Becoming, with upward striving and downward fall (this is how I understand ἡ ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω): 2,400 years before Schopenhauer and Darwin, he proclaimed their most characteristic doctrine in their own words: Ἡράκλειτος μὲν γὰρ ἀντικρὺς πόλεμον ὀνομάζει πατέρα καὶ βασιλέα καὶ κύριον πάντων. Hate and strife lead to generation, all being proceeds from discord, the struggle for existence rules the world and is its vital principle; the Exúρwσis, or reconversion into the primitive element of fire, alone promises concord and peace, like the 'negation of the will' or the Nirvâna of Schopenhauer and the Buddhists. Like Schopenhauer and Darwin, he failed to recognise the presence, beside and above the hatred which breeds divisions and strife, of the other great universal principle, almighty Love, source of each new perfection, uniting and combining all things, suffering and enduring, pardoning and atoning, devoting and sacrificing all-even life itself.

In the classical literature of Germany, the idea of development presents itself from time to time with more or less clearness and conscious precision. In his lectures upon empirical anthropology Kant did not hesitate to assume as self-evident the descent of man from beings of inferior grade, i.e. from the lower animals. The mind of Lessing, impregnated as it was with the ideas of Spinoza, could not possibly pursue any course which was inconsistent with the education of the human race, by natural means and forces, into steadily developing enlightenment and independence. Herder's ' Thoughts on the Philosophy of History' are simply a sketch of

the development of the human race towards a gradually progressive perfection. He too bestows penetrating and, so far as the then state of empirical science allowed, comparative consideration upon the physical difference between man and animals, though he lays much more stress-and in this many modern Darwinians might take a lesson from him-upon the inner principle, the mental development, which is after all the chief thing, though, strange to say, it is almost entirely ignored, or only incidentally mentioned, by the modern school of evolutionists.

The question has been vigorously debated, whether Goethe can be claimed as a supporter of the Darwinian theory of descent, whether he is to be quoted, as by Haeckel, as one of the founders of the doctrine, or regarded, on the contrary, as an adherent of the theory of types. I must confess the controversy seems to me an idle one. The juvenile enthusiasm which took possession of the octogenarian poet when he heard how the French Academy had listened with lively sympathy and interest to the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de St. Hilaire, while the political storms of the July Revolution were raging outside their walls, this very enthusiasm itself shows that the question for him lay not merely between one scientific theory and another, but between the victory or defeat of a whole system, namely, of a view of the universe, in which mind as well as matter was allowed its place. This may sound paradoxical when Darwinism is the subject of discussion, but it will only do so to the thoughtless

majority who make no distinction between materialism and monism, which are as far apart as the poles. To show that this was the case, I will quote Goethe's own significant expressions, together with Lazarus Geiger's comments upon them: 1

1

'When the July Revolution broke out, and the faithful Eckermann found his master in a lively state of excitement about the great events which were taking place in Paris, he began to talk about the errors of the fallen ministry; upon which Goethe replied: "We don't seem to understand each other; I have nothing to say about those people, my concern is about a very different matter. I am speaking of the controversy, of such supreme scientific importance, between Cuvier and Geoffroy de St. Hilaire, which has at last broken out openly in the Academy. From henceforward, in France as elsewhere, natural science will recognise the supremacy of mind over matter; the great maxims of creation will reveal themselves, and we shall penetrate the mysteries of the divine laboratory. This event is incredibly precious to me, and I have a right to rejoice that I am alive to witness the victory won at last by the cause to which my life has been devoted, and which I have made peculiarly my own." The idea of which Goethe already witnessed the victory in the spirit, of which he hailed the proclamation by Geoffroy de St. Hilaire, the idea of cosmic evolution,-will, I doubt not, do as much for the world's freedom as any other great worldhistorical thought of the past. For sooner or later we shall learn from it what man may expect and demand from himself, from humanity and from nature.'

Anyone who, like Schiller, makes the specific character of mankind to consist in freedom, and like him regards liberty and authority as the two great subjects

1 Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, p. 114.

of human interest,' is necessarily compelled to reject the notion that the human will is guided or influenced by any superhuman or extra-human will, however exalted, noble, and pure the conception of it may be. The fact that man is his own creator is alone able to lend value, dignity, and elevation to his being: the abundant powers which have procured him supremacy over the rest of the planet interest us alone if they are the product of his own efforts, not if they are merely cast into his lap by fortune; and in no other light can we regard any higher being to whose favour man may be assumed to owe his precedence. The true kernel and substance of universal history in Schiller's eyes was the image of the human race wrestling its way to an ever higher level of liberty, force and morality. In this sense was the sketch conceived of that Jena Inaugural address of which Carlyle has said: "There has perhaps never been in Europe another course of history sketched on principles so magnificent and philosophical.' After he had carried the picture of primæval savagery back to its remotest stage, and contrasted with it the glittering image of contemporary culture, he says in conclusion :—

'What opposite pictures! Who would suspect the refined European of the eighteenth century of being a brothera few more steps advanced-of the modern Canadian, or the ancient Kelt. All these powers and experiences, these æsthetic impulses, these creations of reason, have been implanted and developed in man during the progress of

''Freiheit und Herrschaft, der Menschheit grosse Gegenstände.'

a few centuries; all these wonders of art, these colossal triumphs of industry, have all been educed from this beginning. What roused those to life, what lured these into being? What conditions had the human race to pass through between the two extreme points: how did man, the unsociable troglodyte, develope into the intelligent thinker, the cultivated man of the world? This is the question to which Universal History supplies the answer.'

The few centuries of which Schiller speaks in this passage are no longer enough for the historian of mankind. Pre-historic science allows us to glance into a vast abysmal past, for which the measures of former chronology are as inadequate as a mundane foot-rule for the distances of Sirius. The further we recede into obscurity, the slower naturally we must expect to find the course of progress. There was a time when men did not know the use of fire, when they were destitute of the very simplest instruments such as we can now hardly dissever from the conception of humanity; and yet even then man was already himself-for man had the gift of speech.

It seems, then, that, with the exception of one short luminous period, the actual realm of human history is enveloped in profound obscurity: an immeasurable past, replete with riddles and mystery, for the interpretation of which only a few dumb witnesses spring from the bosom of earth, forces itself upon the mind of the enquirer as a problem only to be worked out with difficulty and by slow degrees. What then, we may well ask, is the need, where the sense of venturing rashly beyond these distant borders, and