Herder’s Conception of “Das Volk”

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I SEMASIOLOGY OF VOLK —THE IDEA IN OTHER WORDS — THE IDEA IN OTHER WORDS — GREEK — LATIN — FRENCH

Before going directly to the main discussion of our theme, a background is sought in a brief semasiological study of the word Volk. The word is widespread in the Germanic languages; Gothic, however, offers no examples. Among the earliest recorded Germanic forms are those in Old English and in Old High German. Old English folc meant people, common people, multitude, a people, tribe, family, army:

“He sloh folces Denigea fyftyne men”—Beowulf.

“Folces hyrde”—Beowulf.

It was particularly used originally of a crowd of people. Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary suggests the possibility of its being related to both flock and full.

Old High German folc meant people, body of warriors, servants, crowd, mass. The oldest meaning here suggests forces of war: dhazs himiliscâ folc.

The word occurs in Old Frisian as folk; in Old Saxon, folc; and in Old Norse, folk; with meanings equivalent to those found in Old High German and Old English.

Kluge’s Etymological Dictionary says that the meaning “division of an army” seems to be the fundamental meaning of the family group, from which Lithuanian pulkas, heap mass, Old Slavonic plŭkŭ, host of war, are borrowed forms.

In Middle English the word took on the additional meaning of an aggregation of people in relation to a superior; e.g., God, a king, or priest; further it began to mean also the vulgar or lower classes, this use easily rising out of the meaning “mass” or “the many.” Such expressions occur as beboden waes Godes folce, Folkes Mass Book.

In Middle High German the meaning was people, hosts of war, army, servants, subjects, multitude: er das Volk gewan (Gudrun, 1162, 2).

In Modern English the word is chiefly colloquial, being superseded in more formal use by “people.”

In numerous combinations (following German precedent) it has the sense of pertaining to, current among, or existing among the masses of the people or the common people. Such expressions as folk-belief, folk-custom, folk-literature, folk-name, folk-song, and folk-speech are prevalent.

Modern High German has retained the word with nearly all of its primitive meanings: die schottischen Völker empören sich und drohen abzuziehen;[1] Mein Volk zu mindern;[2] Was rennt das Volk?;[3] du weisst, wir alten fahren, und ihr junges Volk reitet;[4] den Teufel spürt das Völkchen nie.[5]

The large number of compounds in which the word is used limit its connotation to either “the masses” or “the common people”: Volksbuch, Volksdichter, Volksgeist, Volkslehrer, Volksschule, etc. Kluge in his Etymological Dictionary says: “Connection with Latin vulgus is uncertain; for it is questionable whether the Latin word together with the Germanic family group would come from an original qelgos, qolgos.”

Weigand, Deutsches Wörterbuch says: “The earlier comparison with the Latin, volgus, is not possible. Rather to be compared here are the word voll and roots related to the Greek πλῆθος.”

The ideas conveyed by the fundamental meanings found in the word Volk appear in other words and in various languages:

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:

CHAPTER II CONCEPTIONS OF VOLK AS SEEN IN HERDER’S USE OF THE TERM — I — II — III — IV — V CONNATIONS ARISING FROM USES WITH ADJECTIVES — COMPOUNDS WITH VOLK

Volk is that part of a nation which is the governed class as distinct from those who are above them in authority and who stand as the ruling class; i.e., the governed as separate from the governing.

I, 16: “Man weiss dass nach den Staatsplänen Lykurgs und Solons, die als die Muster der übrigen glänzten, die Stimme des Volks, eine Stimme des Staats, ja beinahe selbst Gott war.” Volk here is the collective mass of individuals constituting the state as opposed to the ruling heads.

I, 16: “Dies konnte das Volk beantworten, nicht aus Staatseinsichten, sondern weil jeder Bürger streiten musste.” Herder is discussing the power which the people have in the simplest democratic form of government to declare or to forbid war. Volk is here the collection of citizens which make up the state as opposed to nominal rulers.

I, 188: “Cicero ärgert sich, dass er dem Volk zu gefallen, ‘pulcher’ und ‘triumphus’ statt ‘pulcer’ und ‘triumpus’ aussprechen müsste.” In similar connotation are such phrases as: “fraget das Volk”; “die niemand als das Volk geben wird”; “worauf das Volk hinkte, wenn es nicht gehen konnte”; “bloss weil das Volk sie vor Drüsen ansahe.”

I, 18: “Selbst das Volk ist nicht mehr dasselbe. Dort war dieser Name ehrwürdig: er begriff alle Bürger, Rath und Priester ausgenommen.” The collective mass of citizens who form the state in contradistinction to the individuals who were nominal rulers.

I, 22: “So sieht man, dass ihre Schutzgötter, und ihre Gottesdienste, dass Orakelsprüche und Ceremonien blos heiliger Nebel und Opferrauch waren, die Augen des Volks zu blenden.” Herder here mentions Cicero as augur and writer on religious subjects; Volk are the citizens, exclusive of those occupying the official rank such as that held by Cicero, for example.

XIV, 34: “So ist ein Unterschied zwischen Cultur der Gelehrten und Cultur des Volks.” Herder speaks here concerning the organization of the state among ancient peoples. The Gelehrten were the teaching and priestly class—those who were in possession of certain secret knowledge. The Volk, while not having this knowledge, were nevertheless not without culture. We may take Volk to mean nation or people in the same sense in which a modern people might be considered as such and include its clergymen and lawyers who had special professional training.

Quotations in which Volk is used as synonymous with nation. The ideas of collective personality and of Nationalgeist are prominent here.

I, 23: “Der Charakter unseres Volks ist nicht mehr die dreiste Wildheit der Alten; sondern eine feinere und mässigere Freiheit; die Freiheit des Gewissens.” Herder discusses the question of freedom in the fatherland and uses “fatherland” as synonymous with Volk; Volk is nation.

I, 147: “Ein Volk das ohne Poetische Sprache grosse Dichter ... gehabt hätte ist ein Unding.” Volk is nation.

I, 261: “So sehr sich immer Voltaire, und die seines Theils sind, beklagen, dass wir ein eckles dummes Volk aus einem Winkel der Erde so sehr erheben.” Wir here refers to the German people in the eighteenth century. Volk, then, means a nation.

I, 262: “singen wir denn für Juden? die sich für das einzige Volk Gottes hielten? die von dem feurigsten Nationalstolz belebt wurden?” Volk, here, in the light of Nationalstolz, clearly means nation. In the same connection and with the same meaning he says: “Unser Gott ist ein Vater der Menschen nicht eines Volks.”

I, 276: “Ein Rabbi, der für sein Volk Patriotismus, Känntniss seiner Gebräuche.” Volk here refers to the Jews, hence means nation.

II, 8: “Allerdings ist auch die Sprache einer Nation ein beträchtliches Stück in der Litteratur derselben.... Man kann die Litteratur eines Volks, ohne seine Sprache nicht übersehen.” Volk is clearly a synonym with nation.

I, 13: “ein Vorrath, der freilich oft durch Raub und Beute Nachbarn bereichert, aber so wie er ist doch eigentlich der Nation zugehört, die ihn hat ... der Gedankenschatz eines ganzen Volks.” In this passage, language (Sprache) is the word Vorrath, to which reference is made. 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.

II, 160: “Gemeiniglich waren die grössesten Schriftsteller zugleich die grössesten Nationalautoren. Den Geist ihrer Zeit, die Denkart ihres Volks, die Natur ihrer Sprache, wusten sie.” Volk is nation.

III, 30: “sie werden Thränen und Thaten wecken: ein Schatz des Vaterlandes, und das Gefühl, das sie besingen und wirken, Gefühl des Volks, Nationalgeist.” Volk here is nation.

III, 62: “ihn sollte ein Held anstimmen, der zugleich König war, der dadurch die Griechen rettete, der ihnen die Opferung versprochen hatte: dieser also sein Wort brechen, sein Volk nicht lieben, dafür auch nicht etwas Saures thun wollen?” Volk here refers to the ancient Greeks, and therefore has the meaning of nation.

III, 398: “Wo, unsre Religion noch sinnlichen Vorstellungen Raum gibt; wo sie sich einer Poetischen Bildersprache bequemt: da ist sie—Orientalisch. Unter einem Volke gebildet, das ihr Gott auf alle Art von Bildnissen abwenden wollte, in Gegenden, die das Uebermenschliche suchten, in Nationen, die Verhüllungen des Körpers, und Geheimnisse des Geistes lieber verehren als das offne Schöne lieben wollten—im Geist und in der Sprache dieses Volks die sinnliche Bildersprache unsrer Religion also geoffenbaret.” Volk is nation.

III, 414: “Wenn er durch Dichter gebildet war, wenn einem Publikum in Griechenland Dichterverse und Poetische Bilder ihrer Mythologie im Kopfe schwebten, ohngefähr auf die Art, als unserm Volke Kirchenlieder, Bibelsprüche (eine Vergleichung die hier blos Nationalunterschied seyn soll).” Volk is nation.

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? wer ist Bürger dieses Volks, und sagt nicht: unde mihi lapides?” This passage shows Volk to be synonymous with nation.

There are frequent uses of the word Volk in the plural, Völker, with the same connotation:

II, 19: “Die Litteratur fremder Völker und Sprachen ist oft als eine fremde Colonie unter andere Nationen eingeführt.”

II, 23: “Was haben Völker und Sprachen für Vor- und Nachtheile gegen einander?”

II, 79: “das Namenregister ... das mich aus allen Zungen und Sprachen und Völkern und Gesellschaften der Erde überführen soll.”

III, 32: “eine Ader des Gefühls, die die besten Dichtungen und Geschichte, nicht blos der Griechen, sondern aller Völker durchströmt.”

III, 52: “warum die Griechen in Bildung des Schönen so hoch gekommen, um allen Völkern der Erde hierinn den Preis abzulaufen?”

IV, 168: “der das Schöne unter allen Völkern und Zeitaltern sucht.”

V, 86: “der Erste Kopf der an eine wahre Philosophie der Grammatik ... denkt, muss gewiss erst die Geschichte derselben durch Völker und Stuffen hinab überdacht haben.”

I, 2: “Gestorbene Sprachen.... Glücklich, dass die Völker denen sie eigen waren, verlebt sind.”

I, 3: “Hier knüpft die Politik des Staats die Sprachen zur allgemeinen Kette der Völker.”

I, 262: “Von allen Völkern der Erde abgesondert, brachte es seinem Schutzgott Nationalgesänge.” (Jews.)

V, 500: “Der Stamm des Baums zu seiner grössern Höhe erwachsen, strebte, Völker und Nationen unter seinen Schatten zu nehmen, in Zweige.”

V, 501: “Wenn alle Völker unter dem Römischen Joche gewissermaasse die Völker zu seyn aufhörten, die sie waren?”

V, 514: “Norden wars. Und was man auch nun über den Zustand dieser Völker für Ursprünge und Systeme ersinnen mag.”

VI, 115: “Kannte Noah diese ganz? Konnte er allen Völkern die Warnung Gottes bekannt machen?”

VI, 128: “Ich bleibe bei den Umwandlungen dieser Philosophie bei spätern benachbarten Völkern, und dünkts mich kein Traum.”

“Aber dass sich die Geheimnisse mit Ideen dieser Gattung unter allen Völkern beschäftigt.”

Volk, a special group, less cultured, unaltered in certain respects by the influence of civilization. There are marked implications of theories of universalism and democracy here. The largest part of the people are the most important and respectable.

In the following two passages we have a degree of characterization of the rabble:

XVII, 91: “den leider ist es nur Ein Ding, Poebelsinn und Tyrannei, mit zwei Namen genannt, wie die rechte und linke Seite.”

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.

I, 392: “O eine Schrift, die das ist, was eine Erbauungs—eine Bildungsschrift für den grössten, nutzbarsten und ehrwürdigsten Theil der Menschen, das Volk sein soll.” The author has been regretting that the weekly journals, religious books, and sermons are not suited to the common man, and suggests the kind of literature that would meet his needs. Volk is here the largest, most useful, and most respectable part of mankind. These people are to be edified and cultivated.

VII, 246: “die bei dem grossen ehrwürdigen Haufen Volk erregt werden müssen, wenn etwas würken soll. Dies Volk noch nicht zu Raisonnement gebildet, glaubt und handelt.” These are too naïve to have reason; Volk are the naïve, simple people.

VI, 294: Herder here calls the Bible “Orakel Gottes für den besten, grössten Theil der Menschheit, Kinder und Volk.”

VI, 309: “über den Euch noch immer Kind und Volk, der edelste Theil der Menschheit.”

VI, 443: “wie die Kindes- und Volkswelt sich das ursprünglich denken konnte.”

In these last three passages the mental capacity of Volk is that of a child, and the thought therefore implies for Volk a meager degree of education and culture.

VI, 104: “Wo sind in allen unsern Ländern Weisheitsschulen für den ehrwürdigen Theil unsers Publikum, den man das Volk nennet?” Herder says these are human beings who form the stock of the nation and distinguishes them from the nobility who would refuse to enlighten the Volk that these might be the better utilized by the nobility and the better become the subjects of their tyranny. Volk is here a class beneath the nobility, but ideally they are enlightened and made better by social contact and religious observances.

VI, 301: “Zu dem schrieb er fürs Volk; ich verstehe unter diesem Namen die Menge derer, die sich nicht durch die Sprachlehre zu Deutschen gebildet hatten.” Herder here refers to Luther and the people for whom he wrote; these were the less cultured people.

I, 298: “Weil damals noch nicht ein Unterschied zwischen der Sprache der Weisen und des Volks, zwischen der Denkart der Vornehmen und Geringen war; was Homer sang war die Sprache der Götter und zugleich eine veredelte Sprache des Pöbels.” Herder is speaking of Homer’s language and times. In the parallel the wise are the aristocratic; the Volk are those of humble rank.

Volk meaning a special group characterized by primitivism in various forms.

II, 25: “wie die Denkart des Volks mit der gelehrten Denkart neben und in einander laufe?” “Was giebt die Denkart und Sprache des Volks dem Philosophen, Dichter und Redner für Masse?” “Was hat dies für Vortheile und Nachtheile für die Weisen und dem Schüler des Volks?” Here Herder discusses two separate manners of thinking, designating one as being peculiar to the Volk and the other as being that of the Gelehrten; one as belonging to the Volk, the other to the Philosophen, Dichter and Redner. Here is a clear implication that the Volk is a class apart from philosophers, poets, and orators; a class different from the sages. Not being wise and learned, they must be those upon whom artificial methods of training and culture have had less effect than upon the philosophers, poets, and orators. They are therefore more nearly the natural man.

I, 157: “So wie das Völkerrecht jetzt im Staat zum Gesez ward: so in der Sprache.... Es entstand ein Adel ein Pöbel und ein Mittelstand unter den Völkern wie er in der Gesellschaft entstand.” Herder here has traced the development of prose out of poetry. He finds that the language of passion gave way to that of mediocre wit, and this in turn became the speech of reason. Here is suggested a parallel between the rights of the people, which passed into state laws, and the language which passes from Poebel to Mittelstand and then to Adel. If we make parallel the Völkerrecht in the development of law with the Mittelstand in the social status, then Volk is a class between the rabble and the nobility. If we follow the analogy suggested in the second sentence of the quotation, we shall make the rabble those who have the language of passion; the Volk those who have the language of mediocre wit; and the nobility those whose language is that of reason. Herder’s Volk here would be a middle class.

Volk is used commonly to mean primitive peoples, i.e., people who have reached only an early stage of civilization. Among those to whom frequent reference is made as such are: Greenlanders, Laplanders, Early Scandinavians, Early Germans, Greeks of Homer’s time, Ancient Hebrews, Ancient Celts in Scotland and Ireland, and American Indians. The moral standards and intellectual equipment found among these are eulogized and idealized whenever these peoples as groups are compared with civilized communities.

V, 189: “In mehr als einer Provinz sind mir Volkslieder, Provinziallieder, Bauerlieder bekannt, die an Lebhaftigkeit und Rhythmus und Naivetät und Stärke der Sprache vielen derselben gewiss nichts nachgeben würden.” Here Volk is put in apposition with that which is provincial, which has a peasant character. A meaning which is equivalent to the less cultured. Herder is discussing the whereabouts of Volkslieder which he locates among the Volk, and Volk are to be found in the lanes, in the fish markets, and in the country.

V, 185: “Zuerst sollten also wohl für die Seele des Volks die doch nur fast sinnlicher Verstand und Einbildung ist.” ... Herder here considers the Volk as having the kind of soul which would be formed by contact with the forces of nature, unaltered by the hand of man, and, especially, little touched by reflection, the reasoning faculty.

II, 349: “Alles was für das Volk redete und schrieb, Redner, und Geschichtsschreiber, musste populär sprechen; alles was für Gebildetere schrieb, Dichter, und Philosoph, und Redner, und Briefschreiber war freyer.” This statement clearly opposes Volk to those more cultured. The adjective, “populär,” used with reference to that which would befit them, gives a shading to the meaning of Volk, derived from the meaning of “popular,” that which partakes of a quality peculiar to the populace. Volk here are the less cultured.

These imply an emphasis on a group in which crudeness, the natural as opposed to the cultured and polished, are eulogized.

XIII, 299: “Jedes eingebohrne sinnliche Volk hat sich also mit seinen Begriffen auch in seine Gegend umschränkt.”

XIII, 303: “Was ich auszuzeichnen habe sind einige allgemeine Wahrnehmungen aus diesem Schattenreich phantasierender Völker.”

Herder gives as an example of the phantasierender Völker the people of Greenland, India, Lappland, Japan, Peru, and Africa at a period of their existence when they have a mythology. The mythology he calls a philosophical effort of the human soul, which dreams before it awakens and gladly remains in its childhood.

XIII, 328: “Auch unter den wildesten Völkern unterscheidet sich das Weib vom Mann.”

XIII, 389: “Daher ist auch bei den rohesten Völkern die Sprache der Religion immer die älteste.”

XIII, 392: “die göttlichen Gesetze und Regeln der Humanität, die sich wenn auch nur in Resten bei dem wildesten Volk äussern.”

XIII, 393: “Von den rohen Völkern der Vorwelt.”

V, 681: “.... wie die Römische Staatskunst mit den Deutschen Fürsten spielte; und die Grundverfassung dieser Barbarischen Völker in Freiheit und Einigung zu erschüttern suchte.”

XXV, 7: “Rohe Gesänge eines rohen Volks! Barbarische Töne und Märchen, der Grundsuppe einer Nation.”

XXV, 7: “Ohne Zweifel war das Gallische, Englische und noch mehr das Nordischere Volk blos Volk!”

XXV, 8: “Und wenn man sich nun diese Lieder..... in die lebendige Rührung des Volks zurückdenkt.”

XXV, 9: “die Denkart der Nation selbst National; das Volk mit ein so ansehnlicher Theil des Volks dessen Namen man also nicht so Schaamroth oder eckelnd und betroffen ansah und abscheute.”

XXV, 11: “die Reste aller lebendigen Volksdenkart rollen mit beschleunigtem letzten Sturze in Abgrund der Vergessenheit hinab. Das Licht der sogenannten Kultur frisst wie der Krebs um sich.”

Words compounded with Volk show all the various meanings distinguished in the following simple usages.

XXIV, 268: “Wenn Du Deine Ballade einem jungen Bauermädchen aus einem Thale .... gäbest die ausser den Kirchenliedern .... oder sonst einem alten schlichten Gesang nie eine Musik gehört dabei jedoch von Natur eine angenehmere und für den Zweck deines Gedichts passendere Volks-Melodie wählen als irgend einer unserer grössten Virtuosen.”

XXIV, 280: “Ein engerer Bund zwischen Gott und dem Stammvater eines Hirtenvolks wird darauf dieses Volks Losung.” This Hirtenvolk is the Hebrews.

XXIV, 305: “dieser grosse Völkerstamm sich nicht von Nord nach Süden hinab sondern von Gallien Nordwärts.” This Völkerstamm is the Irish and Scotch.

XXIV, 307: “nur so viel ist gewiss dass die allgemeine Volkssage Ossian einige Jahrhunderte später leben lässt.”

XXIV, 399: “und da sie Gesetzgeber, Volksleiter waren.”

I, 86: “Die herumschweifenden Beduinen sind noch solche Rhapsodisten als Homer war: sie sammeln einen Volkhaufen um sich.”

I, 157: “so wie das Völkerrecht jetzt im Staat zum Gesez ward.”

V, 8: “Eigentlich ist diese Sprache der Natur eine Völkersprache für jede Gattung unter sich und so hat auch der Mensch die Seinige.”

V, 132: “Eine Morgenländische Urkunde über die Trennung der Sprachen (die ich hier nur als ein Poetisches Fragment zur Archäologie der Völkergeschichte betrachte).”

V, 218: “Shakespeare .... fand keinen so einfachen Volks- und Vaterlandscharakter.”

V, 486: “Wie tausendmal mehr thöricht wenn du einem Kinde .... deine allgemeine Völkerliebe voll tolerante Unterjochung .... gönnen wolltest!”

V, 493: “ob der Phönicier gleich nicht aus Menschenliebe, Nationen besuchte, es ward eine Art von Völkerliebe, Völkerbekanntschaft, Völkerrecht sichtbar.”

XXV, 5: “Dünkts mich indessen recht, dass wenn auch diese nie ganz erwünschbare Vaterlandsschätze gefunden würden, sie doch kaum Volks-Vaterlands-Lieder für uns im strengern Verstande wären.”

XXV, 6: “nur mit den Augen sehen und mit dem Herzen verstehen .... wie es allemal Volksrührung ist und seyn sollte.”

XXV, 10: “Natürlich musste auch die Denkart und ruhige Volksart der Deutschen an dem ewigen Zwistgewitter theilnehmen.”

XXV, 313: “ganz Volksartig, d.i. leicht, einfach, aus Gegenständen und in der Sprache der Menge.”

XXV, 314: “Der grösste Sänger der Griechen Homerus ist zugleich der grösste Volksdichter. Sein herrliches Ganze ist .... Sage lebendige Volksgeschichte.”

XXV, 316: “und doch ist überall der alte ehrwürdige Volkssänger der einfältige Hirt.”

XXV, 323: “Zum Volkssänger gehört nicht, dass er aus dem Pöbel sein muss, oder für den Pöbel singt.”

XXIV, 263: “Heisst also die Romanze, obwohl ihr nachher der Gebrauch eine engere Bedeutung gegeben eigentlich nichts als Muttersprache der südlichen Länder Europens und in ihnen Volksrede, Volksgesang.”

XXIV, 265: “die alten Englischen und Schottischen Volksgesänge.”

XXIV, 267: “Und so wäre mit echten Volksgesange abermals nicht etwa nur ein Hauptzweig alter, edler, rühmlicher und Ruhmweckender Poesie sondern der Grund aller Poesie die innere Rechtschaffenheit und Honnettetät im Herzen des Volks—ermordet.”

XXIV, 411: “Ungebundenheit (License) soll Endzweck der Regierung sein: Volkslaune (populare humour) Ursprung der Regierung.”

XIII, 39: “Die Abessinier sind ein Arabischer ‘Völkerstamm’ (race).”

XIII, 214: “Völkerschaften die den Dörfern und Städten nah sind mildern und mischen auch mehr ihre Sitten und Züge.”

XIII, 231: “Kennten wir nun noch die zahlreichen Völkerschaften die über ihren dürren Gegenden .... wohnen.”

XIII, 392: “so ist dieser Begriff, als allgemeiner Volksglaube auf der Erde.”

XIII, 427: “Priester- und Volkstradition.”

XIII, 437: “Geschlechtstafel dieser Stämme .... hält sich in den Schranken ihrer Völkerkunde und ihres Erdstrichs.”

XIII, 438: “.... widerspricht nicht nur der Zeitrechnung und der gesammten Völkergeschichte.”

XV, 124: “Damit ich mich des altdeutschen Volksausdrucks bediene.” “Aus dem Latein kam er ins Englische ins Deutsche, wie mehrere Wörter und noch ist er in der Volkssprache.” Herder is discussing the word Priamel which he says is perhaps from the Latin praeambulum. Volk in the two compounds must mean the less learned.

V, 493: “nun müsste der Bewohner des Schiffs und der Küste der expatrirte Seestreicher und Völkerläufer dem Bewohner des Zelts und der Ackerhütte ein ganz anderes Geschöpf dünken.”

V, 501: “Völkerrecht.”

V, 515: “Ihre Feudaleinrichtung wie untergrub sie das Gewühl Volkreicher üppiger Städte.”

The foregoing citations indicate two distinct senses in which Herder uses the term Volk:

Volk is equivalent to nation; nation carrying the idea of a group bound together by blood or language or government, or by all three. As such, a Volk is a collective personality, has a marked individuality, and is characterized by a national spirit.

2. (a) Volk is a race or a nation that never advanced beyond primitive grades of culture; that therefore never was subject to what he considers the deteriorating and degrading effects of higher civilization; (b) Volk is a group to be found within a civilized nation; a group which has retained the primitivism just noted above. Primitivism then is characteristic of all Volk included in section II. This primitivism whether in the entire race or in a special portion is always eulogized. These primitive specimens have the most pronounced racial individuality because civilization has not interfered with the influences of environment.

CHAPTER III CONCEPTIONS OF VOLK AS GATHERED FROM HERDER’S COLLECTION OF VOLKSLIEDER — VOLK SONGS COLLECTED BY HERDER — DANISH—FOUR PIECES — GERMAN—SIXTY-TWO PIECES — ENGLISH AND SCOTCH—THREE PIECES — ESTHONIAN—FIVE PIECES — FRENCH—THIRTEEN PIECES — GALLIC (OSSIAN)—SIX PIECES — GREEK—SEVEN PIECES — GREENLAND—ONE PIECE — ITALIAN—FIVE PIECES — LAPLAND—TWO PIECES — LATIN—SIX PIECES — LETTIC—FIVE PIECES — LITHUANIAN—NINE PIECES — SKALDIC—TEN PIECES — PERUVIAN—TWO PIECES — SPANISH—THIRTY-FOUR PIECES

That Herder’s conception of that group of people which he calls Volk bears relationship to a certain genre of poetry is implied in the fact that he first coined the word Volkslied:

Herder himself has made a collection of specimens of this peculiar type of song. According to his own statements these poems bear the distinguishing marks of that sort of people which he has in mind as being distinctively Volk. In his essay, Ähnlichkeit der mittlern englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst, he says:

Herder’s collections are from national bodies of people. We ought to find among these groups of songs common factors which would not be found as such in that body of poetry which Herder excludes as not being Volk songs.

Further, we should be able to reduce these common factors to lowest terms which would embody some interpretation of Herder’s conception of Volk: “Das sind einmal alte Nationalstücke die das Volk singt, und sang, woraus man also die Denkart des Volks, ihre Sprache der Empfindung kennen lernet.”

This investigation of these poems leads to the following: Each group of poems embodies an expression of personality, individuality which grows out of peculiar environment; not merely physical environment, but also social, political, and religious environment. Each, either in content, form, or in its method of appeal, sometimes in all three, bears traces of the milieu out of which it sprung.

The notes of waning glory and ancestral lament of Ossian gain their character from a different period in the life of the nation from that recorded in the Moorish battle songs in the Spanish collection.

The ruggedness of the Skaldic poetry bespeaks a roughness in climate and scenery not to be found in the French poems.

The mythology of the Scotch Highlanders and of the Norsemen, depicted in their poetry, is different indeed from the Mohammedanism of which the Spanish pieces speak.

The English and German songs which are characterized by Christian customs are colored neither by Mohammedanism, Gallic, nor Classic mythology. The deep reflective moods of the Shakespeare specimens grew out of a social and intellectual environment entirely the opposite of that in which the concrete and vivid pictures of many of Percy’s Reliques had their birth.

In all this difference, the common feature is that individuality is expressed. Individual traits appear within each group. Racial consciousness distinguishes one group from the other.

Now personality and individuality are corner stones in Herder’s system of thought. His discussion of Lessing’s “Laokoon” sets forth the principle that true art will be characterized by these.[9]

Herder’s philosophy is also emphatic in showing that all art is shaped by the environment out of which it grew. The essays “Shakespeare,” “Homer und Ossian,” and “Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie” are replete with such thought.

The art of every nation then will bear national imprint. The national stamp, this expression of personality and individuality, both products of various kinds of environment, belongs to Herder’s conception of Volk wherever the idea is identical with that of nation or race.

Now the preceding chapter has shown that however often Herder uses the term as synonymous with nation or race, he has also a distinctive and a sort of esoteric use.

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.

Another common factor, then, must be sought which is distinctive of people in this more restricted sense.

The way in which the material is presented is what I have called in my analysis of the pieces “the method of appeal.” There is no common basis on which we can place the specimens viewing them from this side. Many of them present vivid visual and auditory pictures. Many others are marked by abstract thinking or sober reflection. Some are dramatic presentations, others are simple descriptions. Some are cold moralizing; others expressions of strong emotions.

All of these selections are in some kind of rhythmic form. It may be parallelism, rhythmical blank verse, or marked feet and rhyme. But we cannot make use of this as a very definite factor, since many specimens are translations which cannot preserve the original exactly. However, we have in the original the English and Scotch, the Ossian and the German collections. All of these present a form of rhythm which is usually so irregular that it would not meet the demands for measured feet, verses, and rhyme to be found in the highly polished and formal poetry. Now in his discussion of rhythmic forms in poetry Herder indicates that the human love for rhythm has its foundations in the physiological processes and symmetry of the body: Der Pulsschlag der Natur, dies Athemholen der Empfindung ist in allen Reden des Affekts ... in der Poesie ... die doch eigentlich Rede des Affekts seyn soll.

The people who produced this poetry, then, were close to nature in their forms of rhythmical speech.

The content of these poems remains to be considered.

Among the Esthonian pieces is a little love song which Herder has heard the harvesters sing at work. It is idyllic in setting. Thoughts of love are all-abounding. Happiness amidst rural scenes is common among all nations.

“König Ludwig” is an Old High German battle song which interweaves thoughts of God and religion; subjects which never cease to engage the attention of mankind.

Wiegenlied einer unglücklichen Mutter, a Scotch mother’s song of unfaithful love; the poem has a setting in domestic life. Litthauische Daina—song of the departure of a young bride who goes to her new home; domestic life and custom are the themes. There is sadness at leaving the home of her girlhood.

These embody expressions of common, human feelings.

A number of the Spanish songs have their scenes laid in the city and at court; but they sing of love, vengeance, and jealousy—all of which are intensely human.

Erlkönigs Tochter, is a Danish piece which sings of elves. Thoughts of the supernatural are among all mankind.

Frühlingslied, is an Italian piece which rejoices at the coming of the flowers and birds and the budding of the trees. This season always awakens human happiness.

Röschen auf der Heide presents personified nature. Such personification is among all men.

Totenlied comes from Greenland. All peoples bemoan and eulogize their dead in song.

Tanzlied is German. Nearly every collection has pieces which present the rhythm and joyous emotions of the dance. This kind of pleasure is common among all races.

The songs from Ossian tell of departed ancestors and heroes. The sentiment expressed is universal.

From Shakespeare appears such things as Hamlet’s Probe einer schauderhaften Metaphysik über Tod und Leben.

Macbeths schreckliche Dolchscene; is there any human breast in which the sentiments involved in these deep reflections have not sometimes found a place?

Now it is what Herder himself says in introducing these selections from Shakespeare which justifies us in making the content, the theme of his whole collection of Volk songs, the common ground upon which they all meet.

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. These songs find a response among the people from whom they arose because these people are products of unhampered nature. Both rhythm and content lead to this conclusion according to Herder’s conception. Volk as seen from this angle, then, are either a primitive people or a group within a people representing advanced stages of civilization, which group has still retained the methods of thinking, the feelings, the modes of expression, and the tastes of primitive people.

We get from Herder’s collection of Volkslieder, then, two conceptions of Volk: (1) Volk, a collective personality resulting from the development of individual consciousness into community individuality and consciousness; (2) Volk, a primitive people or, within a civilized nation, a section, which has maintained certain natural fundamental and primitive characteristics.

CHAPTER IV CONCEPTIONS OF VOLK IN HERDER’S DISCUSSION OF “OSSIAN’S PEOPLE” AND OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS — OSSIAN — THE ANCIENT HEBREWS

Herder has discussed, in connection with two groups of poetry which he distinctly calls Volkspoesie, each race from which the particular collection arose. Both directly and indirectly he presents in each of these peoples the peculiar characteristics by which he identifies a community with his ideal conception of Volk.

In his collection of Volk songs he has presented literature from many and varied peoples of the earth, but he has discussed at length, to show the traits which stamp their Volkspoesie as such, only two of these groups.

An examination of the common factors which the author sees as essential elements of each of these races ought to give us in one form his conception of Das Volk.

The two races are: (1) Those whom he believes to be the ancient Gauls, from whom we have the collection known as “The Songs of Ossian”[10]; (2) the ancient Hebrews.[11]

Herder places the people among whom this body of literature arose in the islands known as the “Hebrides,” in the highlands of Scotland, and in Ireland.

Rugged mountains covered with roaring forests or spotted with desert tracts surround the inhabitants. 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.

At the time at which we see them these highland dwellers look often upon wilderness full of sacred views, upon battlefields, lonesome graves, and blotted-out footsteps.

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. With a sigh and tear as password, they were received at once into the smiling presence of their forefathers, who had clear, transparent figures like to the curled clouds. Their hands were weak, their voices deep and soft. They swayed themselves over the entire abode of their race and rejoiced in boundless space. Space they prized above everything else. Fright and horror were considered as narrow and shut in. Hence they called the grave the narrow house, and weak courage, the breath of a narrow soul.

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. They never came out of this fog, and never saw the sun. One did not know the name of the other. The black water of the morass lake was their only converse; the voice of the Heron and the quacking of ducks their music.

Ossian’s folk attributed every sudden death to an invisible hand which threw a stone out of the clouds and which they called an “arrow of the destroying woman.”

“Their chief conception of the highest being was that it governs the clouds and heavenly bodies and rejoices at bravery and fortune of mankind; that it remained ever invisible ... that the entire earth out of fear would like to catch and imprison it.”

The dead were mourned in funeral dirges sung on the graves of the departed; in the case of heroes, often amid battle tumult, these songs were directed to ancestral heroes who awaited the dead in the clouds.

One of their myths which Herder extracts from Ossian shows a certain phase of their religion:

“As they sing in the moonlight to the moon goddess, Mona, this maiden of the heavens comes with gentle movement, with silent, beautiful cheek; her playmates, the stars, stand in rows to receive her; the clouds bordered with gold trip before them as servants; she outshines all her rivals so that they blush and conceal themselves in veils. On such an occasion as this the hero Ossian turns his sad song to the thought, How would it be if she should once disappear from the heavens, if she should then go into her little hut to cry and cry as he does? He wonders if she like him has lost friends, and he begins to comfort the beautiful girl and to cheer her up so that she quite joyfully smiles again.”

The family feeling is strong, and it is the foundation of nearly all good feeling toward fatherland and friend, tribe and neighbor. There are common among these people scenes full of innocence, of friendship, of fatherly, brotherly, in fact family, love in general. Fingal is hero and leader but also lover, bridegroom, husband, friend, father. Ossian is warrior, but also son of noble Fingal, and in this very relation the singer of the praises of his ancestors, of his friends, of his brothers, of his sons.

It is out of the sadness of separated loved ones that we hear the most touching tones and the harp is made to resound to praises sung to ancestors. Although these tribes are said to be wild, they are in many respects closely bound to customs and forms. The harp is their musical instrument to whose touching tones their legends are fitted into song.

Herder points out that the stage in the history of Ossian’s people from which this collection of poetry wins its character is the time of the extinction of the race of heroes of whom Ossian the brave is the chief and sad singer. He is the last of his courageous tribe; the witness to the deeds of noted Fingal and his colleagues; the departing voice of a heroic age to its weaker descendants. His mournful strains are accompanied by no awakening call for an age yet to come. His race was not, like Homer’s on Ionian shores, a growing people in the dawn of splendor looking toward a flowering in the future.

The cause of the mournful strain in the life of Ossian’s race may have been subjection by a foreign power or the invasion of monks bringing the Christian religion. The poems suggest both. Ossian’s songs must have had a powerful effect upon the people out of whose midst they grew. As long as there were bards this people’s strength was irrepressible. But now we see a patient, subject race trying to revive itself on the renown and happy existence of departed ancestors.

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; that each race has its personality, and each spontaneously expresses this personality in its song:

The eye and the ear of these people are wide open to every sight and sound which their physical environment presents. The ear is strong, quick, lasting; the eye keen, embracing, receptive. A certain perceptual power expressed in alertness, boldness, and noble aspect pervaded their entire being. 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. All objects are personified, filled with life and movement, whether it be wind or wave, or even the down of a thistle. As soon as possible the object itself becomes a voice, and we hear moanings of sadness and songs of the harp. These figures are often of the mist, coming out of clouds through which the stars twinkle.

Ossian sings, also, deeds, happenings of history, the bygone fates of forefathers, and old legends.

In outline all these pictures are delineations, which are snappy, strong, manly, abrupt, wild, lively. They are not painted in detail, and their content does not stream forth slowly in regular and measured intervals. Less harsh and wild are they, however, than the songs of the so-called “Northmen,” because Ossian’s soul possesses a charm giving out lonesomeness, love, and gentleness mingled with courage and strength of feeling.

The language is crisp, short, true, and exact, and penetrates by its simplicity. A single word literally seizes a whole thought and the two break forth together upon a voice tender and sad. When the singer would exhort his comrades to courage, he painted his pictures through tones that fell upon the ear.

In general, Ossian makes us see and hear the living world in scenes that pass quickly, singly, one by one, without arranging themselves in a regular and formal procession. 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.

Herder applies his studies to the Hebrew people as he finds them in their earliest habitations. From his analysis of formative forces and of the peculiar personality resulting from these influences we have what follows: The physical features of the lands with which the Hebrews were familiar were varied enough to give them a rather complete natural history of the earth. They understood the subsiding of water that left mountains above them and valleys in between these. They saw that waters coursed through the valleys and made fertile plains. They knew how springs gush forth from rocks and trees grow on the banks of rivers. They knew both the sea and the desert. The summer sun brought calm waters and the cold winds forged fetters of ice. The palm tree and the cedar, the olive and the grape, grew in these lands. The variety of animals seems to imply a wide and varied expanse of territory.

The crane, the turtledove, the eagle, the raven, the stork, the ostrich, the lion, the wild ox, perhaps the elephant and the rhinoceros, as well as most of our common domestic birds and other animals, frequented these environments.

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. The strong contrasts of oriental skies wrought through light and darkness their sharpest outlines.

The mild climate was perhaps the most beautiful in the world, and produced the simplest needs of life with little labor on the part of the inhabitants. With fertile river valleys in addition, which furnished grazing lands, it was natural that one of the earliest grades of civilization should arise here—the shepherd folk.

Although these people had a civilization that was early circumscribed, it nevertheless presupposes some cultivation. Even the shepherd state cannot exist without arts and fixed customs. The Hebrews in this shepherd state had developed family bonds and fixed the ruling power of the father in domestic life. They had domesticated animals, and developed tender feelings toward them.

Let us look at the moral and mental traits due to this physical and social environment.

The eye developed clearness and acuteness, a vivid sensitiveness; it saw every leaf, every blade of grass, the plains and valleys, the waters in outline and expanse, the planets and the broad ether in which they hung, and it distinguished every movement. The ear heard the delicate rustlings of branches and bows, as well as the roar of winds, the smallest raindrop, and the rush of mighty waters. Every sense was thus developed to a finesse which left no phenomenon of nature unobserved.

These sense impressions were impregnated with the feelings and carrying these effects of feelings they passed onward to the mind and made mental pictures of a kind which correspond to the character of the imprint made by the feelings. Then these made-over pictures were given back to the world in the sublime language found in the Old Testament. It is in these pictures, in this investing of free nature with the power to feel, that we see the texture and depth of feeling which are an essential part of the personality of this group.

They saw the dawn rising out of darkness. They felt that the phenomenon was due to a cause superior to any power in man. They could not account for the beginnings of mankind. 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. They saw the trees and the plants thriving in their own spheres, and they attributed to them life impulses given them by the sympathy and love and directing force of special geniuses, the messengers of God. The stars were light; they had undeceiving brightness and constant courses. 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. Again they were his willing servants and messengers. They saw the heavens stretching from horizon to horizon, and everything in creation working in its own sphere with regularity and order. Their own feeling for system, harmonious working in family and tribal circles, pictured God in paternal relations; a householder who stretched his great tent by fastening it to the outmost borders of the earth, and opened and arranged therein the treasures of his household. They heard a light rustle of leaves and imprinted upon it the feeling of gentleness and kindness, and it became a messenger of God, an angel. They heard the thunder and their shuddering gloom translated it into the voice of an angry God. They listened to their own heartbeats and transferred their rhythm to their own speech, for we may account for the free light rhythm in their songs by comparing it with the systole and diastole of the heart and the movements of the breath in the physiological processes of inspiration and expiration.

Their national pride and national joy found expression in collective song which might either glorify God or invoke their own well-being. Such song is at one and the same time inspiration and expression.

In general, their poetic language draws concise analogy between the objects of creation and the qualities and attributes of the creator of these things. It lingers over single images, repeats them, wonders at them, and finally gives them forth with a vigorous tongue incapable of empty words.

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. We have here a peculiar race type living close to crude nature, an individuality which is shaped by this primitive milieu and which expresses itself in sharp and strong outlines in its art. The most marked feature of this individuality is the spontaneity in its expression.

The common factors to be drawn from this exposition, which contribute to the interpretation of Herder’s general conception of Volk are:

1. The physical environment of both groups was primeval nature; i.e., a material world that had undergone very few of the changes which may be wrought by the arts and crafts of what we term higher stages of civilization.

2. Both races were subject to powerful control by this physical environment:

3. Among both, their ideas of God and their religion were interwoven with personified nature:

4. Both were races of people with keen, strong, exact senses:

5. The members of both races had, as innate characteristics, rapid and direct interaction between sensation, feeling, imagination, and expression:

6. In general, the texture resulting from control of the individual by forces of nature unchanged by human interference is in both peoples fitly correlated with functioning; i.e., spontaneity is innately and intrinsically their nature.

With all these points in common, Ossian’s people and the ancient Hebrews, as portrayed in Herder’s analysis of their poetry, differ from each other as races in religion and in social customs. They show us different habitats. They depict different historical epochs and scenes. But that which is common in all this difference is, according to Herder, that each has a personality of its own which characterizes its art.

CHAPTER V FOUNDATIONS OF INDIVIDUALITY AND PERSONALITY IN HERDER — I. STIMULUS — II. SENSES — III. KNOWING AND WILLING

Herder as philosopher was concerned more with practical and concrete applications of his principles than with dogmas and abstract theories. The following brief investigation of purely philosophical discussions is made with a view of determining how he applies his philosophy to this definite anthropological conception.

In his Gespräche über Spinozas System Herder sets forth much of his own religious philosophy. A passage in the second dialogue substitutes for the word “attributes” the word “forces” in expounding one of Spinoza’s postulates. The passage then reads: “The Godhead reveals itself in an infinite number of forces and in an infinite number of ways.” It is with the word for forces that we are concerned at this point—Kraft, Kräfte.

This same word Herder uses in discussing the fundamental life-principle in the world at large, which is the theme of his first few sections in the essay entitled: Vom Erkennen und Empfinden in ihrem menschlichen Ursprunge und den Gesetzen ihrer Würkung. These Kräfte, these “modifications of God,” find their impulse to operate in a stimulus, beyond the material form of which Herder cannot go.

Herder’s philosophy plants itself from the beginning quite firmly on material foundations. He says that in the qualities which are constantly designated by such words as heavy, thrust, fall, movement, rest, strength, even power of inertia, is implied a life-principle, a soul. Any close observation of nature must show that the great working power of nature is everywhere the same, and it is the analogy between the processes of the material world in general and the phenomena in the human organism in particular which can give the clearest insight into the great life-principle. This study by analogous reasoning is not artificial, Man cannot avoid feeling the similarity between himself and external nature. Human beings must of necessity, he continues, vitalize everything about them with their own feelings.

The feelings then are strongly instrumental in man’s interpretation of the world about him.

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. Pain, disturbance by something foreign, contracts; the strength collects, increases for resistance, and takes its stand again. Well-being and pleasure—warmth—expands, makes for calmness, placidity, enjoyment, and release.

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.

This power is nothing external or mechanical, in which case it would not be life. The plant structure of organic fibers which takes in life from the surrounding elements does so through its own activities. The power to escape its enemies and to make over all its nourishment into differentiated parts lies within the plant. The complicated body of the animal likewise has this stimulus to seek the nutrition essential for life within: hunger and thirst are powerful exciting forces. When he applies his theories to man, he calls love the most powerful stimulus to life.

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.

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.

What is the relation of these indefinable and unanalyzed stimuli to the feelings? Since the passions which surround the heart find their roots in the finest fibers of the physical structure, the degree to which these fibers are stimulated determines the degree to which the feelings will be excited and will express themselves. Love, courage, anger, and bravery are in proportion to the stimulus of the heart and the collaborating parts: “Die Innigkeit, Tiefe und Ausbreitung mit der wir Leidenschaften empfangen, verarbeiten und fortpflanzen macht uns zu den flachen oder tiefen Gefässen die wir sind.”

The forcefulness of thought is likewise dependent upon the vigor of this obscure stimulus, for no thought, says he, can reach the brain unless feeling in its proper physical connection has preceded it.

And just here our philosopher lays the very roots of individuality. The degree to which the fibers are stimulated is the beginning of the operations which will end in producing an aggregate of properties peculiar to an individual.

By this inductive method, which develops fundamentally a philosophy of evolution, Herder finds that the senses are a nerve-structure developed to meet the waves of stimulus from without and feeling from within and to differentiate them more finely than did the fibers which worked only in a general way. But the law is the same. The nerves of every sense operate according to the same law by which the fibers contract and expand. The nerves advance to meet pleasant agreeable things, but recede from and resist unpleasant things.

Now Herder observes that something other than the organ of sense and the external objects must operate to produce sensation in at least two of the senses. He sees a certain mental bond without which sight and hearing could not go to the object nor the object to the senses; this common substance, he says, is light, a substance which has the peculiarity of taking just so much from creation as the two end organs can receive. But this light as a medium is a requisite for the finer senses only. There are coarser senses, fibers, and stimuli which cannot be brought into action thus. They can feel only in themselves, for the object must come to them, touch them, and, to a certain extent, be one with them.

Herder is explicit in connecting individual character with the senses. The contribution which each sense makes to the soul cannot with any two human beings be the same in kind, strength, depth, and breadth. There are many proofs of this. Seeing and hearing, which furnish most of the material for thinking, are seldom in one individual with the same degree of training or of natural force. This will not only account for inequalities of the senses evinced in all forms of expression in a single individual, but for such inequalities among groups and races. For, he continues, imaginative power in which thoughts and feelings disport themselves is made of the flowing together of sense impressions.

This is Plato’s thought also when he objects to making knowledge mere sense-perception because it would make a different standard of knowledge for each man. Socrates in Theaetetus quotes Protagoras on the same point: “Sensations are relative and individual.” One scarcely needs to be reminded here of Herder’s thorough acquaintance with Greek philosophy.

The way from a sensation to thought is through the nerve-structure of sense organs, these nerve-structures furnishing just such a medium between the object of sensation on the one hand and thinking and willing on the other, as does light between the object of sense and the visual and auditory organs.

Never losing sight of the physiological element in his psychology, Herder tells us that the soul has grown out of the body, and has so outgrown the body that soul has become the monarch over that, without which soul could not exist. All its thinking grows out of feeling, and this feeling out of a body having in its command manifold obscure forces administered to by variously endowed “servants” and “messengers.”

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. 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.

This suggests Socrates in the Protagoras, as he argues that men would always do good if they knew the good. “No man voluntarily pursues evil or that which he thinks to be evil. 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.”

The distinctive personal and individual character whose foundations have just been traced, according to our author, can not come to its fullest development except as a component part in a larger self-conscious and self-directing entity which he calls “humanity.”

This humanity as a whole, and the relation of the individual to it, is discussed in the collections Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität. An emphatic tone regarding personality and individuality as characteristics of the group pervades these letters.

Existence as a self-conscious being which develops into group consciousness Herder finds rooted in human frailty.

Primitive man, to himself and enigma, he observes, when comparing his visible condition, his natural capacities, his will-power with enduring nature, was forced to a feeling of weakness, to a sense of mortal existence; he finds himself of the earth, a fragile house of clay. Sympathy then and the realization of one’s duty to one’s fellow-men began here.

But the consciousness of frailty led also to a knowledge of our powers and abilities, to a sense of our calling and our duties, and brought us to a deep consideration of human nature.

The group is always striving toward an ideal pattern which is “the character of the race,” and, again, this character is in the individual; for, says Herder, he who does not make the best of himself cannot assist the sum total of the race.

The author states the idea when he says that it is according to the sacred laws of nature that man is a complete unit in himself, and at the same time an important element of groups each a consistent part of larger groups which make the sum total of humanity. Man is friend, citizen, husband, father; fellow-citizen, finally, in the great city of God on earth.

CHAPTER VI EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN HERDER’S CONCEPTION OF DAS VOLK — LEIBNIZ AND HERDER — REFERENCES TO LEIBNIZ — SHAFTESBURY AND HERDER — SHAFTESBURY AND HERDER — REFERENCES TO SHAFTESBURY — ROUSSEAU AND HERDER — “DER MENSCH” — ROUSSEAU AND HERDER — REFERENCES TO ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES — CONCLUSION

Herder, by numerous references and discussions, in which he is definite and explicit as to name and theories, shows a thorough acquaintance with the various schools of philosophy which were influential throughout the century in which he lived. Among those whose names occur many times in his works are:

• Roger Bacon
• Francis Bacon
• Baumgarten
• Berkeley
• Boileau
• Bolingbroke
• Condillac
• Descartes
• Diderot
• Hume
• Kant
• Leibniz
• Locke
• Montaigne
• Montesquieu
• Newton
• Rousseau
• Shaftesbury
• Spinoza
• Voltaire
• Wolf

These are philosophers whose expressions of thought left their traces either vaguely or deeply upon the enlightenment period and, as already said, whom Herder knew well. But the doctrines of many of these men converged. Of others, the principles were developed and amplified by successors. The main ideas of the period which enter into Herder’s conception of Volk are found in three great exponents: Leibniz, Shaftesbury, and Rousseau. The influence of each upon Herder will be examined here.

IV, 224: Herder calls Leibniz the greatest man that Germany has produced in later times.

IV, 361: Herder calls Leibniz and Plato the two greatest heads for hypotheses.

VIII, 178: Herder says that no one says it better than Leibniz, that bodies as such are only phenomena of substances, as the Milky Way is of stars and the clouds of drops.

IX, 493: Herder regrets that Leibniz was not sufficiently appreciated by the Germans; most of them in the city in which he lies did not even know where his grave was.

IX, 534: Herder cites Leibniz as saying that human wit and humor are never more effective than in play, and uses this in support of his own belief that the human heart expresses itself most effectively in the nature songs of primitive people.

X, 305: Herder sees the flower of Leibniz in Shaftesbury.

XIII, 199: Herder agrees with Leibniz that the soul is a mirror of the “world-all” and he believes there is a deeper truth in Leibniz’ statement than is usually recognized; i.e., all the forces of a “world-all” lie hidden in the soul, and they need only an organization or a succession of organizations to set them into activity.

XIV, 417: Herder finds support in Leibniz for the statement that the Catholic Church considered the king a protective magistrate under the supremacy of the Pope.

XV, 180: Herder says Leibniz pointed out weak sides of Locke’s philosophy.

XVI, 450: Herder makes the following statements:

XVI, 458: Herder calls Leibniz a “Proteus of Science,” who has done much to unify philosophical truths.

XVI, 606: Herder calls Leibniz, “our immortal Leibniz.”

XVII, 331 ff.: Herder eulogizes Leibniz, emphasizing his theories of play, his mildness and sympathy in criticizing others his youthful, impartial soul.

XVIII, 126: Herder says that Leibniz was the most modest among all the reformers of philosophical thought; he thought that all systems of the ancients could be united because each held something good.

XXI, 19: Herder quotes Leibniz as saying that language is the mirror of human understanding.

XXI, 70 ff.: Herder translates Leibniz’ Ueber Philosophie in der Deutschen Sprache.

XXI, 145: Herder mentions Leibniz’ principles of Identity and Causality.

XXI, 319: Herder translates Leibniz’ Vom philosophischen Vortrag.

XXII, 190: Herder translates Leibniz’ Ueber Macht und Anwendung der Musik.

XXIII, 132: Herder recommends Leibniz’ Neue Versuche über den menschlichen Verstand to young men.

XXIII, 479: Herder says, Leibniz, had he lived to see his original plans revived in the Scientific Society in Berlin, probably would have arranged a System der Völker nach Sprachen und Bildungen. This method of studying history by going to natural environments and to the sources is sufficiently in accord with Herder’s ideas to call forth the prophecy that what the past century had omitted in this respect the future would do.

XXIII, 483: 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.

XXIV, 267: Herder notes Leibniz’ romantic attitude, observing that Leibniz regretted the decline in the feeling of courage and honor and that he counseled a return to the deeds and voices and models of the past to reawaken these.

XXV, 88: Herder says if Leibniz found human wit and humor most real and effective in play, certainly he (Herder) is justified, in finding the most faithful reproductions of traditions, language, and customs at the point where truth and delight meet; i.e., in song.

XXX, 135: Herder calls Leibniz the greatest man that Germany has had.

XXX, 258: Herder has remarked frequently upon Leibniz’ theory that the human mind is never more clear-sighted and disposed to activity than in play. He analyzes the thought here, and it is worth considering because it hinges closely upon Herder’s philosophy which causes him to seek genuine Volk character in methods of expression which are natural rather than artificial.

He asks, Why is it that there is this connection between our innermost selves and pleasure and joy? Many forms of play are so difficult and fatiguing, others are subject to such strict rules; just because they demand this is the form of play interesting for those who like it. It becomes pleasant because it keeps both soul and body constantly and interchangeably busied. In the progress of being occupied lies an indefinable pleasure; we feel the happy progressiveness by which our forces are strengthened and grow. The more frequently this interchange takes place, the more do we realize our forces enriched.

XXIII, 154: Herder says Shaftesbury sent to Leibniz the former’s works and that Leibniz found in them his own system.

XXIII, 461: Herder praises Leibniz’ efforts in behalf of the Royal Scientific Society in Berlin.

XXIII, 468 ff.: Herder has written an essay on Leibniz in which he reviews the work of the latter under the following heads: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: (1) Theologie und Religion; (2) Rechtsgelehrsamkeit und Politik; (3) Geschichte, Alterthümer, Sprachen; (4) Mathematik und Physik; and (5) Die erste Philosophie.

Herder’s own comments in certain parts of this series of expositions are important in this connection.

1. Theology and religion.—Leibniz’ proof of Christianity Herder finds was based upon natural religion; after firmly laying the foundation of this natural religion, one should show the necessity of a revealed religion, then the superior beauty of the Christian religion, surpassing as it does all other religions. Leibniz sees atheism as well as materialism, to say nothing of the disparagement or mockery of Christendom, as the herald of a barbarism with which is bound up the decay of honor and morality. Herder’s comment upon this is: How faithfully have succeeding times proved this to be true! Leibniz, he continues, would rejoice if he could see the Bible so clarified, every one of its books interpreted in the light and spirit of its own time and above all the subtleties foreign to the sense and content of Christianity removed—all this, such as it was in his own day, is Herder’s idea. Important to note here is the return to nature as a foundation for Christianity, and to natural environment for the interpretation of Christian teachings.

2. Jurisprudence and statesmanship.—Here Herder finds that Leibniz became a real teacher der Völker through his work, Codex des allgemeinen Völkerrechts. Just as Leibniz in his opposition to Puffendorf founds man’s natural rights upon eternal principles of right and reason, so he carries these on into the so-called “voluntary rights of peoples” to which he adds in the Christian Republic a divine, positive right.

This divine, positive right Herder admits was, in the beginnings of the Christian republic, conceived of as being embodied in the emperor as head of the state. But, says he, Leibniz’ great thought was true; true in the sense that this divine, positive right is that which made itself evident long before the French Revolution.

He asks, Does Christendom teach anything other than pure humanity? It must be founded upon humanity which is also Leibniz’ Codex des Völkerrechts.

It is clear, continues the commentator, that what a nation demands or wishes from another it must also offer; force, faithlessness, and bold arrogance of one toward the other enrage all nations. This Codex des Völkerrechts is written in the breasts of all human beings. Wherever his view was unobstructed, he saw clearly the political relationships of Europe, and prophesied much that followed.

The natural rights of mankind to be applied to humanity through states and nations, then, is what Herder notes at this point in Leibniz.

3. History, antiquities, languages.—Herder notes here that Leibniz liked above everything else in History the origins of races, Uranfänge der Völker, which led to their antiquities and language stocks. This accounts for his diligence in comparison and derivation of languages and in etymologies. Herder reminds us that a family tree of languages has been established since Leibniz’ time through the Russian journeys in Northern Asia, continuous news from China, the investigations of the English in India, and other studies made in Tibet, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Africa, America, and the Southern world.

XXXII, 226: Herder’s discussion of Leibniz’ monad:

It seems evident that Herder accepts much of Leibniz’ theory of the monad. The important point of departure is expressed in the two sentences:

I, 182: Herder says Shaftesbury knows how to use the dialogue excellently; he had learned it from Plato and taught Diderot.

V, 490: Herder calls Shaftesbury the amiable Plato of Europe.

X, 232: Herder mentions Shaftesbury’s philosophischen Lobgesang auf die Natur in seinen “Moralists”.

X, 305: Herder concedes to Shaftesbury a refined, beautiful, philosophical intellect. He is impressed with the “Characteristics” and the “Moralists.” The latter, says he, can be put side by side with the writings of the Ancients. Herder finds in Shaftesbury the flower of Leibniz’ philosophy and the teachings of new platonism. He sees traces of Shaftesbury in Mendelsohn’s Letters concerning Feeling.

Herder’s tone defends Shaftesbury in the statement that one should love virtue for her own sake, on the ground that many religious enthusiasts, including Fénélon, have maintained the same thing. Nor is he either atheist or pantheist in his Song of Praise to Nature. He further mentions the following works in German translations: The Moralists; Investigations Concerning Virtue, Berlin, 1745; Shaftesbury’s Philosophical Works, translated by Voss, Leipzig, 1776.

XI, 123: Herder finds Shaftesbury’s Ten Letters to a Student of Theology excellent in the following points: (1) What he says of real philosophy, of empty speculation, of academic polyhistorie, of intellectual ambition and the real freedom of thought, of the writings of the Greek, and of the beautiful and pure toward which one must aim in studies of all kinds; (2) what he says of the spirit of endurance and Christian simplicity.

XI, 220: Herder admires die Grazien des Platonish-Shaftesbury dialogue.

XVI, 407: Herder expresses himself by quoting in translation a stanza from Shaftesbury’s Moralists.

XVI, 158, 159: Article on Shaftesbury; holds him in high esteem, calls him Virtuoso der Humanität. Herder declares that Shaftesbury has influenced the best minds of the eighteenth century.

XXIII, 143 ff.: Herder shows an intimate acquaintance with the life and works of Shaftesbury as well as the sources of his philosophy. He reminds that Shaftesbury influenced both Diderot and Leibniz. Herder reveals his own inclination to take nature and the feelings as standards: (1) By criticizing Shaftesbury for overlooking an important principle in Greek philosophy in one of his discussions; namely, the principle der Natur zu folgen. (2) By saying an honorable feeling for truth and justice is a law of our nature.

XXX, 321: Herder calls Shaftesbury the high priest of the temple of Grazie.

Shaftesbury’s Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Time will be used as a reference book.

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. This implied a moral and social system composed of parts nicely adjusted in each single entity, which in turn was a component part of a larger whole; the parts of this greater system were likewise in constant proportion to one another, and so finely and fitly adjusted that any disarrangement could not fail to effect the harmonious blending and the unity of the entire design. Out of this, it follows that man can come to his truest and most natural development in community life only.

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.

That faculty by which the good and the beautiful are to be recognized and approved is indeed little different if different at all from an emotion. The principle of feeling really becomes the criterion of right and wrong. It is the principle of feeling which forms the essence of Shaftesbury’s Moral Sense. He admits that this sense may be improved by cultivation, but its essential part is innate. “Sense of right and wrong” is as natural to us as natural affection itself, and a first principle in our constitution.

The two ideas which we are considering here as a part of Shaftesbury’s philosophy are the development of the individual and his harmonious relation to the whole of mankind.

These ideas are made the nucleus of a collection of writings and reviews by Herder which he calls Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität. These have been considered to some extent in a preceding chapter as a part of Herder’s system of thought, but the purpose here is to connect the same with that of Shaftesbury.—Dritte Sammlung, Brief 27 ff.

At the outset in this letter the author is concerned with the distinction between the following:

He concludes that the word Humanität will best suit, because among both ancients and moderns it connotes worthy ideas. The reference to the ancients reminds us of the common source from which both Herder and Shaftesbury drew inspiration. Both were schooled in the literature of the ancients.

As Herder lingers on the philological discussion, he gives us the philosophical reason why the conception of frailty attaches to the idea expressed in the word for man, Mensch.

The word “humanity,” he says, not only connotes the thought which he desires to express, but it suits his purpose also on account of its history. Among the upper classes of the Romans were some who were wont to temper the execution of justice with mercy when exercising power over their subjects; such a Roman citizen, Patrician, was humanus, humanissimus. Now, he thinks, that since with the Romans the word connoted the idea of mildness in the exercises of citizenship and law, that it would be well to take over the word and the idea. He makes reference also to the Greeks whose word, ἂνθρωπος, looking upward, he clothes in Plato’s words: “As he looks he reasons.” Therefore, says Herder, he does not fail to notice the human failings that lead to sympathy, consequently to humanity. The knowledge of our powers and inborn potentialities, of our calling and our duty arises from an intense study of mankind. He repeats that the Greeks and Romans led the way in this studium humanitatis. The only limit which Herder sets to what we shall be is to be found in the highest possible formation and completion of whatever belongs to the character of our race.

Many of the telling thoughts in these letters are scattered in isolated paragraphs running something like the following: 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.

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. The highest and most fruitful wisdom arises from the (common) people because they have felt need and suffering, they have been driven here and there, they have tasted the sweet fruit of trouble and they know how to care for others.

The kinship to the spirit and philosophy pervading Shaftesbury is here quite evident.

IV, 369: In discussing his ideal book for the development of humanity, Herder finds that important points would be rules and exhortations for the development of body and soul; in this he says: ist Rousseau ein grosser Lehrer.

IV, 371: He will imitate Rousseau zealously; will read him, contemplate him, nationalize him.

V, 37: Herder agrees with Rousseau in that language is not the result of convention and agreement.

VI, 250: Reference is made to Rousseau’s Pygmalion.

VII, 65: Herder in his discussion concerning the fall of man quotes Rousseau with reference to the tree of knowledge and the fall of man.

VII, 74: Herder calls Rousseau one of the greatest lights of his times.

X, 298: Herder says Rousseau’s Confessions and other writings contain excellent passages for philosophy and natural theology. Many of these writings have suffered evil repute (übel berüchtigt.)

XV, 248: Herder calls Rousseau a great, wonderful man.

XVI, 26: Herder calls Rousseau a teacher of wisdom and morals.

XVII, 190: Herder speaks of Rousseau as a good man who exaggerates and who in his phantasy is an idealist for the good.

XVII, 326: Herder says in his own day (bis in unsern Tagen) Rousseau’s Social Contract has had an effect that its author had scarcely expected.

XVIII, 359 and 371: Herder says that in his own time (in unserer Zeit), Rousseau’s Confessions have aroused a great sensation. He quotes from them.

XVIII, 372: Sein Geist war stolz, seine Grundsätze waren edel, p. 374, he speaks of Rousseau as a tree having brought forth beautiful fruit and blossoms.

XXII, 151: Herder approves Rousseau’s views in the introduction to Nouvelle Héloise, views on poetic language as a natural human art.

XXII, 161: He calls Rousseau one with great ability to express the thoughts of his heart, and Herder considers this ability peculiar to Naturmenschen.

XXIII, 272: Herder says much that Rousseau has said in Emile against the use of La Fontaine’s Fables for youth is right.

XXV, 601: Herder translates from Rousseau’s Consolations.

XXV, 631: Herder has a translation of Rousseau’s “Shepherd Song,” Consolations, p. 97, No. 53.

XXV, 632: Translation of “Song of Desdemona,” Consolations, p. 125, No. 65.

XXIX, 256: Herder eulogizes Rousseau in the poem Der Mensch.

XXIX, 265: Herder calls upon Rousseau to help him know himself.

XXX, 30: In regretting the fact that the taste and desire for overrefinement was causing wholesome simplicity to be displaced in educational methods and life in general, Herder calls attention to Rousseau and interprets him thus:

XXXII, 41: Herder calls Rousseau “our patriotic friend of mankind.”

XXXII, 147: Herder says only Rousseau could dig to the knowledge of the human heart.

Line 45 ff.: Herder shows that he is influenced by the eighteenth-century demand for a return to nature in general and by Rousseau’s philosophy in particular in a portion of this poem:

1. He prizes the universal and fundamental instincts and longings of man which show him to be a simple product of nature:

2. The primitivism of this nature-man is eulogized:

3. The feelings are set up as a standard:

4. Physical environment is to have free sway in shaping this ideal man:

5. Rousseau is eulogized:

The eulogy continues by praising Rousseau’s condemnation of wealth and pomp and false glory and, finally:

Discourses.—In his Discourse concerning the Arts and Sciences Rousseau insists that our outward lives should be true expressions of our inner feelings. This harmony between expression and feeling began its decline under the influences of overrefinement and of tastes that had been distorted by excessive civilization. Therefore, he argues, it is the common man, the crude rustic, rather than the polished and elegant courtier who reveals his heart in all purity; we may deal with this common man without suspicions, fears, reserves, and treacheries. It was the simplicity of ancient times when men lived in a primitive state that bred innocence and virtue, courage and genuine humanity. In this discourse there is in general a pointed attack upon literary and scientific training and polish.

The discourse which deals with the inequality of man is based in general upon the same doctrine which furnishes the ground for the attack on the sciences and the arts. It attempts to show us what men would have been had they remained in their original state. This original state was one in which man lived much like the dumb animals; forests and rocks, running brooks and springs, furnished abode by day and bed and shelter for the night, and among these were to be found the meat and drink which produced strong healthy bodies; bodies robust because their nourishment was simple. This was a primitive state which had remained true to nature by not advancing at all or at least not more than a single degree beyond the original. In such a state man by reason of both his physical hardiness and his native animal instincts and alertness has all his faculties, these operating with a force and fineness unknown to the highly civilized man. Here, as in the essay on the social contract, the philosopher is opposed to a superior ruling power and arbitrary establishment of laws.

Social contract.—In the Social Contract in which Rousseau’s social state is presented as the superior form of government, men had been brought to realize their dependence upon one another and to know that co-operation was the true basis of welfare. The doctrine of individuality which made of man a self-centered unit was weak in that it offered little protection for the individual. For this individual, born with natural freedom, was in danger of exercising this freedom to the detriment of the rights of others.

In giving up himself and his rights to the group, the individual became subject to no one person, but gained certain rights over each member of the community. In this compact there is a union of individuals, each working for the good of the body politic, each a sovereign with civil liberty and moral freedom.

Thus the restrictions which would be imposed upon members of society by one supreme authority were avoided. 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; this goodness is the essential thing in his manhood, and it is natural.

Emile.—The keynote of Rousseau’s doctrine here is that of absolute reliance upon nature without impeding or diverting her progress at any point. He is in accord with the epistemological side of Locke’s philosophy, and therefore demands that Emile shall have his senses well developed. He is to have a strong vigorous body, full of courage and hardihood. 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.

Origin of language.—In fixing the beginnings of speech, Rousseau says we can believe that necessities dictated the first movements, and that passions called forth the first voices. The genius of oriental languages, the most ancient known to us, have nothing in them that is methodical or reasoned out; they are vivacious and figurative. It is evident that the origin of languages is not at all due to the primary needs of man. The origin is due to the moral needs, to the passions. It is neither hunger nor thirst, but love, hate, pity, or anger which have called forth from men the first voices. 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. It was for this reason that the oldest words were invented.

The following quotations affirm in a general way the preceding statements of Rousseau’s philosophy:

Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts, Part. II:

Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes:

The primitivism which stands out in Rousseau’s two discourses is to be seen in a general way in Herder’s dislike for the higher culture that would discourage spontaneous outbursts of human feelings as they appear in the so-called cruder forms of literature; a culture that would displace these by a smoother product born of reflection and regulated by set rules and formulas.

He has an admiration for the instinct which to him is always to be found in women, children, and fools, and which he sees as the foundation of a naïveté more valuable as a part of mental equipment than anything which could be substituted by processes of training and culture.

Rousseau’s attempt to return to nature for concrete everyday life finds its approval with Herder, but the general idea takes a new turn. He finds in it the inspiration for scientific methods of studying art, history, and philosophy. His line of investigation in these will be by way of nature; i.e., man in his primitive abode; man in the hands of nature; man as the product of his environment.

The opposition to a central and superior governing power, which is found in the Social Contract, to be opposed to the natural method of community life, finds its echo in Herder in frequent tirades against the policirte Nationen. It is the unpolicirte Nationen to whom nature has given a certain solace that can scarcely be found in Menschliche Künsteleien.

The Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität carry a constant strain, which makes the interdependence between the individual and the group a requisite for well-being. This theory, we have seen, finds a distinct place in Shaftesbury’s philosophy before Rousseau had voiced it as his own.

Emile’s senses have been highly developed by his contact with nature, and it is this sharpness and exactness of the senses that Herder extols so much in primitive peoples. They are both cause and effect of the work which nature achieves by her most trusted handmaiden; namely, environment.

In discussing the origin of language, even though Herder at certain points takes issue with Rousseau, it is very clear that he is influenced by the latter and is in agreement with him to considerable extent.

Rousseau has pursued the question of the origin of language, not only in his essay bearing this title, but also in the Discourse on Inequality.

The first sentences of Herder’s essay Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache run not unlike a passage in Rousseau’s Discours just mentioned:

Further, in his own essay, Herder says, that as our tones of nature are for the purpose of expressing passion, it is natural that they should become also the elements of all that which is emotional, and if we call this immediate sound of feeling speech, then, says he, it is easy to find the origin of speech natural.

But although all animals have a speech by which they sound forth their feelings, such speech will never become human language until reason, understanding (Verstand), arises to use these tones with direct intention.

In so far, then, as the very beginnings of language are cries of passion, Herder is in accord with Rousseau in both essays in which the latter discusses the question.

The character and frequency of the references which Herder makes in his writings to the philosophers of the eighteenth century show that he knew the predominant lines of thought which characterized the entire period of the enlightenment. The outstanding eighteenth-century theories which seem to have a place in Herder’s conception of das Volk are well epitomized in the teachings of Leibniz, Shaftesbury, and Rousseau.

Herder’s own exposition of a part of Leibniz’ contribution to thought shows how he found here some things which were in agreement with his own fundamental ideas concerning innate potentialities.

The praise given to Shaftesbury’s principal ideas of the harmonious development of the individual and of humanity lead us to believe that Shaftesbury had exercised an influence on the German writer.

The numerous eulogistic outbursts over Rousseau, the coinciding in many writings by both men of details concerning the essential elements in man’s nature, concerning primitivism, liberty, and the ideal state, show that Herder was fully imbued with the spirit of Rousseau, expressed in the cry, “back to nature.”

CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION

Both the word Volk and the various ideas for which it stands are old and are to be found among many peoples. The parent tongue, the Indo-European, seems to have had a form which meant “full,” “many.” The “many” easily became the “common,” so that the “many” as opposed to the “few” was parallel with the “common,” “vulgar” as opposed to the “upper classes,” the “aristocracy.” This meaning seems to have been a fundamental one in both ancient and modern times.

The shift in meaning of the Germanic word Volk, which extends the sense to that of “nation,” has been more general and more permanent in German than in English. It is with these two main conceptions, that is Volk, the common people, and Volk, nation, that we are concerned in this study of Herder. Many examples of Herder’s use of the term Volk show that he makes the word an exact synonym for nation. In many other examples it is used as an equivalent term for nation. In both of these uses “nation” with Herder means those bound together only by the same laws and customs whether related by consanguinity or not.

But Herder frequently makes Volk stand more specifically for those who are of the same blood, and in that sense identifies it with “race.” We have seen that these are common uses of the term Volk and the idea conveyed by it, uses which occur in many languages and among many civilized peoples.

Now Herder, while using the term Volk in the commonly accepted sense of nation, has always firmly in mind certain attributes and powers which characterize groups as such. They have power to rule; they have power to express themselves in peculiar ways; they have Nationalgeist. This Nationalgeist in the final analysis is the outgrowth of physical and social environment and conforms to the dictates of these in all its peculiarities.

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 of Volk, even in this commonly used sense, a unique place. Individuality, personality, distinguished nations just as these traits mark out human beings.

Herder makes use of the term Volk in a second sense. Here he means a group within a civilized nation which forms the mass below the aristocracy and the governing class. This use likewise is to be found in all languages of civilized peoples.

But Herder is emphatic in noting that this group has not been affected by expurgating and eliminating influences to the fullest extent to which these have operated. It has therefore been more thoroughly the product of natural environment. 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.

In his collection of Volkslieder, Herder does not confine himself to those which are marked by primitivism, but includes also many selections of polished literary form. But these all submit to a classification which takes into account the true expression of universal and fundamental feelings common to all humanity. Here Herder’s mind is fixed on that power which the group has to express itself, to express that which is fundamental and therefore to show forth its personality.

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. They have the power to give expression to their personality and have exercised this power in a marked way in their unique literatures. The individuality of each group is sharply defined in the songs of each.

Now how does Herder arrive at the requirements to which he makes his Volk conform?

His philosophy as expressed in Erkennen und Empfindung recognizes inborn forces in the individual which are potentialities differing in kind and degree of working power in each person. These varying potentialities he makes the constituencies of the senses which are accordingly different in scope and capacity in every human being.

It must be noted that Herder does not regard these original “forces” as constituted by the senses; they are prior to and more fundamental than the senses. The phenomenon Reiz, stimulus, which causes the smallest fiber either in plant or animal to contract or expand, repeats itself in the nerves of each one of the senses. But this Reiz is in the beginning, and without it there would be no Kräfte, no nerve, no sense organ. This Reiz, then, is identical with the innate forces, Kräfte.

They control and direct the development of the senses and are, therefore, the very beginning of that variation in sense functioning which initiates individuality.

It is in the treatment of these original Kräfte that Herder gives his own turn to Leibniz’ theory of the monad.

The principle of the monad was highly abstract, and when Herder took it over he gave to it a more concrete application. It became the principle of innate and varying potentialities. The monad was not controlled and directed by a force outside itself, according to Herder, but by a power within, and as the power within was never exactly alike in any two beings, no two could develop just alike. 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.

Now Herder sees that this unfettered development of natural endowments will come to its fullest only in relations to others. It is the essence of his Humanität. He goes further than Shaftesbury in that he finds in this tie, which unites the individual to the group, that which is universal and fundamental. He endows his Volk with sentiments which are universal and fundamental. It is this universal and fundamental which makes such expressions as “Hamlet’s soliloquy” find a place among the songs of Herder’s Volk.

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, 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.

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.

When we eliminate details, when we regard only those elements upon which Herder’s thought seems to be continuous, those qualifications of which he never seems to loose sight, whether he idealizes his Volk through his philosophy, his song collections, his study of the works of other philosophers, or through the analysis of concrete examples, we come to the following as essentials in Herder’s Volk: Das Volk is a group whose innate, natural tendencies have been allowed to unfold and develop unhindered and unwarped by civilization. They are people who have come into contact with various forces of nature in the physical world and have been strongly influenced by their natural environment.

They, as an entity, possess: (1) Individuality, personality; (2) a sense of that which is universal and fundamental among mankind; (3) common feelings of relationship to humanity; (4) strong religious sentiments.

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.

FOOTNOTES

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