of it ? Not in the least.
I have already indicated wherein lies the defi-
ciency. A careful revision must be made, the
results of the study of other national growths
as well as the discoveries in one's own national
history must be assimilated and digested. A sort
of subjection to the laws found to apply to other
peoples must be acknowledged ; for it has been
found that the succession of the stages of the

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 211

history of one nation is the same for all other
nations. Yet there is no kind of doubt that,
according to the nature of the new method as
well as because of the condition of things, these
principles of classification are more German than
otherwise, and that the final method must be
made more universal.

An infinite amount of work has still to be
done, a work which shall seize upon that which
is of importance for universal history in the
growth of the various states and set it forth
in its true colors. Such an undertaking, if
truly accomplished, would be free from all
bias, all restraint such as is ordinarily imposed
by one's former views of what ought to have
been the ruling moments in the history of the
several peoples.

But a further problem, and a difficult one too,
must be met by way of preparation for such a
work. Are the cultural ages, hitherto discovered
and applied in German history, all that exist
and all that the intelligent student might look
for? Do tbey embrace the whole field from the
beginning to the end ?

The question must be answered in the negative.

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212 WHAT IS HISTORY ?

As to the future, we Germans hope (and justifi-
cation of this hope may he found in Roman his-
tory) that the number of the culture-epochs is not
yet exhausted. To complete the cycle which
seems to have been the rule in other civilizations,
still other epochs are required. If this is true, a
great field of effort lies ahead of us, a field which
might be called that of historical science inter-
preter, as it were, of over-ripe cultures; to be
able to work in this domain one must study
carefully the Roman, the Indian, and the Chinese
cultures. Still, all this must not be considered
as being all-important. First, because one likes
best to study those cultures of the past whose
typical forms clear up more satisfactorily the *
development and present condition of the great
states of to-day. And again, because decadent cul-
tures — and those mentioned above are certainly
to be regarded thus — can be understood only
when their earliest stages of development lie
open before us. And just these lowest stages
are those about which we know the least in all
these instances, and therefore those which re-
quire most accurate description and interpreta-
tion, for the reason that the later periods of

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 213

national growth present a decidedly different pic-
ture from that of their earlier stages ; and it is
the study of both pictures which, perhaps more
than any other, clears up the inner motifs of
the decadence.

Thus, if we would fill out the cycle of culture-
epochs, as our study of German history suggests,
we must turn our attention backward to the
beginnings of recorded history, and if we apply
here the canons of modern historical science,
considering at the same time the inter-relations
of the various branches of the subject, we shall
find two conditions which require attention : —

1. German history reaches back into an age
which we may call at first sight that of ethno-
logical culture ; it is well known that for the
conditions of the old Germans, as we know them
from Csesar and Tacitus, we find numerous par-
allels in present conditions of people of so-called
lower culture, as, e.g., the Kaffirs, or, to mention
an American Indian tribe, the Tlinkits. 2. The
question of finding still other cultural ages, fur-
ther removed from us than those at present
known to German history, is therefore identical
with the task of discovering from the enormous

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214 WHAT IS HISTORY?

materials of modern ethnology whether degrees
of psychic development of such a nature exist
as to permit existing material to be embodied
with them, without doing violence to established
principles of classification. And the answer to
this question would signify, as can easily be
seen, the harmonizing of history and ethnology
and at the same time the classification of the
lower peoples now living, and their arrangement
in their proper place in the course of universal
history, which would again signify the full de-
velopment of an ordered science of world-history.
We see from what has been deduced how impor-
tant is the problem which has just been stated.
But how can it be solved ?

Any amount of investigation of the conditions
of early social life, of family and clan organiza-
tions, would fail to give an adequate basis for
the formulation of the principles of a history of
lower cultures. Indeed, to understand these, one
must take the same point of departure as for
higher cultures : the highest functions of psychic
life are those which must be investigated.

But among these one has particularly to be
singled out in order that we may clearly corn-

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY

215

prehend all its psychological bearings. This is
imaginative activity. The imagination is that ;
special psychological function in which new
thought-unities take their origin, that is, the
beginning of both synthetic concepts, which
again come into existence only after the break-
in g-up process of analysis. In these changes we
also first mark the appearance of a new dominant
Therefore it has become possible to say of the
single individual, 1 " The tendency of the imagi- J
nation shows in the most direct manner what
experiences and associations have gained the
upper hand, and thus what sort of a character he
is." But what has been said here of the indi-
vidual-psychic being may be applied quite as
appropriately to the socio-psychic being.

If thus the question about the enumeration of
the periods of low culture — or, what is the same
thing, the problem of the analysis of the vast
ethnological material on the line of historic cate-
gories — is reduced to an inquiry concerning
imaginative activity, it will be found that we
must rely mainly on the plastic arts. A brief
review of the materials of ethnography seems to

»Von Lipps,p. 126.

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216 WHAT IS HISTORY?

be necessary at this point. The requirements,
both practical and scientific, demand in this re-
view a consideration only of those parts of the
vast material which are subject to the fewest
exceptions, and analogous elements which charac-
terize the growth and development of all peoples
at certain stages of their existence. We must
also take examples of imaginative activities which
are not modified so positively by the influence of
the various languages. Otherwise, how would it
be possible, with our limited means, to carry out
the comparison? Such examples, however, are
only to be found in the field of art.

The history of art furnishes us with the
examples with which to make our comparisons.
And there are still other practical reasons for
studying these subjects. As is known, we cannot,
from the general ethnological material, divide
off a historic section or subdivision, because the
material, considered from the universal-historical
point of view, is wanting in the first of all neces-
sary elements, that is to say in chronology, either
absolute or relative. Historically we know too
little of the nations, whose cultural possessions
are shown in our museums, to be able to dis-

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 217

tinguish easily between the products of each
nation which come from older times and those
which were added from later or neighboring
peoples.

The spade and pickaxe are our main reliance
in the study of prehistoric times. Archaeology
is concerned chiefly with civilization in its
lower stages ; but while looking for the signs
of primitive culture in the earth, we also find
in these hidden records, as they are laid bare
to our view, the necessary facts for the estab-
lishment — though sometimes none too securely
— of a new chronology reaching into far
remote ages of the past. Thus earlier and
later culture-epochs are clearly traced within
the limits of ages hitherto regarded as beyond
the reach of modern investigation. By the
terms "earlier" and "later" it is not meant
that our knowledge of prehistoric nations covers
their whole civilization. It is well known, in-
deed, that all the work done at the various lo-
calities in the East only brings to light certain _
classes of monuments — those done in the most
durable of materials and those which have been
in some way protected against the forces of dis-

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218 WHAT IS HISTORY?

integration. Besides, all that has come to light
thus far deals almost exclusively with the artistic
side of life, with plastic art in particular.

This is for us the salient point. If we look
backward, we find the chronology necessary
for the historical analysis of ethnological data
can only be drawn from prehistoric times ; but
the latter furnish satisfactory materials only for
plastic art. The chronology of this material,
however, even if it were of a nature to
extend our knowledge of the other branches
of prehistoric activity, could be applied only to
that of plastic art. And finally: if all the
data for all branches existed both in archaeology
and ethnology, and if all the languages of the
different nations could be mastered equally well
by one and the same investigator, we should
still be able, on account of the vastness of the
material, to make only a beginning, and this
beginning would, because of general psychological
laws, be in the field of imaginative effort. So
we should have finally to do first just what our
materials now enable us to do intelligently —
judge the past through its artistic side.

Again all roads lead to Rome. So much the

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 219

better if only this seeming unity enables us to
solve our problem the more readily. , But this
requires a systematic working-through of all the
monuments of northern, middle, and southern
Europe, along with those of the eastern Medi-
terranean and Asia Minor. This will give rise
to comparative study of the various peoples
along the lines of their development — chiefly
as expressed in the various forms of art. If it
appears that all these civilizations have ad-
vanced along parallel lines, — which seems
highly probable, — then shall we have a canon
of history which may be applied to the other
ethnographic groups. When this has been
accomplished, we may estimate the importance
to world-history of each individual community
or nation. A scientific Weltgeschichte can then
be written.

Such a universal history remains, of course,
the final aim and end of all historical science.
And it can be attained in no other way than by
the application of scientific method and experi-
ment, however much the imagination would like
to hurry by way of transcendentalism toward gen-
eral results and easy solutions. Hence there is all

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WHAT IS HISTORY ?

the more reason to emphasize empirical and me-
thodical efforts to reach a true answer. But this
can only be attained (and this, not the materials
of knowledge, is our goal to-day) when we ap-
proach the subjects in question entirely free
from prejudice. How long has it been since
the day when tradition restricted one to the
written sources! And even to-day a similar
opinion comes occasionally to the surface —
a notion which belongs only to the past of
historical science. It has been seen what an
extraordinary importance now attaches to the
investigation of prehistoric times, a field of ac-
tivity so much despised a few decades ago.
And looked at from a methodological point of
view, is not a monument, which personifies a
portion of the past, to be far more highly prized
from the epistomological point of view than the
story of any occurrences indirectly, and perhaps
incorrectly, related? And has not every pre-
historic monument which takes a prominent
place in the history of fine arts a greater docu-
mental value in proportion as it fixes, not only
one moment of a past important action, but all
moments of it ?

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 221

We must be cautious, but also intellectually
free, in the rarefied air of the problems of uni-
versal history.

It is, however, time to face the last but not
least important phase of the subject. Do the
examples dealt with really embrace all the prob-
lems of universal history ? Are there not other
and more difficult ones ?

This must be unreservedly answered in the
affirmative. Indeed, all the questions in point
here, within certain limits, refer to suppositions,
which are .simplified by isolation. These sup-
positions, intentionally formulated somewhat
too strongly, are : the national course of human
history, and the normal course of national develop-
ments. Has history, as far as we are able to ob-
serve it, really taken its course in normal, — that
is to say, from the beginnings to the very per-
fection of individual development, — progressive
national cultures? Or has this occurred only
in certain arbitrarily chosen examples? It is
as if one would require that a forest should con-
sist only of trees which had gone through the
whole process of growth, from the very begin-
ning to their final decay — i.e. the course of a

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222 WHAT IS HISTOBY?

normal tree. But there are trees which are
propagated by grafts and from shoots; and
then not every tree comes to its full maturity.
It is not different in the life of a community.
Indeed, the example of the tree and the
wood teaches us how fitting and necessary
is the method of isolating things. What
would plant biology have amounted to if
one had been required to study each indi-
vidual plant rather than the normal, typical
growth ?

But it is an established fact that the course
of universal history can by no means be deter-

*4 » -» « ly — of the pri.-
ciple of special individualist research, in so far
as I am acquainted with this class of writing.
It seems a matter of course that we should
only follow up in the most careful manner the
vast subject, and that we cannot reconstrue it
and draw conclusions of any kind from it after
the manner of logical deduction. In the course
of our observations, certain great complications
have not received due notice, though in a gen-
eral way they have not been excluded from the
schemes laid down. In this class belong certain

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♦

UNIVERSAL HISTORY

223

parts of every migration of nations and of every
colonizing movement.

This is a point which it is certainly worth
while to touch on here, in the historic metro-
politan seaport of the New World. What is
it that makes the history of the United States
one of the most interesting subjects for every
historian ? I think it is the fact that on the
same ground two interesting psychic currents
of general significance have crossed and are still
crossing each other: the incidents of psychic
revolution of such national elements as one
finds in national migration, and such as undergo
at the time that peculiar change of the

national character which is always connected
with the appearance of colonizing movements.
The inhabitants of the German empire of to-
day are, in their ideals of culture, of a two-
fold habit of mind : according as they belong to
the old native country, which is situated west-
ward from the Elbe and which they have oc-
cupied for at least fifteen hundred years, or to
those colonial territories, eastward from the Elbe,
which were wrested from the Slavonic inhabit-
ants only five hundred years ago. We Germans

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224 WHAT IS HISTORY?

understand very well the distinction between the
Berlin and the Cologne types, between the young
squire from the country east of the Elbe and
the manufacturer of the West — between Prus-
sia, the Eastern State, and the other States ; it
is the distinction of the plucky, more energetic
disposition, with a natural bent to rule,
and the more yielding, indolent class — the
distinction between the colonial and indigenous
character. It is the same distinction that exists
between the Englishman and the American,
indigenous and colonial Anglo-Saxons, a funda-
mental distinction for American history. For
the original Irishman, German, Swede, Roman,
Slav, becomes in the United States a colonial.

But this is not all. For the culture of this
great country and its people the principles of
psychic transformation of the migration of
nations hold good. Here, on colonial soil, nation
stands beside nation, though the Anglo-Saxons
are in the ascendency, and they all act and re-
act upon each other. This is a process which
again modifies the national character, already
strongly differentiated from the original by colo-
nial conditions. These influences, reenforced by

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY

225

geographical and political forces, will continue
until new common purposes and ideals are
attained.

This process is being worked out in the very
light of history ; and thousands of sources, for-
eign relations, the constitution, social growth
and change, poetry, all speak out and prophesy
concerning things present and to come. What
a wonderful task for a historian to follow up
these psychic changes, these innumerable com-
binations and decompositions, and to project
from them the picture of a great and united
future! This idea cannot be even outlined in
the short space of a lecture on the general char-
acter of universal history. Could this undertak-
ing even be carried to perfection without clear
notions of the general principles of which we
have been speaking, and is not an understanding
of American history and conditions a problem of
world-history ?

Vast and inexhaustible are the sources of
universal history. Whoever tries to survey it
will certainly shrink back in the very beginning
from the task of bringing all its treasures to-
gether and from attempting to sort them all for

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226

WHAT IS HISTORY?

himself, especially if he but pause to think how
little men know of their past, to say nothing of
their ancestry. How we labor and puzzle our-
selves, trying to find out how and when the
human race came into existence ! Herder's idea
was that God separated all human kind from
the rest of animate nature and breathed into
them the spirit of reason, — the greatest act of the
whole process of creation. How many millions
of years may have passed since man began to
separate himself from other organic life of which
he was to become the master. And how many
ages have passed into that eternity which sepa-
rates us from man's first attempt to approach
with timid steps (from stimulus or association)
the beginnings of that extremely complicated
subject: evolution, which has become for us
the very basis of our thought.

Of all these millenniums we know but ten
thousand years. And yet we try to penetrate
into the very birth-chamber of human life?
Does not the feeling of the psalmist again steal
over us, as in the beginning of our lecture?
With profound reverence we approach the altar
of humanity. But this must not prevent us

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY

227

from investigating with the sharp critical mind
which the passing centuries have given us what
we reverently worship. One thing must be
avoided if we would not stumble: the mix-
ing of our wishes and our judgment, the inter-
mingling of feelings produced by our sense of
the sublime and the magnificent, with the results
of judicious and painstaking investigation. It
has been in this spirit that the various phases of
the great subject have been treated in this course
of lectures; and as scientific students we need
not despair of the final solution of many of the
great problems of universal history. May we
not press forward with the battle-cry of the
greatest of all German humanists: Perrumpen-
dum est tandem ! Perrumpendum est 1

MAYS- 1915

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THE CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY

Planned by the late Lord Acton, LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History

at Cambridge University.
Edited by A. W. Ward, Litt.D., G. W. Prothero, Litt.D., and Stanley

Leathes, MJl. Cloth Royal 8vo $4.00 net per volume

This comprehensive history of modern times will be completed in twelve vol-
umes, and will cover the period from the close of the Middle Ages to the present
day. It is hoped that the progress of the work will permit two volumes to be pub-
lished in each year. In order that each portion of the work may be the product of
special research, many of the leading historical writers in England, America, and
on the Continent have been invited to contribute.

VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED

Volume I. THE RENAISSANCE

Volume II. THE REFORMATION

Volume III. THE WARS OF RELIGION

Volume VII. THE UNITED STATES

Volume VIII. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE AMERICAN COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY

By Herbert L. Osgood, Professor of History in Columbian University. Vol-
umes I and II — The Chartered Colonies. Beginnings of Self-Govern-
ment. Cloth 8vo $5.00 net Postage 44 cents

These volumes form the first instalment of an institutional history of the Ameri-
can colonies. It is intended to serve both as an introduction to the study of
American institutions and as a contribution to the history of British colonization.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

By Henry William Elson, Author of w Side Lights on American History,"
etc. Cloth xamo $1.75 Postage 24 cents

" Published at a very reasonable price, it is the most comprehensive handy,
popular history of the United States that has yet seen the light." — Montreal Star.

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girl, as a Christmas, birthday, or graduating present." — Friends Intelligence.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

From the Compromise of 1850

By James Ford Rhodes. In five volumes. Cloth 8vo $12.50 net

*' It is the one work now within reach of the young American student of to-day in which
he may learn the connected story of the great battle that resulted in the overthrow of slavery
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know bow gradually they were developed from year to year under varying political power,
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THE HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA UNDER THE PROPRIETARY
GOVERNMENT, 1670-1719

THE HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA UNDER THE ROYAL GOV-
ERNMENT, 1719=1776

THE HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE REVOLUTION,
1775-1780

THE HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE REVOLUTION,
1780-1783

By Edward McCrady, a Member of the Bar of Charleston, S.C., and Presi-
dent of the Historical Society of South Carolina.

8vo Cloth Gilt top Each $3.50 net

" Unquestionably a valuable contribution to American historical literature. It covers a
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selection of material. . . . The future must surely be indebted to Mr. McCrady in no mean
degree." — St. Louis Globe- Democrat.

RECONSTRUCTION IN MISSISSIPPI

By James W. Garner, Ph.M., Member of the Mississippi Historical Society.

Cloth 8vo $3.00 net

" The latest and one of the most valuable examples of pacific literature which is eradicat-
ing the bitterness from our national history. It has taken over 400 pages to enable Mr. Garner
to tell the story of that time of distrust and calamity, and even with so generous an allowance
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The story that follows is one of arrogance upon Doth sides, of frailty and passion, indignation,
courage, conscience, fanaticism, nobility, and contemptibility. _ Mr. Garner has made the
dry records of the legislature and newspapers tell their dramatic story, and it will be impos-
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can history, and should have no lack of readers." — Chicago Tribune.

MARYLAND AS A PROPRIETARY PROVINCE

By Newton D. Mereness, sometime University Fellow in History in Colum-
bia University. Cloth 8vo $3-00 net

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and references to the authorities confirm every statement. The labor undergone has been
great ; but the result is a work planned and carried out in the truest historical spirit, and in-
valuable to the student of American history and institutional development." - The Nation.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY

, By Ernest F. Henderson, A.B. (Trinity), M.A. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Berlin),

Author of a A History of Germany in the Middle Ages."

r Two Volumes Cloth 8vo $4.00 net

Vol. I. 9 A.D. to 1640 A.D.
I Vol. II. 1648 A.D. to 1871 A.D.

" This work is in the form of a continuous narrative, unbroken by monographs
on particular institutions or phases of Germany's development, but covering the
whole subject with a unity of treatment such as has seldom been attained by earlier
writers in the same field. In this respect, at least, the book is unique among popu-
lar histories of Germany in the English language.** — Review of Reviews.

NAPOLEON : A Sketch of his Life, Character, Strug-
gles, and Achievements

By the Hon. Thomas E. Watson, author of u The Story of France," etc.
Illustrated with portraits and facsimiles. Cloth 8T0 $3. as net

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there does not live a boy who will not be made more ambitious, by honest study of
Watson's ' Napoleon.* . . .

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genuinely American study of this great character, read Watson's history of
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THE STORY OF FRANCE: From the Earliest Times
to the Consulate of Napoleon Bonaparte

By the Hon. Thomas E. Watson, author of " Napoleon," etc.

Two Volumes Cloth 8vo $5.00 per set

M Many histories of France have been written, many in the English tongue, but
none that can compare with this. A more brief, direct, yet readable history leaving
a vivid impression upon the mind is scarcely imaginable. . . . For our part we
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established governments, . . . and it is so that Mr. Watson regards history, so in
his own inimitable style that he has written the history of France.' — The North
American, Philadelphia.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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