THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.* THIS remarkable book is
the best instance we have lately met with of history written to prove a thesis. One merit all such attempts possess : they have a unity which is lacking in ordinary historical writing. Whether they have other merits depends upon the value of the thesis which they are written to prove. If the thesis be a sound and fruitful one, a genuine principle of things, they may give us history in its most illuminating and suggestive form. If the thesis be wrong-headed or trivial—such as a history of Europe from the point of view of the migrations of red-haired men— then we have only a barren exercise of ill-directed industry.
One fault, too, the best of such historians must share. Their work demands universal knowledge, which no man possesses. " Quel plus siur moyen de courir d'erreurs en erreurs," as Mr. Chamberlain quotes from Rousseau, " eine la fureur de savoir tout." The best must contain blunders and perversions which will shake the confidence of the ordinary reader. If a man is con- vinced of the truth of a thesis,his view of historical fact will be in- sensibly coloured by the desire to obtain corroborative evidence. The work before us has had a great popular vogue in Germany, and Lord Redesdale, who writes the introduction to its English translation, thinks it a new gospel. We have read the volumes with interest and profit, some scepticism, and occasional annoyance. It is a rich book, in which one may delve to good purpose—a "mass of fine confused feeding," as the Scotsman said of his national dish. We can well understand its popu- larity iu Germany, for this kind of dogmatic survey of history, if picturesquely wr; fashion at present in that cou so Mr. Chamberlain's cardliiiy- giiatdod con- clusions, if translated roughly into popular language, might seem to give support both to the fashionable .Tudenhetze and to national pride. At the same time the book merits serious consideration, for it is the work of a vigorous thinker and a man of immense erudition. The true temper of a judicious scholar is not often apparent, bat there can be no question about the width and variety of Mr. Chamberlain's reading.
The aim of the book is to expound the various influences which " conditioned " our nineteenth-century civilisation. " I do not profess," the author says, " to give a history of the past, but merely of that past which is still living." His aim is to sug- gest rather than teach; to provide a principle of illustration. He is quite alive to the difficulties of this kind of task. " Philosophical history is a desert ; fanciful history an idiot asylum. We must therefore demand that the artistic de- signer should have a positive tendency of mind and a strictly scientific conscience. Before he reasons he must know." After these common-sense prolegomena he sketches his thesis. Roughly it is that the Teutons—by which he means all North- men, Celts, Saxons, Germans, and Slays alike—deserve the first place among the peoples who have moulded the world's history. " Our whole civilisation and culture of to-day is the work of one definite race of men—the Teutonic." They used, of course, certain great legacies from the past, notably that of Greece in art and thought, of Rome in law and organisation, and of Christ in religion. But they have moulded and united these in one new and coheient doctrine of life. He then pro- ceeds to discuss these earlier influences in turn.
The chapter on Greece seems to us by far the least convincing in the book. It is full of dubious race
• The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. By Houston Stewart Chamber- lain. Translated from the German by John Lees, M.A., D.Lit. With an Introduction by Lord Redesdale. 2 vols. London: John Lane. E25s.]
generalisations, such as that from the earliest times the Greeks were disloyal, unpatriotic, and selfish, which is like a schoolboy's comment when he first reads of Themistocles. There is a disquisition on Homeric unity which shows that the author has not in the least appreciated the most modern form of the controversy. Of Aristotle he writes that " till a short time ago he had paralysed the natural sciences at all points; philosophy, and especially metaphysics, have not yet shaken off his yoke." This is the way people wrote in Germany a undred years ago when they were still combating Scholasticism; it is safe to say that at the present moment all schools of philosophy are inclined to return to Aristotle and to find in him a wisdom the world had forgotten. Mr. Chamberlain declares roundly that the Greek was no metaphysician, but his own metaphysical equipment seems to us strangely confused. He thinks the Greek crueL Professor Murray has dealt with that subject so well that, in the light of his argument, the
opinion is untenable. Mr. Chamberlain takes his view of the Persian War from Gobineau! Every man is entitled to his own opinion, but these violently stated and generally exploded dogmas shake the confidence of the reader. The chapter on
Rome is much better ; except that he is wholly unfair to Julius Caasar, he has a real insight into the Roman genius and the principles underlying the Roman conquests. " Rome is not the creation of individual men, but of the whole people ; in contrast to Hellas everything really great is here anonymous '; none of its great men approach the great- ness of the Roman people as a whole." The great legacy of Rome was the removal of the centre of gravity of culture once and for all to the West, and that law which in its spirit rather than in its form is the cement of civilisation. "Whilst our artistic and scientific culture is in many essential points derived from Greece, our social culture leads us back to Rome " ; and by social culture he means not material civilisation, but the " secure moral foundations of a dignified social life." Mr. Chamberlain is at his best in his acute appreciation of Roman law, and especially in his account of the transition to the formalism of the Byzantine editors.
The third and greatest legacy from the past was the revela- tion of Christ. We commend this chapter to all readers, for few things more reverent and more wise have been written in our time. Whenever the author approaches the Christian revelation, his language acquires a dignity and beauty which few historians reach. We are far from agreeing with all he says, and we think the pages spent in proving that Christ had " not a drop of genuinely Jewish blood in His veins " a waste of fallacious ingenuity ; but these faults do not detract from the majesty and truth of Mr. Chamberlain's conception of Our Lord :-
"I believe that we are still far, very far, from the moment when the transfiguring might of the vision of Christ will make itself felt to its utmost extent by civilised mankind. Even if oui churches in their present form should come to an end, the idea of Christianity would only stand out with the more force. . . . Even now Christianity is not firm upon its childish feet; its maturity is hardly dawning upon our dim vision. Who knows but a day may come when the bloody church history of the first eighteen con - turies of our era may be looked upon as the history of the infantile diseases of Christianity ?"
These are the three great legacies of the past. After them came the Chaos, the raceless welter of the later Roman Empire. " Hatred and disdain of every great achievement of the pure races were taught : a Lucian scoffs at the great thinkers ; an Augustine reviles the heroes of Rome's heroic age ; a Tertullian calls Homer a ' liar.' " Asceticism grows up out of sheer dis- gust at the state of the world. Salvation came from the barbarian invasions which meant the annihilation of "that monstrosity, a State without a nation, of that empty form, of that soulless congeries of humanity, that union of mongrels bound together only by a community of taxes and super.
stitions." The strife of the future was to lie between these Northern invaders and the Jews, who now enter Western history, and the battle was fought over the interpre- tation and use of the three great legacies from the past. Mr. Chamberlain is no vulgar Anti-Semite. He has an immense respect for the great qualities of the Jew and expounds the mystery of his origin in many pages ; but in religion be holds that be is essentially a materialist, in politics essentially nnnational, in art unimaginative. But he is racially pure, and against him only a pure race can stand. This latter he finds in the Teuton, or Northman, home Europaeue, whose chief virtues were freedom and loyalty. The second volume is the story of the struggle of the two types—the struggle for nationality, for art, for liberty, for a spiritual religion. This latter part is necessarily sketchy and a little out of proportion to the scheme of the work. Mr. Chamberlain finds the Roman Church eminently Judaistic in spirit, both in its materialism and its superstition. "Rome has never, from the first, adopted a specifically religious or a speoifically evangelical stand- point. . . . . Rome, by banishing the Gospel from the home and the heart of the Christian, and by taking as the official basis of religion the original materialism upon which the dying chaos of races had supported itself, as well as the Jewish theory of sacrifice, by which the priest becomes an indispensable mediator, has si mply been consistent." The struggle in the domain of politics was between universalism and nationalism. At first the struggle was against the Emperor and the Pope ; but the battle is not yet over, and Mr. Chamberlain believes that the form it will take in the future will be the fight between patriotism and international socialism. It was the Northman who was the true legatee of Greece and Rome, the true exponent of a revelation of Christ; and it is to him that we owe the founda- tions of the nineteenth century. In the later chapters Mr. Chamberlain works out the thesis in detail, dealing with the different domains of science, art, religion, economy and politics. There is nothing specially remarkable in this section except the enthusiastic appreciation of Kant, who, however, might surely have been praised without a constant belittling Hegel.
It is a bold and sensational thesis. How true is it all ? At least as true as any other thesis on the subject. In this kind of history there is no finality. Mr. Chamberlain is quite aware of the danger of generalisation. We are willing to believe that he has taken pains not to sum up prematurely, but no human knowledge is sufficient to buttress so vast as argument. We differ from him on many of the so-called facts, and we think that he has carried his race theories to desperate lengths. When he is compelled to maintain that the great Italians of the Middle Ages were all Northman, he reveals the impossible basis of his doctrine. The thesis cannot be held proved in the extreme form in which he has stated it. It is open to a learned man to write another book to prove that the foundations of the nineteenth century are wholly. Latin or wholly Jewish, and make a good argument of it. We think that Mr. Chamberlain would have the better case, but among extreme doctrines there is, as we have said, no finality. In. spite, however, of many crudities and extravagances, it is a remarkable book. It is a monument of erudition, and the skilful handling of erudition ; and even those who differ from it most widely will find it in a high degree stimulating and suggestive. It was well worth an English translation, and we would add that the translation could scarcely have been better done.
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