Daniel G. Brinton

“ Early in this century Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote: “The last and highest duty of the historian is to portray the effort of the Idea to attain realization in fact;” and the most recent lecture on the philosophy of history which I have read, that by Lord Acton, contains this maxim: “Ideas which in religion and politics are truths, in history are living forces.” ”

“ The ethnologist who has no taste for poetry may gather much that is good, but will miss the best; the historian who neglects the poetic literature of a nation turns away his eyes from the vista which would give him the farthest insight into national character. ”

“ For an answer, I turn with satisfaction to an older writer on the philosophy of history, one whose genial sympathy with the human heart glows on every page of his volumes, to Johann Gottfried von Herder.21-3 The one final aim, he tells us, of all institutions, laws, governments and religions, [22] of all efforts and events, is that each person, undisturbed by others, may employ his own powers to their fullest extent, and thus gain for himself a completer existence, a more beautiful enjoyment of his faculties. ”

“ First, by the principle that man can be explained only by man, and can be so explained completely. That is, no super-human agencies need be invoked to interpret any of the incidents of history: and, on the other hand, no merely material or mechanical conditions, such as climate, food and environment, are sufficient for a full interpretation. Beyond these lie the inexhaustible sources of impulse in the essence of Mind itself. ”

“ Any definition of evolution which carries with it the justification of optimism is as erroneous in history, as it would be in biology to assert that all variations are beneficial. There is no more certainty that the human species will improve under the operation of physical laws than that any individual will; there is far more evidence that it will not, as every species of the older geologic ages has succumbed to those laws, usually without leaving a representative. ”

“ Lazarus, perhaps the most eminent analyst of ethnic character of this generation, reaches in one of his essays: “A people which is not rich in ideas, is never rich; one that is not strong in its thinking powers, is never strong.”18-1
I claim, therefore, that the facts of ethnology and the study of racial psychology justify me in formulating this maxim for the guidance of the historian: The conscious and deliberate pursuit of ideal aims is the highest causality in human history. ”

“ Such is the ethnologist’s view of history. He does not pretend to be either a priest or a prophet. He claims neither to possess the final truth nor to foresee it. He is, therefore equally unwelcome to the dogmatist, the optimistic naturalist and the speculative philosopher. He refuses any explanations which either contradict or transcend human reason; but he insists that human reason is one of the causal facts which he has to consider ”

“ The saying of Goethe that “The most unnatural action is yet natural,” is a noble suggestion of tolerance; but human judgment can scarcely go to the length of Madame de Stael’s opinion, when she claims that “To understand all actions is to pardon all.” We must brush away the sophisms which insist that all standards are merely relative, and that time and place alone decide on right and wrong. ”

“ My assertion is, that the chief impulses of nations and peoples are abstract ideas and ideals, unreal and unrealizable; and that it is in pursuit of these that the great as well as the small movements on the arena of national life and on the stage of history have taken place. ”

“ I have not forgotten the converse example of the Jews, which some attribute to their religion; but the Romany, who have no religion worth mentioning, have been just as tenacious of their traits under similar adverse circumstances.
The Arts, those of Utility, such as pottery, building, agriculture and the domestication of animals, and those of Pleasure, such as music, painting and sculpture, must come in for a full share of the ethnologist’s attention. They represent, however, stadia of culture rather than national character. ”

“ Just in proportion as such ideas are numerous, clear and true in the national mind, do their power augment and their domain extend; just so much more quickly and firmly do they express themselves, in acts, forms and institutions, and thus enable the nation to enrich, beautify and strengthen its own existence. ”

“ In place of any of these, the man who loves his kind would substitute others; and as these touch closely on the business of the ethnologist and the historian when either would apply the knowledge he has gained to the present condition of society, I will briefly refer to some advanced by various writers.
The first and most favorite is that of moral perfection. It has been formulated in the expression: “In the progress of ethical conceptions lies the progress of history itself.” (Schäfer.) To such writers the ideal of duty performed transcends all others, and is complete in itself. ”

“ Next to this I should place Government, understanding this word in its widest sense, as embracing the terms on which man agrees to live with his fellow man and with woman, family, therefore, as well as society ties. This includes the legal standards of duty, the rules of relationship and descent, the rights of property and the customs of commerce, the institutions of castes, classes and rulers, and those international relations on which depend war and peace. ”

“ Persons change their religion with facility, but adhere resolutely to the laws which protect their property. The mighty empire of Rome secured ethnic unity to a degree never since equalled in parallel circumstances, and its plan was to tolerate all religions—as, indeed, do all enlightened states to-day—but to insist on the adoption of the Roman law, and, in official intercourse, the Latin language. ”

“ It begins with the acknowledged maxim that man is by nature a gregarious animal, a zoon politikon, as Aristotle called him, living in society, and owing to society all those traits which it is the business of history, as distinguished from biology, to study. ”

“ Religion is, however, essentially “divinatory,” that is, its chief end and aim is toward the future, not the present, and therefore the impress it leaves on national character is far less permanent, much more ephemeral, than either government or language. This is constantly seen in daily life. ”

“ It does not deal in eternal laws, nor divine the distant future. The ethnologist does not profess to have been admitted into the counsels of the Almighty, nor to have caught in his grasp the secret purposes of the Universe. He seeks the sufficient reason for known facts, and [9] is content with applying the knowledge he gains to present action.
Before stating the view of the ethnologist, I must briefly describe what the science of Ethnology is. You will see at once how closely it is allied to history, and that the explanation of the one almost carries with it the prescription for the other. ”

“ I do claim that it is timely for me to repeat these doctrines and to urge them with vehemence, for they are generally repudiated by the prevailing schools of ethnology and history in favor of the opinion that objective, mechanical influences alone suffice to explain all the phenomena of human life. ”

“ The ethnologist, however, has not completed his task when he has defined an ethnos, and explained its traits by following them to their sources. He has merely prepared himself for a more delicate and difficult part of his undertaking. ”

“ Probably a man cannot himself have very strong convictions about politics or religion, and not let them be seen in his narrative of events where such questions are prominently present. A few familiar instances will illustrate this. No one can take either Lingard’s or Macauley’s History of England as anything more than a plea for either writer’s personal views. ”

“ We must accept the [17] presence of the same powers, and in a greater degree, in the life and the history of man.17-1
It may be objected that abstract ideas are far beyond the grasp of the uncultivated intellect. The reply is, consciously to regard them as abstract, may be; but they exist and act for all that. All sane people think and talk according to certain abstract laws of grammar and logic; and they act in similar unconsciousness of the abstractions which impel them. Moreover, the Idea is usually clothed in a concrete Ideal, a personification, which brings it home to the simplest mind. ”

“ Flint in his work on the philosophy of history in these [14] words: “History is essentially the record of the work and manifestation of human nature.”14-1 In both sciences it is the essentially human which alone occupies us; it is the life of man.
Now men do not live in material things, but in mental states; and solely as they affect these are the material things valuable or valueless. Religions, arts, laws, historic events, all have but one standard of appraisement, to wit, the degree to which they produce permanently beneficial mental states in the individuals influenced by them. ”

“ Though he exalts the power of ideas, he is no idealist, but practical to the last degree; for he denies the worth of any art, science, event or institution which does not directly or indirectly contribute to the elevation of the individual man or woman, the common average person, the human being. ”

“ Together, they make up the social unit, at first the family or clan, itself becoming part of a larger unit, a tribe, nation or people. The typical folk, or ethnos, is a social unit, the members of which are bound together by certain traits common to all or most, which impart to them a prevailing character, an organic unity, specific peculiarities and general tendencies. ”

“ But I may ask your attention to the fact that one of the highest authorities on the laws of natural science, the late George J. Romanes, reached by the severest induction an exactly opposite opinion, which he announced in these words: “The human mind is itself a causal agent. Its motives are in large part matters of its own creation. ”

“ The assumption that history is the record of a necessary and uninterrupted evolution, progressing under ironclad mechanical laws, is a preconceived theory as detrimental to clear vision as are the preoccupations of the theologian or the political partisan. ”

“ I am aware that I am here in opposition to the popular [8] as well as the scientific view. No commonplace is better received than that, “Eternal progress is the law of nature;” though by what process eternal laws are discovered is imperfectly explained. ”

“ Were all men truly ethical, all would be perfectly free. Therefore Freedom, in its highest sense, according to him and several other accomplished reasoners, is the aim of morality, and is that which gives it worth. ”

“ Tobler.8-3 There has been no growth of humanity at large at all comparable to that of the individual. There are tribes to-day in the full stone age, and others in all stages of culture above it. The horizons of progress have been as local as those of geography. No solidarity of advancement exists in the species as a whole. Epochs and stadia of culture vary with race and climate. ”

“ By means of it he has been able to follow the trail of most of the arts and institutions of life back to a period when they were so simple and uncomplicated that they are quite transparent and intelligible. Later changes are to be analyzed and explained by the same procedure.12-1
This is the whole of the ethnologic method. It is open and easy when the facts are in our possession. There are no secret springs, no occult forces, in the historic development of culture. Whatever seems hidden or mysterious, is so only because our knowledge of the facts is imperfect. ”

“ These are the primary impulses of conscious human endeavor, and it is vain to attempt to understand ethnology or to write history without assigning their consideration the first place in the narration. ”

“ There is in living matter everywhere something which escapes the most exhaustive investigation, some subtle center of impulse, which lies beyond the domain of correlated energy, and which acts directively, without increasing or diminishing the total of that energy. ”

“ I fear this does not sound well from the scientific rostrum, for the prevailing notion among scientists is that the poet is a fabulist, and is therefore as far off as possible from the platform they occupy. No one, however, can really understand a people who remains outside the pale of the world of imagination in which it finds its deepest joys ”

“ Keener thinkers have, however, recognized that virtue, morality, the ethical evolution, cannot be an end in itself, but must be a means to some other end. Effort directed toward other, altruism in any form, must have its final measurement of value in terms of self ”

“ It assumes Evolution as a law of the universe, whereas in natural science it is only a limited generalization, inapplicable to most series of natural events, and therefore of uncertain continuance in any series. ”

“ When the ethnologist has acquired a competent knowledge of his facts, and deduced from them a clear conception of the mental states of the peoples he is studying, he has not finished his labors. Institutions and arts in some degree reflect the mental conditions of a people, in some degree bring them about ”

“ By the comparison of several social groups he reaches wider generalizations; and finally to those which characterize the common consciousness of Humanity, the psychical universals of the species. By such comparison he also ascertains under what conditions and in what directions men have progressed most rapidly toward the cultivation and the enjoyment of the noblest elements of their nature ”

“ Taking objective facts as his guides, such as laws, arts, institutions and language, he seeks from these to understand the mental life, the psychical welfare of the people, and beyond this to reach the ideals which they cherished and the ideas which were the impulses of their activities. ”