Georgiana Rose Simpson

“ Herder ascribes to the plant something in addition to the stimulus to seek nutrition when he recognizes that intelligence in plant structures which selects only such elements as fit the peculiar needs for its development after its kind. He does not succeed in getting rid entirely of the external in operating the organism; he sees in breathing a kind of time-beating by which nature swings the machine, and here nature is without, for she breathes upon the machine, in this harmonious way, the spirit of life. ”

“ Herder’s collection of Volk poetry embraces as themes: love, war, religion, domestic life, idyllic scenes, vengeance, court life, ghost tales, fairy tales, marriage, mythology, phenomena of nature, death, personified nature, freedom, the dance, the seasons, and hero and ancestral veneration.
These embody sentiments universal among mankind; feelings which are fundamental in the human breast; thoughts which are innate in humanity. That which is universal, fundamental, and innate is natural. ”

“ The harmonious man is to be the product of a natural unfolding of innate human nature. The potentialities within are to be allowed to develop unwarped and unimpeded and to express themselves completely and symmetrically. There must be no subordination of personality or individuality to artificial standards, for nature is the sovereign. If no powers, inclinations, or impulses are thwarted in their trend and activity, they will, in all their manifold variety, flower into the perfectly beautiful and therefore the perfectly good. ”

“ Truth is the bond of humanity between friends. The purer the thoughts of men are, the more they agree. The true invisible church is one in all times, in all lands.
Franklin had a wonderful sense of humanity. He proceeds from the simple eternal laws of nature, from the most infallible practical rules—the needs and interests of mankind. Franklin recognized the value of the common people and thought to teach them by clothing his ideas in simplicity. ”

“ Moral education is to be the result of natural discipline carried on in a sort of laissez-faire way. In general, Emile gets his education by being thrown into contact with nature and being allowed to observe and feel the phenomena of a crude environment, and by expressing directly what he has learned at first hand from this teacher. Emile, then, is shaped by primitive forces just as the simple, common man in the Social Contract and the Inequality. These made the simple, common man the epitome of that which was of greatest worth to humanity. ”

“ The consciousness of limitations of their own knowledge and the awe for the unknown first cause turned the actual darkness and dawn and full daylight into chaotic emptiness, a ray of light at the beginning of creation and a completed work at the end of six days—a wonderful personality directing it all. ”

“ According to Herder’s philosophy, as expressed in Erkennen und Empfinden, the senses present to the mind pictures which receive the stamp of feeling and which in turn are given back through some medium of expression.
In Ossian, the material for these pictures is first and foremost Nature; Nature robed in the peculiar majesty of the north. The sun is a rash youth, the moon a maiden who has had as sisters other moons in the heavens. The evening star is a lovely boy who comes out, winks, and goes away again. ”

“ Companionship is the foundation of humanity and the communion of human souls, a mutual interchange of acquired ideas (thoughts) and of traits of understanding which increases the mass of human knowledge and skill infinitely. If humanity is no empty name, suffering mankind must rejoice at the advance in medical science. Human society founded on virtue must stand. ”

“ By this means the general will worked for the general good of humanity.
But the idea of progress implied not only the teaching that the good of one must be the good of all, but meant also: (1) That man was not self-sufficient and therefore could come to fullest development only in the group. (2) That the seeds of individuality lay within man as a universal element and were nurtured and brought to flower by the peculiar touch of him who was expressed in their flowering. The fundamental tendencies in mankind being allowed to unfold, the man will be good ”

“ Herder conceives of this entire milieu as a world in which the dawn of human life was arising out of dark night, and giving way to the broad daylight in which water and air, earth and sea, mountain and forest, were in the fullest view and most powerful working. ”

“ Volk is the same as nation.
II, 28: “Der ganzen Nation wäre ein solches Buch ein Schatz: ... denn der Genius, der über die Wissenschaften eines Volks wachet ist zugleich der Schutzgott der Sprache desselben.” Volk is nation.
II, 32: “Und was dörfen wir uns unserer Consonanten schämen, wenn sie Concente der Tapferkeit sind, um Götter und Stammväter unseres Volks, Helden und Erretter der Nation zu preisen.” Volk is nation. ”

“ Fruits do not steal away from our hands at all; one may nourish one’s self with them without talking; we may follow in silence the prey of which we wish to make a repast; but to move a young heart, to repel an unjust aggressor, nature dictates accents, cries, and tones of resentment. ”

“ The elevation of human nature, as found in the individual, to something which has a universal value, to something higher and nobler than the interests of self alone was one of the prominent tenets of Shaftesbury’s philosophy. ”

“ These souls so entirely formed by the sights and sounds of nature blended with inner feeling give a secret, mystical significance touched with the finest spiritual sense to the pictures and parallels which they produce. ”

“ In jedem Lande bildet sich der Volksgesang nach innern und äussern Veranlassungen der Nation. Ossians Gedichte bezeichnen den Herbst seines Volkes. Die Blätter färben und krümmen sich; sie falben und fallen. Der Lufthauch, der sie ablöset, hat keine Erguickung des Frühlinges in sich; sein Spiel indessen ist traurig ... angenehm mit den sinkenden Blättern. [27]
Gesetzt, wir konnten alles dies wissen; singen wir denn für Juden die sich für das einzige Volk Gottes hielten?... Von allen Völkern der Erde abgesondert, brachte es seinem Schutzgott Nationalgesänge. ”

“ When Herder brings to our attention the difference between the mournful tones of Ossian and the arousing strains of Homer, when he reminds us of the differing stages of history commemorated by each, the points entirely unlike at which each writer halts and from which he extracts for his art character, he sets forth a definite theory; namely, that each writer, speaking as his people would speak, characterizes his poetry with the individual content and feeling of his race ”

“ Il suit encore que l’inégalité morale autorisée par le seul droit positif, est contraire au droit naturel toutes les fois qu’elle ne concourt pas en même proportion avec l’inégalité physique; distinction qui détermine suffisamment ce qu’on doit penser à cet égard de la sorte d’inégalité qui règne parmi tous les peuples policés, puis-qu’il est manifestement contre la loi de nature. ”

“ III, 425: “eine Nation, deren Merkwürdigkeiten eben so verwickelt von der Politischen Wissenschaft sind, dass eine einzelne Münzensymbole sie nicht vorstellen kann, ein Volk, das aus der verblümten Bilderzeit hinaus, Wahrheit suchet, und Wahrheit findet: ein Volk endlich, in dem die Münzen und der Geschmack auf denselben durchaus für keine Produktion des Publikum gelten kann—ein solches Volk soll sich seine Geschichte des Geschmacks und der Kunst aus Münzen weissagen, sich ein Buch durch mit einem andern, dessen Numismatik Himmelweit von der ihrigen abliegt, hämisch vergleichen lassen? ”

“ Both Shaftesbury and Rousseau relate the development of the individual to the group but neither makes the altruism or interdependence such an impelling force as does Herder. His Volk, conscious of their own frailty, will have sympathy and a general regard for the needs and interests of mankind. This consciousness will be not merely a passive altruism nor an interdependence of material and economic necessity, but it will be heightened by an ideal love for humanity, which will force to active and positive efforts to make humanity the highest possible. ”

“ The noble dead never became old, but grew constantly wiser because they conversed with the good of other times. On the other hand, the souls of the wicked were driven whirling into a thick fog which always hung over an offensive smelling morass. ”

“ Herder denies that anything in the way of knowledge comes back to the soul out of the platonic fore-world, and abstract egoism, he says, is opposed to truth and the open course of nature. Just as all of the soul’s knowing depends upon obscure stimuli and forces having their foundations in the body and leading to sensations and then to reasoning, so her willing comes from these as a natural sequence of her knowing. ”

“ They stamped the sense impression of them with the feeling of worshipful joy, of rhythm which became music and dancing, and so it was that the stars became the daughters that shouted about the throne of the Great Ruler. At times they assigned to them the sense of power for defense in well-ordered numbers of individuals, and the stars became an army ready to do battle for God. ”

“ Here are Herder’s foundations for individuality and personality.
A perfection resulting from the unfolding of the content of the individual life and the shaping of its originality are seen in Shaftesbury’s thought when he makes morality consist of the rich and full expression of individual powers in a beautiful and sovereign personality. The individual system as seen in one man in all its physical and mental elements is related to something external to himself. Altruistic inclinations are an important part of the natural endowment of every human being. ”

“ That which is expansion and contraction in dead nature, the result of warmth and cold, seems to be here the obscure seed of stimulus and feeling in man. The “world-all,” the entire feeling, nature of human beings and animals moves in this ebb and flood of warmth and cold. The power to expand and contract which is the effect of this heat and cold, pleasure and pain, Herder makes the fundamental principle of the power for self-nutriment. ”

“ We have seen that when Herder lays emphasis on the feelings, when he is opposed to arbitrary and restrictive government, when he elevates the crude and primitive, his system of thought is in agreement with that of Rousseau. But Herder makes an advance in seeking standards in processes actually or believed to be found in Nature. His line of investigation in history, art, and philosophy will be by way of the natural man, [57] i.e., the primitive. His Volk, then, because of their power to express their personality freely, give him a theory of art; art must be an expression of personality. ”

“ Comme ce cri n’était arraché que par une sorte d’instinct dans les occasions pressantes, pour implorer du secours dans les grands dangers ou du soulagement dans les maux violents, il n’était pas d’un grand usage dans le cours ordinaire de la vie, où règnent des sentiments plus modérés. ”

“ These old Highlanders believed in an all-high Being, whom they conceived to be self-existing. The cloud was the dwelling place of patriotism and love. The voice of renown, that is of song sung by friends yet alive to the honor of their departed ones, still highly esteemed, introduced these departed to their ancestors. ”

“ In exercising their powers and general spirit, they act as an entity according to Herder’s conception. He makes the group a single being, an individual. In Herder’s day when ideas of nationalism had no definite shape, this added sense of the meaning of nation meant clearly that he was a forerunner in the realm of philosophy, and gave to Herder’s conception [55] of Volk, even in this commonly used sense, a unique place. Individuality, personality, distinguished nations just as these traits mark out human beings. ”

“ To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power, is surely the height of goodness, and makes that temper which we call divine.—Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, section 4. ”

“ Thus far Herder has recognized the existence of a stimulus in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which is in reality a life-principle. This life-principle is not only the monitor over the feelings, but merges into them and becomes the stuff of which feelings are made. ”

“ The first phase of feeling which Herder considers is Reiz or stimulus. The peculiar phenomenon of stimulus says he, which may be seen in the smallest, most delicate filaments of plants, causing them to contract and expand, and bespeaking a sort of feeling is due to the same law which controls the most complicated feelings and passions of the human being. This all-pervading law of stimulus Herder finds in the action of physical heat and cold, which he makes parallel in its working with pleasure and pain respectively. ”

“ Peuple—that part of a nation considered as opposed to the classes among whom there is either more ease or more education: Il y a le peuple qui est opposé aux grands. C’est la populace et la multitude. [8]
In Middle English the word people was already a synonym for folc: “A Blysful lyf, Ledden the peoples in the former age” (Chaucer) .
In Modern English the word people has almost entirely displaced Volk except in colloquial or archaic speech. Like Volk in its fundamental sense we have:
People—a body of persons composing a community, tribe, race, or nation. ”

“ Ossian’s people and the Ancient Hebrews are products of an environment which is most effective in shaping Herder’s ideal Volk: namely, nature unaltered by the hand of man. As a result of such rough, crude surroundings, these peoples have developed into simple, harmonious beings, and possess all the elements which Herder considers essential in man’s nature. He finds they are natural because they are primitive, and they possess superior traits because they are natural. ”

“ Mists and clouds, midnight and storm, abound both on mountain tops and in the intervening valleys. Their huts are bordered by rocks and narrowly shut in by foggy darkness or from rough cliffs; they overlook the sea. ”

“ XXV, 323: “Volk heisst nicht der Poebel auf den Gassen, der singt und dichtet niemals, sondern schreyt und verstümmelt.”
These characterizations of Poebel suggest not a lack of culture but culture of a sort that has had a warping effect. If Volk is not this rabble and, yet, not the learned class, it must stand in some respects, at least, between the two. It is more dignified and respectable than the rabble; it has certain intellectual aptitudes and moral traits found among primitive peoples, but which are usually effaced by a high degree of civilization and culture. ”