Chapter IV: The Development to Humanity (2)

It is of importance to note the motives that led to the first steps toward the realization of a universal human religion. They were identical with the very earliest incentives to religion, such as prevailed among all peoples on the very threshold of the belief in demons and gods. For, after the disappearance of political interests, to which the national gods owed their supremacy, it was again _two_ experiences that occupied the foreground--_sickness_ and _death_. During the period of Hellenistic world culture, the occupation of the physician was held in especial esteem. Connected with this was the fact that the cult of Æsculapius, the god of healing, grew from small beginnings into a cult whose influence extended over distant lands. Even more marked was the increase in the influence of those cults that centred about a world after death and the individual's preparation for it. The origin of these cults was connected both with the needs of this life and with the desire for endless joy in the beyond. In view of their identical development, how could it have escaped notice that, whatever formal differences there might be, the Grecian Demeter, the Phrygian Cybele, and the Phœnician Astarte were alike in nature? Even more than was the case with the Greek mysteries, these Oriental cults carried over into the cults of the beyond, into which they developed, certain ecstatic and orgiastic elements of ancient vegetation cults. All the more readily, therefore, were the latter cults incorporated into the deity cults, inasmuch as these had as their concern the satisfaction of human needs generally. But conditions were ripe for a still further advance. As has been suggested, the national and State interests which fettered man to the actual world of his environment gave way to interests transcending this world. In proportion as this occurred, however, did the life of the present, deprived of its former values, relinquish all cherished desires in favour of that heavenly world possible to all men regardless of class, calling, or nationality. This change was antithetical to the innate fear of death, and yet was its own final product. All these cults thus became _redemption cults_. To be redeemed from the evil of the world--the desire of deeper religious minds--or, after the enjoyment of the good things of this life, to receive still greater happiness after death--a hope doubtless entertained by the majority then as now--such was the primary object of the cults of these supranational gods. National cults had fashioned the gods in the image of man, even though exalting them with all the power of the mythological imagination into the superhuman and the unapproachable. At this later period, all efforts were directed toward bringing these anthropomorphic gods nearer to man as regards the activities in which they engaged, and particularly as regards the experiences which they underwent. No figure in the later Greek pantheon better lent itself to such a purpose than did Dionysos. Like the female deities representing Mother Earth, this male deity originated in the ancient field and fertility cults. Later, however, he became more and more transformed by legend into the ideal of a striving and suffering deity, who, after a horrible death, arose to new glory. Related to Dionysos were other deities who likewise became supreme in the Hellenistic age--Mithra, Attis, Osiris, and Serapis. All of these were gods who had been redeemed from pain and anguish, and were therefore capable, in their sympathy, of redeeming man.

In its beginnings, Christianity also was one of these religions of redemption. Over five hundred years before its rise, moreover, there had already appeared in the Far East a religion in which the same thought occupied the foreground. I refer to Buddhism. With reference to the steps by which Buddhism attained its supremacy, our only data are the controversies of the philosophical schools that participated in the development. These controversies make it probable that the basal motives involved were similar to those that were later operative in the cultural world of the Occident. There were also essential differences, however, traceable to the fact that the various Brahmanic systems had a common religious substratum, and that Hindoo thought had attained to a fairly advanced stage of philosophical development. One fact is doubtless universal--the appearance of a redemptive religion marks the decadence of an old and the rise of a new period of culture. Beginning with the Hellenistic period, therefore, and continuing with increased strength during the Roman world empire, there was a transition from a national to a humanistic culture. World religion was a more decisive indication of this crisis than were any of the other elements of world culture, or than was even world empire, which prepared the way for world culture. The old gods could no longer satisfy the new age, unless, at any rate, they underwent marked transformations. The age required new gods, in whom national traits were secondary, as they were in life itself, and universal human characteristics were supreme. It was particularly the unique worth of the individual human personality, without regard to birth, class, and occupation, which this period of transition from the national to the humanistic ideal emphasized. Hence the obstacles which the surrounding world placed in the way of personal endeavour were inevitably felt the more deeply in proportion as the values of the narrower community life disappeared. A change in mood took place within the consciousness of the age, as it so often does within that of the individual, and this change was enhanced by the contrast of emotions. The world lost the values which it had thus far held, and became a place of evil and suffering. In contrast with it, there loomed up a yonder world in which the desired ideals were believed to meet fulfilment. This mood, of course, did not continue permanently. World religion was of inner necessity forced to adapt itself to the earthly life in proportion as State and society again acquired a more fixed organization. But, just as the strata of the earth's crust retain the effects of a geological catastrophe long after it has passed, so spiritual life continues to exhibit the influence of upheavals that have occurred in the transitions from age to age, even though the spiritual values themselves have undergone many changes. In this respect, world religion manifests a conserving power greater than that of any other product of mental life.

There are only _two_ world religions, in the strictest sense of the term, _Buddhism_ and _Christianity_. Confucianism, which might perhaps be included so far as the number of its adherents is concerned, is a system of ethical teachings rather than a religion. Hence, when we take into account the vast number of Chinese peoples, Confucianism will be found to embody a great number of different religious developments, the most important of which are the ancient ancestor cult and Buddhism, the latter of which penetrated into China from elsewhere. The faith of Islam is a combination of Jewish and Christian ideas with ancient Arabian and Turanian traditions. As such, it has brilliantly fulfilled the mission of bringing a cultural religion to barbarian or semi-barbarian peoples, but it cannot be credited with being an original religious creation. Judaism finally formed a supremely important element of Christianity, one whose influence would appear to have been absolutely indispensable. In itself, however, it is not a world religion, but is one of those vanquished cults which struggled for supremacy in the pre-Constantinian period of the Roman world empire.

But what, let us ask, were the powerful forces that gave these two great world religions their supremacy? Surely it was not merely their inner superiority, though this be in no way disputed. Nor was it simply propitious external circumstances, such, for example, as the fact that Constantine made Christianity the State religion. Doubtless there were a great number of co-operating factors, foremost among them being the desire for a purely humanistic religion, independent of nationality or external position in life. And yet this also could not have been of decisive significance--precisely such a longing was more or less characteristic of all the religious tendencies of this transitional period. Moreover, this leaves unexplained the peculiarities of each of the two great world religions. These are in complete accord as regards their universal, humanistic tendency, but are just as different in content as is a Buddhistic pagoda from a Gothic cathedral. As a matter of fact, these world religions are also cultural religions. Back of each of them is a rich culture, with characteristics peculiar to itself, even though its basal elements are universally human. Hence it is that these two world religions are not merely expressions of a striving for a universally valid religious and moral ideal, in the sense in which such a striving is common to mankind as a whole; it should rather be emphasized that they reflect the essentially different forms which this striving has assumed within humanity. Buddhism, in its fundamental views, represents the highest expression to which the religious feeling of the Orient has attained, while Christianity, as a result of the conditions which determined its spread, has become the embodiment of the religious thought of the Occidental world. To appreciate this fact we must not allow our minds to be diverted to the tangled profusion of beliefs in magic and demons which Buddhism exhibits, nor to the traditional and, in part, ambiguous sayings of the great ascetic himself. If we would discover the parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, we must hold ourselves primarily to the ideas that have remained potent within the religion of Buddha. True, the worlds which these religions disclose to our view differ, yet in neither case had religious feeling up to that time received so exalted an expression. In Buddhism, as in original Christianity, human life is regarded as a suffering, and this underlies both the irresistible impulse to asceticism and repentance, and the hope for unclouded bliss in the future. The Christian of the primitive church looks forward to the speedy return of Christ, and to His inauguration of an eternal, heavenly kingdom. In contrast with this, it is as a prolonged migration through animal bodies, alternating with rebirth in human form, that the Hindoo thinker conceives that great process of purification by means of which sense is finally to be entirely overcome and man is to partake of an undimmed knowledge of the truth, and, with this, of supreme and never-ending bliss. This is the true Nirvana of Buddha. Nirvana does not represent the nothingness of eternal oblivion, but an eternal rest of the soul in pure knowledge, a peace which puts an end to all striving, just as does the heaven for which the Christian hopes. The difference between Nirvana and the Christian heaven is merely that, in the one case, the emphasis falls on knowledge, whereas, in the other, it is placed on feeling. This distinction, however, is not absolute. Buddha, also, preaches love of one's neighbour--indeed, sympathy with every suffering creature; and the Christian, as well as the Buddhist, seeks the knowledge of God. Moreover, ideas of purification are necessarily involved in redemptive religions, and hence are to be found in Christianity no less than in the world religion of the Orient, though in a different form. The Occidental Christian, swayed by his prompter emotions, images in the most vivid colours the agonies of the damned and the purification of the sinners in need of redemption. The patient and peace-seeking Oriental entertains the conception of a prolonged suffering that leads gradually, through the light of knowledge, from the debasement of animal existence to a state of redemption.

A further feature which differentiates these kindred religious developments is their relation to the contemporary philosophy which affected them. Buddhism grew out of philosophy, and then became a folk religion. In its spread, it became transformed from an esoteric into an exoteric teaching, continually absorbing older elements of folk belief. Its ethical basis never entirely disappeared, yet it became more and more obscured by a multitude of miracle-legends and magical ideas. Christianity, on the other hand, began as a folk religion and, in so far, as an exoteric teaching. But, in entering into the strife of religions and into the controversies of the thought-systems of the Hellenistic-Roman period, Christianity passed under the control of philosophy. Precisely because it lay outside the realm of philosophy, it was subjected to the influence of the various schools, though it was most decisively affected by Platonism and Stoicism. Inasmuch as philosophy itself had its setting in a superstitious age, it was the less able to purify Christianity from the belief in demons, miracles, and magic which the latter, as a folk religion, embodied from the very outset. Nevertheless, philosophical thought supplemented the real meaning of religious statements with an idealized interpretation. This gave birth to dogma, which consisted of a peculiar combination of esoteric and exoteric elements, and for this very reason assumed a mystical character. Hence it is that Buddhism, which sprang from philosophy, never possessed any real dogmas in the sense of binding norms of faith, whereas Christianity, which originated as a folk religion, fell a prey in its dogmatization to a theology which prescribed the content of belief.

These two world religions, which dominate the main centres of spiritual culture, do not, surely, owe their supremacy over other religious cults to the external conditions of their origin. Indeed, these conditions differ in the two cases. To account for the pre-eminence of the two religions we must look to the religious and moral nucleus which they possess in the sayings and teachings as well, also, as in the ideal lives of their founders. In spite of all differences, there is a similarity of character between the prince who wandered about as a beggar, preaching to the peoples the salvation which pure knowledge brings to him who renounces all external goods of life, and the man of the common people who pronounced blessings on the poor and the suffering because they are prepared above others to find the way to heaven. Another remarkable coincidence is the fact that the religious communities which they inspired sought to deprive them of the very characteristic which opens human hearts to them; they were real persons who lived and to whose deeds and sufferings their contemporaries bore testimony. What, as compared with them, are the redeeming gods in the pantheon of the various nations--Dionysos, Mithra, Osiris, or even Serapis, whose worship was established by the Ptolemies under the driving power of ideas of extensive political authority? The need of a living god whose existence was historically attested led irresistibly to the elevation of the man into a god. Thus, though in an entirely different world-setting and with a completely changed hero-personality, the process through which deities were created at the beginning of the heroic age was repeated. At this later period, however, it was not the universal type of idealized manhood that was regarded as the incarnate deity, but a single ideal personality. This purely human deity was no longer bound by national ties; he was not a guardian of the State and a helper in strife with other peoples, but a god of mankind. For every individual he was both an ideal and a helper, a saviour from the imperfections and limitations of earthly life. With this process of deification, the religions whose central object of cult was the suffering individual who secures for himself and for mankind redemption from suffering, opened their doors also to the gods and demons of earlier ages. Thus, there penetrated into Buddhism the Hindoo pantheon, together with the beliefs in magic and spirits which were entertained by the peoples converted to Buddhism. The Christian Church did not finally supersede the earlier heathen folk belief until it had assimilated the latter in the conceptions of demons and the devil, in the cult of saints, and in the worship of relics, the last-mentioned of which also constituted an important element of Buddhism.

In the case of Christianity, there was still another factor which prepared the soil for the new religion. This factor was due either to a direct transference or, as is probable so far as the main outlines of the history of the passion are concerned, to the real similarity of this event with the legends, prevalent in all parts of the earth, of the death and resurrection of a deity. Such legends everywhere grew up out of vegetation cults, which date back to the beginnings of agriculture. The hopes centred about a world beyond caused the cults based on these ideas to incorporate the soul cults. The latter then displaced the original motives of vegetation cults. In this way, higher forms of soul cult were developed, as exemplified by the ancient mysteries and by the related secret cults of other peoples. The exclusive aim now came to be the attainment of salvation from the earthly into a heavenly world. It was thought that this goal would be the more certain of attainment if, yielding to the old association of the mystical and secret with the magical and miraculous, the circle of initiated cult companions were narrowly limited. But how different is the form which this very ancient legend of a god who suffers, dies, and rises again assumes in the suffering and death of Christ! Jesus was a real person, whose death on the cross many had witnessed and whose resurrection his disciples had reported. Moreover, the cult of this crucified Saviour was not enveloped in a veil of secrecy. The redeeming god did not wish to win heaven merely for a few who had gained the privilege through magical ceremonies. The Christian heaven was open to all, to rich and poor, though especially to the poor, who were to receive in the beyond a rich compensation for the good things denied them upon earth. It is but natural that this new cult, with its vastly deeper and more vital significance, and with the strength which it nevertheless continued to draw from the old traditional legends, won for itself the allegiance of the new world with its strivings for a greater security in life as in death. Even some of the Roman soldiers, coming from their Saturnalian or Sacæan festivals, may, perhaps, have felt strangely moved upon seeing re-enacted, as a terrible reality, that which in their country was a playful custom, representing a survival of a once serious cult and ending in the mimic death of the carnival king. It was obviously in recollection of these very prevalent festivals that the coarser members of the crowd gave to him who was crucified the name "King of the Jews." The appellation was exactly suited to heighten the contrast between the joyous tumult of such mimic cults and this murderous reality.

The above scene was prophetic of the entire subsequent development of the new religion. That Christianity became a world religion was not due merely to the depth and sublimity of its spirit--these were hidden under a cover of mythological elements, from which Christianity was not free any more than were other religions. Christianity gained its supremacy, just as did Buddhism, in its own way, through a capacity to assimilate auxiliary mythological conceptions to an extent scarcely equalled by any of the previous religions. The very fact that the latter were national religions precluded them, to a certain extent, from incorporating alien ideas. It was not only mediæval Christianity that took over a large part of the earlier belief of heathen peoples. Even present-day Christianity might doubtless be called a world religion in this sense, among others, that, in the various forms of its beliefs and professions, it includes within itself, side by side, the most diverse stages of religious development, from a monotheism free from all mythological elements down to a motley collection of polytheistic beliefs, including survivals of primitive ideas of magic and demons.

But there is another phenomenon in which the spirit of Christianity comes to expression even more significantly than in its capacity to adapt itself to the most diverse stages of religious development. Here, again, there is a similarity between Christianity and the other great world religion, Buddhism. The belief of Hindoo antiquity in a populous heaven of gods was very early displaced, in the priestly wisdom of India, by the idea of "the eternal, unchangeable" Brahma. We here have an abstract deity-idea from which every trace of personality has disappeared. It was under the influence of this priestly philosophy that Buddha grew up, and his esoteric teaching, therefore, did not include a belief in a personal deity. Meanwhile, the ancient gods had continued to maintain their place in popular belief, though their original character was obscured by rankly flourishing ideas of magic and demons. This state of affairs was due to the fact that there was no longer a supreme deity who could give to mythology a religious basis. In the religious movement which began with Buddha, however, the latter himself came to be a supreme deity of this sort, the old nature gods and magic demons becoming subservient to him. The god-idea had been etherealized into the abstract idea of a superpersonal being, but its place was taken by the human individual exalted into a deity. Christianity underwent the same crucial changes, though in a different manner. In the philosophy of the Greeks, the personal deity of popular belief had been displaced by a superpersonal being. Plato's "idea of the good," the Aristotelian _Nous_, which, as pure form, holds sway beyond the boundaries of the world, even the Stoic Zeus as the representative of the teleological character of the world order, and, finally, the gods of Epicurus, conceived as indefinite forms dwelling in nebulous regions and unconcerned with the world--all manifest the same tendency either to elevate the personal deities of the heroic age into superpersonal beings, or, as was essentially done by Epicurus, to retransform them into subpersonal, demon-like beings. In contrast with this tendency, Jesus, as the representative of a religious folk belief, holds fast to the god of ancient tradition, as developed in the Jahve religion of the Israelites. Indeed, it is in the conception of Jesus that this god receives his deepest and most personal expression, inasmuch as he is conceived as a god of love, to whom man stands in the relation of son to father. This conception of the relation of God to man Christianity sought to retain. But history is not in accord with this traditional view. Cult and dogma alike testify that in this case also the deity came to be superpersonal from an early period on. To cult, which is always concerned with personal gods, Christ became the supreme deity; in the Catholic Church, there came to be also a large number of secondary and subsidiary gods, who sometimes even crowded the Christ into the background, as is exemplified particularly by the cult of the Virgin Mary. Dogma, on its part, cannot conceal the fact that it originated in philosophy, which is destructive of personal gods. For dogma ascribes attributes to the deity that are irreconcilable with the concept of personality. The deity is represented as eternal, omnipotent, all-good, omnipresent--in short, as infinite in all attributes that are held to express his nature. The conception of the infinite, however, contradicts that of personality, for the latter demands a character that possesses sharply defined attributes. However comprehensive our conception of personality may be, limitation is necessarily implied; the concept loses its meaning when associated with the limitless and the infinite. Even though dogma may continue to maintain that belief in a personal God is fundamental to Christian faith, such a belief is nevertheless self-contradictory; the union of the ideas 'personal' and 'god' must be understood as a survival within the era of world religions, where many such survivals occur, of the god-idea developed by national religions.

The truth is that the transformation of the personal god into a superpersonal deity is probably the most important mark of world religion. National religion displaced the subpersonal demon in favour of the personal god; in world religion, the personal god is exalted into a superpersonal deity. At this point there is a very close connection between world religion and world culture. As the idea that the universe is bounded by a sphere of fixed stars must give way to the conception of the infinitude of the universe, so also does world culture transcend the limits imposed upon it by the preparatory world empire, whose own origin was the State. World Culture, as we have seen, comes to signify a cultural unity of mankind, such as includes the national States. Similarly, world religion strives toward the idea of a deity who is superpersonal, and who, though only in so far as he is superpersonal, transcends the world of experience. The foundations of this concluding stage in the development of religion had long been laid by philosophy. In religion itself, the culmination was actually attained with the recedence of the deity in cult; in theology, it came with the ascription to the deity of attributes of absoluteness and infinitude, even though the deity-conception did not clearly emerge from a mystic incomprehensibility rendered inevitable by the combination of contradictory ideas.

Though the transition from a personal god to a superpersonal deity is the decisive characteristic that marks a world religion, there is closely connected with it a second distinctive feature. In Christianity, indeed, it was the latter that prepared the way for the idea of the non-personal character of God. The fact to which I refer is that, in addition to the non-personal deity, there is believed to be a personal god in the form of an exalted human individual. Cult continues to require a personal being to whom man may come with his needs and desires. And by whom could his trouble be better understood than by a deity who himself lived and suffered as a man? In Buddhism, therefore, as well as in Christianity, the god-man became the personal representative of the non-personal deity, not as the result of any external transference, but in consequence of the same inner need. The god-man is a representative in more than one respect. Cult honours him as the deity who dwelt upon earth in human form, and who represents the godhead; it turns to him also as the human individual who represents mankind before God. Back of these two ideas of representativeness that dominate belief and cult, there is still a further, though an unrecognized, need for a representative. The religious nature requires that there shall be a personal god as the representative of him who has been exalted into a non-personal deity and has become inaccessible. The infinite god posited by the religious intellect is unable to satisfy the religious nature that is pressed by the cares and sufferings of finitude. Herewith the way is opened for a development whose course is determined by the changing relations into which the two aspects of the concept 'god-man' enter with one another. On the first stage, the divine aspect of the god-man overshadows the human character. At this period, it might appear as though world religion merely substituted a new god for the older gods. Though the superpersonal deity receives recognition in dogma, and the development, therefore, marks an important religious advance over the age of gods, the cult is directed to the person of the god-man. Then comes a second stage, in which the human aspect of the concept 'god-man' occupies the foreground. The god-man becomes an ideal human being who succours man in the afflictions of his soul, but who does so not so much by his divine power as by the example of human perfection which he represents. At the third stage, the god-man finally comes to be regarded as in every respect a man. It is recognized that, through the religious movement which bears his name, he indeed prepared the way for the idea that the deity is a non-personal source of being, exalted above all that is transitory. Nevertheless, the god-man is conceived as an ideal man only in the sense in which one may speak of any ideal as actual. Hence, the world religion derives its name from him not so much because of what he himself was as because of that which he created. From this point of view, it is eventually immaterial even whether or not Jesus or Buddha ever lived. The question becomes one of historical fact, not one of religious necessity. Jesus and Buddha live on in their religious creations. That these creations, to say nothing of any other proofs, point back to powerful religious personalities, the unbiased will regard as certain, though from this third point of view the question is of subordinate importance.

A world religion may lay claim to being such not merely on account of its wide acceptance, but also because of its ability to incorporate the elements of other religions. In a similar manner, and more particularly, a world religion is one that includes within itself elements representing past stages of its own development. Historically considered, religious elements are juxtaposed in such a manner that the religious life of the past is mirrored in the present. Hence the religion can at no time emancipate itself from its historical development. It is just as impossible to return to the religious notions of earlier times as it is to transform ourselves into the contemporaries of Charlemagne or even of Frederick the Great. The past never returns. Nevertheless, it is universally characteristic of mental development, particularly within the sphere of religion, that the new not only continues to be affected by the old, but that the more advanced stages of culture actually embody many elements of the past. That these be permitted to exist side by side with higher conceptions, and that there be no limiting external barriers in either direction, is all the more demanded by world religion inasmuch as the independence of State and society, which its very nature implies, presupposes, first of all, the freedom of personal belief.

Inasmuch as it possesses a universal human significance, religion cannot escape the change to which everything human is subject. This appears most strikingly in the undeniable fact that the fundamental idea of the two great world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, has in both cases changed. I refer to the idea of _salvation_. We do not, of course, mean to deny that an individual may either permanently or temporarily return to the religious ideas of the past with a fervour which again reinstates in him impulses that have long since disappeared. Nevertheless, the present-day idea of salvation is no longer identical with that which animated the primitive Christian Church when it looked forward to the return of its Saviour. Christianity is a religion of humanity. Precisely for this reason, it, in every age, took up into itself the feelings and aspirations representing the ideal spiritual forces of that age. All that was permanent in the midst of this change was really the religious impulse as such, the feeling that the world of sense belongs to an ideal supersensuous order--a feeling for which world religion seeks external corroboration in the development of religion itself. In distinction from national religions, which sprang from an infinitely large number of sources, a world religion requires a personal founder. To this personality is due also the direction of the further development of the religion. Thus, the final and most important characteristic of world religion is the fact that it is pre-eminently an _historical_ religion. It is historical both in that it has an historical origin, and in that it is constantly subject to the flux of historical development.

5. WORLD HISTORY.

The meaning attached to the term 'world history' clearly shows how firmly rooted is the anthropocentric view of the world in connection with those matters that are of deepest concern to man. World history is regarded as the history of mankind--indeed, in a still narrower sense, as, in the last analysis, the mental history of mankind. If facts of any other sort are taken into account, this is not because they are an essential part of the subject-matter, but because they represent external conditions of historical events. The justifiability of this point of view may scarcely be disputed. If the purpose of all historical knowledge is to understand the present condition of mankind in the light of its past, and, in so far as we also attribute to this knowledge a practical value, to indicate the probable course of the future, then the history of mind is the immediate source of historical knowledge. If this be true, it follows that the essential content of history consists in those events which spring from the psychical motives of human conduct. Moreover, it is the nexus and change of motives underlying such conduct that lends to events the inner continuity which is universally demanded of history.

But the very meaning which is universally associated with the term 'world history' itself includes _two_ very different conceptions. For, even when the field of history is limited to the events connected with mankind, as those which are of greatest importance to us, there remains a further question. Is history to deal with the _whole_ of mankind, or is it to be restricted merely to those peoples that have in any way affected the course of the mental history of humanity? As is well known, most of the works on world history have been confined to the more restricted field. For them, world history is an account of cultural peoples, whose activities are shown by a continuous tradition and by existing monuments to form a relatively connected whole. But there have also been more comprehensive works, which have felt it necessary to include at least those cultural and semi-cultural peoples who attained to some independent mental development, as did the peoples of the New World prior to the time of Columbus. Back of this uncertainty arising from the ambiguity of the concept 'mankind' lies a deeper-going confusion due to the no less ambiguous meaning of the concept 'history.' However much we may associate the word 'history' primarily with the traditional limits of historical science, we may not entirely put aside the broader meaning, according to which it includes everything which may at all be brought into a connected order of events. For we also speak of a history of the earth, of the solar system, of an animal or a plant species, etc. Now, with this wider connotation of the idea in mind, we cannot fail to recognize that the conditions that still prevail among certain races, and that doubtless at one time prevailed among all, are such that, while they would not concern historical science in its more restricted and familiar sense, they would demand consideration if the term were taken in its broader meaning. From the latter point of view, the condition of a primitive people of nature is no less a product of history than is the political and cultural condition of present-day Europe. But there is nevertheless a radical difference between the two cases. The historically trained European understands, to a fairly great extent, the external circumstances that have led to present conditions. He is conscious not merely of the present but also of its preceding history, and he therefore looks forward to the future with the expectation of further historical changes. The man of nature knows only the present. Of the past he possesses merely fragmentary elements, legendary in character, and much altered by the embellishments of a myth-creating imagination; his provision for the future scarcely extends beyond the coming day. Hence, we should scarcely be justified in unqualifiedly calling peoples of nature 'peoples without a history.' In the broader sense of the term, they have a history, as well as have the solar system, the earth, the animal, and the plant. But they lack a history in the narrower sense, according to which historical science includes among 'historical' peoples only such as have had some special significance in the development of mental culture. That even this limitation is variable and uncertain need scarcely be mentioned. The past shows us many instances in which hordes that were previously unknown, and were thus, in the ordinary meaning of the term, peoples without a history, suddenly stepped into the arena of the cultured world and its history. The colonial history of the present, moreover, shows that the characteristics and the past development of races occupying regions of the earth newly opened to cultural peoples, have not been, and are not, without influence upon the course of history. It should also be remembered that between an historical tradition comprehending the entire cultural world and recollection limited to the immediate past, there are a great number of intermediate stages. These stages are dependent primarily upon the forms of social organization, though also upon other cultural factors. Peoples that have failed to advance beyond a tribal organization may frequently have traversed wide regions of the earth and yet have preserved at most certain legendary elements of the history of these migrations, although retaining myths, cults, and customs indefinitely. On the other hand, wherever a national State has arisen, there has developed also a national tradition, intermingled with which, of course, there have long continued to be mythological and legendary elements. But the tradition, even in this case, relates exclusively to the particular people who entertain it. Strange races are as yet touched upon only in so far as they have directly affected the interests of those who preserve the tradition. Indeed, such races continue to have but an inconspicuous place in tradition until the establishment of world empires and of the partly anticipatory colonial and trade interrelation of peoples. Hence it is not until the rise of world empires that we find the transition to world history in the sense in which the term is most commonly employed to-day. In so far as world history involves a transcendence of the history of a single people but nevertheless a limitation to the circle of cultural peoples who are more or less generally interrelated, it is a direct product of world culture. Such a history includes all peoples who participate in world culture and excludes all those who have no share in it.

Considered from a psychological point of view, the different meanings of the concept 'history' in its relation to the various stages of mental culture, clearly show a fluctuation between _two_ ideas which, though opposite, nevertheless mutually imply each other. On the one hand, there is the purely objective conception of history. History, in this case, is regarded as a course of events of such a nature that the specific occurrences may be brought by an external observer into an orderly sequence of conditions and results. On the other hand, history has been conceived as a course of events, which not only exhibits an orderly sequence from an objective point of view, but which is also _subjectively experienced_ as a nexus by the individuals concerned. In the one case, history is a reconstruction, on the basis of external observation, of the inner connection of phenomena; in the other, it is the conscious experience of the latter connection. Mankind exemplifies all possible transitional stages between these two extremes--history as merely objectively given, and as experienced both objectively and subjectively. Indeed, it is even true to say that, as a matter of fact, none but such transitional stages actually occur. Even the horizon of primitive man includes a narrow circle of consciously experienced history. On the other hand, man is ever far from attaining to a self-conscious grasp of his own history in its entirety. Thus, that which is in a high degree characteristic of world religion is true also of world history. Within the conscious horizon of each individual very different levels of historical consciousness are represented, even in the case of the cultural peoples who participate more or less actively in the course of world history. Here, as in world religion, we find that what was developed in a sequence during the course of ages continues to remain, at any rate roughly speaking, in juxtaposition. Moreover, even apart from this, we never survey more than a segment of the entire nexus of historical factors. One of the most important tasks of the historian consists in tracing the chain of events back to motives which are, in part, inaccessible to superficial observation, and, in part, indeed, remain of a problematical nature even when we believe that, through inference, we have gained an approximately true conception of them. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that immediate knowledge be complete in order that there may be a consciously experienced nexus of events such as is demanded for the content of history proper. It is merely necessary that some interconnection be actually experienced and that its relations be directly apprehended. This knowledge, moreover, must possess sufficient power to influence decisively the actual course of events.

This narrower conception of history brings historical events into relation with the human _will_. The will is really a phase of conscious experience. It is necessary, however, to single it out for special discussion, because of the fact that popular opinion either regards it as the exclusive factor in history or else stresses it so one-sidedly that the causal view, required in principle even for individual consciousness, threatens to vanish entirely from the conception of historical life. Naturally, the will does not become an influence definitely affecting the course of events until individuals have become consciously aware of the interconnectedness of historical life. Whenever, therefore, an exaggerated importance is attached to the function of volition, the conscious intervention of individual personalities in the course of events readily comes to appear as the decisive feature that distinguishes the historical from the prehistorical stages of human development. But this is erroneous in both its implications. Even the life of primitive peoples of nature is not entirely unaffected by individual personalities, whose influence may be more or less permanently operative even after they themselves have been forgotten. On the other hand, the will acts of individuals constitute but one factor among the many which determine historical life. Moreover, inasmuch as every particular volition is conditioned by motives inherent in the general constitution of individual consciousness, it is subject to the same psychical causality that dominates human consciousness in general. The criterion for differentiating historic from prehistoric existence, therefore, is not the influence of a personal will upon the life of the group, but rather the fact that the conscious experience of historical continuity includes a recognition of the effect of individual personalities upon the destinies of peoples. The advance to such an insight is inaugurated by world empires, in which the vicissitudes of peoples first begin to form a unified history; it reaches its completion in world culture, which creates a common mental heritage for mankind, and thus engenders the consciousness of a universal community.

Of the various elements of world culture that give impetus to this development, the _world religions_ occupy the foremost place. In extent and permanence they surpass not only the world empires but also all other forms of material and spiritual interchange between peoples. However much the traditions associated with world religions may be interwoven with mythological and legendary elements, they nevertheless constitute a bond whose primary effect is to arouse among peoples who may otherwise be widely different in culture and history, the idea of a universal human community. The peoples of Eastern Asia, for example, though exhibiting marked political differences, were united by Buddhism into a community of religious thought, in which they became conscious that, in spite of differences of race and of history, they possessed a similar religious and ethical temper. If we compare the Brahmanic doctrines with the sayings of such teachers as Confucius and Lao-tsze, we are struck particularly by the similarity of ethical trend as well as by the divergence of this trend from that of Occidental thought. In its idea of a community of faith, Islamism likewise brought the consciousness of unity to numerous peoples of barbaric culture--to a more limited extent than Buddhism, it is true, but for this reason all the more forcefully. Of Christianity, it is even more true that, from the very beginning, it took as its guiding principle the belief that in the eyes of God there is no distinction either of race or of class and occupation. Hence it has regarded missionary activity among heathen peoples as a task whose purpose it is finally to unite the whole of mankind beneath the cross of Christ. Thus, world religion destroyed the barriers erected by the preceding national religions, and took as its aim the unification of men and races into an all-embracing community. To the adherent of a national religion, the race that believed in a different god was strange and hostile; both characteristics, strangeness and hostility, were included by the Greek in the term 'barbarian.' The Christian speaks of heathen who have not as yet beheld the light of pure truth, but for him there are no barbarians. The god to whom the Christian prays likewise rules the heathen world, and to the heathen, also, the gospel is preached. True, we find a recurring limitation in that it is only the Christian who is a brother to Christians. Nevertheless, it is prophesied of the heathen that they will at one time be received into the brotherhood of the disciples of Christ. At the end of time, there is to be but _one_ shepherd and _one_ flock upon earth. Thus, in the missionary activity which the Christian recognizes as his calling, the assertion, All men are brothers, is based on the two ideas, All Christians are brothers, and All men are destined to become Christians.

It was on the basis of the Christian tradition that science first attempted to treat history, not as the history of a single people or, at best, as a number of histories of successive or contemporaneous races and States, but as true world history. At the outset, world history was objective in character. The underlying thought was that the whole of mankind was controlled by a single idea which governed all events, and that the task of humanity consisted in carrying this idea into realization. Augustine's _Civitas Dei_ was the first attempt at a world history based on the idea of the religious vocation of mankind. That this exposition is limited to the legendary history of the Israelitic people, supplemented by the history of Jesus as transmitted in the Gospels, and by the Apocalyptic prophecies of a future world, should not cause surprise. The limitation is due to the fact that the idea of humanity is considered solely from the religious point of view. The Church, as the institution about which religion centres, is glorified by Augustine's work as the divine State. The adoption of this religious viewpoint causes the history of mankind to appear as record, not of human experiences that come as a result of human striving and activity, but of events that are from the very beginning divinely foreordained.

Nevertheless, Augustine's remarkable work long continued to determine the general direction of conceptions relating to the history of mankind. Up to the eighteenth century, _religious_ development was regarded as establishing the only connection between the various periods of history. The sole exception to this occurred in the case of Giambattista Vico. In his _New Science_ (1725), Vico sought to combine the development of language and of jurisprudence with that of religion. True, the question regarding the origin of the State and the causes of changes in constitutions had concerned men from the time of the early Sophists on. Particularly during the Hellenistic period and at the time of the Renaissance, such inquiries were of focal interest, as a result of the great political changes that were then taking place. Yet, whenever the underlying laws of such changes were sought, it was the _single_ State that formed the basis of investigation; by comparing its vicissitudes with those of other States, the attempt was made to arrive at a general law along some such line as the Aristotelian classification of States into monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, etc. There was hardly ever a suggestion that the historical sequence of civilizations and of States was a connected process intelligible in causal or teleological terms. Religion alone was conceived as a phenomenon which was, on the one hand, independent of the limits of a single people, and yet, on the other, subject, in its development, to law. The idea that Christianity was destined to be a world religion, together with the fact that it had originated historically and had spread widely, did not admit of any other interpretation. Within this Christian circle of ideas, moreover, the historical development and growth of religion were, quite naturally, brought into connection with the world beyond, in which the development was thought to await its completion. The religious philosophy of history thus terminated in a prophecy whose culmination was the final triumph of Christianity. The Age of Enlightenment, after effecting a unification of Christianity with the religion of reason, again made the world of historical experience the scene of triumph. This triumph was held to consist in the ultimate development of Christianity into a religion of reason--a conception in which the idea of the destiny of Christianity to become a world religion undergoes a philosophical transformation which recurs even in the writings of Kant.

Apart from this transformation, which was only partially complete even in the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of religious development that grew up in connection with Christian thought involves _two_ presuppositions. The first of these is that the pathway of mankind was _determined by God_, and not voluntarily chosen by man himself. It is not to religious thought that the characteristic features of the development must be ascribed. The development, moreover, is not immanent in religion; it is the result of external causes. The second presupposition is that this development follows a preconceived _plan_; it embodies a purpose--indeed, it expresses purpose in the very highest degree precisely because it proceeds from the will of God. Even the co-operation of individuals in the fulfilment of this plan is but the result of divine predetermination, or happens because God has made known His purposes to these individuals. Thus, this course of thought leads with inner necessity to the conception of _revelation_. This conception combines two essentially irreconcilable ideas, offsetting each by the other. The religious destiny of man is thought to lie outside his own control: it is imposed upon him from without, and is communicated to him in the form of an illumination which he receives from the supersensuous world. Thus, religious development itself becomes a supersensuous process, which falls beyond the possibilities of the ordinary means of human knowledge. As its goal lies in the supersensuous, so also is the development itself a supersensuous process that extends over into the world of sense.

But at this point the religious view of world history necessarily came into sharp conflict with the philosophical view, though the latter had in certain respects appropriated the idea, developed by the former, of a teleological direction of human destinies. The philosopher, always trusting the guidance of his own reason, might admit both a goal and a plan, but that these should be inaccessible to the _lux naturalis_, as the philosophy of the Enlightenment called rational knowledge in distinction from _lux supranaturalis_, or revelation, he could not concede. The logical outcome of this course of thought was an auxiliary concept which appeared to surmount the difficulty, and also possessed the happy characteristic of leaving every one free to retain, along with the natural light, as much or as little of the supernatural thought of an earlier period as he might deem wise. This auxiliary concept was that of _education_--a conception that would readily suggest itself to an age vitally interested in pedagogical questions. The thought here involved represents merely a special application to this particular instance of the idea that the world is governed by a personal deity. Thus it came about that, from the time of Locke and Leibniz down to that of Lessing and Herder, the favourite conception of history was that of an education of mankind. But it is significant that the very work whose title incorporates this idea, Lessing's _Education of the Human Race_, really ends by displacing it. True, as a result of Biblical tradition, the idea of education is here brought into connection with the thought that the Jewish race is the chosen people of God. Freed from this connection, however, and applied to mankind in general, the idea of education, in Lessing's work, becomes that of _self-education_, or, what is the same thing, that of a _development_ determined by the general laws of mental life. Hence conditions were ripe for the further advance made by Herder, in his _Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind_. Though frequently lapsing, in his discussions of details, into the transcendent teleology of the preceding period, Herder nevertheless did away in principle with the restriction of the history of mankind to religious development, substituting for the latter the development to humanity.