Johann Gottfried Herder

“ His "Oberon" is one of the most charming and attractive poems of modern times.
Herder (1741-1803) was deeply versed in almost all branches of study, and exercised great influence, not only as a poet, but as a theologian, philosopher, critic, and philologist. He studied philosophy under Kant, and, after filling the offices of teacher and clergyman, he was invited to join the circle of poets and other literary men at Weimar, under the patronage of the Grand Duke Karl August. Here he produced a series of works on various subjects, all marked by a kindly and noble spirit of humanity. ”

“ He at once suggested Herder, who was thoroughly tired of his position at Bückeburg, and thinking of accepting a professorship at Göttingen. The majority of the clergy of the duchy were by no means delighted with the proposal, for Herder had the reputation of being a heretic; but Goethe never grudged labour undertaken for a friend, and worked so hard, and with so much tact, in Herder’s interest, that all difficulties were overcome. Herder came to Weimar in 1776, and soon made a great mark, not only as a preacher, but as an earnest promoter of every scheme for the public welfare. ”

“ He had met Herder at the very moment when he needed, and was capable of responding to, the stimulus of an original mind at a stage of development more advanced than his own.{41} When he parted from his teacher, it was no longer necessary for him to sit at the feet of a master. He had learned that great achievements were possible only if, like the poets into whose secrets he was penetrating, he brought himself into direct contact with the facts of the world, and trusted absolutely to the inherent impulses and laws of his own intellectual and imaginative powers. ”

“ I might circumstantially quote that previously mentioned opinion of a sober-minded man, and corroborate it by my own experience; all this, according to Herder, went for nothing; there was no immediate truth, properly so called, to be found in these poems; here was neither Greece nor Italy, neither a primitive world nor a cultivated one, everything was rather an imitation of what had already existed, and a mannerised representation, such as could be expected only from an over-cultivated man. ”

“ Had Herder been methodical, I should have found the most precious guide for giving a durable tendency to my cultivation; but he was more inclined to examine and stimulate, than to lead and conduct. Thus he at first made me acquainted with Hamann's writings, upon which he set a very great value. [Pg 353] But instead of instructing me as to these, and making the bias and drift of his extraordinary mind intelligible to me, it generally only served him for amusement when I behaved strangely enough, in trying to get at the meaning of such sibylline leaves. ”

“ The personal acquaintance of the men who surrounded him increased his literary power but did not make his religion more fervent and [Pg 172] powerful. His training had been in the old purifying furnace of Pietism. His father had been a rare specimen of that class of devout householders, who, back in the days of Spener and Francke, were the real glory of the German people. Young Herder was accustomed to family worship every day, when the hard duties of temporal life were forgotten by those engaged in singing, in the leisurely reading of the Scriptures, and in prayer. ”

“ Let us now accompany the student Goethe to Strassburg and pay a visit to the inn “Zum Geist,” where his friendship with Herder, so important for his future development, was formed. “I visited Herder morning and evening, I even remained whole days with him ... and daily learned to appreciate his beautiful and great qualities, his extensive knowledge, and his profound views.” In Leipzig, the next university where Goethe studied, he lived in a house, between the old and the new market, which was called after its sign “Die Feuerkugel.” ”

“ His honesty showed itself the same as ever; nay, his acquaintance with the world may have occasioned him to adhere with more severity and even obstinacy to his well-meaning views.
Merk.
Through these two friends, I very soon became acquainted with Merck, to whom I had not been unfavourably announced by Herder, from Strasburg. This strange man, who had the greatest influence on my life, was a native of Darmstadt. Of his early education I can say but little. After finishing his studies, he conducted a young man to Switzerland, where he remained for some time, and came back married. ”

“ Religion as a primary instinct in man and the principal factor in his development was Herder's lifelong and predominant interest. He identified himself with Christianity, but it was a Christianity understood by him in the most liberal sense, a Christianity free from dogma, a spirit rather than a creed. ”

“ Herder’s writings were for a long time regarded as of temporary value only, and fell into neglect. Recent criticism, however, has tended very much to raise their value by tracing out their wide and far-reaching influence. His works are very voluminous, and to a large extent fragmentary and devoid of artistic finish; nevertheless they are nearly always worth investigating for the brilliant suggestions in which they abound. His place in German literature has already been indicated in tracing his mental development. ”

“ Rough, strong sublimity is their character. The colors which burst upon the eye and the tones which storm the ear come forth without premeditation and polish; the natural outlet of a people to whom nature has given an eye and heart and mind for wild beauty, and in whom manners, customs, and language of civilization have wrought no marring effects. These peoples see and feel, but they do not think and ponder. Here Herder makes spontaneity a child of unwarped nature.
THE ANCIENT HEBREWS
Herder applies his studies to the Hebrew people as he finds them in their earliest habitations. ”

“ I mused upon future reforms, when the philosophy of Christianity, disencumbered of all superstitious dross and yet preserving its moral efficacity (that was my great dream) , would be left the great school of humanity and its guide to the future. My readings in German gave nurture to these ideas. Herder was the German writer with whom I was most familiar. His vast views delighted me, and I said to myself, with keen regret, if I could but think all that like a Herder and remain a priest, a Christian preacher. ”

“ In the proportion to which innate tendencies have not been checked and warped, individual traits have had free development. Therefore spontaneous personality characterizes this group to a higher degree than it does the more cultured. Here Herder makes prominent his philosophy that unhampered nature is the most potent force in the development of this spontaneous personality. ”

“ Any knowing without willing would be false and incomplete. If knowing is only a deep feeling of truth, who is going to see truth and at the same time be blind to it—know goodness and not will to do it? Every single passion or feeling thus knowing the good would at the same time will the good. Herder is emphatic about the interdependence of these two. Just as no knowing is without willing, no willing is without knowing; they are only one energy of the soul. ”

“ No two men, indeed, could be more essentially antipathetic by nature than Herder and Goethe. Their antagonism was clearly apparent during their intercourse in Strassburg, and in the end, after many years of uneasy relations, their alienation became complete. Be it said that the traits in Herder which estranged Goethe from him were equally recognised and felt by others. ”

“ In 1826 a formal festival was got up by some of his admirers, one of whom, Herder, spoke of his categories as new gods; and he was presented with much poetry and a silver mug. In 1830 the students struck a medal in his honour, and in 1831 he was decorated by an order from Frederick William III. In 1830 he was rector of the university; and in his speech at the tricentenary of the Augsburg Confession in that year he charged the Catholic Church with regarding the virtues of the pagan world as brilliant vices, and giving the crown of perfection to poverty, continence and obedience. ”

“ They are wont to express themselves freely, fully, truthfully, in various forms of art, the individual specimens of which find their test of genuineness in the response which they receive from the group out of which they arose.
In this ideal conception Herder sees the best that mankind can produce. ”

“ The evidence that poetry has been shaped by environment and expresses the individual consciousness of a group of people cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that the group from which it emanated belongs to Herder’s Volk of the specific type, for Herder excludes from the category of Volkslieder that poetry which bears the imprint of scholastic and pedantic cultural milieu to the extent that certain primitive traits find no expression. ”

“ Herder convinced him that there was more genuine poetry in a simple Volkslied than in all the ingenuity of the German imitators of Horace or Anacreon; above all, he awakened his enthusiasm for Shakespeare. The pamphlet Von deutscher Art und Kunst (1773) , to which, besides Goethe and Herder, the historian Justus Möser (1720–1794) also contributed, may be regarded as the manifesto of the Sturm und Drang. The effect on Goethe of the new ideas was instantaneous; they seemed at once to set his genius free, and from 1771 to 1775 he was extraordinarily fertile in poetic ideas and creations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To prefer evil to good is not in human nature.”
Briefly summarizing: Herder finds his stimulus the same everywhere in the material world. It is the principle of life since it impels to self-nutriment and reproduction. It works by the same law in both body and soul. Variations of it in degree are the foundations for individuality and personality. All that is true of feeling for essentially stimulus becomes feeling. Out of all this Herder arrives at the conclusion: “Der tiefste Grund unseres Daseyns ist individuell, sowohl in Empfindungen als Gedanken.” ”

“ Foremost stands Lessing, the first critic of his time. Next to him comes Herder, a devout philosopher, and a clear-sighted intellect, with the eyes of a child; curious to penetrate the maze and noisy market of the world, the variegated life among the ancients and the moderns in search for that beautiful humanity which he had sketched in his own mind, and which he would fain proclaim the order of an otherwise mysterious providence. ”

“ German church historian, was born on the 4th of March 1801 at Basel, where his father was a practising physician. His preliminary education was received at a Pestalozzian school, and afterwards at the gymnasium, whence in due course he passed to the newly reorganized local university. He early devoted himself to theological studies and the service of the church, while at the same time cherishing and developing broad “humanistic” tendencies which found expression in many ways and especially in an enthusiastic admiration for the writings of Herder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You feel how you would embrace one who could be to you what you are to me. Don't let us be frightened like weaklings because we must [Pg 93] often disagree: should our passions collide, can we not endure the collision?" [83] Might we not infer from this passage that not Herder but Goethe was the dominating spirit in their intercourse? [84]
Goethe found another source of inspiration in Strassburg besides Herder, and one which, as he describes it both in his Autobiography and in a contemporary effusion, moved him even more powerfully. ”

“ They wrote and taught against those departments of truth which it is necessary to preserve intact if we would have Christianity continue a vital power of the soul and an aggressive principle in the world. Objections will still be urged against the Gospel history, but it will still be blessed by the ceaseless oversight and unfailing ministrations of the Holy Spirit. Supposing the evangelical accounts to be purely human, we have even then the highest embodiment of truth in the history of man. Herder says, "Have the fishermen of Galilee founded such a history? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Herder, referring to Leibniz’ system of Monaden, prästabilirten Harmonie u. f., says that no one doubts that there is much that is true and beautiful in it; no one dares deny a world of souls and a harmony between mind and body; there is no doubt that there are pure conceptions in which thoughts are considered only as workings or developments of the soul, and, on the other hand, the laws of the world of bodies are considered as mechanical and artificial. ”