The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel

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      So is the race of Cain and Cain's sons represented from its origin, as one attached to the arts, versed in the use of metals, disinclined to peace, and addicted to habits of warfare and violence, as again at a later period, it appears in scripture as a haughty and wicked race of giants.

      On the other hand the peaceful race of Patriarchs who lived in a docile reverence of God and with a holy simplicity of manners, were descended from Seth. This second progenitor of mankind occupies a very prominent place even in the traditions of other nations, which make particular mention of the columns of Seth, signifying no doubt, in the language of remote antiquity, very ancient monuments, and, as it were, the stony records of sacred tradition. In general the first ten holy Progenitors or Patriarchs of the primitive world are mentioned under different names in the Sagas, not only of the Indians, but of several other Asiatic nations, though undoubtedly with important variations, and not without much poetical colouring. But as in these traditions we can clearly discern the same general traits of history, this diversity of representation serves only to corroborate the main truth, and to illustrate it more fully and forcibly. The views, therefore, of those modern theologians, who represent the concurrent testimony of Gentile nations to the truths of primitive history as derived solely from the Mosaic narrative, and as it were transcribed from a genuine copy of our Bible, are equally narrow-minded and erroneous.

      It would be more just and more consonant with the whole spirit of the primitive world, to assert, what indeed may be conceded with little difficulty, that these nations had received much from the primeval source of sacred tradition; but they regarded as a peculiar possession, and represented under peculiar forms, the common blessings of primitive revelation; and, instead of preserving in their integrity and purity the traditions and oracles of the primitive world, they overlaid them with poetical ornament, so that their whole traditions wear a fabulous aspect, until a nearer and more patient investigation clearly discovers in them the main features of historic truth.

      Under these two different forms, therefore doth Tradition reveal to us the primitive world, or in other words, these are the two grand conditions of humanity which fill the records of primitive history. On the one hand, we see a race, lovers of peace, revering God, blessed with long life which they spend in patriarchal simplicity and innocence, and still no strangers to deeper science, especially in all that relates to sacred tradition and inward contemplation, and transmitting their science to posterity in the old or symbolical writing, not in fragile volumes, but on durable monuments of stone. On the other hand, we behold a giant race of pretended demigods, proud, wicked and violent, or, as they are called in the later Sagas of the heroic times, the heaven-storming Titans.

      This opposition, and this discord—this hostile struggle between the two great divisions of the human race, forms the whole tenour of primitive history. When the moral harmony of man had once been deranged, and two opposite wills had sprung up within him, a divine will or a will seeking God, and a natural will or a will bent on sensible objects, passionate and ambitious, it is easy to conceive how mankind from their very origin must have diverged into two opposite paths.

      Although this primitive division of mankind is now characterized as a difference of races, this is far from being merely the case; and that opposition which distracted the primitive world had far deeper causes than the mere distinction of a noble and a meaner race of men. It is somewhat in this manner a German scholar of the last generation, divided all nations now existing, or which have appeared within the later historical ages, into two classes; wherever he imagined he found his favourite Celts and their descendants, he had not words strong enough to extol their romantic heroism; while he pursued with the most pitiless animosity, over the whole face of the earth, the unfortunate Monguls and all those he deduced from that stock. The struggle which divided the primitive world into two great parties arose far more from the opposition of feelings and of principles, than from difference of extraction. Great as is the interval which separates those ages and that world from our own, we can easily comprehend how this first mighty contest of nations, which history makes mention of, was in fact a struggle between two religious parties—two hostile sects, though indeed under far other forms, and in different relations from anything we witness in the present state of the world. It was, in one word, a contest between religion and impiety, conducted however on the mighty scale of the primitive world, and with all those gigantic powers which, according to ancient tradition, the first men possessed.[41]

      The Greek Sagas represent this two-fold state of mankind in the primitive ante-historical ages in a very peculiar manner, as the gradual decline and corruption of successive generations; of this kind is the tradition of the ages of the world, whereof four or five are numbered. The Golden age of human felicity and the brazen age of all-ruling violence form the two essential terms of this tradition; and the intermediate ages are mere links, or points of transition to render the account more complete.

      In the age of Saturn, the first race allied to the Gods lived in peace and happiness, and were blessed with eternal youth; the earth poured forth her fruits and gifts in spontaneous abundance, and even the end of human life was not a real or painful death, but a gentle slumber into another and higher world of immortal spirits. But the next generation in the age of Silver is represented as wicked, devoid of reverence for the Gods, and giving loose to every turbulent passion. In the Brazen age this state of crime and disorder reached its highest pitch; lordly violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper and their instruments and utensils of brass, and even, in the construction of their edifices, they made use of copper; for as the old poet says, "black iron was not then known;" a circumstance which we must consider as strictly historical and as characteristic of the primitive nations. Between this and the following age, the better heroic race of poetical and even historic tradition is somewhat strangely introduced; and the whole series of generations is closed by the Iron age, the present and last period of the world—the term of man's progressive degeneracy.

      This idea of a gradual and deeper degradation of human kind in each succeeding age appears at first sight not to accord very well with the testimony which sacred tradition furnishes on man's primitive state; for it represents the two races of the primitive world as cotemporary; and indeed Seth, the progenitor of the better and nobler race of virtuous Patriarchs, was much younger than Cain. However, this contradiction is only apparent, if we reflect that it was the wicked and violent race which drew the other into its disorders, and that it was from this contamination a giant corruption sprang, which continually increased till, with a trifling exception, it pervaded the whole mass of mankind, and till the justice of God required the extirpation of degenerate humanity by one universal Flood.

      In the Indian Sagas, the two races of the primitive world are represented in a state of continual or perpetually renewed warfare:—wicked nations of giants attack one or other of the two Brahminical races that descend from the virtuous Patriarchs; generous and divinely inspired heroes come to their assistance, and achieve many wonderful victories over these formidable foes. Such is the chief subject of all the great epic poems, and most ancient heroic Sagas of the Indians. In conformity to their present modes of thinking, and to their present constitution of society, they describe that fierce race of giants as a degraded caste of warriors; and they even give that denomination to many nations well known in later history, such as the Chinese, who bear the same name with them as with ourselves; the Pahlavas, who were a tribe of the ancient Medes and Persians, corresponding to one of the two sacred languages of ancient Persia—the Pahlavi—and the Ionians or Yavanas according to the Asiatic denomination of the primitive Greeks. It may even be a matter of doubt, whether a regular caste of warriors, and an hereditary priesthood, according to the very ancient system of the hereditary division of classes, did not exist in the primitive world. However great may be the chronological confusion evinced in these poems and Sagas, however much, perhaps, of later history may have been interwoven into their ancient narratives, and however much of poetical embellishment and gigantic hyperbole the whole may have received, the leading features of historic truth may still be distinguished with certainty in the chequered tablet of tradition. For the СКАЧАТЬ